Speaker 1: Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff reproduction of iHeartRadio. I'm Horrid
Speaker 1: cham And in this year end episode, we are answering
Speaker 1: the question why is a year a year? Why do
Speaker 1: we have three hundred and sixty five days in the year?
Speaker 1: Is it changing? And will the new year always be
Speaker 1: the same? This is the second in our two part
Speaker 1: holiday special, so be sure to check out last week's
Speaker 1: episode about whether the North Pole is moving. Today, we're
Speaker 1: going to continue our conversation with my friend and planetary
Speaker 1: scientist Matt Siegler, and he's going to fill us in
Speaker 1: on the physics of our annual spin around the Sun.
Speaker 1: So get ready to count down the new year with
Speaker 1: Science as we answer the question why is a year
Speaker 1: a year? Hey? Everyone, Happy new Today we're celebrating another
Speaker 1: orbit around our lovely Sun and the end of our
Speaker 1: first year on Science Stuff. On behalf of everyone involved
Speaker 1: in the show. Thanks for tuning in to get you
Speaker 1: into party mode. We're going to continue my conversation with
Speaker 1: planetary scientists doctor Matt Siegler. Doctor Siegler is a professor
Speaker 1: at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Geophysics and Planetology,
Speaker 1: and he works with NASA and the European Space Agency
Speaker 1: on several missions. On our last episode, we talked about
Speaker 1: how you can't really trust the North Pole no matter
Speaker 1: if you're talking about the magnetic North Pole, the spin
Speaker 1: axis of the Earth, or even the GPS top of
Speaker 1: the world. It's all changing. So I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: doctor Siegler if the same applies to the year, as
Speaker 1: our orbit around the Sun changed since the Earth was formed,
Speaker 1: or will it change in the future. Here's my chat
Speaker 1: with doctor Siegler. Okay, let's stitch over to the new year. Matt,
Speaker 1: are you looking for to the new year?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, it's a very exciting new year.
Speaker 1: You sound excited. Did you do anything specially in Hawaii
Speaker 1: for New Years?
Speaker 2: Apparently there is a massive, massive home fireworks display world
Speaker 2: that goes on here such that it becomes kind of
Speaker 2: out of control and chaotic where the skies are just
Speaker 2: lit up.
Speaker 1: Well, good luck with that. So I thought it'd be
Speaker 1: fun to talk about in the Solar System whether the
Speaker 1: year has changed for Earth and also where are the
Speaker 1: years like in other planets. So let's start with the
Speaker 1: planet Earth. We talk about how the north pole is
Speaker 1: changing on Earth. Is the year changing for planet Earth also?
Speaker 1: Or is it pretty constant?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the year is not really as malleable as the
Speaker 2: spin axis. In a way, the year is how long
Speaker 2: we go to take one revolution around the Sun, Okay,
Speaker 2: and so that period ends up being pretty constant. You know,
Speaker 2: we talked about how oval the Earth's orbit is, but
Speaker 2: it's still take the same period to go around. It
Speaker 2: will just go faster at some parts of it and
Speaker 2: slower at other parts.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's what's going on. The Earth's orbit around the
Speaker 1: Sun is pretty much a circle. If someone showed you
Speaker 1: a picture of that orbit, you'd probably say, yep, that's
Speaker 1: a circle. But actually it's not quite a perfect circle.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit about one point six percent ovalish
Speaker 1: or elliptical. And this has a few interesting consequences. First
Speaker 1: of all, it means we're not always at the same
Speaker 1: distance from the Sun. In January, we're about three million
Speaker 1: miles closer to the Sun than in June. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't affect too much how hot it feels on Earth.
Speaker 1: As we'll talk about later, the tilt of the Earth
Speaker 1: has a bigger effect on the seasons. But it does
Speaker 1: mean that the Sun looks a little bit smaller in
Speaker 1: June than in January, about three point three percent smaller.
Speaker 1: And it also means that our speed around the Sun
Speaker 1: changes throughout the year. In January, the Earth is swinging
Speaker 1: around the Sun a little faster than in June, about
Speaker 1: two thirds of a mile per second faster. So if
Speaker 1: it feels like the holidays in New Year go by fast,
Speaker 1: you can blame it on the earth slightly elliptical orbit. Okay,
Speaker 1: now the question is how did we get that orbit?
Speaker 1: I have two questions. The first question is what determined
Speaker 1: how long our year was going to be? Is it
Speaker 1: tied to the formation of the Solar system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, as the planets formed, they had a certain
Speaker 2: time period over their orbit. And there is actually a
Speaker 2: really interesting story about that that we think the way
Speaker 2: the planets formed, Jupiter and Saturn were at slightly different
Speaker 2: distances to the Sun than they are today, and that
Speaker 2: actually ended up with them going into a resonance, which
Speaker 2: is every one time Juwber goes around, Saturn goes around
Speaker 2: twice or something like that. Right, And so what happened
Speaker 2: then was that the gravity of the two giant planets
Speaker 2: would yank on you each other, and that eventually caused
Speaker 2: Saturn to move around and then slingshot out into the
Speaker 2: outer Solar System, and that messed up Neptune's orbit and
Speaker 2: fired it kind of out into the Coiper Belt and
Speaker 2: may have knocked around all these icy objects out there
Speaker 2: and caused them to go haywire and fall into the
Speaker 2: inner Solar System, and some of them hit the Earth
Speaker 2: and Moon and Mars. And that might be one of
Speaker 2: the main reasons we have water here on Earth is
Speaker 2: because of this chaotic change of years.
Speaker 1: Yes, scientists don't really know why we have so much
Speaker 1: water here on Earth. Some of the water in our
Speaker 1: oceans and lakes probably came from water that was trapped
Speaker 1: inside the Earth when the Earth formed that was then
Speaker 1: burped out into our atmosphere by volcanoes. But that's not
Speaker 1: enough water to fill up the oceans. So scientists have
Speaker 1: a theory that the rest of the water on Earth
Speaker 1: came from space, from icy comets or astero It's from
Speaker 1: the far out Kuiper Belt in our Solar system. And
Speaker 1: what doctor Siegler is saying is that the reason that
Speaker 1: water ended up here to create deep oceans and maybe
Speaker 1: life and us was the orbital Shenanigans of the planets
Speaker 1: Jupiter and Saturn. So as you look back and give
Speaker 1: thanks this holiday season and New Year, be sure to
Speaker 1: give a shout out to the planets Jupiter and Saturn
Speaker 1: for putting us here. Now, could that have happened to
Speaker 1: us here on Earth? Were we thrown into this orbit
Speaker 1: in that crazy chaotic young Solar system? Sort of? Actually
Speaker 1: our planet came about from two smaller planets crashing into
Speaker 1: each other. Could that have happened to Earth? Could something
Speaker 1: have happened to make us have a different year in
Speaker 1: our past? Or can it happen in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this is something we're learning from studying
Speaker 2: other Solar systems or exoplanets, right, is that a lot
Speaker 2: of the planets seem to migrate around closer or farther
Speaker 2: away from their star over time. And so I think
Speaker 2: the ideas that the Earth has not migrated a ton
Speaker 2: over its time. But the Earth we think formed kind
Speaker 2: of like a pre Earth that was a little bit
Speaker 2: smaller than Earth. And then there was another planet about
Speaker 2: the size of Mars that crashed into us, and most
Speaker 2: of that material became the Earth, but some of it
Speaker 2: got thrown into a disc kind of like Saturn, and
Speaker 2: that formed the Moon.
Speaker 1: Oh so the pre Earth could have had a different orbit,
Speaker 1: could have had a different year.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So you had these two planets that one
Speaker 2: was a little closer to the Sun than the Earth
Speaker 2: and so it had a shorter year, right, and then
Speaker 2: one was a little farther from the Earth and had
Speaker 2: a longer year.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: And they got into some kind of gravity tug of
Speaker 2: war and crashed into each.
Speaker 1: Other, and that's when the year was born. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: when the Earth year was born. Oh before that, there
Speaker 1: was no Earth year after that impact. Now the year
Speaker 1: was born, yes, when it just happened forzero point five
Speaker 1: six billion years ago, not yesterday. No, And we can
Speaker 1: tell when that started because the rocks on the Moon
Speaker 1: that formed at the same time haven't been all messed
Speaker 1: up by weather, and so we can date a rock
Speaker 1: from the Moon and figure out how old the Earth is. Whah.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. And we don't think it's changed since then,
Speaker 1: Like the Earth year hasn't changed much.
Speaker 2: No, I mean there's some perturbations to the year from
Speaker 2: how much Jupiter might yank on us and alter our
Speaker 2: orbit a little bit, right, pull us out a little
Speaker 2: towards Jupiter. Venus might pull us in a little bit.
Speaker 2: But on average, the year has not changed substantially.
Speaker 1: I see it has changed, but just a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what do you think is going to happen in
Speaker 1: the future. I think we're going to be stuck with
Speaker 1: our year for quite a while. Actually this is not
Speaker 1: quite true, Doctor Sieger says. There is something that is
Speaker 1: going to affect how long our gear is going to
Speaker 1: be in the future. So when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about what that effect is and how other orbital
Speaker 1: effects are going to fundamentally change how we celebrate the
Speaker 1: new year. So don't say goodbye to the old year
Speaker 1: just yet.
Speaker 2: Stay with us.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the physics of the new year, and so far we've
Speaker 1: learned the Earth's orbit around the Sun is not a
Speaker 1: perfect circle, and it's the result scientists theorize of two
Speaker 1: planets crashing into each other. But once the crash settled
Speaker 1: and the debris became the Earth and the Moon, our
Speaker 1: orbit around the Sun has been pretty stable. But that's
Speaker 1: not always going to be true.
Speaker 2: I guess in the long long future, roughly three or
Speaker 2: four billion years from now, the Sun have expanded enough
Speaker 2: that the outer atmosphere of the Sun will cause some
Speaker 2: drag on the Earth and that might cause it to
Speaker 2: lose a little bit of its momentum. Huh, and then
Speaker 2: it would slowly spiral down.
Speaker 1: In into the Sun. Yeah, so the year will get
Speaker 1: shorter and short. Well, first of all, like, if we're
Speaker 1: being dragged by the atmosphere of the Sun, we're probably
Speaker 1: not here, like we're cooked.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so hopefully we're all living somewhere else.
Speaker 1: We might see the Earth's year get shorter and shorter
Speaker 1: as it drags into the Sun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's kind of questionable or depending on what
Speaker 2: model you might assume of how a star expands, whether
Speaker 2: it's enough drag to cause the Earth to spiral in
Speaker 2: all the way, or if it just slows us down
Speaker 2: a little bit and we end up a little closer
Speaker 2: to the venus or crash in the venis sudden. I
Speaker 2: guess we won't see, but we can imagine that there
Speaker 2: are some interesting ways.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll see from a distance.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the idea is that the long term of our
Speaker 2: solar system is that the outer atmosphere of the Sun
Speaker 2: will expand away. There'll be a white dwarf star, you know,
Speaker 2: where the core of the Sun that remains is. And
Speaker 2: I suppose the Earth will be a little closer, probably
Speaker 2: because of this drag, and have a shorter year, but
Speaker 2: hopefully there will still be some hulk of what used
Speaker 2: to be the Earth going around there. And whether after
Speaker 2: that it can never be a place where life could
Speaker 2: re emerge, that's going to be an interesting, big question,
Speaker 2: I see. But going through the outer atmosphere of the
Speaker 2: Sun will be a traumatic period for.
Speaker 1: The Earth, meaning there might not be anything alive to
Speaker 1: celebrate New Years.
Speaker 2: It's hard to do a sad one.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. So the year will get shorter, according
Speaker 1: to scientists, maybe a few billion years in the future
Speaker 1: when the Sun expands and engulfs the Earth, making it
Speaker 1: into a smaller orbit. Now, in general, the orbit of
Speaker 1: a planet depends on how close it is to the Sun.
Speaker 1: Planets close to the Sun move really fast and their
Speaker 1: orbits are short, and planets that are far from the
Speaker 1: Sun move slowly and their orbits take longer. For example,
Speaker 1: mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and its
Speaker 1: orbit takes eighty eight Earth days. In other words, a
Speaker 1: year on Mercury is only eighty eight days long. But Neptune,
Speaker 1: the farthest planet from the Sun, has an orbit that
Speaker 1: takes around sixty thousand Earth days or about one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty three Earth years. So if you want it
Speaker 1: to feel younger or older, you could just move to
Speaker 1: another planet. I'm just trying to find a way to
Speaker 1: make myself younger.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, if you measure it by years, then you
Speaker 2: want to go further out in the source. Right, So
Speaker 2: we have Mercury is close to the Sun and so
Speaker 2: it's year is only eighty eight days long. Uh huh. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you might feel pretty old pretty quickly if your
Speaker 2: birthday is every three.
Speaker 1: Months, as opposed to if you move to like Saturn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go out to Saturn and your year is
Speaker 2: about thirty Earth years, right, so you're barely a year
Speaker 2: old and Saturn, yeah.
Speaker 1: It'd be like one and a half basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there you're a Saturnian infant.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Okay. There are two interesting things about
Speaker 1: the physics of the New Year. The first is one
Speaker 1: that most people know, and that is that the orbit
Speaker 1: of the Earth is not quite three hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: five days long. It's actually three hundred and sixty five days,
Speaker 1: five hours, and forty eight minutes, Meaning the Earth doesn't
Speaker 1: spin in place a full three hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: times in the time it takes to go around the
Speaker 1: Sun and back to the same spot. It spins a
Speaker 1: little bit more. But we celebrate the new year when
Speaker 1: we fad three hundred and sixty five days, which means
Speaker 1: the new year we celebrate is not actually how long
Speaker 1: it takes to go overround the Sun, and we build
Speaker 1: up this difference for three years until every fourth year
Speaker 1: we add a whole new day to the year on
Speaker 1: leap years, So if you really wanted to celebrate going
Speaker 1: around the Sun a full orbit, you should wait until
Speaker 1: about six am on New Year's Day to set off
Speaker 1: those fireworks. The other interesting thing about the physics of
Speaker 1: the new year is that the new year also doesn't
Speaker 1: celebrate the passing of the seasons. We're used to thinking
Speaker 1: that a year is when we've had a full cycle
Speaker 1: of winter, spring, summer, and fall, but actually our orbit
Speaker 1: and the seasons are slowly going out of sink.
Speaker 2: We celebrate New Year's conspicuously around the winter solstice, right,
Speaker 2: but those events have changed where they would fall in
Speaker 2: the year over time.
Speaker 1: Because of the wobble of the spinactive of the Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, this one's a little hard to explain. Right now.
Speaker 1: We celebrate the New ye near the winter solstice, which
Speaker 1: is the longest night of the year for people in
Speaker 1: the Northern hemisphere, and it's the longest night of the
Speaker 1: year because that's when the northern hemisphere is tilted the
Speaker 1: most away from the Sun. Then six months later, when
Speaker 1: the Earth has gone through half of its orbit, the
Speaker 1: northern hemisphere is tilted the most towards the Sun, making
Speaker 1: it the longest day of the year for people above
Speaker 1: the equator. This is called the summer solstice, and right now,
Speaker 1: those two solstices fall on December twenty first and June
Speaker 1: twenty first. But as we talked about in the previous
Speaker 1: episode about the North Coal, the Earth is wobbling, which
Speaker 1: means its spin axis is rotating and changing direction, sort
Speaker 1: of like a top that wobbles as it spins on
Speaker 1: a table. Scientists think that in thirteen thousand years, that
Speaker 1: wobbling is going to make the Earth tilt in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, which means the winter and summer solstices are
Speaker 1: going to switch. In thirteen thousand years, the summer solstice
Speaker 1: is actually going to be on December twenty first, and
Speaker 1: the winter solstice will be June twenty first. In other words,
Speaker 1: in thirteen thousand years, those of us in the Northern
Speaker 1: Hemisphere are going to be celebrating New Year's Day in
Speaker 1: the middle of summer. It's going to be hot, and
Speaker 1: at least in the United States, if the United States
Speaker 1: still exists in thirteen thousand years, we're going to be
Speaker 1: celebrating the fourth of July in the dead of winter.
Speaker 1: And that's because the seasons follow the tilt of the Earth,
Speaker 1: and the tilt of the Earth is changing regardless of
Speaker 1: our orbit around the Sun.
Speaker 2: Earth has a round enough orbit that the electricity of
Speaker 2: the Earth's orbit is not a predominant cause of season.
Speaker 2: I see, yeah, so it's mostly just this tilt.
Speaker 1: But that's wobbling. So that means that in like ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, it's going to be summer in New Year's Yes.
Speaker 2: If you're in the northern hemisphere, what so everyone will
Speaker 2: be like Hawaii.
Speaker 1: So our year is not really defined by the seasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seasons will slowly drift over thousands of years time scales,
Speaker 2: thirteen thousand year time scales, right, it will change. Oh
Speaker 2: so yeah, So that's why I don't know when we
Speaker 2: talk about stoneheads being aligned for the summer solstice, I
Speaker 2: think maybe it's not aligned in the same way as
Speaker 2: it was when they built it.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? It means New Year's Day is
Speaker 1: totally unrelated to the seasons.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the long game, New Year's Day is totally
Speaker 2: unrelated to the season.
Speaker 1: It's also arbitrary and changing at the same time. Yes,
Speaker 1: these things we think are like, you know, set points
Speaker 1: in our lives, in our cycle of society are really
Speaker 1: in the long run due to physics changing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or due to culture.
Speaker 1: You know, that's wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing is fixed.
Speaker 1: You can't trust anything. Man, Just live with the impermanence.
Speaker 1: He live in the moment. Just enjoy the holidays.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So to recap, the length of the year that we
Speaker 1: have right now on Earth is the result of a
Speaker 1: gigantic crash that happened billions of years ago that merge
Speaker 1: two small planets together and put them in a single
Speaker 1: orbit around the Sun. That orbit is pretty constant. The
Speaker 1: length of the year is not changing, even though the
Speaker 1: orbit is not a perfect circle, and we move around
Speaker 1: the Sun at different speeds at different times of the year.
Speaker 1: But what is changing is the tilt of the Earth,
Speaker 1: which is what determines the seasons. So in the future,
Speaker 1: we're going to be celebrating new Years in opposite seasons
Speaker 1: from how we celebrated today. People in the northern hemisphere
Speaker 1: will celebrate it in the middle of summer, and people
Speaker 1: in the southern hemisphere will celebrate it in the middle
Speaker 1: of winter. Case it's still a celebration of surviving another
Speaker 1: spin around the Sun plus or minus five hours and
Speaker 1: forty eight minutes. All right, When we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to recap our favorite episodes of the year, including
Speaker 1: which one surprised me the most and which one was
Speaker 1: the most fun to make. So stay with us, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Hey, welcome back, Okay. In this third segment,
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be fun to recap some of our
Speaker 1: favorite episodes of the year. In twenty twenty five, we
Speaker 1: made forty three episodes on a wide range of topics.
Speaker 1: We asked questions about animals, like do our pets lie
Speaker 1: to us, can animals appreciate music? And do animals have consciousness?
Speaker 1: We wondered about space topics like what's inside a black hole?
Speaker 1: Or where are all the aliens? And can we terraform mars?
Speaker 1: We also explored questions about technology like what is a
Speaker 1: quantum computer? Can we upload our brains to the cloud?
Speaker 1: And can you survive being cryogenically frozen? And we answered
Speaker 1: questions about evolution and the human body and brain like
Speaker 1: why do we have five fingers? Do we have to
Speaker 1: wait thirty minutes after eating before you can go swimming?
Speaker 1: And it is food coloring that for you? I could
Speaker 1: go on and on. So if you haven't gone through
Speaker 1: our archive in a while, I encourage you to go
Speaker 1: check it out. I guarantee all the episodes are fascinating.
Speaker 1: To pick which ones to recap, I ask the people
Speaker 1: who work on the show to pick their favorite episodes.
Speaker 1: So first up is our sound mixer, engineer and general
Speaker 1: manager of the show, Casey pegram. Casey is the reason
Speaker 1: I and every guest on the show sound great. And
Speaker 1: believe me, we're recording pretty suboptimal conditions most of the time.
Speaker 1: So the fact that the show stays on track and
Speaker 1: sounds like it was all recorded in the studio. Is
Speaker 1: all thanks to his magic. Back in October, Casey picked
Speaker 1: this episode as his favorite Don't pull the plug and
Speaker 1: get ready to live inside our electronic mind as we
Speaker 1: answer the question can you upload your brain to a computer.
Speaker 4: So, the idea of mind uploading, which is like a
Speaker 4: hypothetical future technology, is that if you make a simulation
Speaker 4: of the human brain, and you make it refined enough,
Speaker 4: it will be as good as the real thing. And
Speaker 4: the hope is that if it's good enough, we can
Speaker 4: use this technology to migrate over to machines.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's in principle possible for you to capture that
Speaker 5: level of detail from a human brain. We do it
Speaker 5: from animal brains all the time. Unfortunately, those methods.
Speaker 6: Require that you die.
Speaker 5: We don't yet have wadys of looking at it without
Speaker 5: taking chunks of your brain out, essentially pickling them and
Speaker 5: then slicing them into.
Speaker 6: Very very thin sections of brain. But what you're getting
Speaker 6: is the instant after you had actually died. So I
Speaker 6: don't think you would want to be necessarily preserved in
Speaker 6: that state, right.
Speaker 1: Casey said he found this episode interesting because of the
Speaker 1: topic and the viewpoints of the three interviewees. In the episode,
Speaker 1: we talked to a philosopher, a mathematician, and a neuroscientist,
Speaker 1: all interested in the idea of uploading your brain. Casey
Speaker 1: said he liked that it had a great mix of
Speaker 1: sci fi and philosophy, and that it's speculative but at
Speaker 1: the same time very plausible. You also liked the third
Speaker 1: interview covered the exact main objection he had about uploading
Speaker 1: your brain, which is that the copy you make of
Speaker 1: you is not going to be a part of you,
Speaker 1: even though it may think it is.
Speaker 7: So why would anybody think that if we build a
Speaker 7: simulation of your brain, then somehow you enter the simulation
Speaker 7: instead of staying there where you are in your brain.
Speaker 2: I see, but yeah, that's not you, that's a copy.
Speaker 1: Meaning like, there's this fantasy that I would close my eyes,
Speaker 1: I would feel like I'm going through a tunnel and
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm in a computer. That's the fantasy, yeah, But
Speaker 1: in reality it's like I'll close my eyes and I'll
Speaker 1: open them again, and then now suddenly there's something that's
Speaker 1: like me on the computer.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think so.
Speaker 1: But for the thing in the computer, they would have
Speaker 1: the experience of going through the tunnel over to.
Speaker 3: They Well, they wouldn't exist before, so maybe they would
Speaker 3: have a memory, you know, like a false memory of that.
Speaker 1: Oh, false memory. This gets so tricky. This episode reminded
Speaker 1: Casey of a short story called The Copy by Paul Jennings,
Speaker 1: where a kid has a machine that can copy things,
Speaker 1: except the copies come out mirrored. He eventually clones himself.
Speaker 1: Then the two clones fight and he kills the clone.
Speaker 1: But then later his mom tells him he's writing with
Speaker 1: his left hand instead of his right hand, and that
Speaker 1: his hair is parted in the other direction. In other words,
Speaker 1: he was the clone and he didn't know it. That
Speaker 1: is creepy indeed, So if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about how scientists think about the idea of uploading your brain,
Speaker 1: go check out that episode. The next person I asked
Speaker 1: was our editor Rose Segura. Rose lives in Spain and
Speaker 1: she puts the whole show together, adding music and sound effects.
Speaker 1: She's basically the reason we all sound so smart. I
Speaker 1: asked her what her favorite episode was, and she said
Speaker 1: there were many, but the episode about taking an elevator
Speaker 1: to space was a particular favorite. I guess for her
Speaker 1: a rows above the others. Today we are going to space. No,
Speaker 1: we're not going to strap ourselves to a giant rocket
Speaker 1: full of flammable fuel. Instead, we are going to take
Speaker 1: the elevator. It may seem like science fiction, but a
Speaker 1: space elevator is something serious scientists actually think is possible
Speaker 1: to build.
Speaker 8: If you're not using a space elevator, the alternative is
Speaker 8: a rocket, and rockets are dangerous and rather explosive. And
Speaker 8: so the idea of a space elevator is if you
Speaker 8: put like a really big spool of cable right at
Speaker 8: that altitude and just sort of let it down very
Speaker 8: gradually and slowly, and.
Speaker 9: Then you have this straight or mostly straight cable that
Speaker 9: goes from the surface of the Earth, so it's a
Speaker 9: big stationary cable. And on this cable you would put
Speaker 9: a climber or an elevator car or something which lifts
Speaker 9: your payload up to whatever altitude you want.
Speaker 1: Rosette said this was a favorite episod it because when
Speaker 1: editing the episode, she felt like she was traveling around
Speaker 1: space without a spaceship or spacesuit, just pushing a button
Speaker 1: while of course listening to elevator music. Rose said she
Speaker 1: liked how in the episode we make several stops kilometers
Speaker 1: away from the surface of the Earth to learn about
Speaker 1: the physics of space, which made her feel small lying
Speaker 1: in orbit around the planet.
Speaker 9: We want to advance the development of the space elevator
Speaker 9: and hopefully get it built within our lifetimes. So that's
Speaker 9: a perfect place to build solar power satellites. Rather large
Speaker 9: habitats could be built there, Okay, colonies, things like that,
Speaker 9: orbible factories. If you want to go to Mars, then
Speaker 9: you can get to Mars in about sixty one days.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's doable.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean the question is do you have an
Speaker 8: economic case for doing so? Right, That's that's a real question.
Speaker 1: Now for me, I have three favorite moments from the years.
Speaker 1: Was when I got to visit a quantum computer lab
Speaker 1: at Caltech for the episode What Is a Quantum Computer?
Speaker 1: The lab is led by Amazon's head of quantum hardware
Speaker 1: and my friend, professor Oscar Painter. Hey, Oscar, how are you.
Speaker 4: Good to see you after so many years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a while. Huh.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: All of these control electronics, right, is to use to
Speaker 7: control about twenty of these quantum bits.
Speaker 1: There's twenty quantum particles correct.
Speaker 7: Which we are manipulating as quantum bits, and that circuit
Speaker 7: lives down inside of this special refrigerator. And this refrigerator
Speaker 7: is under vacuum, the temperature which is about ten million
Speaker 7: degrees above absolute zero.
Speaker 1: Ten million degrees so.
Speaker 7: To give you an idea the coldest darkest parts of
Speaker 7: outer space or that universe. Yeah, but this thing's about
Speaker 7: thirty times colder than that.
Speaker 1: Even whoa. It's just cool to be there and to
Speaker 1: be able to take listeners with me, to experience what
Speaker 1: it's like to be in front of such a cutting
Speaker 1: edge technology. Now. My second favorite moment was when I
Speaker 1: got my kids to do a live taste test of
Speaker 1: different meats for the episode Why does frog Taste Like Chicken? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you four meats and you're just gonna
Speaker 1: tell me what do you think of it? Oh? Very well,
Speaker 1: taste like chicken. Does not taste like chicken.
Speaker 3: Chicken?
Speaker 1: Probably the rabbit or the alligator alligator meat. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's just a lot better. Very chicken, very chickeny chicken
Speaker 1: chicken like.
Speaker 6: This is probably the frog meat.
Speaker 1: What do you think? It is?
Speaker 5: Very lushy?
Speaker 1: No, how about the taste ye quin, So the alligator
Speaker 1: meet definitely like chicken taste like overcooked. Okay, what do
Speaker 1: you think of your dad experience unsuing? First of all,
Speaker 1: I was surprised my teenage kids agreed to do it,
Speaker 1: And second of all, we actually learned a lot. We
Speaker 1: kind of set the stage for that episode really well.
Speaker 1: Plus I like that in that episode we learned that
Speaker 1: lots of meat taste like chicken because basically all meat
Speaker 1: is made of the same molecular mechanism and proteins. What
Speaker 1: makes different meats taste different is something else. So if
Speaker 1: you want to know what that is, go check out
Speaker 1: that episode. And my third favorite moment from the year
Speaker 1: was when I interviewed Professor Jim Anderson for the episode
Speaker 1: Do Animals Understand Death? In the episode, doctor Anderson tells
Speaker 1: the story of a chimpanzee named Pansy who passed away
Speaker 1: of old age, surrounded by her and best friend who
Speaker 1: comforted her in her last hours.
Speaker 3: The old female chimpanzee, she was lying up on a platform.
Speaker 3: All three of the chimpanzees in the group came over
Speaker 3: and gathered around her at once, and this was the.
Speaker 1: First time this was happening.
Speaker 3: And two of them were grooming her, her daughter, and
Speaker 3: her long term friend, another adult female, and then the
Speaker 3: adult male in the group came over and he bent
Speaker 3: down and looked closely into her face, and then he
Speaker 3: took her by the shoulder and gradually shoot her shoulder
Speaker 3: while staring at close range into her face. And then
Speaker 3: he laid her shoulder back down on the ground, looked
Speaker 3: at her, and then moved away. What we had witnessed
Speaker 3: was the Chris moment, where the adult male seemed to
Speaker 3: be checking for any signs of life and perhaps realizing
Speaker 3: that she had gone. Her daughter slept beside her all
Speaker 3: night long.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then the following morning, her long term friend came
Speaker 3: over and sat by her. And because of that response
Speaker 3: is by the male, he had left some straw on her,
Speaker 3: so she gently cleaned the straw of her OIDI and
Speaker 3: her sheesh and just sat by her for a while.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now I did this interview while I was traveling. I
Speaker 1: was in a hotel room in San Diego and doctor
Speaker 1: Anderson was in Japan, and it was just a very
Speaker 1: profound moment hearing a scientist talk about how animals relate
Speaker 1: to dying and how he knew the end of his career,
Speaker 1: things about his life. If we haven't listened to that episode,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. Okay, with that, we reached the
Speaker 1: end of the episode and twenty twenty five. We look
Speaker 1: forward to making more episodes for you next year. We're
Speaker 1: gonna start twenty twenty six with episodes about the signs
Speaker 1: of imagination, whether supersensus exist, and why we procrastinate. At
Speaker 1: least I think we'll get to it. We'll see anyways,
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening to sign Stuff. See you next
Speaker 1: time you've been listening to science Stuff. The production of iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: written and produced by me or Yham, edited by Rose Seguda,
Speaker 1: executive producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pegrom.
Speaker 1: And you can follow me on social media. Just search
Speaker 1: for PhD Comics and the name of your favorite platform.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
Speaker 1: tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.