Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and my pick for s
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects this week is the one we
Speaker 1: did on the ten thousand year Clock. Uh. Just looking back,
Speaker 1: I think it's probably one of the coolest episodes we've
Speaker 1: ever done. And it's just kind of me and Chuck
Speaker 1: operating on all cylinders talking about something we're super jazzed about.
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoy it. And my apologies for
Speaker 1: being sick in this one. It's still good. Welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast, Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: W Chuck Bright and that makes this stuff you should
Speaker 1: That's right. How are you, sir? I said, it's a
Speaker 1: little under the weather. Other than that, I'll find I've
Speaker 1: got that. Remember the Happiness audio book. We talked to
Speaker 1: it guy David Pierced and trans humanist about separating a
Speaker 1: susception pain, like the physical experience of pain, from suffering,
Speaker 1: like just getting rid of suffering, like I've reached that
Speaker 1: point and being sick where like I see how intertwined
Speaker 1: the two are. Like I just keep saying, like woe
Speaker 1: is me? Like I am suffering. It's pretty bad. So
Speaker 1: do you feel bad, like in a flu sense or
Speaker 1: is it just the head full of stuff it makes
Speaker 1: it unbearable. Uh? No, Luckily I don't have any flu
Speaker 1: symtom because that's what puts me under this when you
Speaker 1: literally feel those eggs in your skin is really sensitive.
Speaker 1: Was just what I had before you. We're taking turns.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I got it from you or not.
Speaker 1: Air air travel often will do that, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: got I got mine after air travel too. Stupid air travel.
Speaker 1: It's two thousand and twelve, you know you don't. Can
Speaker 1: we do better with the recirculated air on a plane? Maybe? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like surely you can crack a window a little
Speaker 1: bit or something, right, get some fresh air in there.
Speaker 1: There's gotta be something there, right, So um, I guess
Speaker 1: we should do this one. No, we're not, you know why,
Speaker 1: because we got all the time in the world. Man,
Speaker 1: slow down, That's what I was saying. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: just reiterating, well, thank you. There's no hurry, Josh. Well,
Speaker 1: let's just stay here for a little while. We're in
Speaker 1: the foundation of the long now. Uh, you're misreading. It's
Speaker 1: the long now foundation. I like the foundation of the
Speaker 1: Long Now you Longer? Yeah it is. It's a couple
Speaker 1: of extra wards there named by Brian Eno. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: great musical composer, father maybe of techno producer. I think
Speaker 1: he's called a rock musician in this article. Well the
Speaker 1: guy I watched a Setti talk from Alexander Rose, who
Speaker 1: you said is the project manager of the Long Nail
Speaker 1: Foundation's um clock of the Longmail project, which we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about, And when he was doing his presentation,
Speaker 1: he said mentioned Brian Eno and he said, who was
Speaker 1: an ambient music guy? Is that what he called him? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was like, this is Brian Eno? Come on? What
Speaker 1: did he write? Um? What was his album music for Spaceports? Uh?
Speaker 1: Something like that? That was a solo thing after Roxy Music.
Speaker 1: Yeah wait, Brian you know was in Roxy Music? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know, Brian Ferry was. They were, and they famously
Speaker 1: butted heads and Brian Eno left I think after one
Speaker 1: album did solo work until he hooked up with you
Speaker 1: two and the Talking Heads and as an uber producer.
Speaker 1: Cool man, where you go, Chuck. Thanks, that was a
Speaker 1: great explanation. Okay, Mr Brian the ambient music guy? Right?
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right, He's the one who coined the
Speaker 1: the name the long now Um. And uh, this whole foundation,
Speaker 1: this group of people, the long now Foundation or the
Speaker 1: foundation of the long now Um, are dedicated to forcing
Speaker 1: um hoisting upon humanity. Like you were saying, like just
Speaker 1: the idea of slowing down, of taking a longer view
Speaker 1: of everything, the long now. Yeah, And I think the
Speaker 1: way they put it was to try and think in
Speaker 1: the terms of if you live to be one thousand
Speaker 1: years old, so long term thinking for the world is
Speaker 1: better than short term thinking, although I would argue you
Speaker 1: need both. You know what I'm saying, Yeah, because it's like,
Speaker 1: because exactly when should I get out of the way
Speaker 1: of the speeding car? We don't live to be a
Speaker 1: thousand that is, but I do like you hear it
Speaker 1: behind it, I have a question for you. Would you
Speaker 1: want to live to be a thousand years old if
Speaker 1: we aged like normally and would be like you don't
Speaker 1: turn into the dungeon Master from the from the cartoon. Uh,
Speaker 1: you mean if it was like a thousand years old
Speaker 1: would be the equivalent of like a hundred Heck, yeah,
Speaker 1: would you really? Why not? Well? I can think of
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons why not name one, Um, boredom
Speaker 1: you'd be worried about boredom. Boredom. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: all the stuff you can do in a century. Now,
Speaker 1: multiply that by ten. There's an amount of stuff to
Speaker 1: do on this planet. Well, if you I think everybody
Speaker 1: would end up with huge, massive drug problems by age four,
Speaker 1: you might be right, but hey, four year old should
Speaker 1: be able to handle his h So okay, despite how
Speaker 1: you feel about living, do a thousand long now foundation
Speaker 1: is Um, they're kind of into that way of thinking.
Speaker 1: Like you said that long term thinking can lead to
Speaker 1: short term gain and a good example of this is
Speaker 1: climb it change, right, So, UM, I think one of
Speaker 1: the people who are on the side of who are
Speaker 1: in favor of taking great action against climate change would
Speaker 1: would say that, Um, if we can take steps now,
Speaker 1: if we can think further out, then you know, we'd
Speaker 1: be able to mitigate this. But we're not. We're thinking
Speaker 1: about very immediate concerns, which some are are reasonable, like
Speaker 1: economic concerns, that kind of thing. But it's just two
Speaker 1: schools of thought exactly. So, UM, you can kind of
Speaker 1: understand where the long Now Foundation UH would side or
Speaker 1: sit on that. UM, debate. But what they figured out
Speaker 1: is that we basically we humans to think like this,
Speaker 1: we need something to um lead our minds in that direction,
Speaker 1: because just saying like, man, what's it gonna be like
Speaker 1: ten thousand years from now? It's like who cares? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about food, like I am literally right now.
Speaker 1: I just pose the question, and I'm thinking about food
Speaker 1: already long term, right. But if they were saying, like
Speaker 1: a two ft clock in front of me that I
Speaker 1: knew was designed to tick off ten thousand years, I
Speaker 1: might take a much longer view of things. A beacon,
Speaker 1: if you will, a beacon. Indeed, so the long Now
Speaker 1: Foundation has undertaken its flagship projects and there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of other projects to UM called the Clock of the
Speaker 1: long Now a k a. The ten thousand year clock.
Speaker 1: Very cool, Yeah, and I think it's pretty awesome. I
Speaker 1: can tell you're a fan. Well, but if for no
Speaker 1: other reason than to uh get attention for for their
Speaker 1: foundation and their their school of thought, you know, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the whole point. Like, and it's gotten some
Speaker 1: pretty good attention, I think, Um, A lot of people
Speaker 1: have heard of the ten thousand year clock already. UM,
Speaker 1: But it's actually being created. One's already done a tabletop version. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tabletop meaning eight ft. But the well, the prototype, um,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing was proposed by a guy named
Speaker 1: Danny Hillis. Um back in UH wrote in a like
Speaker 1: a Wired magazine scenarios article, the idea for this, the
Speaker 1: concept behind it, and um, there's been coome this kind
Speaker 1: of rallying cry that he wants a cuckoo to come
Speaker 1: out every millennium. Everybody that shows up in every article
Speaker 1: I've read on it, that's what they say. That's his thing, like,
Speaker 1: he wants a cuckoo to come out on the millennium.
Speaker 1: What's crazy is I don't see anywhere in here that
Speaker 1: there actually will be a cuckoo. Yeah. I didn't see
Speaker 1: that either. So poor Danny Hillis will have to wait.
Speaker 1: But he's he's the guy behind the Long Nail Foundation, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first thing that I noticed when I look at
Speaker 1: any of the writings about them and the long now
Speaker 1: clock is the zero that they just placed in front
Speaker 1: of the current year. So in when he wrote that article,
Speaker 1: he proposed, you know, not that they actually change it,
Speaker 1: but the way they look at things is zero one, nine,
Speaker 1: nine five and Just seeing a date written in that
Speaker 1: way kind of makes me breathe a little relief, because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, twenty twelve doesn't look like the future.
Speaker 1: Oh to one two looks like, oh well, we got
Speaker 1: a long way to go, like we're backwater Yokel's time wise.
Speaker 1: Yeah does that make sense? Oh yeah, totally, because I
Speaker 1: think they said we've been around, like civilization has been
Speaker 1: around for ten thousand years or so. So essentially this
Speaker 1: clock would represent our entire past. Well yeah, moving forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would place us directly in the middle of two,
Speaker 1: which I love so which I was curious about. Why
Speaker 1: they're not starting over then? Why not started zero years?
Speaker 1: Clark's clock, um starts you want to name it a
Speaker 1: Clark it's a millennium yea, uh maybe because they just
Speaker 1: they don't want to disrespect you know, time served if
Speaker 1: you will. But also so, what they've come up with
Speaker 1: is a clock then that will run until the year
Speaker 1: twelve thousand, twelve thousand, twelve twelve thousand and fifteen, depending
Speaker 1: on how how fast they can get this thing built. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's their idea, is to come up with a
Speaker 1: ten thousand year clock, the clock that will run without
Speaker 1: human intervention for ten thousand years one um that can
Speaker 1: be easily understood by anybody. Um, which I think that
Speaker 1: they could have done something slightly different with the design,
Speaker 1: Like my eyes crossed when I look at like the face. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm living in zero two one two um.
Speaker 1: But there there's some challenges to all this, right, Like
Speaker 1: there's humans haven't really made too many things, um that
Speaker 1: have lasted ten thousand years yet. Yeah, why should this
Speaker 1: be any different? Well, you you outlined a couple of
Speaker 1: the base. I think they have the five basic principles
Speaker 1: they were aiming for, and you outlined a couple of them.
Speaker 1: There to work relatively free of regular maintenance? Was one? Uh,
Speaker 1: simple enough to maintain that if all of a sudden
Speaker 1: we go into some post apocalyptic world where there's no technology,
Speaker 1: we could still maintain it. Right, They were saying they
Speaker 1: estimate it couldn't go back prior to the Bronze Age.
Speaker 1: But as long as we have Bronze Age technology, which
Speaker 1: begin and the hallmark of the Bronze Ages metallurgy and
Speaker 1: um in black magic and of metal or separating ores
Speaker 1: from metal and um uh metal alloys. Okay, Well if dude,
Speaker 1: if we're sent back beyond the Bronze Age, then this
Speaker 1: clock is not gonna matter very much. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Uh, A close inspection of the operational principles
Speaker 1: should reveal the principles behind its operation. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit of word play there that sounds like Danny hillis
Speaker 1: and then uh what else? No matter when someone comes
Speaker 1: upon it, it should be able to be improved upon.
Speaker 1: And finally it should be able to be constructed small
Speaker 1: enough to fit on a table. That's what the prototype.
Speaker 1: So success, Yeah, success, And then for the rest of them,
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of abandoning that because, like we said,
Speaker 1: this thing is going to be the one that's being
Speaker 1: constructed right now, is going to be two ft tall. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: but looks like it I have ourselves, um powering such
Speaker 1: a clock. There's if you're looking at ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: I think it seems kind of likely that civilization will
Speaker 1: suffer at least one collapse, if not several, And we
Speaker 1: have no idea how far back humans will be set,
Speaker 1: hopefully not for the Bronze Age. But um, so this
Speaker 1: clock needs to somehow gain power from the environment, and
Speaker 1: Danny hillis came up with a bunch of different ideas, right,
Speaker 1: like atomic power. Yeah, most of that, Uh, that's poor
Speaker 1: manageability and transparency. Most of these are scalability Like they
Speaker 1: may have been good ideas, but they're just what too
Speaker 1: large to fit their their needs either that there either
Speaker 1: they're too big or they there already like they're perfect
Speaker 1: for this clock, but you can't use that to power
Speaker 1: Maybe if if something need if something's added on that
Speaker 1: requires more power, t s. You already are using all
Speaker 1: the power you can, or you can't scale it up
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't work the same maybe exactly so that
Speaker 1: would be chemical pre stored potential, geothermal, tidal, gravitational changes,
Speaker 1: and seismic and plate tectonics. Those all had poor scalability,
Speaker 1: so says Hill us Um, you can't use pressure change
Speaker 1: because you would need like a bellows or a seal.
Speaker 1: You want this thing to be as um simple as possable,
Speaker 1: because as any engineer knows, the more moving parts you have,
Speaker 1: the more parts you have that can break down. Um.
Speaker 1: And the flow of water. That's a good one, right,
Speaker 1: there should be water on the on the planet for
Speaker 1: ten thousand years. Sorry, you're exposing the clock to water,
Speaker 1: so inherently waters is self defeating energy source. Wind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any kind of exposure to weather. That's why this thing
Speaker 1: is buried inside of a mountain, right, So what did
Speaker 1: he come up with? He came up with two ideas
Speaker 1: to power this humans. That's one. Yeah, human winding, that's one,
Speaker 1: a novel idea. The other is temperature change, that's right,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he wanted He said his favorite was human
Speaker 1: winding because it fosters responsibility for the clock, which is
Speaker 1: a great, great idea, I think, because ultimately the clock
Speaker 1: is for humans, even though it's sequestered in a mountain
Speaker 1: and it can run by itself for ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: if no human ever lays eyes on it, it's for humans.
Speaker 1: And we'll explain on that. If it sounds like we're
Speaker 1: talking out above side to our amounts, will explain on
Speaker 1: that by saying doesn't need humans. Yet, it doesn't need humans.
Speaker 1: I bet people can't wait. I could just feel attention.
Speaker 1: The hairs in the back of their necks bristly. All right.
Speaker 1: So for the prototype, um, it's sort of like an
Speaker 1: old school clock in a way. Uh. They used to
Speaker 1: helical weights, Uh, similar to the weight gravity systems just
Speaker 1: like clock towers, old clock towers, and they drive the
Speaker 1: energy going up and down these tubes which will drive
Speaker 1: the pendulum, right yeah, um. And ultimately the prototype, the
Speaker 1: drive assembly as you'd call it, Um, it served its purpose.
Speaker 1: There was a prototype and that it said, okay, we
Speaker 1: need to do something different, and they have. But for
Speaker 1: the prototype, Yeah, there's helical weights we're not familiar with,
Speaker 1: are you okay? Um, But the the prototype also still
Speaker 1: had like a solar synchronizer, which we'll talk about later, um,
Speaker 1: and a pendulum, which will also get a little more
Speaker 1: into But the pendulum is kind of key to keeping
Speaker 1: the time. We should do that now you want to Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So back in the six D people were trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to keep time better than they have
Speaker 1: him more accurately. UM. And somebody a Dutch astronomer. Back
Speaker 1: in the day the best astronomers were Dutch Christian holligans.
Speaker 1: He said, hey, why don't you try using a pendulum
Speaker 1: because a pendulum has pretty cool property and that the
Speaker 1: only two um things that affect the swing of a pendulum.
Speaker 1: Nothing else affects the swinging of a Pendlum, not changes
Speaker 1: in temperature, not humidity, not anything else except the force
Speaker 1: of gravity and the length of the pendulum. I didn't
Speaker 1: know this well I didn't either. Um, if you take
Speaker 1: a pendulum and put it just about anywhere on Earth,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find that the gravitational field is is so
Speaker 1: close to the same that a pendulum will swing the
Speaker 1: same way anywhere on Earth. So the same rate to right, right,
Speaker 1: So what affects that rate The period, which is the
Speaker 1: amount of time it takes for a pendulum to swing
Speaker 1: all the way from one side to the other. So
Speaker 1: not just one side, it's it's both. That's a pendulum period.
Speaker 1: So really the only thing that affects it is um,
Speaker 1: the length of the pendulum. Right. The shorter the pendulum,
Speaker 1: the faster uh they go. The longer the pendulum usually uh,
Speaker 1: the um the longer it takes. And once you get
Speaker 1: a pendulum going, which doesn't require a lot, it will
Speaker 1: keep going. Yes, it takes a very small amount of
Speaker 1: energy input to keep it going, right, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: perfect for something like a ten year clock. Right. So
Speaker 1: if you put a pendulum and attached it to something
Speaker 1: called an escapement, right, Yeah, this is a part I
Speaker 1: got confused on. Okay, we'll check this out. So you
Speaker 1: have a pendulum, and you've figured out the exact length
Speaker 1: you need for a pendulumce period to take one second
Speaker 1: to tick off one second on on a second hand.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. So you can attach the pendulum to
Speaker 1: this thing called an escapement. An escapement is just like
Speaker 1: a wheel with some gears to it, right, And these
Speaker 1: gears are attached to the second hand, Okay, and the
Speaker 1: escapement is always wanting to go forward, but it's being
Speaker 1: held in place by the pendulum, which is attached to
Speaker 1: an anchor. But we'll just call it the pendulum, right,
Speaker 1: So as the pendulum swings one way, the escapement gear
Speaker 1: is being held in place, and it's when it swings
Speaker 1: the other way, which is the end of a second,
Speaker 1: the pendulum opens up, allowing the escapement gear to take
Speaker 1: forward one tooth, thus moving the second hand forward one
Speaker 1: movement in a second. So that's how you do it.
Speaker 1: And if you're very, very clever, you can design the
Speaker 1: escapement gear so that as it moves, as it escapes,
Speaker 1: it also nudges that anchor that's a touched to the pendulum,
Speaker 1: transferring energy back to the pendulum to keep it swinging
Speaker 1: and that's basically the basics of a clock, mechanical clock, right,
Speaker 1: and that's what they use for the ten thousand year
Speaker 1: clock too, very smartly inappropriately to Yeah. I love how
Speaker 1: when they do design something to work ten thousand years
Speaker 1: they go back to bronze age and well this wasn't
Speaker 1: bronze age, but a lot of just old mechanical technology.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean it's I think we've advanced in
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, if you're gonna make a digital clock,
Speaker 1: yeah we know what we're doing, but how are you
Speaker 1: going to power it? And you want to just use
Speaker 1: some really old, perfect technology exactly? That's called long thinking, Josh.
Speaker 1: So we've got winding and temperature changes, differences in temperature
Speaker 1: changes that are powering this clock, now right, that's right, um.
Speaker 1: And then those are the two principles that are powering
Speaker 1: the clock. And there are different parts of the clock
Speaker 1: that need to be powered, like your favorite the Geneva wheels,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, Aneva wheel sounds intimidating a Geneva drive until
Speaker 1: you look it up on YouTube and see what it is,
Speaker 1: and it's really just um. And it can come in
Speaker 1: all kinds of shapes and in this case, it's sort
Speaker 1: of the shape of a star, and it's imagine each
Speaker 1: point of a star has a notch cut in it,
Speaker 1: and sitting underneath that is a is a wheel, a
Speaker 1: drive wheel that spins with a peg coming out of it,
Speaker 1: and it slips into the little slot on the star,
Speaker 1: advancing it one little click, keeps turning and and spins
Speaker 1: out of it and then by the time it comes
Speaker 1: back around, it slips back into the next one. So
Speaker 1: it's just a slow ticking around in a circle. Right,
Speaker 1: And so there's I think twenty of these for the
Speaker 1: big clock. But they're designed with a bunch of holes
Speaker 1: in a pins and holes system basically, which essentially is
Speaker 1: making a mechanical Babbage Babbage difference engine like an early computer,
Speaker 1: like a punch hole computer. Yeah. Right, they use before calculators.
Speaker 1: They is mechanical summers or actors, and this is you.
Speaker 1: But it's adding in binary ones and zeros. So it's
Speaker 1: carrying out digital calculations through mechanical means, which is astounding.
Speaker 1: And they're using this astounding technology to power basically what
Speaker 1: um in this article that we're reading. It's the world's
Speaker 1: slowest computer, and that computer is being used to calculate, uh,
Speaker 1: an algorithm that will produce a different chime using ten
Speaker 1: different chimes or two bells, um so that this thing
Speaker 1: supposedly will never make the same chime twice. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the algorithm maxes out at three point five million
Speaker 1: chimes of course, designed composed by Brian Eno, the ambient
Speaker 1: music guy, right and uh and that that doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with the powering of the clock. That's
Speaker 1: just the chimes. No, but the dirty secret of the
Speaker 1: Long Mouth Foundation is that three point five million different
Speaker 1: possible chime tones uh or combinations is about ninety thousand
Speaker 1: days short of ten thousand years. Oh really, yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't ninety thousand days and years. I don't know, you
Speaker 1: have a binary add we need some Geneva wheels in here.
Speaker 1: Stat Well, they're not telling anyone that though obviously no
Speaker 1: they did actually wired. Yeah, They're like, you know, this
Speaker 1: thing's not gonna chime every day, so I'm sure it'll
Speaker 1: be fine, Okay, But basically no one's speaking to probably
Speaker 1: Needo right now. He's been demoted to ambient music guy
Speaker 1: from legendary producer. Uh. So the prototype, that's the prototype.
Speaker 1: It's eight ft tall roughly eight and a half. It
Speaker 1: is um at the Science Museum in London. You can
Speaker 1: go see it there. And it first started ticking on
Speaker 1: December thirty first, nineteen or O one if you're a
Speaker 1: long hour, and it worked the gong twice at the
Speaker 1: turn of the millennium to indicate that two millenniums are
Speaker 1: now past, which is funny because technically the millennium didn't
Speaker 1: start until two one. That's true. But they don't care.
Speaker 1: They don't care about a lot of stuff I'm finding out. Uh,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the real deal when this article
Speaker 1: is written. The real deal was just proposed and it
Speaker 1: was going to be about sixty ft tall. That was
Speaker 1: two years ago. Well, that one is the one in Nevada.
Speaker 1: I think that's still gonna be sixty. They just decided
Speaker 1: to start on the Texas one first, gotcha because Bezos
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, here's forty two million bucks, can we
Speaker 1: get started? Well, go ahead and spill the means there.
Speaker 1: I just Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon dot com, UH
Speaker 1: is heavily involved in this, to the tune of money
Speaker 1: and UH it being built on a mountain inside a
Speaker 1: mountain in West Texas, on his property. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: he owns it sort of kind of. I get the
Speaker 1: impression that, yes, he definitely has This project is his,
Speaker 1: but it's one of many that are going to be
Speaker 1: built around the world, Like they got approval to build
Speaker 1: one in a Smithsonian just this past year. Um and
Speaker 1: uh also Bezos by the way, he said that the
Speaker 1: two are unrelated. It's just a cool coincidence or whatever.
Speaker 1: But he's also building a spaceport by the mountain too,
Speaker 1: and he says that's unrelated to the clock. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: just said, Hey, that's why not there's a space port.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be ten thousand year clock. We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: But if you want to see he's um funding this,
Speaker 1: uh this space program called Blue Origin. And you know
Speaker 1: how like in the fifties, like science fiction rockets would
Speaker 1: like land just going straight up and straight down, you know, yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what his rockets do. And there's you can see
Speaker 1: video of It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen that.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm like, is this real? Like we're pretty good
Speaker 1: at after effects these days, it's gotta be. I think
Speaker 1: it's real. You can make it happen blue Origin dot com.
Speaker 1: I will I will look that up, sir. So, like
Speaker 1: you said, Bezo says, or the one in Texas, I
Speaker 1: guess is what you should call it. The one that's
Speaker 1: under construction is going to be about two hundred feet tall, um,
Speaker 1: and it's kinda it's out in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: very purposefully. Yeah. I think it's hours from the nearest airport.
Speaker 1: It requires a full days hike to reach the mouth
Speaker 1: of the cave opening, which is like a steel door,
Speaker 1: and it's a mountain rising up from the the desert,
Speaker 1: so you have a fifteen hundred foot climb just to
Speaker 1: get to the steel door the first door. So vandals,
Speaker 1: not only will you be trespassing, but you need to
Speaker 1: be a mountaineer if you want to go mess with
Speaker 1: this thing, which we don't encourage one, but they have
Speaker 1: they The first door is going to be jade, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. It's gonna be hidden behind the rock face,
Speaker 1: so like you have to, I guess you could stumble
Speaker 1: upon it. I think that's part of the idea, the fun. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but you will know when you do stumble upon it
Speaker 1: that there's something very cool there because it's going to
Speaker 1: be a carved jade door in the rock face. Well,
Speaker 1: they're gonna open it up when they finish, they said
Speaker 1: they are. But I'm saying, like, if if this if
Speaker 1: the location or the idea or anything you're having to
Speaker 1: do with the clock, it'll still be there and people
Speaker 1: can find it accidentally. Yeah. What really bothers me about
Speaker 1: this is I'm not going to know the result. You know,
Speaker 1: if you lived to a thousand, maybe you would, but
Speaker 1: I can't live to ten thousand regardless. But does that
Speaker 1: bother you? Yeah? Like I want to know how this ends.
Speaker 1: I want to know if in ten thousand years, if
Speaker 1: it's still running, Well, what happens if if? Okay, so
Speaker 1: just the clock just you don't care what happens like
Speaker 1: hundred years from now, not just the clock. Um, So,
Speaker 1: if you want to access this thing, you go through
Speaker 1: those two doors. It's in complete darkness. It's not all
Speaker 1: lit up, which is kind of cool, right because I
Speaker 1: guess any kind and they don't want any kind of
Speaker 1: electricity to be needed obviously why they're building it. They're
Speaker 1: using stuff but for a visitor later on, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: a post Bronze age visitor. It's going to be housed
Speaker 1: in a five hundred foot tall tunnel about twelve ft
Speaker 1: in diameter, Yeah, a vertical tunnel. Yeah, it's like a shaft. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's a twelve ft diameter shaft that's five ft tall,
Speaker 1: very tall. And um, it's got a very precise rock
Speaker 1: staircase that was carved with a robot slicing machine. You
Speaker 1: see video that I think it was awesome. And it
Speaker 1: starts at the top, which is cool. Basically it starts
Speaker 1: at the top with this just big hunk of rock
Speaker 1: and just cuts in a circle, down, down, down, one
Speaker 1: stair at a time, like the golden ratio kind of nautilus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very cool. Yeah, And so that's how you're gonna access
Speaker 1: the gears. So let's go ahead and get to that.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and get to the counterweights at least.
Speaker 1: Well that's the first thing you would kind of come
Speaker 1: upon if you walked in on this thing and it's completed.
Speaker 1: And the counterweights are made up of stone discs, each
Speaker 1: about the size of a car, each waying about ten
Speaker 1: thousand pounds um. And we said that winding is winding
Speaker 1: in differences in temperature change of the principles that provide
Speaker 1: energy for this clock, but um, the weights are what
Speaker 1: keep it running. Um. And when you come upon the weights,
Speaker 1: you're gonna come upon a platform. And you know there's
Speaker 1: like old um those old movies or whatever where there's
Speaker 1: you know, slaves or um, somebody on a ship and
Speaker 1: they're having to like crank a wheel. Like there's three
Speaker 1: guys like all moving in the same direction, and each
Speaker 1: one has like a pole that is pushing like a
Speaker 1: horizontal wheel. Right. Yeah, they're gonna have one of those
Speaker 1: for visitors to crank, and that will raise these enormous
Speaker 1: counterweights and once they're fully raised, they'll have enough stored
Speaker 1: potential energy to power the clock for about a century
Speaker 1: without a single dash of sunlight or another human visitor.
Speaker 1: So that's essentially winding the clock. I think they said
Speaker 1: two or three people it takes to do this, and
Speaker 1: um it what's it called a cap stand? I think
Speaker 1: that that is what it's called. It's called a cap stand, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the horizontal wheel. That's yeah. Yeah, so it's pretty cool,
Speaker 1: like it requires human intervention. But as we said, and
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and spill the beans how that works.
Speaker 1: If no one came around ever, it would still run
Speaker 1: because of uh differences, and it collects sun's rays. The
Speaker 1: prism that sticks out at the top a sapphire couple
Speaker 1: of I bet that looks nice. And that's the only
Speaker 1: part that's visible from outside. They said, yes, And it
Speaker 1: collects the sun's rays and then channels them down through
Speaker 1: metal rods. And the difference in that was it the cave,
Speaker 1: the interior cave temperature and the temperature that collects between
Speaker 1: day and night. It changes okay and night, which is
Speaker 1: pretty ingenious because you think about what they're probably still
Speaker 1: will be over ten thousand years, there probably will still
Speaker 1: be day and night. Yes, and that's ultimately what powers this. Well,
Speaker 1: they're with no human intervention, Yeah, exactly. This dude though,
Speaker 1: the Alexander uh what was his name? Rose? He said
Speaker 1: that what they had to figure out there's something called
Speaker 1: the equation of time, and it's not constant, like the
Speaker 1: Earth is slowing its rotation by about a second every
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years, and all this stuff sounds like
Speaker 1: you have a big deal, but when you look on
Speaker 1: a ten thousand of your timeline, it is a big deal. Um,
Speaker 1: So the Earth is slowing by about a second every
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years. Uh, it's also processing on its
Speaker 1: pole every twenty six thousand years, so they have to
Speaker 1: take that into account. And then climate change, it's gonna
Speaker 1: if poles continue to melt, water is gonna be pushed out,
Speaker 1: it's gonna rotate even slower. So what they figured out
Speaker 1: there was a variance, Well, normally there's a variance of
Speaker 1: about ten or fifteen minutes throughout the course of a
Speaker 1: year from where the Sun should be. And they designed
Speaker 1: this thing too self correct to still be able to
Speaker 1: pick up the Sun's rays. Yeah, pretty ingenious, but they
Speaker 1: needed to do it on a ten thousand year scale.
Speaker 1: So they basically formulated this massive equation and they figured
Speaker 1: out how time would evolve over ten thousand years according
Speaker 1: to all these variables, and they found out it is
Speaker 1: a plus or minus and this worst case scenario with
Speaker 1: climate change of twenty three days from where they think
Speaker 1: the sun should be over ten thousand years, which means
Speaker 1: that the clock is way off by the end of
Speaker 1: the ten thousand years. Well, but they accounted for that
Speaker 1: with this equation they did. And the way that they
Speaker 1: accounted for it though, also is through the solar synchronizer.
Speaker 1: So every sunny day that um. At noontime, the sun
Speaker 1: will hit that prism. We'll heat up this little rod
Speaker 1: that sends a signal to the clock center working. So
Speaker 1: the the smart part of the clock that keeps time
Speaker 1: all the time, no matter what um and says, hey
Speaker 1: it's solar noon, and they the clocks readjusts itself. So
Speaker 1: the most it's ever going to get off is say,
Speaker 1: you know, however, many days or maybe a couple of
Speaker 1: centuries without sunlight if there's some sort of horrible nuclear
Speaker 1: winner or whatever. But let's say a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: years without sunlight. The next time there's sunlight, it'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's noon, and the clock will just readjust itself kind
Speaker 1: of wake back up. Yeah that's crazy, but but it
Speaker 1: will go back to Okay, it's noon now. No matter
Speaker 1: how far it drifted, it will now know it's noon.
Speaker 1: Solar nude. It is very awesome. And the timber. The
Speaker 1: differences in temperature also, it's it's called the thermoelectric effect UM.
Speaker 1: The electrons. If you have a thermoelectric device, electrons will
Speaker 1: go from a hot side to the cold side. And
Speaker 1: you know as well as I do that the flow
Speaker 1: electrons equals electricity, that's right, So that will keep things
Speaker 1: in check as well. That will keep the inner workings
Speaker 1: powered too. They thought of everything they did, and they
Speaker 1: also thought of ways to store energy or to keep
Speaker 1: from using energy, saving energy. He's another way to put it, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean over time. I think they said that if
Speaker 1: the difference in temperature is great enough, it will just
Speaker 1: store that temperature and over a timeline. If that keeps happening,
Speaker 1: it won't even have to you know, stop and catch up.
Speaker 1: It'll just start operating fully mechanically by itself. Right. So
Speaker 1: here in the order of winding exactly, So in the
Speaker 1: order of um preference or of importance, the solar energy
Speaker 1: or the diurnal temperature change energy UM goes from the
Speaker 1: inner workings of the clock, yes, spills over to the weights, yes,
Speaker 1: and then if the weights are wound, then you will
Speaker 1: have the Geneva drive operating. Right, So it goes basically
Speaker 1: like the clock knowing the correct time, the clock operating
Speaker 1: and showing the correct time or whatever information that's supposed
Speaker 1: to and then the clock making sounds. Those are the
Speaker 1: levels of importance as far as energy distribution. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense because the chimes, they gotta come last
Speaker 1: they do. It's nice and all, but they're also they're
Speaker 1: meant for human consumption. But if enough of that diurnal
Speaker 1: temperature difference uh energy spills over to the weights, then
Speaker 1: the clock will ostensibly um be chime when nobody's there.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. That's very cool. And next to his
Speaker 1: little rocket station. Right, he's got it all. He's got
Speaker 1: all figured out. Um So, while we mentioned the Geneva
Speaker 1: gears on on the on the main uh the two
Speaker 1: ft when they're building these are about eight ft in diameter,
Speaker 1: each one weighing about a thousand pounds. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty remarkable. I mean, if you think if you
Speaker 1: ever been inside a clock tower and seeing that, it's like,
Speaker 1: imagine that times twenty. And remember the Geneva drive system
Speaker 1: is the the mechanical computer that's come that's calculating the
Speaker 1: algorithm to play the chimes. It's the whole reason it's there,
Speaker 1: that's right, and it's being powered by winding or the weights.
Speaker 1: Winding the weights. Uh So, if you keep climbing up
Speaker 1: in this thing, you will get to the primary chamber,
Speaker 1: and that is where you finally see the face of
Speaker 1: the clock, which is the most important thing. If you're
Speaker 1: building a clock, it's also gonna be baffling thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the face of this clock is uh or
Speaker 1: if it's anything like the prototype, it's not like any
Speaker 1: clock I've ever seen. It's very awesome, Like you can
Speaker 1: clearly say, oh, I see the century, and I see
Speaker 1: them the millennium, maybe even the year. But like when
Speaker 1: I get to the star field, I imagine like so
Speaker 1: the starfields being displayed, I get that. I think that
Speaker 1: that means that if it were nighttime and you can
Speaker 1: see the star field and you went outside and looked up,
Speaker 1: you would see the same stars, right right, Okay, But
Speaker 1: the horizons are what's throwing me off the most. The
Speaker 1: ret r e t e. It shows horizons. I don't
Speaker 1: understand what that, what that means, or what you're gonna
Speaker 1: it from that fortunately, and I haven't seen it. But
Speaker 1: supposedly there's going to be a manual, some sort of explanation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'll have it, some sort of uh it.
Speaker 1: Once they open it up for people to come visit.
Speaker 1: There'll be some like a little button you push and
Speaker 1: it will be Morgan Freeman's boy explaining our works or
Speaker 1: what the horizon means. Um If you want to know
Speaker 1: the time of day, though, you have to ask the clock.
Speaker 1: Chuck I thought this was one of the coolest parts
Speaker 1: of this whole deal because they built it to to
Speaker 1: operate at its most frugal over the years, obviously, and
Speaker 1: one thing that you don't need is a current read
Speaker 1: out if no one's there to read it. And so
Speaker 1: they says, well, why don't you ask the clock, like
Speaker 1: you said, So whatever time you see when you approach
Speaker 1: the clock is the last time that it read when
Speaker 1: someone wound not the clock itself, but the clock's face
Speaker 1: right the display the yeah, the clocks. So there's two
Speaker 1: ways to win. The cap stay and that raises the weights,
Speaker 1: and then there's the there's a little hand wheel that
Speaker 1: just one single person can do to wind the clock
Speaker 1: the clocks display and it'll correct itself and say, we'll
Speaker 1: ring it's now you know whatever time it is. And
Speaker 1: here's the horizon, which Josh doesn't get. Here's where the
Speaker 1: moon and sun phases are, and here's what year it
Speaker 1: is with the zero in the front of it. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So the clock always knows what time it is.
Speaker 1: It's just not necessarily displaying it. It's just not gonna
Speaker 1: tell it's asked. Pretty cool, so chuck. Um, there's some
Speaker 1: pretty obvious reasons to choose the inside of a mountain
Speaker 1: to put this clock in earthquake protection, nuclear bomb protection mountains.
Speaker 1: They're they're long lasting, yeah, um. But there's other reasons
Speaker 1: that they chose the interior of a mountain as well, Like, um,
Speaker 1: the differences in temperature between seasons and day within the
Speaker 1: mountain um are very minimal, which means that you're not
Speaker 1: gonna have a freeze thaw cycle, which is apparently very corrosive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's great enough to where you're gonna get the
Speaker 1: energy out of it, right, especially at the top. So
Speaker 1: remember like there's the mountain top that from the entrance
Speaker 1: the bottom of the clock, the top is five feet,
Speaker 1: but the clocks only two d feet, so the extra
Speaker 1: three feet is above there is where the temperature differences
Speaker 1: will really be noticeable. Right. Uh. So they've picked a
Speaker 1: very good place. And also the one in Nevada has
Speaker 1: got similar conditions, I think so, which is why they
Speaker 1: picked that high dried desert, highdried desert. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the parts this is remarkable to me, Um, if you're
Speaker 1: going to construct something at last for ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna want to throw a bunch of thirty
Speaker 1: weight oil in there, because oil uh has the potential
Speaker 1: to fail and leak, and oil will attract dirt like crazy,
Speaker 1: and little hairs in like fuzzy pieces of grit over
Speaker 1: ten thousand years will stop any machine from running. So
Speaker 1: what they did was they barring from NASA, who originally
Speaker 1: developed ceramic bearings to use on satellites. So because you
Speaker 1: don't want to have satellites that need oiling either, uh,
Speaker 1: they used uh ceramic, which nowadays can be harder than diamonds.
Speaker 1: Ceramic bearings, like the moving parts are ceramic. And remember
Speaker 1: earlier I said, like humans haven't made too many things
Speaker 1: that have lasted ten thousand years. Ceramic pot shirts are
Speaker 1: one example of something. Boom Uh we have pot shirts
Speaker 1: that are like seventeen thousand years old, and that's just
Speaker 1: like from a pot. What they're making today should be
Speaker 1: able to last way longer because these parts move so
Speaker 1: slowly they don't require any lubrication. So the ceramic ball
Speaker 1: bearings are keeping the metal parts away from one another,
Speaker 1: because if you have to like metals that are in
Speaker 1: contact and aren't moving really like the millennium dial um
Speaker 1: basically won't move the whole time you or I are alive,
Speaker 1: children are alive. Um. And if you have the same
Speaker 1: kind of metal and like one gear touching the other gear, um,
Speaker 1: they're's gonna fuse together. You know. Micro vibration. I did
Speaker 1: not enlighten me. No, it's micro vibration, Like it's not moving,
Speaker 1: quote unquote, but micro vibration over ten thousand years will
Speaker 1: cause it to weld itself. That's pretty cool. And that's
Speaker 1: if it's a like metal, and if they're unlike, they
Speaker 1: will corrode over time in that right, Yeah, it's um
Speaker 1: galvanic corrosion. If they're dissimilar metals, they'll just eat into
Speaker 1: each other. So either either way, you don't want these
Speaker 1: metals touch you another. So the ceramic ball bearings that
Speaker 1: don't need any lubrication are perfect. It's right. The rest
Speaker 1: of it is made from three sixteen sainless steel, which
Speaker 1: this Alexander guy said that'll last ten thousand years. And
Speaker 1: even if it starts to rust. The movements of this
Speaker 1: clock because it moves so slowly, because it's so large Um,
Speaker 1: the the precision doesn't need to be like thousands of
Speaker 1: an inch, that's what's cool. It can be like a
Speaker 1: quarter of an inch. Last plenty of room for rust, right,
Speaker 1: so if there is rust, it really doesn't matter. And
Speaker 1: also saw where he said in the video that all
Speaker 1: the gear teeth were cut three dimensionally, and uh, what
Speaker 1: that means is it uses rollers to roll the gear,
Speaker 1: so it's a rolling mechanism instead of what he called
Speaker 1: a scrubbing friction. So I guess a rolling friction is
Speaker 1: much easier on the parts and scrubbing. And um, I
Speaker 1: was reading a Wired article on it, and the reporters
Speaker 1: said that he came upon a Geneva wheel, remember their
Speaker 1: eight feet in diameter. Yeah, these are um and they
Speaker 1: had the ceramic ball bearings in it and he could
Speaker 1: turn it very easily with just like gentle pressure from
Speaker 1: his finger. So they're going to be working just fine.
Speaker 1: I can't I want to visit this thing when it's done,
Speaker 1: at least I know I won't see the end, but
Speaker 1: I'd like to be there for the beginning. Well you
Speaker 1: can actually you can go join the long Now Foundation
Speaker 1: at long now dot org. Right, Yeah, they operate on
Speaker 1: don't nations. I don't think we ever even mentioned. It's
Speaker 1: a private organization and funded by people like Bezos. And
Speaker 1: I think the the UM basic membership costs like eight
Speaker 1: bucks a month. Um, you probably have a pretty good
Speaker 1: idea of where your money is going. Uh, their website
Speaker 1: long now dot org, long now dot Oregon. Then there's
Speaker 1: also now ten thousand year clock dot net and that's
Speaker 1: bezos website. Yeah, and there's not a whole lot there yet,
Speaker 1: but no, I mean it's just give overview, but um,
Speaker 1: there's there. We were left out this one part and
Speaker 1: the one in Texas Bezos is millennium Clock. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be little alcoves, different rooms. There's a one year room,
Speaker 1: a ten year room, hundred a thousand and ten thousand
Speaker 1: year room, and like they're leaving it to later civilizations
Speaker 1: to figure out what artifact to put in there. But
Speaker 1: in the one year room they're putting the ory which
Speaker 1: tracks the motion of the calculates the movement of the planets,
Speaker 1: and it also is an animation of I think Voyager
Speaker 1: two on this grand tour of like some of the
Speaker 1: outer planets. UM. And that's going into one year and
Speaker 1: they're going to figure out what to put in the tenure.
Speaker 1: So they're soliciting um ideas from any if you have
Speaker 1: an idea of what you what should be put in
Speaker 1: the ten year alcove. But I guess some of that
Speaker 1: stuff would require electricity though, right, I know, I don't
Speaker 1: think so now, I don't think any of it's going
Speaker 1: to or if it does, it will just be a thermoelectricity. Right,
Speaker 1: So I feel like we covered that pretty well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ten year clock. I mean it's a way more basic
Speaker 1: than it appears like when you first look at it.
Speaker 1: It's like simple gears moving pendulum swinging. It's also going
Speaker 1: up and fully and genius. Though, Yeah, the way they
Speaker 1: put it together overcame problems that it may not encounter
Speaker 1: for thousands of very smart, dudish indies. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about the ten thousand year clock, you
Speaker 1: can type in ten thousand year clock in the search
Speaker 1: bart how stuff works dot com And that I said
Speaker 1: search bar, So that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right, Josh, I'm gonna call this the cone snail
Speaker 1: saved my life. Yes, remember when we talked about the
Speaker 1: cone snail in the Venom podcast No, it wasn't venom.
Speaker 1: What was it? It was? Probably? Was it just called venom? No,
Speaker 1: it's like, what's the most venomous animal on earth? That's right?
Speaker 1: This from David Miami. Hey, guys, love the show. I
Speaker 1: recently listened to the show on venom and you mentioned
Speaker 1: the cone snail. Five years ago, cone snail venom saved
Speaker 1: my life. Was diagnosed with cancer and due to the
Speaker 1: cancer chronic pain. After many years have failed attempts to
Speaker 1: control my pain with conventional medication, I was extremely frustrated
Speaker 1: and still suffering intolerable pain. Luckily, I found out about
Speaker 1: the ziconotide cone snail venom because remember I think we
Speaker 1: talked about scorpion venom being used in cancer. Yeah, that's right, okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: The only problem with using the cone snail venom to
Speaker 1: control pain is that I needed an implant. It can't
Speaker 1: be taken in pill form. One needs to be implanted
Speaker 1: with a hockey puck sized implant that slowly releases the
Speaker 1: medication into my intrathecal fluid. What which is the fluid
Speaker 1: surrounding the spinal cord? I might be pronouncing it wrong.
Speaker 1: Every three months, I need to go in for a
Speaker 1: refill so using a small needle. This guy's like Iron Man.
Speaker 1: The doctor refills the pump that's inside of his body
Speaker 1: with Cone Snail venom. It has been a godsend and
Speaker 1: greatly improved my quality of life and some days I
Speaker 1: am completely pain free. That is cool. So David Miami,
Speaker 1: kudos to you, sir and continued good health. Hats off
Speaker 1: to your medical pioneering. Absolutely, what's old is new again
Speaker 1: and thank you Cone Snail. Yeah, thanks Cone Steele. Uh
Speaker 1: let's see if you have an email about a past
Speaker 1: episode and how it affected your life. We always want
Speaker 1: to hear that kind of thing. Sure, you can tweet
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