Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about hobo's earlier. Of course you are,
Speaker 1: and of course a great thing about hobos as we
Speaker 1: you know, think of the classic you know, a great
Speaker 1: Depression era wanderer with his bendel stick and his handkerchiefs
Speaker 1: handkerchief and his weird codes and uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like they would they would ride the rails. They would
Speaker 1: get from one from point A to point B by
Speaker 1: an accepted highway that existed between those, which was typically
Speaker 1: the rails, right. So um, and and you know, for
Speaker 1: the hobo, he's not really having to expend. He's kind
Speaker 1: of a a lazy individual, or at least he does.
Speaker 1: He has he has found value in other aspects of
Speaker 1: life that don't revolve around vigorous labor. So he will
Speaker 1: ride the rails and let the rails do all the
Speaker 1: work for him as he plays cards, yeah or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking, like, what if a hobo, a
Speaker 1: galactic hobo, as it were, needed to get from here
Speaker 1: to Proximu centuri, which is the the closest star to
Speaker 1: our own. Did you realize that we are equating astronauts
Speaker 1: with hoboes. Yes, and that's perfectly fine, Yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: just want to state that that's that's spot on right.
Speaker 1: I wish I had the internet here, I would do
Speaker 1: a certainty who was the first hobo astronaut? If we've
Speaker 1: had one, um or you know, and if we haven't,
Speaker 1: we need to see about fulfilling that if there are
Speaker 1: any hobos left. Right, So Proximus century, like I said,
Speaker 1: closest star to our own, which means it's an insane
Speaker 1: distance away. Um. To put that in a little in
Speaker 1: a little scale, it is two hundred and seventy one
Speaker 1: thousand astronomical units or a use away all right. Now,
Speaker 1: don't let that number throw anybody off. Two two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy one tho a US. I'm there with you, okay,
Speaker 1: one a U a single astronomical unit is the distance
Speaker 1: between Earth and the Sun. Okay. So it's that distance
Speaker 1: laid out two hundred and seventy one thousand times, all right,
Speaker 1: So let's put all that in in even another friend
Speaker 1: of reforens here Okay, all right, this is a classic
Speaker 1: analogy and I got this off of off of a
Speaker 1: NASSA website. Uh, if the Sun were the size of
Speaker 1: a typical half inch diameter marble, Okay, the distance from
Speaker 1: the Sun to the Earth again an astronomical unit, would
Speaker 1: be about four ft. The Earth would barely would be
Speaker 1: barely thicker than a sheet of paper, and the orbit
Speaker 1: of the Moon would be about one fourth an inch
Speaker 1: in diameter. And on this scale, the closest to Star
Speaker 1: Proximus centuri would be about two d ten miles away.
Speaker 1: So that's about the distance between Cleveland and Cincinnati. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're we're talking a massive distance here, and there
Speaker 1: are no trains traversing that distance. So how would one
Speaker 1: get to that destination? Well, I mean you post a
Speaker 1: pretty lofty question there. I mean we're talking about uh
Speaker 1: trillion miles away, right, Okay, so it's definitely not gonna
Speaker 1: be a day trip, right, not a day trip. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's what's the farthest we've ever gone? Well, the voyage
Speaker 1: probe reach the farthest distance of man made object is gone.
Speaker 1: So we're talking a colossal journey pretty much. Um, for
Speaker 1: all intents and purpos, it's kind of an impossible one
Speaker 1: at this point. I mean, we could was we'll get
Speaker 1: into we could do it, but we have to have
Speaker 1: a phenomenal amount of will and energy. Yeah, and we'd
Speaker 1: have to maybe not be so into the idea of
Speaker 1: the hobo still being alive when you reach proximate centurion,
Speaker 1: right right, Um, So it comes down to energy, right right,
Speaker 1: And and it comes down to what's already making that trip.
Speaker 1: And I think as the as the title of the
Speaker 1: podcast should spoil, um light is the is the railway
Speaker 1: that one might traverse. That's right, Yeah, there's why a
Speaker 1: little photons. Yes, So the idea of using a solar
Speaker 1: sale and you know, it's it's a pretty basic concept,
Speaker 1: and it's it's exactly how you might think of it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like you put up a sail on
Speaker 1: a ship and you catch the breeze and you ride
Speaker 1: the ride the wind across the lake. Say, well, the
Speaker 1: solar sail concept is pretty much the same thing. There's
Speaker 1: like a breeze of light, you put up the sail,
Speaker 1: the the it'll catch the breeze and push the object,
Speaker 1: push the sail. I mean, at first glance, it really
Speaker 1: does seem kind of whimsical. Yeah, it seems. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like it's a delightful you know, it sounds like
Speaker 1: something from some sort of like French animated film, you know,
Speaker 1: something on a fantastic planet. Indeed, you do see these
Speaker 1: these designs show up like unrealistically in things from time
Speaker 1: to time, like I think there's one in tron I
Speaker 1: think that second um Star Wars prequel has some sort
Speaker 1: of a solar sail thing, and uh so, so it's
Speaker 1: easy to sort of dismiss it is just as being
Speaker 1: like sailing ships and outer space is kind of a deal.
Speaker 1: But but the idea has been around for a while. Um.
Speaker 1: The astronomer Johannes Kepler, who we recently talked about in
Speaker 1: another podcast Um he actually can't is perhaps the earliest
Speaker 1: to come up with the concept back in the sixteen century,
Speaker 1: and he noticed that comet tails always point away from
Speaker 1: the sun, implying the sunlight itself is pushing them around
Speaker 1: like cosmic wind socks, right right, So he thought that
Speaker 1: you could just simply, you know, get like a ship
Speaker 1: with the sail, and you know, it was properly put together,
Speaker 1: you could sail around out there, which which again, that's
Speaker 1: kind of that sounds kind of fantastic. It was really
Speaker 1: on the right track. So his hunch was right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do have to point out that they as he
Speaker 1: also thought that comments were formed of fatty globules and ether,
Speaker 1: which for two, you can't get everything right. Okay, you're
Speaker 1: really asking a lot of limitations back man too. Um,
Speaker 1: but but but just start to run down exactly how
Speaker 1: this is working. All right, Scientists now know, um, with
Speaker 1: the you know, the advent of all the things we've
Speaker 1: learned since the sixteenth century, that sunlight is a little
Speaker 1: more than a stream of photons, tiny particles of light,
Speaker 1: and they don't possess mass, but they do boast linear momentum, right,
Speaker 1: and then the smallest quantum of light, right, And when
Speaker 1: they bounce off of a reflective sour face, they push
Speaker 1: against that surface. There's actually a push. So just you know,
Speaker 1: you know, just look at anything like I'm looking right
Speaker 1: now at a at a lamp and a canister of
Speaker 1: tissue paper, you know, and and it granted that the
Speaker 1: tissue paper is not crawling across the desk pushed by
Speaker 1: the light, but there, but even though it's not visible
Speaker 1: of the naked eye, there is um. There is a
Speaker 1: certain amount of momentum to that light. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: that tissue were a tissue box, I should say we're
Speaker 1: super light and it was reflective, and when we'd see
Speaker 1: more momentum right right, and if it were an outer
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, free of the confines of Earth's gravity,
Speaker 1: then we start, you know, opening up the rules a
Speaker 1: little bit. So um. After Kepler had was long dead,
Speaker 1: eight seventy three had James Clark Maxwell, and he first
Speaker 1: demonstrated that sunlight exerts that a small amount of pressure
Speaker 1: on photons. In nineteen sixty, we launched a little something
Speaker 1: called Echo one, uh and observed the sun pushing it around.
Speaker 1: Echo one and Leaveacko too. We're both pretty awesome because
Speaker 1: they were basically super balloons. They were they rose up
Speaker 1: to an altitude of a of a thousand miles and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're actually space balloons in a very real
Speaker 1: sense of the word. And they look kind of like
Speaker 1: giant giant they're huge spheres. They kind of like giant
Speaker 1: Christmas tree ornaments, just a very thin, you know, layer,
Speaker 1: reflective surface with the gas. Yeah, I can't help but
Speaker 1: think up hot air balloons without the bucket. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: so in this case they observed the sun actually pushing
Speaker 1: on it. So the basics behind that then is that
Speaker 1: you've got a reflective surface. You've got light, right, and
Speaker 1: like you said, you're you're we're not just reflected highly
Speaker 1: reflect like a sheet of metal or a plastic coated
Speaker 1: with metal and uh, and then it's reflecting the light. Okay.
Speaker 1: And so the sales that we have right now, they're
Speaker 1: thin sheets of metal like you said, and they've got
Speaker 1: the plastic substrate in between, and then the reflective film
Speaker 1: faces the sun. Right, Is that right? And it seems
Speaker 1: again it seems really whimsical to think that this might
Speaker 1: be something that could empower us to alpha century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds far fetched, but but actually the more you
Speaker 1: look at it, the more realistic it is. We've actually
Speaker 1: um I was taught, actually talked about this subject with
Speaker 1: the Dr Gregory L. Matt Loff, who is you can
Speaker 1: look him up online. He's a pretty brilliant dude and
Speaker 1: just can talk about sales, solar sales at the drop
Speaker 1: of a hat. Just tell you all about him. So
Speaker 1: the things that I get right in this podcast to
Speaker 1: attribute to him, and the any errors I make are
Speaker 1: purely my own doing. Um. But Marion or ten is
Speaker 1: an example of a probe that we sent out that
Speaker 1: it was not in its in and of itself a
Speaker 1: solar sale, but it had solar cells on it. It
Speaker 1: had it was gaining some energy from the Sun because
Speaker 1: it was on a on a mission around Mercury right
Speaker 1: where there's lots of solar energy due the proximity of
Speaker 1: Mercury to the Sun. So they were running low on
Speaker 1: the on gas to power it's you know, corrective boosters.
Speaker 1: So they were able to use it's a solar cells
Speaker 1: as a as an impromptu solar sale to maneuver it
Speaker 1: a little, and they had some success with that. And
Speaker 1: uh and so since that point we've had a number
Speaker 1: of other experiments. The US especially had a habit of
Speaker 1: like putting a lot of work and thought into them
Speaker 1: and then not doing anything with it right, usually because
Speaker 1: the funding dried up. Yeah, exactly, Like in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Dr Lewis Friedman wanted to send a pro about to
Speaker 1: Hayley's comment, and they were going to use the solar
Speaker 1: sales for the rendezvous, but that was scrapped. The Russian
Speaker 1: Space Agency had the whole uh spinning space mirror program, Uh,
Speaker 1: the zan Maya one and two and UH and possibly three.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if three actually came to fruition. But
Speaker 1: but the whole idea was they were going to reflect
Speaker 1: sunlight uh back to the Earth so that they could
Speaker 1: give sunlight to some of the you know, the far
Speaker 1: northern regions that we're pretty short on it during the
Speaker 1: winter and uh. And in at any rate, that was
Speaker 1: able to successfully demonstrate some of those uh, those properties
Speaker 1: of the solar sale even though those those projects were
Speaker 1: far from you know, tremendously successful and um but though
Speaker 1: just as a side note, they were apparently designed to
Speaker 1: the point where they could provide luminosity between five and
Speaker 1: ten times a full moon. So well, you know, um
Speaker 1: uh India's INSAT two A and three A communications satellites
Speaker 1: in two thousand three. Uh, they were there was like
Speaker 1: a four panel solar array on one side, and they
Speaker 1: were able to use some aspects of solar sale technology
Speaker 1: to maneuver it. And of course then the Japanese finally
Speaker 1: beat us to the punch by getting you know, it's
Speaker 1: like we're just as the years get up, right, we
Speaker 1: sort of see this as a trend that. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were left a little bit in the the dusts they were
Speaker 1: able to launch this wonderful little device called Karros and
Speaker 1: uh it's I I say little, but it had. It's
Speaker 1: basically a square some twenty meters in a diagonal line,
Speaker 1: and it's as thin as like point zero zero seventy
Speaker 1: five millimeters and it's made from a poly need resident. Right,
Speaker 1: it's called the space yacht. Right, just to give you
Speaker 1: an idea of how big it is. Yeah, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: the headlines really loved using that space shot, thank too.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty cool because it would it would it
Speaker 1: was like it would be it was like this the
Speaker 1: central hub that would rotate and then the sales would
Speaker 1: would would spread out on all sides around it, and
Speaker 1: it was it was. They used a rocket to get
Speaker 1: it up there right right, okay, and then it unfurled okay,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, and it's it's it's been pretty successful
Speaker 1: so far, um there, and we're still keeping eyes on
Speaker 1: it to see how it's gonna how it's gonna do
Speaker 1: in the near future. But the spacecraft itself was launched
Speaker 1: May two, ten, uh, and with the whole idea that's
Speaker 1: going to spend a six month trip traveling to Venus
Speaker 1: and then it was gonna been a three year journey
Speaker 1: to the far side of the Sun. So it's the
Speaker 1: world's first solar powered aircraft employing both the photon propulsion
Speaker 1: and then film solar power generation. So it's it's it's
Speaker 1: getting some energy from the sun for it's uh for
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's for some sun for some of its thrust.
Speaker 1: But then it's also using solar sales, okay, and they're
Speaker 1: able to manipulate that yeah, yeah, yeah. But the really
Speaker 1: cool thing is, you know, no fuel, it's all based
Speaker 1: on on the Sun, some of its solar sales, some
Speaker 1: of its solar cells, uh, to to power these these
Speaker 1: little thrusters. And uh. Then there's of course NASA's Nano
Speaker 1: Sale D which is currently as of this recording, NASA
Speaker 1: has lost contact with it. Um. It was you know,
Speaker 1: recently launched just in the past month, and it is
Speaker 1: it's what's called a nano satellite or a cube SAT,
Speaker 1: and it's merely designed. It's it's one of several different
Speaker 1: experiments where launched and it's up there just to test
Speaker 1: the potential for solar sales in atmospheric breaking. And that's
Speaker 1: when you have an interplanetary vehicle and you send it,
Speaker 1: say to Mars, and you want it to slow down
Speaker 1: when it gets to Mars. Right. It was also ejected
Speaker 1: from another satellite, right, which is kind of a cool
Speaker 1: way to get multiple satellites up there or betting at
Speaker 1: the same Timeeah, it's like, let's get a satellite up
Speaker 1: there loaded with some nano satellites, each one like testing
Speaker 1: some particular technology. So in this case, this one tested
Speaker 1: tested solar sales. But you know, so keep your fingers
Speaker 1: crossed right now, it's not looking too hot for it.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't know, maybe it's just part
Speaker 1: of the curse with with US solar sale technology, the
Speaker 1: curse nano sale d Okay, So it's worth wondering just
Speaker 1: how fast are these things going? Because again I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the cleanex box. It's not moving, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: just looking at that. Uh, It's it's hard. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not moving to me, but it's hard to look
Speaker 1: at that and then imagine oh the sun pushing uh,
Speaker 1: you know, these satellites or even a spaceship with a
Speaker 1: hobo inside it, Like, you know, how is that gonna
Speaker 1: reach any amount of speed, but you'd actually be surprised,
Speaker 1: all right, um, if you if you were to reduce
Speaker 1: them the mass of of one of these devices significantly,
Speaker 1: you could see it eventually traveling at about like fifty
Speaker 1: six miles per second, which it's just crazy. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: that's basically like two hundred thousand miles per hour UM.
Speaker 1: That's ten times faster than the Space Shuttle's orbital speed
Speaker 1: of five five miles per second. And uh and it
Speaker 1: would be like traveling from New York to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in less than a minute UM. If NASA order to
Speaker 1: launch an interstellar probe powered by solar sales, it would
Speaker 1: take only eight years for it to catch Voyager one spacecraft,
Speaker 1: which is which has been traveling for twenty years and
Speaker 1: is the most distant spacecraft from Earth, like we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: So the speed can really pick up UM and and
Speaker 1: the key with it with any kind of interstellar voyage
Speaker 1: because again, as you want to start as close to
Speaker 1: the Sun as possible, it's kind of like imagine that
Speaker 1: you have a fan in a room, like an electric
Speaker 1: fan and a paper airplane, and you want to use
Speaker 1: the power of that fan to sail that paper airplane
Speaker 1: across this big room. You want to start it as
Speaker 1: close to that fan as possible to give them the
Speaker 1: biggest to meet push, Yeah, to give them as momentum.
Speaker 1: And so is the idea too that the greater the distance,
Speaker 1: the greater the velocity, it's gonna go a lot faster. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and and you want to have as lighter materials
Speaker 1: as possible, you know, as reflective as possible. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's talking to Matt Loft and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you had using you know, sort of current technology,
Speaker 1: you would you get this thing close to the sun
Speaker 1: as possible, probably within the orbit of mercury, and uh,
Speaker 1: get it in position, and then you unfurl those sales,
Speaker 1: right it starts and then all that reflection starts taking place,
Speaker 1: and uh you could you could probably reach two hundred
Speaker 1: astronomical units in something like fifteen years, ten or fifteen years.
Speaker 1: That that kind of uh, that kind of field. So
Speaker 1: if you were putting a hobo on that, I don't
Speaker 1: know how forget about how much a hobo ways, let's
Speaker 1: just you know, for just to just just jazz it up,
Speaker 1: we'll say hobo is aboard. Even if it's like a
Speaker 1: nano hobo. Yeah, and uh you're going to launch in
Speaker 1: the future, y. Yeah, that's it's coming. They're gonna be
Speaker 1: made out of nanotubes. Um, you were going to launch
Speaker 1: him from mercury uh towards proximate centuri Uh, you would
Speaker 1: probably we'd probably take seven thousand years for him to
Speaker 1: reach it. Yeah. So so again that sounds really really slow.
Speaker 1: It is a colossal distance. I mean at that point
Speaker 1: you need a generationship, right so that the hobo could
Speaker 1: make other little hoboes that or your hobo has to
Speaker 1: be purely mechanical or even a program like. One of
Speaker 1: the really cool things about nanotechnology is when you start
Speaker 1: looking at the possibilities of deep space probes, they don't
Speaker 1: have to be as big as a room, right is
Speaker 1: the technology improves, we can seevably make smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: uh probes capable of of you know, of going out
Speaker 1: there and relaying a message or or even you know,
Speaker 1: carrying a sensory equipment. Right again, how carbon nanotubes are
Speaker 1: changing our life exactly? And in fact, that was one
Speaker 1: thing Matt Low touched touched on too. It's like it's
Speaker 1: with this improves and we're able to make say a
Speaker 1: fifty nanometer uh, you know, thick sale if you built
Speaker 1: it in space, you know, and you could probably make
Speaker 1: an interstellar void and as little as two thousand years
Speaker 1: and go uh in in so the lie or you
Speaker 1: go uh and you could go even faster. One one
Speaker 1: possibility to would beat it. You have that you have
Speaker 1: like holes in your sale if it perforated, because you're
Speaker 1: still you know, cover a huge space, still reflective, but
Speaker 1: taking up less mass. So it's just a game of
Speaker 1: like cutting down how much space they take? How how
Speaker 1: small can you get in order as you can Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just you know huge sales as well, right, well, yes,
Speaker 1: I guess smaller meaning point Yeah. And so Matt, I've
Speaker 1: also said that, you know, as we get into these
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes and and and graphines and and all these
Speaker 1: type of futuristic um materials, he thinks we'll do a
Speaker 1: lot better than than two thousand years. He you know,
Speaker 1: he thinks we may even get you know, below a
Speaker 1: thousand years. Uh. And he says he has his doubts
Speaker 1: when we get into talking about like a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred years. So it would still take our current technology. No, No,
Speaker 1: this would be with with with forthcoming nanotechnology, we would
Speaker 1: he and this is just talking about you know, getting
Speaker 1: into the orbit of mercury and sling shotting at out
Speaker 1: on that beam of light. I mean, but we're using
Speaker 1: some current technology to sort of Yeah, current technology, you're
Speaker 1: looking at a seven thousand trip, but with conceivable more
Speaker 1: or less near future technology, you could get it down
Speaker 1: to a thousand years maybe a number of central Okay,
Speaker 1: So some of the technology we have right now, it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of decreasing in the size that we
Speaker 1: needed to be. Yeah. Okay, so let's go back to
Speaker 1: the get that right in my head. Yeah, So let's
Speaker 1: get back to that that paper airplane in the room
Speaker 1: with the electric fan. Let's say you're shooting it off
Speaker 1: and it's not making it all the way. What's one
Speaker 1: thing you can do to increase the chances of delivering
Speaker 1: that paper airplane to the far side of the room.
Speaker 1: I can harness it with nuclear arm heads no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: But but what you can do is say you've got
Speaker 1: a different fan, a more powerful fan. Right. So we
Speaker 1: can't really replace the sun right right, Um, I mean
Speaker 1: not with any kind of conceivable technology. If we could
Speaker 1: reach the point where we could replace the sun. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't be trying to figure out how to travel to
Speaker 1: the far side of the galaxy because you're probably doing
Speaker 1: it every day. So but one thing we can do
Speaker 1: is we can concentrate those particles by use of a
Speaker 1: laser or a particle accelerator, because these are basically just
Speaker 1: concentrated um photons, right, Okay, so we know the photons
Speaker 1: have momentum. So if we did have giant lasers, then
Speaker 1: you would have so much more energy to concentrate that.
Speaker 1: What you're saying, you could have a solar pumped laser,
Speaker 1: which is basically a laser that's feeding off solar energy
Speaker 1: that's absorbed. Okay, So the idea here is you would
Speaker 1: point you if you've got one of these just crazy
Speaker 1: advanced lasers, you could point it in the direction that
Speaker 1: you want to solar sail you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: laying a train track, uh, point in the direction of
Speaker 1: say proximate centuri and then you just you know, you
Speaker 1: coast that solar sail craft into the stream and then whammo,
Speaker 1: it just takes off. It's like like grabbing hold of
Speaker 1: you know, being on a skateboard and grabbing hold of
Speaker 1: a passing vehicle. Suddenly you're you're office. Do you have
Speaker 1: a couple of things at work. You've got the added
Speaker 1: acceleration of the beam, right, and then you've get the
Speaker 1: fact that the greater the distance to travel, the faster
Speaker 1: you're going. So two of those those forces working on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: provided you built a large enough laser, a large enough sail,
Speaker 1: and a light enough spacecraft and you know, had light
Speaker 1: enough Hobo in it, um, you could conceivably, according to
Speaker 1: Mount laft Uh, according to his estimations, um, with this
Speaker 1: higher velocity, you could conceivably deliver that ship to another
Speaker 1: to the nearest start to proximate injury within a human lifetime.
Speaker 1: Well okay, so that's how we get to see it
Speaker 1: in this lifetime, well not this lifetime, but within the
Speaker 1: space our forbearers will. This presentation is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. So yes, future generators and
Speaker 1: of Hobo could conceivably do this. Right. Now, you get
Speaker 1: into questions of like energy costs for that laser right
Speaker 1: because um, I think some of the estimates are looking
Speaker 1: at like all the power generated on the Earth would
Speaker 1: have to go into that laser. Um and then some right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then some yeah, there you go. That's that's a
Speaker 1: bit of a logistics problem, not to mention your pointing
Speaker 1: a laser at like a distant point in the galaxy.
Speaker 1: Like you've got to sort of think, is that what
Speaker 1: if there's somebody over there and they're like, whoa, they're
Speaker 1: firing a laser at it, and then there are they
Speaker 1: going to overreact and fire laser back at us? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, we we think we're just laying some train track,
Speaker 1: but we're actually firing the first shot in the Earth's
Speaker 1: first and last galactic war. That would kind of suck. Now,
Speaker 1: another cool idea is to send off a slow moving
Speaker 1: vessel and uh and have and and use lasers as
Speaker 1: a form of transport between us and that vessel. Okay,
Speaker 1: explain more. Okay, So again it's like like you send
Speaker 1: off a slow moving maybe unmanned vessel, all right, just
Speaker 1: powered by more conventional um you know systems kind of
Speaker 1: these generationships you here, you know, talk to talk about
Speaker 1: in sci fi and cosmology, where it's traveling such a
Speaker 1: vast distance that you would have generations live and diet
Speaker 1: aboard it. Well, instead of that, you just you sort
Speaker 1: of keep it tethered by this this laser or you
Speaker 1: maybe you don't have the laser fired up at all times,
Speaker 1: but whenever you need to, you know where it is,
Speaker 1: you know where you are. You were able to fire
Speaker 1: up the laser and use solar sale technology to travel
Speaker 1: between the two. Yeah, So that's another possible use for
Speaker 1: for some of this uh and uh. But going back
Speaker 1: to just sort of non laser solar sale technology, there
Speaker 1: are a number of cool possibilities here involving, say, using
Speaker 1: the solar sale to send cargo ahead of say a
Speaker 1: trip to Mars. Um. There have been some some cool
Speaker 1: studies into how we could use it to um to
Speaker 1: mitigate a near Earth object that's getting a little too
Speaker 1: close to our planet. Okay, so if there is an
Speaker 1: asteroid coming at us, Yeah, then we could like some
Speaker 1: some plans involved like actually putting a solar sail on
Speaker 1: it and then it catches the light and it steers
Speaker 1: it away and nudges it out of the way and uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's somewhere it's like it's like there's like
Speaker 1: a satellite beaming, putting a beam of light on the
Speaker 1: the asteroid and pushing it with light. And then there
Speaker 1: are there are also plans where you just like splash
Speaker 1: it with white paint and then yeah, and it and
Speaker 1: itself reflects and then right. So and I thought that
Speaker 1: was interesting because I was reading it a little bit
Speaker 1: about it and said something about how it would be
Speaker 1: really hard to sort of tether an asteroid because it's rotating,
Speaker 1: it's maybe tumbling, so you really have to get a
Speaker 1: system of gimbals to anchor it, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: get your solar sail anchored to the surface of it.
Speaker 1: But we have, we have successfully landed vessels you know before,
Speaker 1: so it's not you know, completely crazy, but but it's
Speaker 1: still it's better than the nuclear option, right of shooting
Speaker 1: down an asteroid and turning it into a giant shotgun
Speaker 1: blast still headed for the Earth. Um and then another
Speaker 1: really cool thing like we talked about with with acros.
Speaker 1: You know, it has it doesn't need fuel, it has
Speaker 1: it's all sunlight. So this is a tremendous opportunity for
Speaker 1: for instance, that there's some some plans to you know,
Speaker 1: put out some sort of approbe to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on solar flare so we'll have advanced warning dangerous radiation
Speaker 1: levels headed to the Earth. You put us you put it,
Speaker 1: you know, more of a traditional satellite out there in
Speaker 1: a high solar area. Um, you're gonna need fuel so
Speaker 1: that it can correct itself with with with its with
Speaker 1: its thrusters to maintain its position. But if you could,
Speaker 1: if you could have all of that solar base, then
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's no need to worry about how
Speaker 1: much food fuel it has. Uh, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: for for all intents and purposes, it's self sufficient. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I mean it sounds to me like it's just
Speaker 1: a in the very short term, there's an easy way
Speaker 1: to collect more data. Yeah, um, and in a more
Speaker 1: efficient way. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's basically just really
Speaker 1: it's the thing that really amazes me about it is
Speaker 1: that it's just kind of like a really common sense idea.
Speaker 1: Now it's not, it's it's it's common sense of the
Speaker 1: idea is needless to say, as you know, we need
Speaker 1: to work out the engineering to to make it to work,
Speaker 1: to really perfect it, um, you know, and we need
Speaker 1: to not lose contact with the satellites they are testing it.
Speaker 1: But but it's but still you talk to talk to
Speaker 1: guys like Matt Loff and and other experts in there,
Speaker 1: they're really you know, they really believe in this technology,
Speaker 1: and they really see it as as playing is playing
Speaker 1: a role in our cosmic future. So yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people will say, well, that's crazy too.
Speaker 1: You know, why would you spend the energy and the
Speaker 1: money to create this technology to go to alpha century
Speaker 1: our proximate century, whichever you prefer. But I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, that that purportedly would have planets
Speaker 1: of a century that would be earthlike, at least that's
Speaker 1: what we think. And so if we ever had the
Speaker 1: at least other systems, I'm not so sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what the outlook is on. I think that the
Speaker 1: suspicion is that they might sort of like rocky um
Speaker 1: planets like Earth. And so the suspicion is, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: let's go out there and have this opportunity to observe
Speaker 1: planets if we could, and the suns if we could,
Speaker 1: and and take that data back home and and even
Speaker 1: use it to get a better understanding of our own planet,
Speaker 1: which I think that sometimes people think there's too much
Speaker 1: of a disconnect between space and Earth, and the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is that that's if you never try
Speaker 1: to find out anything about space, it would be like
Speaker 1: never leaving your house, your entire life being born inside
Speaker 1: this one house and dying inside this one house. And
Speaker 1: you would never have a full understanding of your life
Speaker 1: if you didn't have other things to compare it to
Speaker 1: and to get a perspective on. So that's why I'm
Speaker 1: I think it's so fascinating that this technology exists right
Speaker 1: now and how far it can get us in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just in terms of practicality to um when it
Speaker 1: comes to deflecting potentially dangerous potentially like extinction level near
Speaker 1: Earth asteroids, like we've never we've never done that before,
Speaker 1: we've never had to do it. But should we ever
Speaker 1: do that, that will be the one time in human
Speaker 1: history that humans have ever done anything to save the
Speaker 1: planet in a very literal sense, Like you watch you
Speaker 1: watch big dumb summer action films. It's like people save
Speaker 1: the world every week. You know, every comic book hero
Speaker 1: that's ever existed to save the world at least once,
Speaker 1: But in reality, we've never done that. This is the
Speaker 1: one realistic chance we ever have at saving the planet.
Speaker 1: I mean, aside from the things that we know can
Speaker 1: do to keep ourselves from destroying it. That's right, And
Speaker 1: we can't rely on Bruce Willis to to save No,
Speaker 1: he's he's got gigs that you're doing it bars, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just can't expect to get him at the job
Speaker 1: of a hat. So, hey, we have some listener mail.
Speaker 1: Let's bring it, let's do it. Have one here. Both
Speaker 1: of these relate to our recent podcast about music Rebuilding
Speaker 1: the Mind. We talked about the connection between music and
Speaker 1: our brains and what's going on when we listen to
Speaker 1: music or or you know, partake of any kind of
Speaker 1: musical exercise. We've received a lot back from people on that,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to earworms. So Justin writes us,
Speaker 1: and he says, hey, guys, I just discovered your podcast
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago, and your literal blow the
Speaker 1: Mind episode about people's heads blowing up. It was fantastic.
Speaker 1: Since then, I've listened to almost a dozen more, and
Speaker 1: I just listened to listen to your podcast on music
Speaker 1: in the mind. As far as non lyrical earworms, none
Speaker 1: of mine focus on what is being said. However, what
Speaker 1: is strange is the tone of the vocals is what
Speaker 1: gets stuck in my head. Um example, rushes closer to
Speaker 1: the heart. Yeah, yeah, how's it go? Um, I can't
Speaker 1: say like the word, but I can't do the time.
Speaker 1: That wasn't you know what I'm saying. So there we
Speaker 1: just got him again if we were listening there, Justin
Speaker 1: Um he says, so when he says, when the song
Speaker 1: floats back, it is never the actual content, but instead
Speaker 1: the sounds of the vocal exactly like you couldn't remember
Speaker 1: the words of him and you could remember the the
Speaker 1: And this is no slight to rush. But I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like I could use that example for every
Speaker 1: single one of their songs. That's that one little melody there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then Justin also added p s. I did a
Speaker 1: neat undergrad collateral study UM on the the predicators of
Speaker 1: crime and found that a that states a state's power
Speaker 1: energy usage and uh and how each state voted Republican
Speaker 1: or Democrat were correlated to crime, amongst other things. So
Speaker 1: he recommends were looking at that for a possible future episode.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty cool. Uh. And I have another email
Speaker 1: here and this is pretty cool too. This is from
Speaker 1: this dumb By the end of Gabriel and Gabriel got
Speaker 1: a big kick out of the term auditory cheesecake, and
Speaker 1: I thought it's uh, sounds delicious. But he also pointed
Speaker 1: out quote, by the way, if there's an earworm that's
Speaker 1: bugging you, there's a little site called www dot unhear
Speaker 1: it that's you in H G A R I T
Speaker 1: dot com that will replace a song that's that's been
Speaker 1: peanut buttered on your brain by peanut buttering another song
Speaker 1: onto ukranium. Give that a try next time. Poker Face,
Speaker 1: where's its ugly head? Um? And uh and I actually
Speaker 1: check this out and it seems to work. It's kind
Speaker 1: of dangerous. It's kind like playing Russian roulette with sometimes
Speaker 1: bad songs like I just you know. You can click
Speaker 1: through it and each time it'll bring up a SoundCloud
Speaker 1: file with a particular song. Uh and uh and I
Speaker 1: actually I did not have an earworm earlier today when
Speaker 1: I checked it out, but it did get some sort
Speaker 1: of like I don't even know what it was, but
Speaker 1: some sort of a little electronic tune was momentarily caught
Speaker 1: in my head. But you could conceivably replace poker Face
Speaker 1: with whoop there it is. Yeah, I don't know that's
Speaker 1: that's a dicey prospect because right now I have got
Speaker 1: my seasonal earworm going on, which is simply having a
Speaker 1: wonderful Christmas time, thanks a lot, Paul McCartney. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd have to kind of go there and see if
Speaker 1: if it was. If I can't imagine a worse warm
Speaker 1: ear worm, though, then pal McCartney's simply having a wonderful
Speaker 1: Christmas time. So I guess the bets are pretty good
Speaker 1: in favor. Thank you of Whoop there it is. It
Speaker 1: does remind me and and I'm not trying to make
Speaker 1: light of mental illness here that I once went to
Speaker 1: a local grocery store and it was at night, and
Speaker 1: it was one of these grocery stores that's it's a big,
Speaker 1: big grocery store, and it's kind of like everybody goes there.
Speaker 1: It's like you'll see hipster's there, you'll see um, but
Speaker 1: you also see people that are down on their luck.
Speaker 1: And this one particular gentleman, who was I think a
Speaker 1: little down on his luck, seemed to only be able
Speaker 1: to speak the words whoop there It is like he
Speaker 1: was just constantly saying, whoop there it is. And then
Speaker 1: when when people would like, a guy came up to
Speaker 1: you know, ask him something, you know, before we entered
Speaker 1: the store, he was like responding, like in a conversational tone,
Speaker 1: but the only words coming out were whooped, there it is. Okay.
Speaker 1: I thought at first that you meant that he was
Speaker 1: sort of like capping his thoughts with groop there. No, no,
Speaker 1: like that was the only the only words he was saying.
Speaker 1: Like he was just kind of walking on, whoop there
Speaker 1: it is. Whoop there it is. And then like somebody
Speaker 1: talked to him and he's like, whoop there it is.
Speaker 1: Whoop there it is, Like that was that was the
Speaker 1: only way he could different inflections, Yeah, different inflections, So
Speaker 1: it was it was really fascinating and there I it's
Speaker 1: like it was, is this like the terminal? This is
Speaker 1: what happens if you cannot get into your worm out
Speaker 1: of your head? Yeah? Probably not, it was. There probably
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of other stuff going on there,
Speaker 1: but it was so weird that this was the one
Speaker 1: song that ended up being his you know, all that
Speaker 1: he was. It's too bad you couldn't have introduced him
Speaker 1: to the other Yeah, you found about that website? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of hassle. And speaking of websites, you can
Speaker 1: check us out on two particular websites, uh, that being
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. We're blow the mind on both of those.
Speaker 1: Oh and also we do have an excellent article on
Speaker 1: the main side about solar sales, how solar sales work.
Speaker 1: So I just dropped drop that into the search bar
Speaker 1: and you find a really you know, it's it's really
Speaker 1: good oversight of just how it just worked. So if
Speaker 1: anything that I told you kind of throw you and
Speaker 1: go there, and you should clear any questions up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you have any questions or comments at hobos
Speaker 1: and solar sales, drop us a line at below the
Speaker 1: mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
Speaker 1: the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
Speaker 1: The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
Speaker 1: it today on iTunes.