Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Be there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says I lost
Speaker 1: my poor meatball when somebody sneezed. I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Our host Jonathan Strickland is out on
Speaker 1: vacation this week, so Joe and I are going it alone.
Speaker 1: He is out getting the top of his head sun burned. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is usually what happens. Actually, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He might wear a helmet on the beach. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure a helmet. Jonathan is not really a hat person.
Speaker 1: He's more of a helmet person. I've seen him wear
Speaker 1: baseball caps, although I think that the helmet thing would
Speaker 1: go better with his entire mad scientist persona. So right,
Speaker 1: But you know what I bet Jonathan is doing while
Speaker 1: he's out on vacation. What I bet he's eating some
Speaker 1: delicious food. Oh, I bet he is. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: jealous of his delicious food. Yeah, that's that's one of
Speaker 1: the things you do on vacation, right, eat delicious food
Speaker 1: and you take pictures of it and you send it
Speaker 1: back to the people at home in order to make
Speaker 1: them jealous specifically. But do you know a really cool
Speaker 1: place you can go where you almost definitely don't get
Speaker 1: to eat delicious food? Um? Space? That's exactly right. I
Speaker 1: was just reading a little review of some space food
Speaker 1: that came out I think it was in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven or so and Discover magazine about what the astronauts
Speaker 1: eat up there at the I S S. So they
Speaker 1: had a food critic eating it, and it didn't sound
Speaker 1: too appealing. Apparently a favorite among the astronauts is the
Speaker 1: shrimp cocktail, which sounds disgusting to me. But is it
Speaker 1: dehydrated rehydrated shrimp? I would assume, yeah, I'd have to
Speaker 1: assume that's what it is. That doesn't sound like a
Speaker 1: party to me personally. It comes in packages, you know,
Speaker 1: and you've got to add hot water, I guess, and
Speaker 1: with a syringe. It's not really Uh yeah. The whole
Speaker 1: process of eating in spaces is designed so that you
Speaker 1: get a minimum number of crumbs out into the open
Speaker 1: air because um are closed air, as the case may be,
Speaker 1: because those can can bounce around and reck all kinds
Speaker 1: of systems and you know, so so it has to
Speaker 1: be very specifically engineered for this entire um a um
Speaker 1: conservation of resources so that you're not creating unnecessary waste
Speaker 1: and be right making sure that you're not making a mess. Well,
Speaker 1: as we learned from the Simpsons episode Deep Space Home,
Speaker 1: or if you just crack open a bag of potato
Speaker 1: chips in the capsule, they could clog the instruments. The
Speaker 1: science of the Simpsons is pretty rock solid, right. So
Speaker 1: so a lot of the foods there you get are
Speaker 1: they're designed to be easy to eat from a little
Speaker 1: uh pouch or something like that, and there their shelf
Speaker 1: stable for transport up into space. And so that's understandable. Uh,
Speaker 1: but wouldn't it be great if you could get any
Speaker 1: food you wanted in space? I mean, I'd take that
Speaker 1: option here, honestly. Well yeah, but you know who does
Speaker 1: get any food they want in space? The people on
Speaker 1: Star Trek they do, along with those Nancy jumpsuits. How
Speaker 1: do they get it? Do they just have a really
Speaker 1: good chef on the enterprise replicators? Replicators? Of course, we've
Speaker 1: all seen the whole tea Earl Gray hot kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: For those of us who haven't, Captain Jean Luke Picard
Speaker 1: has a fondness for Earl Gray tea hot. So he
Speaker 1: goes up to the wall and there's a little nook
Speaker 1: in the wall and he speaks to it. He says,
Speaker 1: teh hot, and it comes right out. Yeah. It molecularly
Speaker 1: assembles this or possibly sub molecularly assembles this, this cup
Speaker 1: and the tea and makes it warm and serves it
Speaker 1: up to you. Because that is what computers of the
Speaker 1: future can do. It's a dream come true, really, and
Speaker 1: that's why today we're talking about food replicators. That's our
Speaker 1: that's our topic for forward thinking to you today. Is
Speaker 1: this possible to make a food replicator? And if so,
Speaker 1: how would it work? So how do they work on
Speaker 1: Star Trek? Well, so it's it's a machine that creates
Speaker 1: material objects and it's not in Star Trek actually limited
Speaker 1: to food, is it right? You can make any I mean,
Speaker 1: like I said, it also creates the cup when you
Speaker 1: order a cup of tea. So uh. But they also
Speaker 1: use it for for building all kinds of things and
Speaker 1: like getting new clothes I imagine stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can basically you can produce parts with it, I
Speaker 1: think too. If you want to repair the enterprise, you
Speaker 1: can make something that you need to go in a
Speaker 1: certain place. Basically, the only things that can't make are
Speaker 1: things that would make the plot too easy if you
Speaker 1: were able to just manufacture one. So I think it
Speaker 1: can't make new like drive fuel, can't make dilithium crystals
Speaker 1: or right, because that would be that would be ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And in a lot of episodes seems to be used
Speaker 1: as like it's comic relief, the sort of jokes where
Speaker 1: people of the jokes like there are too many options
Speaker 1: at Starbucks. I just want coffee. They do that in
Speaker 1: Star Trek, right, you know, I just want playing hot
Speaker 1: tomato soup, not any of these seventeen varieties. Or it's
Speaker 1: the joke where the human language to computer language compatibility,
Speaker 1: where the I mean, even though this is an extraordinarily
Speaker 1: advanced computer system, for some reason, if you say hot
Speaker 1: earl gray tea, it doesn't necessarily get it um. And
Speaker 1: also they use it to I think illustrate some principles
Speaker 1: about like economics or the prime directive, like is it
Speaker 1: ethical to share replicator technology with planets that don't have
Speaker 1: this kind of thing yet? Sure, and to make overall
Speaker 1: commentary about how this, this incredible future is partially perfect
Speaker 1: because nobody is hungry. Right, that's a big thing on
Speaker 1: the show. That's the economics point. I guess you know.
Speaker 1: There's this idea of a post scarcity economy in Star Trek,
Speaker 1: which we can talk about later in this episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how does this actually work on Star Trek? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I I'm very happy to have some angry Trek ease
Speaker 1: correct me if I get this wrong. But presumably I
Speaker 1: believe it works on the same principle as the transporter.
Speaker 1: That is what I have read as well. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the transporter, you get on the transporter, it takes all
Speaker 1: the atoms in your body, converts them into energy, zaps
Speaker 1: them somewhere else, and reassembles them from that energy into
Speaker 1: matter there. So the replicator then would have to be
Speaker 1: working a little bit differently, and that it's not taking
Speaker 1: food from some transporter deck somewhere else and not to you.
Speaker 1: It's just making it out of some other matter or energy. Right.
Speaker 1: There's not a Starbucks on Klingon. That's that's shipping you
Speaker 1: your muffins. Right, So it would be like if you
Speaker 1: got into the transporter and it transported you somewhere, but
Speaker 1: turned you into a bunch of muffins, delicious muffins for
Speaker 1: for the Klingons or whoever ordered them. Um, but you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to use live humans. Don't look so shocked, no,
Speaker 1: I mean you could probably turn anything into muffins, right right.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's the point of of of
Speaker 1: these replicators, is that they're using waste materials from the ship. Um.
Speaker 1: Again not necessarily humans as an all soil and green
Speaker 1: but um, but but but other stuff that has been
Speaker 1: used and they don't need anymore to to transfer into
Speaker 1: delicious muffins. Okay, well, let's talk about the different ways
Speaker 1: it could theoretically be working. That's one, it's taking waste material,
Speaker 1: so taking matter and then changing that into other matter. Um.
Speaker 1: And that could be done I could imagine at a
Speaker 1: couple of different levels. One would be at the molecular
Speaker 1: or atomic level. So say you throw in a bunch
Speaker 1: of human excrement and trash from the cafeteria, just put
Speaker 1: it right back in. And uh, I don't know what
Speaker 1: else they use, just stuff they don't want on the enterprise,
Speaker 1: Old old Captain Kirk Laundry. I am done with this
Speaker 1: keyboard right, yeah, bye bye, don't need it anymore. So
Speaker 1: that gets broken down into atoms and molecules, and then
Speaker 1: those get reassembled by some magical procedure into the food
Speaker 1: you want to eat. And please, I'm open to correction
Speaker 1: on this issue as well, But it would seem to
Speaker 1: me that if you were just breaking it down to
Speaker 1: the molecular or atomic level, you would be limited in
Speaker 1: the kind of things you would produce, because you'd have
Speaker 1: a certain number of carbon atoms and a certain number
Speaker 1: of iron atoms, and you would have to rearrange those
Speaker 1: into something that would use basically the same number of
Speaker 1: the same kinds of atoms. Right, So, if you've got
Speaker 1: a teacup and you want tuh, that's maybe a difficult conversion. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know what atoms are in a teacup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've got leftover juice and you want tea, maybe
Speaker 1: that's a little bit easier to wrangle. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'd imagine the cup would be harder. I don't know
Speaker 1: that this is all speculation, but at any rate, there's
Speaker 1: a there would be a way to get around this,
Speaker 1: right sure. Yeah, if you take this down to the
Speaker 1: subatomic level, wherein your build holding the kinds of atoms
Speaker 1: that you need, right, then you have the same parts
Speaker 1: for all atoms, right, you need neutrons, protons, electrons. And
Speaker 1: if you can break it down to that level, well
Speaker 1: then you can make whatever atoms you need. You can
Speaker 1: make whatever molecules you need, and you can make whatever
Speaker 1: nanostructures you need, which build up and up and up
Speaker 1: until you have whatever kind of thing you want to build.
Speaker 1: It's the most basic, not the most basic, but the
Speaker 1: farthest down the chain we'd need to go a good
Speaker 1: operative building block. Yeah, yeah, of course, there are some
Speaker 1: questions about this because if you're talking about taking apart
Speaker 1: atoms and then using the sub atomic particles, there's a
Speaker 1: thing that happens when we split atoms. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: whole nuclear vision thing or yes, yes, vision, I used
Speaker 1: the correct word, uh is produces a great deal of
Speaker 1: energy and so and I'm not sure that I would
Speaker 1: personally want yeah, bombs going off every time. I just
Speaker 1: want a cup of tea. Yeah, okay, So that's a
Speaker 1: definitely a concern. Not to make it seem like just
Speaker 1: breaking it down to the atomic or molecular level would
Speaker 1: be totally a piece of cake. But let's think about
Speaker 1: the other way, which is, instead of going from matter
Speaker 1: to a different kind of matter, would it be possible
Speaker 1: to just take energy, just straight up energy from the
Speaker 1: ship's power plant and turn that into the atoms we
Speaker 1: need in order to make our food. Uh. Theoretically, yes,
Speaker 1: we do know about a process that's called pair production,
Speaker 1: where where you can basically convert a photon into a
Speaker 1: positron and an electron, electrons being you know, mattera UM.
Speaker 1: But that's that's you know, at the single photon level,
Speaker 1: and you're only creating electrons, and I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: that becomes a cup of tea UM. Also, the the
Speaker 1: amount of energy that it takes to kick off this
Speaker 1: process is quite a bit of energy. Yeah, again, this
Speaker 1: would be a problem at the physics level. I think
Speaker 1: what we'd have an uh an amount of energy and
Speaker 1: a scalability question here. But it is true that you
Speaker 1: can turn energy into matter, just like you can turn
Speaker 1: matter and energy with a nuclear reaction. You can split
Speaker 1: a photon into an electron and a positron and those
Speaker 1: two would fly off in opposite directions and and there
Speaker 1: you'd have an electron. This is a massive particle it's
Speaker 1: it's matter, um, and so that you could also just
Speaker 1: think about it in terms of the Big Bang, Right,
Speaker 1: So you have like expanding energy that cools and turns
Speaker 1: into material material we know and love today. So that
Speaker 1: is something that is theretically possible. Is it practical? Probably not.
Speaker 1: It seems very doubtful to me. Yeah, possibly never. I mean,
Speaker 1: considering that we're doing these kind of pair production experiments
Speaker 1: at like the largest particle colliders on the planet in
Speaker 1: single units. Uh yeah, yeah, Okay, so if we just say, okay,
Speaker 1: I believe, we just put on the I believe hat
Speaker 1: and say it works, it works. Are they any good
Speaker 1: as chefs on the in the Star Trek universe at least?
Speaker 1: And we're about to get to some some real facts,
Speaker 1: don't worry. Oh no, everyone likes talking about the Star
Speaker 1: Trek universe eternally. Um uh. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: the characters on Star Trek all are a little bit
Speaker 1: doubtful about that kind of thing, or not all of them,
Speaker 1: but but the you got your foodies, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that Rikers sometimes through like dinner parties on
Speaker 1: the on the Enterprise in order to show off his
Speaker 1: renaissance mannishness and be really rykery about stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, like he'd actually cook, could actually cook, Yeah,
Speaker 1: make a point of cooking and show off to all
Speaker 1: of his friends how good of a cook he was.
Speaker 1: So is this like the star trek century equivalent of
Speaker 1: the people who go out in the woods and bow
Speaker 1: hunt elk these days? That just like cooking in a
Speaker 1: walk is their equivalent of that? Yeah, although there's there's
Speaker 1: always a quality issue. I mean, like, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a replicator. It's providing sustenance and not
Speaker 1: necessarily quality sustenance. Um. I think also like Picard had
Speaker 1: a couple of jars of caviare stashed around because real
Speaker 1: caviare is superior, according to him, to replicator caviare. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you can actually kind of imagine if this were
Speaker 1: real technology. You can see why it would be the case.
Speaker 1: It might be an issue of resolution basically, Like Okay,
Speaker 1: so you imagine you're an audio file and you love music,
Speaker 1: and you're one of those people who you can you
Speaker 1: say you can really hear the difference between an MP
Speaker 1: three file a digitized version and hearing the music played live. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess anybody can tell the difference between
Speaker 1: MP three and hearing it live to some people don't
Speaker 1: care that much, right right, right, Um, But there is
Speaker 1: a there's a resolution difference. Anytime you take a real
Speaker 1: world analog phenomenon and turn it into digital data, you
Speaker 1: are you know, you're shaving off the edges. You're experiencing
Speaker 1: a loss, right um. And there's also a slight question
Speaker 1: of whether it's um healthy or or even ethical from
Speaker 1: a from a basic human standpoint to eat replicator food
Speaker 1: when you have the option to to grow food the
Speaker 1: normal way. Um. That There was an episode of Deep
Speaker 1: Space nine that dealt with that, where there was this
Speaker 1: kind of like bloody ish group of colonists who, um,
Speaker 1: even when presented with the with the technology, basically refused
Speaker 1: to use it. Huh. I didn't see that one Deep
Speaker 1: Space nine. I think I'm one of the only like
Speaker 1: five people on the planet who really liked that show. Well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go there. But this, of course is a
Speaker 1: it's a common idea that like technologically produced or assemboled
Speaker 1: food in sci fi that's often seen as like you
Speaker 1: can tell there's something wrong with it, Like in Cronenberg's
Speaker 1: version of The Fly there's a part where they they've
Speaker 1: got a teleporter pod in that movie and they teleport
Speaker 1: a steak from one to the other and Gina Davis
Speaker 1: eats it and says, you know, yuck, it tastes synthetic. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: But but there's been this this idea of hope for
Speaker 1: this kind of artificial food concept for a really long time.
Speaker 1: I mean going back to like the sixties with the
Speaker 1: Jetsons and food pills. Oh it goes back before that,
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. Yeah. How about the French chemist Pierre Eugene
Speaker 1: Marsillen Marchillen mark. I don't do French names. Well Bertelo
Speaker 1: I I did not look it up, so I'm okay.
Speaker 1: He's a French chemist named Bertolo, and he was he
Speaker 1: was an important French chemist. But there I found this
Speaker 1: great old article, uh called foods in the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: Professor R. Bertolo's theory that chemistry will displace agriculture. And
Speaker 1: that was by Henry J. W. Dam in uh McClure's
Speaker 1: magazine September. Okay, so so they were looking forward to
Speaker 1: foods in the in the incredible year two thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what will it be like in the year two thousand
Speaker 1: and He did not imagine Chippotle. What he imagined was, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, to a chemist back then, you can see
Speaker 1: why this would make sense. He says, the foods we
Speaker 1: eat are entirely made up of atoms. I mean, duh.
Speaker 1: Most people don't know this, But basically you've got four
Speaker 1: leading elements. You've got carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, with a
Speaker 1: few others thrown in of course. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: you can make the You can find all of those
Speaker 1: elements and say, a piece of charcoal, a glass of water,
Speaker 1: and a breath of air. Sure, so why can't we
Speaker 1: turn those things into delicious food? Right? And that was
Speaker 1: actually Burlow's idea. He was like, look, agriculture is on
Speaker 1: the way out. Why are we raising crops the old
Speaker 1: slow way? And yeah, why are we doing it like
Speaker 1: that when we could just take these atoms and make
Speaker 1: all the nutrients we need. Obviously there are a few
Speaker 1: other elements too then, in addition to the ones he named,
Speaker 1: But the principle basically holds and and so I don't
Speaker 1: think he was quite imagining the star trek level of
Speaker 1: the Replicator, but he was imagining a a cheap, plentiful
Speaker 1: chemical synthesis of food, right, And he wasn't even the
Speaker 1: only person working on the issue around that time. There
Speaker 1: was one uh Gen Front who manufactured an artificial meat
Speaker 1: from brewery and distillery wastes in nine and and I
Speaker 1: mean the stuff was nutritionally superior to beef, but how
Speaker 1: did it taste? Um Front in front of Front himself
Speaker 1: has this really terrific quote in which he says it
Speaker 1: would be a hundred times better if foods were without
Speaker 1: odor or savor, for then we should eat exactly what
Speaker 1: we needed and would feel a great deal better. What
Speaker 1: seems certain is that such synthetic foods are nourishing. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So what he was saying was that it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if it tastes and looks like cardboard, because it's good
Speaker 1: for you, so eat it right well. And so they
Speaker 1: were talking about uh having plentiful nutrition, which is a
Speaker 1: different kind of thing than on Star Trek, but touches
Speaker 1: some of the same themes of like a post scarcity idea.
Speaker 1: In fact, Bertelow even seems to hint that he thinks
Speaker 1: that perhaps this kind of chemical manufacturer of resources will
Speaker 1: make humans more peaceful. Basically, one of those like like
Speaker 1: end all wars will be brought by artificial meat kind
Speaker 1: of things. Well, it's an interesting idea. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: if you have something that can just easily produce the
Speaker 1: resources we need, maybe conflicts will fade away. He also,
Speaker 1: I think mentioned that something. There's something about the brutalizing
Speaker 1: effect on humans of having to kill animals for meat
Speaker 1: makes us, you know, yeah, angry people, poor ethical decision
Speaker 1: making processes. I don't personally kill the animals I eat,
Speaker 1: so perhaps I've I've been like shielded, like removed from
Speaker 1: the fishing once when I was a kid. But that's
Speaker 1: that's about it. Okay, But these are not the only
Speaker 1: past futurists have looked ahead and said, oh, chemical synthesis
Speaker 1: of food, in fact, are one of our favorite people. Here,
Speaker 1: Arthur C. Clark predicted replicators pretty much like what they've
Speaker 1: got on Star Trek. Uh. Yeah, and here you predicted
Speaker 1: those for Oh don't know if we're on track for
Speaker 1: that one, Arthur, But yeah, he predicted UH a universal replicator.
Speaker 1: This is a quote universal replicator based on nanotechnology. UH
Speaker 1: is now available to create any object, from gourmet meals
Speaker 1: to diamonds. The only thing that has value is information
Speaker 1: that was for the year on his future timeline. Right.
Speaker 1: But but the press is really fond of kind of
Speaker 1: citing Star Trek replicators every time some kind of new
Speaker 1: product or technology comes out that that looks even vaguely promising,
Speaker 1: right us, some of the recent stuff like like lab
Speaker 1: grown beef. Oh yeah, so lab grown beef is really cool,
Speaker 1: but it's not really in the same ballpark at all.
Speaker 1: Oh no, No, it's an entirely different sport, I think. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so we've talked about that on this podcast before. But
Speaker 1: lab grown beef is a brand new advance basically just
Speaker 1: from last year. It's organically grown beef, so it's real beef.
Speaker 1: It's not fake beef. It's just grown in in vitro,
Speaker 1: in in in glass in a test tube rather than
Speaker 1: in a cow's body. Right. So you take some stem
Speaker 1: cells out of a cow's muscle, and then you create
Speaker 1: the right lab conditions and you just allow these cells
Speaker 1: to multiply and make cow muscles in a little dish.
Speaker 1: You add them together and you can make beef out
Speaker 1: of that, and and that's great. You know, it offers
Speaker 1: potential future advantages in terms of things like consuming less
Speaker 1: energy to produce the meat, and it avoids animal cruelty,
Speaker 1: and so that's awesome. But it's not really anything like
Speaker 1: on demand food synthesis. I mean, one thing I'd say
Speaker 1: is that it's only one kind of protein. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's making you a plate of a meat and
Speaker 1: three sides like the Star Trek replicator would. And it
Speaker 1: takes time and energy to grow. Uh. It's a slow process,
Speaker 1: not an instantaneous on demand thing. Sure. Sure. There's also
Speaker 1: nothing cost free about it. Oh yeah, it's possibly way
Speaker 1: more costful. Expensive would be the word I'm looking for. Uh,
Speaker 1: than than just growing a cow, would be right, It's
Speaker 1: definitely more expensive. Now, the the advantage, I guess would
Speaker 1: be that it takes less energy in the long run
Speaker 1: and has a smaller car carbon foot print. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But another big buzzword three D printing. Three D printing food. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about a few of these. Uh. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the NASA one, the NASA pizza.
Speaker 1: NASA pizza okay, so an pizza of the stars, this
Speaker 1: is real. NASA announced it would fund a project on
Speaker 1: three D printed food, So they're getting into future nom
Speaker 1: noms for space and It gave a DW five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to a Texas based company called Systems and Materials
Speaker 1: Research Corporation to develop three D printed food for future
Speaker 1: space mission. All right, the prototype uses shelf stable powders
Speaker 1: and oils mixed with water to construct stuff stuff stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, dough or tomato, sauce or whatever. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is video online of this, uh, this printer prototype making
Speaker 1: a pizza, and let me tell you, looks absolutely delicious
Speaker 1: if you are into death by cafeteria food. Not to
Speaker 1: downplay their achievement at all, I'm sorry. I shouldn't make fun.
Speaker 1: But the idea that you've got a print or printing
Speaker 1: a pizza is pretty cool. But it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: the my favorite pizza. It looks a little bit strange, um,
Speaker 1: you know. And and any time that you're that you're
Speaker 1: working with shelf stable ingredients, it's not an ideal situation
Speaker 1: for nutrition, I think. Yeah, and laying them on a
Speaker 1: substrate one tiny dot at a time. Yeah, still still
Speaker 1: kind of expensive and awkward. But there's more than just
Speaker 1: the pizza right there. There are people, plenty people three
Speaker 1: D printing food. Oh absolutely. Uh. Sugar is a big one.
Speaker 1: Right now. Um, there's there's a pair of kids named
Speaker 1: Liz and Kyle von Hasseln who um agreed to make
Speaker 1: a cake for a friend's birthday. Yeah, and then realized
Speaker 1: that they didn't own an oven, Um, but that they
Speaker 1: did own a three D printer. Because these are very
Speaker 1: first world problems that some people have. No, No, I'm
Speaker 1: brilliant people. They realized that precise combinations of water and
Speaker 1: sugar can be printed in layers just the way that
Speaker 1: the plastics would in a three D printer. And they've
Speaker 1: got a version that works with chocolate too. Essentially, they're
Speaker 1: just making really fancy looking frosting with structural capacity. Um.
Speaker 1: If you've ever watched video of sugar sculpture before, you'll
Speaker 1: appreciate how being able to design and print improbable structures
Speaker 1: is is pretty nifty rather than having to you know,
Speaker 1: work with um molten sugar lava because that's like death. Um.
Speaker 1: But but you probably wouldn't be able to survive long
Speaker 1: on this kind of food. UM. If you heard buzz
Speaker 1: by the way about chef jet printers, perhaps especially from
Speaker 1: south By Southwest, that's the brand that that these guys created. UM,
Speaker 1: and bigger names are getting into the confectionery three D
Speaker 1: printing business to Hershey just struck a deal in January
Speaker 1: with three D Systems to develop chocolate confectionery printing technology. Yum,
Speaker 1: there's actually a product I read about. I feel kind
Speaker 1: of strange about it. Uh So, it's a product called
Speaker 1: Natural Machines FOODINI three D printer. It can, supposedly, if
Speaker 1: the ads are to be believed, print delicious meals, including pizza, ravioli,
Speaker 1: and other stuff. And this isn't so much for space
Speaker 1: as for sort of ease and luxury. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that makes ingredients like ravioli that you don't have
Speaker 1: the time, skill or desire to make my hand. It
Speaker 1: can make like rolled pasta and and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: printing it one layer at a time. I can sort
Speaker 1: of see that making sense as a as a thing
Speaker 1: if if the ads are again to be believed as
Speaker 1: good as it looks. Okay, yeah, I've seen. I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit dubious about that one because the price point
Speaker 1: is like one thousand, three hundred dollars, and that seems
Speaker 1: like an awfully low price for for revioli whenever you
Speaker 1: want it. I don't know, I could be I could
Speaker 1: be wrong. Um, but wait, there's more. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: a one Jeffrey Lipton, who's as of late was a
Speaker 1: Cornell engineering PhD candidate, And uh, he and some some
Speaker 1: other Cornell people started experimenting with printing food in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, UM, using like gelatin and flavorings to create
Speaker 1: little snacks. And I have a quote from Mr Lipton
Speaker 1: He said it was met with universal condemnation. It was
Speaker 1: very soil and green. Who are those people on Star
Speaker 1: Trek who didn't like the replicator? Yeah? Uh they've since then,
Speaker 1: um switched their research to the kind of pre processed
Speaker 1: foods that we've been talking about here, you know, creating
Speaker 1: like keish or meatloaf for noodles, or veggie chips or
Speaker 1: something like that from from kind of deconstructed food bits,
Speaker 1: you know. And anything that you can run through a
Speaker 1: food processor and shove out as some kind of loaf
Speaker 1: is basically okay for three D printed food, But anything
Speaker 1: more advanced than that seems like a no go at
Speaker 1: the current moment, which, by the way, I do want
Speaker 1: to say is not necessarily a dis on that kind
Speaker 1: of food construction method, because I mean, like we said,
Speaker 1: in those in those protein related episodes that that lab
Speaker 1: grown beef stuff was in those aired back in September,
Speaker 1: if you guys want to go look for them if
Speaker 1: you missed them. But a lot of the food that
Speaker 1: we currently like, like bologna, for example, is already really
Speaker 1: highly processed. Lots of cold cuts, in fact, are made
Speaker 1: from deconstructed or emulsified meat that has been shaped and
Speaker 1: rebonded using animal or vegetable proteins. Rebonded. Okay, three D
Speaker 1: printed food. I think that means we're sort of a
Speaker 1: little bit closer to replicators, but not really. I mean,
Speaker 1: this certainly isn't assembling food at the molecular level for
Speaker 1: magic meal production, And first of all, it's not assembling
Speaker 1: the molecules that make the food. The whole process works
Speaker 1: on the macro level. It's laying down little dots of
Speaker 1: pre prepared edible ink. And those dots, I mean they're
Speaker 1: made from a recipe, So it's pre prepared powdered dough
Speaker 1: or tomato sauce or cheese. It's not like molecules of
Speaker 1: carbon and calcium and things being put together one at
Speaker 1: a time um on a spaceship. It seems like these
Speaker 1: printable materials would have to be pre prepared. It also
Speaker 1: is an instant I mean, if you watch this going,
Speaker 1: I again not to knock it, but it's really pretty slow.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's three D printing. It's not gonna go immediately.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna pop out in a few seconds like
Speaker 1: the replicator does. It also doesn't really solve any problem
Speaker 1: about sourcing nutrition, the scarcity thing. So if we had
Speaker 1: a replicator, we wouldn't have to worry about where food
Speaker 1: came from. It could just make it out of anything.
Speaker 1: This needs to make it out of food, right, And
Speaker 1: in fact, it involves a whole bunch of processing of
Speaker 1: regular food in order to get it to a state
Speaker 1: that you can put it through this printer. So exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's really more just a way of a very
Speaker 1: convenient way in space perhaps, but a way of turning
Speaker 1: bulk food stuffs into recognizable dishes on a spaceship. Uh.
Speaker 1: But what else is there? I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: time we just go back to nanotechnology. Uh, that's that's
Speaker 1: the solution to everything. But this is I think if
Speaker 1: we want to talk about real proposed technology that people
Speaker 1: are actually thinking about, this is the closest thing. We're
Speaker 1: going to get to the idea of the replicator, which
Speaker 1: is the idea of the molecular assemblar slash nano factory.
Speaker 1: So what's the deal with the molecular assimilar slash nano factory?
Speaker 1: All right? The idea of it goes like this. Picture
Speaker 1: all of those great factories you've seen, and like how
Speaker 1: it's made. Okay, done, coke bottles or all right, Now,
Speaker 1: picture all of that on the nanoscale with like entire
Speaker 1: factory floors taking up some some dozen nanometers, as as
Speaker 1: molecules are being sorted and atoms are being rearranged, and
Speaker 1: then increasingly large molecules are built and pushed out through
Speaker 1: increasingly large factory floors. Um this this is accomplished not
Speaker 1: just through mechanical manipulation but also through chemical reaction. Right,
Speaker 1: You'd be like positioning reactive particles at certain points to
Speaker 1: form a chemical bond with something to move it along
Speaker 1: exactly and eventually so you're you're going to get macroscale
Speaker 1: bits that more bigger machines can use to build whatever
Speaker 1: you'd like. Okay, So that's sort of like a printer idea,
Speaker 1: but it's like printing one atom at a time kind
Speaker 1: of and and adding them together more and more until
Speaker 1: you have building blocks you can work with, and then
Speaker 1: eventually you can produce a computer or a steamed fish
Speaker 1: or I don't know what steamed fish replicator, Give me
Speaker 1: a steamed fish. Well, you know, whatever you'd like. Steamed
Speaker 1: fish is very healthy. Um. But but okay, so how
Speaker 1: realistic is this? Well, I'd say we're probably not even
Speaker 1: close if this is possible at all. So people like
Speaker 1: that this was made popular. The idea of molecular simblers
Speaker 1: was made possible by one of the big minds behind nanotechnology,
Speaker 1: who was ka Eric Drexler. And there was another nanotechnologist
Speaker 1: named Richard Smalley who sort of argued with Drexler that
Speaker 1: they published back and forth years ago. It was more
Speaker 1: than a decade ago um about whether molecular assemblers were possible,
Speaker 1: and and Smalley had criticisms about how these machines would
Speaker 1: be too clumsy to do what Drexler was saying that
Speaker 1: they could possibly do. Um. But obviously I don't have
Speaker 1: the level of technical sophistication or knowledge to adjudicate this.
Speaker 1: It seems to be a debate that's ongoing whether it's
Speaker 1: possible to build synthetic machines machines right thing in order. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: at that scale and that elegance, in order to do
Speaker 1: what we want them to do. Right. But it it
Speaker 1: does seem that if it is possible, it's not like
Speaker 1: we're almost there. It is going to be a ways
Speaker 1: off if it's possible at all. Sure, and some some
Speaker 1: other thinkers like like Mitio CaCu have have pointed out
Speaker 1: that molecular assemblers do exist in real life. I mean
Speaker 1: in nature. Yeah, that that that's almost a trivial fact
Speaker 1: actually in biology, like you know, enzymes and ribosomes, right,
Speaker 1: because we I mean every day turn um, you know,
Speaker 1: a glass of water and a burger or whatever into
Speaker 1: cells in our body. Yeah. So ribosomes are they are
Speaker 1: these structures inside the cells in your body that they
Speaker 1: take a bunch of amino acids. It's like, I want
Speaker 1: to fix this up, and they make chains of amino acids,
Speaker 1: turn them into proteins, and then those proteins are the
Speaker 1: things that make your body. Yeah. Yeah, I was I
Speaker 1: was laughing off camera because off off Mike, because I
Speaker 1: enjoyed Joe's intercellular narration voice very much. Okay, so what
Speaker 1: about synthetics. Do we have anything along the lines of
Speaker 1: a ribosome that's actually been created in the lab, well,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, something kind of close. So last
Speaker 1: year there was a news release from the University of
Speaker 1: Manchester discussing how a team based in their School of
Speaker 1: Chemistry had created a machine that's kind of like an
Speaker 1: artificial ribosome. So it's a synthetic molecular machine on the
Speaker 1: nanoscale that's capable of putting together molecules and it's much
Speaker 1: slower than a real rubiosome, but basically it works. And
Speaker 1: their findings were published in the journal Science in and
Speaker 1: so that's really great, but it's very it's small scale,
Speaker 1: it's low, and it's not versatile, right, it's not versatile
Speaker 1: like the idea of a real replicator. So I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to just shove that aside. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really cool research, but it's not if you saw
Speaker 1: a headline saying like we've built a replicator, that's not
Speaker 1: what it is. And and one of one of the
Speaker 1: other problems that we're talking about here is um the
Speaker 1: amount of energy it would require in order to I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean some some of these terrific advances that we
Speaker 1: have been talking about are operating at a cellular level
Speaker 1: which is really quite small and very slowly, and in
Speaker 1: a lab which has huge resources. Um, how how how
Speaker 1: is this ever going to be practical or scalable? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good question whether you're going with the sci
Speaker 1: fi Star Trek model where the mechanisms are I'm just
Speaker 1: not sure what they are, or you're going the nanotech model.
Speaker 1: Either way, you've got big hurdles. The star Trek model
Speaker 1: seems to have this completely unreasonable energy requirement. Um. The
Speaker 1: nanotech model is based on mechanisms that we can't really
Speaker 1: predict if they're feasible at all. So what does seem reasonable?
Speaker 1: I want to say a few things. Um. One thing
Speaker 1: is I think I'd be personally more willing to accept
Speaker 1: the idea of a future machine that turns waste material
Speaker 1: into something like bulk sugar or a homogeneous mass of
Speaker 1: protein gruel, which would maybe like the main constituent of
Speaker 1: some kind of like space tofu sure, Um, some kind
Speaker 1: of building blocks, so that we could at least create
Speaker 1: stuff that could be used by by real actual chefs,
Speaker 1: right right right, you would be making constituents of food
Speaker 1: rather than whole complete dishes that are programmed with atomic
Speaker 1: precision to have this side and this main course. And yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems fanciful to me. But I and see with
Speaker 1: some degree of plausibility, maybe you know, you just take
Speaker 1: the waste products from the ship and you have some
Speaker 1: chemical process that turns them into usable carbohydrates. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: we can go with that. But there's also this interesting
Speaker 1: Uh it's a it's a problem that Lawrence Krauss talks about.
Speaker 1: And he's a physicist cosmologist, and he has a book
Speaker 1: called The Physics of Star Trek. Yeah, and it's this
Speaker 1: atoms to bits problem. So, uh, the best I can explain,
Speaker 1: the way I understand it is, once you're talking about
Speaker 1: a complex enough piece of matter, the amount of information
Speaker 1: you would need to represent it digitally and thus to
Speaker 1: read and write and store it is just ludicrously huge.
Speaker 1: Um and so, and how would you assemble it quick enough?
Speaker 1: So if there's just some massive identical copy and paste molecules,
Speaker 1: you're making the same molecule over and over, that seems
Speaker 1: a little less fantastical to me. Um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: it might even be able to be done with some
Speaker 1: very simple chemical reactions, Like you wouldn't even be doing
Speaker 1: it mechanically. Maybe you just introduce some catalyst and and
Speaker 1: you're doing the chemistry right there, just mixing it up basically.
Speaker 1: You've also you've also got scaling problems here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's say that we've got nanobot armies that
Speaker 1: can construct whatever atoms we want and whatever configurations we want. Um,
Speaker 1: Like you kind of alluded to a second ago, Joe,
Speaker 1: it could take a nano scale machine millions of years
Speaker 1: to construct a meaningful amount of macro scale material. I mean,
Speaker 1: remember that the nano equals billionth like, like, there are
Speaker 1: some hundred and fifty billion atoms making up just the
Speaker 1: genetic material that the DNA and RNA inside a single
Speaker 1: human cell um. And that's some of the smallest bits
Speaker 1: involved in in a cell. So so you know, even
Speaker 1: if you had trillions of nano bots, it could take
Speaker 1: a serious minute to create a burger. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that's something that's often skipped over when people
Speaker 1: are discussing this molecular as simbler or nano factory idea.
Speaker 1: Seems like it would take a long time. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine that the number of nano bots that
Speaker 1: would require be required to do that kind of work,
Speaker 1: And and you're basing this on on nanobot magic to
Speaker 1: begin with, so it's like, welp, yeah, I also want
Speaker 1: to introduce a maybe less scientific concern, but just something
Speaker 1: that we would also need to keep in mind. The
Speaker 1: idea of eating normal foods in space almost necessarily to me,
Speaker 1: requires artificial gravity. Oh sure, I mean it was. It
Speaker 1: wasn't t Earl gray hot in a hermetically sealed container
Speaker 1: that isn't going to spill face te Earl gray hot
Speaker 1: to scald me. It just floats out of the cup. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense, Like, oh, I really want a sandwich,
Speaker 1: but you can't put it down or the pieces of
Speaker 1: bread and everything float apart, and also all of the
Speaker 1: crumbs from the sandwich start mucking up your computer systems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd I'd almost have to imagine that for this to
Speaker 1: even be worth it, you'd need artificial gravity, I guess,
Speaker 1: for except some specific types of food that would be
Speaker 1: easy to clump together. Sure, yeah, just just add lots
Speaker 1: of magical clumping nanobots and then, like an apple would
Speaker 1: be fine, I guess, you know, not so much like
Speaker 1: a ball of cotton sour soup. I although, from from
Speaker 1: what I understand about space food, everything is presented in
Speaker 1: cube form like like like like bite size forms, so
Speaker 1: that you could so that you don't have to bite
Speaker 1: anything off. Ever, you can just pop a single unit
Speaker 1: of it and chew with your mouth closed. So that's
Speaker 1: the kind of future I want to live in. Everything's cubes.
Speaker 1: You've got a board cube, you've got a dinner cube,
Speaker 1: and that's it. Okay, So let's put on the I
Speaker 1: believe had again. Sure, I just I believe. I believe
Speaker 1: there's a replicator. It's coming in twenty to forty years. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: we got it. What does it actually mean? What? What
Speaker 1: are the implications of replicator technology for the world. Lots
Speaker 1: of people talk about about this idea of a post
Speaker 1: scarcity economy, right, so that the economy is based on
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a limited amount of stuff
Speaker 1: and people are competing for goods, you know, and that
Speaker 1: you can't get everything you want, and that's why we
Speaker 1: have things like like money as as a workaround to
Speaker 1: to trade for stuff that you need that you don't have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but how radically would it change society if you didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you could have any physical thing you wanted,
Speaker 1: we we would be free to to to do whatever
Speaker 1: we wanted to to to work out new problems, to
Speaker 1: seek out new life and new civilizations. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's we would We wouldn't be tied to the same
Speaker 1: daily grind that we are right now. I think that
Speaker 1: that could be true, But I think you would have
Speaker 1: to take on board one other assumption, um, which is
Speaker 1: something about energy. I would like to observe that even
Speaker 1: in the Star Trek universe, a replicator is not completely
Speaker 1: a free lunch. You're still making one investment, which is energy, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you need energy to run it, and if we
Speaker 1: are to stick with the ideas of physics, it may
Speaker 1: take a lot of energy. Yeah, I'm picturing right, you know,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about earlier, when you're getting down
Speaker 1: to the to the molecules and and and splitting atoms
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, that's dangerous energy territory. Right, So
Speaker 1: this would depend on basically a vast energy surplus. And
Speaker 1: there are sci fi thinkers and future ologists and all
Speaker 1: kinds of people who have imagined that in the future,
Speaker 1: energy could become its own currency, like I think Arthur C.
Speaker 1: Clark imagined that in the future you wouldn't have dollars,
Speaker 1: you'd have megawatt hours. That's the currency you use um.
Speaker 1: And so if that is the case, if we still
Speaker 1: have limited energy, then I can see a replicator not
Speaker 1: really fixing the problems because you'd just be trading one
Speaker 1: scarcity for another. Right, You're just transferring it to an
Speaker 1: energy problem you would have to work out called fusion
Speaker 1: or whatever in order to run your replicators. And then right,
Speaker 1: but so if we assume you've got replicators and you've
Speaker 1: got basically limitless free energy, then okay, then maybe I'm
Speaker 1: on board with the idea this post scarcity thing is
Speaker 1: for real. I mean, do you think it would really
Speaker 1: end all wars? It was? Was that nice French fellow? Correct?
Speaker 1: Do you think? I don't know if the idea of
Speaker 1: uh so you could have any foods you wanted manufactured
Speaker 1: on the spot and it's just free food on demand,
Speaker 1: whatever you want. Uh I don't know if most wars
Speaker 1: are started by people who have trouble getting enough to eat.
Speaker 1: I you know, certainly revolutions have been started over scarcity
Speaker 1: or or unequal distribution certainly of resources um and and
Speaker 1: lots of fighting has been done over particularly desirable or
Speaker 1: fertile bits of land, especially in pre industrialized ages. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't think it's necessarily a war
Speaker 1: ender because humans are still humans. But but right, you know,
Speaker 1: like we were saying it, it frees It frees people
Speaker 1: up to do more of what they want to do
Speaker 1: rather than you know, it removes a layer of what
Speaker 1: has to be done. Right. So I guess the question
Speaker 1: then is, once people have no rational motivation to fight
Speaker 1: each other, would they still do it? I mean, would
Speaker 1: they come up with reasons? I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: I which is which is probably appeared on my shoulder
Speaker 1: and told me I had the start of war. It
Speaker 1: happened penguins, and penguins are pretty mean. Okay, So even
Speaker 1: if we never get replicators, I do want to emphasize
Speaker 1: that some of the technologies we mentioned today that have
Speaker 1: been maybe mistaken for or yeah uh, not entirely accurately
Speaker 1: compared to a replicator can still make a big difference.
Speaker 1: So I want to emphasize again lab grown meat. I
Speaker 1: think that's awesome actually, and it really it really could
Speaker 1: in the future, if made cheap provide nutrition to millions
Speaker 1: of people with a much smaller carbon footprint than real
Speaker 1: meat and without animal cruelty. And that's definitely a real thing,
Speaker 1: oh sure. And and three D printed meals in space
Speaker 1: could make space travel much more comfortable, which could be
Speaker 1: a huge factor in trying to uh set settle other planets, right,
Speaker 1: I mean comfort matters when you're in space. You've got
Speaker 1: people who are astronauts. They need to be performing at
Speaker 1: their mental and emotional peak. Food is a big part
Speaker 1: of that. If you're eating nasty gunk from a sealed container,
Speaker 1: I mean that it wears on you. That doesn't help. Um. So,
Speaker 1: and even if somehow we are able to create this
Speaker 1: magical Star Trek style replicator, I guess it probably would
Speaker 1: be a huge boon to human life. Even if it
Speaker 1: doesn't eliminate war or energy is an issue or any
Speaker 1: of that, it's still if it just means more people
Speaker 1: have access to nutritious food. You can't really look down
Speaker 1: your nose at that. Oh absolutely not that that would
Speaker 1: be a lovely thing right now in this on this
Speaker 1: current planet, not even not even with Star Trek jumpsuits. Involved.
Speaker 1: So I think that just about wraps up our conversation
Speaker 1: here about food replicators. UM. We hope that you have
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode, and hey, if you have any ideas
Speaker 1: for other episodes that you would like to hear, please
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. We have a fancy email address.
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Speaker 1: out more podcast episodes, all kinds of blog posts, and
Speaker 1: all of Jonathan's wonderful videos. And that website is again,
Speaker 1: FW thinking dot com and we hope to hear from
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