Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks in the future and says, I'm your moon,
Speaker 1: You're my moon. We go round and round. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
Speaker 1: is not with us today, but she will be back
Speaker 1: with us soon. She is off doing something awesome right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's vacating, and we just have to sit here and
Speaker 1: talk about science that's gonna blow your brains out your ears. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're gonna specifically talk about one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: in science, and I really wanted to get some in
Speaker 1: here so that we could, you know, have that moment.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can have Noel pitch up our voices appropriately,
Speaker 1: because we're going to talk about Helium three, specifically Helium three.
Speaker 1: It's when you get to the third movie in a series.
Speaker 1: Is it almost always goes downhill? Doesn't It pretty much
Speaker 1: goes downhill after the second in the second one. How
Speaker 1: many can you think of where you get to the
Speaker 1: third one and it's still good, It's still good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a tough one. Man, maybe evil dead army attic
Speaker 1: is pretty good. That's a good one. It is very different. So,
Speaker 1: but of course helium three is not actually, uh what's
Speaker 1: the word for a sequel, that's actually the third one,
Speaker 1: a triquil. It's not that it's an isotope. It is
Speaker 1: an isotope. So let's let's talk about what helium is
Speaker 1: and then specifically what helium three is and why we're
Speaker 1: interested in talking about this in the first place. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: because this is going to be more than just a
Speaker 1: chemistry lesson, will actually play into a discussion about technology
Speaker 1: that could be highly relevant to life on planet Earth
Speaker 1: and beyond. Yeah, exactly. So helium is an element, Yeah,
Speaker 1: second lightest element in the universe, behind hydrogen. But it's
Speaker 1: always looking at hydrogen and saying like, if only I
Speaker 1: were that, then it's you know, hydrogen. It's just looking
Speaker 1: at hydrogen on the ladder, and it's like, you just
Speaker 1: watch yourself, buddy, I am one step behind, and if
Speaker 1: you falter, I will take your place. I might be
Speaker 1: anthropomorphizing elements a little bit, but no, it's it's a colorless, odorless,
Speaker 1: and tasteless element. It is a gas at room temperature
Speaker 1: and it makes up a whopping point zero zero zero
Speaker 1: five of the Earth's atmosphere, and it's not gravitationally bound
Speaker 1: to the Earth. Helium is so light that it just
Speaker 1: continues to float up and up and up until it
Speaker 1: can slip the earthly bonds of gravity and flow down
Speaker 1: into space. Yeah. And if you're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how does that work? Just think about what happens to
Speaker 1: a helium balloon. Yeah, I mean yeah, and it comes up,
Speaker 1: it's it's lighter than the atmosphere, so uh, and eventually
Speaker 1: you've got the balloon that is, the balloon part is
Speaker 1: heavy enough to keep the the whole thing floating off
Speaker 1: into space. That's why we don't have you know, if
Speaker 1: you looked out into space, you wouldn't see the last
Speaker 1: you know, it's fifty years of children's birthday party balloons
Speaker 1: are cleaned the Earth. But no, I'm sure eventually the
Speaker 1: balloon pops. Yes, But but the gas itself can escape
Speaker 1: to the space. Yeah. So what makes an element that element? Well,
Speaker 1: it's the number of protons in the nucleus of the element.
Speaker 1: So the specific thing that makes helium helium is that
Speaker 1: it's got two protons. Now, other things can vary. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can have like charged particles, or you can have
Speaker 1: charged atoms, or you can have isotopes that have different
Speaker 1: numbers of neutrons. Exactly the standard helium you're gonna find
Speaker 1: on Earth if you find it, because again it's pretty rare,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be helium four. Yeah, that's two protons, two neutrons,
Speaker 1: the four. It's a nice balance. It's referring to the
Speaker 1: mass here really the atomic mass and total. Yeah, four total,
Speaker 1: the two protons, the two neutrons, uh and UH. Helium
Speaker 1: three obviously would mean that you'd have to have one
Speaker 1: fewer of those nucleic particles, but as you pointed out, Joe,
Speaker 1: you can't change the number of protons. Now, if you
Speaker 1: did that, you would suddenly have tritium because you would
Speaker 1: have one proton, two neutrons and well, actually, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to get rid of an electron uh, and
Speaker 1: that would end up being an isotope of hydrogen. So
Speaker 1: if you you have the only thing you can get
Speaker 1: rid of and still have it be helium is a neutron.
Speaker 1: So you get rid of a neutron, you have two protons,
Speaker 1: one neutron, and still two electrons you've got helium three.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you if you have a surplus or
Speaker 1: a deficit of electrons, that's an ion of whatever you
Speaker 1: know element you're talking about. And then the different the
Speaker 1: different variations of neutrons, those are the isotopes. So I
Speaker 1: have a question that Jonathan, you mentioned that it's not
Speaker 1: gravitationally bound to Earth. Well, obviously everything has a gravitational attraction,
Speaker 1: but I think what you're saying is that it's lighter
Speaker 1: than the atmosphere, so it just goes, it just goes,
Speaker 1: it just boils off into space. Right, Um, So how
Speaker 1: come there's any on Earth at all? That's a great
Speaker 1: question because obviously, if there were, you know, just some
Speaker 1: limited supply of of helium by now throughout the Earth's history,
Speaker 1: you would have expected it all to go away. But
Speaker 1: in fact, helium can be the result of radioactive decay.
Speaker 1: So one of the things radioactive decay can produce are
Speaker 1: what are called alpha particles. That's specifically alpha decay, and
Speaker 1: that's a form of ionizing radiation, right, and alpha particles
Speaker 1: are essentially helium nucleus. So you've got the two protons
Speaker 1: and the two neutrons, and if it captures two electrons,
Speaker 1: it becomes a helium atom. But that would be helium four,
Speaker 1: like we talked about regular old helium that's got that
Speaker 1: nice nuclear balance. Yeah, and and that is by far
Speaker 1: the more prevalent type of helium that you would find
Speaker 1: on Earth. Like you know, some huge number per cent
Speaker 1: of all the helium on Earth falls under the category
Speaker 1: of helium four. Only a tiny percentage is helium three. Now,
Speaker 1: if I want to put helium to very good use,
Speaker 1: such as like buying a tank of it for a
Speaker 1: child's birthday party, to fill up a bunch of balloons
Speaker 1: that eventually flowed up in the atmosphere pop fall down
Speaker 1: to Earth and kill some wildlife, and then also just
Speaker 1: end up huffing some of it to make my voice
Speaker 1: really high. Where does that helium come from? Like, where
Speaker 1: did they fill up the tank? So yeah, this is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, usually we get helium through as a byproduct
Speaker 1: of other things. So it's not that we've got you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have people in the you know, laboring away
Speaker 1: in the helium mines deep under the ground. That would
Speaker 1: be the most hilarious, mind though, they would definitely be
Speaker 1: singing very high pitched songs and then when they emerge
Speaker 1: from the minds, you see these just enormous dudes. Now, um,
Speaker 1: it's mostly from natural gas deposits. Oh, hold on a second,
Speaker 1: this is what happened to snow White seven Dwarves because
Speaker 1: they sing that that song. Yeah, what is the song?
Speaker 1: Which high high ho? It's off to work we go.
Speaker 1: I guess that's not all that high pitched a song
Speaker 1: for some reason, I was imagine it's Actually it's actually
Speaker 1: fairly low for you know, it's high who high who?
Speaker 1: Now snow White she's going falsetto city. But anyway, getting
Speaker 1: back to this, Um, yeah, it's mostly from natural gas deposits.
Speaker 1: And in the United States, we're talking about deposits that
Speaker 1: are mostly found in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, the state,
Speaker 1: not the band, right, Yeah, so that's that's where we're
Speaker 1: getting it. Some other interesting facts about helium. You can
Speaker 1: liquefy helium. You can get it to turn into liquid form.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's very important for a lot of of
Speaker 1: scientific purposes. But you gotta get the temperature nice and
Speaker 1: chilly first. I imagine it also requires applying some pressure.
Speaker 1: It does, so if you're talking about turning helium into
Speaker 1: a liquid. It will be a liquid at minus four
Speaker 1: fifty two degrees fahrenheit, which is minus two hundred sixty
Speaker 1: eight point nine degrees celsius. Folks. Yeah, so the freezing
Speaker 1: and boiling points of helium are lower than any other
Speaker 1: known substance. I mean, there may be other ones out
Speaker 1: there that we don't know of that could break this record,
Speaker 1: but so far, so good. Um, and liquid helium is
Speaker 1: what we what we well, what researchers and scientists are
Speaker 1: using to super cool elements at stuff like the Large
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider. You know, you want to make sure that
Speaker 1: super conductivity is something that normally we can only achieve
Speaker 1: through super cooling as well as a just removal of
Speaker 1: all electric electrical resistance. Resistance that's where you lose energy
Speaker 1: in the form of heat. By super cooling, you can
Speaker 1: you can reduce resistance to zero, so you get electrons
Speaker 1: flowing through the conductor. Material becomes like a super conductor.
Speaker 1: So um, it's kind of like just turning whatever it
Speaker 1: is into a greased luge for electricity. Yeah. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: we we know about the main types of of matter.
Speaker 1: You know, we will will discount plasma for the second
Speaker 1: for the sake of conversation. But you know the three
Speaker 1: that all elementary school kids here in the US learn about.
Speaker 1: The You have the gases, you have the liquids, and
Speaker 1: then you've got the solids. So you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: can you make helium into a solid, And the answer
Speaker 1: is you can, but it requires tremendous effort because you
Speaker 1: have to have it under a pressure of at least
Speaker 1: twenty five atmospheres. That may have been the pressure I
Speaker 1: was thinking about a minute ago. Yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: would normally, if you're going to turn helium into a
Speaker 1: liquid here on Earth, you're going to be applying pressure anyway, right,
Speaker 1: because it's not Getting the temperature down that low is
Speaker 1: very difficult to do. The liquid helium is what you
Speaker 1: switch to when liquid nitrogen isn't cold enough. So uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So you'd have to apply a pressure of twenty five
Speaker 1: atmospheres and at a temperature of one kelvin. Zero kelvin
Speaker 1: keep in mind, is no molecular movement. That's absolute zero,
Speaker 1: So that is minus four fifty eight degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: minus two d seventy two degrees celsiu. So pretty phenomenal stuff.
Speaker 1: And we were talking about the isotopes. The fact that
Speaker 1: you know, that's the difference between you know, how many
Speaker 1: protons are how many neutrons are in the nucleus of
Speaker 1: your atom. Right, so the one you'd most often find
Speaker 1: on planet Earth is going to be your standard helium four,
Speaker 1: two protons, two neutrons. We we are going to be
Speaker 1: talking a lot more about helium three. That's where you
Speaker 1: take one of the neutrons away. But how many isotopes
Speaker 1: are there total? There are seven more than that, so
Speaker 1: there's nine total, But there are only two that you're
Speaker 1: gonna find in nature, helium four and helium three, because
Speaker 1: those are the stable forms of helium. In the lab,
Speaker 1: you can make other isotopes, but they don't last forever.
Speaker 1: They decay. In the lab, you can make all kinds
Speaker 1: of perversions of nature, It's true. And in the lab
Speaker 1: we just laugh and laugh and and then you know,
Speaker 1: and then there's the terror and the scariness, and the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs get loose and and some helium atoms wake you
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night saying why did
Speaker 1: you create me? Ugly? It's time. So, yeah, lots of
Speaker 1: different isotopes, only two are and found in nature. Says
Speaker 1: exactly the same too that we've been talking about all
Speaker 1: this time. And um, now, there were a pair of
Speaker 1: scientists who were the first to propose that the isotope
Speaker 1: helium three would exist. That would be Mark Oliphant, who
Speaker 1: was an Australian physicist, and Ernest Rutherford, who was a
Speaker 1: New Zealand physicist. So I have to imagine that they
Speaker 1: worked together, that they fought like cats and dogs, because
Speaker 1: those Australians and New Zealanders, let me tell you, actually
Speaker 1: they're both very nice. Just don't confuse one for the other.
Speaker 1: That's the rule of thumb. But they were investigating the
Speaker 1: possibilities of helium and hydrogen isotopes way back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, and they discovered tritium, which is hydrogen with
Speaker 1: a mass of three, so it's a a proton and
Speaker 1: two neutrons. Uh. And they also discovered helium three, which
Speaker 1: is helium with a mass of three. Three was an
Speaker 1: interesting number for them. It's the magic number. So we've
Speaker 1: known about helium three since the nineteen thirties. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the question now is why on earth did we pick
Speaker 1: helium three to talk about here on this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are tons of isotopes that most of
Speaker 1: them just what do they matter? Like, what can you
Speaker 1: do with them? Yeah? The the interesting thing about helium
Speaker 1: three is it's potentially a very useful source of fuel
Speaker 1: for nuclear fusion, as in a nuclear reactor that uses fusion,
Speaker 1: not fission to generate electricity. Hold on the second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought nuclear fusion was just one of those wacko dreams.
Speaker 1: It may still be. We're hoping that it won't be,
Speaker 1: but it's one of those things where the the the
Speaker 1: science is saying something and now we're waiting for the
Speaker 1: technology to catch up. Okay, well, let's do a real
Speaker 1: quick and easy distinction between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Right,
Speaker 1: nuclear fission are all the nuclear power plants we've got today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the nuclear power plants that we've talked about
Speaker 1: in previous episodes before thinking these are the ones that
Speaker 1: are generated nuclear waste. One of the big problems with
Speaker 1: these these UH facilities they rely on uranium. They rely
Speaker 1: on uranium decay. Essentially, it's it's to create a nuclear
Speaker 1: reaction that becomes self sustaining. Right, So you take a
Speaker 1: piece of uranium and you get it nice and enriched
Speaker 1: so that it is primed to have a runaway reaction
Speaker 1: of sending off radiation particles and and and then you
Speaker 1: set it going right and it keeps itself going, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to continuously pour energy into maintain that reaction.
Speaker 1: So how does that turn into electricity, Well, it generates
Speaker 1: a lot of heat. That heat ends up converting water
Speaker 1: into steam. So you're using water to help main manage
Speaker 1: the temperature of this nuclear uh reactor, and it's also
Speaker 1: being generated turned into steam. The steam ends up turning
Speaker 1: steam turbines and then ends up being recycled back into
Speaker 1: the system. Like the steam condenses into water and is
Speaker 1: used to cool it again. Sometimes you have a paired
Speaker 1: cooling system where you've got um the coolant. The actual
Speaker 1: water that's cooling the the core is not the same
Speaker 1: water that's going through the turbine system. I mean you
Speaker 1: can pair it that way. So essentially you have two
Speaker 1: pipes next to each other. One pipe is the steam
Speaker 1: that's been generated from direct contact with the nuclear material,
Speaker 1: and the other pipe is a closed system of water
Speaker 1: that then gets converted into steam because the heat from
Speaker 1: the first pipe. But in either case you're talking about
Speaker 1: creating steam. It turns the turbine. The turbine generates electricity,
Speaker 1: and that's where we get electricity from nuclear power plants. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So fission is taking very elements, big chunks of elements
Speaker 1: that are very heavy atoms, and breaking them apart into
Speaker 1: little pieces to create heat that we translate to electricity.
Speaker 1: Fusion is taking very small atoms and gluing them together,
Speaker 1: and that's also an energetic reaction. It also produces energy
Speaker 1: when that fusion between the atomic nuclei occur, right, And
Speaker 1: it's creating energy in a different way. So if you
Speaker 1: think about how you know it's it actually makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. If you take a big, heavy atom
Speaker 1: and you break it apart and you get energy in
Speaker 1: the form of heat, then in order to fuse two
Speaker 1: atoms together, you need heat. You need to pour energy
Speaker 1: into the system to make them combined together. As a result, uh,
Speaker 1: they will eject other particles. Now in in nuclear fission,
Speaker 1: some of those particles include things like neutrons that can
Speaker 1: cause real issues if you don't have a containment system
Speaker 1: for them. And fusion, you're talking mainly about protons. Protons
Speaker 1: are easier to control, and I'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a second. So The other big difference is that you're
Speaker 1: not turning water into steam. With nuclear fusion plants. You
Speaker 1: actually get a net electrical um energy uh from this fusion.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's like imagine, imagine that the fusion
Speaker 1: reactor has a big outlet and you just plug your
Speaker 1: thing into that, and it would be generating the electricity
Speaker 1: running the thing. Of course, it obviously doesn't work exactly
Speaker 1: like that, but you are saying direct electricity generation. It
Speaker 1: generates a pressure of electrons that will flow into an
Speaker 1: electrical grid. Well, and it's a little more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: You have to look at a an electro magnet system
Speaker 1: which is specifically used to help control the the protons
Speaker 1: that get ejected in this process. Uh. And that's partly
Speaker 1: where you're starting to get some electrical output. But yes,
Speaker 1: ultimately there's no conversion of water into steam in this
Speaker 1: In this scenario, it's not unlike almost every other version
Speaker 1: of electricity we've talked about, with possible exceptions like solar energy,
Speaker 1: it doesn't involve converting water into steam to turn and turbine.
Speaker 1: It is it is in itself a means of generating electricity. Now,
Speaker 1: the old methods that I've heard when when people used
Speaker 1: to talk years ago about creating fusion, what I always
Speaker 1: heard for fusion power plants was that it would involve
Speaker 1: harvesting deuterium from the ocean. Tritium in deuterium, I believe,
Speaker 1: and those are also different isotopes of elements, but those
Speaker 1: are isotopes of the element hydrogen. Deuterium is hydrogen atom
Speaker 1: that has a proton and a neutron, and it's also
Speaker 1: called heavy hydrogen. And tritium is is extremely heavy hydrogen, dude,
Speaker 1: because that's a proton and two neutrons. Uh So, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: those were the ways that we thought about before. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: the other thing we should point out really quickly is fusion.
Speaker 1: That's the same energy that we see in stars, right,
Speaker 1: and typically what you hear is happening inside a star.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's actually you know, a star specialist could
Speaker 1: tell you that more is going on, but the basic
Speaker 1: process is hydrogen fusing into helium and a temperature of
Speaker 1: millions of degrees right, right, Because you know, they might
Speaker 1: be giants taught us. Actually they were. They were covering
Speaker 1: a song from an old kid's album. But that's beside
Speaker 1: the point. Exactly though, and so the deuterium and tritium. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea was that you could take these these isotopes
Speaker 1: of hydrogen and fuse them together, and you would end
Speaker 1: up with helium as one of your your byproducts. But
Speaker 1: you would also end up getting neutrons that that would
Speaker 1: be bounced off from this, uh, this fusing process, and
Speaker 1: those neutrons are hard to control as opposed to protons.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is that neutrons are have no charge. Right. So,
Speaker 1: imagine that you've got a material that has no magnetic
Speaker 1: charge to it, and let's think of it like a uh,
Speaker 1: like a ceramic ball. Okay, so there's no magnetic there's
Speaker 1: no magnetic activity here. It's a ceramic ball. It's a
Speaker 1: big one. Let's say it's the size of a van
Speaker 1: and it's rolling down a hill at you. You gotta
Speaker 1: get out of the way. That ceramic ball. That's all
Speaker 1: there is to it. Now, Let's say that instead of
Speaker 1: it in a ceramic ball, it's something that can have
Speaker 1: a charge to it and it's rolling down a hill
Speaker 1: at you. But you have a really powerful electro magnet
Speaker 1: that you have set to the opposite charge of that
Speaker 1: giant thing. That's rolling towards you, and you flip a switch,
Speaker 1: those opposite charges attract one another and it will slow
Speaker 1: or even stop that charged ball from coming down and
Speaker 1: crushing you. Yeah. Another way to think of it is
Speaker 1: that protons are sticky and neutrons are not. And if
Speaker 1: you have some the right kind of sticky fly paper
Speaker 1: to attract some protons, you can catch them more easily
Speaker 1: than you catch neutrons. And obviously, if you want to
Speaker 1: control the the movement of particles that are going really
Speaker 1: really super fast, you have to pour energy into the system.
Speaker 1: In order to do that. With neutrons, that ends up
Speaker 1: becoming a big problem. It's it's one of the reasons why,
Speaker 1: one of the many reasons why, uh, nuclear fusion reactions
Speaker 1: have been difficult to sustain, where you get a reaction
Speaker 1: that's greater than the amount of energy you poured into
Speaker 1: the system in the first place. Okay, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about the difference between fusion reactions that produce protons versus
Speaker 1: fusion reactions that produce fast moving neutrons. But how does
Speaker 1: that How is that relevant to helium three? So what's
Speaker 1: the difference Using helium three as a fuel, infusion gets
Speaker 1: you around the neutron problem depending upon what you pair
Speaker 1: it with. Okay, so you're saying, if we go with
Speaker 1: the old the idea of tritium and deuterium fusion, that's
Speaker 1: more likely to produce these fast neutrons. And if you
Speaker 1: use helium three and deuterium, then the fusion between those
Speaker 1: two would result in helium four atom and and an
Speaker 1: extra proton. Uh. But that's easier again to contain because
Speaker 1: the proton has a charge. So you can use an
Speaker 1: electromagnet that has a negative charge because protons have positive charge,
Speaker 1: and be able to attract it that way and stop
Speaker 1: it from you know, being such a like being akin
Speaker 1: to a fast moving neutron um and so you would
Speaker 1: have a really efficiency them that way, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: generate nuclear waste. But you could also use helium three
Speaker 1: with itself, so instead of helium three and deuterium being
Speaker 1: merged together, you merge to helium three atoms together and
Speaker 1: that would produce helium and two protons. But either way
Speaker 1: this approach, you don't end up with a an unstable
Speaker 1: isotope that leads to decay, which would be another way
Speaker 1: of saying you don't have radioactivity brilliant. Okay, Well, so
Speaker 1: now that we know this, let's just gather up tons
Speaker 1: and tons of helium three from those natural gas reserves
Speaker 1: and uh and make a fusion reactory that will provide
Speaker 1: abundant clean energy without producing nuclear waste. That seems like
Speaker 1: an easy win. Why aren't we doing that right now?
Speaker 1: Hold on, slick. So the main reason is that, again,
Speaker 1: helium four is overwhelmingly the type of helium we we
Speaker 1: have here on Earth. Uh, to the point where getting
Speaker 1: helium three, like any there, there's so little helium three
Speaker 1: in the United States that it will blow your mind.
Speaker 1: So um, let's say that you know, you wanted to
Speaker 1: have enough helium three to provide electricity to the United
Speaker 1: States for an entire year, you would need about twenty
Speaker 1: five tons more, give or take of helium three. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's easy. The Earth's big. Yeah, right now we've got
Speaker 1: of helium three in the United States. There's a large
Speaker 1: gap you might notice, between what we need and what
Speaker 1: we have. And and it's because it sounds more precious
Speaker 1: than silver or gold. Yeah, and we don't have any
Speaker 1: means of generating more of it in a way that
Speaker 1: would be less problematic. For example, here's one way we
Speaker 1: could generate helium three. You can just make it in
Speaker 1: the lab, kind of if you think of a lab
Speaker 1: as a nuclear fission reactor. So let's say you're using
Speaker 1: a heavy water nuclear reactor. Heavy water nuclear reactors, you
Speaker 1: have deuterium inside of them, uh, and tritium inside of
Speaker 1: them inside the water itself. Oh. Wait, so you're saying,
Speaker 1: like the water is H two oh, But that H
Speaker 1: in the water instead of being standard hydrodium, which is
Speaker 1: just a proton and an electron, the H in the
Speaker 1: H two oh is actually heavy H. Yeah, really would
Speaker 1: be tritium, not deuterium. I should have I think I
Speaker 1: kind of misspoke earlier. But then you rate you could
Speaker 1: generate tritium this way. Even if it was just deuterium.
Speaker 1: You could generate tritium in this way, and then you
Speaker 1: would have to store the tritium and giant tanks to
Speaker 1: start to decay and undergo decay. When if they undergo decay,
Speaker 1: then one of the things they generate is helium three.
Speaker 1: But that would take like twelve years for it to
Speaker 1: decay to any appreciable amount, give or take eight days.
Speaker 1: So um, twelve years is a long time to wait too,
Speaker 1: you know, for and plus that whole time, you're generating
Speaker 1: nuclear waste because you're using nuclear fission, not fusion. So
Speaker 1: we could do that here on Earth, but it seems
Speaker 1: like that would be a problematic means of generating helium. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that is another issue. We don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of it here on Earth. Making more of it here
Speaker 1: on Earth is not an ideal, uh solution, So maybe
Speaker 1: we need to look somewhere else. Wait a second, now,
Speaker 1: Earlier we were talking about how the fusion process inside
Speaker 1: stars works by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium, and it's
Speaker 1: gotta it's got a net helium output. So over time
Speaker 1: more the mass of a star is going to be
Speaker 1: made up of helium. But a star also ejects particles.
Speaker 1: So particles are you know you who? You have this
Speaker 1: solar wind and radiation pressure and all this stuff coming
Speaker 1: off of the Sun all the time. Part of what's
Speaker 1: coming off of the Sun particles from the Sun being
Speaker 1: blown out into space. I bet a lot of that
Speaker 1: is helium three, isn't it. Yeah, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: significant amount of helium three being given off by the Sun.
Speaker 1: And if only we didn't have this pesky atmosphere, it
Speaker 1: would make its way here to Earth, but our atmosphere
Speaker 1: pretty much, you know, the helium three is not gonna
Speaker 1: enter Earth's atmosphere. It's just not a second. I know
Speaker 1: a particular moon that doesn't have an atmosphere. It's the moon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that one, the moon, one of the best moons.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite moon. Um. Yeah, So the Moon does
Speaker 1: not have an atmosphere, so helium three from solar wind
Speaker 1: will impact the Moon. And actually the lunar soil absorbs
Speaker 1: helium three. So there there is helium three locked away
Speaker 1: in the lunar regulus, which that's that top soil above. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and rocks as well, I mean you know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there there's heli and three and then the our craters.
Speaker 1: So that is a potential source for helium three. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to think about how on the Moon, despite the
Speaker 1: kind of like bigness and scariness and violence of space,
Speaker 1: nothing happens on the Moon, you know, except unless there's
Speaker 1: the occasional impact from some rock or something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: there's no weather, there's no wind blowing. There's a Chinese
Speaker 1: rover up there right now. Pretty much nothing happens. So
Speaker 1: it's just been up there for billions of years, slowly
Speaker 1: accumulating the dust that we could go and harvest to
Speaker 1: use in our fusion reactors. One million tons of helium three,
Speaker 1: remember tons, would provide enough for energy for the entire
Speaker 1: United States for a year. Well, that's pretty good. So
Speaker 1: a million tons would that would give us are assuming
Speaker 1: that we could get nuclear refusion to work out. That
Speaker 1: that's the base assumption that we have to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: But assuming we get that to work out, and assuming
Speaker 1: we could find some way of harvesting this helium three
Speaker 1: from the Moon, we would have a potential energy source
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. So the other thought is that
Speaker 1: you hope at least that humans of the future would
Speaker 1: continue to look at different ways of generating energy or
Speaker 1: capturing energy and generating electricity that didn't even involve fusion,
Speaker 1: and that by the time we would ever get to
Speaker 1: a point where we're like, well, moon's looking a little scrawny.
Speaker 1: Hopefully by then we'll have a dicensephere that just captures
Speaker 1: all of the energy of the Sun. A boy can dream.
Speaker 1: But okay, so we need to remember one thing that
Speaker 1: you said a minute ago. I think it's good to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. You make it sound like this is
Speaker 1: not the only stumbling block to achieving fusion power. We
Speaker 1: we still also have to figure out how to have
Speaker 1: an optimal reactor design and how to initiate react actions
Speaker 1: that are going to give us more energy than we
Speaker 1: put in. But this is a significant part of the problem, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: this would be This would be helium. Helium three would
Speaker 1: be a huge solution to some very difficult problems, assuming
Speaker 1: we could get the reactor part to work. So it's
Speaker 1: you know that that part has to work too, But yeah,
Speaker 1: assuming that has to work, helium three would be a huge,
Speaker 1: huge bonus. Uh, as opposed to using deuterium and tritium. Well,
Speaker 1: let's play that imagination game. Let's say we've got a
Speaker 1: team here, who they say, all right, top men? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and women and women. But I mean, I'm just quoting raiders.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure some some some dogs too. And by
Speaker 1: then we'll have genetically engineered really smart dogs. Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: be deuterium sniffing dogs, who knows. Anyway, a team of wonderful,
Speaker 1: brilliant organisms. We'll say, hey, we've got a reactor, a
Speaker 1: fusion reactor, that can get the job done. You just
Speaker 1: got to get us an off helium three. Ye, and
Speaker 1: we know there's a bunch on the moon. What does
Speaker 1: that operation look like? How do we get our hands
Speaker 1: on it? How do we get it to the reactors
Speaker 1: and turn that into a manageable electricity producing system. Well,
Speaker 1: if we get to the point where the fusion reactors
Speaker 1: are making sense, it will be a race to get
Speaker 1: that helium three off the moon, because there's there is
Speaker 1: absolutely no reason to not pursue it at that point
Speaker 1: unless you you come to the conclusion that the effort
Speaker 1: to get it is costing you more energy than what
Speaker 1: you're getting out of using which seems unrealistic. Assuming that
Speaker 1: we're able to transport a significant amount of helium three
Speaker 1: back to Earth, it wouldn't be a big you know,
Speaker 1: I could imagine that being something you know possible. So
Speaker 1: let's let's put this into perspective. The amount of helium
Speaker 1: three on the moon, or that's estimated to be on
Speaker 1: the Moon is more than hasn't has more energy stored
Speaker 1: in that potential energy stored there than ten times all
Speaker 1: the coal, all the natural gas, and all the oil
Speaker 1: that the Earth has ever had. More than ten times.
Speaker 1: So think about that being attempting target. You're like, obviously,
Speaker 1: we mean we have to go after that, assuming we
Speaker 1: can get the reactor part to work. So all right,
Speaker 1: So keeping that in mind that that we have to
Speaker 1: have something to meet our energy needs. We want it
Speaker 1: to be clean. We don't want to produce radio activity. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is like no carbon footprint deal. This
Speaker 1: is fantastic. What does it take to get there? Well,
Speaker 1: obviously it takes a system that would allow us to
Speaker 1: send missions from Earth to the Moon to capture helium
Speaker 1: three two then bring that helium three back to Earth.
Speaker 1: So what might that look like? In the nineties there
Speaker 1: was a proposal about a possible future mining system that
Speaker 1: was beautiful in its insanity. Um, they suggest me, let
Speaker 1: me guess the actual fusion power plant is on the
Speaker 1: Moon and they send the energy it produces back to
Speaker 1: Earth via a giant laser only slightly less crazy than
Speaker 1: that moon laser, only slightly less crazy. So okay, well
Speaker 1: you do get a moon laser. Don't don't get ahead
Speaker 1: of me, all right, So imagine that you've got this rover.
Speaker 1: And when I say rover, I'm not talking about a
Speaker 1: tiny rover crawling across the Moon. I'm not even talking
Speaker 1: about something as relatively large as the Curiosity rover, which
Speaker 1: is pretty big. Actually, I'm talking something gargantuan, like imagine
Speaker 1: the biggest piece of construction material, you know, like construction
Speaker 1: of vehicles you've ever seen, and make that bigger, because
Speaker 1: that's what I'm talking about. This is if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen the vehicle that uh pulls the Space Shuttle to
Speaker 1: its to its launchpad, that's kind of the size we're
Speaker 1: talking about here. And this design, which by the way,
Speaker 1: they just had a computer graphics kind of you know,
Speaker 1: this is a proof of concept sort of thing. It
Speaker 1: had a wheel on the front of it that would
Speaker 1: scoop up regular up to two meters down from the
Speaker 1: surface of the Moon, so you know that's that's a
Speaker 1: big scoop, right. It pulls it into the machine, and
Speaker 1: the machine has a series of vibrating screens that separate
Speaker 1: the rocks from the dust. Now, the rocks are too
Speaker 1: big to efficiently treat to get the helium three out,
Speaker 1: so they get dumped back onto the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 1: The dust keeps getting separated into smaller and smaller grains,
Speaker 1: so anything that's larger than a hundred microns in size
Speaker 1: gets dumped back on the moon. All the grains that
Speaker 1: are hundred microns in size are smaller, get put into
Speaker 1: a heating chamber. Now, in order to separate the helium
Speaker 1: three from this lunar soil, you have to apply heat,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it, like an excess of six
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. This where the laser comes in. This is
Speaker 1: where the laser comes in. Nice So their design also
Speaker 1: had an enormous satellite dish like thing on the top.
Speaker 1: It was really a mirrored array, so you pointed towards
Speaker 1: the sun. It captures sunlight, concentrates that sunlight into a
Speaker 1: very tight beam, similar to a laser. So when I
Speaker 1: said it is a laser, I'm kind of exaggerating a bit,
Speaker 1: but concentrates into a beam a very hot solar energy
Speaker 1: that is then directed to a series of pipes that
Speaker 1: contain liquefied metal that heat up the liquefied metal provide
Speaker 1: the heat to the regular the little fine grains of
Speaker 1: of moon dust. They get pushed through this heating chamber
Speaker 1: that releases a lot of the stuff that happens to
Speaker 1: be fused with that lunar soil, and it's not just
Speaker 1: helium three, it's one of the things that is attached
Speaker 1: to it. But also you've got stuff like water, You've
Speaker 1: got carbon diox side, you've got um uh, methane, there's
Speaker 1: all all these other like tiny molecules of the stuff
Speaker 1: are are married to this dust. Yeah. And if you're like,
Speaker 1: who cares well it matters on the moon? Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to have an operation on the Moon where
Speaker 1: you you know, we haven't really talked about what would
Speaker 1: be required on the Moon itself to make this happen.
Speaker 1: Most of the proposals I see suggest that eventually you
Speaker 1: would have some sort of lunar base. And if you
Speaker 1: have a lunar base, then if it's a lunar base
Speaker 1: that has humans in it, you're gonna need stuff in
Speaker 1: order to provide water, oxygen, you know, all these other
Speaker 1: sort of things fuel, things that are really important, uh,
Speaker 1: in order to maintain a presence there. Also, I've seen
Speaker 1: proposals saying that, Okay, maybe we don't even have a
Speaker 1: lunar base there. Maybe everything that's on the Moon is
Speaker 1: operated autonomously by robots and that there are no humans there.
Speaker 1: But you could still end up using a lot of
Speaker 1: those materials for things like miss into Mars or other destinations.
Speaker 1: So well, we've talked many times here on how having
Speaker 1: water in space is useful in so many ways. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So even if just for the fact that you're not
Speaker 1: having to ship it up there in a you know,
Speaker 1: rocket where it costs so much money. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And so you would get access to this stuff. You
Speaker 1: would also be able to rest assured that you're not
Speaker 1: creating giant pits like mining pits on the Moon. It
Speaker 1: would essentially look like it would definitely make the Moon
Speaker 1: look different. Creators, small creators would get smoothed out, so
Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon would actually change in appearance
Speaker 1: over time. Um, but I mean it all depends on
Speaker 1: what side of the Moon the operation is on. Keeping
Speaker 1: in mind there's no dark side of the moon, not
Speaker 1: at least not a permanent one. There's there's a night
Speaker 1: side of the moon. Uh. And in fact, the night
Speaker 1: becomes important because you've got all these different gases contained
Speaker 1: in a part of this rover, right, and you need
Speaker 1: to get to the helium three. So how do you
Speaker 1: get the helium three separated from everything else? The night
Speaker 1: cycle could actually help you in that endeavor and separating
Speaker 1: out the different gases, right, so you've got them all
Speaker 1: contained in this this chamber. But one of the things
Speaker 1: we pointed out helium very very low liquefying point as
Speaker 1: far as temperatures go, it gets gets really cold on
Speaker 1: the lunar night cycle, which lasts a long time compared
Speaker 1: to Earth. It's not a day. So this plan maybe
Speaker 1: pretty high on the insanity meter, but it's also pretty clever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's taking advantage of physics to say, like well, by
Speaker 1: having the rover harvest in the daytime, right and and
Speaker 1: convert the into the helium three during the daytime the
Speaker 1: lunar daytime which lasts like fifteen days, uh, and then
Speaker 1: go into the night cycle, that low temperature is going
Speaker 1: to liquify nearly all the gases besides helium and hydrogen,
Speaker 1: which you can then vent in to a different chamber
Speaker 1: and then separate those out later. Uh. And there are
Speaker 1: ways of separating helium from hydrogen, so you could do that,
Speaker 1: and then the liquefied stuff you could separate in other
Speaker 1: ways and use it for whatever it is you need
Speaker 1: to use it. So that was really pretty interesting. So
Speaker 1: that was the old plan though, Yeah, the one that
Speaker 1: was never put into place. Yeah, yeah, that was the
Speaker 1: old plan. And I think just us talking about this
Speaker 1: in the in the very sketchiest way makes it pretty
Speaker 1: clear that this would be an enormous investment required to
Speaker 1: to actually set up like a lunar mining operation of
Speaker 1: any kind. We don't even have the type of vehicles
Speaker 1: that would be necessary to land on the lunar surface
Speaker 1: to be loaded up with this stuff and returned back
Speaker 1: to Earth like it was. You know, they were talking
Speaker 1: about in the video that a vehicle similar to the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle would be able to carry the amount we
Speaker 1: would need to fuel the Earth the United States energy
Speaker 1: needs for a full year, But we don't have anything
Speaker 1: like that right now. The Space Shuttle alone obviously would
Speaker 1: not have been able to do it because it was
Speaker 1: not designed to leave low Earth orbit. So we would
Speaker 1: need to have a type of spacecraft capable of making
Speaker 1: a journey to Earth and bringing back a substantial amount
Speaker 1: of helium three. Or if you didn't do this, do
Speaker 1: this the way that was suggested in that video back
Speaker 1: from the nineties, you'll be bringing back lunar soil, and
Speaker 1: that's a much I mean, that's that's heavier, right. You're
Speaker 1: talking about bringing back a larger amount of material for
Speaker 1: a smaller amount of the stuff you actually want, because
Speaker 1: most of that mass is going to be made up
Speaker 1: of the soil, not of the helium three that you
Speaker 1: actually want to get. Whereas the proposed version that I
Speaker 1: said from the nineties, they'd be getting just the helium
Speaker 1: three or whatever, you know, other fuels or whatever sent back,
Speaker 1: and you would you would leave the soil on the moon. Uh.
Speaker 1: There has been a proposal. In fact, there is an
Speaker 1: ongoing series of missions that is looking at the possibility
Speaker 1: of using the Moon as a source for various stuff,
Speaker 1: including helium three. And it comes from China. So UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Have you read about the chung E
Speaker 1: lunar Lander. I don't think I have, or if I have,
Speaker 1: I forgot the name. So this was this was the
Speaker 1: lunar lander that UH touched down last year on the
Speaker 1: surface of the Moon. So the only the the so
Speaker 1: China is the third nation to have successfully done a
Speaker 1: soft landing on the on the Moon. UM. And the
Speaker 1: lander also has a rover called the YouTube rover, and
Speaker 1: the purpose of that mission was really just to do
Speaker 1: scientific measurements of the soil on the Moon, as well
Speaker 1: as you know, some other scientific research. But there's going
Speaker 1: to be a future mission that takes advantage of what
Speaker 1: was learned on this one, and it is called the
Speaker 1: chung E five mission that's scheduled to happen sometime in
Speaker 1: UH if if everything stays on schedule, and its mission
Speaker 1: is a little different. It's to travel to the Moon,
Speaker 1: land on the Moon, dig up a certain amount of
Speaker 1: lunar soil, two kilograms of it, and then blast off
Speaker 1: to UH end up meeting back up with a lunar orbiter.
Speaker 1: So it's similar to the way the Apollo missions worked
Speaker 1: and then return to Earth. So would actually be bringing
Speaker 1: lunar soil back to Earth. UH. This is obviously not
Speaker 1: ideal because again you are having to carry a lot
Speaker 1: more material, and ultimately the stuff you are interested in
Speaker 1: is just a fraction of that material. But it is
Speaker 1: an actual step toward this, this proposal of using the
Speaker 1: Moon as a source of of mining material. So I
Speaker 1: mean it's while while you could argue it's it's not
Speaker 1: efficient and that even if this all works that it
Speaker 1: ultimately wouldn't make sense from an energy production perspective. What
Speaker 1: you have to say is it's happening, right, Like, whether
Speaker 1: whether this particular version is something that would ultimately be
Speaker 1: used on a larger scale is kind of immaterial. It's
Speaker 1: it's really to say someone has fired the first shot
Speaker 1: in a new space race. Yeah, well, I mean, at
Speaker 1: least metaphors, at least it could probably teach us. I
Speaker 1: believe you said earlier that the amount of helium three
Speaker 1: in the lunar soil, it we've got a pretty good
Speaker 1: estimate we think of how much is in there, but
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure yet. Now we don't know
Speaker 1: for sure, and also the concentration within any given amount
Speaker 1: of lunar soil could vary, and it's not it's not
Speaker 1: as much like, yes, there there may be a million
Speaker 1: tons of helium three in the lunar soil. This particular
Speaker 1: thing is bringing back to two kilograms of lunar soil.
Speaker 1: And when we talk about the helium three being in there,
Speaker 1: obviously that's you know, depending upon the concentration, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a pretty small amount of helium three. So
Speaker 1: again you might you might say, well that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: very practical, but it's a it's a step. It's it's
Speaker 1: you can't think of it as this is an ends
Speaker 1: to itself. No, this is this is a step on
Speaker 1: a journey to use the Moon as a source of
Speaker 1: material for energy or whatever. Um because you know, you
Speaker 1: could use it for other things if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to mind it for water, you could.
Speaker 1: So the question I have is whether or not this
Speaker 1: is going to start a new flurry of activity among
Speaker 1: various nations to look at the Moon seriously as a
Speaker 1: potential source for energy fuel, and if it does, what
Speaker 1: that might mean in the next five to ten years,
Speaker 1: where various entities will be trying to lay claim to that. What, well,
Speaker 1: we get to a point where those treaties that were
Speaker 1: assigned in the past need to be revisited because we're
Speaker 1: now viewing the Moon as an actual, legitimate source of fuel,
Speaker 1: Then how do we fairly designate that as as such? Right? Okay,
Speaker 1: you're you're talking about like if people can um because
Speaker 1: we've sort of had an agreement that you can't harvest
Speaker 1: resources from planets and say that they belong to you.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can you maybe can from like asteroids,
Speaker 1: because that's not considered what is it a fixed body
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, I meanly, essentially, it's not supposed to
Speaker 1: be a celestial body. But I think, I think, and
Speaker 1: most most people would argue that you could probably get
Speaker 1: away with mining stuff. You couldn't claim the entire body
Speaker 1: as belonging to China, like you couldn't say this now
Speaker 1: is the Great People's Republic of China. Lunar division. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't stop us. You you aren't supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to do that. So what we're looking at is the
Speaker 1: possibility of that being, you know, adjusted over time. If
Speaker 1: we've got lots of different interested parties all wanting to
Speaker 1: go to the Moon and using different means, it also
Speaker 1: could mean that our moon would look very different in
Speaker 1: another like twenty years. So I mean, it's it's nothing.
Speaker 1: None of this is set in stone, obviously. I mean,
Speaker 1: if the nuclear fusion thing never works out, then it's
Speaker 1: pointless anyway, no one's gonna do it. But well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if i'd say it's pointless because we've talked
Speaker 1: about this with several other things in space exploration, where
Speaker 1: you might have a mission to discover a particular answer
Speaker 1: to a question or to exploit a particular resource and
Speaker 1: even if that doesn't pan out, space exploration is all symbiotic,
Speaker 1: like every mission makes every next mission easier and more possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the missions themselves would certainly lead to advance
Speaker 1: in science and technology that would be beneficial to us.
Speaker 1: What I really meant, what I really meant was that
Speaker 1: the the goal the goal. Assuming that the goal of
Speaker 1: the mission is to create a sort or to get
Speaker 1: to a source of fuel for fusion, that the fusion
Speaker 1: doesn't work out in that mission, part of the mission
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. It doesn't mean that we don't benefit
Speaker 1: in other ways, but that that particular, that particular part
Speaker 1: of the mission becomes moot. Right. Well, I hope they
Speaker 1: can exploit helium three and make fusion work, obviously, I
Speaker 1: mean it would be a revolutionary thing for energy on Earth.
Speaker 1: But and and I also just hope they build a
Speaker 1: lunar base. Well so do I I mean, I there
Speaker 1: was a few years ago NASA was trying to get
Speaker 1: excitement about the potential for a lunar base. Again. I
Speaker 1: remember we even had here at Hell stuff works, though
Speaker 1: not here in this building and our old building. We
Speaker 1: had someone from NASA come in and give a presentation
Speaker 1: about a proposed lunar base. Um. This was a few
Speaker 1: years ago when NASA was really kind of pushing for that,
Speaker 1: but then, you know, budgets changed, things changed, and that
Speaker 1: that plan got put on the back burner. But there's
Speaker 1: always the hope that if this in fact looks like
Speaker 1: it's a promising route, that that will encourage the funding
Speaker 1: of such missions and not just a reliance upon private
Speaker 1: companies here in the United States. I mean, that could
Speaker 1: definitely help as well. Or it could lead to what
Speaker 1: we saw in Moon, because that's the plot of Moon,
Speaker 1: main character, and Moon is overseeing a helium three mining
Speaker 1: operation on the Moon. Jonathan, don't scare the children, but
Speaker 1: do go see Moon, because that's a good is really good.
Speaker 1: It's a good one of the best science fiction movies
Speaker 1: in the past ten years. So, you know, I the
Speaker 1: optimist to me, certainly hopes that fusion works out because
Speaker 1: it would be enormous. I mean, being able to to
Speaker 1: shrug off our dependence on fossil fuels for the majority
Speaker 1: of our energy needs would be phenomenal for so many reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean, from a national security standpoint, that would be wonderful.
Speaker 1: Although again this could raise serious questions about national security
Speaker 1: for other nations. What happens to nations that don't have
Speaker 1: the capability of sending mining operations to the moon. Are
Speaker 1: they going to rely upon some sort of weird helium
Speaker 1: three market, which I imagine that's exactly what would happen.
Speaker 1: Would they have to you know, I mean, would there
Speaker 1: be this crazy divide between nations that have access to
Speaker 1: fusion technology and those that don't. Probably, at least for
Speaker 1: a while, there would be. Um But I hope that
Speaker 1: these sort of things could be ironed out over time
Speaker 1: and that we could get our our dependence away from
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, and that can in turn lead to at
Speaker 1: least diminishing of the effects of climate change. We we
Speaker 1: know that climate change is going to continue to happen,
Speaker 1: and really at this point, what we need to do
Speaker 1: is see how drastically we can reduce those effects. And
Speaker 1: this would go a really long way to helping that happen,
Speaker 1: particularly when you think China's leading the way here. That's enormous, right,
Speaker 1: So big hope that it all pans out. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's there are a lot of ifs, but I don't
Speaker 1: you know, I don't see any of them as being
Speaker 1: um pessimistic, Like, I don't think any of them are. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's not enough indicators there to tell me that this
Speaker 1: is just totally crazy. It's just it's it's like, this
Speaker 1: is the long shot of long shots, and if it
Speaker 1: works out, it's great, and if it doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: no one is surprised. I think that there's a much
Speaker 1: greater chance of this working out than that, at least
Speaker 1: I hope so too. But yeah, this was kind of
Speaker 1: fun to talk about. We did not get balloons to
Speaker 1: celebrate this particular episode because we're generally of the opinion
Speaker 1: that helium should be used for really important things besides
Speaker 1: our entertainment um or at least I am, and so
Speaker 1: we didn't do that. However, big surprise, We're gonna go
Speaker 1: and enjoy some nice frosty coffee based beverages in just
Speaker 1: a moment, so because we're gonna go talk about some
Speaker 1: episodes of Forward Thinking video series uh with our director
Speaker 1: and editor. Shortly they will peek behind the curtain. We're
Speaker 1: actually gonna be talking about what's coming up in the
Speaker 1: future of the show. So if you guys haven't checked
Speaker 1: out the video series for Forward Thinking, you should definitely
Speaker 1: go do that. Uh, it's it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Joe and I both work on it. I hosted, Joe
Speaker 1: writes a lot of the episodes. I write some of
Speaker 1: the other episodes. Lauren right some of the episodes, and
Speaker 1: we explore all sorts of topics and there Those videos
Speaker 1: are great. So if you haven't checked this out, do so.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future topics, you should
Speaker 1: write into us. We love getting your messages. We've been
Speaker 1: getting a ton of them and it really helps us
Speaker 1: choose which topics we're going to cover. We've had a
Speaker 1: few people talk about fusion and helium three in the past,
Speaker 1: so I'm glad we're able to talk about this. But
Speaker 1: you should send us an email that addresses fw think
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