Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, have
Speaker 1: you ever raised sea monkeys? I have? Yeah, Well are
Speaker 1: you disappointed? Um? Yeah, a little bit, But I think
Speaker 1: I was more intrigued by the atmosphere that they were
Speaker 1: living in, Like that seems really magical. Well on the package,
Speaker 1: it looks magical because it shows these little creatures living
Speaker 1: and they have like a little undersea kingdom, and then
Speaker 1: you expect that to take place to up and it
Speaker 1: doesn't really happen. Now it doesn't, but I was taken
Speaker 1: with that. I thought, oh yes, finally, Well, like like
Speaker 1: growing sprouts is I find that to be far more satisfying.
Speaker 1: And at the end I have, like something delicious put
Speaker 1: on a sandwich. Sea monkeys not that delicious, No, not
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah. There are a species of brine shrimp, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not to take away them as stake here,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah they're not. They're not actually you know,
Speaker 1: hominid's in any way, shape or form. Yeah, tiny seaman.
Speaker 1: But according to their packaging, they are a true miracle.
Speaker 1: Of nature. Yes, well, I mean everything is really but
Speaker 1: but you know there's uh these undersea kingdoms that they had,
Speaker 1: like it, like it really captured my imagination. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people's imagination is because because there's something
Speaker 1: like in the Psyche that just wants to see underwater cities. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess it's just the like the just impossible nature
Speaker 1: of it, the sort of topsy turvy world aspect of it.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean if you think about it geographically,
Speaker 1: it is like the Earth turned upside down or not
Speaker 1: the Earth, but that what we see there as land lovers. Um,
Speaker 1: So why wouldn't you want to hang out in that
Speaker 1: submerged mountain range? Yeah? And it's you know, it's the
Speaker 1: mystery of it too, like the what's underneath the water?
Speaker 1: You know, and see some fish something that looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a mermaid. Yeah, and then there's a whole
Speaker 1: tranquil thing. Yeah. Yeah, and you know it's like your
Speaker 1: wait list and it's yeah, it's uh so it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's an idea that's been exploring in a number
Speaker 1: of times, like just to run through like a few
Speaker 1: of the famous ones, like in in myth you have
Speaker 1: the Lost Cities of s and Atlantis. Yes, um, yes,
Speaker 1: yes you do. Oh. I thought you're correcting because I
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly sure how to pronounce because it looks kind
Speaker 1: of like yees and it and it's I thought it
Speaker 1: was pronounced like S, but it could be yes, the
Speaker 1: city of Yes. Yes, no, I was just agreeing they
Speaker 1: are mythic. You have the City of Rapture in the
Speaker 1: Bioshot games. You have Lions in the War and War
Speaker 1: Gods of the Deep. You have the Lost City of
Speaker 1: Atlanta and Futurama. Did you ever see that one? It's
Speaker 1: like the city of Atlanta, which where we're podcasting from,
Speaker 1: is completely submerged and people live in it. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to seek that one out. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's not I mean, it's it's like an outsider's critique. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, does it have Marta, Does it
Speaker 1: have like like for underground Atlanta. Yeah, because an insider's
Speaker 1: view of the Lost City of Atlantis, I think would
Speaker 1: would be a lot more interesting, at least to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: because what happens to Marto when it's when it's submerged,
Speaker 1: it's still late. Yeah, you have of course, uh uh
Speaker 1: sub Diego of Aquaman. You have the city of and
Speaker 1: I'm never sure pronounced this, even though I've read Lovecraft
Speaker 1: numerous times. We have the city of really really a yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I've always wondered yea, yeah. I always just
Speaker 1: think of it as like Caulu town, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: right yeah? And then uh, and then you have you
Speaker 1: have like various like mechanical underwater cities that have popped up,
Speaker 1: like um, I like or not or not always cities,
Speaker 1: but sometimes just habitats. I have anyone who's seen any
Speaker 1: of them. Like the late nineties, I feel like it
Speaker 1: was when we had just tons of underwater base underwater city,
Speaker 1: uh situation showing up in the films you have like
Speaker 1: the Abyss, you had Deep Star six, you had the
Speaker 1: Leviath than the Lords of the deep Water World water World?
Speaker 1: Did they ever go into what I've never seen water World?
Speaker 1: I haven't either actually think that they not having seen
Speaker 1: it though, um, I think that they just created like
Speaker 1: a bunch of floating areas, floating cities. So nonetheless they
Speaker 1: were on the water. Well, they were on the water.
Speaker 1: They might have had stuff, yeah, slightly. I bet they
Speaker 1: took a swim every once in a while. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the unfilmed sequel maybe, But but but anyway, outside of
Speaker 1: the realm of myth and fantasy and science fiction, we
Speaker 1: we've actually looked into this, uh through through a number
Speaker 1: of experiments, and it's an idea that continues to capture
Speaker 1: the imagination and it and often ends up spilling over
Speaker 1: into a scientific inquiry. Yeah. And it seems to me
Speaker 1: like like the nineteen fifties saw a really big fascination
Speaker 1: with us and that this has some parallels with space colonization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same sort of idea where we could enter this
Speaker 1: mysterious um quiescent space and live our lives in a
Speaker 1: completely different way. Yeah, and he goes back like anytime
Speaker 1: you look at like the like the Walt Disney you know,
Speaker 1: I've got Center Visions of Tomorrow or you know, the
Speaker 1: World of Tomorrow, and it was, you know, it was
Speaker 1: always like we're totally we're gonna do it, guys. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have cities on the moon, We're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: live underwater and cities. I mean, it was just this
Speaker 1: since that same sense of optimism that that you know,
Speaker 1: that told us that with science at our side. You know,
Speaker 1: the stars are ours and it's you know, so of
Speaker 1: course the ocean is also within our grass. Of course.
Speaker 1: Of the funny thing now is it's driven by pessimism,
Speaker 1: I think, because it's like, well, hm, we're really eating
Speaker 1: up all the natural resources here and taking up a
Speaker 1: lot of land. Maybe we should explore the oceans a
Speaker 1: little bit more. Maybe that's possible to live underneath them. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where it's like, oh, well, the the environment is not
Speaker 1: going too hot. Everything's gonna be underwater anyway, right, so
Speaker 1: can we make it everything float or make it just
Speaker 1: all waterproof? So New York City. Maybe it's just a
Speaker 1: chain of little lisle ins and underground pods. Who knows.
Speaker 1: So one of the first that really comes to mind,
Speaker 1: like like when when this is when people were actually like,
Speaker 1: let's let's do it. Let's let's try it out. Because
Speaker 1: on the on the surface, on the on the surface
Speaker 1: of things, like the idea sounds pretty simple, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you're not familiar with any of the
Speaker 1: the science involved, just like, well, let's just build something underwater.
Speaker 1: You know, you saw it's air tight, pump some air
Speaker 1: down to it, and people will live in it, right,
Speaker 1: will be like the chunnel. Yeah, but it's it gets
Speaker 1: a lot more complicated than that. And when one of
Speaker 1: the the main guys who is really looking into this
Speaker 1: UM in the late fifties or like sixties was of
Speaker 1: course Custo. So wait, oh, I thought you were okay,
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna do more of a French tech
Speaker 1: on Custo because I feel like I'm not getting the
Speaker 1: proper Okay, it's just one syllable is that I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway, not my forte jacqu Custos. Let's try your
Speaker 1: more Italian see okay? Um. But Jacquesto had the con
Speaker 1: Shelf project and this was a series of three underwater
Speaker 1: habitats that they explored and and it it gets right
Speaker 1: into the idea of the aquanot, which is like the
Speaker 1: astronaut except underwater. Basically it's just going down for an
Speaker 1: extended period of time and adapting to the pressure. UH
Speaker 1: scuba divers living and operating both inside and outsider and underwater. Right,
Speaker 1: and to be in a specific about and we're not
Speaker 1: talking about David Blaine like doing some sort of like
Speaker 1: seventeen minutes done under the water. Um, but it's more
Speaker 1: about someone living in an underwater habitat or using storm
Speaker 1: sort of device for twenty four hours or more in
Speaker 1: order to explore the area around him or herself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one of these that Jacques Cousteau and company
Speaker 1: pulled off was con shelf one. And this is two.
Speaker 1: And this is just off the cop the coast of
Speaker 1: France near Marcellus. And uh, they just went down about
Speaker 1: they went down thirty three ft ten and this is
Speaker 1: this thing just looks like a big steel, yellow barrel
Speaker 1: about sixteen ft five meters long, you know, uh, eight
Speaker 1: ft two point five meters in diameter. And it was
Speaker 1: a you know, it's like a home laboratory. Two guys
Speaker 1: in there one week, thirty people observing from the surface,
Speaker 1: monitoring these guys health, um and uh. And they'd leave
Speaker 1: the two for five hour shifts to study see life
Speaker 1: work on an underwater farm, which sounds fabulous and uh
Speaker 1: and and and again they're just like they weren't actually like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, we got to you know, get
Speaker 1: a crop going this week. It is you know, it's
Speaker 1: more like, let's let's observe what would happen if we
Speaker 1: actually did have people down on the you know, the
Speaker 1: bottom of of of the of the ocean working on something.
Speaker 1: Let's let's look at their vitals. Let's see how they're doing. Right,
Speaker 1: And it's a really practical solution to right, because they
Speaker 1: don't have to decompress, they don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: coming up. Um, so if they're able to hang out
Speaker 1: there for a while, then they can you know, a
Speaker 1: mass a lot of data, look at it, continue to
Speaker 1: go out, so on and so forth. Yeah, because just
Speaker 1: just without getting to a whole lot of depth about
Speaker 1: the about the bins, but you go down to certain
Speaker 1: you go down to certain depths, you have more pressure
Speaker 1: and that causes the gas and the breathable air to
Speaker 1: dissolve into your flesh, right, the nitrogen. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: you surface too fast, you get nitrogen bubbles, which can
Speaker 1: be exceedingly painful or fatal. So which means, you know,
Speaker 1: the longer you stay down, the longer you need to
Speaker 1: come back up. Yeah. Right, And it was originally called
Speaker 1: the Grecian bend, by the way, the Grecian Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know what maybe they attributed like bending to the Grecians.
Speaker 1: I don't know, they observe people bending over. Oh, Wow.
Speaker 1: So it's actually like you would come up and just
Speaker 1: be bent over, Yeah, doubled over. And I know that.
Speaker 1: So Concheff one was a success there. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just sort of like, let's test it out. Let's see
Speaker 1: because this hadn't really been done before. You know, you
Speaker 1: have guys going down the submarine. Sure, you know, you
Speaker 1: had people have been diving under water to catch fish,
Speaker 1: and and you know in Jacques Cousto, certainly it's spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time developing you know, you know, scuba
Speaker 1: aqualung technology. But but this was a real first Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty groundbreaking and um even though it
Speaker 1: was basically like a low tech uh sort of, it
Speaker 1: was like a shipping container. Basically, it's low tech in
Speaker 1: in terms of what we think of today. But and
Speaker 1: you you look at images from the inside and it
Speaker 1: looks like two dudes living in a big barrel. Like
Speaker 1: it looks kind of it looks rugged. It's not yes,
Speaker 1: socks everywhere, it's not pretty. Yeah, it's not very Steve
Speaker 1: z sue. It's just like like guys living in a barrel. Um.
Speaker 1: So so that this was a success, so they're like,
Speaker 1: let's try something a little more ambitious. Let's um, let's
Speaker 1: actually maybe leave you know, our French backyard here and
Speaker 1: and you know, improved that we can do this in
Speaker 1: a in a in a more exotic location. So they
Speaker 1: went to the Red Sea and uh and and and
Speaker 1: went down this time again ten meters in uh thirty
Speaker 1: three ft and con shelf two had like three different facilities,
Speaker 1: basically two main facilities. There was a starfish house, which
Speaker 1: doesn't look at so much like a starfish, but it
Speaker 1: had like a central hub and like these little areas
Speaker 1: come sticking off from the side. Um, when we do
Speaker 1: a blog post for the round up for these podcasts
Speaker 1: for this week's podcast, I'll be sure to you know,
Speaker 1: throw a link to a couple of good sites that
Speaker 1: have lots of cool images of these. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: they the main starfish house contained crew quarters, bathroom facilities,
Speaker 1: a dining area, a laboratory. So suddenly everything's at everything
Speaker 1: is a lot more life aquatic, a lot more you know,
Speaker 1: like we think of as an undersea base and less
Speaker 1: like a barrel right there, thinking more esthetically now, yeah,
Speaker 1: and next the next door to this, they have a
Speaker 1: structure that they call the aquarium, which was basically a
Speaker 1: garage for the fly for the diving saucer vehicle that
Speaker 1: they had, which you know, cool little submersible unit UM
Speaker 1: for zooming around underwater uh an equipment hangar. And then
Speaker 1: they also had a complex called Deep Station, which was
Speaker 1: located UM eight eighty two feet deep, so it was
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you know, it was even deeper
Speaker 1: than than the main station. And this is a hat
Speaker 1: and a habitat filled with oxygen helium mixture, with the
Speaker 1: inhabitants divers leaving the habitat to do daily work below
Speaker 1: one sixty feet. Okay, is this the one that they
Speaker 1: spent a month in? Yes? Yeah, five Yeah, five m
Speaker 1: aqua nuts or ocean knots would live Frenchy. No, I
Speaker 1: really think that. Yeah, they call uh five. Five of
Speaker 1: these guys with one or of gals. I think they
Speaker 1: were all guys in this though, would live for a
Speaker 1: month in the Starfish base. Two of them would spend
Speaker 1: a week in the Deep Station. And once more project
Speaker 1: was successful and Custo began talking about a third project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again I see the parallels here between this and space. Right,
Speaker 1: Like there's you completely isolated, You're with very few people.
Speaker 1: I mean that even though they they've gotten a little
Speaker 1: bit more pimped out here, you're it's still esthetically like
Speaker 1: not like it is at home. The comfort level it
Speaker 1: is isn't as great. And you have to wonder about
Speaker 1: the psychological ramifications of this too. Yeah, just basic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like you get down to the basics of humans
Speaker 1: need sunlight, and the deeper you go, the less sunlight
Speaker 1: there is, you know, a weird habitat plus being like
Speaker 1: soggy all the time. That's gotta it's gotta chief. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to say nothing of the athletes foot or maybe it's
Speaker 1: called con shelf foot um with those in the new Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but actually, you know, we talked about the space expiation.
Speaker 1: A lot of the data that came out of this
Speaker 1: and other experiments in the in the early sixties. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was stuff that they could they were able to
Speaker 1: apply to contemplating, you know, the habitats in the orbit.
Speaker 1: This presensation is brought to you by Intel sponsors. Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Now we're up to and this is con Shelf three,
Speaker 1: the third and final um underwater habitat. And this was
Speaker 1: like the Oldman. This was like a large yellow and
Speaker 1: black six person sphere which was lowered to a depth
Speaker 1: of oft. So the crew lived on con shelf three
Speaker 1: for three weeks, venturing out each day to work in
Speaker 1: a mock up oil well and uh, you know, just
Speaker 1: to you know, test their ability to you know, to
Speaker 1: leave this thing and work and then come back. And
Speaker 1: again it was a success. They were they were able
Speaker 1: to show that, yes, we can put people down there
Speaker 1: on you know, at a at a considerable depth, and
Speaker 1: they can they can actually operate and work within this
Speaker 1: you know, this time limits. So right, and actually U
Speaker 1: three hundred feet is is the norm, right for what
Speaker 1: we usually go down to in terms of depth that
Speaker 1: we have access to. Yeah, yeah, because otherwise than you
Speaker 1: get down into the really cool extreme a file territory,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Yeah. So this was really pushing personal
Speaker 1: the envelope um. At the same time, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy was interested in this too, and so they had
Speaker 1: the Sea Lab programs, which this is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I did not mention s Lab one earlier because
Speaker 1: I didn't want to confuse the issue. But this is
Speaker 1: the actual sea lab, not to be confused with any
Speaker 1: cartoon uh some sixty four Sea Lab one. And this
Speaker 1: was this was very like the Sea Lab like con
Speaker 1: Shell rolled out in three phases, very similar. Sea Lab
Speaker 1: one was a you know, windowless red ciland cylinder had
Speaker 1: four guys in it eleven days performing physical biological experiments.
Speaker 1: Uh um. You know they were doing stuff with like
Speaker 1: ultrasonic beacons and anti shark cages again just to see
Speaker 1: how they performed. And this is off the off Panama City, Florida.
Speaker 1: And then they they moved it about twenty six miles
Speaker 1: southwestern Bermuda and tried it out two hundred feet and
Speaker 1: it was a success. So they did Sea Lab two
Speaker 1: in sixty five and this was this was out in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and they had ten men depth of two
Speaker 1: hundred feet thirty days. Uh. There was another cylinder type situation.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't as cool. I mean, it's just me,
Speaker 1: but it's not as cool looking as they cond shelf too.
Speaker 1: But that too, was was bigger, looked kind of like
Speaker 1: a little submarine. And and they they conducted you know,
Speaker 1: physiological psychological studies. Yeah, that's what I think is interesting
Speaker 1: about this party. They took a lot of what they
Speaker 1: learned from conch off right because cont originally I think
Speaker 1: was was pitched to them, and they said no, and
Speaker 1: coast and they do their own thing. Yeah, Jacosta said,
Speaker 1: I'll take it on. So it's what I think is
Speaker 1: interesting about Sea Lab is that they really are looking
Speaker 1: at this like the psychological strains and the physiological strains
Speaker 1: on the person as well. Yeah, and the number of
Speaker 1: experiments that they did on Sea Lab two was actually
Speaker 1: pretty cool, like that they just really threw a lot
Speaker 1: of task at these guys, Like, uh, they were evaluating
Speaker 1: the struck full engineering at the habitat they worked up on.
Speaker 1: They work on the mock up for a submarine hole.
Speaker 1: They tested undersea tools, they used uh um, like like
Speaker 1: foam to raise an old Navy jet fighter to the surface.
Speaker 1: They experimented with plants um and they also experimented with
Speaker 1: a trained porpoise named Toughie to do quote courier work
Speaker 1: between the habitat and the surface. Um so tough uh
Speaker 1: and Tofy was trained, uh yeah, trained to respond to
Speaker 1: a buzzer and uh, Toffy would apparently did a pretty
Speaker 1: good job of bringing them male tools and bottles of soda,
Speaker 1: which I don't know, it sounds kind of demeaning, but no,
Speaker 1: but I mean there's part of that part of that
Speaker 1: sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, who
Speaker 1: hasn't trained their dog to probably get them a beer?
Speaker 1: Will not me because I don't have a dog, But
Speaker 1: it's always seemed like a good thing to do. Has
Speaker 1: the cat been able to succeed in that yet? Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll keep working now. I mean he's he's working on
Speaker 1: bigger projects. Yeah, that he can't discuss with me. Well. Sadly,
Speaker 1: Sea Lab three UM, which was similar to see Lab two,
Speaker 1: just kind of like more robust. Uh. It ended up
Speaker 1: being kind of a disaster unfortunately, And this was February nine.
Speaker 1: They lowered it down to the ocean floor off off
Speaker 1: the coast of California. They sent four divers down to
Speaker 1: repair hey, helium leak on Sea Lab three, and enduring
Speaker 1: the attempt, one of the divers died, apparently of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide asphyxiation. Yeah. Yeah, so they were concerned about their
Speaker 1: safety and they just shut it down. I mean this
Speaker 1: is the rub right, the CEO two problem. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is obviously why we can't um colonize
Speaker 1: oceans like you for the oceans, I suppose, UM, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that we don't continue to try and
Speaker 1: build really like macked out stuff like the trilobus. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this one's really um, really awesome looking. Uh. This particular
Speaker 1: submersible habitat was the cover story for Popular Mechanics back
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, so you may have seen it there.
Speaker 1: I'll throw a link up to the to the website.
Speaker 1: It has the images so cool. It's really really I
Speaker 1: dare say, boss, Yes, you know it looks like like
Speaker 1: James Bond villain should be living in it and feeding
Speaker 1: people to sharks. Um, it's true. And it's it's like
Speaker 1: a sphere, right yeah, it's got different levels. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very like retro to me. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like a like a space clam
Speaker 1: that lives. It's it's it's really cool, but the clam
Speaker 1: part being like the the where the windows are and yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has like lots of areas you know, for
Speaker 1: uns set by the set by the window and observe
Speaker 1: you know, fish and dolphins swimming by. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's definitely for the godfly of the seas,
Speaker 1: right um. And it's got a spiral staircase connecting all
Speaker 1: four levels. Yeah. So it's neat. We'll see if it
Speaker 1: ever actually gets built, but the designs out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I like about it too is that they say
Speaker 1: that the shape allows for modular aggregation, creating colonies if
Speaker 1: you'd like. So, I mean to me, I think of
Speaker 1: it as like this super futuristic suslito. You know, these
Speaker 1: sort of they're not houseboats but necessarily, but these communities
Speaker 1: they kind of like hook up and yeah. Right, you
Speaker 1: can have like a whole community of trilobus if you'd
Speaker 1: like trilobi um and and there then there, of course
Speaker 1: is We've we discussed this a little bit in Life
Speaker 1: on the five Floor. But you have you have Hydropolis,
Speaker 1: which is the planned underwater skyscraper in Dubahi, right yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's this time right now. It's I think it's
Speaker 1: still in the works a k a. Being crushed by
Speaker 1: the economy, so I don't know where they are in
Speaker 1: the process, but it does sound like this completely crazy
Speaker 1: super fly. Of course, this is in Dubai, right, so
Speaker 1: it's it's not going to be a junkie star sure, um,
Speaker 1: but it includes a shopping mall, restaurants, movie theater, and
Speaker 1: my favorite, the missile defense system. All sixty ft underwater.
Speaker 1: But you know, the economy has been rough on everybody,
Speaker 1: so in Goodbye, they just send to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna tighten the belt. We're just gonna build the
Speaker 1: largest skyscrapers that have ever been erected on the planet. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll just we'll just hold off on building underwater
Speaker 1: skyscrapers that are protected by a town of weapons, right exactly.
Speaker 1: But what I like about this is that, you know,
Speaker 1: a poor man's Hydropolis is the Jewels Undersea Lodge Um,
Speaker 1: which is named after the author of Two Leagues under
Speaker 1: the Sea, and that is actually the world's first underwater hotel.
Speaker 1: And it was originally built in the seventies as a
Speaker 1: research lab off the coast of Puerto Rico, and it
Speaker 1: was relocated to Key Largo in eighties six and opened
Speaker 1: its hatch to the public then. But it's twenty one
Speaker 1: ft under the sea and you have to scooba dive
Speaker 1: to get to it. So unlike Hydropolis, which they plan
Speaker 1: to have like this crazy clear glass um tube that
Speaker 1: shoots you underneath. It's like in Futurama where they have
Speaker 1: these these tubes these shoot people like pneumatic tubes that yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and supposedly it is supposed to be in the shape
Speaker 1: of a jellyfish or resemble a jellyfish. I don't know
Speaker 1: really how that works, but that seems like more like
Speaker 1: a subway system to me. Yeah, maybe they can work
Speaker 1: and making the overall design even more ambitious, right right,
Speaker 1: or they could you know, save some money in stream land. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, they're there are different ways that you
Speaker 1: can get at living undersea if you'd like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you are the gadfly about town. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting things we're looking at the other day too, is
Speaker 1: that you have the National Science Foundations Ocean Observations Initiative.
Speaker 1: It kind of forces you It's it's a really really
Speaker 1: kind of it's a complex, multi scale observatory plan where
Speaker 1: you have uh it's like, you know, everything from like
Speaker 1: this very regional observations uh of of the undersea environment
Speaker 1: to kind of interconnect into a global um it's kind
Speaker 1: of like putting spy cameras. Like the very rough explanation
Speaker 1: is like let's put spy cameras and sensors automated on
Speaker 1: the ocean floor. Let's have you know, automated submersible sort
Speaker 1: of going on patrol and checking out conditions. Right, Let's
Speaker 1: collect data on every single thing we could collect data on,
Speaker 1: and you know, let's run fiber optic um lines all
Speaker 1: over the place, like you said, cameras, Let's have platforms
Speaker 1: that we can observe, submersibles, anything and everything. Because the
Speaker 1: idea is that the entire world can benefit from better
Speaker 1: knowing its oceans and that we can help to predict
Speaker 1: climate change. Um, we can look at the population of
Speaker 1: uh species and really better understand what's going on because
Speaker 1: right now, I mean the ocean is largely unknown to us. Again,
Speaker 1: parallel to space, um, I mean, you know, it's covering
Speaker 1: more of the world. So it does kind of make
Speaker 1: you say, okay, that that seems like it might be
Speaker 1: a good idea. Yeah, And it's an interesting parallel of
Speaker 1: the space too, because like both visions of us, you know,
Speaker 1: moving under the ocean and moving into into the cosmos,
Speaker 1: Like it was very much tied with the scientific exsporation.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go down there and figure out how things work.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go up there and and and figure out
Speaker 1: what space is all about. And eventually that the technology
Speaker 1: reaches the point where We're like, well, we can actually
Speaker 1: do that easier without you know, trying to tackle all
Speaker 1: these problems involving how to take a fragile human being
Speaker 1: that's that's designed to live in a certain layer of
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere. How are you going to you know,
Speaker 1: create the technology to safely send that into orbit or
Speaker 1: into you know, pressurized depths when we can just send
Speaker 1: robots instead, and and you know, and the idea is
Speaker 1: understanding what's going on down there, so you know we
Speaker 1: can This is a classic example. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: lot like robotic probes, you know, it's it's we can
Speaker 1: do this without necessarily sending people down there, right right.
Speaker 1: And the the oceanographer John Delaney, who's heading up the
Speaker 1: team working on this, he was actually saying, I mean,
Speaker 1: he wasn't saying this was the holy Grail, but I
Speaker 1: was thinking about as the holy grail in the sense
Speaker 1: um that it's a quest to better understand our world.
Speaker 1: But not only that, that beneath the on the ocean floor,
Speaker 1: there's all this biomass tied up living in microbes. Um
Speaker 1: they're living in the sea cracks are but no beneath
Speaker 1: the floor, and the total amount of biomass living at
Speaker 1: the surface of Um. The ocean floor actually exceeds that
Speaker 1: of the planet's surface. So his idea is, could it,
Speaker 1: you know, could it be the next rainforce in terms
Speaker 1: of potential pharmaceuticals And that's that's the holy grail element
Speaker 1: that I think that is really enticing, but also you know,
Speaker 1: could be a red herring. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it would be really interesting to defind out what sort
Speaker 1: of bacteria is there and could it be useful to us. Now,
Speaker 1: the flip side of that is, OK, when you start
Speaker 1: to interrupt ecosystems, because presumably there would be some level
Speaker 1: of interruption when you're laying on the cable, which we've
Speaker 1: done a lot anyway, UM and you have all these submersibles,
Speaker 1: you know, what is it doing to the oceans? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, on one level, it's like we're already
Speaker 1: laying We've been putting a lot of crap down there
Speaker 1: for riches, and you know, we're erecting you know, oil
Speaker 1: rigs and and and everything else. But you know, this
Speaker 1: would be for a much more positive purpose. But still
Speaker 1: you're laying laying a lot of cable. You're you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're putting a lot of machines out there. Stuff
Speaker 1: is gonna you know, there's gonna be a certain amount
Speaker 1: of litter that's gonna Yeah, and if you're if you're
Speaker 1: going to try to map the entire ocean with sonar,
Speaker 1: what is that going to do to the population of
Speaker 1: you know, dolphins? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we already have examples
Speaker 1: of of a certain like navy and certain Navy sonar
Speaker 1: techniques that are interfering with with with certain types of
Speaker 1: whales and dolphins right in the breedy and and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're getting it's I guess it's sort of confusing them
Speaker 1: in terms of what they're perceiving from the sonar. So
Speaker 1: there's that question. I mean, it really is intriguing to
Speaker 1: to be able to find out more. And what if
Speaker 1: there is a sort of rainforest at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the sea for us, a mermaid kingdom and we or
Speaker 1: you know, or you know, or we've discovered the los
Speaker 1: city of Atlantis and we took them off with our
Speaker 1: robots and they attack us. It could happen. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're like Richard Branson, you just get into your submersible
Speaker 1: and use zoom away. And I'm not kidding. Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I keep forgetting that he has a submersible. I end
Speaker 1: up end up reading far more about his interest in
Speaker 1: space and right again, here we go. He can't help
Speaker 1: himself either space and um in the ocean. It's called
Speaker 1: the neck or nymph. I know it's a I mean
Speaker 1: the name, I'm sorry, but the Necker part is Necker Island,
Speaker 1: which he owns, his private island. And the nymph part,
Speaker 1: I suppose its supposed to be a scene nymph um,
Speaker 1: but it can dive to depths of up two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty feet and he hopes to one day explore
Speaker 1: depths of thirty five thousand feet plus. Um. But it
Speaker 1: can carry a pilot in two visitors, it can go
Speaker 1: on a two hour trip and uh after you have
Speaker 1: to of course be um fluid in the in the
Speaker 1: language of scuba diving in order to do this. I
Speaker 1: guess there's a legal protocol or something. But the nymph
Speaker 1: is available for higher dollars a week. It just sounds
Speaker 1: like a like some sort of a pleasure barge, just
Speaker 1: the nymph. I know, Richard Branson, come on, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what do you expect, um, But just
Speaker 1: in case, you're wondering it does have fighter jet technology,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's just in case you do come
Speaker 1: across Atlantis. So, I mean, I don't know. All this
Speaker 1: sort of bears out the question of of, uh, what
Speaker 1: do we do into the oceans? Who even owns the oceans?
Speaker 1: Jeoff Clark has an awesome article on that, and do
Speaker 1: a search on the House Opports homepage and find that yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and and will we ever permanently have human occupation of
Speaker 1: the sea floor? I don't think so, but it can happen.
Speaker 1: We'll see, We'll see, well, I mean we won't see.
Speaker 1: We'll be dead, but somebody will see. Why I'm laughing
Speaker 1: about that. You know. Well, Hey, we have some listener
Speaker 1: mail here, and the first one actually uh corresponds with
Speaker 1: the theme of this podcast. We recently did an episode
Speaker 1: on accessorizing to make a to make us more than
Speaker 1: human and one of the technologies that we covered was
Speaker 1: the dolphins suit, which you wore for that podcast. Ye
Speaker 1: kind of uncomfortable, Yeah, but it hit at the y. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I bet uh So Richard uh a listener by the
Speaker 1: name of Richard since this end, He says, Hi, I
Speaker 1: recently bought these and he throws a link to something
Speaker 1: called the Dark Thing. No, I'm sorry, dark Thin Gloves.
Speaker 1: I think it's dark fingloves, but it's Dark thin glove
Speaker 1: dot com. Not sure if I will ever use them,
Speaker 1: but I thought they were they were really cool and
Speaker 1: priced well enough that I should own them, just to
Speaker 1: say I own them. Maybe I'll freak my daughter out
Speaker 1: at bathtime or something. So if you, if you go
Speaker 1: to the website and did you have a chance to
Speaker 1: look at these, no, I haven't. All right, Well there
Speaker 1: they're they're black webbed gloves and they kind of look
Speaker 1: like a creature from the Black Lagoon hands and uh
Speaker 1: and and I think would make an interesting companion to
Speaker 1: those toe shoes that people were, all right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I feel about that. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: I've I've heard mixed things. Well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: toes are a separate issue into themselves. I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure that you should define them with toast sock shoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's for another podcast, I suppose. But but
Speaker 1: now these are these look pretty cool. I mean they
Speaker 1: look kind of creepy and would I think would be
Speaker 1: ideal for creeping somebody out at bathtime? Um? But but
Speaker 1: also I mean it's like he's just adding webbing to
Speaker 1: improve you know, you know, your speed. And I wonder
Speaker 1: too if, like I don't. I try swim semi regularly,
Speaker 1: and I find it like holding my hand together to
Speaker 1: make a like a like a scoop, a scoop just
Speaker 1: to swim with like end up, my fingers feel kind
Speaker 1: of sore the next day. And it makes sense because
Speaker 1: you're you're flexing your muscles and your your hands and
Speaker 1: your fingers. Yeah, but it freaks you don't normally go
Speaker 1: around like that all day long, right, Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just in case I need to karate ch out somebody,
Speaker 1: right right, So I'm just constantly and then I have
Speaker 1: to type. So but yeah, it's dangerous in these halls.
Speaker 1: You never know, you never know. But it makes me
Speaker 1: makes me wonderus, like, should I just look into having
Speaker 1: something that like holds my fingers together, so I'm that
Speaker 1: straining to create that scoop, I don't know, I think,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I should probably do a searching. I mean,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, you have to type, you don't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, these are the moneymakers, exactly. I can't
Speaker 1: I can't depend just on podcasting. That's right, those babies
Speaker 1: are insured. Yeah. So anyway, Richard, thanks for sending that in.
Speaker 1: They are pretty cool. And that's again. That's Dark Thin
Speaker 1: Gloves dot com. They have cool pictures. You can check
Speaker 1: them out. We also received an email from the listener
Speaker 1: by the name of Derek and Uh. He responded to
Speaker 1: our In a recent podcast we mentioned or I mentioned
Speaker 1: how Atlanta shows up in The Walking Dead and has
Speaker 1: all these like a post apocalyptic looking locations, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that the the the film doesn't take that far
Speaker 1: in the future. So it's you know, it's like Atlanta
Speaker 1: is pretty post apocalyptic looking already if you look in
Speaker 1: most of the right places. Uh. And uh anyway, he
Speaker 1: just wrote in to say, um, I took to point
Speaker 1: out that says, quote, well, hopefully Atlanta doesn't look quite
Speaker 1: as supposed to apocalyptic as it does in The Walking Dead. Uh.
Speaker 1: It does. Um, that's not the reason it was chosen
Speaker 1: for the filming. The actual reason for it is that
Speaker 1: the series is based in a long running comics series
Speaker 1: by Robert Kirkman, and in the comics, Uh, that was
Speaker 1: one of the major cities that was thrown out there
Speaker 1: to the living as a strong home stronghold before it
Speaker 1: fell to the zombie, So he just was clearing that up.
Speaker 1: And he also said, apart from that, this was really interesting.
Speaker 1: He's talking about the Life on the five Floor episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: the concepts of virtual farming are mind blowing. So I
Speaker 1: think I'll be sad if I live to see the
Speaker 1: day when people live their entire lives in the same building.
Speaker 1: The loss of cross culture and social creation would be
Speaker 1: a very interesting thing to study. Though isolated pockets of
Speaker 1: individuals whose influence is based off of what would essentially
Speaker 1: be isolationism and a futuristic internet social network, the psychological
Speaker 1: and sociological discussion would be endless. Yeah, seriously, And I
Speaker 1: mean that that begs a question about whether or not
Speaker 1: we'd have tribes within these these buildings, these living platforms.
Speaker 1: We all have different tribe and different buildings. It would
Speaker 1: be or entire to like different cultures in each building,
Speaker 1: like warring with each other. Well in gene pools too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have you have you basically have different Maybe you'd
Speaker 1: reach to the point where like you have building a
Speaker 1: building beat and like they can't even like breed. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: instead of identifying yourself as American or Australian. You say
Speaker 1: I'm building a Yeah, Now tell me like Roomy and
Speaker 1: Juliet didn't. That wasn't part of the thing that everybody
Speaker 1: lived in like sort of ancient skyscrapers to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: like they if I remember that correctly, they lived in
Speaker 1: felt like that that region had sort of tall buildings
Speaker 1: and everybody, every each family would have like a building.
Speaker 1: I don't recall. I mean there's definitely a balcony in
Speaker 1: that so maybe so Yeah, all I'm saying is futuristic
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet one species living in Building A, one
Speaker 1: species and living in Building B. Who's going to write it? Um?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm throwing it out. Maybe me, maybe
Speaker 1: you the listener. Send it in when you get it
Speaker 1: done next three weeks would be kid. Yeah, And if
Speaker 1: you want to send us anything else, you can certainly
Speaker 1: come to visit our Facebook or Twitter pages. We are
Speaker 1: below the Mind on both of those and we're constantly
Speaker 1: updating that with links to cool how stuff works articles,
Speaker 1: cool articles from elsewhere on the web, and our own
Speaker 1: blog posts. That's right, And if you'd like to send
Speaker 1: us an email, please do so. At Blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
Speaker 1: icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The
Speaker 1: how stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it
Speaker 1: today on iTunes