Speaker 1: Happy holidays friends. This year, December twenty fifth marks both
Speaker 1: the start of Hanukkah and Christmas Day. Feeling in the
Speaker 1: festive spirit, Daniel and I decided to dig into some
Speaker 1: of the science behind these holiday stories. To the parents
Speaker 1: with kids who will be staying up late waiting for
Speaker 1: Santa this year, you may want to consider whether your
Speaker 1: children's holiday experience would be enhanced or diminished by putting
Speaker 1: these magical stories under a scientific lens. So today we'll
Speaker 1: be asking ourselves questions like how does Santa manage to
Speaker 1: go fast enough to deliver toys to all the Christian
Speaker 1: kids in the world in just one night? And how
Speaker 1: does Rudolph produce that light to guide the way? Does
Speaker 1: he have a bad bacterial infection? And how does time
Speaker 1: dilation perhaps account for the Hanukkah oil burning for eight
Speaker 1: long days and nights. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinarily
Speaker 1: festive universe.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I think
Speaker 2: we don't have enough science holidays.
Speaker 1: Ooh, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites, and yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: back that up. My people. The ecologists are pretty excited
Speaker 1: about birthday. But you know, we could always use more holidays.
Speaker 1: What holiday would you.
Speaker 2: Start Universe Day?
Speaker 1: Nice? Yeah, I guess Earth Day would be a subset
Speaker 1: of Universe Day.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, yeah, it encompasses everything. Why isn't everyday Universe Day?
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to those ads already.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, how would you celebrate Universe Day?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. You'd need a really dark chocolate cake,
Speaker 2: I guess, to represent the absolute mysteries of the universe
Speaker 2: and the impenetrable darkness of space.
Speaker 1: I think if someone told me they were giving me
Speaker 1: a cake that represented the mysteries of the universe, I
Speaker 1: would be really worrying about what was inside that cake. Like,
Speaker 1: here's a razor blade. I don't know that I'd be
Speaker 1: excited about that cake.
Speaker 2: I'm only putting razor blades and cakes I send to
Speaker 2: my friends in prison. Kelly, You're not in prison.
Speaker 1: Not yet. No. I think we've established that the worst
Speaker 1: I've ever done is like jaywalked.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Oh, no, we both committed dairy related crimes.
Speaker 2: Mmmm yes, international cheese smuggling and butter smuggling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, man, we're rebels.
Speaker 2: Maybe not a great idea, to admit to that on air.
Speaker 1: There's a show I listened to and their slogan is like,
Speaker 1: don't instagram your crimes, and we're podcasting are crimes anyway,
Speaker 1: We're not the smartest criminals.
Speaker 2: No. And the cheese was delicious, so probably worth it anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the butter was delicious also.
Speaker 2: And food is asential element for how people celebrate their holidays.
Speaker 2: That's why I think it should be the center of
Speaker 2: Universe Day, which I'm totally going to launch next year.
Speaker 2: But today on the podcast, we're not talking about fictitious
Speaker 2: holidays that we are starting to poke fun at real holidays.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the science of your holidays.
Speaker 1: And I am so excited. You know. We are, of
Speaker 1: course recording this a bit in advance of December twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: and my family's putting up our Christmas tree this weekend
Speaker 1: and I am so excited. I love doing that with
Speaker 1: my daughter. She's always like super excited about it.
Speaker 2: So does that mean that you observe the Christmas tree
Speaker 2: before Thanksgiving tradition?
Speaker 1: We observe no traditions in particular. It's just whenever we
Speaker 1: remember like, oh we can do that now, And this
Speaker 1: just happens to be when we're all going to have time.
Speaker 1: So we're probably gonna do it on Thanksgiving Day, just
Speaker 1: because it's a time when we're all together.
Speaker 2: And do you guys follow your childhood Christmas traditions because
Speaker 2: Zach grew up in a Jewish family.
Speaker 1: No, We've created our own traditions that mesh together Honkkah
Speaker 1: and Christmas and work for our family. What about you?
Speaker 1: Are you doing what your family did? Is Katrina's family
Speaker 1: also did they celebrate Hankah.
Speaker 2: Katrina's family is Danish, so they celebrated a very secular
Speaker 2: kind of Christmas, but with particular traditions involving like harrying
Speaker 2: and very thick bread and dinners that are called lunches
Speaker 2: and lots of schnaps and stuff like that, which is
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. And over the years we've invited
Speaker 2: like eighty people over to serve them this traditional Danish
Speaker 2: dinner which they call Christmas lunch, which is a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. But I didn't grow up with any Christmas
Speaker 2: traditions because my family is Jewish, so our Christmas traditions
Speaker 2: are Katrina's Christmas traditions. Plus Hazel's social media desires from
Speaker 2: what she's seen on other people's TikTok. She's like, I
Speaker 2: want Christmas like that, so we, for example, all wear
Speaker 2: matching pajamas on Christmas morning.
Speaker 1: I have tried to get Zach to do that, and
Speaker 1: he absolutely refuses, but I think it would be so cute.
Speaker 1: Oh that's great.
Speaker 2: This year even the dog is getting magic pajamas.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. Do you send out like holiday cards
Speaker 1: afterwards or like New Year cards? Mostly? I just have
Speaker 1: to see this, all right, I'll put up a picture. Okay, awesome,
Speaker 1: I can't wait. That sounds adorable, And maybe I could
Speaker 1: use that to convince Zach that we should all dress up.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to work, but it could
Speaker 1: be worth it.
Speaker 2: Look what the Californians are doing. We should follow a suit.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to work on him.
Speaker 1: No, well that's not going to work. That's gonna anti work.
Speaker 2: All right, never mind, And we hope that you're all
Speaker 2: out there having a wonderful holiday. Whatever version or variety
Speaker 2: or tradition you are following. We hope it means one
Speaker 2: full time with your family, and we also hope that
Speaker 2: it gives you another way to think about science. That's
Speaker 2: why on today's epide That's why on today's episode we're
Speaker 2: going to be breaking down the science of holiday traditions.
Speaker 1: I think we should start calling them epipodes, and we
Speaker 1: should get like toad related facts incorporated into every episode episode.
Speaker 2: I think you hopped to that idea little quick.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love funs. That's so great. It's too
Speaker 1: bad we can't hear the audience groaning though, But.
Speaker 2: You know they are, you know they are.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: So it's our first holiday tradition that we're going to
Speaker 2: interpret in the name of science.
Speaker 1: All right. The first holiday tradition we're tackling today is
Speaker 1: how the heck does Santa manage to visit about three
Speaker 1: hundred million children in the world that are distributed in
Speaker 1: about eighty five million different homes. How does he do
Speaker 1: that in just one night?
Speaker 2: Does Santa have to follow the laws of physics? Is
Speaker 2: it possible physically for Santa to accomplish this feat? We
Speaker 2: thought about some of the numbers, especially in light of
Speaker 2: our recent episode about flight and the physics of it,
Speaker 2: the mysterious science behind how things stay in the air.
Speaker 2: And so you're right, Kelly, by my calculations, there are
Speaker 2: approximately three hundred million children in the world who are
Speaker 2: expecting Santa to visit, which means eighty five to one
Speaker 2: hundred million different homes on Christmas Eve. That's a lot.
Speaker 2: And if you think about what he's carrying with him, like,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of presents. If each kid gets a
Speaker 2: pretty small present. I was thinking, like, you know, an iPod, nano,
Speaker 2: something really tiny, then he has a pretty big load
Speaker 2: to carry. It's something like one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: tons of presents. And that's got to be a low
Speaker 2: estimate because some kids are getting you know, air rifles
Speaker 2: or big Tanka trucks or bicycles.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. Oh, what was the rifle in the Christmas story?
Speaker 2: You're going to shoot your eye out with a daisy
Speaker 2: air rifle?
Speaker 1: Yet, there you go, you'll shoot your own kid. Oh
Speaker 1: that was a classic. My daughter was not crusted with
Speaker 1: that movie anyway. I haven't like looked at a map
Speaker 1: and thought about this, but are Christian homes distributed all
Speaker 1: around the earth or are there regions of the earth
Speaker 1: that you can skip?
Speaker 2: Well, Christians are definitely not equally distributed across the whole
Speaker 2: earth because there aren't that many for example, living in
Speaker 2: the Pacific, so you know, the land mass helps you concentrate,
Speaker 2: so that shrinks where Santa has to go. And also
Speaker 2: people are not evenly distributed across land, right, so you
Speaker 2: get like a lot of children you can take care
Speaker 2: of in Manhattan, for example. And of course not every
Speaker 2: country has an equal number of Santa expecting children, right.
Speaker 2: There are more proportion in the Americas than there are
Speaker 2: in Africa or in Asia for example, though of course
Speaker 2: there are all across the world, and in every country
Speaker 2: you have children who are expecting Santa. So it's actually
Speaker 2: interesting problem, and it relates to the traveling salesman problem,
Speaker 2: which is a famous problem in computer science, which is
Speaker 2: to find the shortest path among a bunch of cities.
Speaker 2: And even with like ten or twelve cities, there is
Speaker 2: a huge number of combinations that the traveling salesman would
Speaker 2: have to consider to find the shortest path. And it's
Speaker 2: not a problem we have a fixed solution to. Like, basically,
Speaker 2: the only way to find the shortest path is to
Speaker 2: try every possible combination and calculate them and then take
Speaker 2: the one with the shortest path. But because there's so
Speaker 2: many combinations, it's almost impossible to even do that. So
Speaker 2: now have eighty five million homes that you have to
Speaker 2: go to and you try to minimize the flight time
Speaker 2: between them. Basically, Sant has got to have an enormous
Speaker 2: quantum computer if he wants to solve this problem.
Speaker 1: I guess I was wondering if maybe this is what
Speaker 1: Santa does in the off time, you know, like while
Speaker 1: the elves are making the toys, but you know those
Speaker 1: Christian families are moving.
Speaker 2: Around, yeah, and having babies and.
Speaker 1: Having babies and just yeah, it's complicated. So maybe he
Speaker 1: has solved this already, and like we should be asking
Speaker 1: him what the solution is. Maybe he's a mathematician.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, Yeah, maybe he's solved whether P equals NP.
Speaker 2: Remember we had Scott Aronson on the podcast talking about
Speaker 2: really hard to solve problems. This is one of the
Speaker 2: hardest to solve problems, and Santa clearly has figured it out.
Speaker 2: Because even on the fastest computer, if you ran this
Speaker 2: problem how to very quickly go from home to home
Speaker 2: for eighty five million homes, it would take you at
Speaker 2: least a year on the world supercomputers. So I think
Speaker 2: that proves that Santa must have mastered quantum computing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt. We should send Scott Aronson up there
Speaker 1: to visit and make a chat about it, or.
Speaker 2: At least we should have the next big quantum computer
Speaker 2: named something Santa related.
Speaker 1: I do like that idea. That's ter cool. Right, that's huge.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 2: Wait, maybe P equals NP. Maybe NP stands for a
Speaker 2: north pole. It's been the secret the whole time. It's
Speaker 2: right in front of the gosh.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Wait, you and I should have a spinoff
Speaker 1: podcast on conspiracy theories. I'm in.
Speaker 2: Santa sasquatch quantum computing, invest in my crypto startup.
Speaker 1: Boom right, all the right words right there, Daniel. Yes,
Speaker 1: we've already got an advertisement for the show done.
Speaker 2: But even if Santa does have a huge quantum computer
Speaker 2: and has figured out the fastest way to get from
Speaker 2: place to place, he's still got a lot of problems
Speaker 2: to solve if he's going to figure it out within
Speaker 2: the laws of physics.
Speaker 1: That's right. So you said we've got about one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand tons of presents. He's got to distribute
Speaker 1: those presents at about seven hundred and sixty eight visits
Speaker 1: per second. Per second that's fast exactly.
Speaker 2: That's a lot. And that's assuming that he has like
Speaker 2: around thirty hours to do it, because you know, as
Speaker 2: the earth spins and you have time zones, is like
Speaker 2: a little bit more than a twenty four hour window
Speaker 2: where people could still technically call it Christmas. This is
Speaker 2: being pretty generous. I mean, I think most people want
Speaker 2: their presence like by four am in case their kid
Speaker 2: gets up early. But if you're generous, you know midnight
Speaker 2: to seven am or whatever, then you get about thirty
Speaker 2: one hours. And that's still a lot of visits and
Speaker 2: not a lot of time. It means, for example, one
Speaker 2: to one thousands of a second for each house, you
Speaker 2: got to land, you got to get down the chimney,
Speaker 2: you got to eat the cookies, you got to put
Speaker 2: the present, You've got to get back up the chimney,
Speaker 2: you got to get back on this leg, and you
Speaker 2: have to take off. All of these things have to
Speaker 2: happen within a thousands of a second per house.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's some of the families. You have to
Speaker 1: grab the carrots that people left for the reindeer and
Speaker 1: feed those to the reindeer. And that was something my
Speaker 1: family did. So that's another step you can't miss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and then you have to factor in the
Speaker 2: travel time between houses also, right, So assuming again that
Speaker 2: sand has somehow minimized this, I estimated that the total
Speaker 2: travel time of his trip is going to be around
Speaker 2: seventy five million miles. That's making some simplifying assumptions about
Speaker 2: how far apart the houses are around the world. That's
Speaker 2: a long way to go in thirty one hours. And
Speaker 2: I hid in the back of my mind this question
Speaker 2: is like, is Sana going to have to break the
Speaker 2: speed of light limit? Santa FTL is not only is
Speaker 2: he quantum Santa? Is he also like Einstein was wrong?
Speaker 2: Santa is he?
Speaker 1: No, he's not right because he's under that he's not.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, it turns out he only has to travel
Speaker 2: about seven hundred miles per second, which is pretty fast.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like thirty four hundred times the speed
Speaker 2: of sound. But it's nowhere near the speed of light.
Speaker 2: So the speed of light does not interfere with Christmas.
Speaker 1: So how much do you think Jeff Bezos has offered
Speaker 1: Santa for this technology that allows you to deliver packages
Speaker 1: this quickly?
Speaker 2: Who's the logistics master? Right? That's right? Right? Santa should
Speaker 2: really branch out and compete with Amazon. If he did
Speaker 2: more than just Christmas, right, if Santa could deliver anything
Speaker 2: to you right now, like faster than Amazon, Wow, Santa
Speaker 2: could be rich.
Speaker 1: You know what makes me a little nervous though, is
Speaker 1: last year it was noted that some of the bags
Speaker 1: the toys came in looked like the same bags Amazon
Speaker 1: uses when you deliver a gift, So at your house,
Speaker 1: at my house, there might be a little bit of
Speaker 1: collaborating going on, so maybe they're sharing secrets. Amazon packages
Speaker 1: get there like the next day sometimes that's pretty fast.
Speaker 2: That's pretty fast, And I definitely don't want Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: like learning to fly drones down chimneys just to deliver
Speaker 2: packages faster like that would be creepy.
Speaker 1: Would be creepy, all right, So never mind, Let's hope
Speaker 1: they're not talking to each other. Could he travel that fast? So, like,
Speaker 1: at those speeds, is it gonna heat up? Or is
Speaker 1: he maybe traveling he goes up to space to avoid
Speaker 1: air friction, that comes back down again real fast.
Speaker 2: You can't really avoid the resistance the atmosphere though, because
Speaker 2: if you come back in you have the re entry
Speaker 2: He's moving pretty fast. I mean, mock thirty four hundred
Speaker 2: is very fast to move through the atmosphere. Like I
Speaker 2: don't hear it, but if Santa really is traveling that
Speaker 2: fast on Christmas Eve, then there's gonna be some serious
Speaker 2: sonic booms. And not to mention that, Remember we're talking
Speaker 2: about a huge amount of cargo. Like we set one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand tons of presents. That's about the
Speaker 2: same mass as two fully equipped loaded aircraft carriers. So
Speaker 2: now imagine two aircraft carriers traveling through the atmosphere at
Speaker 2: mock thirty four hundred. This sounds like the plot of
Speaker 2: the Avengers, right. Those things are definitely going to burn up.
Speaker 2: They're going to pressurize the atmosphere in front of them.
Speaker 2: It's going to turn into plasma. They're going to melt
Speaker 2: the front of it. He's going to have some really
Speaker 2: intense heat shielding. Yeah, but what does he have in front?
Speaker 2: He's got reindeer. So somehow maybe those reindeer noses are
Speaker 2: working as heat shields. I don't really understand how that's possible.
Speaker 1: I don't think that we have that as an example
Speaker 1: in the Animal Kingdom yet. That would be pretty incredible
Speaker 1: I guess maybe he has figured out some invisible heat
Speaker 1: shielding that can be used. Maybe that's how we explain this.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That seems like a copa because then
Speaker 2: you can do invisible anything. Right, Yeah, he's got an
Speaker 2: invisible warp drive.
Speaker 1: That's where the magic happens. Then I guess, so you
Speaker 1: mentioned those reindeer flying, and let's take a break and
Speaker 1: talk about how that might have evolved. Okay, and we're back.
Speaker 1: So Santa has reindeer that fly and bring him around
Speaker 1: the world somehow without burning up to deliver gifts to
Speaker 1: all the boys and girls. How do those reindeer fly?
Speaker 1: So there's a whole field studying the evolution of flights.
Speaker 1: We have three vertebrate examples where these animals evolved the
Speaker 1: ability to fly. So we've got bats, birds, and pterosaurs.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're going back in time.
Speaker 2: Wow, So what you're saying, in the entire history of Earth,
Speaker 2: only three vertebrates have learned to fly. We got to
Speaker 2: dig back to dinosaurs to have our third example.
Speaker 1: According to the cow Museum website, I was looking at Yes,
Speaker 1: those are the three examples I saw. The website didn't
Speaker 1: look super modern. So maybe it was a little bit,
Speaker 1: but as far as I know, yeah, we've got birds, bats,
Speaker 1: and pterosaurs.
Speaker 2: And what about the evolutionary history there, because I know
Speaker 2: that people tell us that, like, oh, birds are basically
Speaker 2: descended from dinosaurs. Does that mean that birds are modern
Speaker 2: day pterosaurs? Do they come from the same origin? Did
Speaker 2: that flight involve twice or once?
Speaker 1: I think that terosaurs are not dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: What pterodactyls are not dinosaurs? Calvin and Hobbes taught me wrong.
Speaker 1: That's right, Paradactyls are not dinosaurs. I mean, I hate
Speaker 1: to ever say anything negative about Calvin and Hobbes and
Speaker 1: Bill Waterston. Yeah, but you know children are allowed to
Speaker 1: dream and that is a fictional account of things. So yeah,
Speaker 1: pterosaurs are not dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: So wait, what makes something a dinosaur? All giant reptiles
Speaker 2: living with the dinosaurs or not dinosaurs?
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's right. Not everything that lived in the
Speaker 1: time of the dinosaurs were dinosaurs. And we have now
Speaker 1: maxed out by paleontology knowledge. When I was like eight,
Speaker 1: could ask me any of this and I could have
Speaker 1: rattled off the answers.
Speaker 2: But you know, oh man, we should have eight year
Speaker 2: old Kelly on the podcast. That sounds great.
Speaker 1: She was a lot more fun.
Speaker 2: When I build a time machine, that's the first thing
Speaker 2: I'll do. So I'll go back in time and ask
Speaker 2: eight year old you dinosaur questions.
Speaker 1: Awesome, sounds good. I hope she's as clever as I
Speaker 1: seem to remember her being. But I guess we'll find out,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: But we were talking about reindeer flight, and you were
Speaker 2: giving us the context of the evolutionary history of flight pterosaurs, bats,
Speaker 2: and birds. So it's possible for vertebrates things with bones
Speaker 2: in them, to learn to take to the air. How
Speaker 2: does that happen? What are the evolutionary pressures that are needed,
Speaker 2: and could they possibly apply to a reindeer.
Speaker 1: So for a lot of this stuff, you know, we
Speaker 1: can't go back in time, we can't see it ourselves,
Speaker 1: but we can look at evolutionary trees and try to
Speaker 1: see what closely related ancestors were doing and then try
Speaker 1: to get a sense for what happened over time. So,
Speaker 1: for example, it looks like the pterosaurs, they evolved the
Speaker 1: ability to fly from ground dwelling ancestor, so it looks
Speaker 1: like they were sort of leaping up into the air
Speaker 1: and having wings maybe helped them soar or glide for
Speaker 1: a little while and then but birds seem to have
Speaker 1: evolved from animals that were up in the trees, and
Speaker 1: so they jumped out of the trees and then they
Speaker 1: would glide. So you've got, you know, bottom up and
Speaker 1: top down abilities to learn how to fly.
Speaker 2: But in both cases there had to be some evolutionary pressure.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're giving us examples of like how there
Speaker 2: was proto flight, which somehow got selected for and encouraged.
Speaker 2: What was the pressure that made these tree jumpers want
Speaker 2: to fly or these ground leapers want to fly.
Speaker 1: There are a couple different hypotheses for what the pressures were.
Speaker 1: I think the most convincing, or at least the most
Speaker 1: commonly stated one is that it had something to do
Speaker 1: with like escaping predators. So if a predator is coming
Speaker 1: for you and you can jump out of the tree
Speaker 1: and then glide away, for example, then that helps you
Speaker 1: get away. And then over time there were all these
Speaker 1: additional benefits. So, like gliding is nice, but if you're
Speaker 1: able to stay in the air for longer and maybe
Speaker 1: flap your wings, you can get from place to place.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can find a spot where there's better food.
Speaker 1: But every step along the way has to have some
Speaker 1: benefit in order for you know, evolution to continue building
Speaker 1: on that trait.
Speaker 2: And something I don't often hear enough about when it
Speaker 2: comes to these stories of evolution are the costs. Because
Speaker 2: I could tell a story about how it would be
Speaker 2: awesome if I had wings, Like I could escape predators,
Speaker 2: I could escape traffic, I could hunt better, like I
Speaker 2: could do all sorts of things. I would love to
Speaker 2: have wings, Like, obviously there are benefits. Why don't everybody
Speaker 2: have wings? And I guess the answer must be that
Speaker 2: there are costs to having wings which don't pay off
Speaker 2: for everybody, right, So, like why don't humans have wings?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, sometimes evolution is a cruel mistress. I mean,
Speaker 1: so wings are often like the bones in your arms
Speaker 1: get sort of repurposed and you end up with like
Speaker 1: webbing in between. And so you know, bats, if you
Speaker 1: look at it, it's like the fingerbones have like extended
Speaker 1: and now there's webbing in between. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we really benefit from our ability to use our hands, right,
Speaker 1: so if we could fly, we might you know, lose
Speaker 1: some of that, and so yeah, there's trade offs or
Speaker 1: just about anything.
Speaker 2: You know, if you asked me like wings or hands,
Speaker 2: that would be a tough call because wings would be awesome.
Speaker 2: But boy, who's going to like scratched at my nose
Speaker 2: if I don't have hands?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, I mean you can rug your nose on
Speaker 1: a tree or something.
Speaker 2: That doesn't seem very dignified.
Speaker 1: Well, humans do tons of undignified things. We could Acclabate's true.
Speaker 1: But you know one thing you might have noticed is
Speaker 1: that reindeer don't have wings at all. That's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what's going on with that? I can't think of
Speaker 1: any example of an animal that can fly with no wing.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's talk a little bit about the
Speaker 2: physics of reindeer flight. How is it possible to get
Speaker 2: in the air. All the examples you're giving us for
Speaker 2: how to get in the air involved having like really
Speaker 2: low density like birds we know have like hollow bones
Speaker 2: and bats really have minimal bones because you want to
Speaker 2: minimize the amount of mass you need to get in
Speaker 2: the air, and then some huge surface areas that you
Speaker 2: get lift. And we had a whole episode about how
Speaker 2: lift works. And you need either some angle of attack,
Speaker 2: so the Newtonian force pushes you up as the air
Speaker 2: particles put down, or you need some airfoil to create
Speaker 2: pressure difference in velocity difference, or you need both. So
Speaker 2: the physics of flight is quite complicated, but it always
Speaker 2: involves wings, right. Even insects have wings, even though their
Speaker 2: flight mechanics are completely different. So it's hard to imagine
Speaker 2: how a reindeer without any wings at all are going
Speaker 2: to get up in the air, right, Like, physics problem
Speaker 2: number one is, I don't think their bones are hollow.
Speaker 2: You know, they are made for like holding a lot
Speaker 2: of meat and running pretty fast on the ground. Reindeer
Speaker 2: running like thirty five miles per hour, you need some
Speaker 2: pretty strong bones for that. I have to hold the muscles.
Speaker 2: I did learn, however, that reindeer hair is hollow. So
Speaker 2: they're living cold places and for insulation, it's nice to have,
Speaker 2: you know, fluffy hair, and their hair is like little tubes,
Speaker 2: so it's very low density.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's sort of like having the frosting
Speaker 2: without the cake because you got a much bigger problem
Speaker 2: to solve just getting the thing off the ground. And
Speaker 2: then there's the big question of the antlers, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you don't see a whole lot of flying things with
Speaker 2: heavy duty antlers. And there's a reason, right, Like what
Speaker 2: about the pterosaurs? Do they have like really big heads
Speaker 2: and pokey bones.
Speaker 1: I think they had like projections on their heads. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the point of those was. But they
Speaker 1: also had like giant weights, perhaps to offset stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking, if I had to get a
Speaker 2: bunch of reindeer off the ground, how would I do it?
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, maybe we're looking in the wrong place.
Speaker 2: Maybe the physics of reindeer flying is actually about the sleigh,
Speaker 2: because you never see the reindeer flying by themselves. There's
Speaker 2: always reindeer plus sleigh. So I thought, maybe it's like
Speaker 2: asking how does a jet engine fly. It doesn't fly
Speaker 2: by itself, it flies with a wing. So I thought
Speaker 2: maybe we should take a more careful look at Santa's
Speaker 2: sleigh because potentially that could be like an airfoil. Think
Speaker 2: off Santa Slay as the wind and the reindeer as
Speaker 2: the engine. So they're running along the ground and maybe
Speaker 2: providing enough thrust so you get lyft off Santa's sleigh
Speaker 2: and then you can take off.
Speaker 1: What is that going to get you across the ocean
Speaker 1: like that might get you off the ground, but then
Speaker 1: those hooves become helpless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know the physics doesn't really hold together. That
Speaker 2: was just like, can I even make a first step
Speaker 2: here towards somehow getting this thing in the air. There's
Speaker 2: some obvious problems there, Like number one, you're saying, how
Speaker 2: do you stay afloat? Right? Like reindeer they can run
Speaker 2: pretty fast, but then what do they do once they
Speaker 2: get into the air. Because they don't have wings, they
Speaker 2: can't paddle through the air. Though when you see a
Speaker 2: typical depiction, they're somehow still running through the air, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what they're supposed to be working on.
Speaker 2: Another big problem even with this idea is they got
Speaker 2: to be able to take off from a rooftop right,
Speaker 2: basically from a standstill. Yeah, and reindeer can run it
Speaker 2: like thirty five miles per hour, But they don't go
Speaker 2: from zero to thirty five miles per hour instantly, right,
Speaker 2: They take some time aim to accelerate. Even a reindeer
Speaker 2: can't survive like more than a few g or their
Speaker 2: insides will liquefy the same way humans would. And reindeer
Speaker 2: speeds are thirty five miles per hour. That's pretty fast,
Speaker 2: But jets need like one hundred and twenty one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty miles per hour going over those airfoils or
Speaker 2: hitting the angle of attack to take off. So reindeer,
Speaker 2: I can't see how they could get up to high
Speaker 2: speeds or accelerate from the rooftop to get fast enough.
Speaker 2: The only thing that's left is, like, reindeer have kind
Speaker 2: of big ears. You know, maybe those ears could flap somehow.
Speaker 2: Maybe we're just like looking in the wrong place and
Speaker 2: all the magic is in the ears. So I did
Speaker 2: a little calculation to think if you treat the ears
Speaker 2: like wings, how fast would they have to flap to
Speaker 2: provide enough thrust? And the number I got, which I'm
Speaker 2: sure has a lot of uncertainty, is about thirty five
Speaker 2: thousand times per minute.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I mean, does that take into account
Speaker 1: all the weight that they're pulling and the fact that
Speaker 1: they're teeny tiny with low surface area. No, okay, no, just.
Speaker 2: To take off the reindeer the I'm thinking like the
Speaker 2: reindeer version of a hummingbird here, like like it would
Speaker 2: be insane, and I think you would notice that happening.
Speaker 2: I don't see that in the depictions. So I did
Speaker 2: the best I could, but I couldn't get these reindeer
Speaker 2: off the rooftop no matter what I did. I just
Speaker 2: think the physics is not there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wouldn't be a dKu episode if we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about aliens once or cannibalism, which we've somehow
Speaker 1: managed to miss. Do you think maybe Santa has access
Speaker 1: to some alien levitation technology or maybe this is where
Speaker 1: the magic comes in.
Speaker 2: It's certainly possible if you give yourself access to any
Speaker 2: sort of potential future human technology or alien technology across
Speaker 2: the galaxy, you might imagine that Santa is using anti
Speaker 2: gravity technology. I mean, fundamentally, we do not understand what
Speaker 2: gravity is or how it works. We have this wonderful
Speaker 2: theory of gravity general relativity that tells us that mass
Speaker 2: bends space and space tells mass how to move, and
Speaker 2: that this weird bending can cause things that look like
Speaker 2: forces to appear, which is what we call the force
Speaker 2: of gravity. So the space is bent near the Earth,
Speaker 2: which is why everything falls towards the center of the Earth.
Speaker 2: And in order to avoid falling towards the center of
Speaker 2: the Earth, you need to be accelerated up or outwards
Speaker 2: away from the center, which is what the surface of
Speaker 2: the Earth is doing. That's why it appears that things
Speaker 2: are moving under gravity when you're standing on the surface
Speaker 2: of the Earth. What's actually happening is you're accelerating against
Speaker 2: the natural force of gravity. That's a long way to
Speaker 2: say that maybe Santa has some technology that bends space
Speaker 2: itself so that he can create some pseudo force, basically
Speaker 2: anti gravity. And if you imagine, like the gravitation a
Speaker 2: well of the Earth, things would naturally be falling towards it.
Speaker 2: But a Santa can counteract the bending of space only
Speaker 2: in his local environment, so that he's not falling towards
Speaker 2: the center of the Earth. It would look like he's flying.
Speaker 2: You would look like there's some great force there. So
Speaker 2: potentially super advanced aliens or time traveling future humans might
Speaker 2: have access to space bending technology that to us would
Speaker 2: look like anti gravity basically levitation. So if we're gonna
Speaker 2: go for aliens, then that's my solution, Santa, the anti
Speaker 2: gravity alien.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's all kinds of things that we
Speaker 1: could learn from Santa if he would only come hang
Speaker 1: out with the rest of us a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Maybe our scientists holiday should just be when Santa visits
Speaker 1: and reveals all these secrets to us.
Speaker 2: I know he's mastered quantum computing, he's mastered anti gravity.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's figured out quantum gravity. Right, maybe Santa is
Speaker 2: a string theorist. Oh my gosh, Santa, please come on
Speaker 2: the podcast and explain physics to us.
Speaker 1: That would be great.
Speaker 2: You know, I was gonna say if anybody out there
Speaker 2: has a connection to Santa, but then I realized anybody
Speaker 2: can just write to Santa. So let's send a message
Speaker 2: to Santa and say what we want for Christmas is
Speaker 2: for him to come on the podcast and explain the
Speaker 2: universe to us.
Speaker 1: That sounds great. All right, Well, Santa, please get in
Speaker 1: touch with us. That's my only wish for Christmas. And
Speaker 1: let's take a break, and when we come back, let's
Speaker 1: talk about Rudolph's shiny nose. All right, and we're back.
Speaker 1: So our next task is to try to figure out
Speaker 1: how Rudolph's shiny nose shines. We've got a couple ideas here.
Speaker 1: So we discovered what we didn't personally discover. We discovered
Speaker 1: by doing a tiny bit of research that actually a
Speaker 1: lot of mammals are fluorescent, which means that when you
Speaker 1: shine black light on them, they sort of reflect that
Speaker 1: light back in a variety of different colors. So mammals
Speaker 1: are fluorescent. So Rudolph could maybe be fluorescent, but that's
Speaker 1: just reflecting light back and it's not producing light the
Speaker 1: way it feels like Rudolf's nose is supposed to be doing,
Speaker 1: so I think he's not fluorescent.
Speaker 2: The fluorescence is really interesting from a physics point of view.
Speaker 2: I mean, what's happening there is a little bit more
Speaker 2: complex than just reflection. You're absorbing that light, converting into energy,
Speaker 2: and then emitting light at a different wavelength, right, because
Speaker 2: you're absorbing ultraviolet light or something else and then emitting
Speaker 2: at a different wavelength. So it is fascinating, right, Fluorescence
Speaker 2: is not just reflection. It's amazing that it exists in
Speaker 2: so many animals and there's so many biological applications for it.
Speaker 2: Why do you think animals would have evolved this? Why
Speaker 2: is fluorescence a thing in an animal kingdom? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't think we have a great handle on this yet.
Speaker 1: I think in some cases it seems like it's to
Speaker 1: attract prey, and other cases it's to attract mates. I
Speaker 1: think there's probably also a subset of instances where the
Speaker 1: fluorescence doesn't really have any purpose. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: an accident. Like the pigment is, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like red or something, and it's meant to signal
Speaker 1: other animals. But that red pigment also happens to fluoresce
Speaker 1: if it's hit with the right wavelength of light. And
Speaker 1: maybe that doesn't really happen in nature, but it happens
Speaker 1: in the lab. And so you know, in nature, maybe
Speaker 1: that fluorescence doesn't do anything because it just kind of
Speaker 1: doesn't come up that often. But I don't think we
Speaker 1: know why a lot of mammals are fluorescent, because I
Speaker 1: think we didn't realize it was until recently.
Speaker 2: I was looking at a picture of a bat under
Speaker 2: a black light and it's like fabulously blue. It's like, wow,
Speaker 2: maybe bats are like having a party this whole time,
Speaker 2: and they looked like they were colored in a boring
Speaker 2: way to us, But the reality is that they're spectacular.
Speaker 1: Bat ravees every night, I'm it.
Speaker 2: I also remember talking to a friend of mine here
Speaker 2: at U c Irvine who studies birds and vision and
Speaker 2: she discovered that a certain kind of bird called the
Speaker 2: blue tit, is actually emitting in the ultraviolet, and that
Speaker 2: the birds themselves can see the ultraviolet. And they only
Speaker 2: discovered this because they smeared some of these blue tits
Speaker 2: with vasiline, which blocks the ultraviolet, and when you do that,
Speaker 2: the otherwise very sexually successful tits were now totally ignored
Speaker 2: by all the females.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So that means that the females were selecting the fabulously
Speaker 2: ultraviolet blue tits.
Speaker 1: That is incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There is an incredible chapter in Ed Young's book Immense World,
Speaker 1: all about different kinds of visions, and he points out
Speaker 1: that there's lots of animals that can see things that
Speaker 1: we can't see. And I found that both like absolutely
Speaker 1: amazing that there's so much as animal behaviorists that maybe
Speaker 1: we're missing when we study animal behavior because we just
Speaker 1: don't know what they're seeing, but also like a total
Speaker 1: bummer that there are colors that I will never see. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think that these deer are not fluorescing, which
Speaker 1: would be awesome. Maybe they're fluorescing on top of it,
Speaker 1: but Rudolph's knows. My best guess is that it's bioluminescence,
Speaker 1: And so bioluminescence is a chemical reaction. So you get
Speaker 1: this thing called luciferin, and when it combines with oxygen,
Speaker 1: they produce something called oxyluciferin, and that reaction releases light.
Speaker 2: And luciferin as in lucifer.
Speaker 1: Luca is like a prefix that means something about light.
Speaker 2: Oh I see, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So like fireflies, I believe that they've got like luciferin
Speaker 1: and oxygen like in similar places in their like butts,
Speaker 1: and then they release luciferase, and that's an enzyme that
Speaker 1: speeds up the chemical reaction and so it increases the
Speaker 1: amount of light that's visible. Some animals can do this,
Speaker 1: like fireflies, but there's also bacteria that can do this.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of animals that bioluminess not because
Speaker 1: they're doing the reaction themselves, but because they harbor bacteria
Speaker 1: in these specialized organs, and the bacteria produce the bioluminescns.
Speaker 2: Oh that's very cool. Yeah, I love when you can't
Speaker 2: do it yourself you outsource it to microbes.
Speaker 1: Symbiosis. Pretty cool. How would this have evolved for Rudolph?
Speaker 1: One possibility is for camouflage. So we see a lot
Speaker 1: of bioluminescence happening in the ocean, and often it's being
Speaker 1: used at night. So the deal is, if you're an
Speaker 1: animal that's swimming around, you know, under the water surface
Speaker 1: in the ocean, the light reflects off the moon and
Speaker 1: into the water and it leaves little like trickles or
Speaker 1: streams of light coming through. And so if you as
Speaker 1: an animal moving around in the ocean, have to watch
Speaker 1: out because if you cast a shadow, then predators underneath
Speaker 1: you can see the shadow that you cast and then
Speaker 1: know that they can go to eat you. And so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of animals that have either their own
Speaker 1: bioluminescence or they store organisms that release light in ways
Speaker 1: that mimics the way moonlight trickles down through the ocean.
Speaker 2: So that's fascinating because your intuition is if you want
Speaker 2: to hide, you should be dark. But if the background
Speaker 2: is shimmery, you actually want to be shimmery to blend
Speaker 2: in with the shimmery background, because otherwise your shadow makes
Speaker 2: you obvious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And so I think the most famous example
Speaker 1: of this are bobtail squid, and the bobtail squid have
Speaker 1: a compartment that stores these bioluminescing bacteria, and they feed
Speaker 1: the bacteria things like sugars and stuff to make them
Speaker 1: happy and keep them reproducing, and it casts enough light
Speaker 1: that sort of cancels out the shadow that's made by
Speaker 1: the squid. So this is like a famous symbiosis where
Speaker 1: squid and bacteria live together nicely. So it could be
Speaker 1: that maybe why so few of us see Santa's sleigh
Speaker 1: at night is because there's some bioluminescent tricks canceling out
Speaker 1: Santa's sleigh shadow. But I think maybe that's not what's happening,
Speaker 1: because the light is facing in the wrong direction, right.
Speaker 2: And also, we're talking about just one reindeer here, right,
Speaker 2: Rudolph is the only one with the shiny news. So
Speaker 2: not only do you have to explain how Rudolph evolved this,
Speaker 2: but how you have like a subset of reindeer with
Speaker 2: shiny noses and most of the population doesn't.
Speaker 1: I have concluded that Rudolph is probably a separate species.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see, all right, his.
Speaker 1: Species evolved this, but he may be the last one
Speaker 1: left of his species. Because no, this is tragic, I know,
Speaker 1: because another purpose of bioluminescence is to attract mates, and
Speaker 1: it just doesn't seem to be working for poor Rudolph.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: A final purpose for this bioluminescence is to attract prey.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting story with cookie cutter sharks where they've
Speaker 1: got this like on their abdomen where it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like the light sort of coming down through the ocean,
Speaker 1: but then there's a blank patch, and the hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that blank patch looks like a fish that's swimming above
Speaker 1: and is creating a shadow, but you're actually just looking
Speaker 1: at the belly of a cookie cutter shark. And so
Speaker 1: when a predator comes up, thinking it's gonna eat a fish,
Speaker 1: the cookie cutter shark quickly spins around and they take
Speaker 1: like a cookie cutter shaped chunk out of the animal
Speaker 1: and then they swim away really quick. So maybe Rudolph
Speaker 1: is predatory.
Speaker 2: What he's not a grass munching vegetarian like the other reindeer.
Speaker 1: It's unclear. It's unclear. So the question is, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, is Rudolph another species or does he maybe
Speaker 1: just happen to have a weird bioluminescent bacterial infection in
Speaker 1: his nose? And so maybe he is the same species,
Speaker 1: it doesn't benefit him at all, and he just has
Speaker 1: this infection he can't clear.
Speaker 2: That could be certainly, It's amazing how these things happen, right, Like,
Speaker 2: obviously none of this is designed or organized. It means
Speaker 2: that sometime in history, like one of these squid or
Speaker 2: one of these shark like developed some infection and it
Speaker 2: turned out to be beneficial. Right that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So an infection implies a negative outcome. So it
Speaker 1: could have been that these bioluminescing bacteria ended up invading
Speaker 1: some small part of the bobtail squid and they just
Speaker 1: lived there and didn't hurt the bobtail squid. But the
Speaker 1: ones who harbored the bacteria just did better, and over
Speaker 1: time it was better to have more bacteria, So some
Speaker 1: of them, you know, ended up feeding them with sugars.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. It doesn't have to start negatively, but
Speaker 1: it could have, right.
Speaker 2: No, I don't even think about microbes negatively. I think
Speaker 2: I've just been propagandized by my wife who like helps
Speaker 2: me appreciate like basically microbes are essential for everything we
Speaker 2: do in every part of our lives. Like sterile humans
Speaker 2: just could not survive, right, and so we're totally colonized
Speaker 2: by all sorts of micros, bacteria and phages and all
Speaker 2: sorts of crazy stuff easing ecosystem that keeps us all going.
Speaker 2: But it's crazy when that changes, when you get colonized
Speaker 2: by new criter, which changes what you could accomplish. It
Speaker 2: makes me wonder, like why humans never learn to glow? Right?
Speaker 2: I can imagine some scenarios where all these stories you tell,
Speaker 2: I can imagine some scenario where it could apply to
Speaker 2: humans right, where we could attract prey, or we could
Speaker 2: camouflage better or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I guess it's worth noting that most
Speaker 1: of the examples of animals that bioluminous are living in
Speaker 1: aquatic environments. It seems to be much more beneficial there. So, yes,
Speaker 1: we have fireflies, but they're pretty unique in their ability
Speaker 1: to buy iluminess on land. So it might be that
Speaker 1: the benefits on Earth are just not that big, which
Speaker 1: makes it even more surprising that Rudolph is able to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though, there are lots of land creators that fluoresce, right,
Speaker 2: so like under a black light will glow cool colors
Speaker 2: or something. But humans know you got to wear a
Speaker 2: crazy T shirt for that at your next dance party.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, Ah, the nineties were wild time.
Speaker 2: But speaking of lighting, there's another holiday that happens right
Speaker 2: around the same time of year. It's not just Christmas.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the science of Honkkah, the festival
Speaker 2: of lights.
Speaker 1: That was a beautiful transition. Yes, let's do that. Tell
Speaker 1: me about the Honkah story. I did marry a Jewish man,
Speaker 1: so I'm familiar with it. But in case other people aren't.
Speaker 2: So the story of Honkkah, as most of the stories
Speaker 2: from the Old Testament center around battles, those lots of
Speaker 2: these battles, Jews were always getting involved in wars. And
Speaker 2: this is a battle between the Jews and the Maccabees
Speaker 2: over the temple. And it raged back and forth, and
Speaker 2: the Jews lost the temple and then recovered it and
Speaker 2: they won the battle. But in the end, when they
Speaker 2: got back into the temple, they found that most of
Speaker 2: the oil that they used to light the lamps. This
Speaker 2: is ali of oil in the original temple, which of
Speaker 2: course now destroyed, had been spoiled. And you know, this
Speaker 2: is like the center of Judaism, and so you need
Speaker 2: oil that's like pure and has been blessed in all
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. You can't use spoiled oil. And
Speaker 2: they only had a little bit of oil left. They
Speaker 2: had oil enough to keep the lamps going for one day,
Speaker 2: and it's essential, so you keep the lamps burning. And
Speaker 2: it takes about eight days to make more oil, to
Speaker 2: press it and purify it and bless it and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. So the pipeline is eight days long. It's
Speaker 2: been interrupted. You have one day supply. So they're like, uh, oh,
Speaker 2: we got to get these lamps going, but there's no
Speaker 2: way they're going to last eight days. And so the
Speaker 2: miracle of Honkkah is somehow a one day supply of
Speaker 2: oil lasted for eight days. It lasted until they could
Speaker 2: get a fresh supply, and so the lamp never went out.
Speaker 1: Amazing. And just to be clear, and it's not being
Speaker 1: used for cooking or for heating. It's being used for
Speaker 1: religious purposes and lighting.
Speaker 2: Up the temple. Yeah, it's a ritual essentially, it's like
Speaker 2: the eternal flame, right, Okay, got it. Got And so
Speaker 2: even before we dig into like the miracle of Honkkah,
Speaker 2: I've always been amazed at the technology of lamps like,
Speaker 2: it's kind of incredible. You have this fuel you want
Speaker 2: to burn, but you want to burn it a little
Speaker 2: bit at a time, so you have a low, consistent glow.
Speaker 2: And there is this amazing bit of technology which it
Speaker 2: comes to us from the ancient world, which is the wick.
Speaker 2: You don't want to just like set your oil ablaze
Speaker 2: because just like all burn out and pollute the indoors
Speaker 2: and you won't have a lighting for very long. So
Speaker 2: they have this incredible technology of the wick, which essentially
Speaker 2: pulls a little bit of fuel from your main supply
Speaker 2: and burns only a little bit at a time, giving
Speaker 2: you a constant glow. And it's so simple. It's basically
Speaker 2: just you put a string in your fuel. It's one
Speaker 2: of these genius bits of technology that must have been.
Speaker 1: A huge improvement in quality of life when that was
Speaker 1: figured out. Like being able to read all night by
Speaker 1: the light of a lamp as opposed to just needing
Speaker 1: to pick and choose, when you're going to be able
Speaker 1: to burn your big supply of oil all at once.
Speaker 2: That sounds incredible, It is incredible, and it's something that
Speaker 2: humans have been doing for thousands of years. We're telling
Speaker 2: a story from the Old Testament, so it's a couple
Speaker 2: thousand years old. But wick technology has been found by
Speaker 2: archaeologists dating back at least three thousand BC. Right, so
Speaker 2: the ancient Egyptians used wicks. This is something people figured
Speaker 2: out a long long time ago, and probably independently. We
Speaker 2: think that the Chinese used rice paper to create wicks
Speaker 2: and made wax out of insects and seeds and all
Speaker 2: sorts of stuff. So this is like kind of ingenious
Speaker 2: but also fairly simple, and so people discovered a long
Speaker 2: time ago.
Speaker 1: We are a pretty clever species. So is one possibility
Speaker 1: then that when they came back into the temple and
Speaker 1: they noticed that a lot of the oil had gone bad,
Speaker 1: they switched to using wicks and it used it more efficiently.
Speaker 1: Or that's not the miracle.
Speaker 2: No, they were using wicks the whole time. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: wick technology was pretty well established at that point. I
Speaker 2: also love the word wick because the word tells you
Speaker 2: what it does. Right, Like everybody's familiar with like fancy
Speaker 2: shirts that wick the sweat away from your body, right,
Speaker 2: that's what wick means. It like slurps up the liquid.
Speaker 2: It's wicking the liquid. Anyway, That's enough about the science
Speaker 2: of wicks. They're sort of incredible. So then let's dig
Speaker 2: into the miracle of it, right, how could you possibly
Speaker 2: use science to make your lamp burn longer than you
Speaker 2: have a fuel supply for? And the crucial thing is
Speaker 2: you have to keep it burning the same brightness. You
Speaker 2: can't just like turn it down and be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to make it last for eight days by
Speaker 2: having it be an eighth as bright. You got to
Speaker 2: keep it as bright and somehow get more energy out
Speaker 2: of it. Right, And so unless you're going to say like, oh,
Speaker 2: there was fusion happening or some other sort of energy
Speaker 2: source to pull additional energy out of the fuel, seems
Speaker 2: pretty implausible. The only thing I could think of, and
Speaker 2: I'm basically going back to the same Santa miracle, is
Speaker 2: somehow bending of space and time. Because we know that
Speaker 2: there is a way in physics to have time slow down. If,
Speaker 2: for example, I sent Kelly in orbit near a black hole,
Speaker 2: I will see her clocks running slow, and she'll see
Speaker 2: my clocks running more quickly. And so, for example, if
Speaker 2: I could create a special bending of space in the
Speaker 2: vicinity of these lamps, I could slow down time for
Speaker 2: the lamps and then far away from the lamps, even
Speaker 2: a few meters, I would observe clocks running slowly. So
Speaker 2: essentially one day for the lamp would be like eight
Speaker 2: days for me.
Speaker 1: And during that time you were making new oil.
Speaker 2: During that time, I was making new oil. And so
Speaker 2: this requires you to like somehow know how to bend
Speaker 2: space and time. But you know, if we're gonna give
Speaker 2: Santa that power, then we can give the ancient Jews
Speaker 2: that power. Also. There are some wrinkles here though, because
Speaker 2: if the clock is running slower, you would argue that
Speaker 2: it's also producing photons less often, and so technically you'd
Speaker 2: be getting photons at one eighth the rate. You know,
Speaker 2: It's sort of like if you're getting a video stream
Speaker 2: from a spaceship going near the speed of light? Are
Speaker 2: you getting those frames at the same rate that they're
Speaker 2: being produced? Does it look slow motion to you? You
Speaker 2: could go down a whole rabbit hole here the science
Speaker 2: of Hanukkah. Basically there's no way to really make it work.
Speaker 2: But that's the best I could come up with.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it was a noble attempt, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, though it's fun to use these as
Speaker 2: a launching off place to talk about science and how
Speaker 2: you accomplish these things. We all recognize the point of
Speaker 2: these stories is not to have a scientific explanation their
Speaker 2: mythology and their nice stories to tell about our history
Speaker 2: and to have traditions and to all gather together over
Speaker 2: the holidays and enjoy time with our families. So we
Speaker 2: don't mean to try to ruin these things for you
Speaker 2: by trying to turn them into science. We just mean
Speaker 2: to use them as a fun place to have science
Speaker 2: conversations on these topics.
Speaker 1: That's right. The miraculous nature of these stories is what
Speaker 1: makes them so exciting to tell the kids.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and having stories in common is what makes us human.
Speaker 2: And so everybody out there, hope you enjoyed this little
Speaker 2: dose of science and then you enjoy your time with
Speaker 2: your family on the holidays.
Speaker 1: Happy holidays everyone. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced
Speaker 1: by iHeart Reading. We would love to hear from them,
Speaker 1: We really would.
Speaker 2: We want to know what questions you have about this
Speaker 2: Extraordinary Universe.
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