March 28, 2014 • 51 mins
Is antigravity possible? From impractical flying machines to cities in the clouds, we take a look at science fiction technology that allows us to slip the bonds of Earth. Is any of it possible?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, every one, and welcome to Forward Thinking.
The podcast it looks at the future, says, come fly
with me, Let's fly, Let's fly away. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
(00:20):
and I'm Joe McCormick and Jonathan. No, I don't want
to fly. I'm perfectly happy here on the ground. Well,
you're one of the few. We should also mention before
we jump into this podcast, our beloved co host Lauren
is under the weather today, so she will not be here.
Well we will hope she's feeling better soon. Yes, we
will carry on and uh and and do her proud.
(00:43):
So we're gonna talk today about this idea of everything
from what really it's about defying gravity and not in
the you know, Idina Menzel Wicked kind of way, or
maybe in the idea when Menzel wicked kind of way.
That's obviously the musical Wicked. She has this big song
defying graph. Okay, I'm not cool enough to get that
refer Okay, well that's okay the people out there who do.
(01:04):
But if you reference Huey Lewis, I'm I'm right there
with you. Got you. Well, we're doing it all for
never mind. We're talking now about everything from hoverboards to
to flying cities, to to anything in between. Really and
and our inspiration here largely comes from the world of
science fiction. Yeah, so, Jonathan, what's your favorite sci fi
(01:26):
hover thing? You know, I mean it's cliche to say
the Back to the Future hoverboard, but it's the Back
to the Future hoverboard. I remember when I say it
was one of those things where when you saw it
for the first time. In Back to the Future Too,
it's into not one it was in the second one. Yes,
it really well for the you know, of course, they're
mirroring a scene that happened in the first film, right
(01:48):
he he goes up to a kid who has a
wooden scooter and he rips the top of the scooter
off and turns it into a skateboard and skates around
while running from bullies, right and then of course the
bullies get there, come up and via uh manure truck.
And then in Back the Future Too, it's kind of
a mirror of that scene, only this time the Yeah,
(02:08):
it's it's so really not that far in the future
today anyway. Year. But yeah, so that by then uh,
and it's I think made by Mattel if I'm not mistaken.
It actually has like the logo of the company on
the branding. Yeah, but it's a a floating a hoverboard.
(02:28):
It has no wheels, it hovers above the ground. Anyone
has seeing this movie knows immediately what I'm talking about here.
And um even at the time when the movie was released,
I don't know if you ever saw any of the
interviews or anything that came out around the same time
as this. I mean, there was a long time ago
for you, not so long for me. Um. The but
they actually kind of played up this idea that the
(02:51):
hoverboards were real, that these things had really been made,
and the only reason they weren't everywhere in in stores
is because parent teacher routs were up in arms saying
that it would be too unsafe and kids couldnot use them.
And so there was this kind of a interesting rumor
that was being perpetuated. And keep in mind, this is
really before you know, the internet could allow these rumors
(03:14):
to spread like wildfire. But there was a pretty widely
held belief that in fact, those hoverboards were not special effects.
They weren't being you know, supported by rigs of any kind.
They were really real, but they totally weren't really real.
You know. I feel like even if I had heard
that as a kid, I don't want to toot my
own horn, but I think I would have thought that
(03:35):
sounds not true. I mean, look at this thing. It's
this little flat piece of plastic. How could it float
like that? But it turns out a lot of people
still want to go for this idea because I believe
it was just last week when a video went viral
on the internet Tony Hawk wasn't It wasn't Yeah Tony.
(03:55):
A bunch of celebrities there. There were some professional athletes
and uh some I think Christopher Lloyd was in it
from UM and it had a hoverboard. It was h
u v R. However, it's like promoting this as if
it were a technology that's coming out this year. Get
your hoverboard, and and they were filming people using it
(04:16):
and talking about how cool it was, and all these
people on the internet were like, whoa, it's finally real.
Uh sad fact here um not not real. Still there
there are some good breakdowns on YouTube. I hate to
spoil the fun, but if you go look them up,
just look up, you know, hoverboard hoax videos, and you
(04:37):
can see where people have slowed down frames in particular
parts of the video where you can see the shadow
of the crane that's holding these people up moving behind. Yeah. Yeah,
and that's a that's a giveaway right there. Obviously, it's
one of those things where if you are a filmmaker
or making a video or whatever, Uh, it's very easy
to to overlook something like that that you need to
(04:59):
have a control over, or to hope that perhaps whatever,
however you edit the video, that you hide those well
enough that no one really spoils the fun too early,
depending upon your point of view, whether it's spoiling fun
or or just perpetuating a hoax. But well then again,
figuring it out might have been part of the fund
they planned. Yeah, and these days, you know, it's people
(05:20):
have lots of of abilities to really comb over things
thoroughly when they go up online. And so it's it's
harder and harder to get a hoax to pass, you know,
a truly skeptical I it's not impossible, but it is.
It's challenging. So what's your favorite implementation of this flying
(05:41):
hovering stuff? Well, I would probably go with the video
game BioShock Infinite. There's only a few things that fly
on that like everything everything flies. Okay, so a lot
of these things seem to be some kind of aircraft
or whatever. But the city itself, the city where the
game takes place, is a floating city called Columbia. Called Columbia,
(06:02):
it's a it's a dystopia, you know, full of evil
and maybe it's utopia. When it starts, Yeah, it seems
so nice until it's not until you go into the
wrong part of town, until everyone in charge of it
is totally evil. Well there they were evil to start with,
it's just everyone was going along with it until okay.
(06:23):
So yeah, you get on this floating city and and well,
if you know the game, you know the game. But
if you don't, what happens is there are these like
glowing discs on the bottoms of the city platforms you
can see and they basically explain, oh these the city
is held in the air by quantum levitation, which is
(06:45):
controlled by a lutess field named after a scientist in
the game. Uh. And basically this goes along with the
standard sci fi convention of inventing fake technologies that sound
realistic because you put the quantum in there. Yeah, it's
very much like in Star Trek. You can you can
solve any problem by reversing the polarity. It sounds it
(07:07):
sounds scientific enough where the average person watching is just
going to accept that as, oh, this is what they
do to fix whatever it is. And it's only when
you start paying attention to you start telling up how
many times they reverse the polarity for different things that
you think they don't Really, that's just that's just magical
speak for saying, flip the switch to make it stop beeping,
you know. But well, yeah, well it's totally true. I mean,
(07:30):
if I say I've got a debigulator to shrink you
down to a pocket size, that sounds ridiculous. But if
I have a quantum debigulator, it's like, oh okay, it's quantum.
It uses the power of the atom. So uh, what's
interesting is that in this implementation, according to some of
the deeper lore within BioShock infinite, Uh, this quantum levitation
(07:54):
field allows you to suspend particles in a physical location
in whatever orient ation you want, which is going to
be interesting when we talk about a real science a
little bit later, on. Now, this is this is not
a real scientific application of the of what we'll be
talking about later. Believe it or not, BioShock Infinite failed
(08:14):
to create real anti gravity technology, right. Uh. And so
we've also got a couple of other ones that we're
going to mention, Like the Avengers they have their Hellic Harrier.
As far as I can tell, this is just a
huge quad rotor kind of thing, yeah, which or I
don't know how many rotors it has, but it's it's
not like something crazy magical. It's just like pretend you
(08:36):
had unlimited energy, right, and that you were able to
spend these things, these rotors with enough enough speed, and
you had enough of them to generate the lift necessary
to lift up this this aircraft carrier, which I would question. Uh.
The other one I would go with is uh Lando
Calarisians home, well, wud City star Wars. I don't think
(09:00):
it was his home. He technically one cloud city I
think in a gambling I'm sure that is a cloud
city is where he laid his head at night. That's
didn't else, gotcha, gotcha. It's not not his not his
point of origin, but it was where he spent all
his time. Yeah, I think it's explained just in terms
of general anti gravity magic. Yeah, I don't think it's
even explained so much as it just is an interesting visual. However,
(09:23):
we'll have something more to say about that in this
episode too. Yeah, okay, So why is it that we
don't have stuff like this? What makes gravity such? In
your words in the notes here, I must quote such
a harsh mistress. Well, as it turns out, gravity is
a really interesting stuff, and we don't necessarily understand everything
(09:45):
about it. In fact, you know, one of the things
that we we one of the bits of information we lack,
is what is the actual mechanism of gravity? We have
the placeholder of gravitons, which are the particles, the hypothetical
particles that made ray work, but we don't you know,
they're hypothetical. We haven't had any direct observation of them
(10:06):
or been able to prove their existence in any definitive way. Now,
mathematically it totally makes sense because and we have to
have a placeholder there. So that's kind of why we
we have this thing we call gravitons. I think they're
in that category where they're consistent with what we know,
but there's no evidence for them directly right. So, according
(10:27):
to lots of theories, including the general relativity of theory,
that a certain Einstein way to go. Einstein came up
with UH talks about space time and curvature of space
time and how mass causes a warping of space time.
So if you have a mass in spacetime, it causes
(10:47):
space time to warp around it, and that the typical
example people give is a much simpler one for us
to understand. So Joe, you and I, let's imagine we're
holding a rubber sheet, and we're standing far enough apart
where we're holding that sheet as as tightly as tautly
as we can. Why are we holding a rubber sheet?
Because we love science? Joe, Okay, Well, you know it's
(11:10):
gonna get weirder before he gets less weird. So then
then Lauren, who has recovered from her being under the weather,
comes up and rolls a tennis ball across this, uh,
this rubber sheet which we're holding taught and the rubber
sheet is taught enough where the tennis ball pretty much
rolls in straight line from you to me. Okay, okay,
But then Lauren decides that she's you know, wants to
(11:31):
get a little impish, and she puts a bowling ball
in the center of this rubber sheet, which then causes
the rubber sheet to deform around it. It dips down.
The weight of the bowling ball is pulling down too
hard for the rubber sheet to remain taught. Of course,
you know what else would happen is that the tennis
ball would roll toward the bowling ball, exactly like if
you were to try and roll that tennis ball second time,
(11:51):
instead of going in a straight line, it would immediately
start to deviate towards the bowling ball, which has deformed
that that straight plastic sheet. The same thing happen and
in space time with bodies of large enough mass, I mean,
any mass is going to warp it a little bit,
but for you to really significantly warped spacetime, you have
to have pretty large amounts of mass uh. And so
(12:13):
that's kind of the the idea behind this whole gravity thing.
It's also can we can also express it as saying
that gravity UH is the attraction that two bodies have,
two bodies of mass have UH, and the amount, like
the significance of that gravity depends upon two things. The
size of the mass is involved, and how near or
(12:34):
far apart they are from one another. Okay, so when
we're talking about the Earth, the Earth has a pretty
good hold on us. We're kind of stuck um without
you know, using some pretty extraordinary means to get our
feet off the ground for more than a couple of
you know, more than a second or two, depending upon
how you're how you're managing to do this trampoline or not.
(12:55):
So uh, you know, we have to find ways to
counteract that force of gravity, that that downward accelerating force
that's constantly pulling upon us. And uh. And so it's
it's tricky because to do that means that you have
to expend energy or you have to find some other
means of counteracting the force of the succeloring force pulling
(13:18):
you downward. Of course, it's not like flying or even
floating is a total mystery to us. I mean, we've
come up with quite a few ways of flying. I mean,
there is the balloon lighter than air. Uh, and so
that works by having a material within the balloon that
is of a of less density than the atmosphere around it,
(13:39):
So it floats up right. It's it's it's technically called
lighter than air, tends to be called that. Yeah, if
you were to if you were to take a a
ziploc bag or just a sandwich bag of whatever brand
you like, and it has that little sealable edge, and
you fill it with air and you seal it, and
you put that on a pool, it's gonna float on
top of the pool because that air is less dense
(14:00):
than the water around it. Yeah. Of course, what makes
a boat or something float on top of the water
is the same principle that allows a balloon to float
in the air. It's this buoyancy issue. So if you
get some gas that is less dense than our atmosphere
is particularly no our atmosphere at the altitudes that which
(14:21):
we can operate without uh encountering some significant difficulties, then
you can, if you have enough of it, you can
have enough lifting force to lift a you know, something
like whether it's a balloon or a blamp or whatever.
Hydrogen and helium tend to be used the most. Hydrogen
was used quite a bit until the Hindenburg disaster. And
(14:43):
the thing about hydrogen is it has a lot of
lifting power. I mean, it's that's the first element, right
so you've got this ability to uh, it's it's gonna
be the least dense, it's gonna be the lightest just
by definition. Um. And it has a one point one
kilogram for every cubic meter of gas lifting power. So
if you have a cubic meter of of hydrogen, uh,
(15:04):
then it can lift one point one Yeah, but it
also has one point one million units of fire. Well, yeah,
it's flammable. That's the that's the big issue. So after
the Hindenburg disaster, most lighter than air vehicles now rely
on helium, which is not flammable. It is not volatile
at all, but it has uh, it doesn't it's not
(15:26):
as strong either. Has one point oh two kilograms of
lifting power per cubic meter of helium is. It also
still more expensive. I know at the time of the
Hindenburg that hydrogen was cheaper and easier to get your hands.
Definitely expensive because if you look at scientific papers, they
talk a lot about how the getting enough helium to
(15:47):
do things like super cool your particle accelerators is getting
harder and harder, particularly as people use it for things
like balloons and stuff. Not that. Not that if you
get a not that if you get your kid, you know,
a balloon for or his or her birthday that you
have just robbed the large Hadron collider of finding the
next you know, hypothetical particle. But it is an issue.
(16:08):
It's not something that's easy to get at. Hydrogen. We could,
you know, by pouring a little energy into water, we
can get hydrogen. He can't do that with helium. So yeah,
I would say the idea of creating something like a
city like Columbia floating on the basis of helium or hydrogen,
that doesn't seem all that feasible. You would you would
(16:28):
need so much because I mean, remember that's that's the
lifting power of a cubic meter of that gas. So
you would need so many cubic meters to to be
able to lift something as heavy as a city. Uh,
it would be pretty ridiculous. But then, um, we can
look at maybe something like a heavier than air aircraft
(16:50):
because we do have plenty of examples of those two.
All right, Yeah, I've flown in one of those things.
It has wings instead of balloons. Yeah, that's another Yeah,
this is all about generating lift, and this is one
of those things that often gets miscommunicated one of the
the way that I always heard about lift being generated,
(17:10):
it turns out is not entirely correct. The thing I
always heard was that, let's say you've got a wing
going through the air, and it's angled in such a way,
or the wing is molded in such a way that
the air over the top of the wing has further
to travel than the air going beneath the wing, and
the differences in pressure are what generate lift. That's a
very common explanation for lift. Is also not technically correct. Well,
(17:34):
I would think it would have to create upward uh
force by throwing air down. That's pretty much it. Yeah,
it turns out that an object moving through a solid
object moving through a fluid is going to displace that
fluid the flow of fluid. Now, when we say fluid flow,
we don't necessarily mean that the fluid itself is moving.
(17:54):
It can be perfectly stationary. If the object is moving
through the fluid, that can end up interrupting the quote
quote flow of the fluid that actually makes it move around.
Or you could have a stationary object and move the
fluid past it and and have the same thing, or
you could have a combination of the two. So anyway,
if your wing is designed in such a way so
that it's deflecting the flow more of the flow of
(18:15):
air downward than upward, then you're going to get a
perpendicular to the surface I guess of whatever. I if
it's a fluid container, would be the surface of that
fluid container. You'll get a perpendicular force called lift. And
so as you're going forward with great speed, you're trying
to just slam tons of air down below the bottom
(18:37):
body of the plane, right, you have to displace enough
so that it can counteract the weight. So, yeah, thrust
is very important, like the speed is very important, both
for a an airplane or jet. You know, it has
to go fast enough to to to generate this lift
in order to uh to fly, or a helicopter in
which case you're talking about the speed of the rotors turning.
(18:57):
But either way, you know, or if you are sen
you tell me that the way a helicopter flies is
by beating the air into submission. Just I guess, kind
of true. Uh So, that's that's another example of being
able to defy gravity in a way, but again not
necessarily something that would work for the city. Uh So, yeah,
it works like something the size of an airplane. I mean,
(19:19):
here's one question they ask, like, why don't they make
airplane bodies stronger? You know, airplanes can crash and disintegrate
and have all these problems that kill people on board
when when there's a malfunction, Why don't they just really
reinforce them. Well, as you keep adding mass to the airplane,
you're reducing its ability to fly. Yeah, you actually have
(19:39):
to you know, again, you have to make lift that
can counteract that weight, and so you have to make
the aircraft progressively more powerful in order to do that.
And that's a real and to use more fuel and
that That kind of brings us to the next one,
which is rockets. Very similar in that you know, in rockets,
you're trying to generate thrust. You're generating us that has
(20:00):
aimed toward the surface of whatever. You know, with a
rocket that we're trying to send something into space, it's
directing it down towards the ground. Uh, you're essentially creating
something that's throwing out mass um at a rate that
is a greater than the weight of the or the
mass of the object that there's that's containing the fuel
(20:23):
and has the spacecraft on it, so uh, you know,
you could be using you know, when you think about it,
with a rocket trying to send a spacecraft up, you
have to first account for, all right, how heavy is
the spacecraft? How much fuel are we going to need
in order to generate the thrust necessary for the spacecraft
to go up? All right, but that fuel weighs something
that actually adds mass to this. So now we have
(20:45):
to figure out how much fuel do we need to
take care of both the spacecraft and the weight And
wait a minute, that fuel has to go in something.
How much how much fuel do we now need to
make the spacecraft and the fuel and the fuel's container
all go up and launch into orbit. And that's why
we need such a massive amount of fuel to escape
(21:06):
Earth and and send stuff up into orbit, and why
it's so important, or at least it's why why so
many people are interested in finding an alternative means of
getting stuff from the ground into space, right because it
would dramatically cut down on cost, It cuts down and
risk um uh and it you know, you don't end
up having to uh burn through millions of gallons of
(21:29):
fuel each time. So it's or if you're talking about
solid fuel, million tons of fuel. Um, it's you know,
it's it's definitely one of those things that is a
driving force. No no pun intended in the space industry.
But yeah, again, if you wanted to have rockets on
your city to keep your city afloat, you would need
lots and lots of fuel, which would of course add
(21:52):
to the amount of fuel you would need to keep
the city afloat. It's not really If you watch how
most rockets go up, they have a multi stage launch,
so they have to throw off fuel containers that they've expended.
I don't know how that would work in something that's
supposed to be permanently floating, like you've got fuel containers
(22:14):
that maybe you've got like ten billion fuel containers that
you're constantly launching off a bunch of them. I guess
you would have to have some sort of weird, crazy
fusion reactor thing that's just superheating gas that shooting it
straight down or I don't know. I mean, there's enough.
I can't think of any practical, like not even practical
(22:35):
like like quasi plausible ways of doing it. It's it's
kind of it defies my imagination. But there's one other
one we can talk about about, you know, making just
you know, defying gravity, rather than my imagination, which is
a magnetic levitation. This one is actually pretty cool and
(22:56):
might be I mean, if we're talking about floating a
city side thing. None of these are particularly plausible, but
this one might be the most plausible, at least at
least this one would. You know, we have examples of
this being used in transportation right now, and in fact,
there is at least one way where you could, in
theory create a hoverboard that would work under these principles,
(23:19):
but under very specific circumstances. Yeah, we'll talk about that
in a minute. Okay, So mag love is using a
combination of electromagnets and maybe sometimes permanent magnets um and
the way you usually see this used as say on
a train, Why does it help to float a train
above the track with magnets, Well, it reduces friction. Yeah,
(23:41):
it almost completely removes it. I mean, you still get
wind resistant unless you're gonna put it in a tunnel
that's got all the atmosphere sucked out of it, similar
to something. Yeah, then you can really cut down on
friction to almost zero and you can go at super
speeds and just it's magic almost almost magic. Yeah, it's
(24:02):
too too two we meror mortals, it seems as as such,
it's um Yeah. Essentially, if you've ever played with magnets,
then you know the basics of how this works. Because
if you have two magnets and you try and put
both north ends of the magnets together, they push apart
from one another. Yeah, and that that's because of electric charge, right, Yeah,
(24:23):
it's magnetic charge. But yeah, magnetic calls magnetic, So opposite
signals will attract a plus and minus that would if
they were polarized, it would suck your train to the track. Right.
So what you could do is you can have the
you can have the magnetic fields aligned in such a
way where they're repelling one another, and thus, by repelling
(24:44):
one another, if you have enough of a magnetic force there,
you can lift an entire vehicle like a train, off
the tracks. Now, these tracks they all have guards on
them so that the train doesn't you know, fly off
or anything or or get uh you know, the wump us,
and then immediately there's some terrible accident. They have safety
guides there. Uh. And usually what in most implementations I've
(25:07):
seen not all but most the track has some very
powerful electro magnets and it sometimes they're even created by
a super cooled semiconductors. And the thing about semiconductor is
the colder you get it, the more you cut down
on resistance, which means you lose less energy in the
form of heat. So you know, when you run electricity
(25:27):
through a circuit, one of the by products is heat, right,
and we talk about this all the time. It's the
resistance of whatever material you're running electricity through. That resistance
kind of represents how much energy you're going to lose
in the processes. When you super cool semiconductors, you really
cut down that resistance. You make them very efficient. So
imagine that you've got a track of these super cold semiconductors.
(25:49):
And this is just one implementation. Not all of them
use super cold semiconductors, but you've got a whole track
of this. And part of this is creating the the
magnetic field that suspends the train rain that actually keeps
the train above the tracks. And then another signal makes
a an opposite charge to the front of the train,
so it starts to pull the train forward and you
(26:11):
just run you change that signal down the track and
the train just follows it. Meanwhile, in the rear of
the train, you create a signal that is the same
as the back of the train, so that pushes the
train forward, and you've got this pull push thing. You
were pulling the front and pushing the back. And that's
how you can get these trains up to amazing speeds
because you're really only limited ultimately by wind resistance and
(26:32):
how quickly you can change that that UM, that charge
also possibly whatever you know, safety regulations you want to
put in place so you don't turn everyone into a slushy.
I would love to be a slushy. I would love
a slushy actually, But um, yeah, so it's it's pretty
cool stuff. Like I said, there's a lot of different implementations.
(26:55):
There are several examples in UM in Asia and Europe,
not so many in United States. UM. It's one of
those things I would love to see adopted more widely.
And of course hyperloop is one of the examples of
something similar to this. Yeah, okay, So one of the
interesting things about mag love technology is that you don't
necessarily have to have some kind of huge, powerful device
(27:17):
on the floating object itself. I mean, you can invest
the power into the base that the object is floating above, right,
so that whatever right. This might enable you to have
something that's reasonably sized to float. Yeah, this is where
we could get into this idea of a hoverboard potentially
(27:38):
being possible. It would be a very particular implementation. You
would have to have essentially a floor that would be
lined with these these electro magnets that could generate a
magnetic field, and then you could have permanent magnets on
the hoverboard, uh, that are aligned so that the they
will oppose whatever is on the floor are so when
(28:00):
you turn on the electro magnets, the hoverboards spring up
into the air and then if it's strong enough, it
could even hold you, although I don't know how stable
it would be. Yeah, that's a problem you see with
a lot of these floating magnets is that they wobble them. Yeah,
they do. There's a lot of wobble in them. And
it's also kind of uh uh. I mean, just imagine
what would happen if you accidentally put your hoverboard upside
(28:22):
down on the floor. You would never be able to
pick it up. It would just be stuck there. You like,
can you turn the floor off again, or if you
set your cell phone down on the floor, or yeah,
all your magn all your credit cards get demagnetized or yea.
But I can see it. Okay, so you might not
be able to use this hoverboard out on the street
around the neighborhood, but I mean I can see it
(28:44):
being worth it two kids to drive out to the
play space. You know, Mom, please take me. I want
to do hoverboard. Yeah, I could see it. I mean
maybe on your birthday, if you could figure out a
way of making it very stable, then I could see
it working. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm certain that
you'll end up seeing examples of this in various kinds
of attractions, particularly at a place where you know, they've
(29:08):
got a lot of money where they can show the
sort of stuff off. It would be kind of similar
to the the hovercraft that we used to see all
the time and still do in some places that use
air as thrust to try and and hover above a surface.
I could see that kind of happening to. Let's talk
a little bit about anti gravity, so you know that's
(29:29):
a big thing in science fiction too. Yeah, that's uh,
the basic magic that holds cloud city. Up. I guess
it's some kind of anti gravity anti gravity. Yeah, okay,
So the thing about anti gravity is it's pretty much pseudoscience.
I mean, it's the thing people think that scientists are
working on out there. I don't know about that. Yeah,
let's let's talk a little bit about some of the
(29:51):
things where we try to simulate micro gravity here on Earth,
because clearly, I mean that would be really useful if
we could truly simulate it, because it means that we
could do a lot of ex experiments that otherwise we
would need to shoot up into space, and that, like
we just said, is really expensive. Well, I mean, you
can simulate the experience of it like you can fall.
So you can get on a parabolic flight, right and
(30:14):
within the enclosed environment where you are, you will seem
to float. I mean you will actually be floated. It
will be like a thirty second or so experience, sometimes
up to ninety seconds depending upon the flight. But uh,
an experience where you can you know, you're simulating a
microgravity environment because you're all in free fall essentially, um,
(30:34):
and allows you to kind of float around as if
you were on board the International Space Station. Uh. Then UM,
there's also I didn't mention this in my notes, but
there's also the the method we talked about for the
scientists used to test certain types of of drugs and
stuff that's not truly simulating micro gravity. What it really
does is it keeps rotating a specimen very slowly through
(30:59):
all different axes so that every single part of that, uh,
that sub that whatever that subject is, is under an
equal influence of gravity. So it's as if no gravity
is affecting it, you know what I'm talking about. We
mentioned one of the ones about mice. Yes, you can
mice breed in anti graph or not in micrograph, right,
(31:21):
So it's one of those things where, uh, it's you know,
it's really more negating the effect of gravity on a
particular orientation of whatever it is you're testing. So that's
not that that doesn't really fit either. There's also gyroscopic procession,
So this is what lets you stay upright on a bicycle.
You might think that you have amazing balance and that
(31:43):
you can ride a bike with no hands, and it's
because you were just incredible. But uh, and I'm not
saying you're not incredible, but the reason why you're able
to do that is because of gyroscopic procession. It's this
idea that a a spinning wheel along an access when
you apply torque to it, it generates these kind of
other forces along it. In one way of seeing this,
(32:03):
I used to see this, uh, displayed at a science
museum that used to be here in Atlanta called Sidetrack.
And Uh, the way they did it was they had
a bicycle wheel suspended like they they had a little
axle attached to it. On one side of the axle,
they had a a rope tied from the ceiling to
that axle. So if you were to let go of
(32:23):
the wheel, it would just kind of hang flat, like
you know, horizontally. But if you aligned it vertically and
then started spinning the bicycle wheel and then let go,
the bicycle wheel would remain upright and it would start
to turn around and around on like the It would
spin around on this rope, so the wheel wouldn't go
back down flat. This is the same sort of thing
(32:44):
that allows tops to stay upright when they're spinning. Uh.
We see it all the time. There's actually some great
videos out there that display this this principle and explain
what's going on from a basic physics perspective, and it's
pretty interesting stuff. But again, it's not really anti gravity.
It just kind of it seems to defy what we
(33:05):
think of as gravity because of our everyday experience with it.
But it's not truly anti gravity. You're not gonna be
able to ride a bike so fast that you're gonna
lift off the ground unless you happen to have et
sitting in your basket in front of you. I was
gonna say, I hope you believe in love the idea,
of course I do. Uh. Then there's we've covered the
hoverboard hoax, the fact that you know, you can look
(33:25):
at the the frame by frame breakdowns and see where
how they they managed to create the illusion of hovering.
That that's yeah, that's anti gravity by power of trick photography. Right.
There's also liquid mountaineering. Now this is what you have
never seen this video, So this is not exactly anti gravity,
(33:47):
but it is kind of similar to the idea of
defying certain laws of physics. So liquid mountaineering there was
there were these viral videos that came out a couple
of years ago, and it was a bunch of people
who were hanging out next to a body of water.
I think it was like a lake or something, and um,
they were talking about how they were pioneers of a
(34:07):
new sport called liquid mountaineering, and the way the sport
worked is that you had to get up a really
good speed running speed, and you typically would run down
a bank and then hit the water. And if you're
hitting the water fast enough, you could run so fast
as to be able to run across the surface of
the water without breaking the surface tension and falling through
(34:29):
for at least a few steps. And the video showed
them running, you know, maybe three or four feet into
the water, like getting two or three good steps going
and then falling through. Sense it doesn't make any sense.
I mean, if you know about how service tension and
all that can really mess you up if you hit
(34:49):
water going really fast, maybe on that level you're thinking
it makes sense, but ultimately we don't have enough surface
area on our feet to be able to take advantage
of any of those properties. But the other people eventually
proved that what was going on was that this group
was using transparent platforms just under the surface of the water.
(35:10):
So because it was just under the water, you couldn't
even tell they were there. So people were actually running
on solid platforms that were extended out maybe three or
four feet into the water and then dropped off to
try and create this effect. I guess they figured that
if they made it longer than that that it would
press people's like it would challenge people's credulous nature too much.
(35:33):
But anyway, so it's not truly anti gravity either. It's
also yet it's not kind of sort of fits in
with it. I just wanted to include it because it
was another viral video where hoaxers were and I think
it was ultimately um like part of a marketing campaign
for a line of running shoes. I want to say
that's what it ultimately ended up being. But then, what
(35:54):
about what does science have to say about anti gravity? Yeah?
I was gonna ask this because everything we've said so
far is a not really. Yeah, it turns out pretty
much all the claims have either turned out to be
a hoax or if they weren't a hoax, no one
has been able to replicate the results being claimed, and
(36:15):
as we know with science, that's a bad sign, right, Yeah,
especially when the claim itself is something very cool. Yeah,
if it's if it's an extraordinary claim, then it definitely
needs to have uh, you know, independent corroborating evidence. Otherwise
it's just you can't really believe in it. You can't
put you can't put any faith in it. So that was,
(36:35):
you know, when it comes to to science, the word
anti gravity is kind of a uh I mean, it's
kind of a four letter word in science circles. But
I do think we should talk about something that's sort
of related to what we already discussed, which was maglev.
What's the deal with quantum locking? It is the coolest
thing ever. This is a video that looks like a
(36:58):
hoax but isn't quantum locking. If you've ever seen and
there are a few different videos, there's a Ted talk
on YouTube. This is awesome. It's one of the things
the first time you see it, your brain says, Okay,
how are they pulling this trick off? Like this is
obviously some sort of magic trick or something. So quantum
locking involves using a superconductor, super cooled superconductor, So it's
(37:21):
very much like I was talking about earlier. When you
cool semiconductors and you start to lower resistance, A super
cooled superconductor has no resistance. It perfect conductor of electricity.
Which is pretty incredible, but you have to really cool
it down with like liquid nitrogen. You know, it it's
super cold, and then it's like the cold fog coming off.
Oh yeah, yeah. It's usually got a good crust of
(37:43):
of some sort of ice type stuff all around the outside.
It looks like something from Mr. Freeze's labe. So the
superconductive material, if it were absolutely uniform and molecular nature,
if it was a perfectly formed super conductor material, it
would simply repel all magnetic fields. You mean, if it
(38:03):
had no impurity exactly, if it were absolutely structurally sound
from a molecular standpoint, it would just it would repel
all magnetic fields and you would end up getting like
the super wobbly kind of levitation. But if you introduce
impurities very methodically, you know, it's called doping. If you
were to do this very very specifically, it creates these
(38:26):
things called flex tubes, which allow you to lock in
position over a magnet magnetic field along three axes the superconductor.
So if the superconductor is small and you have say
a permanent magnet that's in a base, and you put
this over top of it, it can lock into place
and then you can even change the orientation and it'll
(38:48):
stay there. If you were to pick the magnet up,
the superconductor would move in the same way as you
move the magnet. Even if you turn the magnet upside down,
the superconductor will stay exactly locked in that same orientation
and apparently define the laws of gravity. It just seems
to be, you know, hovering there, not even hovering, just
(39:09):
stuck in the air. When you think of hovering, you
think of hovering ships from sci fi, where there's a
kind of vibration or there is a jitteriness, something that
looks like a vehicle that's powered. This just looks like
it is frozen in the air. It's pretty phenomenal right there.
The first time you see it, like I said, you
(39:29):
just think this has got to be some sort of trickery.
What sorcery is this? And uh And they're also great
examples on YouTube where people have created a magnetic track.
It's usually like just a simple circle that you can
lock one of these super cool superconductors on top of
the track, uh, you know, hovering above all stuck above it,
(39:49):
and then give it a little push and because there's
no real friction apart from air resistance. It'll just go
right along that. It will follow that track perfectly, and
it will still maintain its orientation. So if you said
it so it was perfectly level, it'll be perfectly level.
If you can't it at an angle, it will remain
at that angle all the way around. It's really really,
I mean it's it's one of the coolest things I've
(40:13):
seen on YouTube in a few years. I really enjoy
those videos. So if you're working on hoverboard technology, take
a look at quantum locking. I think that's where you
want to put your money. So, yeah, you have to
have you have to have magnets beneath the floor and
a super cool hoverboard. So so, kids, where where your socks?
(40:34):
Where your winter socks? Uh? This is where we tell
you don't play with liquid nitrogen or help us, don't
touch liquid helium. All right. So that moves us on
to the what I when you originally you would think
of as probably the least plausible method, just the floating city,
(40:56):
just a city that floats on its own, because you
think of Star Wars. There's nothing in that I recall
and Empire strikes Back that shows those cities using propulsion
of any sorts to float where they are. They're just
they're just there. No, they might as well. Cloud City
might as well be a big balloon, And turns out
you might actually be able to create something like that,
(41:18):
just probably not here on Earth, right, um. I want
to talk about the idea of floating planetary colonies that
humans could inhabit because they would be full of Earth atmosphere. So,
in other words, when we talked earlier about balloons with
hydrogen and helium, and the reason those work is because
(41:38):
hydrogen and helium are less dense than our atmosphere is,
and if you get enough of it together, it has
lifting power. In this case, the air that we breathe,
the mix of of breathable oxygen that we could survive on,
is less dense than what you might find on some
other planets and would have that same sort of lifting ability. Yeah,
(41:59):
this isn't just might like maybe out there there's some
kind of planet we could look at, the planet Venus.
It happens to be not very far away. No, it's
right there. And while most colonization efforts are focused on Mars,
there are some people who think Venus might be just
as good a place to look. Yeah, uh. So, the
NASA scientist Jeffrey landis proposed to floating Venus colony, and
(42:21):
this he's been talking about this for years or a
paper he presented to the a I P In two
thousand three, So this is not a new idea, um,
but he's been trying to promote this. So on Venus,
the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide CO two, and breathable
air is lighter than carbon dioxide. So a colony inside
a bubble full of breathable earth atmosphere, which should be
(42:44):
a nitrogen and oxygen mixture, could float at about fifty
kilometers above the surface of Venus. And actually that would
be a pretty happy place for humans because pressure there
and he would be totally tolerable, unlike on the surface
of Venus. Now they would not be no on the
surface of Venus would be literally like being in a
pressure code. Yeah, we we've sent, We've sent the human
(43:07):
beings have sent multiple probes to Venus and most of
them don't survive very long. The Soviets put landers down
on the surface of Venus. That actually sent a couple
of photos back, which if you get a chance to
look at them, they are creepy. Looking. They're these weird
yellow kind of hell scapes that are I don't know.
They make it look so cool, but like a place
(43:27):
you would not want to go. So the atmosphere is
so heavy it will crush you, and the heat is
enough to melt lead at some points on the surface.
So so yeah, being above that in a place where
you would actually have tolerable temperatures and pressures obviously very important. Yeah,
you know, you wouldn't want to fall down, but yeah.
Um but anyway, what Landis himself said in the paper
(43:51):
he presented to the i P was that, at about
fifty kilometers above Venus, it's the most earthlike environment other
than the Earth It's self that you will find in
the Solar system. That's a quote. The only thing is
you wouldn't be able to breathe the air outside, but
otherwise it'd be fairly tolerable. Um. Now, of course it's
(44:12):
not like that. Oh okay, well, totally easy. No, this
would actually be really difficult and expensive, But it is
really interesting that it's it seems quite plausible. It would
just be a very expensive undertaking. It would be an
engineering project because you'd have to design the bubble such
that one, it doesn't leak obviously, and the bigger your
structure is, I think, the harder it is to design
(44:34):
something that doesn't leak. I don't know if you remember, um,
when we were talking about what is it called biosphere
to the control closed ecosystem that they tried to create
in the United States. But it had a problem with
you know, like with leaking the internal gas mixture. Um.
And I think that that had to do with the
fact that, well, you're getting big. Once your scale keeps increasing,
(44:57):
it's harder and harder to engineer that that perfect kind
of airtight system. Also, you have trouble with corrosion because
venus is surrounded by clouds of sulfuric acid, which can
be a little corrosive. No, if you put a drop
of sulfuric acid on, say like a cotton T shirt,
just watch what happens. Kids, don't put sulfuric acid. To
(45:24):
put sulfuric acid on your warm winter socks before you
go glide around on quantum locking hupperboards, Um, no, it'll
it'll burn it up. The stuff is really really corrosive,
So you would need a special kind of material that's
resistant to this kind of chemical corrosion, and maybe something
like ceramics could do it. I don't really know, but
(45:45):
I think it is doable. Yeah. You would also want
to make sure that whatever material material you were using
wasn't too heavy, because the heavier it is, the more
of the gas you're going to need to counteract that weight.
And of course some of that is going to be
necessary just because that's the stuff we breathe to live of.
But you know, you also would have to make a
larger structure to hold that volume of gas without you know,
(46:08):
making it too highly pressured. Right, I mean, it would
just require good engineering in the same way that say,
designing a ship would require good engineering. Needs to displace
enough water and be the right shape and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
So I mean this is this is a certainly a possibility.
I don't know how plausible it is in the long run,
(46:29):
because a lot of attention is still on Mars, right right.
And I would say one of the biggest questions is
it's not so much whether we could do this, because
it seems like it is doable. The question is is
anybody going to pay to do this? I mean, there's
obviously going to be hugely expensive. Um, would there be
enough research interest in Venus and enough possibility for a
(46:52):
return on investment that people would want to go there
and spend this much money to build something like this,
and the I don't of the answer to that question. Yeah,
but uh, you know, maybe just pure scientific curiosity will
win the day in the future. Suddenly, you know, in
the next ten years, everybody will be like, oh, let's
let's spend all our money on learning. Uh maybe that
(47:15):
or maybe that there is some kind of material resource
on Venus that could be exploited to great effect, the
same way that asteroid mining, while it's definitely going to
be a huge investment, offers such a great return that
people are taking it very seriously. It's not just a
pie in the sky thing. People are like, all right,
let's get let's get going. I think the uh, I
(47:38):
think the really interesting thing here is that the technology
found in Star Wars is the one that seems like
it's the of course, we have to point out like
the Star Wars implementation clearly is not scientifically accurate all
it wasn't meant to be scientifically accurate. There's it's not
It's not a slam against the movie Star Wars is fantasy.
It's a hard sci fi, yeah, because I mean, who
(48:00):
ends up being suspended upside down underneath Cloud City for
a little while before the Millennium falcon comes around and
he can clearly breathe, So obviously it's not the same
sort of thing. Yea. Also beyond Venus, I mean, you
could think about there are other places where maybe something
like this could take place. I don't I don't know
the specifics, but I'd wonder about Saturn's moon Titan, you know,
(48:20):
that has a dense atmosphere. Maybe something like this could
happen there too. Or it may even be that perhaps
when we're looking outside of our own solar system, that's
still a possibility. It's one of those interesting things that, uh,
I'm sure that that eventually we will explore in one
way or another. It may I'm guessing it will probably
not be in an implementation that involves actual human beings
(48:41):
for the first few times. I don't know that anyone
we want to risk it that, you know that. I
also don't know exactly how you would get back from
Venus to Earth if you wanted to travel back. I mean,
you would have to have some sort of platform to
launch from that would allow you to uh to withstand
the forces of a rocket taking often pushing down against
that platform. Well, I don't know. I mean I wonder
(49:04):
if you could uh take off, say suspended by balloon.
Yeah yeah, or you could have some sort of hybrid
aircraft rocket type thing. I guess, uh, you know, we're
talking pure speculation here anyway, So pies the pie in
the sky type stuff. Anyway, Well, this was really fun
to talk about. It was one of those things that
you know, it was we knew we wanted to to
(49:26):
eventually chat about hover boards and that kind of stuff
because a lot of people who are into science I
think also at some point we're into science fiction. They
may still very well be into science fiction quite a bit.
And it's these sort of things that spark our interest
that you know, when we see something that's implemented in
real life that mirrors something we saw on film, it's
(49:49):
really exciting. So we wanted to definitely, you know, talk
about that. But hey, if you know anybody out there
claiming a cool anti gravity technology that we don't know about,
we'd be happy to take a look you even though
it may very likely be total bunk. Go ahead and
send it to us, So, I mean, we'd love to
see it. Yeah, we we'd love to see it. Of
course we are not uh, physicists or anything along, but
(50:13):
we can we can certainly look at something and go
ah interesting. Uh yeah. Our addresses f W Thinking at
discovery dot com. You can also write us if you
have any suggestions for future topics that do you think
we should cover, or if you have any questions let's know.
And also you can get in touch with us on
the social media that we frequent which include Google Plus, Twitter,
and Facebook. Are handling all of those is f W
(50:35):
Thinking and Joe and I and probably Lauren too. We'll
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
(51:01):
brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, every one, and welcome to Forward Thinking.
The podcast it looks at the future, says, come fly
with me, Let's fly, Let's fly away. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
(00:20):
and I'm Joe McCormick and Jonathan. No, I don't want
to fly. I'm perfectly happy here on the ground. Well,
you're one of the few. We should also mention before
we jump into this podcast, our beloved co host Lauren
is under the weather today, so she will not be here.
Well we will hope she's feeling better soon. Yes, we
will carry on and uh and and do her proud.
(00:43):
So we're gonna talk today about this idea of everything
from what really it's about defying gravity and not in
the you know, Idina Menzel Wicked kind of way, or
maybe in the idea when Menzel wicked kind of way.
That's obviously the musical Wicked. She has this big song
defying graph. Okay, I'm not cool enough to get that
refer Okay, well that's okay the people out there who do.
(01:04):
But if you reference Huey Lewis, I'm I'm right there
with you. Got you. Well, we're doing it all for
never mind. We're talking now about everything from hoverboards to
to flying cities, to to anything in between. Really and
and our inspiration here largely comes from the world of
science fiction. Yeah, so, Jonathan, what's your favorite sci fi
(01:26):
hover thing? You know, I mean it's cliche to say
the Back to the Future hoverboard, but it's the Back
to the Future hoverboard. I remember when I say it
was one of those things where when you saw it
for the first time. In Back to the Future Too,
it's into not one it was in the second one. Yes,
it really well for the you know, of course, they're
mirroring a scene that happened in the first film, right
(01:48):
he he goes up to a kid who has a
wooden scooter and he rips the top of the scooter
off and turns it into a skateboard and skates around
while running from bullies, right and then of course the
bullies get there, come up and via uh manure truck.
And then in Back the Future Too, it's kind of
a mirror of that scene, only this time the Yeah,
(02:08):
it's it's so really not that far in the future
today anyway. Year. But yeah, so that by then uh,
and it's I think made by Mattel if I'm not mistaken.
It actually has like the logo of the company on
the branding. Yeah, but it's a a floating a hoverboard.
(02:28):
It has no wheels, it hovers above the ground. Anyone
has seeing this movie knows immediately what I'm talking about here.
And um even at the time when the movie was released,
I don't know if you ever saw any of the
interviews or anything that came out around the same time
as this. I mean, there was a long time ago
for you, not so long for me. Um. The but
they actually kind of played up this idea that the
(02:51):
hoverboards were real, that these things had really been made,
and the only reason they weren't everywhere in in stores
is because parent teacher routs were up in arms saying
that it would be too unsafe and kids couldnot use them.
And so there was this kind of a interesting rumor
that was being perpetuated. And keep in mind, this is
really before you know, the internet could allow these rumors
(03:14):
to spread like wildfire. But there was a pretty widely
held belief that in fact, those hoverboards were not special effects.
They weren't being you know, supported by rigs of any kind.
They were really real, but they totally weren't really real.
You know. I feel like even if I had heard
that as a kid, I don't want to toot my
own horn, but I think I would have thought that
(03:35):
sounds not true. I mean, look at this thing. It's
this little flat piece of plastic. How could it float
like that? But it turns out a lot of people
still want to go for this idea because I believe
it was just last week when a video went viral
on the internet Tony Hawk wasn't It wasn't Yeah Tony.
(03:55):
A bunch of celebrities there. There were some professional athletes
and uh some I think Christopher Lloyd was in it
from UM and it had a hoverboard. It was h
u v R. However, it's like promoting this as if
it were a technology that's coming out this year. Get
your hoverboard, and and they were filming people using it
(04:16):
and talking about how cool it was, and all these
people on the internet were like, whoa, it's finally real.
Uh sad fact here um not not real. Still there
there are some good breakdowns on YouTube. I hate to
spoil the fun, but if you go look them up,
just look up, you know, hoverboard hoax videos, and you
(04:37):
can see where people have slowed down frames in particular
parts of the video where you can see the shadow
of the crane that's holding these people up moving behind. Yeah. Yeah,
and that's a that's a giveaway right there. Obviously, it's
one of those things where if you are a filmmaker
or making a video or whatever, Uh, it's very easy
to to overlook something like that that you need to
(04:59):
have a control over, or to hope that perhaps whatever,
however you edit the video, that you hide those well
enough that no one really spoils the fun too early,
depending upon your point of view, whether it's spoiling fun
or or just perpetuating a hoax. But well then again,
figuring it out might have been part of the fund
they planned. Yeah, and these days, you know, it's people
(05:20):
have lots of of abilities to really comb over things
thoroughly when they go up online. And so it's it's
harder and harder to get a hoax to pass, you know,
a truly skeptical I it's not impossible, but it is.
It's challenging. So what's your favorite implementation of this flying
(05:41):
hovering stuff? Well, I would probably go with the video
game BioShock Infinite. There's only a few things that fly
on that like everything everything flies. Okay, so a lot
of these things seem to be some kind of aircraft
or whatever. But the city itself, the city where the
game takes place, is a floating city called Columbia. Called Columbia,
(06:02):
it's a it's a dystopia, you know, full of evil
and maybe it's utopia. When it starts, Yeah, it seems
so nice until it's not until you go into the
wrong part of town, until everyone in charge of it
is totally evil. Well there they were evil to start with,
it's just everyone was going along with it until okay.
(06:23):
So yeah, you get on this floating city and and well,
if you know the game, you know the game. But
if you don't, what happens is there are these like
glowing discs on the bottoms of the city platforms you
can see and they basically explain, oh these the city
is held in the air by quantum levitation, which is
(06:45):
controlled by a lutess field named after a scientist in
the game. Uh. And basically this goes along with the
standard sci fi convention of inventing fake technologies that sound
realistic because you put the quantum in there. Yeah, it's
very much like in Star Trek. You can you can
solve any problem by reversing the polarity. It sounds it
(07:07):
sounds scientific enough where the average person watching is just
going to accept that as, oh, this is what they
do to fix whatever it is. And it's only when
you start paying attention to you start telling up how
many times they reverse the polarity for different things that
you think they don't Really, that's just that's just magical
speak for saying, flip the switch to make it stop beeping,
you know. But well, yeah, well it's totally true. I mean,
(07:30):
if I say I've got a debigulator to shrink you
down to a pocket size, that sounds ridiculous. But if
I have a quantum debigulator, it's like, oh okay, it's quantum.
It uses the power of the atom. So uh, what's
interesting is that in this implementation, according to some of
the deeper lore within BioShock infinite, Uh, this quantum levitation
(07:54):
field allows you to suspend particles in a physical location
in whatever orient ation you want, which is going to
be interesting when we talk about a real science a
little bit later, on. Now, this is this is not
a real scientific application of the of what we'll be
talking about later. Believe it or not, BioShock Infinite failed
(08:14):
to create real anti gravity technology, right. Uh. And so
we've also got a couple of other ones that we're
going to mention, Like the Avengers they have their Hellic Harrier.
As far as I can tell, this is just a
huge quad rotor kind of thing, yeah, which or I
don't know how many rotors it has, but it's it's
not like something crazy magical. It's just like pretend you
(08:36):
had unlimited energy, right, and that you were able to
spend these things, these rotors with enough enough speed, and
you had enough of them to generate the lift necessary
to lift up this this aircraft carrier, which I would question. Uh.
The other one I would go with is uh Lando
Calarisians home, well, wud City star Wars. I don't think
(09:00):
it was his home. He technically one cloud city I
think in a gambling I'm sure that is a cloud
city is where he laid his head at night. That's
didn't else, gotcha, gotcha. It's not not his not his
point of origin, but it was where he spent all
his time. Yeah, I think it's explained just in terms
of general anti gravity magic. Yeah, I don't think it's
even explained so much as it just is an interesting visual. However,
(09:23):
we'll have something more to say about that in this
episode too. Yeah, okay, So why is it that we
don't have stuff like this? What makes gravity such? In
your words in the notes here, I must quote such
a harsh mistress. Well, as it turns out, gravity is
a really interesting stuff, and we don't necessarily understand everything
(09:45):
about it. In fact, you know, one of the things
that we we one of the bits of information we lack,
is what is the actual mechanism of gravity? We have
the placeholder of gravitons, which are the particles, the hypothetical
particles that made ray work, but we don't you know,
they're hypothetical. We haven't had any direct observation of them
(10:06):
or been able to prove their existence in any definitive way. Now,
mathematically it totally makes sense because and we have to
have a placeholder there. So that's kind of why we
we have this thing we call gravitons. I think they're
in that category where they're consistent with what we know,
but there's no evidence for them directly right. So, according
(10:27):
to lots of theories, including the general relativity of theory,
that a certain Einstein way to go. Einstein came up
with UH talks about space time and curvature of space
time and how mass causes a warping of space time.
So if you have a mass in spacetime, it causes
(10:47):
space time to warp around it, and that the typical
example people give is a much simpler one for us
to understand. So Joe, you and I, let's imagine we're
holding a rubber sheet, and we're standing far enough apart
where we're holding that sheet as as tightly as tautly
as we can. Why are we holding a rubber sheet?
Because we love science? Joe, Okay, Well, you know it's
(11:10):
gonna get weirder before he gets less weird. So then
then Lauren, who has recovered from her being under the weather,
comes up and rolls a tennis ball across this, uh,
this rubber sheet which we're holding taught and the rubber
sheet is taught enough where the tennis ball pretty much
rolls in straight line from you to me. Okay, okay,
But then Lauren decides that she's you know, wants to
(11:31):
get a little impish, and she puts a bowling ball
in the center of this rubber sheet, which then causes
the rubber sheet to deform around it. It dips down.
The weight of the bowling ball is pulling down too
hard for the rubber sheet to remain taught. Of course,
you know what else would happen is that the tennis
ball would roll toward the bowling ball, exactly like if
you were to try and roll that tennis ball second time,
(11:51):
instead of going in a straight line, it would immediately
start to deviate towards the bowling ball, which has deformed
that that straight plastic sheet. The same thing happen and
in space time with bodies of large enough mass, I mean,
any mass is going to warp it a little bit,
but for you to really significantly warped spacetime, you have
to have pretty large amounts of mass uh. And so
(12:13):
that's kind of the the idea behind this whole gravity thing.
It's also can we can also express it as saying
that gravity UH is the attraction that two bodies have,
two bodies of mass have UH, and the amount, like
the significance of that gravity depends upon two things. The
size of the mass is involved, and how near or
(12:34):
far apart they are from one another. Okay, so when
we're talking about the Earth, the Earth has a pretty
good hold on us. We're kind of stuck um without
you know, using some pretty extraordinary means to get our
feet off the ground for more than a couple of
you know, more than a second or two, depending upon
how you're how you're managing to do this trampoline or not.
(12:55):
So uh, you know, we have to find ways to
counteract that force of gravity, that that downward accelerating force
that's constantly pulling upon us. And uh. And so it's
it's tricky because to do that means that you have
to expend energy or you have to find some other
means of counteracting the force of the succeloring force pulling
(13:18):
you downward. Of course, it's not like flying or even
floating is a total mystery to us. I mean, we've
come up with quite a few ways of flying. I mean,
there is the balloon lighter than air. Uh, and so
that works by having a material within the balloon that
is of a of less density than the atmosphere around it,
(13:39):
So it floats up right. It's it's it's technically called
lighter than air, tends to be called that. Yeah, if
you were to if you were to take a a
ziploc bag or just a sandwich bag of whatever brand
you like, and it has that little sealable edge, and
you fill it with air and you seal it, and
you put that on a pool, it's gonna float on
top of the pool because that air is less dense
(14:00):
than the water around it. Yeah. Of course, what makes
a boat or something float on top of the water
is the same principle that allows a balloon to float
in the air. It's this buoyancy issue. So if you
get some gas that is less dense than our atmosphere
is particularly no our atmosphere at the altitudes that which
(14:21):
we can operate without uh encountering some significant difficulties, then
you can, if you have enough of it, you can
have enough lifting force to lift a you know, something
like whether it's a balloon or a blamp or whatever.
Hydrogen and helium tend to be used the most. Hydrogen
was used quite a bit until the Hindenburg disaster. And
(14:43):
the thing about hydrogen is it has a lot of
lifting power. I mean, it's that's the first element, right
so you've got this ability to uh, it's it's gonna
be the least dense, it's gonna be the lightest just
by definition. Um. And it has a one point one
kilogram for every cubic meter of gas lifting power. So
if you have a cubic meter of of hydrogen, uh,
(15:04):
then it can lift one point one Yeah, but it
also has one point one million units of fire. Well, yeah,
it's flammable. That's the that's the big issue. So after
the Hindenburg disaster, most lighter than air vehicles now rely
on helium, which is not flammable. It is not volatile
at all, but it has uh, it doesn't it's not
(15:26):
as strong either. Has one point oh two kilograms of
lifting power per cubic meter of helium is. It also
still more expensive. I know at the time of the
Hindenburg that hydrogen was cheaper and easier to get your hands.
Definitely expensive because if you look at scientific papers, they
talk a lot about how the getting enough helium to
(15:47):
do things like super cool your particle accelerators is getting
harder and harder, particularly as people use it for things
like balloons and stuff. Not that. Not that if you
get a not that if you get your kid, you know,
a balloon for or his or her birthday that you
have just robbed the large Hadron collider of finding the
next you know, hypothetical particle. But it is an issue.
(16:08):
It's not something that's easy to get at. Hydrogen. We could,
you know, by pouring a little energy into water, we
can get hydrogen. He can't do that with helium. So yeah,
I would say the idea of creating something like a
city like Columbia floating on the basis of helium or hydrogen,
that doesn't seem all that feasible. You would you would
(16:28):
need so much because I mean, remember that's that's the
lifting power of a cubic meter of that gas. So
you would need so many cubic meters to to be
able to lift something as heavy as a city. Uh,
it would be pretty ridiculous. But then, um, we can
look at maybe something like a heavier than air aircraft
(16:50):
because we do have plenty of examples of those two.
All right, Yeah, I've flown in one of those things.
It has wings instead of balloons. Yeah, that's another Yeah,
this is all about generating lift, and this is one
of those things that often gets miscommunicated one of the
the way that I always heard about lift being generated,
(17:10):
it turns out is not entirely correct. The thing I
always heard was that, let's say you've got a wing
going through the air, and it's angled in such a way,
or the wing is molded in such a way that
the air over the top of the wing has further
to travel than the air going beneath the wing, and
the differences in pressure are what generate lift. That's a
very common explanation for lift. Is also not technically correct. Well,
(17:34):
I would think it would have to create upward uh
force by throwing air down. That's pretty much it. Yeah,
it turns out that an object moving through a solid
object moving through a fluid is going to displace that
fluid the flow of fluid. Now, when we say fluid flow,
we don't necessarily mean that the fluid itself is moving.
(17:54):
It can be perfectly stationary. If the object is moving
through the fluid, that can end up interrupting the quote
quote flow of the fluid that actually makes it move around.
Or you could have a stationary object and move the
fluid past it and and have the same thing, or
you could have a combination of the two. So anyway,
if your wing is designed in such a way so
that it's deflecting the flow more of the flow of
(18:15):
air downward than upward, then you're going to get a
perpendicular to the surface I guess of whatever. I if
it's a fluid container, would be the surface of that
fluid container. You'll get a perpendicular force called lift. And
so as you're going forward with great speed, you're trying
to just slam tons of air down below the bottom
(18:37):
body of the plane, right, you have to displace enough
so that it can counteract the weight. So, yeah, thrust
is very important, like the speed is very important, both
for a an airplane or jet. You know, it has
to go fast enough to to to generate this lift
in order to uh to fly, or a helicopter in
which case you're talking about the speed of the rotors turning.
(18:57):
But either way, you know, or if you are sen
you tell me that the way a helicopter flies is
by beating the air into submission. Just I guess, kind
of true. Uh So, that's that's another example of being
able to defy gravity in a way, but again not
necessarily something that would work for the city. Uh So, yeah,
it works like something the size of an airplane. I mean,
(19:19):
here's one question they ask, like, why don't they make
airplane bodies stronger? You know, airplanes can crash and disintegrate
and have all these problems that kill people on board
when when there's a malfunction, Why don't they just really
reinforce them. Well, as you keep adding mass to the airplane,
you're reducing its ability to fly. Yeah, you actually have
(19:39):
to you know, again, you have to make lift that
can counteract that weight, and so you have to make
the aircraft progressively more powerful in order to do that.
And that's a real and to use more fuel and
that That kind of brings us to the next one,
which is rockets. Very similar in that you know, in rockets,
you're trying to generate thrust. You're generating us that has
(20:00):
aimed toward the surface of whatever. You know, with a
rocket that we're trying to send something into space, it's
directing it down towards the ground. Uh, you're essentially creating
something that's throwing out mass um at a rate that
is a greater than the weight of the or the
mass of the object that there's that's containing the fuel
(20:23):
and has the spacecraft on it, so uh, you know,
you could be using you know, when you think about it,
with a rocket trying to send a spacecraft up, you
have to first account for, all right, how heavy is
the spacecraft? How much fuel are we going to need
in order to generate the thrust necessary for the spacecraft
to go up? All right, but that fuel weighs something
that actually adds mass to this. So now we have
(20:45):
to figure out how much fuel do we need to
take care of both the spacecraft and the weight And
wait a minute, that fuel has to go in something.
How much how much fuel do we now need to
make the spacecraft and the fuel and the fuel's container
all go up and launch into orbit. And that's why
we need such a massive amount of fuel to escape
(21:06):
Earth and and send stuff up into orbit, and why
it's so important, or at least it's why why so
many people are interested in finding an alternative means of
getting stuff from the ground into space, right because it
would dramatically cut down on cost, It cuts down and
risk um uh and it you know, you don't end
up having to uh burn through millions of gallons of
(21:29):
fuel each time. So it's or if you're talking about
solid fuel, million tons of fuel. Um, it's you know,
it's it's definitely one of those things that is a
driving force. No no pun intended in the space industry.
But yeah, again, if you wanted to have rockets on
your city to keep your city afloat, you would need
lots and lots of fuel, which would of course add
(21:52):
to the amount of fuel you would need to keep
the city afloat. It's not really If you watch how
most rockets go up, they have a multi stage launch,
so they have to throw off fuel containers that they've expended.
I don't know how that would work in something that's
supposed to be permanently floating, like you've got fuel containers
(22:14):
that maybe you've got like ten billion fuel containers that
you're constantly launching off a bunch of them. I guess
you would have to have some sort of weird, crazy
fusion reactor thing that's just superheating gas that shooting it
straight down or I don't know. I mean, there's enough.
I can't think of any practical, like not even practical
(22:35):
like like quasi plausible ways of doing it. It's it's
kind of it defies my imagination. But there's one other
one we can talk about about, you know, making just
you know, defying gravity, rather than my imagination, which is
a magnetic levitation. This one is actually pretty cool and
(22:56):
might be I mean, if we're talking about floating a
city side thing. None of these are particularly plausible, but
this one might be the most plausible, at least at
least this one would. You know, we have examples of
this being used in transportation right now, and in fact,
there is at least one way where you could, in
theory create a hoverboard that would work under these principles,
(23:19):
but under very specific circumstances. Yeah, we'll talk about that
in a minute. Okay, So mag love is using a
combination of electromagnets and maybe sometimes permanent magnets um and
the way you usually see this used as say on
a train, Why does it help to float a train
above the track with magnets, Well, it reduces friction. Yeah,
(23:41):
it almost completely removes it. I mean, you still get
wind resistant unless you're gonna put it in a tunnel
that's got all the atmosphere sucked out of it, similar
to something. Yeah, then you can really cut down on
friction to almost zero and you can go at super
speeds and just it's magic almost almost magic. Yeah, it's
(24:02):
too too two we meror mortals, it seems as as such,
it's um Yeah. Essentially, if you've ever played with magnets,
then you know the basics of how this works. Because
if you have two magnets and you try and put
both north ends of the magnets together, they push apart
from one another. Yeah, and that that's because of electric charge, right, Yeah,
(24:23):
it's magnetic charge. But yeah, magnetic calls magnetic, So opposite
signals will attract a plus and minus that would if
they were polarized, it would suck your train to the track. Right.
So what you could do is you can have the
you can have the magnetic fields aligned in such a
way where they're repelling one another, and thus, by repelling
(24:44):
one another, if you have enough of a magnetic force there,
you can lift an entire vehicle like a train, off
the tracks. Now, these tracks they all have guards on
them so that the train doesn't you know, fly off
or anything or or get uh you know, the wump us,
and then immediately there's some terrible accident. They have safety
guides there. Uh. And usually what in most implementations I've
(25:07):
seen not all but most the track has some very
powerful electro magnets and it sometimes they're even created by
a super cooled semiconductors. And the thing about semiconductor is
the colder you get it, the more you cut down
on resistance, which means you lose less energy in the
form of heat. So you know, when you run electricity
(25:27):
through a circuit, one of the by products is heat, right,
and we talk about this all the time. It's the
resistance of whatever material you're running electricity through. That resistance
kind of represents how much energy you're going to lose
in the processes. When you super cool semiconductors, you really
cut down that resistance. You make them very efficient. So
imagine that you've got a track of these super cold semiconductors.
(25:49):
And this is just one implementation. Not all of them
use super cold semiconductors, but you've got a whole track
of this. And part of this is creating the the
magnetic field that suspends the train rain that actually keeps
the train above the tracks. And then another signal makes
a an opposite charge to the front of the train,
so it starts to pull the train forward and you
(26:11):
just run you change that signal down the track and
the train just follows it. Meanwhile, in the rear of
the train, you create a signal that is the same
as the back of the train, so that pushes the
train forward, and you've got this pull push thing. You
were pulling the front and pushing the back. And that's
how you can get these trains up to amazing speeds
because you're really only limited ultimately by wind resistance and
(26:32):
how quickly you can change that that UM, that charge
also possibly whatever you know, safety regulations you want to
put in place so you don't turn everyone into a slushy.
I would love to be a slushy. I would love
a slushy actually, But um, yeah, so it's it's pretty
cool stuff. Like I said, there's a lot of different implementations.
(26:55):
There are several examples in UM in Asia and Europe,
not so many in United States. UM. It's one of
those things I would love to see adopted more widely.
And of course hyperloop is one of the examples of
something similar to this. Yeah, okay, So one of the
interesting things about mag love technology is that you don't
necessarily have to have some kind of huge, powerful device
(27:17):
on the floating object itself. I mean, you can invest
the power into the base that the object is floating above, right,
so that whatever right. This might enable you to have
something that's reasonably sized to float. Yeah, this is where
we could get into this idea of a hoverboard potentially
(27:38):
being possible. It would be a very particular implementation. You
would have to have essentially a floor that would be
lined with these these electro magnets that could generate a
magnetic field, and then you could have permanent magnets on
the hoverboard, uh, that are aligned so that the they
will oppose whatever is on the floor are so when
(28:00):
you turn on the electro magnets, the hoverboards spring up
into the air and then if it's strong enough, it
could even hold you, although I don't know how stable
it would be. Yeah, that's a problem you see with
a lot of these floating magnets is that they wobble them. Yeah,
they do. There's a lot of wobble in them. And
it's also kind of uh uh. I mean, just imagine
what would happen if you accidentally put your hoverboard upside
(28:22):
down on the floor. You would never be able to
pick it up. It would just be stuck there. You like,
can you turn the floor off again, or if you
set your cell phone down on the floor, or yeah,
all your magn all your credit cards get demagnetized or yea.
But I can see it. Okay, so you might not
be able to use this hoverboard out on the street
around the neighborhood, but I mean I can see it
(28:44):
being worth it two kids to drive out to the
play space. You know, Mom, please take me. I want
to do hoverboard. Yeah, I could see it. I mean
maybe on your birthday, if you could figure out a
way of making it very stable, then I could see
it working. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm certain that
you'll end up seeing examples of this in various kinds
of attractions, particularly at a place where you know, they've
(29:08):
got a lot of money where they can show the
sort of stuff off. It would be kind of similar
to the the hovercraft that we used to see all
the time and still do in some places that use
air as thrust to try and and hover above a surface.
I could see that kind of happening to. Let's talk
a little bit about anti gravity, so you know that's
(29:29):
a big thing in science fiction too. Yeah, that's uh,
the basic magic that holds cloud city. Up. I guess
it's some kind of anti gravity anti gravity. Yeah, okay,
So the thing about anti gravity is it's pretty much pseudoscience.
I mean, it's the thing people think that scientists are
working on out there. I don't know about that. Yeah,
let's let's talk a little bit about some of the
(29:51):
things where we try to simulate micro gravity here on Earth,
because clearly, I mean that would be really useful if
we could truly simulate it, because it means that we
could do a lot of ex experiments that otherwise we
would need to shoot up into space, and that, like
we just said, is really expensive. Well, I mean, you
can simulate the experience of it like you can fall.
So you can get on a parabolic flight, right and
(30:14):
within the enclosed environment where you are, you will seem
to float. I mean you will actually be floated. It
will be like a thirty second or so experience, sometimes
up to ninety seconds depending upon the flight. But uh,
an experience where you can you know, you're simulating a
microgravity environment because you're all in free fall essentially, um,
(30:34):
and allows you to kind of float around as if
you were on board the International Space Station. Uh. Then UM,
there's also I didn't mention this in my notes, but
there's also the the method we talked about for the
scientists used to test certain types of of drugs and
stuff that's not truly simulating micro gravity. What it really
does is it keeps rotating a specimen very slowly through
(30:59):
all different axes so that every single part of that, uh,
that sub that whatever that subject is, is under an
equal influence of gravity. So it's as if no gravity
is affecting it, you know what I'm talking about. We
mentioned one of the ones about mice. Yes, you can
mice breed in anti graph or not in micrograph, right,
(31:21):
So it's one of those things where, uh, it's you know,
it's really more negating the effect of gravity on a
particular orientation of whatever it is you're testing. So that's
not that that doesn't really fit either. There's also gyroscopic procession,
So this is what lets you stay upright on a bicycle.
You might think that you have amazing balance and that
(31:43):
you can ride a bike with no hands, and it's
because you were just incredible. But uh, and I'm not
saying you're not incredible, but the reason why you're able
to do that is because of gyroscopic procession. It's this
idea that a a spinning wheel along an access when
you apply torque to it, it generates these kind of
other forces along it. In one way of seeing this,
(32:03):
I used to see this, uh, displayed at a science
museum that used to be here in Atlanta called Sidetrack.
And Uh, the way they did it was they had
a bicycle wheel suspended like they they had a little
axle attached to it. On one side of the axle,
they had a a rope tied from the ceiling to
that axle. So if you were to let go of
(32:23):
the wheel, it would just kind of hang flat, like
you know, horizontally. But if you aligned it vertically and
then started spinning the bicycle wheel and then let go,
the bicycle wheel would remain upright and it would start
to turn around and around on like the It would
spin around on this rope, so the wheel wouldn't go
back down flat. This is the same sort of thing
(32:44):
that allows tops to stay upright when they're spinning. Uh.
We see it all the time. There's actually some great
videos out there that display this this principle and explain
what's going on from a basic physics perspective, and it's
pretty interesting stuff. But again, it's not really anti gravity.
It just kind of it seems to defy what we
(33:05):
think of as gravity because of our everyday experience with it.
But it's not truly anti gravity. You're not gonna be
able to ride a bike so fast that you're gonna
lift off the ground unless you happen to have et
sitting in your basket in front of you. I was
gonna say, I hope you believe in love the idea,
of course I do. Uh. Then there's we've covered the
hoverboard hoax, the fact that you know, you can look
(33:25):
at the the frame by frame breakdowns and see where
how they they managed to create the illusion of hovering.
That that's yeah, that's anti gravity by power of trick photography. Right.
There's also liquid mountaineering. Now this is what you have
never seen this video, So this is not exactly anti gravity,
(33:47):
but it is kind of similar to the idea of
defying certain laws of physics. So liquid mountaineering there was
there were these viral videos that came out a couple
of years ago, and it was a bunch of people
who were hanging out next to a body of water.
I think it was like a lake or something, and um,
they were talking about how they were pioneers of a
(34:07):
new sport called liquid mountaineering, and the way the sport
worked is that you had to get up a really
good speed running speed, and you typically would run down
a bank and then hit the water. And if you're
hitting the water fast enough, you could run so fast
as to be able to run across the surface of
the water without breaking the surface tension and falling through
(34:29):
for at least a few steps. And the video showed
them running, you know, maybe three or four feet into
the water, like getting two or three good steps going
and then falling through. Sense it doesn't make any sense.
I mean, if you know about how service tension and
all that can really mess you up if you hit
(34:49):
water going really fast, maybe on that level you're thinking
it makes sense, but ultimately we don't have enough surface
area on our feet to be able to take advantage
of any of those properties. But the other people eventually
proved that what was going on was that this group
was using transparent platforms just under the surface of the water.
(35:10):
So because it was just under the water, you couldn't
even tell they were there. So people were actually running
on solid platforms that were extended out maybe three or
four feet into the water and then dropped off to
try and create this effect. I guess they figured that
if they made it longer than that that it would
press people's like it would challenge people's credulous nature too much.
(35:33):
But anyway, so it's not truly anti gravity either. It's
also yet it's not kind of sort of fits in
with it. I just wanted to include it because it
was another viral video where hoaxers were and I think
it was ultimately um like part of a marketing campaign
for a line of running shoes. I want to say
that's what it ultimately ended up being. But then, what
(35:54):
about what does science have to say about anti gravity? Yeah?
I was gonna ask this because everything we've said so
far is a not really. Yeah, it turns out pretty
much all the claims have either turned out to be
a hoax or if they weren't a hoax, no one
has been able to replicate the results being claimed, and
(36:15):
as we know with science, that's a bad sign, right, Yeah,
especially when the claim itself is something very cool. Yeah,
if it's if it's an extraordinary claim, then it definitely
needs to have uh, you know, independent corroborating evidence. Otherwise
it's just you can't really believe in it. You can't
put you can't put any faith in it. So that was,
(36:35):
you know, when it comes to to science, the word
anti gravity is kind of a uh I mean, it's
kind of a four letter word in science circles. But
I do think we should talk about something that's sort
of related to what we already discussed, which was maglev.
What's the deal with quantum locking? It is the coolest
thing ever. This is a video that looks like a
(36:58):
hoax but isn't quantum locking. If you've ever seen and
there are a few different videos, there's a Ted talk
on YouTube. This is awesome. It's one of the things
the first time you see it, your brain says, Okay,
how are they pulling this trick off? Like this is
obviously some sort of magic trick or something. So quantum
locking involves using a superconductor, super cooled superconductor, So it's
(37:21):
very much like I was talking about earlier. When you
cool semiconductors and you start to lower resistance, A super
cooled superconductor has no resistance. It perfect conductor of electricity.
Which is pretty incredible, but you have to really cool
it down with like liquid nitrogen. You know, it it's
super cold, and then it's like the cold fog coming off.
Oh yeah, yeah. It's usually got a good crust of
(37:43):
of some sort of ice type stuff all around the outside.
It looks like something from Mr. Freeze's labe. So the
superconductive material, if it were absolutely uniform and molecular nature,
if it was a perfectly formed super conductor material, it
would simply repel all magnetic fields. You mean, if it
(38:03):
had no impurity exactly, if it were absolutely structurally sound
from a molecular standpoint, it would just it would repel
all magnetic fields and you would end up getting like
the super wobbly kind of levitation. But if you introduce
impurities very methodically, you know, it's called doping. If you
were to do this very very specifically, it creates these
(38:26):
things called flex tubes, which allow you to lock in
position over a magnet magnetic field along three axes the superconductor.
So if the superconductor is small and you have say
a permanent magnet that's in a base, and you put
this over top of it, it can lock into place
and then you can even change the orientation and it'll
(38:48):
stay there. If you were to pick the magnet up,
the superconductor would move in the same way as you
move the magnet. Even if you turn the magnet upside down,
the superconductor will stay exactly locked in that same orientation
and apparently define the laws of gravity. It just seems
to be, you know, hovering there, not even hovering, just
(39:09):
stuck in the air. When you think of hovering, you
think of hovering ships from sci fi, where there's a
kind of vibration or there is a jitteriness, something that
looks like a vehicle that's powered. This just looks like
it is frozen in the air. It's pretty phenomenal right there.
The first time you see it, like I said, you
(39:29):
just think this has got to be some sort of trickery.
What sorcery is this? And uh And they're also great
examples on YouTube where people have created a magnetic track.
It's usually like just a simple circle that you can
lock one of these super cool superconductors on top of
the track, uh, you know, hovering above all stuck above it,
(39:49):
and then give it a little push and because there's
no real friction apart from air resistance. It'll just go
right along that. It will follow that track perfectly, and
it will still maintain its orientation. So if you said
it so it was perfectly level, it'll be perfectly level.
If you can't it at an angle, it will remain
at that angle all the way around. It's really really,
I mean it's it's one of the coolest things I've
(40:13):
seen on YouTube in a few years. I really enjoy
those videos. So if you're working on hoverboard technology, take
a look at quantum locking. I think that's where you
want to put your money. So, yeah, you have to
have you have to have magnets beneath the floor and
a super cool hoverboard. So so, kids, where where your socks?
(40:34):
Where your winter socks? Uh? This is where we tell
you don't play with liquid nitrogen or help us, don't
touch liquid helium. All right. So that moves us on
to the what I when you originally you would think
of as probably the least plausible method, just the floating city,
(40:56):
just a city that floats on its own, because you
think of Star Wars. There's nothing in that I recall
and Empire strikes Back that shows those cities using propulsion
of any sorts to float where they are. They're just
they're just there. No, they might as well. Cloud City
might as well be a big balloon, And turns out
you might actually be able to create something like that,
(41:18):
just probably not here on Earth, right, um. I want
to talk about the idea of floating planetary colonies that
humans could inhabit because they would be full of Earth atmosphere. So,
in other words, when we talked earlier about balloons with
hydrogen and helium, and the reason those work is because
(41:38):
hydrogen and helium are less dense than our atmosphere is,
and if you get enough of it together, it has
lifting power. In this case, the air that we breathe,
the mix of of breathable oxygen that we could survive on,
is less dense than what you might find on some
other planets and would have that same sort of lifting ability. Yeah,
(41:59):
this isn't just might like maybe out there there's some
kind of planet we could look at, the planet Venus.
It happens to be not very far away. No, it's
right there. And while most colonization efforts are focused on Mars,
there are some people who think Venus might be just
as good a place to look. Yeah, uh. So, the
NASA scientist Jeffrey landis proposed to floating Venus colony, and
(42:21):
this he's been talking about this for years or a
paper he presented to the a I P In two
thousand three, So this is not a new idea, um,
but he's been trying to promote this. So on Venus,
the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide CO two, and breathable
air is lighter than carbon dioxide. So a colony inside
a bubble full of breathable earth atmosphere, which should be
(42:44):
a nitrogen and oxygen mixture, could float at about fifty
kilometers above the surface of Venus. And actually that would
be a pretty happy place for humans because pressure there
and he would be totally tolerable, unlike on the surface
of Venus. Now they would not be no on the
surface of Venus would be literally like being in a
pressure code. Yeah, we we've sent, We've sent the human
(43:07):
beings have sent multiple probes to Venus and most of
them don't survive very long. The Soviets put landers down
on the surface of Venus. That actually sent a couple
of photos back, which if you get a chance to
look at them, they are creepy. Looking. They're these weird
yellow kind of hell scapes that are I don't know.
They make it look so cool, but like a place
(43:27):
you would not want to go. So the atmosphere is
so heavy it will crush you, and the heat is
enough to melt lead at some points on the surface.
So so yeah, being above that in a place where
you would actually have tolerable temperatures and pressures obviously very important. Yeah,
you know, you wouldn't want to fall down, but yeah.
Um but anyway, what Landis himself said in the paper
(43:51):
he presented to the i P was that, at about
fifty kilometers above Venus, it's the most earthlike environment other
than the Earth It's self that you will find in
the Solar system. That's a quote. The only thing is
you wouldn't be able to breathe the air outside, but
otherwise it'd be fairly tolerable. Um. Now, of course it's
(44:12):
not like that. Oh okay, well, totally easy. No, this
would actually be really difficult and expensive, But it is
really interesting that it's it seems quite plausible. It would
just be a very expensive undertaking. It would be an
engineering project because you'd have to design the bubble such
that one, it doesn't leak obviously, and the bigger your
structure is, I think, the harder it is to design
(44:34):
something that doesn't leak. I don't know if you remember, um,
when we were talking about what is it called biosphere
to the control closed ecosystem that they tried to create
in the United States. But it had a problem with
you know, like with leaking the internal gas mixture. Um.
And I think that that had to do with the
fact that, well, you're getting big. Once your scale keeps increasing,
(44:57):
it's harder and harder to engineer that that perfect kind
of airtight system. Also, you have trouble with corrosion because
venus is surrounded by clouds of sulfuric acid, which can
be a little corrosive. No, if you put a drop
of sulfuric acid on, say like a cotton T shirt,
just watch what happens. Kids, don't put sulfuric acid. To
(45:24):
put sulfuric acid on your warm winter socks before you
go glide around on quantum locking hupperboards, Um, no, it'll
it'll burn it up. The stuff is really really corrosive,
So you would need a special kind of material that's
resistant to this kind of chemical corrosion, and maybe something
like ceramics could do it. I don't really know, but
(45:45):
I think it is doable. Yeah. You would also want
to make sure that whatever material material you were using
wasn't too heavy, because the heavier it is, the more
of the gas you're going to need to counteract that weight.
And of course some of that is going to be
necessary just because that's the stuff we breathe to live of.
But you know, you also would have to make a
larger structure to hold that volume of gas without you know,
(46:08):
making it too highly pressured. Right, I mean, it would
just require good engineering in the same way that say,
designing a ship would require good engineering. Needs to displace
enough water and be the right shape and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
So I mean this is this is a certainly a possibility.
I don't know how plausible it is in the long run,
(46:29):
because a lot of attention is still on Mars, right right.
And I would say one of the biggest questions is
it's not so much whether we could do this, because
it seems like it is doable. The question is is
anybody going to pay to do this? I mean, there's
obviously going to be hugely expensive. Um, would there be
enough research interest in Venus and enough possibility for a
(46:52):
return on investment that people would want to go there
and spend this much money to build something like this,
and the I don't of the answer to that question. Yeah,
but uh, you know, maybe just pure scientific curiosity will
win the day in the future. Suddenly, you know, in
the next ten years, everybody will be like, oh, let's
let's spend all our money on learning. Uh maybe that
(47:15):
or maybe that there is some kind of material resource
on Venus that could be exploited to great effect, the
same way that asteroid mining, while it's definitely going to
be a huge investment, offers such a great return that
people are taking it very seriously. It's not just a
pie in the sky thing. People are like, all right,
let's get let's get going. I think the uh, I
(47:38):
think the really interesting thing here is that the technology
found in Star Wars is the one that seems like
it's the of course, we have to point out like
the Star Wars implementation clearly is not scientifically accurate all
it wasn't meant to be scientifically accurate. There's it's not
It's not a slam against the movie Star Wars is fantasy.
It's a hard sci fi, yeah, because I mean, who
(48:00):
ends up being suspended upside down underneath Cloud City for
a little while before the Millennium falcon comes around and
he can clearly breathe, So obviously it's not the same
sort of thing. Yea. Also beyond Venus, I mean, you
could think about there are other places where maybe something
like this could take place. I don't I don't know
the specifics, but I'd wonder about Saturn's moon Titan, you know,
(48:20):
that has a dense atmosphere. Maybe something like this could
happen there too. Or it may even be that perhaps
when we're looking outside of our own solar system, that's
still a possibility. It's one of those interesting things that, uh,
I'm sure that that eventually we will explore in one
way or another. It may I'm guessing it will probably
not be in an implementation that involves actual human beings
(48:41):
for the first few times. I don't know that anyone
we want to risk it that, you know that. I
also don't know exactly how you would get back from
Venus to Earth if you wanted to travel back. I mean,
you would have to have some sort of platform to
launch from that would allow you to uh to withstand
the forces of a rocket taking often pushing down against
that platform. Well, I don't know. I mean I wonder
(49:04):
if you could uh take off, say suspended by balloon.
Yeah yeah, or you could have some sort of hybrid
aircraft rocket type thing. I guess, uh, you know, we're
talking pure speculation here anyway, So pies the pie in
the sky type stuff. Anyway, Well, this was really fun
to talk about. It was one of those things that
you know, it was we knew we wanted to to
(49:26):
eventually chat about hover boards and that kind of stuff
because a lot of people who are into science I
think also at some point we're into science fiction. They
may still very well be into science fiction quite a bit.
And it's these sort of things that spark our interest
that you know, when we see something that's implemented in
real life that mirrors something we saw on film, it's
(49:49):
really exciting. So we wanted to definitely, you know, talk
about that. But hey, if you know anybody out there
claiming a cool anti gravity technology that we don't know about,
we'd be happy to take a look you even though
it may very likely be total bunk. Go ahead and
send it to us, So, I mean, we'd love to
see it. Yeah, we we'd love to see it. Of
course we are not uh, physicists or anything along, but
(50:13):
we can we can certainly look at something and go
ah interesting. Uh yeah. Our addresses f W Thinking at
discovery dot com. You can also write us if you
have any suggestions for future topics that do you think
we should cover, or if you have any questions let's know.
And also you can get in touch with us on
the social media that we frequent which include Google Plus, Twitter,
and Facebook. Are handling all of those is f W
(50:35):
Thinking and Joe and I and probably Lauren too. We'll
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
(51:01):
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Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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