Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. I'll be there, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says I'm
Speaker 1: free falling. I'm Joe McCormick and I'm Lauren voc Obama,
Speaker 1: and our host Jonathan Strickland is not with us this week.
Speaker 1: He is across the ocean in a strange land, Ireland
Speaker 1: in fact, so not totally strange. What's he doing there?
Speaker 1: I guess not drinking Guinness. No vacationing, taking in the site,
Speaker 1: catching some rays in Ireland? Yes, probably Okay, Well, best
Speaker 1: of luck to him with whatever he's doing over there.
Speaker 1: But today Lauren and I thought we would talk to
Speaker 1: you about artificial gravity. Yeah, we are traveling into space,
Speaker 1: where you can also get a pretty wicked tan um.
Speaker 1: So what happens when you go into space. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're a stowaway in a supply capsule that's flying up
Speaker 1: to the International Space Station and you get out of
Speaker 1: your hiding place, much to the annoyance of the astronauts
Speaker 1: around you. Yeah, they're going to be really mad at you,
Speaker 1: I think, is the immediate effect of being in space
Speaker 1: in that case. I guess, especially if they didn't calculate
Speaker 1: your weight into the fuel costs, and you probably cost
Speaker 1: like a million dollars unless you're very, very thin. And
Speaker 1: then you you go over, you float over to the window.
Speaker 1: Wait a second, why are you floating, because that's what
Speaker 1: you do in space? You float? Oh, right, because there's
Speaker 1: no gravity in space. Uh no, No, that is incorrect entirely.
Speaker 1: A common myth is that there's no gravity in space.
Speaker 1: But the fact is there's plenty of gravity in space.
Speaker 1: At two fifty miles above Earth, which is a sort
Speaker 1: of average flight altitude for the International Space Station, less
Speaker 1: than two percent of the distance to the Moon, we
Speaker 1: still feel about eighty eight point eight percent of the
Speaker 1: Earth's gravity. So if that's true, why are the astronauts
Speaker 1: floating around in the capsule? Okay, they're technically not floating.
Speaker 1: They are falling. That's right. Well, I guess they are floating,
Speaker 1: But it's not because there's no gravity, You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: It's because they're falling. So it's pretty much the same
Speaker 1: phenomenon as if you were to take the I S.
Speaker 1: S and and tow it with an airplane up to
Speaker 1: jet cruising altitude and then just drop everyone straight down
Speaker 1: toward Earth and on its way towards the ground, everybody
Speaker 1: and everything inside the capsule would float around because the
Speaker 1: vehicle and everything in it is falling at the same speed.
Speaker 1: There's no force to hold you to the floor. You're
Speaker 1: you're in what's called free fall, right, and so everything
Speaker 1: feels like zero gravity because you're in free fall. And
Speaker 1: we call this situation micro gravity. So why doesn't the
Speaker 1: I S S just hit the ground when it's flying
Speaker 1: around the Earth. Well, that's because it's not falling in
Speaker 1: a straight line towards the Earth's center of mass the
Speaker 1: way you would if you fell out of an airplane. Right.
Speaker 1: Orbit is actually falling with style. It's it's falling in
Speaker 1: a circle around a big thing. Freestyle falling. Yeah, so cool.
Speaker 1: It's like you get to fall forever and never hit
Speaker 1: the ground. It's the best of both worlds. It's floating
Speaker 1: the superman power of flight. Uh no, no injury from impact.
Speaker 1: Let's just have a vadeva due time, right. Uh no, no,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with floating everything? It's not good at all
Speaker 1: for your body. Yeah, it'sn't that a bummer? So floating
Speaker 1: it looks really cool. When you see Chris Hadfield making
Speaker 1: the videos from space and everybody's floating around it. I mean,
Speaker 1: number one, it's kind of hilarious for some reasons we'll
Speaker 1: point out in a minute. But it looks awesome, oh sure,
Speaker 1: and well, and it's fascinating, and it's something that we
Speaker 1: never get to do here on Earth. So there's there's
Speaker 1: a novelty to it, right, unless you ride in the
Speaker 1: vomit commet, which a parabolic flight in an airplane can
Speaker 1: simulate microgravity for a moment. But if you're just taking
Speaker 1: a parabolic flight like in the vomit comment, it only
Speaker 1: lasts a few seconds and that's pretty much uch. Okay,
Speaker 1: But it turns out, yeah, if you stay in microgravity
Speaker 1: conditions for a long period of time, it's really bad
Speaker 1: for your body. Just one of the things, and one
Speaker 1: of the main things is you have bone density loss. Right,
Speaker 1: And okay, both both the bone and muscle components of
Speaker 1: what's bad about microgravity have to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that even even just walking around on the surface of
Speaker 1: our planet, you know, continually having to counteract the force
Speaker 1: of Earth's gravity on your body does a lot to
Speaker 1: keep your bones and muscles healthy. By by strengthening them
Speaker 1: by making them work. Yeah. Well, so you might think
Speaker 1: of your bones as something just kind of like rocks,
Speaker 1: but they're actually not like rocks. They're not static right there,
Speaker 1: living growing things. Yeah, so that they have metabolic interaction
Speaker 1: with your body, and if you don't put stress on them,
Speaker 1: they can weaken over time. So even if you don't
Speaker 1: get a whole lot of vigorous exercise and you're not
Speaker 1: an athlete, you're still doing a whole lot of work
Speaker 1: just walking around your house because you've got this amazing
Speaker 1: force pushing down on you all the time, and you
Speaker 1: have to push back against the surface of the Earth. Now,
Speaker 1: in space, you don't have the stress of constant force
Speaker 1: pushing you down against the floor or surface whatever it is.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it's too easy. In microgravity, Astronauts
Speaker 1: tend to lose about one to two percent of their
Speaker 1: bone mass every month, and according to the e s A,
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency, there are records of up to
Speaker 1: twenty bone mass loss after a six month mission, and
Speaker 1: that's scary. This is especially hard on the weight bearing
Speaker 1: bones the lower body, as you can imagine, because they're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of the work that normally happens when
Speaker 1: you're on the surface of the Earth. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: muscle loss too. Astronauts spend a lot of time on
Speaker 1: the space station exercising just to stave off the effects
Speaker 1: of bone and muscle loss, but that's not enough. There
Speaker 1: was a Journal of Physiology report in two thousand ten
Speaker 1: called Prolonged space flight induced Alteration in the structure and
Speaker 1: function of Human skeletal muscle fibers, and they found basically
Speaker 1: that prolonged weightlessness would contribute to substantial muscle loss in
Speaker 1: the body, and that even the exercise regimens that were
Speaker 1: in place at the time, we're not doing enough to
Speaker 1: hold off the muscle loss. So muscle atrophy was still happening,
Speaker 1: even though you've got people spending tons of time with
Speaker 1: resistance training and on the treadmill. Sure, which means that
Speaker 1: when they get back to Earth they have to really
Speaker 1: work up to being healthy again, healthy enough to to
Speaker 1: not damage their bones from a fall or or you know,
Speaker 1: to be able to do the same amount of work
Speaker 1: that they previously were. Yeah. One of a quote from
Speaker 1: their abstract is our results highlight the need to study
Speaker 1: new exercise programs on the I S S that employ
Speaker 1: high resistance and contractions over a wide range of motion
Speaker 1: to mimic the range occurring in Earth's one G environment.
Speaker 1: One G will use that term again, that's just one
Speaker 1: amount of Earth's gravity, right, and that's that's not all, folks,
Speaker 1: not even the creepiest. What what would you say is
Speaker 1: the creepiest? I would say probably fluid redistribution. That doesn't
Speaker 1: sound good at all. No, So when you enter a
Speaker 1: microgravity environment, pretty quickly your body undergoes fluid redistribution, where
Speaker 1: body fluids are concentrated in the upper body, so you
Speaker 1: can see a big inflated chest and neck and a
Speaker 1: puffy face. Some astronauts apparently report sinus problems and feeling
Speaker 1: like they have a cold or sinus infection. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: microgravity causes the body to think that there's too much
Speaker 1: blood in it, so then it triggers you to pee
Speaker 1: a lot, which leads to a fluid deficit. And so
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's not good for you. Um, there's
Speaker 1: there's also space sickness, am I right? Right? This is
Speaker 1: a less uh I guess probably less detrimental to your
Speaker 1: permanent health, but unpleasant at the time, and it has
Speaker 1: to do with the inner ear, Am I correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like airsickness or any other thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's caused by an imbalance of fluids in the inner ear,
Speaker 1: and you can have nausea, dizziness. It's referred to as
Speaker 1: space adaptation syndrome. There are actually lots of funny stories
Speaker 1: about how different people have experienced it while adapting to space.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure it's not funny at the time, especially
Speaker 1: when you're or whatever. It's not not good. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's very unpleasant. And you can imagine how it's a
Speaker 1: much bigger deal when you're talking about somebody in space.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is somebody who needs to be using
Speaker 1: their time very efficiently because of how expensive and dangerous
Speaker 1: what they're doing is. Uh So it's not just like
Speaker 1: being s sick on a on a cruise, which is
Speaker 1: a bummer, but you're not essentially detrimental to you and
Speaker 1: your country exactly. But even if you overlook all of
Speaker 1: these major health concerns, because they might come up with, say,
Speaker 1: better ways of exercise on the space station that can
Speaker 1: really really do a good job holding off the muscle
Speaker 1: and bone loss, or some kind of super dramamine too,
Speaker 1: to calm down your inner ear receptors. Exactly. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're drugs. Maybe that might help with fluid redistribution, or
Speaker 1: just maybe some kind of physical exercise you could do
Speaker 1: that could help with that. Uh, there are lots of
Speaker 1: things we can learn. Even if we imagine that we
Speaker 1: eliminate all of those medical problems, there's still just major
Speaker 1: problems with lifestyle in zero gravity. Oh right, Because I
Speaker 1: mean the way that we eat food here on Earth
Speaker 1: is dependent upon that food being exposed to gravity. Exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: why why can't we have crumb cake in space? Because
Speaker 1: you don't You don't want the crumbs getting into the
Speaker 1: instruments or your face, I mean, or the rest of
Speaker 1: your face. I mean you want them in your face, clearly,
Speaker 1: but you want the muscle in your mouth, not in
Speaker 1: your eyes. But on the space station, it's going to
Speaker 1: be harder to keep them from getting in your eyes. Actually,
Speaker 1: do you know do you know what would happen if
Speaker 1: you tried to put salt and pepper on your food
Speaker 1: in microgravity? Oh? I had never thought about the before,
Speaker 1: but that's terribly like, I don't want salt pepper in
Speaker 1: my ears. You you'd fail. So you get clouds of
Speaker 1: salt and pepper everywhere, and they get in your eyes,
Speaker 1: and they get in the instruments, and then the insectoid
Speaker 1: invaders would see that the I S s Alien Sentinel
Speaker 1: post is not being manned and they'd mount their invasion.
Speaker 1: There you go, all because of pepper. So instead, this
Speaker 1: is actually true. I've seen pictures of it. Astronauts on
Speaker 1: the I S have literally had droppers for salt and pepper.
Speaker 1: So I guess saltwater and pepper water water to to
Speaker 1: deposit a droplet that will cling to your food and
Speaker 1: not float away. Well, I mean, that's that's a that's
Speaker 1: a genius idea. And I'm glad that they can seeds
Speaker 1: in things properly in space and even from a dropper. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, and the foods that they have to deal
Speaker 1: with to begin with, they're sort of designed to be
Speaker 1: in bite sized pieces and to have such a consistency
Speaker 1: that they don't easily crumble or have little parts that
Speaker 1: come off right. Sure, sure, like if you were going
Speaker 1: to eat an apple and space you and just crunch
Speaker 1: down on an apple, it would have been prepared in
Speaker 1: little apple cubes for you. So that you can just
Speaker 1: pop one in your mouth and not have to bite
Speaker 1: stuff off. Um, so they're sleeping. That's a funny one.
Speaker 1: You have to sleep in these hilarious bags kind of
Speaker 1: kind of like a like a space hammock, except much
Speaker 1: more embarrassing. Yeah, actually they're kind of cute. I think
Speaker 1: it's funny. I saw a video from the I S
Speaker 1: S of one guy showing off his bag and it's
Speaker 1: just stuck to the wall and it's like, this is
Speaker 1: where I sleep. And I don't know, it felt like
Speaker 1: somebody showing me like like pulling out a drawer from
Speaker 1: their dresser, like this is where I sleep. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: um okay. And the big issue that I'm sure that
Speaker 1: everyone is thinking about right now in terms of life functions,
Speaker 1: how how do you use the bathroom in space? Yeah,
Speaker 1: going to the bathroom in microgravity. Just pause for a
Speaker 1: moment and consider it. I actually don't want to consider
Speaker 1: it all that all that hard. Um. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean classically, this was basically just a diaper situation, right,
Speaker 1: you could have a diaper or uh So. There's actually
Speaker 1: a great guest blog post on Gizmoto by the astronaut
Speaker 1: Leroy Chow about space toilet behavior um, and he talks
Speaker 1: about how bathroom activities. Yeah, I used to mean you
Speaker 1: you'd wear a diaper or you'd go into a sealable bag,
Speaker 1: and so it was a clear bag and you really
Speaker 1: didn't have any privacy while you were using it. And
Speaker 1: that sounds fun a really good way to get really
Speaker 1: close to your coworkers, right. Yeah, Apparently with the advent
Speaker 1: of the Shuttle program, we finally got some bathroom accommodations.
Speaker 1: And so the International Space Station has a toilet, but
Speaker 1: in a very loose definition of the word toilet. So
Speaker 1: in the absence of gravity, how are you going to
Speaker 1: get everything where it needs to be. So the toilet
Speaker 1: uses quote airflow two direct waste to its intended destination.
Speaker 1: And to me, that sounds like a somewhat euphemistic way
Speaker 1: of saying that you poop into a vacuum cleaner. Uh Man,
Speaker 1: space is so sexy, you guys. Fortunately, according to Leroy Chow,
Speaker 1: there is a funnel at the end, so apparently they
Speaker 1: worked pretty well. But sometimes sometimes accidents happen and people
Speaker 1: make a mess and then they have to clean it up.
Speaker 1: You can already see why the idea of artificial gravity
Speaker 1: is very appealing, right right, Okay, But but there's there's
Speaker 1: also some more perhaps I mean, not that using the
Speaker 1: bathroom in space it's not a serious problem. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a daily thing that everyone has to do, and
Speaker 1: it's definitely a major concern. But but what about something
Speaker 1: even even more concerning, like like what if you needed
Speaker 1: surgery in space? What if something happened? Oh yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: just earlier this year, there were reports that a Nebraska
Speaker 1: based company called Virtual Incision was coming up with a
Speaker 1: single incision surgical robot that was specifically designed for emergency
Speaker 1: surgeries during space flight. So it would be remote operated
Speaker 1: by another member of the crew, and it would enter
Speaker 1: the body through us single hole. And one of the
Speaker 1: purposes of this model is to require as little opening
Speaker 1: of the skin as possible, because, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: it really wouldn't be a good idea to have fluids
Speaker 1: from insides you soaring out into the cabin through a
Speaker 1: large open incision. Uh, certainly not. Also, as we all
Speaker 1: learned from Event Horizon, it gets really messy when globules
Speaker 1: of blood are just flying everywhere. Yep. And we have
Speaker 1: learned a lot from Event Horizon. We truly have. If
Speaker 1: you haven't heard it, please go listen to the tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episode about the technology of Event Horizon. Uh. One
Speaker 1: more thing, a little more future focused, or hopefully future focused.
Speaker 1: And this is not applying to anything. Now. Let's say
Speaker 1: that we want to colonize space, so just which we
Speaker 1: kind of do. Yeah, yeah, spread out from Earth, go
Speaker 1: into space and live there indefinitely. All the things we've
Speaker 1: mentioned already will matter a lot, but it will really
Speaker 1: start to matter when we want to introduce the next generation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how how do we reproduce in space? And that's not
Speaker 1: merely just like a mechanical problem. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: a biological issue. There are serious questions about what happens
Speaker 1: when mammals try to conceive and ingested to grow a baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a microgravity environment. I mean little little on all
Speaker 1: of the other radiation and other issues that there are
Speaker 1: with being in space. But yeah, we it's such a
Speaker 1: huge issue that we did a whole two podcasts about it.
Speaker 1: They published on February twelve, and and we're called Babies
Speaker 1: in Space Inconceivable, Get it. It's kind of a pun
Speaker 1: about conception. Um. I think that one was more about
Speaker 1: radiation and then The second one was about microgravity, right right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the second one is called babies in space. That's heavy
Speaker 1: because my microgravity. Well, it is heavy because there are
Speaker 1: some studies to suggest that it really might be a
Speaker 1: bad idea trying to conceive in space. Right. So there's
Speaker 1: something about inter cellular protein transfer. Right, there's a few
Speaker 1: issues that we that we know are at play. Um.
Speaker 1: There there's evidence in both plant cells and fruit flies
Speaker 1: the microgravity could disrupt intracellular protein transfer um. In in
Speaker 1: fruit flies that were developed in space, this led to
Speaker 1: a much weakened immune system, which is actually really significant
Speaker 1: to human beings because we, along with lots of other mammals,
Speaker 1: share a similar immune system to fruit flies, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to fungal resistance. So what this means is that, um,
Speaker 1: that there's a possibility that if you have a baby
Speaker 1: in space, it will die of a terrible fungal infection.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's not good. We need to work on
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um. There was also in simulations
Speaker 1: of micro gravity on Earth with mice. The babies produced
Speaker 1: were normal, So that's cool, but um, but fewer embryos
Speaker 1: made it to birth than usual. Oh yeah, there were
Speaker 1: also studies with jellyfish. Remember, oh right, Yeah, So they
Speaker 1: took some jellyfish up in a Space Shuttle flight Aurelia,
Speaker 1: Rita moon least, and these jellyfish underwent stroblation during the procedures.
Speaker 1: So stroblation reminds me of what that. What that was
Speaker 1: where the polyps separates into the f array, which is
Speaker 1: like a larva. And they did that before and after launch.
Speaker 1: And so there was a study published on this in
Speaker 1: and they studied what happened to the jellyfish after they
Speaker 1: spent nine days aboard the Space Shuttle during the larval
Speaker 1: and polyp stages, and then they returned to Earth. So
Speaker 1: jellyfish have graviceptors, which are these little hairy pockets that
Speaker 1: contain calcium sulfate crystals that help them orient their bodies
Speaker 1: with respect to Earth's gravity. So again sort of like
Speaker 1: the inner ear thing that we've got where we've got
Speaker 1: you know, tiny receptors and fluid and everything working together. Well,
Speaker 1: except this is a crystal mechanism, not a fluid mechanism,
Speaker 1: but right, And the study found that the jellyfish they
Speaker 1: developed pretty much normally, like their bodies looked normal. They
Speaker 1: were quote morphologically very similar. I think that just means
Speaker 1: it looked a jellyfish. They looked pretty much normal, but
Speaker 1: they had pulsing abnormalities, which difficulty moving right because the
Speaker 1: jellyfish pulses right share in order to swim swimming quotation marks.
Speaker 1: And then there was a follow up study the same
Speaker 1: year that basically confirmed that something wasn't working right with
Speaker 1: their movement. So so even though they looked fine, just
Speaker 1: something was off. Yeah, and we should take that very
Speaker 1: seriously because as as sad as it is to make
Speaker 1: jellyfish that have pulsing abnormalities, we really wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: subject to human baby to that. I mean, assuming that
Speaker 1: that something didn't go wrong even before that point. If
Speaker 1: a baby was born after being conceived in space, we
Speaker 1: just don't know what would happen to it, And and
Speaker 1: that is a really scary, deep level trial to to undertake.
Speaker 1: We don't want to just willy nilly dive into that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, right, So I hope we've made the
Speaker 1: case now that there is a really really pressing need
Speaker 1: for artificial gravity, Like it's a big deal if we
Speaker 1: actually want to do things in space. It's not just
Speaker 1: kind of a convenience. It matters a lot. Sure, Sure,
Speaker 1: it's it's not just for strutting through the hallways like
Speaker 1: like Ryker looking all looking all cool. Right, it's really
Speaker 1: it's important to well different different levels of importance. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: unlike in the movies, wherein it's just kind of assumed.
Speaker 1: I think that that, oh, in the future will have
Speaker 1: worked out this artificial gravity thing and we don't even
Speaker 1: really need to talk about it that much. Yeah, Usually
Speaker 1: what you see in the movies is it's modeled on
Speaker 1: something that would normally work within Earth's atmosphere, so like
Speaker 1: an airplane or something where there's just a floor hallway
Speaker 1: and seats or a deck, you know, even like a
Speaker 1: like a sailing ship. Yeah, and people just walk around
Speaker 1: on them there. Uh. It seems to be an assumption
Speaker 1: that there maybe there's something underneath the floorboards that's creating
Speaker 1: the gravitational field that holds you there. So that's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. Do we have a way to create real
Speaker 1: gravity without having something with mass? And the answer is no, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's not how gravity works. To create gravity, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, you need something with mass. Everything
Speaker 1: with mass creates gravity. But to have an appreciable amount
Speaker 1: of gravity that you could walk around, and you need
Speaker 1: a lot of mass, an appreciable amount of mass, right,
Speaker 1: I say something about the size of the Earth if
Speaker 1: you're going to have people walking around as though it
Speaker 1: is the Earth's gravity. Yeah, okay, So what if you said, like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we just got some kind of really really
Speaker 1: dense material and put that underneath the floorboards your spaceship
Speaker 1: so it would pull you down towards the floor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a nice idea, But first of all, what kind of
Speaker 1: dense material would that be? So if the spaceship is
Speaker 1: going to be of any manageable size, it sounds like
Speaker 1: you're proposing exotic, as yet unknown material that somehow don't
Speaker 1: decay as very dense material tends to do pretty quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's basically just playing pretend. That's not a lot
Speaker 1: of help. So second, what what if you create Earth
Speaker 1: gravity with real mass? How would you move your ship?
Speaker 1: As the mass of your ship increases, you're essentially eliminating
Speaker 1: the difference between the ship and the planet you came from.
Speaker 1: So what's the point? You might as well just move
Speaker 1: the Earth wherever you want to go. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not like it needs to be aerodynamics. So, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: plowing a little bit deeper into people on the internet
Speaker 1: and lazy science fiction writers. What about gravitons. Can't we
Speaker 1: just use gravitons to create gravity? Well, we might if
Speaker 1: they weren't entirely hypothetical, right maybe, I mean, we don't
Speaker 1: even know the thing is, so gravitons are hypothetical particles.
Speaker 1: They are a hypothesis, and they're predicted to mediate the
Speaker 1: force of gravity in what's called quantum field theory. So
Speaker 1: the same way that photons are the particle of electromagnetism,
Speaker 1: gravitons would be the equivalent massless particle delivers the force
Speaker 1: of gravity. Right there. They're really nice because they make
Speaker 1: math work out just fine in terms of what we
Speaker 1: have already theorized about the universe. However, we've never detected them, right, Well,
Speaker 1: we don't even have a viable theory of quantum gravity yet.
Speaker 1: Please keep in mind that gravitons have never been observed
Speaker 1: in reality. Thus they're currently still considered hypothetical. Like we said,
Speaker 1: they're consistent with some popular theories like superstring theory, but
Speaker 1: there's no direct evidence that these things exist in the
Speaker 1: words of the American particle physicist Don Lincoln quote at
Speaker 1: the moment, gravitons are entirely theoretical constructs that delicately walk
Speaker 1: the knife edge precipice between the domains of scientific respectability
Speaker 1: and the shady world of handwaving. I think the handwaving
Speaker 1: he's invoking there is, you know, the thing you stick
Speaker 1: in to make your equation work. Right. So, furthermore, from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, the people who talk on the
Speaker 1: internet at about using gravitons to create artificial gravity are
Speaker 1: not physicists. And even if we were to discover the
Speaker 1: existence of gravitons, I don't really see how they would
Speaker 1: help us generate gravity without mass. Well, you just have
Speaker 1: a graviton drive. Yeah, yeah, Okay, now I'm not buying
Speaker 1: that one. The bottom line is, if you want real gravity,
Speaker 1: you need mass. You need a lot of mass. But
Speaker 1: can we simulate gravity? There's the ticket. So we can't
Speaker 1: have real gravity without mass, but we can simulate gravity
Speaker 1: because we feel the effects of gravity is a pushing
Speaker 1: interaction between ourselves and the ground. So the force of
Speaker 1: gravity can be represented as your tendency to accelerate towards
Speaker 1: the ground at nine point eight meters per second per second,
Speaker 1: and we can accelerate stuff like woe. Oh sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. The other part of it is that the
Speaker 1: ground is pushing back against you. Otherwise you're just in
Speaker 1: free fall again. So there's more than one way to
Speaker 1: create a pushing interaction like this. How about linear acceleration,
Speaker 1: So that's that's like if you're in a if you're
Speaker 1: in a car and an airplane running down the runway. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So Lauren, you've been in an airplane taking off. You know,
Speaker 1: when they ramp up the speed going down the runway
Speaker 1: and they're about to take off the ground, how do
Speaker 1: you feel in relationship to your chair? You get kind
Speaker 1: of pressed back into it, right, So, because there's massive
Speaker 1: forward acceleration, you feel the force pulling you backward, and
Speaker 1: there's something there to stop you. Your chair, your pin
Speaker 1: to the back of your seat. So if you were
Speaker 1: to get up during takeoff, you'd feel yourself pulled towards
Speaker 1: the back of the plane. So what if we built
Speaker 1: a spacecraft where the floor was the interior aft of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft, So the place back in the plane where
Speaker 1: they keep all the goodies and the toilets and and
Speaker 1: a flight attendant sitting there chatting with their buddies about
Speaker 1: how annoying the passengers are. That could work. Right, So
Speaker 1: there's a spacecraft veling in a straight line. Now imagine
Speaker 1: the interior of the spacecraft is a single room. The
Speaker 1: floor of that room is the aft of the of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft, the stern in the face in the back,
Speaker 1: and the ceiling is the bow the nose. You would
Speaker 1: feel the forces of motion pushing you down towards the ground,
Speaker 1: and if you accelerated it just the right rate, you
Speaker 1: could produce the sensation of one G one Earth gravity.
Speaker 1: This is actually doable, and the only problem would be
Speaker 1: designing the spacecraft and how you're going to continue to
Speaker 1: accelerate the proper rate continuously. Right, And I guess kind
Speaker 1: of without stopping or with having everything nailed down appropriately
Speaker 1: or et cetera. Right, is it might well be a
Speaker 1: strain on fuel or energy reserves, because remember we're talking
Speaker 1: about an acceleration, not just movement. Sure, or you might
Speaker 1: you know, want to stop eventually and then yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean one thing that's proposed is if you're going
Speaker 1: to your destination, you accelerate at a constant rate that
Speaker 1: produces this force halfway there, and then you turn around
Speaker 1: and decelerate at the same rate after the halfway point.
Speaker 1: That could work, but I've got a better one. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to design, say something like a space station
Speaker 1: on me, how about rotational force? So you have a
Speaker 1: rotating object, Okay, yeah, sure. Have you ever gotten in
Speaker 1: one of those carnival rides where there's a big wheel
Speaker 1: and everybody goes into a cage along the inner surface
Speaker 1: of the wheel, and then it starts whirling around really
Speaker 1: fast in the air, And if you try to lift
Speaker 1: your arms up off the outside edge of the cage,
Speaker 1: it's really hard. You can't do it without a lot
Speaker 1: of effort. I I have been on one. I try
Speaker 1: not to after that first experience. I did not enjoy
Speaker 1: it because if someone uh you know, becomes a little
Speaker 1: motion sick and and empties the contents of their stomach
Speaker 1: onto the ride, it gets whirled around on everyone and
Speaker 1: sticks to the wall like you yeah. Uh. So this
Speaker 1: is essentially the type of force we're talking about. It's
Speaker 1: when you have a rotating object, there's a force that
Speaker 1: pulls outward from the axis of rotation. It's the same
Speaker 1: reason that if you hold a bucket of water in
Speaker 1: your hand and you whirl it around really fast. Even
Speaker 1: at the point in the windmill you're making with your
Speaker 1: arm where the bucket is upside down, the water doesn't
Speaker 1: fall out of the bucket, and that's because of the
Speaker 1: force you've created by spinning it around the axis of rotation,
Speaker 1: which in this case would be your shoulder. So that's
Speaker 1: essentially the concept behind a rotating space station for artificial gravity.
Speaker 1: So let's try to picture this. Imagine a space station
Speaker 1: in the shape of a torus, which is a yeah,
Speaker 1: a hollow donut. Uh So from inside the cabin would
Speaker 1: be kind of like a tunnel. It's a tunnel that
Speaker 1: goes all the way around and loops back on itself
Speaker 1: and you're floating along. And what happens in this tunnel
Speaker 1: once the space station starts to spin like a wheel
Speaker 1: around the don't that hole? Well, all of the contents
Speaker 1: of the tunnel, including the air and your body, feel
Speaker 1: force pulling them out away from the axis of rotation
Speaker 1: like we're just talking about. But once you hit the
Speaker 1: floor of the tunnel, which is the outside surface of
Speaker 1: the tourists, there's the structure pushing back against you, just
Speaker 1: like the ground on Earth pushes back against you to
Speaker 1: react to the force of gravity, pulling you towards the
Speaker 1: center of the earth. So so your floor is is
Speaker 1: that outer wall and your ceiling is the inner wall.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Or here's another cool idea for a
Speaker 1: spinning artificial gravity station. What about a capsule tethered to
Speaker 1: a counterweight. So, for example, like if if you've got
Speaker 1: to two hollow containers on either side of a string,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like one of those things that
Speaker 1: people throw at each other in movies. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're called. Yeah, yeah, bullus kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: they're in video games too, sure, sure, but but if
Speaker 1: you if if you had one of those critters and
Speaker 1: except giant enough to stand in, and then your your
Speaker 1: floor in either capsule would be the point furthest away
Speaker 1: from that from that center of rotation, right to be
Speaker 1: the outside of the containers, the opposite of the side
Speaker 1: where the string is attached. So then you could just
Speaker 1: have like rooms that rotate with relationship to each other.
Speaker 1: So why don't we have anything like this, Well, there's
Speaker 1: really no reason we couldn't start building one of these today.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, I can't see that there's
Speaker 1: any missing puzzle piece, right, there's no mathematical reason. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's all about the money and the resources involved.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. It would require a massive, massive investment
Speaker 1: of money and human resources. And why is that. Well,
Speaker 1: so imagine you're in one of these spinning stations. How
Speaker 1: do you generate enough force to simulate Earth's gravity. The
Speaker 1: force you generate is going to be a product of
Speaker 1: the radius of the station, so how far it is
Speaker 1: from the center of rotation to the floor, and how
Speaker 1: fast it's spinning. You've got to multiply those things together.
Speaker 1: So you could have a small station that's spinning really
Speaker 1: really fast. And that is horrible. That's that's really something
Speaker 1: you don't want. Yeah, you're you're also running back into
Speaker 1: those those motion sickness I imagine kind of areas at
Speaker 1: a certain point. Yeah. Well, one thing I've read is
Speaker 1: that physicists talk about how this would entail that because
Speaker 1: your head is a much more significant fraction closer to
Speaker 1: the center of rotation than your feet are. If it's
Speaker 1: not a very big radius, you would feel a lot
Speaker 1: more gravity at your feet than you went at your head. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want that at all. Yeah, no, thank you.
Speaker 1: So you can only imagine the kind of weird Actually,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine what that would feel like. It
Speaker 1: just seems like it would be very unpleasant, kind of
Speaker 1: a nightmare. Yeah. Um. So, so small is hard, um,
Speaker 1: and big is also hard for money purposes, right, big
Speaker 1: is the way to go. If you're going to build
Speaker 1: one of these things. You can spin it much slower
Speaker 1: if you have a longer angle, if you have a
Speaker 1: longer radius. Uh. But how big does it have to be? Well,
Speaker 1: it needs to be really big, like bigger than a
Speaker 1: football field. Uh. How are you going to get that
Speaker 1: much material into space? Very expensively? Right? Because we couldn't
Speaker 1: just build it on the surface of the Earth and
Speaker 1: launch it of I mean, that would be expensive enough
Speaker 1: to begin with. But the things we build in space
Speaker 1: generally can't withstand the stress of a rocket launch, especially
Speaker 1: if they are not built for being launched, if they're built,
Speaker 1: for example, for spitting around themselves really effectively. Right, So
Speaker 1: we we built like we built the I, S. S
Speaker 1: piece by piece in space, and that works fine because
Speaker 1: there's no air resistance in space. I mean, that works,
Speaker 1: but you need to have strong materials to have something
Speaker 1: like this, because there'd be a lot of stress on
Speaker 1: it if it's spinning continually, right right, Uh, it's just
Speaker 1: a really hard job. It would mean lots and lots
Speaker 1: of space launches, taking lots and lots of really heavy
Speaker 1: materials into space, building the thing in space, which is
Speaker 1: dangerous and expensive. It's basically just a really huge project.
Speaker 1: And that's the reason we don't have it right And
Speaker 1: and granted that project might become very worthwhile in the
Speaker 1: next fifty years or whenever it is um when when
Speaker 1: we decide that that space travel, long term space travel
Speaker 1: is for serious. Oh, I already think this is a
Speaker 1: very worthwhile project. It's just you know, where are you
Speaker 1: going to get the money? I don't have it. No, old,
Speaker 1: do you have the money? He's shaking his head. Yeah, now, well,
Speaker 1: so I guess that's it for artificial gravity for now.
Speaker 1: We love the idea. It's really important for our future,
Speaker 1: but it's a massive investment. So if you want to
Speaker 1: go listen to some of those Neil deGrasse Tyson talks
Speaker 1: about how we need to invest more in space exploration
Speaker 1: and in NASA and in the kinds of tech knowlogies
Speaker 1: that we need to sustain our future beyond the planet Earth.
Speaker 1: I recommend it. Yeah, that about wraps it up for today. Yes,
Speaker 1: so um. If you would like to hear more from us,
Speaker 1: or perhaps watch some videos or read some excellent blog posts,
Speaker 1: you can find all of that at our website, which
Speaker 1: is FW thinking dot com. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, if perhaps you have a
Speaker 1: question about anything that we've said today, or a topic
Speaker 1: suggestion for something that you would like to hear from
Speaker 1: us in the future, then please do let us know.
Speaker 1: We would absolutely love to hear from you. You can
Speaker 1: email us at FW thinking at discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus
Speaker 1: or all three if you really want to span us,
Speaker 1: we would enjoy it. Where a handle is FW thinking.
Speaker 1: So thank you for tuning in and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this topic
Speaker 1: and the future of technology, visit Forward Thinking dot Com Problems,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,