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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are coming to a town ostensibly near you,

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Speaker 1: so putatively see us.

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Speaker 2: That's right, May twenty ninth will be in Boston, really Medford, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 2: The next night we're gonna go down to Washington, DC,

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Speaker 2: and then scooch back up to New York City at

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Speaker 2: Town Hall on May thirty first.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're one of those people who likes

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Speaker 1: to plan way far in advance, then you can go

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Speaker 1: ahead and get tickets for our shows in August. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna start out where Chuck.

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Speaker 2: We're gonna be in Chicago August seventh, Minneapolis August eighth,

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Speaker 2: then Indianapolis for the very first time on August ninth,

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Speaker 2: and then we're gonna wrap it up in Durham, North Carolina,

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Speaker 2: and right here in Atlanta.

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Speaker 3: On September fifth and September seventh.

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Speaker 1: Yep. So you can get all the info you need

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Speaker 1: and all the ticket links you need by going to

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Speaker 1: stuff youshould know dot com and hitting that tour button,

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Speaker 1: or you can also go to linktree slash SYSK Live.

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Speaker 1: We'll see you guys this year. Welcome to Stuff you

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Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast I'm Josh, there's Chuck, and Jerry's back. You

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Speaker 1: don't know if you guys do or not, but Jerry's

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Speaker 1: back because yeah, guest producer Ben was sitting in for

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Speaker 1: a while and now Jerry's back, So everybody, Jerry's back

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Speaker 1: in case you hadn't heard him.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're back from a break. I had the

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Speaker 2: spring break and they're by. You had spring break. You're welcome.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks a lot, Thanks a lot. Where'd you go?

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Speaker 3: One of us gets a kid? We all get a kid.

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Speaker 1: Yep.

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Speaker 2: I went to Islo Palms again for the first time

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Speaker 2: in like four years.

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Speaker 1: Very nice and it was great.

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Speaker 3: It's good to be back. I love that place.

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Speaker 1: Did you get arrested again?

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Speaker 3: Never got arrested there? Yeah, so I've never been arrested

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Speaker 3: anywhere I know.

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Speaker 1: I just wanted to throw everybody off.

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Speaker 3: Okay.

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Speaker 1: The casual listeners are like, oh, Chuck got arrested before.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, to get up people, it doesn't exist.

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Speaker 1: So I am really excited about this one, Chuck. It'd

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Speaker 1: been on my list for a while. I think I

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Speaker 1: came across a top ten list about like ten weird

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Speaker 1: things about atomic clocks that house stuff works, right, named

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Speaker 1: Patrick Kiger wrote, Yeah, and I just had it on

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Speaker 1: the list, but I hadn't really read it enough to

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Speaker 1: know what was going on. And it wasn't until I

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Speaker 1: started digging into the research that I was like, these

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Speaker 1: things are really interesting and the idea of our modern world.

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Speaker 1: You know, I soundly frozen caveman lawyer, but it's true.

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Speaker 1: Like everything from air traffic control to the Internet to

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Speaker 1: basically everything except talking to one another on cans connected

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Speaker 1: by string, you can thank atomic clocks for it just

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Speaker 1: simply wouldn't be possible without the atomic clock.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And by saying that, you're what you're saying is,

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Speaker 2: and we'll dig into this more later, is that the

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Speaker 2: world for everything to operate correctly tech forward world, it

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Speaker 2: has to be synchronized, right, and you can't synchronize something

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Speaker 2: unless everybody agrees on what time it is. And that's

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Speaker 2: all an atomic clock is. It is very simply, and

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Speaker 2: we'll get into the how these things work, which sounds difficult,

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Speaker 2: but it's actually pretty simple.

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Speaker 3: Still.

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Speaker 2: It is the most accurate timepiece on planet Earth, and

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Speaker 2: it is a self correcting clock that uses old tech

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Speaker 2: in a way in the form of quartz crystals.

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Speaker 1: Oh you gave it away.

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean the first thing we're going to talk

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Speaker 3: about probably.

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Speaker 2: Quartz crystals, which is old tech, and that it is

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Speaker 2: constantly being checked and corrected using new tech in the

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Speaker 2: form of the element cum one three.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, very well.

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Speaker 2: Put just a clock that sets itself, Yeah, very often

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Speaker 2: and accurately.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because everybody who's ever had any experience with the

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Speaker 1: clock or a watch or something like that knows that

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Speaker 1: it can gain or lose time, it can drift essentially.

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Speaker 2: You know what they say, though, what do they say

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Speaker 2: even the worst clock is correct twice a day.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they do say that. Yeah. So you mentioned quartz, right,

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Speaker 1: I did. That's a big deal. And what quartz is

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Speaker 1: if you've ever I had no idea what quartz was

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Speaker 1: in a watch or a clock. I just had seen quartz,

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Speaker 1: and you know, courts, it was like decades before I

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Speaker 1: realized that wasn't a brand. That they were saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: there's quarts inside, and what they're doing is boasting about

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Speaker 1: how reliable their clock is. Because when we used to

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Speaker 1: we used to use things like mechanical stuff like springs

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Speaker 1: that you would whine, that would power a bunch of gears,

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Speaker 1: and that would kind of gears. Yeah, the movement of

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Speaker 1: the gears would tick off seconds.

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Speaker 3: Right, how to gears work though.

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Speaker 1: Oh, we'll get into that in different episode. Right, Or

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Speaker 1: you had a pendulum tickt off time something like that.

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Speaker 1: And then when we move to Quurtz, what quartz does

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Speaker 1: is it takes off time as well, because we figured

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Speaker 1: out at some I don't know who tried this first,

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Speaker 1: but if you apply an electrical current to courts, you

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Speaker 1: mechanically like disfigure it. It called the Piezzo electric effect.

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Speaker 1: And after you I guess as a result of that

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Speaker 1: that contortion, it emits energy. It's like it's like it's

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Speaker 1: a way of saying uncle. And when it emits energy,

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Speaker 1: it emits it at a really reliable frequency. And we

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Speaker 1: figured out how to use that reliable frequency to tell time.

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Speaker 1: And it's pretty pretty nuts how complicated clocks are, and

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Speaker 1: just how it kind of to me falls in line

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Speaker 1: with that Arthurs cy Clark quote that any sufficiently advanced

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Speaker 1: technology will be indistinguishable from magic. I think applying electricity

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Speaker 1: to quartz to keep time is right up there with

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Speaker 1: that kind the thing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned it's a Pizzo electric material, and you know,

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Speaker 2: we apply electricity to it just to affect it like

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Speaker 2: you could. You could bend chords or smack it or

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Speaker 2: flick it with your finger or something, any kind of

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Speaker 2: mechanical stress on it, and it would do the same thing,

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Speaker 2: and it would produce an electrical charge that's going to

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Speaker 2: come out in pulses. And what those pulses do is they,

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Speaker 2: in the terms of a clock or a watch, is

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Speaker 2: they mimic the swinging of that pendulum. But in this case,

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Speaker 2: like a pendulum ideally swings it once per second, in

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Speaker 2: this case it's thirty two thousand, seven hundred and sixty

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Speaker 2: eight pulses per second that that quartz crystal is emitting.

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Speaker 2: And you talked about whacking it or something. It looks

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Speaker 2: like if you look at like the quartz they use,

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Speaker 2: it looks like a little tiny tuning fork.

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Speaker 1: Oh Nito, I hadn't seen that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a little itty bitty tiny tuning fork.

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Speaker 2: And just like you would whack a tuning fork, and

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Speaker 2: it would, you know, whatever a tuning fork does, because

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Speaker 2: that's not what this is about. But that quurch does

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Speaker 2: the same thing. And we'll come back to that. Thirty

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Speaker 2: two thousand and seven hundred and sixty eight pulses per

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Speaker 2: second a few times, because the whole idea with the

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Speaker 2: development and as we get into history here of the

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Speaker 2: atomic clock is the more little pulses or ticks that

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Speaker 2: you have, the more accurate within a second of time,

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Speaker 2: the more accurate a clock is going to be. And

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Speaker 2: the development of the atomic clock has always been about

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Speaker 2: just making that number as large as possible. And I

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Speaker 2: guess we shouldn't reveal where we're at now, but it's

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Speaker 2: in the matter of billions.

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Speaker 1: Well, so if you start from the say like an

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Speaker 1: old grandfather clock, as a pendulum swings from one side

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Speaker 1: to the other, that's a second, right, and we'll call

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Speaker 1: that a tick. Ticks off a second by swinging from

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Speaker 1: one side to the other. And if that pendulum is

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Speaker 1: off just a little bit, say by a tenth of

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Speaker 1: a second, right every ten seconds, it's going to lose

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Speaker 1: a second, right because it has far fewer things to

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Speaker 1: tick off. It has one tick per second, and like

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Speaker 1: you were kind of hinting at, with crystals, you have

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Speaker 1: thirty two thousand plus ticks per second. So if it

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Speaker 1: misses one tick out of like, what if it misses

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Speaker 1: a tenth of the ticks, that's far far fewer in

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Speaker 1: total than it is to that one tick or that

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Speaker 1: tenth of a tick that the pendulum is missing. And

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Speaker 1: so the more accurate the clock is, the more it's

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Speaker 1: what's called stable. And that's the goal of super precise clocks. Stability,

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Speaker 1: which is it's going to measure a second exactly the

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Speaker 1: same now as it will ten thousand years from now.

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Speaker 1: That's stability, and that's the goal, and that's why we've

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Speaker 1: started to turn to things like the atom, which if

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Speaker 1: we can figure out how to measure the atom accurately,

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Speaker 1: it's it's going to release x number of ticks every

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Speaker 1: time anywhere in the universe if we can measure it

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Speaker 1: when it's excited. And that's kind of where we're at

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Speaker 1: with atomic clocks.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you're wondering, you know, in the terms

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Speaker 2: of analog technology, with watches and clocks, they fall out

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Speaker 2: of whack for a number of reasons because mainly because

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Speaker 2: it's analog technology. Like a spring gets weaker over time,

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Speaker 2: gears can come out of balance. Even when it comes

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Speaker 2: to crystals, like when they got the quartz crystal involved,

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Speaker 2: that was pretty good, like thirty two thousand and seven

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Speaker 2: sixty eight pulses per second, Like that's not too bad

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Speaker 2: at all, but they can. Quarts can gunkump a little

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Speaker 2: bit because it's a naturally occurring thing, and we'll talk

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Speaker 2: about where you find that in a minute. And temperature,

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Speaker 2: atmospheric pressure, all of these things can throw even quarts

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Speaker 2: out of whack because it operates really well, you know,

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Speaker 2: basically at room temperature. But once you start applying you know,

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Speaker 2: really cold like a watch in the really really cold weather,

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Speaker 2: an analog watch are really really hot weather, is it

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Speaker 2: going to be as accurate? So all of these things again,

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Speaker 2: for many many, many hundreds of years, like all this

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Speaker 2: stuff was fine because they just needed to tell time

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Speaker 2: and get it pretty darn close, and that was good enough.

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Speaker 2: But when we started going into space, when we started

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Speaker 2: launching satellites, certainly when the Internet came online, we started

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Speaker 2: using GPS to do things like oh a get you places,

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Speaker 2: b bomb unfortunately bomb hopefully the right place from a

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Speaker 2: satellite communication in a war being off a little bit

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Speaker 2: can cost human lives and lose a lot of money

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Speaker 2: in other cases. So accuracy and that stability was a

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Speaker 2: really really important goal to reach.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I found a really good kind of comparison of

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Speaker 1: you know why, that's so important that accuracy. So like

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Speaker 1: with quartz clock or a watch, it might lose fifteen

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Speaker 1: seconds over thirty days, which is not bad if you're

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Speaker 1: running a train schedule, a court swatch will do just fine, right,

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Speaker 1: But if you're trying to like say, land a lunar

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Speaker 1: lander on the moon, if you're off by something like

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Speaker 1: a millisecond, you might overshoot the moon by like one

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Speaker 1: hundred and two hundred miles three hundred or so kilometers

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Speaker 1: just by a millisecond. And a lander needs to be

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Speaker 1: accurate within like one hundred meters, so a millisecond off

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Speaker 1: in your calculations can make you miss your your spot

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Speaker 1: by like three thousand times. That's not good at all.

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Speaker 1: So that's why we need this kind of accurate stuff.

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Speaker 1: And there's all tons of applications, like we'll talk about

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Speaker 1: it later, but it just kind of goes to show

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Speaker 1: like just how vital time is when you start using

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Speaker 1: it as a factor in really heavy formulas, which are

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Speaker 1: the kind of formulas they used to land landers on

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Speaker 1: the moon. The heaviest.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I got one more for you. A microsecond, even

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Speaker 2: just a microsecond. An error in the order of a

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Speaker 2: microsecond can be a three hundred meter or about three

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Speaker 2: hundred and twenty something yards difference, so that's still a lot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure, So again you need precision, and people have

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Speaker 1: been working for quite a while now to make clocks

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Speaker 1: as precise as possible. Do you want to like take

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Speaker 1: a break and then start talking about the history of

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Speaker 1: the atomic clock?

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Speaker 3: I think so.

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Speaker 2: I think that was I mean, maybe one of our

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Speaker 2: best setups ever between you and me. I don't want

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Speaker 2: to get this out on the air, but okay, all right,

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Speaker 2: this is just us talking.

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Speaker 1: We'll edit that out.

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Speaker 3: All right, we'll edit that out. But I think we're

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Speaker 3: on the right track.

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Speaker 1: Okay, well, we'll be right back everybody. So we have

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Speaker 1: a physics, very famous physics professor named Isidor Rabbi who

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Speaker 1: turned down the job of being Oppenheimer's like right hand

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Speaker 1: man at Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project and instead

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Speaker 1: of one often to his own thing. And one of

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Speaker 1: the things he developed is he discovered nuclear magnetic resonance,

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Speaker 1: and he figured out that's used in like the Wonder machine,

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Speaker 1: the MRI, that's how it does its thing. He figured

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Speaker 1: out how to train that into or how to use

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Speaker 1: it to great effect in what's called an atomic beam

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Speaker 1: magnetic resonance, which essentially is a way to trap and

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Speaker 1: push around and excite atoms that you want to specifically

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Speaker 1: mess with. That's that's maybe the ten thousand feet version

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Speaker 1: of what atomic beam magnetic resonance is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and when we say we're going to say things

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Speaker 2: like exciting atoms, that just means they're moving around.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So just I guess we could toss it out

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Speaker 1: real quick now. And Adam has a ground state which

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Speaker 1: is its resting state and an excited state, and it

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Speaker 1: can have multiple excited states, but it's either resting or

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Speaker 1: in some sort of excited state or other. Right, So

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Speaker 1: Rabbi was like, hey, this nuclear beam, I have a

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Speaker 1: feeling you guys could could make an atomic clock out

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Speaker 1: of it. And everybody said, you guys, why don't you

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Speaker 1: make it? And he said, you go make it. I

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Speaker 1: he can, dare you was his famous quote.

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Speaker 3: You do it, No, you do it.

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Speaker 1: So somebody went off and did it. Yeah. I think

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Speaker 1: within four years the National Bureau of Standards which is

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Speaker 1: now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, they said

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Speaker 1: we've got this. We did it. Rabbi and He's like,

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Speaker 1: what are you talking about? He had terrible forgetfulness.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they said, we built the first atomic clock, and

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Speaker 2: this is the earliest version. Used ammonia as the molecule

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Speaker 2: and the source of the vibrations, so there were reason

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Speaker 2: like copper piping to heat it up and shoot it out.

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Speaker 2: It was compared to what we have today, very rudimentary.

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Speaker 2: But it worked pretty well as approofed of concept, as in, hey,

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Speaker 2: we can do this.

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Speaker 3: But it was a little bit off.

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Speaker 2: I think it was about a second every four months,

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Speaker 2: better than quartz, but still not as good as we

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Speaker 2: needed to get to. But again, it proved conceptually that

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Speaker 2: an atomic clock was a thing that works better.

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Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. But what's strange about ammonia is it

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Speaker 1: has a lower frequency, so there's less ticks per second

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Speaker 1: than the quartz crystal. Does it as like twenty three

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Speaker 1: thousand ticks per second or twenty and seventy hertz, right,

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Speaker 1: But like you said, they figured out that, yes, you

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Speaker 1: can use an atom to keep track of time. But

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Speaker 1: they're like, we got to find something better than that.

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Speaker 1: Let's try seasium. And in nineteen one, yeah exactly, I

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Speaker 1: could not find anywhere why they decided on seasium. I

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Speaker 1: know it's like neutral and maybe it's like it only

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Speaker 1: maybe because it only does have two states, either ground

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Speaker 1: or excited. I'm not exactly sure why, but it's a

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Speaker 1: really weird element, and it's difficult to work with, especially

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Speaker 1: at like room temperature, because it can just suddenly catch

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Speaker 1: fire if it wants to.

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Speaker 3: Well, I saw why they used it.

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Speaker 2: You want to know, Well, all of this stuff has

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Speaker 2: to deal with oscillation, which is basically, whether it's a

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Speaker 2: pendulum swinging or that spring moving the gears, oscillation just

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Speaker 2: means something that's moving back and forth at a regular rate.

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Speaker 2: And it turns out that ccium one thirty three and

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Speaker 2: when something is oscillating, and when you're speaking of like

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Speaker 2: a clock or a timepiece, that's called a frequency reference,

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Speaker 2: like you're literally referencing a frequency that needs to be steady.

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Speaker 2: And ccium one thirty three, they found, just was the

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Speaker 2: most consistent frequency reference that they could find in nature.

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Speaker 2: And that was important because using something natural meant that

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Speaker 2: humans all of a sudden were taken out of the

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Speaker 2: equation for the first time, which was a breakthrough because

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Speaker 2: it's like, this stuff is consistent till the cows come

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Speaker 2: home and human hands aren't making it.

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Speaker 1: So no, the only thing that humans have to do

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Speaker 1: is to figure out how to excite it, and once

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Speaker 1: you get it excited, it's going to do the same

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Speaker 1: thing every time, like I said, anywhere in the universe. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then how to measure it. And those are like

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Speaker 1: the advances in atomic clocks. Figuring out how to more

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Speaker 1: accurately measure caesium atoms once you get them excited. That's

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Speaker 1: kind of like the advance once they figured out how

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Speaker 1: to excite seaesium and then how to measure it. They

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Speaker 1: had the first atomic clock all the way back in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two. The thing is is they started kind

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Speaker 1: of advancing by leaps and bounds because with caesium, I think,

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Speaker 1: do you want to go ahead and reveal like how

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Speaker 1: many ticks caesium gives off every second?

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Speaker 3: I guess we should, huh, I think you should take

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Speaker 3: it man, all.

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Speaker 2: Right, So it was thirty two thousand and chain for quartz,

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Speaker 2: or that pulse caesium one thirty three oscillates at nine billion,

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Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety two million, six hundred and thirty

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Speaker 2: one thousand and seven hundred and seventy right, that's I

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Speaker 2: think we would all agree that's quite a jump from

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Speaker 2: thirty two thousand and change.

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Speaker 1: It is. And like you said, oscillate is something that

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Speaker 1: is just moving back and forth. It can also oscillate

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Speaker 1: up and down. And if something oscillates up and down,

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Speaker 1: what you're talking about is a wave. And if you

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Speaker 1: put a bunch of waves together, you have a frequency,

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Speaker 1: right if you if you have if you have a

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Speaker 1: point in space that you are detecting a wave passing,

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Speaker 1: and you count how many pass in one second, you're

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Speaker 1: tracking the frequency of that wavelength, right, which I think

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Speaker 1: in that sense as a hurts. Whatever happens in a

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Speaker 1: second is a hurtz. That's the that's the old slogan.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so if you were if you could see the

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Speaker 1: waves coming off of a caesium atom as it returns

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Speaker 1: back to its ground state, it got really excited and

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Speaker 1: it shoots off a photon, and the photon itself has

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Speaker 1: waves where if you could, if you could just stand

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Speaker 1: still and watch it pass and count the waves, you

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Speaker 1: would count nine billion, one hundred and ninety two million,

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Speaker 1: six hundred and thirty one, seven hundred and seventy waves

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Speaker 1: passed by you in exactly one second, and it became

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Speaker 1: so clear that you could literally set your watch to

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Speaker 1: this kind of thing if you could figure out how

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Speaker 1: to measure it. That back in nineteen sixty seven, the

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Speaker 1: international community said, let's just attach the second to the

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Speaker 1: caesium atom. Yeah, and the caesium Adam said, I better

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Speaker 1: get some money for this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, let's literally redefine what a second means based

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Speaker 2: on this caesium one thirty three. Prior to that, it

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Speaker 2: was based on like, you know, the sun coming up

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Speaker 2: and going down. It was a solar day, so it

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Speaker 2: was one eighty six thousand and four hundred thousandth man,

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Speaker 2: really hard to keep my head around. One over eighty

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Speaker 2: six four hundred is the average length of a solar day,

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Speaker 2: just that little fraction. So they said, let's just redefine it,

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Speaker 2: and I think we should go through a little bit

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Speaker 2: sort of the jumps that they made. Yeah, I agree,

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Speaker 2: because this is all just kind of like, I mean,

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Speaker 2: who cares about this? What people really want to know

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Speaker 2: is how much more accurate was this stuff in nineteen

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Speaker 2: fifty nine. I believe the nineteen fifty five was the

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Speaker 2: first season base clock and then in nineteen fifty nine

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Speaker 2: they had an error rate of one second per two

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Speaker 2: thousand years. Five years later it was second every six

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Speaker 2: thousand years.

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Speaker 3: It could lose or.

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Speaker 2: Gain a second. Let me say, what's the next one

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine. Well, let's go to the mid seventies. First, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it was one second every three hundred thousand years, and

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Speaker 2: then finally in nineteen ninety nine when they debuted the

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Speaker 2: caesium fountain, which that's still what they're using today, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of the general state of the art,

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Speaker 1: although they're just still looking into new stuff too.

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Speaker 3: How much better do you need to get it? Though?

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Speaker 1: They're getting it pretty good.

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Speaker 2: So nineteen ninety nine it became you could lose a

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Speaker 2: second every twenty million years, and then by twenty thirteen

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Speaker 2: they said we can actually go back in time and

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Speaker 2: say that using this method, we have not lost a

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Speaker 2: second since the Big Bang.

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Speaker 1: Right. So that last one you mentioned is a strontium

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Speaker 1: lattice clock, which is again we just talked about. Once

396
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Speaker 1: we figure out how to measure the vibration of an

397
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Speaker 1: atom once it's excited and returns to its ground state,

398
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Speaker 1: it's just a question of becoming better and better at

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Speaker 1: measuring it. And so they figured out that if you

400
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Speaker 1: hold strontium atoms in laser beams form a lattice, you

401
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Speaker 1: can basically hold them in place and measure them much

402
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Speaker 1: more accurately. And so that's what represented that crazy amazing leap.

403
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Speaker 1: And I was trying to figure out, like, how can

404
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Speaker 1: they say, like, this thing would not have lost a

405
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Speaker 1: second since the beginning of the universe. How can you

406
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Speaker 1: possibly do that? It really is, But they know how

407
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Speaker 1: to back it up. So what they do is they'll

408
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Speaker 1: compare the output of one stronium clock to another stronium clock,

409
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Speaker 1: and the difference, the biggest difference between the two. They'll

410
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Speaker 1: take that and say that that's the discrepancy, right, And

411
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Speaker 1: because these things vibrate at such crazy huge numbers per second,

412
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Speaker 1: that the like the loss of like one or two

413
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Speaker 1: waves over a second, it just adds up to these

414
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Speaker 1: crazy huge numbers. So it lost one wave essentially for

415
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Speaker 1: every ten to the tenth power waves, which is like

416
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Speaker 1: I think ten billion waves, right. So when you start

417
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Speaker 1: adding that up to the number of seconds in a day,

418
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Speaker 1: in a year, in a century, you suddenly realize like, Okay,

419
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Speaker 1: this thing is not going to lose a second for

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Speaker 1: you know, fifteen billion years. That's how they do that.

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Speaker 3: Amazing math is how they do it.

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Speaker 1: I should say, let's give matho its due for once.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, all the maths as they say in England for sure.

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Speaker 2: So we're going to explain how this works now. Kind

425
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Speaker 2: of the remarkable surprise of it all is that these

426
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Speaker 2: things and I guess it's not much of a surprise

427
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:19,760
Speaker 2: because I mentioned it at the very beginning, it could

428
00:23:19,800 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 2: have been, but they still use quartz as part of

429
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:26,840
Speaker 2: this system. It's just it's a feedback loop that starts

430
00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:30,560
Speaker 2: with a quartz crystal and ends up with the quartz crystal,

431
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:36,960
Speaker 2: and in between this science voodoo happens. That just is

432
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:40,679
Speaker 2: all about self correcting as it feeds back into that

433
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Speaker 2: quartz crystal to be you know, shot back out again

434
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Speaker 2: in the form of microwaves.

435
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: Yes, And I'm glad that you really kind of stepped

436
00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:53,040
Speaker 1: up and took charge here, because when we're researching, we'll

437
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Speaker 1: send like you know, especially day of stuff. We'll send

438
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:59,360
Speaker 1: just like little last minute details or maybe better explanations

439
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:03,679
Speaker 1: of something that we have when we're researching, and Chuck

440
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:06,920
Speaker 1: stepped up and was like, okay, let's not over explain this.

441
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:10,359
Speaker 1: This is actually kind of a simple thing in concept,

442
00:24:10,520 --> 00:24:13,840
Speaker 1: and you rescue me from sheer madness.

443
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:15,920
Speaker 3: It is our thing though.

444
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:19,000
Speaker 1: I had looked into the abyss and found atomic clocks

445
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 1: just staring back at me, and it was something that

446
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 1: really you really rescued me from it, and I appreciate it.

447
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:26,320
Speaker 1: I want to say hats off to you.

448
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:29,320
Speaker 2: Well, thanks, but we're not done. Oh God, like, there's

449
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:31,840
Speaker 2: still a chance to over explain this into confusion.

450
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:34,800
Speaker 1: Well, then allow me to try that, all.

451
00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:38,720
Speaker 2: Right, take it away, because it's all about this outermost electron, right.

452
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so with caesium, I guess then the reason

453
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: they selected caesium is because it has fifty five electrons.

454
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: Fifty four of them are so tightly locked in orbit

455
00:24:47,880 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: around the nucleus that they basically don't get excited. Yeah,

456
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: that fifty fifth outer most electron, though, it gets excited

457
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 1: pretty easy, right, But it only gets excited when it's

458
00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:04,199
Speaker 1: exposed to frequent sea of electromagnetic radiations at specifically nine billion,

459
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: one hundred ninety two million, six hundred and thirty one

460
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 1: and seven hundred and seventy cycles or hurtz.

461
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 3: If you offered ice cream.

462
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 1: It gets kind of excited. Sure, yeah, but it may

463
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,439
Speaker 1: not fall out of its ground state. It depends. Is

464
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 1: it Jenny's ice cream? Is it that like butter cake?

465
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 1: Gooey butter cake? It's gonna get excited from that one.

466
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: Is it just you know some dippy old you know

467
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:30,480
Speaker 1: Briars that's been in for several months. Yeah, there's no

468
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:32,639
Speaker 1: shade on briars. But if it sits there for a

469
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:35,360
Speaker 1: few months, it's kind of form ice crystals. Nobody, even

470
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 1: the caesium Adam's not going to get excited by this.

471
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, what was it in?

472
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:39,119
Speaker 4: Uh?

473
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 3: Did you see the Alfred Brooks movie Mother.

474
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: Albert Brooks?

475
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:44,960
Speaker 3: And yes, what I say?

476
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:47,720
Speaker 1: I think you said Alfred Brooks and I think that's

477
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: his butler.

478
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:52,879
Speaker 2: Well no, but well now that we're off on this track,

479
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 2: you know their original name was Einstein. Albert Einstein was

480
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 2: his name? No, Albert Brooks's name, yes, because his brother

481
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 2: was super Dave Osborne Bob Einstein.

482
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:04,639
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, yes, I forgot about it.

483
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 2: Obviously changed his name, but yeah, his his movie Mother

484
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,400
Speaker 2: with a great Debbie Reynolds.

485
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 1: Kerrie Fisher's mom.

486
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:15,879
Speaker 3: That's right, boy, we're just all over the place.

487
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 2: Yep, there was a very funny joke about the ice

488
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:19,880
Speaker 2: crystals on the ice.

489
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 3: Cream, and I can't remember what she called it, but

490
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 3: something like.

491
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 2: A protective barrier or something that it forms like to

492
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 2: really preserve the ice cream underneath that is.

493
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,399
Speaker 1: So that's a good one. I feel bad for Fleischmann

494
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 1: from Northern Exposure because he has to play such a

495
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 1: jerk and he does it so well.

496
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 3: Yeah.

497
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 2: I saw an episode of that, a couple of episodes

498
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 2: on our last tour.

499
00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:42,639
Speaker 1: Actually, you know, Chuck, I think have you seen the

500
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:43,240
Speaker 1: whole series?

501
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 2: I mean I saw it back when I was a

502
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 2: huge Northern fan, but then watched a couple I watched

503
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 2: the first two EPs when we were I was in

504
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 2: the hotel in one of our towns.

505
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: And how did it hold up?

506
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 3: You know, it held up pretty good for a show

507
00:26:57,040 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 3: of that era.

508
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: Okay, great, fantastic. Did you look glad to hear that? Yeah?

509
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 1: I loved it. I was gonna say I think that

510
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: the last episode was one of the best last episodes

511
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: of any show ever. I don't remember it or no, okay, sorry,

512
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:13,119
Speaker 1: not last episode. Fleischman's last episode, oh oh, when.

513
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:15,359
Speaker 2: He goes back to New York Okay, I don't remember.

514
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 2: Did he leave in the show continued, Yeah, very little,

515
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 2: while I don't remember this guy. When Steve Carell left

516
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:23,120
Speaker 2: the office, I was done.

517
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:26,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, his last Uh. There was some moments of brilliance

518
00:27:26,440 --> 00:27:29,199
Speaker 1: in there in the office after Corell left, but it

519
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:33,120
Speaker 1: wasn't Yeah, it wasn't reliably great every single episode. Yeah,

520
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:35,199
Speaker 1: and they got whackier and whackier as time went on.

521
00:27:35,280 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: But that happens, especially when a showrunner leaves too.

522
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 3: How do we get sidetracked? I'm talking about the ice talking.

523
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:42,680
Speaker 1: About yeah, mother. And by the way, I just wanted

524
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: to give a shout out to the Alfred Brooks a

525
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 1: movie Defending Your Life so great, far and away his

526
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:52,159
Speaker 1: best movie, if you ask me.

527
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 2: There's a really good documentary on him that's out now

528
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:56,560
Speaker 2: that Rob Reiner did in case you're interested.

529
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, all right, So we're back to seesium and

530
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 1: I was saying that it gets excited at that same

531
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 1: frequency that it emits a photon at, right, That's what

532
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: it takes. And so what they figured out is that

533
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: you can figure you can find out if your quartz,

534
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: crystal oscillat or the thing that you're using to keep

535
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:20,479
Speaker 1: time with it's super reliable. But again it gets subject

536
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: to frequency drift here or there. But if you can

537
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 1: find out how far off or whether it's keeping reliable

538
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:32,679
Speaker 1: time by comparing it to the excitement of a caesium atom.

539
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 1: If the quartz crystal is putting out the right frequency,

540
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 1: the caesium atom will become excited and it will shoot

541
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: off a photon. And if enough of them do that

542
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: in this atomic clock, this gas chamber essentially that they have,

543
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 1: then you know that your quartz crystal is keeping the

544
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: right time because it's emitting the right number of pulses itself.

545
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 1: The thing is chuck And this is where the madness lies.

546
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 1: For me. I don't understand how they take thirty two

547
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: thousand and change hurts coming from the Qurtz crystal and

548
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: translate that into nine billion and change hurts that excites

549
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: the caesium atam. That's what I don't get. Do you

550
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 1: get that?

551
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 3: Well?

552
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 2: The way I understood it is that those two things

553
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:24,200
Speaker 2: are working independently, Like the caesium is doing its thing

554
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 2: at nine billion plus hurts, okay, just to get a

555
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 2: more accurate measurement, and then it's sending that correction via

556
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 2: another electronic signal. I think it goes into what's called

557
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:40,680
Speaker 2: the detector. That's to me where the magic is, because

558
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 2: I watch a bunch of videos, even kids science videos,

559
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 2: and it just says it goes into the detector, yeah,

560
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 2: and then back out feeding into the courts.

561
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 3: Again.

562
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 2: I don't know what happens in that detector. I mean

563
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 2: it's detecting.

564
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they're actually tracking the photons. It's one

565
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 1: of the beauties of it. And I think that's why

566
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 1: they kept courts crystal technology run is because it releases

567
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,960
Speaker 1: radio waves and we can read those really easily, so

568
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: that has that's one reason they kept quts around. It

569
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: keeps good time and we understand it really well. But

570
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 1: so this is but this is where I'm thrown off, Like,

571
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: are they comparing the number of ticks that the courtz

572
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: is giving off to the number of ticks that the

573
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 1: caesium atom is given off and that's the same time

574
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: span and the If the two match, then you know

575
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: the Courts is still keeping good time. If it's off

576
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 1: a little bit, then you know how much to adjust it,

577
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 1: because that caesium atom is not going to release any

578
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 1: more waves than that number. It's just not there's never

579
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: going to be seven hundred and seventy one. There's never

580
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,240
Speaker 1: going to be seven hundred and sixty nine. It's always

581
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 1: going to be that nine billion number. So I guess

582
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: if you compare how many of the crystal, which can

583
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: have more or less over time depending on how well

584
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: it's functioning, If you compare those two, then you know

585
00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: that your courtz clock is keeping fully act. You're at time?

586
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: Is that what it is?

587
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:04,920
Speaker 2: I think that's the deal and all that it does

588
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 2: once it reads once those atoms are like, no, you're

589
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 2: actually off a little bit. I think it just tweaks

590
00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:15,840
Speaker 2: that original electric current in the feedback loop feeding back

591
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 2: into the courts.

592
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: Right, it punishes right chords crystal in the form of bank.

593
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 4: No.

594
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 1: No, it's like that that one guy who's being tested

595
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: for ESP at the beginning of Ghostbut no, not again.

596
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I think that's I think that's it. Great,

597
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 3: good night.

598
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the second a little more because

599
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: I think we kind of jump past and I think

600
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: it's worth including the actual definition because it's so great.

601
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is it now? Since the official change?

602
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is what they changed to in nineteen

603
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: sixty seven the second. They're talking about the second. Every

604
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 1: everybody who walks around is like, yeah, there's sixty seconds

605
00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 1: in a minute. This is the international definition of what

606
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 1: a second is. It's the duration of nine billion, one

607
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,680
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety two million, six hundred and thirty one thousand,

608
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: seven hundred and seventy periods of the radiation corresponding to

609
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 1: the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground

610
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: state of the caesium one thirty three atom. By the way, everybody,

611
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:22,959
Speaker 1: this definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at

612
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: a temperature of zero calvin.

613
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 3: Yeah.

614
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 1: Wow, so yeah, but you're like, okay, that that doesn't

615
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: really make any sense. But now that you understand how

616
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 1: atomic clocks are work, it does make sense. They're saying,

617
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: if you have something that is timed to this, you

618
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: have a second. That's a second, right there. Everybody's going

619
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 1: to be on the same measure. That's why it's the

620
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: international standard. Everyone is on the same measure, and the

621
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:52,720
Speaker 1: caesium atom is never going to give out more or

622
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: less of those waves when it's excited.

623
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, you know the reason. One

624
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 2: of the reasons that quarts was used is because we

625
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:07,479
Speaker 2: had worked with it up until that point. We understood it.

626
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 2: A lot of the tech was built around it. We've

627
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 2: known how to work with it and repair things using it.

628
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 3: So like, they.

629
00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 2: Didn't want to reinvent the wheel here, they just wanted

630
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 2: to make that quartz run more perfectly. And it turned

631
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 2: out it was, you know, sitting around in ore deposits

632
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 2: and where what Maine and South Dakota.

633
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, and polar stasium comes from. It's pretty rare.

634
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the other thing that strikes me about this

635
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: Chuck too, was when we adopted that second in nineteen

636
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: sixty seven and removed our seconds from the solar day

637
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: because it's so inaccurate.

638
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 3: Cluegi.

639
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: Really, we actually became better at tracking the solar day

640
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 1: when we turned our attention to tracking the atom for

641
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: use as a benchmark for time rather than the solar day.

642
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty neat and ironic.

643
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they've calculated that too, right, Like, because

644
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:04,840
Speaker 2: now we have what's called International Atomic Time t AI.

645
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 3: It's one of those backwards French things, Yeah.

646
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 2: Backwards French things, but now we can actually track using

647
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 2: universal time and against the Earth's rotation, and you know,

648
00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 2: the fact that we're off because you know, things can

649
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 2: slow the Earth down, space, dust, scan, solar winds, atmospheric resistance,

650
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,839
Speaker 2: the moon, you know, and gravity tugging on the Earth.

651
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:35,440
Speaker 2: So they can say now that UTC coordinated Universal Time

652
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:40,320
Speaker 2: is thirty seconds behind the TAI.

653
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 3: Right, which is pretty pretty cool to be able to

654
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 3: know that.

655
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:48,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like they're keeping better track of the spin

656
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 1: of the Earth than the spin of the Earth is. Yeah,

657
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 1: it's like it's crazy, Like they figured out that the

658
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 1: Earth is slowing down by about two milliseconds each day.

659
00:34:56,960 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 1: Could not have done that when you're pinning the second

660
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:03,200
Speaker 1: to one eighty six four hundredth of a solar day.

661
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,319
Speaker 1: You need atomic clocks to measure stuff like that. So

662
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:09,879
Speaker 1: I just think that's just fantastically neat. And they've done

663
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:12,319
Speaker 1: so many other stuff. There's so many other things with

664
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:14,640
Speaker 1: us already too. I say we take a break and

665
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: we come back and talk about some of the applications

666
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:19,919
Speaker 1: for timekeeping in an ultra precise way.

667
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:28,320
Speaker 4: Let's do it. So.

668
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 2: Atomic clocks were a huge leap forward, but they were

669
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 2: very big at first. Obviously, with all kinds of tech

670
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 2: like this, it just gets smaller and smaller. I think

671
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 2: about twenty years ago they built an atomic clock that

672
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:02,280
Speaker 2: could be put upon a microprocessor. It's crazy, totally crazy,

673
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 2: And it's important to point out here that there are

674
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 2: a little more than four hundred atomic clocks all over

675
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 2: the world and more than seventy labs operating these clocks.

676
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 2: But you still need, like you know, one ring to

677
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 2: rule them all. You need one clock to tell all

678
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:20,239
Speaker 2: the clocks what.

679
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:20,799
Speaker 3: Time it is.

680
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:25,799
Speaker 2: So the International Bureau waits and Measures averages all these

681
00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 2: atomic clocks that are operating in the world. It gives

682
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 2: better weight to the ones that are really accurate. So

683
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:34,359
Speaker 2: if you've got a gold star because your atomic clock

684
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 2: in your lab is super accurate, you're going to be

685
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 2: more heavily weighted.

686
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: If there's a lot of known pot users in your lab,

687
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: they're not going to wait it as heavily.

688
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 2: So well, ironically we'll see here in a minute. It

689
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 2: comes from Colorado, but it is. Then they're like, all right,

690
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:53,360
Speaker 2: this is the real time for the entire world, and

691
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 2: then they message that out as what I mentioned earlier,

692
00:36:56,719 --> 00:37:00,840
Speaker 2: International atomic time and here in the United States, or

693
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 2: I guess in all of North America that is broadcast

694
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 2: out from a radio station in Fort Collins, Colorado, WWVB

695
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 2: that all American clocks sink to.

696
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, there all control clocks exactly. Yeah. So if you

697
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 1: have an atomic watch or an atomic alarm clock or

698
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:23,239
Speaker 1: something at your house, it's actually passively picking up those

699
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:27,359
Speaker 1: radio waves from WWVB, and those radio waves are telling

700
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:29,760
Speaker 1: the clock what time it is. So it's keeping accurate

701
00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:34,920
Speaker 1: time because it's getting the information from from radio WWVB,

702
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 1: Radio Free Europe.

703
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:39,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's the time that they're like, all right,

704
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 2: this is what time it is on the internet, and

705
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 2: that's what time all your trains are gonna run and

706
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:48,280
Speaker 2: your planes are gonna take off in land. Yeah, although

707
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:51,319
Speaker 2: those are always gonna be late. But you know, if

708
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:55,319
Speaker 2: we're operating in space, if we're using GPS, and you

709
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 2: can explain the thing you found on GPS because that

710
00:37:57,200 --> 00:37:59,319
Speaker 2: was pretty cool, But all of it is set to

711
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,840
Speaker 2: that that agreed upon average of all those atomic clocks.

712
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:05,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. And some people have their own like timekeeping stuff

713
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: like if you if you have an iPhone or Android

714
00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: or something like that, whoever is serving that that phone

715
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,719
Speaker 1: has their own time servers, but their time servers are

716
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 1: still if you trace it back far enough. Some they're

717
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:22,799
Speaker 1: getting their information from the atomic clocks that are being

718
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: maintained at least in the US by the National Institutes

719
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:28,239
Speaker 1: of Standard and Technology. And then we also have to

720
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: give a shout out to the US Naval Observatory. They

721
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:34,239
Speaker 1: started at first, and they still maintain their own set

722
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,759
Speaker 1: of atomic clocks, and they are the official timekeeper for

723
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. But they're also the ones that

724
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:44,200
Speaker 1: you can call to get the accurate time. And in

725
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: the United States you can call two two seven six

726
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: two one four oh one, and you will hear the

727
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: voice of a man from the seventies who died in

728
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:55,440
Speaker 1: the nineties who's still telling you what time it is.

729
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 1: He apparently spent several days. Fred Goldsmith, I think.

730
00:38:58,680 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 3: What's that number again?

731
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 1: Two oh two seven six two fourteen oh one.

732
00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 2: All right, I'm typing that into my phone because I

733
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 2: had a weird urge about two months ago to call

734
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:14,359
Speaker 2: time like we did when we were kids. You could

735
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:16,879
Speaker 2: call and get time and weather. You're still chances yep,

736
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:18,800
Speaker 2: all right, I'm glad to know that's the thing, because

737
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:20,800
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna do it from the phone that

738
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 2: I know has all that information on it so so.

739
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was reading like an AARP article on appropriately enough,

740
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,440
Speaker 1: and I think they already get the name is Fred

741
00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: Fred Goldsmith, right, Uh yeah, that's where I get a

742
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:33,400
Speaker 1: lot of this information.

743
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 3: No, no, no, but are you getting mailers yet?

744
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 1: Uh? No, I found it on the internet.

745
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:39,360
Speaker 3: Okay, just way that you get your first mailer.

746
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 1: He apparently recorded every possible time it could be, including seconds,

747
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:49,719
Speaker 1: over the course of several days, and they still use

748
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:51,799
Speaker 1: these recordings to tell you what time it is.

749
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:52,480
Speaker 3: Amazing.

750
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 1: One of the other amazing things I saw was like

751
00:39:55,040 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: they just expected this to kind of go away once

752
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 1: smartphones became so quit, people just didn't need it anymore.

753
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:06,759
Speaker 1: Your phone is automatically communicating with your server, the time

754
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 1: server for your phone company. Nope. In two thousand and nine,

755
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: they actually started to see an increase in calls. So

756
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 1: now people called more than they did in the early

757
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 1: two thousands.

758
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 2: Today, you tell me movie phone is still around, I'm

759
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 2: gonna just quit my job and do nothing but call

760
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:23,839
Speaker 2: those numbers all day.

761
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:27,719
Speaker 1: You remember when Kramer figured out that yeah or no,

762
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:30,320
Speaker 1: did did people think he had the movie phone numbers?

763
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:32,239
Speaker 1: So he started thinking being the movie phone.

764
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:34,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I think that's what happened.

765
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 2: And when he didn't know the answers like they would

766
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 2: be punching in the numbers, he would say, why don't

767
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 2: you just tell me the movie?

768
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:42,320
Speaker 1: That's right?

769
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:49,320
Speaker 3: Oh godness good classic rate A r oh Man.

770
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,000
Speaker 1: I watched the Puffy Pirates shirt episode the other day

771
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:55,279
Speaker 1: and it was and it still holds up. Yeah.

772
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 2: All right, so we promised talk of GPS. I didn't

773
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:00,439
Speaker 2: have time to dig into what you sent. So you've

774
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:05,440
Speaker 2: got it together enough. Can you explain how GPS works?

775
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: Yeah? So you mentioned that some atomic clocks can be

776
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 1: fit under microchips. Now and you can find those microchips

777
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 1: and board satellites that orbit space, and we have satellites

778
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: that are dedicated to GPS Global Positioning System. Right, I

779
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:23,399
Speaker 1: actually found this. I got to give a shout out

780
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: to Rpeds r car, who is just some random person on.

781
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:29,799
Speaker 3: Cora who we hope got it right.

782
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, as long as they are not so masterful at

783
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:38,760
Speaker 1: mashing facts up and into you know, into lies essentially,

784
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 1: but just covering it up perfectly, I'm pretty sure this

785
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: guy got it right. But essentially what they do is

786
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 1: you're if you're like, say you're using ways or something

787
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: which I do use shout out to ways to love it.

788
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 1: It has an on board GPS receiver somewhere. I don't

789
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:57,319
Speaker 1: know if it's in the waste server or something like that.

790
00:41:57,360 --> 00:41:59,919
Speaker 1: Maybe it's using your phones. It's probably using your phone.

791
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 1: And what it's doing is it's receiving a signal from

792
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: the GPS satellite saying here's a signal of some GPS info,

793
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 1: but also here's a timestamp that came from my own

794
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: atomic clocks that I have on board this satellite. Right,

795
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: And so your GPS receiver gets it, calculates how using

796
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 1: the speed of light as part of the formula, how

797
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,279
Speaker 1: long it took for you to get that, and then

798
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:28,719
Speaker 1: it does it again with another satellite and another satellite,

799
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:32,719
Speaker 1: usually two or three, and based on all of the

800
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 1: differences between how long it took for those satellites to

801
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:38,360
Speaker 1: send you that information, it can tell you within I

802
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: think one hundred ten feet or ten meters I think,

803
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 1: exactly where you are on planet Earth because it triangulates

804
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: your location. And that's all thanks to atomic clocks. It

805
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: wouldn't be possible to do that without atomic clocks.

806
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean, if you're geocaching, next time you

807
00:42:56,440 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 2: get that Santana record out of the GOK. Thank an

808
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:04,439
Speaker 2: atomic clock. Thanks caesium one thirty three.

809
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: Yep.

810
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 3: Thank the good people of Maine.

811
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:10,440
Speaker 1: And uh north through South Dakota one of them.

812
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 3: I think it's South Dakota.

813
00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 4: Uh.

814
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 1: Was that a callback to like a two thousand and

815
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 1: nine episode? Is that what we said you could find

816
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: in the geo cash things? Man?

817
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 3: For a little while.

818
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 2: I think apparently for a little while, some people were

819
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 2: stuff you should know. Listeners were putting Santana tapes and CDs.

820
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 2: It's awesome in geocacius. But I'm sure that's run its course.

821
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:36,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe not, who knows. I'll bet there's some retro

822
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:40,359
Speaker 1: geocashers that are like, I got the Santana thing going on.

823
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:42,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I was saying, geocacias, that's not work.

824
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: I've heard people say that before, although maybe it was

825
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 1: you from the episode people. Yeah, what else can you

826
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:51,799
Speaker 1: do with the stuff, chuck?

827
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:52,799
Speaker 4: Uh?

828
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 3: I mean I think that's a pretty good summation.

829
00:43:56,960 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 1: Well, let me add let me add one more thing.

830
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: You it's been used in physics experiments to its vital

831
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: and physics experience because you're tracking, like say, the decay

832
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,720
Speaker 1: of particles and atom smashers, and that happened so fast

833
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:10,879
Speaker 1: that you couldn't do it without atomic clocks because they're

834
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: tracking things in the billions of a second. Right, pretty

835
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:16,880
Speaker 1: good stuff. It's also been used more than once to

836
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: prove Einstein's theory of relativity that there's gravitational time dilation

837
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:25,359
Speaker 1: depending on the effects of gravity on you and how

838
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 1: fast you're traveling, as in relation to the speed of light,

839
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 1: time's either going to move faster or slower for you,

840
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,399
Speaker 1: And so people have taken atomic clocks and put them

841
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:39,480
Speaker 1: at different elevations. There was a very famous by much

842
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:42,960
Speaker 1: no I think thirty centimeters for one experiment, and it

843
00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:46,200
Speaker 1: produced differences in time time dilation. But there was a

844
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: really famous experiment called the half lee Keating experiment in

845
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:53,560
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one where they put some atomic clocks on

846
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 1: airliners and just flew around the world and then compared

847
00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:00,319
Speaker 1: them when they got back to the clocks back on Earth,

848
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: and there was a clear distinction between time. It's very

849
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: very slight, but it's enough to prove that, yes, Einstein's

850
00:45:06,560 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 1: theory of gravitational time dilation is correct.

851
00:45:10,239 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that old thing that you will age faster

852
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:15,280
Speaker 2: living in the mountains than at sea level.

853
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is true.

854
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:22,319
Speaker 2: But I think what they found out was if you'd

855
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 2: live in the mountains, it'd be about ninety billions of

856
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 2: a second. Yeah, less life over a seventy nine year lifetime.

857
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,520
Speaker 1: So it's like, why bother even telling us that?

858
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 3: Exactly?

859
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,799
Speaker 1: There's one other thing too, so we mentioned, oh we

860
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 1: didn't mention. I'm sorry I left this out. Those GPS

861
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:45,880
Speaker 1: atomic clocks that they have on board, very very precise.

862
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:48,839
Speaker 1: They still get updates twice a day from back here

863
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: on Earth from those international timekeepers. Yeah, just to make

864
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:57,520
Speaker 1: sure that the frequency drift hasn't taken over too much.

865
00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:00,920
Speaker 1: It just updates them. Right, You can't do that the

866
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 1: further you get out from space. I mean, these satellites

867
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: are only tens or dozens of miles above us. Right.

868
00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: As we get further and further out into space, it

869
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 1: becomes harder and harder to communicate with Earth and to

870
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: get like updates about what time it is. So they're

871
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 1: looking to build ultra precise atomic clocks that can go

872
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: out in space on board spacecrafts that can keep their

873
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 1: own time. They don't need any updating from back here

874
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:30,399
Speaker 1: on Earth. They're going to lose so little time over

875
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,760
Speaker 1: such a long period of time that they will essentially

876
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:38,279
Speaker 1: stay calibrated to the time back on Earth for incredibly

877
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: long periods of time through incredibly long distances out into space.

878
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 2: Why haven't they done that yet, that was my sort

879
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 2: of question.

880
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 3: Well, they have harder they have.

881
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 1: NASA launched the Deep Space Atomic Clock in twenty nineteen,

882
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:54,879
Speaker 1: which is like a test I apparently is going very well.

883
00:46:55,120 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I was about to say, why don't they

884
00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 2: just throw one of those puppies aboard the spacecraft?

885
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: But they but they did, and they they're using mercury

886
00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: ions instead of caesium atoms or astronium. It is because

887
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: so one of the things these atoms, when you have

888
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: them in like a cloud chamber or whatever, they can

889
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 1: rub up basically against the sides of the chamber and

890
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:19,879
Speaker 1: it's gonna mess with them a little bit, it's gonna

891
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: mess with your measurements. Some With an ieon, you can

892
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:25,919
Speaker 1: keep it trapped in an electromagnetic field. It's not gonna

893
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:28,320
Speaker 1: mess with anything. It's not gonna rub up against anything.

894
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:32,040
Speaker 1: And so that's how it's it stays so reliable. How

895
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:35,520
Speaker 1: it's your Your measurements are going to stay reliable for

896
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: a very long time because they're not interacting with you know,

897
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 1: they're not bumping up against anything.

898
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not slam dancing.

899
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:45,960
Speaker 2: They're doing the billy idol. They're dancing with theirselves.

900
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:48,880
Speaker 1: Speaking of slam dancing, And I went to Circle Jerks

901
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: and Descendants last week and it was amazing. And there

902
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: are people, there's a there's a pit for sure in

903
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:57,280
Speaker 1: a long time.

904
00:47:57,680 --> 00:47:59,720
Speaker 3: Did you look down and you me was body serving

905
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 3: across the crowd.

906
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: No, but she was into it. She was there for

907
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:04,960
Speaker 1: the Descendants. I was there for the Circle Jerks. But

908
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 1: both shows were very good. And a fan came up

909
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:09,720
Speaker 1: and said, hi, at.

910
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:12,320
Speaker 3: The show, I think I saw an email or something.

911
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, she emailed was like, I'm sorry if it

912
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:18,320
Speaker 1: was like awkward or weird, And it wasn't awkward or

913
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:18,879
Speaker 1: weird at all.

914
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure it was wonderful.

915
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:23,279
Speaker 1: But it was a very good show. And if you

916
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: have a chance to see Descendants in Circle Jerks and

917
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 1: you like punk, go see it because it's awesome. It's

918
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:29,480
Speaker 1: very good.

919
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 3: Still at it. I love it.

920
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you want to know anything more about atomic clocks,

921
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 1: you can find a whole rabbit hole to go down.

922
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: See if you can escape madness yourself. In the meantime,

923
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:42,680
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail.

924
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 2: This is one that we've tried to get on recently.

925
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,880
Speaker 2: It's another Peanuts one, but this is a standout. Hey, guys,

926
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 2: Charles Schultz was a huge part of my childhood, though

927
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 2: I never never met the man. He spent a short

928
00:48:57,120 --> 00:48:59,680
Speaker 2: amount of time living in Colorado Springs early in his career.

929
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 2: While living there, painted a mural on the nursery room

930
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:05,960
Speaker 2: in the house that had many early depictions of the

931
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:10,000
Speaker 2: Peanuts characters. Years later, long after he moved out, my grandparents,

932
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 2: Stan and Polly Trabnachek bought the house. Over the years,

933
00:49:15,640 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 2: they heard rumors from neighbors that Al Schultz had lived

934
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 2: there and painted a wall. At this point, the wall

935
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:22,440
Speaker 2: had been painted over several times, but my grandma is

936
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 2: an amateur painter, you know a thing or two about paint.

937
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 2: So after lots of deliberating and researching, she decided to

938
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:30,560
Speaker 2: try and remove the layers of paint over the mural

939
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 2: bit by bit using cotton swabs. Wait to go, man,

940
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 2: I love Polly Trabnachek for doing this, because it would

941
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:40,279
Speaker 2: have been lost the time the wall and all the

942
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:44,120
Speaker 2: characters were revealed. Many of my childhood memories involved that wall.

943
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:47,320
Speaker 2: My parents, my grandparents sorry, would even give free tours

944
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:51,080
Speaker 2: of the wall to anyone interested. And this gets so great.

945
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:54,799
Speaker 2: When mister Schultz passed away, my grandparents reached out to

946
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:57,360
Speaker 2: the family offered to donate the wall to be a

947
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:00,319
Speaker 2: part of the Schultz Museum. So the estate core NATed

948
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,400
Speaker 2: to have that wall literally cut from the house, loaded

949
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 2: onto a truck and shipped to California. I will never

950
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:09,320
Speaker 2: forget that cold, rainy fall day in Colorado was around

951
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 2: nine or ten years old. The Schultz family treated my

952
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:15,920
Speaker 2: grandparents like cherished friends for years after that, and even

953
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 2: flew them out first class to be there for the

954
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 2: opening of the museum. Mister Schultz was a wonderful man,

955
00:50:22,640 --> 00:50:25,120
Speaker 2: had an amazing family and made the world a better place.

956
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 2: And that is for Mike de Youong and I saw

957
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 2: pictures and it was really pretty unbelievable. You can google

958
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 2: this wall and look it up, and I can't imagine

959
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 2: the effort that his Granny Travnacheck, Nana Travna Check Nana

960
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 2: Travnacheck put forth to tediously, meticulously expose that great work

961
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 2: of art.

962
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 1: Also, Chuck, She was researching this at a time where

963
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 1: you had to like go to the library to find

964
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:57,760
Speaker 1: stuff this out and they ruined it. Yeah, oh easily

965
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:00,799
Speaker 1: it could have been like that monkey g this art

966
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:06,680
Speaker 1: restoration thing, you remember that, uh huh okay. And I

967
00:51:06,719 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 1: also want to point out that the Schultz Museum flew

968
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:12,000
Speaker 1: them out first class, back when first class actually meant

969
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: something too oh burn. So yeah, there it is the

970
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 1: most triumphant, greatest Peanuts email we received from that episode.

971
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:22,240
Speaker 1: We got a lot of good ones, but Mike Dion

972
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:25,160
Speaker 1: took the cake. So thanks for telling us all that, Mike,

973
00:51:25,520 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: and hats off to Granny Nana travna Check and the

974
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:32,200
Speaker 1: whole family and the Schultz Museum. That was pretty cool stuff.

975
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us like

976
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:36,920
Speaker 1: Mike did, we'd love to hear from you via email

977
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:43,800
Speaker 1: at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should

978
00:51:43,800 --> 00:51:45,399
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

979
00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:49,120
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

980
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.