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Speaker 1: Is the universe's expansion just entropiece show. No, it's the

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Speaker 1: cosmic stretch that lets disorder grow.

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Speaker 2: I live an envy of rip Van Winkle. I just

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Speaker 2: can't stay asleep. But if I take a sleep aid,

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Speaker 2: will I rest longer but less deep?

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Speaker 1: Could aliens evolve epic nap skills for the long cosmic ride?

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Speaker 1: Or yeat themselves across space? On pure physics pride.

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Speaker 2: Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's

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Speaker 2: answers will make it right.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Listener Questions number

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Speaker 1: thirty two.

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Speaker 3: Woo Hello.

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Speaker 2: I'm Kelly Waider Smith and it currently hurts to laugh.

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Speaker 2: So this is one of the few instances in my

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Speaker 2: life where I wish my friend and co host Daniel

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Speaker 2: was less funny.

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I never

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Speaker 1: thought being funny was dangerous.

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Speaker 2: Oh it's not usually, It really really isn't usually.

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Speaker 1: But it is fun to consider yourself dangerously funny.

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Speaker 2: Oh yes, yes, we all enjoy fiction from diamonds.

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Speaker 1: Ooh, I love the instant karma. Every time you throw

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Speaker 1: a jab you feel it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think what I'm what I'm learning

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Speaker 2: about myself is that I laugh at myself a lot,

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Speaker 2: and I think I'm very funny, which is maybe not

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Speaker 2: a great personal trait.

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Speaker 1: It's a little dangerous.

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Speaker 2: It turns out, Yeah, I guess so ooh okay. So

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Speaker 2: here's my question for you. So you used the word

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Speaker 2: yeat and one of in the poem in the intro,

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Speaker 2: and yeat is a word that specifically reminds me that

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Speaker 2: I am old, because it was one of the first

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Speaker 2: words that I remember hearing where I was like, oh,

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Speaker 2: I don't know what that means, but I don't want

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Speaker 2: to tell someone I don't know what it means, because

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Speaker 2: it's clearly one of the cool words that people are

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Speaker 2: using now and I just have to figure it out

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Speaker 2: through context. And so yeat was like my initiation into

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Speaker 2: being one of the not cool older people. Do you

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Speaker 2: have a moment where you were like, oh, I have

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Speaker 2: reached the age where I don't get the things.

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Speaker 1: Well, I have a teenage daughter, so I hear a

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Speaker 1: lot of words I have to interpret in context. For example,

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Speaker 1: it took me a while to understand what sleigh really meant,

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Speaker 1: like what exactly is a good sleigh and how do

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Speaker 1: you start every day with the sleigh? And now, of

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Speaker 1: course that I've mastered it, it's like so embarrassing to

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Speaker 1: use that word, because nobody uses that word. So I

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Speaker 1: love how language is flexible and how it evolves, and

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Speaker 1: how my teenager lets me put my thumb on the

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Speaker 1: linguistic pulse of America.

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Speaker 2: How your teenager lets you sort of strangle America by

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Speaker 2: like making it not fun anymore as soon as you

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Speaker 2: understand it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, spoiling fun as parents do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's certainly what I do.

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Speaker 1: And on this episode, we're hoping did not spoil your fun,

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Speaker 1: but answer your questions, which we hope is a fun

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Speaker 1: resolution to those mysteries we are scratching your curiosity.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the good news is our listeners are a

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Speaker 2: lot more fun than we are, and that kind of

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Speaker 2: makes us fun by associations. So let's start with Sonia's question,

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Speaker 2: and let's go ahead and listen to it.

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Speaker 4: I have a question about time. So years ago I

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Speaker 4: read a book called flat Land, and I think it

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Speaker 4: had a sequel called sphere Land, which I read as well,

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Speaker 4: and it was an incredible explanation of dimensions, including time

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Speaker 4: as a dimension. It did also have some hilarious sexism

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Speaker 4: in it that I think men in nice logical shapes

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Speaker 4: and women are small pointy lines and if they bump

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Speaker 4: into the men, the men explode and die I mean

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Speaker 4: Freudian or what. But aside from that, it made it

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Speaker 4: possible to understand how time could be a dimension. But

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Speaker 4: then I was thinking that time is the only dimension

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Speaker 4: that you can only move in one direction, that you

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Speaker 4: experience it only going forwards, And I often wondered is

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Speaker 4: that related to the fact that the universe is expanding?

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Speaker 4: Is it like space, time is growing and our consciousness

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Speaker 4: sits on the growing edge of it, and as it

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Speaker 4: grows we experience it going forward. Or is it something

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Speaker 4: to do with maybe just falling like gravity and time

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Speaker 4: pulling us forward, like you know, what is pulling us

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Speaker 4: in this direction? Why can we not slide backwards and

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Speaker 4: forwards in time in the way that we could in space.

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Speaker 2: That's it really okay? So I am definitely interested in

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Speaker 2: hilarious sexism. Or are we talking about like, you know,

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Speaker 2: watching a movie from the eighties where you know, the

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Speaker 2: women are like just blonde and need to be saved,

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Speaker 2: or like, what are we talking about.

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Speaker 1: Here, no flatline goes even further back, and it's sort

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Speaker 1: of like a time capsule of casual sexism from the

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Speaker 1: middle of last century. Oh yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 3: Oh.

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Speaker 2: I mean sometimes I can be hilarious but also really frustrated.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if he was even commented on at the time,

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Speaker 1: or if it's just like, hey, this is just how

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Speaker 1: we talk about women. Anyway, it's fascinating.

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Speaker 2: You know. The other day I got my gallbladder removed,

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Speaker 2: which wasn't a ton of fun. But right as they

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Speaker 2: were rolling me into the operating theater, I looked around

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Speaker 2: and I said, wait a minute, you're all women. This

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Speaker 2: is awesome. And they were like, yeah, that is pretty awesome.

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Speaker 2: I guess they were kind of used to it, but anyway,

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Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty great that everybody rolling me

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Speaker 2: into that room was a woman. Anyway, we've made some progress,

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Speaker 2: still some room for improvement. Let's talk about time as

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Speaker 2: a dimension.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Sonya's question essentially is why does time go forward?

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Speaker 1: If time is a dimension, why can't we slide backwards

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Speaker 1: and forwards? And how does it related to the expansion

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Speaker 1: of the universe and all this kind of stuff. So

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Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning, and remember what we know

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Speaker 1: about time and space. Space is three dimensional. You can

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Speaker 1: go backwards and forwards. If you define an arbitrary reference frame,

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Speaker 1: you put yourself at zero, then you're always at the

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Speaker 1: same place. If you define the center of the Earth

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Speaker 1: to be zero, then you can move all around. You

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Speaker 1: can come back and revisit where you were born. There

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Speaker 1: is no arbitrary reference frame, but if you pick one,

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Speaker 1: you can go backwards and forwards. In space, time we

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Speaker 1: think of a little bit differently, but Albert Einstein showed

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Speaker 1: us that time and space are deeply connected. In fact,

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Speaker 1: he wraps them together into a four dimensional object called

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Speaker 1: space time.

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Speaker 2: And one of the first episodes you and I recorded

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Speaker 2: together was what is time and what is space? And

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Speaker 2: those are some really fun philosophical topics to think about

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Speaker 2: deeply while looking at the stars, I think, and this.

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Speaker 1: Is a really important and subtle point here, which is like,

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Speaker 1: why do you put things together? Is it more than

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Speaker 1: just I'm tacking on another dimension? Is it meaningful in

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Speaker 1: some way? And it really is. We only do this

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Speaker 1: when it makes more sense to group things than it

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Speaker 1: does to divide things, like with electricity and magnetism. We

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Speaker 1: notice that these two things are really two parts of

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Speaker 1: the same larger object, and we had drawn an artificial

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Speaker 1: dotted line between them, and now we see that it

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Speaker 1: makes much more sense to connect them and to think

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Speaker 1: of them as one larger hole, because, for example, in

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Speaker 1: special relativity, we know that what somebody sees as an

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Speaker 1: electric fields, somebody else can see is electric and magnetic.

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Speaker 1: It's observer dependent, so it really is one larger hole.

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Speaker 1: And it's the same story with space and time. Things

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Speaker 1: get simpler, they get more beautiful, more elegant when you

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Speaker 1: treat it as one larger hole rather than two separate things.

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Speaker 1: Specifically in special relativity, when you think about what's happening

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Speaker 1: in the universe and you want to translate from what

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Speaker 1: one observer sees to what another observer sees, who's like

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Speaker 1: somewhere else and maybe moving fast, it's just rotating a

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Speaker 1: four dimensional vector. Because space and time is one four

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Speaker 1: D object and a frame is like a four D vector.

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Speaker 1: You just rotate that four D vector and all the

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Speaker 1: components mix just the same way, like in linear algebra.

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Speaker 1: If you have a three D vector in space and

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Speaker 1: you rotate it, all the components get mixed together, and

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Speaker 1: that's just because time impacts where things happen, and space

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Speaker 1: impacts when you see them happen. They really are parts

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Speaker 1: of a larger hole, and so it makes perfect sense

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Speaker 1: to stick them together. In fact, the math becomes much

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Speaker 1: simpler if you do. So that's why we stick things together.

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Speaker 1: It's not just.

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Speaker 2: Arbitrary, okay, but where and when are still different. So

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Speaker 2: do you lose anything by lumping them?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? I love that question. Now you don't lose anything.

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Speaker 1: In fact, you gain because all of your intuition for

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Speaker 1: how space works and vectors rotate in space, you can

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Speaker 1: now generalize that to four dimensions and operate on space

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Speaker 1: time in the same way. So it's like you get

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Speaker 1: to bring a whole set of tools along with you. You

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Speaker 1: have to adapt them a little bit, but now you

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Speaker 1: have like a more powerful toolkit to deal with these questions.

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Speaker 1: But you're right that space and time are still different.

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Speaker 1: Like special relativity sees them as very very similar, right,

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Speaker 1: and brings them closer together. But we know they are

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Speaker 1: still different, and the theories of physics that we have

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Speaker 1: actually all trees time differently. So we've been talking about relativity,

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Speaker 1: which combines space and time, but in general relativity it

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Speaker 1: gets even weirder, and you have these more generalized coordinates

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Speaker 1: which you can say are like kind of spacey, and

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Speaker 1: some of them are kind of timy. And in general

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Speaker 1: relativity you can even have theories of the universe where

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Speaker 1: time has a beginning it's like a singularity right before

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Speaker 1: which there is no time. So time is very weird

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Speaker 1: in general relativity, and then in quantum mechanics it's completely different.

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Speaker 1: Quantum mechanics treats time just as a parameter. It separates

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Speaker 1: space and time. It says you have all these fields

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Speaker 1: through space and they evolve over time. And actually quantum mechanics,

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Speaker 1: which insists that no information is lost, requires that time

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Speaker 1: is infinite into the past and into the future, and

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Speaker 1: quantum mechanics is almost symmetric in time. So we have

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Speaker 1: very similar concepts and we use the same word, but

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Speaker 1: time in quantum mechanics and time and relativity really are

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Speaker 1: different concepts, and it's actually one of the obstacles to

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Speaker 1: merging them together into a theory of quantum gravity. And

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Speaker 1: we have even a third concept of time, which of

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Speaker 1: course we just use the same name for, which is

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Speaker 1: thermodynamic time. Right in thermodynamics there actually is an arrow.

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Speaker 1: The universe evolves differently forwards in time and backwards in

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Speaker 1: time because of entropy. The second law thermodynamics says that

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Speaker 1: entropy increases with time, it goes up. So this is asymmetric,

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Speaker 1: and this is what we call thermodynamic arrow of time.

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Speaker 1: The universe goes from lower entropy to higher entropy. And

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Speaker 1: check out our episode a deep dive into entropy, which

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Speaker 1: shows you that's not just like disorder. It's an evolution

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Speaker 1: from improbable states to more probable states. So that's another

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Speaker 1: concept of time, which again doesn't perfectly mesh with quantum

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Speaker 1: mechanics or with relativity. So we have these three different

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Speaker 1: ideas of time.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so I think that I have lost where we

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Speaker 2: are heading to. So now we have we have a

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Speaker 2: lot of different definitions of time. Initially we were trying

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Speaker 2: to lump space and time. The road that we are

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Speaker 2: taking is eventually supposed to get us to wear.

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Speaker 1: Again, so that's our primerund space and time now. So

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Speaker 1: in this question was are we moving forwards in time

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Speaker 1: because the universe is expanding or does this have something

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Speaker 1: to do with gravity? What's pulling us forwards in time? Essentially?

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Speaker 1: And it's true that the expansion of the universe seems

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Speaker 1: to have a direction in time also, right, like, as

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Speaker 1: time goes on, the universe gets bigger and its entropy

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Speaker 1: is growing. So ooh, that feels like maybe there's a

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Speaker 1: connection there. But number one, it's not required for the

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Speaker 1: universe to keep expanding. Like if the universe had had

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Speaker 1: more mass in it and less dark energy, or if

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Speaker 1: it had a different topology, like it was curved more,

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Speaker 1: it could have contracted. Right, the universe when it began expanding,

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Speaker 1: that expansion was initially slowing down. It was always expanding,

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Speaker 1: but that expansion was decelerating until dark energy ramped up

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Speaker 1: and took over and accelerated it. But it could have

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Speaker 1: been in other universes that it decelerated, stopped, and then contracted.

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Speaker 1: So the universe is not required to expand as time

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Speaker 1: goes forward. It's not like thermodynamics, where entropy increases with time.

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Speaker 1: The expansion of the universe could have various directions. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so I don't think the expansion explains why time goes forwards,

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Speaker 1: but it is true that as time goes forward and

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Speaker 1: the universe is expanding, the entropy grows, right, And this

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Speaker 1: is one of The greatest mystery actually about time and entropy,

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Speaker 1: which is that the early universe started out really really

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Speaker 1: low entropy. Right, Enterpy is going to increase, and eventually

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Speaker 1: we're going to reach a maximum entropy where everything is

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Speaker 1: like spread out and there's no useful energy. There's still

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Speaker 1: like energy floating around, but there's no useful energy, no differences, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: if everything is the same temperature, there's no way for

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Speaker 1: energy to flow and for you to do anything. And

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Speaker 1: so that's a pretty boring universe. And what's fascinating is

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Speaker 1: that our universe started out really really far from that.

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Speaker 1: So it's going to take a long time to get

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Speaker 1: to the heat death. It could have been that our

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Speaker 1: universe started out like pretty close to the heat death

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Speaker 1: and like five seconds later we were at the heat death.

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Speaker 1: One of the deep mysteries of cosmology and theroodynamics and

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Speaker 1: time is why we started out with such low entropy.

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Speaker 2: I guess we might not be here if that hadn't

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Speaker 2: been the case.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a great argument. It's the anthropic one.

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Speaker 1: Only in universes that do start out with very low

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Speaker 1: entropy do you get people asking, hey, why is there

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Speaker 1: such a low entropy? Right? Because the other ones just

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Speaker 1: have a bunch of photons flying around. Another comment on

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Speaker 1: this thermodynamic arrow of time. Some people argue that the

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Speaker 1: thermodynamic era of time is the arrow of time. The

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Speaker 1: fact that entropy grows with time forces time to go forwards,

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Speaker 1: because the second law says entropy has to go up,

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Speaker 1: and therefore time has to go forwards. And I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure I buy that as an argument.

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Speaker 2: You're not sure you buy the second law of thermodynamics

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Speaker 2: full statement, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm deeply invested in the second law. But

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Speaker 1: the second law says time and entropy are connected, doesn't

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Speaker 1: say time has to go forwards. You know, if time

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Speaker 1: went the other way, it would just mean that we're

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Speaker 1: in the universe that entropy is decreasing, so it couples

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Speaker 1: time and enter by. But I don't see how it

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Speaker 1: forces time to go this way instead of the other way.

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Speaker 1: Maybe in some other universe where entropy is constantly decreasing,

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Speaker 1: they're wondering why time goes their direction right, which we

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Speaker 1: would call backwards anyway. So nobody knows the answer to

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Speaker 1: this question, Sonyafor we don't know why time is different

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Speaker 1: from space, because it seems so similar. We don't know

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Speaker 1: how to unify time from a throodynamic point of view

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Speaker 1: and a quantum mechanical point of view and a relativity

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Speaker 1: point of view. We hope to one day figure that out.

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Speaker 1: We don't know why time just goes forwards. It does

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Speaker 1: seem somehow connected to entropy, but I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: connected to the expansion of the universe.

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Speaker 2: All right, well, let's yep this answer over to Sonia

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Speaker 2: and see what she has to say. Does it What

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Speaker 2: was the word that Hazel used, slay? All right, let's

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Speaker 2: see if it's slays.

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Speaker 4: Hey, Daniel and Gelli, thank you so much for taking

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Speaker 4: the time to answer my question. I have been bounded

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Speaker 4: officially by my family from trying to use words like sleigh,

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Speaker 4: So I shall just say that was a fantastic unpacking

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Speaker 4: of all the reasons we don't know the answer. I

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Speaker 4: do you think though, over the last twenty thirty years

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Speaker 4: we've made so many advances in understanding. I wonder whether

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Speaker 4: maybe in my lifetime we might work it out. And

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Speaker 4: if we do, maybe you can explain it to me.

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Speaker 3: Then.

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Speaker 4: Thanks again, love the show.

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Speaker 1: All right, we took a little break and we're ready

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Speaker 1: to answer more questions from listeners. So those of you

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Speaker 1: who are gently falling asleep, don't because this question is

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Speaker 1: very important for you. Get up and stretch, do a

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Speaker 1: jumping jack, and pay close attention.

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Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and listen to Thomas's amazing question about sleeping.

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Speaker 5: Hey, this is Matt the sound guy. Thomas was not

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Speaker 5: available to read his questions, so I'll do it in

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Speaker 5: his stead. Hi, I just finished and enjoyed your episode

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Speaker 5: about aging. As a seventy seven year old who exercises daily,

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Speaker 5: I still find my sleep as very disrupted. My question is,

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Speaker 5: if one takes sleep aids i e. ADVILPM or melatonin,

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Speaker 5: is sleep as beneficial?

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Speaker 1: I love this question. I want to know the answer

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Speaker 1: to this question. Also, thank you Thomas for asking it.

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Speaker 2: Well, okay, so maybe this the answer is going to

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Speaker 2: be relevant to you because you indicated that when you

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Speaker 2: turned fifty you started rounding your age up to one hundred.

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Speaker 2: But I specifically set up an answer for this question

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Speaker 2: for the impact of sleep aids on older folks because

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Speaker 2: it turns out that the answers depend a lot on

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Speaker 2: why you aren't sleeping well, which I'll get into. But

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Speaker 2: first I'd like to note that Thomas is referring to

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Speaker 2: the why do We Age episode where we interviewed doctor

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Speaker 2: Vanki Ramakrishnan, and that was from October ninth, twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 1: Super fun conversations, super fun.

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Speaker 2: He's so good at explaining concepts. And Gina Poe, Doctor

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Speaker 2: Gina Poe is also great at explaining ideas, and we

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Speaker 2: had her on to talk about why we sleep and dream?

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Speaker 2: So another great episode to check out. That was August

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Speaker 2: twenty first, twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 1: And so this is gonna be like a crossover between

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Speaker 1: our two episodes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of a crossover. And I you know, of course,

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Speaker 2: after remind everybody, I am not a medical doctor, and

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Speaker 2: if you are suffering from disrupted sleep, you should talk

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Speaker 2: to a medical professional. And this discussion is in no

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Speaker 2: way comprehensive. Okay.

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Speaker 1: And by a medical professional, do you mean chat gibt

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Speaker 1: or do you mean like an actually human person?

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Speaker 2: I mean an actual human person.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and yet you use chat GPT for medical advice?

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Speaker 2: Are you talking about my decision to go to the

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Speaker 2: er recently? Yes, no, it's true, I did so. I

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Speaker 2: guess I'll tell that story now. So I was crawling

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Speaker 2: around on the bathroom floor in incredible pain, and I

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Speaker 2: had been in pain all day and I just started

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Speaker 2: throwing up, and Zach was like, you should go to

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Speaker 2: the er, and I was like, I don't want to

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Speaker 2: go to the er because I'm gonna have to sit

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Speaker 2: in an er for hours and be uncomfortable in the

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Speaker 2: horrible chairs, and i just want to find a position

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Speaker 2: where I'm comfortable and I'll stay home all day. And

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Speaker 2: Zach look on chat GPT and chat GPT immediately said,

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Speaker 2: your wife has gallstones. She needs to go to the er.

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Speaker 2: And it was right. I went to the er and

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Speaker 2: they immediately brought me to the back and they were like,

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Speaker 2: you have gallstones.

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Speaker 1: And they didn't use CHATCHEAPT, did they.

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Speaker 2: I hope not? Well. I mean, they eventually gave me

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Speaker 2: an ultrasound and they were like, look, you have gallstones.

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Speaker 2: And turns out I had four gallstones, each about two

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Speaker 2: centimeters wide. And then I looked at my post operative

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Speaker 2: notes and they had to cut a bigger hole where

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Speaker 2: my belly button was because the gallstones were making it

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Speaker 2: so hard to get the gallbladder out because they were

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Speaker 2: so big. Anyway, more than anyone needed to know, chat

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Speaker 2: GPT is sometimes a helpful tool, yes, But in general,

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Speaker 2: if you're having disrupted sleep, which is very common in

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Speaker 2: the elderly population, and if it's bothering you, you should

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Speaker 2: talk to a medical professional, all right. So there are

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Speaker 2: lots of reasons why people have disrupted sleep at various

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Speaker 2: different ages, and those problems can impact the kinds of

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Speaker 2: sleep aids that you might want to take. So some

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Speaker 2: people have a trouble sleeping because of anxiety, or because

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Speaker 2: of depression, or because of pain. But I decided that

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Speaker 2: I was going to look at just problems related to

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Speaker 2: sleep when you're aging. And so for example, when folks age,

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Speaker 2: they produce less melatonin. And melatonin is a hormone that

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Speaker 2: our body uses to control our circadian rhythms. So we

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Speaker 2: make more melatonin when it's supposed to be dark outside

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Speaker 2: at night. That's the part of how our body tells ourselves, oh,

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Speaker 2: it's time to go to sleep, and older people make

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Speaker 2: less of it.

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Speaker 1: Is that the one that people often take when they're

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Speaker 1: on an airplane to help them with jet lag.

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Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, exactly. So one thing I'd like to notice

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Speaker 2: that when I read a bunch of these papers, the

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Speaker 2: first thing that most of these papers said was, Look,

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Speaker 2: if you're having trouble sleeping, the first thing you should

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Speaker 2: try isn't a sleep aid. It's exercise, which Thomas is

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Speaker 2: already doing. And then it's cognitive behavior therapy to improve

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Speaker 2: sleep or other sleep hygiene things. And so there's a

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Speaker 2: bunch of stuff you're supposed to try before you start

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Speaker 2: trying to take medications, because a lot of medications have

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Speaker 2: side effects that are not ideal.

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Speaker 1: So first, like, make sure you get exercise during the day,

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Speaker 1: make sure you're sleeping in a cool, dark, quiet place

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Speaker 1: you don't have like toddlers jumping up and down in

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Speaker 1: your head.

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Speaker 3: This kind of thing.

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Speaker 2: Yes, right, try to avoid looking at screens for the

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Speaker 2: two hours before you go to sleep, stuff like that.

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Speaker 2: So Thomas's question actually kind of has a couple different

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Speaker 2: parts to it. First, you probably want to know does

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Speaker 2: the sleep aid actually help you sleep better? And there's

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Speaker 2: a couple different ways you can measure that. So you

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Speaker 2: can measure does it help you fall asleep more quickly

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Speaker 2: once you lay down in bed? Right, once you fall

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Speaker 2: in asleep, do you wake up less often? If you

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Speaker 2: do wake up, how long does it take you to

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Speaker 2: fall back asleep? And then when you're in bed, what

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Speaker 2: is the total amount of time that you spend sleeping?

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Speaker 2: And those are some ways of measuring your sleep, But

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Speaker 2: another way of measuring sleep quality is things like how

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Speaker 2: deep does your sleep get? So you can put like

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Speaker 2: electrodes on people and you can measure things like rapid

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Speaker 2: eye movement sleep, ri em sleep, and this is where

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Speaker 2: you should go and listen to Gina pose amazing episode.

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Speaker 2: But basically, when your brain is doing rapid eye movement sleep,

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Speaker 2: this is when you're like consolidating memories and like doing

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Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff that our brains and bodies need

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Speaker 2: to do.

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Speaker 1: I feel like this is the heart of his question

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Speaker 1: because he's asking me sleep as beneficial. But are we

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Speaker 1: going to talk about aging and sleep and metrics and

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Speaker 1: not talk about Brian Johnson's data?

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Speaker 2: Go ahead, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: Brian Johnson is this guy who wants to prevent himself

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Speaker 1: from aging, and he takes blood from his eighteen year

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Speaker 1: old son and Jackson himself, and I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of that stuff is really weird. What I do think

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Speaker 1: is fascinating is how much data he takes on himself,

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Speaker 1: including what happens when he sleeps, and he posts all

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Speaker 1: this data online.

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Speaker 2: You love telling this story. You also told you doctor,

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Ramachrisa. We had a Nobel Prize winner on

439
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:06,360
Speaker 2: the show, Daniel, and you told him this story. Well,

440
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:09,879
Speaker 2: we were looking at each other over the Riverside recording,

441
00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:12,120
Speaker 2: but go ahead tell everybody so that everybody knows.

442
00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:15,760
Speaker 1: I want to say. It's just that in a one

443
00:23:15,800 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 1: way to measure your sleep is the length and quality

444
00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: of the erections you have. While my gosh, yes, according

445
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:26,840
Speaker 1: to Brian Johnson and the data that he posts daily

446
00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:27,800
Speaker 1: on his website.

447
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:28,560
Speaker 5: Yep.

448
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:32,359
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, well that's that. I didn't find that measure

449
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 2: in any of the papers that I was looking at.

450
00:23:37,280 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 2: But apparently the sleep that Brian Johnson is having slags and.

451
00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:46,520
Speaker 1: All right, so what are some ways that people can

452
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:49,719
Speaker 1: improve their sleep medically? The kind of sleep aids that

453
00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:50,720
Speaker 1: Thomas is talking about.

454
00:23:51,080 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's many different kinds of sleep aids that

455
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 2: can be delivered in different ways. This is not at

456
00:23:56,080 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 2: all comprehensive, as I've said. One class of drugs that

457
00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:05,440
Speaker 2: to be used often are benzodiazepines. And what benzodiazepines do

458
00:24:05,800 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 2: is they bind to GABA receptors. So these are receptors

459
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:12,479
Speaker 2: that are in our brain. They're on are like nerve cells,

460
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:16,960
Speaker 2: and they are important for making our nerves excitatory, which

461
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,159
Speaker 2: is essentially like making our nerves fire so that our

462
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:22,160
Speaker 2: brains are like active and doing stuff.

463
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:23,840
Speaker 1: You said, gabba receptors.

464
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:28,119
Speaker 2: What's a gabba gabba is just a neurotransmitter. Wasn't going

465
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,240
Speaker 2: to go into too much detail here, but it's a neurotransmitter.

466
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 2: And when that neurotransmitter binds to these receptors in our brain,

467
00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:38,879
Speaker 2: our nerves start firing and our brains start doing stuff. Okay,

468
00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 2: but you don't really want your brain to be doing

469
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 2: too much stuff. You want your brain to be kind

470
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:46,960
Speaker 2: of calming down. And so when when benzodiazepines bind to

471
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:50,679
Speaker 2: these receptors, your brain sort of gets less excited and

472
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 2: it acts as like a muscle relaxant and a sedative,

473
00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 2: and you start getting sleepy and the ideas you're supposed

474
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 2: to fall asleep. And these drugs were established and then

475
00:24:59,840 --> 00:25:02,960
Speaker 2: i teen fifties. They were first synthesized in the nineteen fifties,

476
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 2: and they were supposed to be a great replacement for barbituates,

477
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 2: which had some like negative side effects, and everyone was

478
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 2: like yay benzodiazepine, So we started prescribing these for everybody.

479
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 2: But it turns out that they're also highly addictive and

480
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:21,560
Speaker 2: they do a bunch of bad things. But they might

481
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 2: I found a twenty sixteen review for sleep aids for

482
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:30,479
Speaker 2: folks who are older, and that review said that benzodiazepines

483
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:34,080
Speaker 2: do appear to help you fall asleep faster, help you

484
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 2: reach RM sleep faster, So that's sleep where you're doing

485
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 2: a better job of consolidating memories, and it reduces the

486
00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:42,640
Speaker 2: number of times that you wake up in the middle

487
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:45,879
Speaker 2: of the night. But I also found a more recent

488
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 2: study that suggested that if you use benzodiazepines long term,

489
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:54,360
Speaker 2: you're going to spend less time in RM sleep, and

490
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:57,160
Speaker 2: so in that case quality would be lower, So long

491
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 2: term use would be giving you less good sleep. This

492
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 2: all sounds good, but the way that older bodies metabolize

493
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:08,119
Speaker 2: or like breakdown drugs is different than the way that

494
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:10,880
Speaker 2: younger bodies do, and in some ways it's less efficient,

495
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 2: and so these drugs spend more time in your body,

496
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 2: they do different things in your body. So the American

497
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 2: Geriatric Society recommends not using benzodiazepines because in elderly patients.

498
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 2: These drugs are associated with cognitive impairment, delirium, You're more

499
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 2: likely to fall, you're more likely to get fractures, and

500
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:33,119
Speaker 2: you're more likely to get into car crashes. And so

501
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:35,880
Speaker 2: these drugs, even though they might help with sleep, they

502
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 2: are in general not recommended for elderly patients because the

503
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 2: downsides are just too high.

504
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,440
Speaker 1: So your one hundred year old co host here should

505
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:49,879
Speaker 1: not be taken these things. No, So I always wonder

506
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 1: about how we discover these side effects. It seems like

507
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:54,880
Speaker 1: we put these things out and then we discover, oh

508
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:56,919
Speaker 1: my gosh, they're addictive, Oh my gosh, they're bad for

509
00:26:56,960 --> 00:26:59,640
Speaker 1: this population. So I guess we do some preliminary test

510
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,120
Speaker 1: to see they're safe before we put them out there.

511
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: But basically we're testing them on the population without really

512
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 1: knowing the side effects.

513
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 2: Well, so this drug first became available in like the

514
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, Yeah, And I think we had much less

515
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 2: testing before drugs went public back then. And so yes,

516
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 2: I think that this is a drug that was released

517
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 2: to the public before we understood some of the more

518
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:27,120
Speaker 2: negative side effects, and so some of them were sort

519
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:30,160
Speaker 2: of observed along the way. Wow, which is less good.

520
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,200
Speaker 2: The next drug I'm going to talk about, which is zolpitem,

521
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:36,919
Speaker 2: is an example of a Z drug, A non zolpiedom.

522
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:39,119
Speaker 2: Really did I pronounce it wrong?

523
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's a terrible name. Did they

524
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 1: come up with that name? Is that like some marketing scheme.

525
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,439
Speaker 2: A lot of the drugs that are marketed have a

526
00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 2: Z in their name, and I think that's why they're

527
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 2: called the Z drugs. And so I think someone came up.

528
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:51,359
Speaker 3: With that Z.

529
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: I gets because it's associated with sleep, But zolpa dome

530
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: it just sounds like a letdown. Oh, I'm sorry, you

531
00:27:57,359 --> 00:27:58,160
Speaker 1: got a zolpidom.

532
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:03,159
Speaker 2: Maybe it's zolpa z lpid em. I mean, we know

533
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 2: not to trust me for pronunciations.

534
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:08,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so if we take this Z drug,

535
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 1: what happens?

536
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 2: Okay? Well, so it's a non benzo diazepine drug, is

537
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 2: what it's called. And these started getting synthesized in the

538
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties. It binds to like the same kind of

539
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 2: receptor as benzodiazepines, but there's actually like a bunch of

540
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 2: different kinds of GABBA receptors, and these drugs bind to

541
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,719
Speaker 2: like a smaller subset of the receptors and so the

542
00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 2: bad effects are minimized, and so these have fewer bad effects.

543
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 2: They've got a lot of the good stuff going on.

544
00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 2: And so it does seem to be associated with like

545
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 2: you fall asleep faster, you wake up less often, you

546
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 2: sleep for longer, you're less likely to be tired during

547
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 2: the day, You're less likely to have memory issues, you're

548
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 2: less likely to like fall and stuff like that. But

549
00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 2: I found this review paper that was the one that

550
00:28:57,760 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 2: was saying that like, oh, you're you know, it's not

551
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 2: associated with a lot of memory issues, blah blah blah.

552
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 2: But they also said, you know, when we were reviewing

553
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 2: all of these papers, we should note that the quality

554
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:11,840
Speaker 2: of most of the papers we were reviewing was pretty bad, like,

555
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 2: and so it doesn't look like there's a lot of

556
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 2: papers where you know, like good use of placebos or

557
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 2: large sample sizes and blah blah blah. And so although

558
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 2: things look like they're pointing in a good direction, we

559
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 2: haven't really collected loads of exactly the kind of data

560
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:31,240
Speaker 2: that we would want to feel super confident about it.

561
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: So there could still be like dangerous side effects lurking

562
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:36,479
Speaker 1: out there, like makes you more likely to hurt yourself

563
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: laughing on a podcast.

564
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 2: Could be could be yes, maybe yeah, yeah, maybe you

565
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 2: get gallstones, just like Kelly, that's yeah, weird sense of humor, Daniel. So,

566
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 2: but for this drug, you are specifically supposed to take

567
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 2: low doses for short periods of time. Nice, and so

568
00:29:56,920 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 2: there shouldn't be people out there who are taking high

569
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 2: dose for long periods of time. And so if it

570
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 2: is the case that you know, high doses for long

571
00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 2: periods of time do have negative impacts, you know, that

572
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 2: shouldn't matter because people probably shouldn't be taking it in

573
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:12,240
Speaker 2: that way, or at least it's not recommended.

574
00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: All right, So we've done benzodiazepine, we've done the z drugs.

575
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 1: What about the old standby melitonein that feels like kind

576
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: of natural and simple in comparison?

577
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so I started looking into this because

578
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 2: you know, for a while I was having disrupted sleep

579
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 2: and I was like, well, maybe I'll try melatone, And

580
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 2: so I dug into the literature, and I dug into

581
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 2: the literature, you know, specifically like trying to answer Thomas's

582
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:36,480
Speaker 2: questions for you know, people who are older than me,

583
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:41,239
Speaker 2: and it looks like the answer is. It depends, like

584
00:30:41,360 --> 00:30:46,479
Speaker 2: the results are super inconsistent. Really, the most consistent result

585
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 2: is that it helps you fall asleep a little faster.

586
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:52,239
Speaker 2: But the studies that find that the effects size is

587
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 2: often something like five minutes. You know, like you fall

588
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 2: asleep five minutes faster, which is not a big difference.

589
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 1: I don't know. Five minutes of lying there with your

590
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:03,240
Speaker 1: eyes closed trying to fall asleep can feel like a

591
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: thousand years.

592
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,400
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, that you might be a good candidate

593
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 2: for melatonin. You're not supposed to use it like long term.

594
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 2: You're supposed to just kind of use it sort of

595
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 2: short term, not stand it like forever. It doesn't seem

596
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 2: to help too much with things like reducing the number

597
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 2: of times that you wake up or influencing how long

598
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:26,120
Speaker 2: you sleep overall, And some studies have found that you

599
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 2: have what they call a residual daytime sedation. So like

600
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 2: you take it the night before, and then the next

601
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 2: day it's still making you a little bit tired, and

602
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 2: so you might wonder were those additional five minutes worth

603
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 2: it if the next day you're still feeling kind of sleepy. Yeah,

604
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 2: you know, you'd have to make that decision up for yourself.

605
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 2: And then there are some studies that find no effect

606
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 2: at all, Like you take the melotonein it didn't make

607
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 2: the people in the study fall asleep any faster, and

608
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 2: so you know, it's it seems to have done nothing.

609
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: So there's no perfect bullet out there.

610
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like there's any perfect bullet out there

611
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:01,479
Speaker 2: that has no you know, no risks associated with it.

612
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, that's just kind of life.

613
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 2: I think just.

614
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: About that's kind of biology.

615
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:09,840
Speaker 2: That kind of biology, you know. I think anytime you

616
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 2: take a medication, you get a pamphlet with potential side

617
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 2: effects that you need to discuss with your doctor or

618
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 2: your pharmacist and understand the risks of There are plenty

619
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 2: of people who are on sleep aids and they feel

620
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 2: like it's worth it, that the benefits outweigh the risks.

621
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 2: But I think that you if you're having trouble sleeping,

622
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 2: you should go to your doctor and talk about why

623
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 2: you're having trouble sleeping, because you know, if the problem

624
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 2: is pain, then maybe like tailan al or tile and

625
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 2: al PM would be worth it and it would solve

626
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:40,600
Speaker 2: the problem. But you know, I think it's important to

627
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 2: talk to your doctor about the specific problems you're having

628
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 2: and the you know, costs and benefits of taking drugs,

629
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 2: and you know, work through it with them.

630
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 1: It amazes me that in this day and age, when

631
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: we can do so much, we still don't understand sleep

632
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 1: very well, and so we don't understand how to manipulate

633
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: it and correct it and adjust. It's such a basic

634
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: part of life and still such a huge challenge and

635
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 1: a mystery.

636
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 2: But you know, with how complicated our bodies are, I

637
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 2: don't know that we should expect that there would be

638
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 2: a perfect solution, you know, Like our bodies don't necessarily

639
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 2: have like a little switch where you should just be

640
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 2: able to like push up the knob for more sleep

641
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 2: with nothing else getting messed up. Like we were just

642
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 2: an interconnected mess of things, and maybe you can't tinker

643
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 2: with one thing without messing up something else. I don't know.

644
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 2: I think I think what we've managed to do is

645
00:33:31,160 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 2: pretty amazing, and hopefully we just keep getting better.

646
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: That's a fascinating, in kind of depressing theory. I imagine

647
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: our bodies as these really complex machines with all these

648
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:42,719
Speaker 1: knobs on it, and it's of course hard to predict

649
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 1: what happens if you pull this lever or press that button.

650
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: But I always assume that there's some place in that

651
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: phase space of operations where things go the way you want.

652
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you're suggesting that, like, there may

653
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 1: be no way to tweak these knobs to get you

654
00:33:57,920 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: where you want to be.

655
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure that there is always going to

656
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 2: be a way to tweak the nubs to get you

657
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 2: exactly where you want to be.

658
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 1: Wow, fascinating. That's a depressing thought, Kelly.

659
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:09,799
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know that evolution is always going

660
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:11,319
Speaker 2: to be like, oh, I need to make sure there's

661
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 2: some way for Kelly to get to her optimum level

662
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 2: of sleep. You know, evolution is just you get.

663
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:18,279
Speaker 1: What you get and you don't get upset and.

664
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 2: You don't get us set exactly.

665
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners. We

666
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: span an amazing and delicious array of topics. We've also

667
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 1: been getting notes from listeners that they're really appreciating the

668
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: huge variety of topics that we cover. I assume that

669
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:56,719
Speaker 1: means that they're enjoying all the biological and chemical questions

670
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:59,320
Speaker 1: we're tackling. So I'm very glad to have such a range.

671
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 2: I think that means that they're enjoying the questions that

672
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 2: they're submitting, which have been wonderful, and we should give

673
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 2: them the credit for the great diversity.

674
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 1: All right, And so we're going to zoom out from

675
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 1: sleep questions to think about the cosmic context, and of

676
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 1: course talk about aliens. Here's a question from Ralph which

677
00:35:17,080 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: sets me up to give a little rant.

678
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 6: Yay, So I've seen some sensationalist headlines recently based on

679
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:28,919
Speaker 6: Harvard physicist Dabby Lobe's claim that an interstellar object moving

680
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:32,279
Speaker 6: through our Solar System might be an alien spacecraft with

681
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 6: malicious intent. And I'm probably not going to lose any

682
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 6: sleep worrying about this, but it reminds me of a

683
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 6: recent podcast you guys did where you discuss the effects

684
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 6: of interstellar space travel on humans, And I'm thinking, what

685
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 6: if you shifted the perspective to aliens. You know, specifically,

686
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 6: what kinds of evolutionary characteristics might make them more adapted

687
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 6: to survive interstellar travel, and assuming they have superior understanding

688
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,880
Speaker 6: of physics, what kinds of propulsion system might they employ?

689
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 6: This might be an opportunity for you guys to put

690
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:05,399
Speaker 6: on your sci fi hats and have a little fun.

691
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 2: Thank you well, I'm glad to hear that Ralph isn't

692
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:12,240
Speaker 2: planning on losing any sleep, but I am looking forward

693
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 2: to hearing Daniel's rants.

694
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:18,839
Speaker 1: Apparently, not worrying about aliens is the way they get

695
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 1: a good night's sleep.

696
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:22,760
Speaker 2: Oh then you don't sleep much, do you, Daniel, because

697
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:25,280
Speaker 2: you spend a lot of time worrying about aliens.

698
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:31,359
Speaker 1: True. So Ralph mentions this interstellar object three i at lists,

699
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:35,120
Speaker 1: which recently entered our solar system. And this was a

700
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:38,720
Speaker 1: lot of fun because we haven't seen very many interstellar objects.

701
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:41,000
Speaker 1: We've only been looking for a few years, and we've

702
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: seen three of them.

703
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 3: Now.

704
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,319
Speaker 1: That's why it's called three i at lists, and each

705
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: one is new because each one is like one of

706
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,760
Speaker 1: the first few samples we've ever gotten from other solar

707
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: systems out there. We think these things are probably chunks

708
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 1: of rock from like the equivalent of the Orc cloud

709
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:00,280
Speaker 1: around some other star which got gravitationally dislodged, and instead

710
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: of falling into that star and becoming a long period comet,

711
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 1: just floated through the galaxy until it ran into our

712
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: solar system. So it's super fascinating to get to see

713
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: these chunks.

714
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:14,280
Speaker 2: Welcome to our solar system. I think I finally remembered

715
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 2: how to pronounce the first one. Oh muamua, right.

716
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, nice.

717
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:21,919
Speaker 2: I think I've messed it up on the show something

718
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 2: like six or seven times, but eight times at charm.

719
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 1: You go congratulations. And so at first, of course, we

720
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:34,319
Speaker 1: didn't know exactly what to expect, because every single one

721
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: of these is weird. They're drawn from a huge population

722
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 1: that's very diverse, and so they're all going to be

723
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 1: different from anything we've seen before, and this one was

724
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:44,439
Speaker 1: no different from that. As it got closer, we saw

725
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,480
Speaker 1: that it was unusual. It had a lot more carbon dioxide.

726
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:50,760
Speaker 1: In the commentary coma, it seems to have unusual amounts

727
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:52,359
Speaker 1: of nickel and cyanide.

728
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 2: Is the coma. That's just the tail, right.

729
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 1: The coma is the fuzz around the comet.

730
00:37:57,239 --> 00:37:57,399
Speaker 2: OK.

731
00:37:57,560 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: So comet is like a frozen chunk, and then as

732
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: a it's closer to the Sun, there's more radiation on it,

733
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: and as it heats up, various parts of its supplemate

734
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: and turn into gas, and that makes the coma and

735
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: then if there's more pressure from the solar wind or

736
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:14,399
Speaker 1: from the radiation, that can make a tail. And when

737
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: it first arrived, of course, we didn't have a lot

738
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:18,160
Speaker 1: of great data, and we didn't have a lot of data,

739
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 1: and so there was a lot of speculation about what

740
00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: it might be. By now we've pointed all of our

741
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:24,799
Speaker 1: best telescopes at it, we think we understand it. It

742
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: looks like a frozen rock from another solar system. It's velocity,

743
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:32,440
Speaker 1: it's trajectory, all the emissions, it all makes sense. The

744
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 1: prosaic explanation of it being a frozen blob from another

745
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: solar system is a great description of this thing. But

746
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 1: before we had all of this data, there was one

747
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: famous astrophysicist from Harvard Auvi Loebe who made a lot

748
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 1: of hype about how it could be aliens. And so

749
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 1: you know, on the podcast, I try to generally only

750
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 1: be positive and only talk about people if I have

751
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:57,279
Speaker 1: something nice to say. But this guy's made such a

752
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 1: negative impact on science and science communication that I think

753
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:02,240
Speaker 1: it deserves a little bit of a comment.

754
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:06,319
Speaker 2: I love that you jumping up on your soapbox and

755
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:09,239
Speaker 2: getting angry is and I think it deserves a little

756
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:11,720
Speaker 2: bit of a comment like this is this is angry

757
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:13,759
Speaker 2: Daniel is I'm going to make a little bit of

758
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:15,359
Speaker 2: a comments. Let's hear it.

759
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 3: Well.

760
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:18,800
Speaker 1: The issue is that avelobe claims to be like more

761
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:22,719
Speaker 1: open minded to new ideas than mainstream astronomy, and he

762
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 1: likes to paint everybody in mainstream astronomy is like closed

763
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:28,800
Speaker 1: minded and rejecting the idea that it could be aliens,

764
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 1: you know, out of hand, just dismissing it. It's part

765
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: of this whole shtick that like academics are closed minded

766
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: or marched to the beat of some drummer. And you're

767
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,160
Speaker 1: an academic, you know, you can't get to academics to

768
00:39:41,160 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 1: degree on anything. And it's like everybody's dream to disprove

769
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 1: somebody else, or to upset the narrative, or to make

770
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 1: a big paper discovering something mind blowing. And for a

771
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: guy from Harvard to be like complaining about mainstream astronomy, like,

772
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: what's more mainstream astronomy than astronomy at Harvard. But the

773
00:39:59,719 --> 00:40:02,480
Speaker 1: real issue is that he makes a bunch of arguments,

774
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 1: and these arguments are weak and they're flawed, and then

775
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: when experts criticize these things, fairly. He portrays that as

776
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: them trying to shut him down unfairly, when that's just

777
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:15,240
Speaker 1: how the marketplace of ideas work, and if your ideas

778
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:18,000
Speaker 1: can't survive in the marketplace, maybe they're wrong. But instead

779
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: he plays victim and he says, look, they're attacking me.

780
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 1: Oh come, And you know he's made basic mistakes, like

781
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 1: he misunderstood the difference between solar radiation pressure from photons

782
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: and solar wind from particles. He assumed that the fuzz

783
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 1: around the comet, which is just due to the coma,

784
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:35,840
Speaker 1: was because of smearing. It was because it was moving

785
00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:38,799
Speaker 1: so fast. You'd understand that the telescopes were tracking the

786
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:41,240
Speaker 1: comet and the show there should be no smearing effect.

787
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 1: He assumed that because this thing came in close to

788
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: the ecliptic, it was therefore very very unlikely to be

789
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 1: a natural object, which is silly. It's just like you know,

790
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: shooting a gun in a random direction and then drawing

791
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: a bullseye around it later and saying how unlikely that

792
00:40:57,560 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: the bullet landed on the bullseye. You know, you can

793
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 1: always find something unusual if you look through enough examples.

794
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:07,240
Speaker 1: And there's some great work by Steve desh and Jason

795
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: Wright very carefully and very fairly taking his arguments apart,

796
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 1: which he then turned around into like, look, I'm being attacked,

797
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: so you know, I just think it's not a good

798
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 1: faith analysis, which is a shame because we should be

799
00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:22,840
Speaker 1: open to any good faith commentary, and I think that

800
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:27,360
Speaker 1: we are, but these bad faith attacks on mainstream astronomy,

801
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 1: I don't think they're productive at all.

802
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

803
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 2: Well, and this also really frustrating because as a Harvard professor,

804
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 2: he probably could have access to like all the experts,

805
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 2: and he could be working with them on these questions

806
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 2: and like checking to make sure like is that a

807
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:44,719
Speaker 2: smudge or are we tracking it, you know, through time?

808
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:46,880
Speaker 2: And anyway, these mistakes don't need to be made.

809
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:49,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know what's in his heart, so

810
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 1: I can't say for sure, but he's not acting the

811
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: way somebody who's interested in evidence based reasoning acts. He's

812
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: acting more like somebody who's out for attention and spreading

813
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:01,320
Speaker 1: misinformation to benefit himself sell his books. But again, I

814
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:02,439
Speaker 1: don't know what's in his heart.

815
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:02,839
Speaker 3: Yeah.

816
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: Anyway, this was not an alien ship. Unfortunately, I wanted

817
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:08,839
Speaker 1: it to be an alien ship. Lots of people wanted

818
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:10,279
Speaker 1: it to be an alien ship. If it was, we

819
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 1: would be very excited. Astronomers are not like anti alien

820
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: in any way.

821
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:16,959
Speaker 2: Probably no one wanted it to be an alien ship

822
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 2: more than.

823
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 1: You, right exactly, Yeah, come on, man, come and laser

824
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: half the planet but tells the secrets of the universe.

825
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:26,360
Speaker 1: But that was just the prologue to Ralph's question. Ralph

826
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 1: is really wondering about, well, how would aliens get here? Like,

827
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: if this was an alienship, how would aliens survive that

828
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:37,280
Speaker 1: interstellar journey? Could they develop new techniques, could they evolve

829
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 1: in some way that makes it better? And so this

830
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:42,240
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun to think about, like what

831
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:46,960
Speaker 1: kind of critter could survive a thousand or ten thousand

832
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:50,399
Speaker 1: year sublight journey from another solar system? So I thought

833
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:52,680
Speaker 1: about the biology of space travel a little bit. So

834
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:54,919
Speaker 1: can you tell me if I get anything wrong? Yeah,

835
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 1: you know, one issue is our metabolism. Right to stay alive,

836
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,879
Speaker 1: we need oxygen, we need the right temperature, we need

837
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: regular food. The whole thing is a huge ordeal, right,

838
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:09,359
Speaker 1: So perhaps instead of doing that, we could somehow enter

839
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 1: like a or aliens could evolve to enter like a

840
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:16,480
Speaker 1: low menabolic state, you know, essentially where you just don't

841
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: need as much oxygen, you don't need as much food,

842
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:21,479
Speaker 1: And we have examples of this like here on Earth,

843
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:24,719
Speaker 1: like tartar grades can like curl up and essentially not

844
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:26,800
Speaker 1: be dead and not be frozen, but just be like

845
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:28,720
Speaker 1: in a very low metabolic state.

846
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:32,440
Speaker 2: The Ton state. I think that's what, because we had

847
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 2: a whole episode on tartar grades and I think it

848
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 2: was called the Ton state. Yeah. And rodafers also have

849
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:39,960
Speaker 2: like you know states where they can essentially like you know,

850
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 2: freeze their existence and then come back at a later time.

851
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:47,240
Speaker 2: But I think of those as sort of simple creatures,

852
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 2: not the kind of creatures that could create spaceships capable

853
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:52,520
Speaker 2: of interstellar travel.

854
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: But we have examples on Earth of more complex creatures,

855
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 1: not with as dramatic an effect, but like you know,

856
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:03,320
Speaker 1: mammals hibernate their metabolism jobs, so it's certainly possible for

857
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: complex creatures to change their metabolism, right.

858
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 3: Yeah.

859
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 2: Not, I mean nowhere near the time scales that you

860
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 2: would need for interstellar travel, and they still need they

861
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 2: would still need their waste removed, and they would still

862
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 2: need some energy put into the system depending on the

863
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 2: time scales.

864
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:21,280
Speaker 1: Wait, do bears poop in hibernation, Kelly.

865
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 2: I don't know if they poop in hibernation, but like

866
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:29,279
Speaker 2: that's because hibernation is weeks or months, not generations. Uh,

867
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 2: they got to poop eventually. I can tell you that

868
00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 2: as an expert, they got it poop eventually. Okay, on

869
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 2: the repre.

870
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 1: To d in biology, you're getting that's right, that's right,

871
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 1: And of course these are just examples here on Earth.

872
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 1: But you know, it suggests that maybe it might be possible,

873
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: in some coroner of evolutionary space for aliens to evolve

874
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: in such a way that allows them to change their

875
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 1: metabolism maybe more dramatically. Do you think that's impossible? I.

876
00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think it's impossible. I think that

877
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:04,880
Speaker 2: we are very far away from being able to figure

878
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,360
Speaker 2: stuff like that out for like humans, for interstellar travel.

879
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 1: Well, we can't even put humans to sleep here on

880
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: Earth reliably.

881
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.

882
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 3: I don't know.

883
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:15,440
Speaker 2: I guess I'm fifty to fifty on whether or not

884
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:17,240
Speaker 2: that's going to be impossible for humans.

885
00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:20,200
Speaker 1: But you know, imagine aliens and for some reason they've

886
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:23,319
Speaker 1: gone out into space and so there's evolutionary advantages to

887
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:26,720
Speaker 1: being able to survive, you know, to the difference between

888
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 1: being alive and being dead, requiring very very small requirements,

889
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: small amount of foods, small amount of oxygen, et cetera,

890
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:38,399
Speaker 1: maybe lower temperatures. It seems like perhaps evolution could cook

891
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: up some way to survive that situation.

892
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:44,240
Speaker 2: Now, well, so you know, good frogs in like Michigan

893
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:48,000
Speaker 2: can freeze and then thaw out, and so you know,

894
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 2: I think there you can like freeze organisms. But I

895
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:52,799
Speaker 2: also think that it is the case that there's some

896
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 2: percent that die when the thought out happens. I hate

897
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 2: to reference science fiction as though it's science fact, but

898
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 2: I think in Andy Weir's book Hail Mary, some of

899
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 2: the crew did not survive the thaw out. This is

900
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 2: kind of a spoiler, but not really. It happens pretty

901
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:10,400
Speaker 2: early on. But like, you know, I imagine that a

902
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,359
Speaker 2: lot of the procedures that we would come up with

903
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 2: would have a like less than one hundred percent success rate.

904
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 2: But but yeah, we might be able to come up

905
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:22,839
Speaker 2: with some situation. But you know, I don't know if

906
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 2: referencing natural selection is going to help us much because

907
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:28,360
Speaker 2: we are a species that has not been exposed to

908
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 2: extreme temperatures for a long time, you know, and exposed

909
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 2: to natural selection associated with that. So you know, we

910
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:39,879
Speaker 2: don't survive freezing. That's not a thing we do usually.

911
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:43,360
Speaker 1: All right. So the next kind of adaptation that aliens

912
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:47,879
Speaker 1: might potentially evolve would have to do with radiation. Right

913
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 1: out in space, it's not just empty space. There's lots

914
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:53,280
Speaker 1: of particles out there. They're moving at very high speeds.

915
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:55,400
Speaker 1: Even if you're just on the Moon, which is not

916
00:46:55,480 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: very far away, you're going to be exposed to high

917
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:01,279
Speaker 1: energy particles. This is rady. They're gonna zip through your body,

918
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 1: they're gonna tear up your DNA, They're gonna do lots

919
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 1: of damage. And this is why we like being here

920
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 1: on Earth under our magnetic shield and our atmosphere, which

921
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:12,520
Speaker 1: protects us from a lot of that radiation. And anytime

922
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: we go into space we need to worry about it.

923
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 1: So if aliens are traveling here from another star, they're

924
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,799
Speaker 1: gonna have to worry about radiation. The best way to

925
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 1: protect yourself from radiation is mass have like huge water

926
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:27,879
Speaker 1: tanks or huge amounts of lead or something, some high

927
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,280
Speaker 1: Z material between you and the radiation. Is gonna absorb

928
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:34,920
Speaker 1: a lot of that. But mass is tough, right, because

929
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: the more mass of your ship, the harder it is

930
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 1: to accelerate up to some reasonable speed. You can imagine

931
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:42,399
Speaker 1: like finding an asteroid and hollowing it out and living

932
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:44,480
Speaker 1: on the inside while you travel from one start to

933
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 1: the other. But asteroids are massive, and it takes a

934
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: lot of energy to get an asteroid up to near

935
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 1: the speed of light. So instead of building some technology,

936
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 1: you might imagine aliens evolving some biological mechanisms, you know,

937
00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:03,200
Speaker 1: like more active repair systems, or redundant genetic coding or

938
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: something like that, or maybe even some sort of non

939
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:10,200
Speaker 1: DNA based way to store genetic information that's more robust

940
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:10,920
Speaker 1: to radiation.

941
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,839
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think that three I at lasts

942
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 2: is big enough that something could be living inside there

943
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 2: and be shielded from radiation.

944
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:27,480
Speaker 1: I think I've read that post by AVI already speculating that.

945
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

946
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:32,760
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean it's like, I think, a few kilometers across,

947
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,320
Speaker 1: So that's definitely big enough to be a nice ship

948
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 1: for sure.

949
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I still doubt it though, all.

950
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, but I'd love to go inside and take

951
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: a look.

952
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:42,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, beat me up.

953
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,319
Speaker 1: These are maybe ways you could evolve biological techniques to

954
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 1: survive the high radiation in space, but again this is

955
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 1: just science fiction speculation. And then another issue which Kelly

956
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 1: has mentioned many times about living in space is a

957
00:48:55,120 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 1: question of like how do you reproduce?

958
00:48:57,200 --> 00:48:59,280
Speaker 2: You know, It's not like I'm fixated on that, Daniel,

959
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 2: You make it sound like it's all I ever talk about.

960
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 1: You know, is it possible for your species to reproduce

961
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:10,280
Speaker 1: and to have gestation and development and all that stuff

962
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: in space? I think it's certainly possible for another species

963
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:17,720
Speaker 1: to evolve the capacity or to already have a system which,

964
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:21,799
Speaker 1: by chance is not sensitive to gravity. And I think

965
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 1: we don't know whether ours is or how sensitive ours is.

966
00:49:25,600 --> 00:49:28,440
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to avoid that entirely, you can

967
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: imagine another way to spread your aliens around the galaxy

968
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 1: is not to send adults, but to send some sort

969
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:38,400
Speaker 1: of like precursor you know, basically gam meats, and then

970
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: have them be created when they arrive and maybe raised

971
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:45,279
Speaker 1: by robots, you know, chat GPT raised. I've read that

972
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,880
Speaker 1: story for sure. It's a common theme in science fiction,

973
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:50,200
Speaker 1: and in this sense, if you do that, then like

974
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 1: maybe travel is sort of part of your reproductive system.

975
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:56,080
Speaker 1: You know, you have your cozy evening, you create your

976
00:49:56,080 --> 00:49:57,719
Speaker 1: gam meats, you put them on a ship, you send

977
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:00,359
Speaker 1: them off, and you never meet your kids. They'd never

978
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: jump on your head at two in the morning, and

979
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 1: maybe you sleep better.

980
00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and then you don't get all the diseases

981
00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:07,520
Speaker 2: they bring home from kindergarten. And all right, I'm in

982
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:10,399
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. That would really bum me out.

983
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:15,200
Speaker 1: But that would be really weird as the visit teas. Right,

984
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 1: if visitors arrived and they're basically alien babies and we

985
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 1: just watched them grow up, and they've never experienced their

986
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:23,640
Speaker 1: home planet either, I don't know. It sounds like a

987
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: fun science fiction story.

988
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:27,759
Speaker 2: It does. But presumably the robots that are bringing them up, would,

989
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 2: you know, have a bunch of knowledge about the home planet,

990
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 2: and it would be able to teach you a bunch

991
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 2: of stuff.

992
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 1: In which case the robots are the real visitors, right,

993
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: those are the ones we'd want to talk to.

994
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:37,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, forget the kids.

995
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: And then from a technological point of view, let's assume

996
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:45,360
Speaker 1: that aliens don't have warp drives, they don't have wormholes,

997
00:50:45,400 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 1: otherwise they could just get here in a moment. There

998
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:50,560
Speaker 1: are ways to get from star to star in a

999
00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 1: reasonable amount of time if you use things like light sales.

1000
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: This helps you avoid having to carry your fuel with

1001
00:50:56,120 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 1: you because you just have like a huge reflective sheet

1002
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: and you shine on it. It zooms it up to

1003
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: near the speed of light much more quickly because it's

1004
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:07,520
Speaker 1: not so massive. This doesn't work for an asteroid very well,

1005
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: but it works for a small payload, and you can

1006
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:12,680
Speaker 1: cruise between the stars and trying to use the arriving

1007
00:51:12,800 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 1: star as a break when you arrive, and you can

1008
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: maybe even have like a magnetic tail that you can

1009
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:22,239
Speaker 1: use to steer. So this is technologically totally feasible. I

1010
00:51:22,239 --> 00:51:25,320
Speaker 1: can imagine us doing this. I mean, we're still talking

1011
00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 1: huge time periods to visit the star, but it's technologically

1012
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: not impossible.

1013
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:31,399
Speaker 2: I'm staying here.

1014
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: More exotically, Aliens might show up with their whole solar system.

1015
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,360
Speaker 1: You know. Elon Musk talks about building a dice in

1016
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:42,719
Speaker 1: sphere to capture all the energy of the Sun. But

1017
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: if instead you build half a dice in sphere, like

1018
00:51:45,239 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 1: a mirror that wraps around half of the Sun, and

1019
00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:51,439
Speaker 1: then you make it gravitationally captured by the Sun. Then

1020
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:54,359
Speaker 1: in effect it's an engine because half the light gets

1021
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:57,120
Speaker 1: reflected back and half of a dozen and so there's

1022
00:51:57,160 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 1: a net momentum there and basically it just drags the

1023
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: whole solar them so you never have to leave your planet.

1024
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:05,440
Speaker 1: Kelly can stay under the covers and we can go

1025
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 1: visit aliens, or aliens could do that and come visit us.

1026
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 2: Yay, that sounds wonderful.

1027
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 1: All right, So those are some of the ideas I

1028
00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:16,399
Speaker 1: have for how aliens might come and possess. I hope

1029
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:18,919
Speaker 1: that happens one day, and when it does, I'm sure

1030
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:21,240
Speaker 1: that the astronomy community is going to be very interested

1031
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:23,760
Speaker 1: and totally open minded to the possibilities.

1032
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's see what Ralph had to say

1033
00:52:26,280 --> 00:52:28,800
Speaker 2: about Daniel's rant and your answer.

1034
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:32,840
Speaker 6: Guys, thanks for answering my question. Some very interesting thoughts

1035
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:35,440
Speaker 6: and ideas there. I'm happy that I gave Daniel a

1036
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 6: chance to rant, and I'm pretty impressed about how quickly

1037
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 6: Kelly was able to work in an alien poop reference.

1038
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 1: All right, thank you very much everybody for sending us

1039
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:53,120
Speaker 1: your questions. It's really my favorite thing to see your

1040
00:52:53,160 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: questions in my inbox. And I love answering them here

1041
00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:58,439
Speaker 1: on the pod. If you have questions, please don't be shy.

1042
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:00,399
Speaker 1: We love, love, love to hear you.

1043
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 2: Yes, send your questions to questions at Daniel and Kelly

1044
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 2: dot org. We answer them as soon as we can

1045
00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 2: and we answer all the questions, and some of the

1046
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:09,320
Speaker 2: questions also end up on the show.

1047
00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:11,560
Speaker 1: Have a great day everyone, Hope you sleep well.