WEBVTT - From the Vault: Horror Vacui, Part 4 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.160 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:11.240 is Robert Lamb. I'm recording all of these intros, by 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.240 the way, in Batch while Joe is on holiday leave. 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.239 He has of course since back, and I am speaking 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.880 to you from the past, but that's why you're not 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:22.680 hearing Joe on any of these intros for the Horror 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:26.000 Vacuui series. This, by the way, is part four of 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.680 our series from last year, Horror VACUUEI I hope you 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:30.360 enjoy it. 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.599 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:45.839 Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:47.160 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:49.680 And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:53.040 of our series on horror. Vacui or fear of the 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.920 void or fear of the vacuum, a concept that has 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:00.320 relevance in art and design, where it describes an pulse 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:04.800 to fill in blank or uniform spaces with detail, as 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.399 well as relevance in philosophy and in physics, where it's 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.600 been used to describe the long standing belief, often derived 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:15.360 from Aristotle, that a vacuum or a void could not 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.119 exist in nature, and that empty space was in fact 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:22.480 an incoherent concept. So in the previous episode of this 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.839 one we talked about how this view in physics persisted 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:29.119 through the Middle Ages and part of the early Modern 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:34.400 period in Europe until important experiments by figures like Evangelista Torricelli, 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:36.959 the man with the batman symbol for a mustache, or 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:39.880 rob I think, as you pointed out, the sort of 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:41.320 the crucifix goatee. 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.240 M h yeah, sort of a crucifix Van. 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.680 Dyck, Yeah, yeah, him and in Blaze, Pascal of course 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:52.800 established that an approximate vacuum could actually be created inside 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:57.400 a glass tube, and that the force truly responsible for 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.960 preventing a void from forming in most cases, such as 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:03.320 in the case of like a pump or a siphon, 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:08.960 was not Nature's mysterious hatred for vacuums, but in fact 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.880 the weight of the air we breathe, known today as 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:17.080 atmospheric pressure. But something we alluded to in the previous 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:20.680 episode is also the fact that while the laws of 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:24.440 nature don't exactly rule out a vacuum in the way 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:28.400 that Aristotle and the Scholastics thought, there is also some 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:32.880 nuance to the issue, because you can create an approximate vacuum, 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.440 but it's really hard or perhaps impossible to create a 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:41.119 perfect vacuum, depending on how you define your goals. When 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.040 we talk about a vacuum in like real world examples 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.480 instead of you know, ideal thought experiments, we are never 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:54.280 talking about completely empty spaces with no particles whatsoever. Instead, 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:58.000 we're usually talking about an area where the density of 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:02.320 gas particles is very or the inside of a container 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.240 where the density of gas particles is much lower than 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:09.640 the density of particles on the outside. And the latter 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:12.240 type of vacuum where a container that has a lower 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:17.000 density of gas particles than the world outside, is common 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:21.400 throughout the world of technology and electrical appliances and scientific equipment, 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.000 especially of years past, but still somewhat today. A couple 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:29.200 of classic examples incandescent light bulbs. They make light by 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:31.680 running current through a filament that gets so hot that 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:35.280 it starts to emit photons it starts to glow. But 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:39.440 these bulbs are not full of air at regular atmospheric pressure, 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:41.480 and if they were that would be a problem. The 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:44.440 filament would tend to fail very quickly. That's not good 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:49.360 for incandescent bulbs, so instead they are typically either filled 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:53.280 with an inert gas like argon or nitrogen, or they 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.200 are pumped out to contain a vacuum. The earliest light 0:03:56.200 --> 0:04:00.440 bulbs were vacuum based rather than inert gas based. Another 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:04.240 component used in electronics, one that will be very familiar 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:08.800 to electric guitar players, is vacuum tubes, which were once 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:13.520 commonly used to manipulate current to amplify and rectify electrical signals. 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:18.200 They've been replaced with silicon transistors in most modern devices, 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:20.720 but they still have their uses. And by the way, 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.599 if you want to see something really weird and awesome, 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:29.960 look up pictures of vacuum tube based computers before transistors 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.680 took over to become the logic circuitry inside computers. I 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.480 guess that happened roughly around the sixties or so. But 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:41.159 before that, the information processing in computers was done on 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:45.840 large arrays of vacuum tubes. And I'm very tempted to 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.200 say like that, I wish to see a certain kind 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.680 of computer snobbery arise, where there are like gamers who 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.160 are like, oh, you play on transistors, I've got a 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:56.160 vacuum tube rig. 0:04:57.720 --> 0:04:59.279 Yeah, some of the images that come up from me 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:03.119 they look very there's a mad science quality to these. 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:06.200 They look like there's some sort of strange experiment containing 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:09.400 you know, contained gases or something. 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:11.640 Yeah, it does look like that because they look like 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.080 almost like kind of like pills in a blister pack, 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.280 you know, the little blisters popping out, But they're not 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.200 containing special gases. They are containing lower density of gases. 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:27.320 What those tubes contain is relatively nothing compared to the atmosphere. Now. 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.840 One place tubes are still popular in electrical devices today 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:34.440 is in guitar amplifiers, where a lot of players prefer 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.920 the feeling of playing with tubes as opposed to solid 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:40.000 state amps. Rob, I don't know if you've ever come 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.479 across this debate, you know, sometimes I think people look 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.600 on the tube preference as a kind of snobbery. Personally, 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.200 I can see both sides, Like, I think solid state 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:53.720 amps sound great, but tubes are. They're cool? Yeah. 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.760 Not being a guitar player myself, I rarely get any 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.919 of these conversations and rarely hear any of this. So 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.520 is this something where I know a lot of conversations 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:10.120 for regarding retro technology and music and recording and production, 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:13.680 it actually does come through to the final product. It 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.480 actually is something that affects the final sound of the music. 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:18.520 Is that the case here? 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.440 People argue about this. The people argue about to what 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.800 extent you can hear the difference in something that comes 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:29.440 out of a tube versus a good modern attempt to 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.600 approximate that with transistors. I'm not going to try to 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.960 weigh in on one side of the debate here. Basically, 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.800 my experience is that solid state amps sound fine. They 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.799 sound great, but there's also just something kind of cool 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.960 about tubes. They might kind of feel differently when you're 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.320 playing a guitar through one, especially if you're in the 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:50.920 room with it as opposed to listening to a recording. 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:52.159 I'm not sure. 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:54.720 Yeah, listeners, let us know. Do you think tubes are 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.800 tubular or do you think solid state is solid? I 0:06:57.800 --> 0:06:58.120 don't know. 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:00.279 I will weigh in and say I think it's a 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.040 stupid thing to like get mad at people or criticize 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:06.680 people about one way or another. Calm down, guys, fair enough, 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:09.600 But coming back to the bigger point. In cases like 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:13.000 the vacuum light bulb or the vacuum tube for current amplification, 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:17.320 the area inside the glass in these devices is again 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:21.600 not a perfect vacuum. There are particles of atmosphere in there, 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:24.600 they're just way fewer of them than in an equivalent 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.800 area outside. And there are actually designations for the different 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.280 levels of vacuum that are achieved through technological means. You know, 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:34.560 you can have like a medium vacuum, a high vacuum, 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:40.040 an ultra high vacuum, and so that's what's possible on Earth. 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.880 But then you might be wondering in response to that, 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.520 Wait a minute, though, isn't outer space at least a vacuum. 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:50.360 Isn't the space between the planets or the space between 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.119 the stars at least a vacuum. Again, the answer here 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:56.640 is yes and no. It depends on what you mean. 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:01.560 Space is a vacuum when compared to earth atmosphere, and 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:05.240 it is even lower density than most partial vacuums created 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:08.440 by humans. I was trying to find a good estimate 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.600 for the density of outer space, and I came across 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.280 a couple things in that book I was talking about 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:18.120 In the last episode called the Void by the physicists, 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:22.680 Frank Close, he writes about while he's writing about the 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.920 reasoning that led people to assume that outer space was 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:30.520 a vacuum when scientists such as Blaize Pascal started to 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:34.920 notice that the atmospheric pressure was different at different altitude. 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.199 So you go up on a mountain, the atmospheric pressure 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.280 is lower. That does tend to suggest that if you 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.240 go higher and higher, the density of particles just keeps 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.440 getting lower and lower, and you would eventually reach an 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:51.000 altitude at which there was effectively nowhere to breathe anymore. 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.760 There was no atmosphere anymore, which some people found maybe 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.840 kind of like threatening in principle or maybe threatening to 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:02.440 their theological ideas of how the universe was put together. Nevertheless, 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:04.480 you could show it was true. As you go higher 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.600 and higher the density gets lower. So close, writes quote, 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:10.440 at a height of one hundred kilometers, the pressure is 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.080 less than a billionth of that on the ground, at 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:18.600 four hundred kilometers a million millionth, and en route to 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:21.600 the moon in space it is down by ten to 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.680 the nineteen, an amount that is less than the size 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.600 of a proton compared to a kilometer. We can thus 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.120 say that essentially all of the atmosphere is a thin 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:35.440 shell whose thickness is less than one thousandth of the 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:39.280 Earth's radius. Wow, I don't doubt that's true. But that's 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:41.320 the kind of thing that I don't even I don't 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.160 usually picture it that way. I you know, I picture 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.840 the atmosphere is extending much higher up off the surface 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:48.440 of the Earth. 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:53.360 Yeah, you know. For me, this like the reality of 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:58.160 the thinning of the air at the higher altitude you 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:00.000 get to. This was always kind of spelled out from 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:03.240 by looking at something like the Lockheed you to the 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:08.600 spy aircraft that had these just a super long, super 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:13.080 wide wingspan then enabled it one of several design functions, 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.840 but the most obvious one that enabled it to fly 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.440 at such high altitudes where there is just there's less air. 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:22.960 Yes, the air is thinner, it's harder and harder to 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.599 generate lyft. But okay, that's how much thinner the atmosphere 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:28.920 gets as you extend up off of the surface of 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.959 the Earth. What about when you go even beyond that? Well, 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.360 I came across some sort of quick and dirty estimates 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.240 by a radio astronomer named Alistair Gunn doing a short 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.080 Q and A for the BBC, And note that the 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:46.680 following are approximate. But what gun says is that roughly 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:51.959 within the Solar System space between the planets contains an 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:56.240 average of about five atoms per cubic centimeter, so that's 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.280 very low density, but there's still is gas out there. 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:04.800 It's just extremely dispersed. In interstellar space the space between 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.320 solar systems in our galaxy, so like where you know 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.199 where the voyager probes are eventually headed to, or where 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:16.520 Omuamua came from. That interstellar space has about one atom 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:19.760 per cubic centimeter according to gun here. And then in 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:24.680 intergalactic space, the space between galaxies, the density is about 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:27.959 one hundred times less than that. It gets pretty lonely 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.760 out there, right, but still there are not no particles. 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.400 They just get farther and farther apart on average. So 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.600 the reason space is so empty is of course gravity. 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:42.360 Objects with mass attract one another, so mass tends to 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:46.960 clump together over time, creating this varied terrain of cosmic density, 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.040 with very high density say in the middle of a star, 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:55.320 and still lower density around that star and around the 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.600 planets around that star, and then lower density in between 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.600 the stars, and then lower density in between the galaxies 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:05.160 and so forth. But it wasn't always this way. In 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:09.040 the early history of the universe, matter was dispersed far 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:11.880 more evenly, and you could think of the early universe 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.040 in a way as a kind of well, in a 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.200 strange way, almost kind of like an ocean. I guess 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.199 it wasn't liquid, but like an ocean or a cloud 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:24.520 or something where there were more uniform distributions. But then 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.480 as space expanded that more varied terrain that we know 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:29.640 today influenced by gravity emerged. 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:34.080 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, the accretion of these various 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.800 cosmic bodies of different sizes, and then the resulting sort 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:39.960 of shrinkage between these accretions. 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.680 So in a weird way, you could argue that Aristotle 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:48.040 is kind of technically vindicated in that there probably are 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:53.080 no large scale, long term areas of perfectly empty space 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:56.360 in the universe. But I think that in the normal 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.720 way of understanding Aristotle, he was wrong. You can create 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:04.480 a of functional vacuum, but it's not a perfect vacuum. 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:06.240 Yeah, and it sounds like you can also do a 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:10.400 fair amount of arguing over the size of said vacuum. 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.640 Yeah. This was making me wonder, like, what is the 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:18.840 average density of the universe overall? And so I was 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.760 looking around at that I did find a NASA page 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:24.520 on this This is according to research I think carried 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:28.320 out by w MAP by the Wilkinson Microwave an isotropy 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:32.640 probe that was looking at fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.040 and in a write up on that research by NASA 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.280 that they say, quote w MAP determined that the universe 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:42.360 is flat, from which it follows that the mean energy 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.200 density in the universe is equal to the critical density 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:48.240 within a zero point five percent margin of error. This 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:52.760 is equivalent to a mass density of because as an aside, 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.600 ultimately mass and energy can be exchanged for one another, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.320 they are equivalently. You know, mass is just a huge 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.840 amount of energy. Coming back to the quote, this is 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.680 equivalent to a mass density of nine point nine times 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.080 ten to the negative thirty grams per cubic centimeter. But 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.280 the density of normal matter is not even that high 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.439 because most of the energy density in the universe is 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:18.000 not normal matter. It's dark matter or dark energy. So 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:20.320 maybe normal is not even the right word, because the 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:22.400 kind of matter we're talking about that we're familiar with 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:26.080 is the minority of stuff. Less than five percent of 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:29.040 the stuff in the universe is actually made of atoms. 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:34.800 So the quote actual energy density of atoms is equivalent 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:39.920 to roughly one proton per four cubic meters. So you 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:43.240 can imagine kind of a like a large palette box 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.280 and that's like one proton in there, and that's the 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:48.360 average density of the universe. 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:51.480 Yes, so if we were to like redistribute it, that's 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:52.600 how it would play out. 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.680 I think we should redistribute it. Get a fresh start 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:57.840 on this thing. Now. 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:01.400 These numbers are admittedly maybe a little bit challenging to 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:03.760 sort of picture in your head all the time, But 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:07.960 I do like that we're dealing with hard numbers here. 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:14.160 We're doing with dealing with objective numbers related to the 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:18.240 vacuum and the void, something we don't always have in 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:24.400 this particular journey. Sometimes we're dealing with very very subjective qualities. 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.640 Oh, you mean, like Aristotle's argument that you couldn't have 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.320 empty space because if it not be body, it could 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:32.000 not exist. 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:37.160 Yeah, or certainly getting into some of the philosophical ends 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:39.880 of the spectrum where we're dealing with what's the difference 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:45.680 between emptiness and nothingness, what's the difference between eternity and 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.320 nothing It can get a little loosey goosey. 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.120 Well, the difference between I'm going to defend exploring the 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.040 difference between emptiness and nothingness. I think that is an 0:15:56.200 --> 0:16:00.240 interesting distinction, but one that I'm not sure science has 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:01.600 all the answers on. 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:03.880 Yeah, I mean a lot of it does come down 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:07.720 to the subjective experience. I was talking with my wife 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:09.840 before I came in here, and she brought up the 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:13.480 example of isolation tanks. Isolation tanks being a situation where 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.200 on one level, you have certainly limited your space. You 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.560 were isolated or within a tank. You're floating within a tank, 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:26.000 and therefore you're cutting off how much of the outside 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.160 world you were in. But then there is also something 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:33.240 to the experience that is boundary breaking. You know, floating 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.720 in this salt bath that is the same temperature as 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:40.360 your body serves to sort of break down the division 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:44.880 between where you stop and the rest of the world begins. So, yeah, 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:46.840 there are plenty of cases like you don't have to 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.960 have an isolation tank to engage in that kind of 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:53.680 boundary dispute, you know. 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:58.200 I think it's interesting that people often seek maybe not 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:02.600 isolation tanks exactly, but isolation from stimuli specifically in order 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.560 to be creative, and that kind of strange that almost 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:09.240 implies that they think a principle of psychological horror vacay 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.080 is going to come into effect, right, that if you 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:16.480 rob yourself of the normal overwhelming stimuli of everyday existence, 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:19.680 you will get your eyes like, you will team with ideas. 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:22.760 Yeah, but it is one of these things too, where 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:25.800 it's like a lot of times you're just you're just 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:32.400 changing out one high stimuli environment for another, and maybe 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.080 it's just a new one, a novel one. Like when 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:36.200 you go to the beach and you walk on the beach. Yeah, 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.639 it's a different experience than being stuck in a city 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:41.800 or in a library or in your own house. But 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:44.080 I mean that there's a lot going on at the beach. 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:47.760 You know, there's crashing waves and expanses of sand and 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:51.399 birds and all sorts of little shells to look at. Likewise, 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.440 of course, a walk through the woods is just I mean, 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.120 we've talked about this before on the podcast, Like your 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:00.520 your senses are able to fully engage age in the 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.520 environment for which they have evolved, taking in all these 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:08.119 details and changing details in the world around you. 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:10.800 Oh yeah, that does relate to these theories about how 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:15.240 nature tends to engage our attention in a different way 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:20.800 than built environments do, and that essentially that I've forgotten 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:22.879 all the details of exactly what that theory is, but 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.640 it that nature can basically be absorbing to the attention 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:29.960 but essentially not stress inducing. 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:32.360 I think, yeah, And of course it is not even 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:37.879 getting into social isolation cutting yourself off from wanted and 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:42.400 unwanted social connections. Certainly there's a lot to be said 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:46.000 for cutting yourself off from the connection to one's smart 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:48.200 device and the Internet and so forth. 0:18:57.720 --> 0:18:59.800 Finally, before we move on from this, I was wondering, 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.240 what are the superlatives in terms of vacuums created by 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.200 humans in the laboratory or with the aid of technology. 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:11.400 What's the lowest pressure humans can achieve. I'm not sure 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.280 what the answer is in terms of the lowest pressure overall, 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:17.760 but I definitely came across a contender, and it is 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.920 certainly one of the most impressive artificial vacuum systems ever 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:24.440 created by humans, if not the lowest pressure. And it's 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:28.400 actually the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:32.720 which is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:37.160 or CERN. I believe it is still the largest vacuum 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.119 system in operation in the world. It was certainly at 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.520 the time it was put together, and I can't think 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.560 of what would be larger than it. But it has 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:49.320 more than one hundred kilometers of piping held in a 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:51.879 state of vacuum for various purposes. There has to be 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:55.919 ultra high vacuum piping for the actual particle beams to 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:59.000 travel through so that like the accelerated particles don't collide 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:02.600 with gas molecule and ruin the experiments. I'm not sure 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.200 what would happen if they did collide. Maybe it could 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.440 be worse than ruining experiments. Certainly wouldn't be good. You 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:11.240 don't want it. But there are also advanced vacuum systems 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.640 used to like insulate other elements of the collider, such 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:18.840 as the magnets or the helium distribution line. So a 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:23.200 lot of evacuated space going on at the LHC facility, 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.840 and it's at extremely low density. They compare various vacua 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:32.199 that they create to the density of interstellar space, so 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.560 that is horror vacuity in physics. But one thing I've 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.000 been wanting to come back to is the fear of 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.560 emptiness or the fear of empty spaces as an actual 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:45.000 literal fear that humans feel the kind of uneasiness that 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:48.600 one experiences in a depopulated space. 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:54.680 Yeah, this topic of chinophobia and some other related terms. 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:57.840 I figure a good place to start on all of 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:00.960 this might be to return to cinema. We talked a 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:05.120 little bit about cinema earlier in this journey, and in fact, 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.959 we talked about the nineteen seventy seven Dario Argento horror 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:13.919 classic Suspiria, and there's a scene in that film that 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:17.399 instantly came to mind when I was thinking about this fear, 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:22.040 this horror associated with depopulated spaces. Like you're saying, and 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:26.080 if you've seen Suspiria the original, though I really like 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:29.159 the remake as well, and I don't think they recreated 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:31.080 this scene in the remake, but I could be wrong. 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.399 This scene involves a blind man walking through an open, 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.200 unoccupied city plaza at night. There are no other human 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:42.720 beings in sight, the environment is pretty well illuminated, though 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.840 there are still some deep pockets of shadow. There's a 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:49.320 growing sense of threat and terror and eventually, and I 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:51.480 think we get some very wide shots here too to 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:55.800 really take in all that space, and then as the 0:21:55.880 --> 0:21:59.200 tension builds, the dog begins to bark, and in a 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:01.640 nasty twist, because again this is a Gilat film and 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:05.760 they're often nasty, the dog turns on the blind man 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:09.600 and kills him. But the way the scene builds up 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:12.840 to that moment takes just full advantage of this very 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:18.000 open space, this feeling that there's just something wrong in 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:20.520 the openness of all of this, that there's just this 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:24.080 one individual and his dog out here and something terrible 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:24.919 is about to happen. 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:27.920 I think this scene is a fantastic example, especially because 0:22:27.960 --> 0:22:32.800 of how different it is than than most of most 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:35.760 of Suspiria and most of other you know, Italian horror 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.440 films or Gallo films, which we noted in the first 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:43.280 episode in the series are They are often recognized for 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:46.680 being especially visually busy, you know, they have that artistic 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:50.280 sense of horror vacui, as in, you sense a desire 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:53.480 to fill in all empti or uniform spaces with detail 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:56.800 and richness and stuff. You know, they're full of patterns, 0:22:57.400 --> 0:22:59.119 and so I think the scene of you know, the 0:22:59.160 --> 0:23:02.160 man who is unfortunately cursed by the witches and then 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:06.680 this attack happens on him. It gets especially scary because 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:09.080 it's so unlike the rest of the movie, having all 0:23:09.119 --> 0:23:12.760 this emptiness and blank space in the night. But I 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:16.040 was thinking about this and about how the horror genre 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:22.199 in particular tends to favor blank, vacant, empty locations in 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:26.600 multiple ways. So one way is that they tend to 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:30.080 favor settings that are like literally emptied in the narrative sense. 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:33.680 They are literally emptied of human activity or neglected by 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:37.400 humans in some way. So think of how much horror 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:42.080 loves like abandoned or empty buildings and settlements. Maybe the 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:44.680