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: My name is Robert lamp and my name is Julie
Speaker 1: Tuglas Um Julie. I was over the weekend I caught
Speaker 1: the film John Carter that came out. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with this one at all? I am? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the some dudes of Pixar behind at Disney behind it
Speaker 1: based on Edgar Rice Burrows stories of Mars, in which
Speaker 1: this character, John Carter ends up traveling there and having
Speaker 1: all sorts of squash buckling, princess laden adventures. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's a fun flick. I recommend people see it if
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing you're into it into McNulty
Speaker 1: from The Wire shows up as the villain, which is fun.
Speaker 1: But but but what really got me thinking and how
Speaker 1: it ties into this podcast is that it really calls
Speaker 1: back to an age when the science fiction of the
Speaker 1: day uh is emerging from this idea that Mars could
Speaker 1: conceivably the habitated world, or a world that had been
Speaker 1: habitated by a a civilization, not just some organism living
Speaker 1: deep in the soil, but it could have had civilization
Speaker 1: on it. In the past or even in the present.
Speaker 1: And it's just amazing to think back to that time.
Speaker 1: It's and and and try to imagine that being possible
Speaker 1: in your mind. Whereas today we have this, Uh, we
Speaker 1: know that Mars is virtually lifeless and if even if
Speaker 1: even if it has life in it, it is Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not cities, it's not things that can think in
Speaker 1: a way that we understand, you know, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not that that vision of swashbuckling adventure that Edgar Rice
Speaker 1: Burrows had. Instead, we're we're looking even farther out. We're
Speaker 1: we're looking, we're having to cast our dreams even farther
Speaker 1: to try and imagine other worlds that could be like Earth,
Speaker 1: because that's it's kind of a simple thing. We kind
Speaker 1: of want on on this very basic level. We want
Speaker 1: to find that other Earth. We want to find our
Speaker 1: twin out there in the galaxy. And no, that we
Speaker 1: are not alone. Right, That's always been the other question, right,
Speaker 1: are are we alone? Um? You know, is there extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: life out there? Um? We've talked about even SETTI, the
Speaker 1: organization that is committed to trying to find a form
Speaker 1: of life out there. And as you said, it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to think that at one point all of this
Speaker 1: just sort of existed in our minds, this idea of
Speaker 1: what is out there in the cosmos, not really knowing,
Speaker 1: not having the sort of data or the technology to
Speaker 1: substantiate um are our theories. And you know, we just
Speaker 1: talked about Prometheus and we talked about how they were
Speaker 1: journeying to an extra planet or an extrasolar planet. The
Speaker 1: idea that it's just it's a planet. It is encircling
Speaker 1: another star, which is not despite what you see in
Speaker 1: Star Trek and and everything, it's not not in every
Speaker 1: and not every star is going to have planets, right right,
Speaker 1: an extra planet too, I mean the planets beyond our
Speaker 1: solar system. This used to be just a theory as well, right,
Speaker 1: So it's it's in context of of thinking about seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago, it's pretty amazing that we know what we
Speaker 1: know now, and it does the question now doesn't isn't
Speaker 1: are their exp planets? The question is where is that
Speaker 1: earth like planet and doesn't contain life. That's that's where
Speaker 1: we're going towards now. Seventeen years ago that we're looking
Speaker 1: back to hubble Right and cast Star gaze out outward
Speaker 1: into the stars and was able to identify what planet
Speaker 1: candidates based on distance stars. Well, first of all, they
Speaker 1: identified two hundred billion star systems, so this was news.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, hey, here's our solar system and then
Speaker 1: nothing the two hundred billion star systems and um. And
Speaker 1: they did this by gathering light for hundreds of hours
Speaker 1: and staring into deep space and taking all these calculations
Speaker 1: and figuring this out and it was amazing. So then
Speaker 1: they took that information and the Kepler mission, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit um, was able, as you say,
Speaker 1: to identify twenty three hundred UM possible planets extra planets.
Speaker 1: We say possible because we don't know enough information about
Speaker 1: and actually call them planet candidates. And they haven't made
Speaker 1: it past the candidates, and they haven't made it passive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they haven't been vetted yet. But of these we know
Speaker 1: the dimensions and weight of two hundred planets, okay, and um,
Speaker 1: we actually have the composition of atmospheres for twelve planets.
Speaker 1: This is amazing stuff. And we're particularly interested in those
Speaker 1: planets that fall within that habitable zone, that sort of
Speaker 1: goldielike zone, because you look at our planets we have
Speaker 1: and we went into this on the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Kid's Mind video series. You have you have Venus,
Speaker 1: which is uh to have to have the atmospheres to pressurize,
Speaker 1: and it's too hot. You go over to Mars, you know,
Speaker 1: a little far too far to the right, and you
Speaker 1: find not enough atmosphere and intense cold. But right there
Speaker 1: in the little Earth, it's just right the we live
Speaker 1: in this golden zone. Yeah, we evolved, lack is evolved
Speaker 1: as we know it to exist within these very slim
Speaker 1: parameters that we're specifically talking about the orbital distance from
Speaker 1: a star where liquid water on a planet could exist.
Speaker 1: That's just one of the things that needs to be
Speaker 1: going on UM. So yeah, I mean, we we now
Speaker 1: have seven hundred confirmed exoplanets UM. Just out of that
Speaker 1: all the other data, I just want to mention that
Speaker 1: we do have seven hundred confirmed exoplanets UM and it's
Speaker 1: amazing that we're at this point in the Kepler mission
Speaker 1: is actually looking at a tiny region of the Milky Way,
Speaker 1: in a very small fraction of stars in the galaxy UM.
Speaker 1: And because the stars are being sampled by Kepler, are
Speaker 1: very similar to predominant types of stars in the Milky
Speaker 1: Way galaxy. Uh, we are getting basically, in a sense,
Speaker 1: just narrow little pencil beam of stars that may or
Speaker 1: may not be earth like or that we discover. So
Speaker 1: that perspective is pretty mind blowing in and of itself
Speaker 1: because it's just that tiny little point that they're looking at,
Speaker 1: and what else could the universe contain beyond that? So,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned before, like every solar system is not
Speaker 1: going to be a situation of oh, we have planet one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: and five around a single star. You have, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna look like ours per se. You have a variety
Speaker 1: of exoplanets in a variety of solar systems. Right. You
Speaker 1: have planets that are orbiting multiple stars where you would
Speaker 1: conceivably have if you had a planet you could stand
Speaker 1: out in that system. You might have to. You would
Speaker 1: have two sons in the sky at the same time
Speaker 1: or at different times, depending on how things are, how
Speaker 1: the celestial mechanics are panning out. Um, you have planets
Speaker 1: that don't orbit stars at all, which sounds kind of
Speaker 1: crazy to just kind of rogue. Yeah, it's just on
Speaker 1: their own. Um. And then you have at least one
Speaker 1: that is is areas styrofoam. Yeah, yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: what they're calling the planetary zoo because they're talking about
Speaker 1: that the variety of planets that they're discovering and their
Speaker 1: atmospheres and their their weights and dimensions. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that there are smaller, more smaller plants and then
Speaker 1: there are large ones at least in the area that
Speaker 1: they're looking in. But it does point to this diversity
Speaker 1: and this idea that things don't always work the way
Speaker 1: we think they do, and so we probably need to
Speaker 1: reframe the way that we're approaching things sometimes, and we
Speaker 1: may even need to reconsider what the habitable habitable zone is.
Speaker 1: A super Earth is basically a planet that is more
Speaker 1: massive than Earth that is still expected to be predominantly rocky.
Speaker 1: And that's something that we want right when we're talking
Speaker 1: about an earthlike planet, we want it to be rocky
Speaker 1: like ours and not gaseous and hot. Um. And this
Speaker 1: is a quote from Sarah Seeger. She is um an
Speaker 1: amazing UM speaker, and she's actually an astrophysicist and and
Speaker 1: um a planet hunter. Her say, and she says, the
Speaker 1: diversity of exto planets has really forced us to reconsider
Speaker 1: what the habitable zone really is. For example, some of
Speaker 1: these super Earth's are massive enough that they could retain
Speaker 1: a different atmosphere than we have on Earth. These super
Speaker 1: earths may hold onto the light gases hydrogen and helium.
Speaker 1: In this case, if they have a massive atmosphere, they
Speaker 1: could have a massive greenhouse effect. So this could actually
Speaker 1: increase the range of habitable zone in a planetary system.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit different than what we've thought of.
Speaker 1: We thought, Okay, you have to have the exact conditions
Speaker 1: that we have here on Earth. There's this I can't
Speaker 1: help but think, and I imagine some of our listeners
Speaker 1: are probably thinking of this as well. There was a
Speaker 1: there was a PC game back in the day called
Speaker 1: Masters of Orion. They did two of them. Oh they
Speaker 1: did third one that was supposedly not that good, But
Speaker 1: they did two of these things, and it's uh. We
Speaker 1: have different space faring races, and you're exploring new systems.
Speaker 1: In each system you discover will have a range of planets,
Speaker 1: and some of them will be too rocky, someone will
Speaker 1: be gases only some of some of them can be
Speaker 1: colonized with a certain extent and others not so much.
Speaker 1: And a lot of thought. Wind of the game is
Speaker 1: a very smart early um computer game, but but even
Speaker 1: even it managed to feel like it misses the mark
Speaker 1: and just the vast variety. Because if this game of
Speaker 1: Masters a Ryan lined up with what we know now
Speaker 1: about the layout of of other solar systems and the
Speaker 1: existence of extraplanets, you would encounter a lot of these
Speaker 1: systems that we just have nothing in them, right, yeah, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: you know, we have this idea that you know, other
Speaker 1: solar systems were supposed to be like ours, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they're vastly different. Some of them are spinning in what
Speaker 1: we think of is the wrong direction, um, like Australian
Speaker 1: one that don't really a line up to the science
Speaker 1: all that well, but but still backwards rotating solar systems. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So actually I was just thinking, like, how cool would
Speaker 1: it be if they had a planetary Zoo Tycoon game
Speaker 1: similar to sort of what you're saying. If you've ever
Speaker 1: played Zoo Tycoon, you know this is again another way
Speaker 1: to to think about well at least start understanding of
Speaker 1: what's out there. It would be very interesting. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: they if they took that sort of that basic expansion
Speaker 1: and colonization computer game model and really made it match
Speaker 1: up with with what we know now and what the
Speaker 1: conceivable uh near to long term future of of exploration is.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking, you put some really cool graphics of
Speaker 1: like pandas and giraffe planets and get kids to sort
Speaker 1: through the data for you. You can have like a
Speaker 1: million kids playing these games and inadvertently like punching some
Speaker 1: data for you. It could it could be a win
Speaker 1: win um. Alright, So here's the question, how are these
Speaker 1: far flung planets actually inferred? How do we know that
Speaker 1: they're out there? We suspect they're out there. They don't
Speaker 1: actually say definitively out there, they say inferred. Well, you
Speaker 1: have two types of detection. Basically, you have you have
Speaker 1: direct detection and indirect detection, all right, Um, With direct
Speaker 1: detection detection, and it's one thing to detect a star,
Speaker 1: but it's another thing to detect the planet. The visible
Speaker 1: light output by a planet like Jupiter is one billion
Speaker 1: that of its star, but if you shift into the
Speaker 1: infrared spectrum, the contrast is merely a few thousands, all right,
Speaker 1: So it helps to to shift the shift out of
Speaker 1: that visible light spectrum. You can also block out starlight
Speaker 1: and just focus on the corona, that outer plasma region
Speaker 1: of the star's atmosphere, and then you can catch the
Speaker 1: shine of the planets. Um. Direct imaging is the only
Speaker 1: way to access some of the really important qualities of
Speaker 1: an exoplanet, like how much water it has on its surface.
Speaker 1: But then there are these indirect detection methods, and some
Speaker 1: of these are are are pretty pretty crazy, like uh
Speaker 1: another crazy that they're they're really they're really fascinating because
Speaker 1: it's not a direct method of detection. You kind of
Speaker 1: have to find have to find a work around to
Speaker 1: detect the presence of this planet. Yeah, are you talking
Speaker 1: about the biosignature gasses. Yes, that's one of the methods
Speaker 1: that pops up. UM. I love this because it's like
Speaker 1: a game of clue, you know. Um. This is where
Speaker 1: different chemicals absorb or they take a bite out of
Speaker 1: the photons and light at different parts of the spectrum
Speaker 1: and can be used as a fingerprint um of the
Speaker 1: atmosphere of this planet. So if we imagine the planet,
Speaker 1: we can run the light given off from it through
Speaker 1: a machine called a spectrograph, which analyzes the data determine
Speaker 1: the chemicals and the planet's atmosphere um some chemicals which
Speaker 1: science is called biomarkers. Biomarkers may hint at life on
Speaker 1: a planet. At least, that doesn't mean that there's life.
Speaker 1: It just means that if you have certain chemicals that
Speaker 1: are taking a bite out of that light spectrum and
Speaker 1: you can see it missing, then you can start to
Speaker 1: ascertain the percentages of chemicals in the atmosphere. And I
Speaker 1: think that is amazing. Yeah, there's also the wheat gravity
Speaker 1: of a planet pulls the star into the small circular
Speaker 1: orbit and induces a minute wobble that can be detected
Speaker 1: using radial velocity tracking, which is which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And then there's a there's also this scenaria where the
Speaker 1: planet moves between a star and the observer and the
Speaker 1: luminosity shifts. There's a that's that's the transit method, and
Speaker 1: that's actually what the Kepler telescope is using. And just
Speaker 1: to go back to the Kepler mission, we're talking about
Speaker 1: basically a giant ninety eight megapixel digital camera that is
Speaker 1: taking these photos. Like you were saying, when it crosses
Speaker 1: the star, you're basically going to see um that a
Speaker 1: little bit of the light is blocked out and then
Speaker 1: the camera will measure a dip in the star's brightness,
Speaker 1: and if a planet is really what's causing that dip,
Speaker 1: it'll come around and cause the same kind of dip
Speaker 1: again and again and again. So a lot of this
Speaker 1: is pointing toward this idea that you have to have
Speaker 1: a ton of patients if you are a planet hunter. Yeah, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's one thing to find a start. Um.
Speaker 1: We can sometimes detect things like black holes, for instance,
Speaker 1: or potential black holes with gravitational lensing, where we see
Speaker 1: the way that the mass of an object causes light
Speaker 1: to bend around it. Well, then there's gravitational micro lensing
Speaker 1: where you're kind of you're you're you're observing the way
Speaker 1: that the star is causing light to bend. But then
Speaker 1: you're also on top of that observing the way that
Speaker 1: that stars planets are adding, uh, in a smaller sense
Speaker 1: to the bending of that light. Yeah. What I like
Speaker 1: about this too, this planet hunting, is that it kind
Speaker 1: of pulls in so many different disciplines. And you have astrophysicists, physicists,
Speaker 1: you have astrobiologists who are really interested in trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the atmosphere looked like in the early days,
Speaker 1: because having that sort of data can help us then
Speaker 1: look at another planet and say, well, this could be
Speaker 1: an earth light planet perhaps in four billion years, because
Speaker 1: it really matches what we think the Earth look like
Speaker 1: back in the day um or maybe it's halfway to
Speaker 1: that point or so. It's really interesting that everybody is
Speaker 1: sharing all of this data and trying to to get
Speaker 1: to the to the answer to the question, which is
Speaker 1: is there another Us out there? Yeah? And you mentioned
Speaker 1: clue earlier, and I keep coming back to that because
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like this, it reminds me a
Speaker 1: lot of high tech movie TV show crime scene where
Speaker 1: you have like people are coming in. You have your
Speaker 1: botanists that are looking at what what what plants are doing?
Speaker 1: You have you know, biologists, you have entomologists coming in,
Speaker 1: think of for an experts, people are shining lasers. All
Speaker 1: of these different disciplines are coming together, all of these
Speaker 1: different technologies coming together to put a face on this
Speaker 1: question mark you know, where who is the killer? And uh?
Speaker 1: And we see a similar thing here with it with
Speaker 1: the question mark being is there another Earth? Is there
Speaker 1: is there another planet out there that that resembles us? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I like that that you pointed out that way
Speaker 1: that is sort of backing up into the equation and
Speaker 1: taking all that data and trying to reconstruct the crime
Speaker 1: scene or the scene of the life, I guess, the
Speaker 1: scene of possible life. Um, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then when we get back, we'll talk about trying
Speaker 1: to find a true Earth twin. So we're back, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea of finding a true Earth twin. It reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of house hunting because you're looking at
Speaker 1: potential houses, and some houses are not on the market
Speaker 1: at all, so there's not even you know, like much
Speaker 1: like these solar systems or even non solar systems, where
Speaker 1: there's just nothing resembling a planet, uh that we're interested in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you have then you have planets. I mean,
Speaker 1: then you have houses that are either they're either too
Speaker 1: expensive or you get to look at them and they're
Speaker 1: just to run down, or or they look good at first,
Speaker 1: but then you find out that they have some sort
Speaker 1: of major problem like uh, you know, it's a part
Speaker 1: of the house is collapsing, or it's uh, it's atmosphere
Speaker 1: is too heavy and won't allow life to exist. In
Speaker 1: it that you see what I'm saying here, it becomes this.
Speaker 1: It's like the Goldilocks scenario, except with a far pickier
Speaker 1: Goldilocks and so many more um unacceptable containers of poor it. Well,
Speaker 1: if you are Sarah Seg, you're the planetary scientists, um
Speaker 1: an astrophysicists, you do kind of want a mystery house,
Speaker 1: at least for her. She she says, she that we
Speaker 1: want to look at an atmosphere in search for things
Speaker 1: that are unusual. So our own atmosphere is oxygen by volume.
Speaker 1: If she says, an alien civilization is looking at us
Speaker 1: from four light years away, presumably with an awesome telescope,
Speaker 1: and it knows something about chemistry, then it will know
Speaker 1: that we have millions to billions of times more oxygen
Speaker 1: than we should if there were no life on Earth.
Speaker 1: So that should be a clue to them. There's something
Speaker 1: going on here through further synthesis, through the interaction of
Speaker 1: oxygen and carbon dioxide, that that is not fitting uh
Speaker 1: in line with what its composition should be, and so
Speaker 1: we're looking for something that's not right. We're looking in
Speaker 1: the same way to the murder investigation is ends up
Speaker 1: chasing after individuals that are suspicious in some way, shape
Speaker 1: or form, whose story doesn't quite add up. We're doing
Speaker 1: looking for that planet with a story that doesn't quite
Speaker 1: add up. Why does it have this much oxygen? Why
Speaker 1: was it spotted leaving it's a it's apartment at the
Speaker 1: three in the morning garbage bag. That's right to fear
Speaker 1: the planetary dick detective. Then these are the questions that
Speaker 1: they're asking and UM, And what I think is interesting
Speaker 1: is that these these seventeen years, so much of this
Speaker 1: has just been an exercise. And let's let's comb through
Speaker 1: the data and let's try to take measurements. First. That
Speaker 1: was the first thing that they wanted to do. Can
Speaker 1: we take measurements of these planets? Um? The second thing
Speaker 1: is can we figure out what's in them the habitable zone?
Speaker 1: Can we start to really figure out whether native? Are
Speaker 1: they hot and gassie or they rocky? And then it
Speaker 1: became well, let's really see what's taking a bite out
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere here. Let's see if if the composition
Speaker 1: can give us um a clue as to an earth
Speaker 1: like twin for us And now Seeger and obviously others
Speaker 1: in her labs are looking much more specifically at that
Speaker 1: data set that Kepler has given them, those twenty three
Speaker 1: hundred planetary candidates, And she is actually helping to build
Speaker 1: a prototype nano satellite that will be launched in and
Speaker 1: she says that instead of looking at a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifties six thousand distant stars, we hope to survey the
Speaker 1: very nearest sunlight star for transitting Earth sized planets. So
Speaker 1: the return to studying individual extra planets will be for
Speaker 1: those orbiting stars that are close enough for detailed follow up.
Speaker 1: So they just keep honing in more and more on
Speaker 1: this idea that we can answer this question in this generation,
Speaker 1: and then coming in ten, we have a James Webb
Speaker 1: telescope which is going to just even look more laser
Speaker 1: focused at those habitable zones. Yeah, and Singer was on
Speaker 1: a panel at the World Science Festival about exp planets
Speaker 1: along with Natalie to Halla. She's a physicist and team
Speaker 1: leader the Kepler YEP, and that Mountain, the director of
Speaker 1: the Space Telescope Science Institute. Now, they all it was
Speaker 1: a very spirited conversation and they all had different ideas
Speaker 1: about how to go about planet hunting, but I think
Speaker 1: they all degree agree that UM this is something that
Speaker 1: is going to happen in our generation, and they're pretty
Speaker 1: much hamstrung by the technology. Now they could do it.
Speaker 1: They could find an earthlike planet if they had every
Speaker 1: dollar at their disposal, because they could build the right
Speaker 1: sort of UM instruments to do this with it. But
Speaker 1: they are saying that it's very hopeful that you have
Speaker 1: space X, that you have asteroid mining and basically some
Speaker 1: private companies coming in and creating the technology which will
Speaker 1: allow them, just like the nano satellite that seekers working on,
Speaker 1: to really get in and study it much further. And
Speaker 1: it's I think it's just really exciting time to know that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, again, this earthlike planet might be identified, Would
Speaker 1: we travel to it? Would there being aliens that consume us?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's I think I've missed this before,
Speaker 1: but things like this kind of remind me of of
Speaker 1: that day when I first started out stuff works and
Speaker 1: the news head hit that some guys in World, Georgia
Speaker 1: had a cooler with a big foot in it, an
Speaker 1: actual dead sasquatch, And for a split second there I
Speaker 1: was kind of like, is this really going to happen?
Speaker 1: Is this really gonna turn out to be Bigfoot, and
Speaker 1: of course it didn't. But but there was a moment
Speaker 1: there of possibility, and with our search for exoplanets, that
Speaker 1: moment of possibility continues to to draw out. Um, you
Speaker 1: can draw out to the point where some people perhaps
Speaker 1: lose interest in it and they just tend to think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I guess the rest of the universe is empty because
Speaker 1: we haven't found uh, that magic planet yet. But you know,
Speaker 1: some people would say that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: fish in the sea, there are a lot of planets
Speaker 1: uh out there in the universe, and if we look
Speaker 1: long enough, uh, we will find it. Well. And what
Speaker 1: they said on the panel is if, if, if anything,
Speaker 1: scientists are patient and they will come for the data
Speaker 1: and they will find that needle in the haystack. It's
Speaker 1: just a matter of time, um Seeker said. And I
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. If you want to look back
Speaker 1: to what we remember hundreds of years ago, inevitably it
Speaker 1: is the great explorers, Christopher Columbus didn't know what he
Speaker 1: was going to find, and he came across North America.
Speaker 1: Many of us working in the field of exoplanets believe
Speaker 1: that thousands of years from now, when people look back
Speaker 1: at our generation in the early twenty first century, they
Speaker 1: will remember the discovery of other earths as one of
Speaker 1: our most significant accomplishments. That is the beginning of what's
Speaker 1: out there? What are the what are the planets? Known?
Speaker 1: And in the future, we hope that our descendants will
Speaker 1: find signs of life. I don't know, Yeah, there you go. Um.
Speaker 1: I certainly hope to see it, and I think that
Speaker 1: would just be a super exciting thing. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it would be tremendous. And again, it's what I love
Speaker 1: about stuff like this is that it forces us to
Speaker 1: recast our understanding of the universe, universe in our place
Speaker 1: in it, and we've talked a lot about that. So
Speaker 1: if it comes to fruition, that's pretty awesome. Coo, Well,
Speaker 1: let's call the robot over. We well, we didn't call
Speaker 1: him over in the Prometheus episode because it was super
Speaker 1: long and all, so we had some some rather complex
Speaker 1: thoughts to convey about the nature of AI and yeah,
Speaker 1: basically you boot him on the room because we didn't
Speaker 1: want to give him any funny ideas about how he
Speaker 1: could emulate David. So all right, let's see what we
Speaker 1: have here from listeners. Well, this one was exciting because
Speaker 1: we got hats. We did. Some of the podcasters also
Speaker 1: received these and like them. We will will have to
Speaker 1: get a snapshot here of us wearing them. But we
Speaker 1: heard from Adam. Adam wrote in to say, first I
Speaker 1: have to say I've been a lawyer a lawyer. I've
Speaker 1: been a loyal listener since the stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: science class days um, and you actually read a listener
Speaker 1: of feedback. I wrote about the oil industry on the
Speaker 1: Old Show, how it's not as luxurious as the rig
Speaker 1: on the rigs as people think, though the platforms are nicer.
Speaker 1: As an engineer out of practice, your episodes captivate the
Speaker 1: inner scientist and geek within me. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Switching gears. For the past ten months, I've been traveling
Speaker 1: through Latin America on what I call the Happy Nomad Tour.
Speaker 1: After being miserable quote unquote living the dream of living
Speaker 1: working in worry free Denmark for a wind power company,
Speaker 1: I finally started asking myself what my passions are, what
Speaker 1: my dreams are, and what I want out of life.
Speaker 1: I call this process the happiness plunge um, which also
Speaker 1: sounds like maybe like a novelty dessert that you would get.
Speaker 1: I can't throw yourself back into a refreshing pool of tea,
Speaker 1: but as anyway, he continues, MY goal as a traveler
Speaker 1: is to leave each place better than how I found it,
Speaker 1: which I do by volunteering everywhere I go. I've had
Speaker 1: volunteering experiences such as feeding the elderly at nursing homes
Speaker 1: in Mexico, installing solar panels and rural hunduras, attracting book
Speaker 1: donations for a rural library project in Peru, playing with
Speaker 1: kids at orphanages in Costa Rica and Ecuador, designing a
Speaker 1: financial strategy for a new NGO in El Salvador, and
Speaker 1: marketing an organization that turns donated to use bikes into
Speaker 1: bike machines, washing machines, blenders, water well pumps, etcetera. In Guatemala.
Speaker 1: There's a lot I can offer as an engineer NBA.
Speaker 1: I listened to quite a few hs W podcast on
Speaker 1: my ten to twenty our bus rides and wanted to,
Speaker 1: in a very small way, thank you for what you've
Speaker 1: given me. Peru is my last stop in Latin America,
Speaker 1: and I thought these all pack out wool Julio's Julio's
Speaker 1: feel there's one pronunciation different pronunciation to me, then we'll
Speaker 1: call him Julia. We're a great way to say things.
Speaker 1: And no, it doesn't get too cold. I know it
Speaker 1: doesn't get too cold in Atlanta, but still I wanted
Speaker 1: to protect those knowledge filled noggats. I'm at home now,
Speaker 1: visiting my family and preparing for the Asian leg of
Speaker 1: the Happy Nomad Tour. I look forward to listening to
Speaker 1: you guys on the other side of the planet very soon.
Speaker 1: Once again, thank you for all you've taught me. I
Speaker 1: hope you know how appreciated you are. You're super fan Adam,
Speaker 1: and he also shares a couple of links here, um
Speaker 1: Happiness Plunge one word dot com that's the website for
Speaker 1: this and crazy Hair Fundraiser dot com Crazy z Hair
Speaker 1: fund Raiser h A I R not h R e Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, Adams. Really cool. Actually, even though it's eighty
Speaker 1: six degrees in Atlanta today, I was wearing my hat
Speaker 1: this morning, so I appreciate that, and I appreciate your thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it really it sounds like, I mean, it's an
Speaker 1: awesome thing that you're doing, so yeah, keep it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, gosh, some people take off little time rest,
Speaker 1: do you your you're no? Uh low fer there, I'll
Speaker 1: say that and uh and thanks for the hat. Thanks
Speaker 1: for writing in. If you guys would like to share
Speaker 1: something with us, UM, especially if it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing you can post on Facebook, you can find us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, where we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter, where our handle is
Speaker 1: blow the Mind. Let us know what you think about
Speaker 1: the search for exoplanets. What do you think it's gonna
Speaker 1: be like the day that that breaks on the local
Speaker 1: news channel. How is it going to be interpreted by
Speaker 1: pundits on various cable news channels. I don't know. We'll
Speaker 1: see what happened shut some thoughts on that will be interesting. UM.
Speaker 1: You can also send us your thoughts via email at
Speaker 1: Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.