February 18, 2015 • 48 mins
How will we consume media in the future? Could we harness the Earth's core for energy? How do astronomers indicate celestial positions? The team answers some listener mail.
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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, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, wait a minute,
Mr Post, ma'am. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick.
(00:24):
Hi there, Lauren, Hi, Joe, Hi, Jonathan, Hi, Joe, Hi, Lauren, Hi, Jonathan, Hi, Noel.
All right, good, we got everybody. Now, Hi, how are
you doing today? Really well, well, today, I'm very excited
because we're gonna be talking about some listener requested topics.
But we've really had a lot of listener requests piling
(00:44):
up lately. Yeah, which is fantastic. Guy, We really appreciate it.
So we love it. We're not complaining, but they're they're
only piling because you're so fabulous. Yes, and we can
only record and published two episodes a week. But so
today we thought, you know what we should do, We
should do a listener mail roundup episode. Now. Unfortunately, even
(01:06):
in this episode, we're not going to be able to
get to every one of the things you all have
sent us that we want to talk about, but we
wanted to pick some of the topics that could be
addressed in a slightly shorter form and uh and take
them on all at once, and some of these may
eventually become part of an episode where we take a
deeper dive into these, but a lot of the questions
(01:28):
seem like they would have a fairly quick answer that
wouldn't justify a full length episode, which is why we
kind of grouped them together. They're they're not grouped by
any sort of theme either, because you'll see as we
go on, it's kind of all over the place, which
is cool. Yeah. Yeah, So our first listener suggestion that
we want to get to today actually came to us
on our Facebook while it was our listener Ed who
(01:49):
asked us about the future of media delivery, and Ed
said podcast idea, I want my MP three or LP
or v O D. I think that's and I want
my MTV joke for the kids who don't remember dire
Straits or just MTV. Right. Ed goes on, how will
we be listening to or getting our music, watching movies,
(02:12):
reading books and magazines and newspapers in the future. Well,
I think this is a great question. It is it's
a fantastic question, and it's one that I mean, if
I were. If I were being snarky, I would just
say streaming and move on, because I think that that's
really the the answer to a lot of this, and
it's an answer that's being pushed partly by consumer behavior
(02:35):
and partly because it's a very attractive model for companies. Sure, well,
we've got the resources in place, don't we. I mean
now that now that high speed internet is becoming the norm,
at least in some parts of the world, and more
and more of the world long term, it's kind of
hard to argue against the power of streaming. Well, you
have so much access and it takes up so little space,
(02:57):
right that. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that
WiFi was really the speed you would need in order
to get decent streaming experience, right otherwise it was going
to be a very low quality stream or you're gonna buffer.
So you know, I remember the days of trying to
listen to something on streaming and get twenty seconds in
and then suddenly the song stops, and you wait another
(03:18):
fifteen seconds, then another twenty seconds of music plays. But
now now we've gotten too speeds of WiFi, we've gotten
better speeds of of cellular service, and we've gotten better
compression uh models for streaming media to allow that to
happen where we don't have as frequent an issue with
buffering still happens once in a blue moon. It happens
(03:40):
on my my connection at home, which is pretty fast.
But well, I mean, you know, you've got to have
that trifecta of a device that can handle it, right,
connection that can handle it, and the actual service. Yeah,
I mean if you don't have if one of those
three things is deficient, you're gonna have a poor experience.
But we're we've reached the point where the norm is
(04:02):
that you can have this pretty seamlessly. Like my my phone.
Now I can use my phone, uh pretty much anywhere
in Atlanta, uh streaming a podcast, so I don't have
to download an episode anymore. I can just stream it
and it cash is enough of the podcast in local
memory so that if I do pass through an area
(04:23):
that has uh, you know, weak service, Like you know,
I often take the train. In the train here in Atlanta,
there's above ground sections and below ground, so sometimes when
you go below ground, you lose that connection, but the
CASH corrects for that, right, it has enough in the
buffer so that I can keep listening without having that interruption.
I think that because the technology has reached this point,
(04:45):
streaming is really where a lot of this is going.
It also means that we can listen or watch stuff
when we feel like it. You know, we we we can.
And a lot of those UH services also allow us
to stop at one point and pick up at that
same point even as we switch devices. So if we
go from TV to phone or tablet or whatever. Yeah,
(05:07):
I agree that digital playback is going to pretty much dominate.
It's going to be king. I can't really see that
changing for any good reason except for the sort of
small scale collector aspect. I personally, I listen to records
at my house sometimes, and I don't know why. I
guess it's just fun. It can be fun to go
record shopping, to put a record on the turntable. There's
(05:28):
something aesthetically pleasing about it. It's a fun activity. But
I'd say most of my listening I do digitally, whether
that's podcasts or I mean obviously for podcasts, but h
or music. Most of the movies I see now, I
think come to me in a digital form. And I
don't know do you'll think there's any reason that we'd
see a major comeback of physical media for say music playback. Nope,
(05:54):
m hm m m. I mean yeah, yeah, there's that
that nest Alga factor and and that esthetic pleasure that
you get from I mean, cassette tapes are a thing again?
Are they really a thing again? Are they? I mean,
I mean I know that I know that there was
the the marketing gimmick of the Guardians of the Galaxy
(06:18):
soundtrack coming back out on cassette? Are cassettes really coming back? Bands, like,
like smaller local bands are releasing some of their albums
on cassette tape? You have to there's still there's still
still electronics companies selling cassette tape players. You've got some
blood running down your force. Well, I mean, I'm just like,
I'm like, I'm like, look, guys, we're better than that now.
(06:40):
I've left those days behind. Cassettes are not great media formats, yeah,
but they're fun. Come on stick and a lot of
a lot of older cars do still have cassette decks.
I guess, so yeah, I can understand. I do agree
that it's a lot easier to form kind of that
emotional attached meant to uh to something when there's a
(07:02):
physical representation of that thing, Right, Like I have a
vinyl record collection, and there is a particular feeling I
get when I pull an album out of that collection,
put it on a turntable and listen to it. The
ritual of it is kind of lovely, exactly. Yeah, there
is a ritual that's associated with it that's very comforting,
(07:24):
and it's all part of the experience which you can't
you know, you can't really place a quantitative value on,
but it's certainly. Yeah, I never get that warm fuzzy
when I like open iTunes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, when I
when I open up my my Google radio playlist that's
based off the album that I really love. Yeah, I mean,
(07:45):
it's not the same thing. So I don't want to
I don't want to dismiss the the value of physical media,
but I think that because there is the incentive on
the part of the media company, these two maximize profits,
which you certainly can do if you don't have to
(08:05):
have a physical presence anywhere. You know, you don't have
to create inventory, you don't have to have a place
to move that inventory, you don't have to worry about
inventory loss. If someone steals your physical stuff and you
can no longer sell it. I can see a lot
of reasons why companies would shy away from it, and
this could become something that we see more on a
(08:26):
special case by case basis, as UH entities, whether it's
an author or a band or whatever, are catering to
their audience. One way I do see this changing though,
is that I think laser discs are going to come
back in a big way. I think capacity and electronic
discs are going to come back in a big way
in the future. When you want to watch Terminator two,
(08:47):
you're gonna get out that laser disc and you're gonna
flip it halfway through the movie. Yeah, I agree with
ancestors exactly. No. Actually, one thing I do want to
say that I feel pretty strongly about out the future
of audio playback is actually about the devices we use themselves.
I think we're going to continue to see a decoupling
(09:10):
of the audio reading device from the actual device that
produces the sound. So, for example, this this exists today.
You can get pretty good Bluetooth speakers or Bluetooth headphones,
so you stream audio from the Internet on your phone
or your laptop or your TV, and then you listen
to that audio through whichever speaker system phone connects to
(09:31):
a speaker system, and yeah, you seek to your player,
the headphones, the whole speaker system, and you know, that's
bye bye to the earbuds with the chords. I think
that's going to become pretty universal. Sure. I mean, I
have a I have a pair of I have a
Bluetooth headset that's meant for music and podcasts, that sort
(09:53):
of thing that uses bone conduction as well, so it's
not even over the ear, but it also doesn't have
to doesn't have a chord or anything. I definitely see
that trend continuing. Oh sure, sure. Uh you know, I
think as the technology improves, probably your big clunky headset
or small, sexy, slim headset will be the device that
(10:14):
is streaming the media directly. Uh yeah, And I just
see generally more ease of interconnectivity. So like as we
have the Internet of Things entering our homes, more devices
will be the sort of the digital basis of playback,
and then you can sink them to whatever kind of
thing it is that's making the actual noise. Well yeah, again,
(10:36):
this this kind of comes back to the idea of
Let's let's use Netflix as an example, where if I'm
watching I'm logged into my Netflix account, and I'm watching
Netflix on my phone, and then I go into my
house and I want to turn on that same movie
using a set top boxes connected there that's logged into
my account as well. So when I started, it picks
up where I left off on my phone. This uninterrupted
(10:57):
experience is also something I see continuing in to the future. Uh.
The interesting thing to me is that if you had
asked me, maybe I don't know, five or six years ago,
I would have thought that the standalone MP three player
would still remain king because back back then streaming was
not really the method you would download, and so you
would keep everything on the memory of the device itself
(11:19):
instead of it being cloud based. And I would have said,
this is how it's going to continue for the foreseeable future.
And in fact, for the longest time I carried an
MP three player and a phone because I didn't want
to clog up my phone's memory with media. I still
do have an MP three player in a phone. I've graduated.
(11:40):
I only go phone now because I use this streaming method,
so I'm not filling up my memory, the cash fills
up so that if I do lose that connectivity, I
can continue enjoying whatever it is I'm I'm listening to her,
watching or reading. But it's not it's not that I
need to have a phone with practically end less amounts
of storage because that storage isn't needed anymore. Yeah, yeah,
(12:03):
I do think that in general across media or going
to continue to see like you know, mid sized portable devices,
whether that's a tablet or a mini tablet or um tablet. Yeah,
that's what. I have very large buttons on your coat
that that can play movies back to you. I don't know,
um that that are right, that that are capable of
(12:25):
handling both music and video and and books and etcetera,
and and you know, doing the streaming thing. I don't know. Like,
like I wonder, I wonder whether at a certain point
when if like memory will become cheap enough that people
will return to I mean, it depends if the if
(12:47):
the service ends up being so seamless that it's not necessary.
I don't think it's going to be a thing, but
they're always going to be times at least that I
can see where you are going to want to have
things stored directly on the advice itself. For example, if
you take a flight somewhere and you don't want to
spring for WiFi on the flight. Plus, WiFi on flights
(13:07):
is never at the speed that here, and I think
that that's a that that's a point like like right now, um,
cellular service isn't available everywhere, WiFi can be spotty, you
have to pay for them in in many contexts, and
so therefore streaming isn't quite ready. It's not to go
not supers totally seamless. It all depends on where you look.
Like if you're in a city like Atlanta or San
(13:28):
Francisco or New York, it's probably pretty good, but that's
not universal. Yeah. I would also add to that access
anxiety if you're interested in something that is perhaps obscure,
something you're not sure is going to continue to be
provided by Netflix or whatever. You know, that's a good point,
you think, well, you know, I don't know if this
movie is still going to be on Netflix in a
(13:51):
year when I want to watch it again, I'd rather
just own the Blu Ray, right. I mean, if Tammy
and the t Rex goes away, I don't know what
I'm gonna do me there, and uh, what about what
about books? Right? Right? So, I think that more reading
is going to be done digitally as prices on reading
(14:11):
devices electronic reading devices drop, and I I suspect that
in parallel, print prices are going to rise as printing
runs get smaller as a result. I see, so you're
you're thinking of because the the market is moving more digital,
the the potential market for actual physical books is getting smaller.
(14:32):
That drives the prices up because you can no longer
print in the volumes that you would before and expect
a decent return on that investment. Right. The other way
of looking at that is that they just keep the
prices the same by cutting costs, and there will be
more typos in your print books now editor free. I'm sorry,
we only hired a copy editor for the digital version
(14:53):
of Lauren. I liked your book, but the main character's
name changed like six times. That was part of the point. John, Uh,
these modern novels. I'm actually I'm in thinking about this.
I got the sudden moment of of worry that, um,
some people might start to get priced out of easy
access to print media due to the fact that, um,
(15:14):
you know, from an entry standpoint, a paperback is a
lot cheaper than a kindle and probably will continue to be.
Um even though you know, obviously getting a kindle at
having basically unlimited access to a lot of books for
very cheap or even free in the case of classics. UM. Well,
and I love I love the move to electronic media
(15:35):
for another reason. It also gives us access to books
that otherwise have passed out of print. They're not in
the public domain. You still have to buy them. But
I'm the son of an author. My dad has a
horror novel that came out in the eighties and it's
my favorite book that my dad ever wrote. I love it.
But it's not available in physical format anymore. But you
can get it electronically, and that's something that I love.
(15:56):
It means that people can have access to works that
there's no reason from the publishers standpoint to produce more. Yeah,
there's not enough, there's not a large enough market to justify.
But electronically you can have anything out there. Yes, yes,
and that that is truly wonderful. Um And I wonder,
I wonder whether for like the generation being born right now,
(16:18):
literally right now, I salute you, um when when you're
all about to listen to this, you'll appreciate that. Yeah,
what weather for them? Paper books and like paper printed
magazines and newspapers are going to become a nostalgic, uh nostalgic.
I don't want to say fetish, but but but but
like a nostalgic uh like like like like an anachronism
(16:42):
some sort of like tape or a vinyl record. Yeah. Yeah,
if reading something on paper is going to be like, oh,
I just love the ritual of opening a book. You know,
maybe this is I'm just far too technophobic, I guess
to be talking about technology all the time. I do
admit I have a perhaps old and preference for paper books.
(17:02):
I don't have a tablet, but I don't think I
would really like to read a book length literary work
on one. I can. I'll read articles on the internet
and stuff I I I gotta. I got one of
the touchscreen kindles at some point, and I actually really
like it. I but but I also did get the
kind of case for it. It's like made of wood
and leather, and so you open it and you kind
(17:23):
of feel like you're opening a book. Um, well, maybe
I just need to get with the times. I will
say that the move to digital formats for books also
means that we'll have fewer head scratching lee odd moments
in movies like have you guys heard about the scene
in the j LO film Boy next Door where the
boy next Door hands her a quote first edition of
(17:45):
the Iliad end quote? Well, hey, there have been lots
of first editions of the Iliad. That's the problem is
that just like they're joking that it's this it's this
valuable thing, or it should have been a blind poet,
it should have been exactly just starts reciting in Greek.
(18:05):
The first edition is the first time it's fixed intangible medium. Well,
you know, if we go back into the brain waves
thing anyway, that's that's neither here nor there. But I
think I think it was great question. It was It
was interesting. Um. I do think that streaming, for at
least the foreseeable feature is going to be the way
to go. Maybe we'll eventually get to a point where
(18:26):
things will get beamed directly into our brains and we
will experience them instantaneously in their entirety. I hope. So
that would be such a time, It would really I
could get through all of those books that are on
my list in like no time flat. Yeah. Well, thanks
for your question, ed. I think now we're going to
move on to an email we got from our listener
Jude about geothermal energy and space coordinates. So Jude says, hi, there, hey, Jude, Hey,
(18:53):
oh no, I see what you did there. Go ahead,
Jude says, hi there, I've been listening to your audio podcast.
You guys are doing a great job. Thanks to that
warms my my cold heart. Yes, uh, part is very
warm Jack. Well, okay, sorry, back to the email. Can
you please cover the following topics. We all know Earth's
core is molten rock and must be a source of
(19:15):
massive untapped energy. Has anyone attempted to harness Earth's geo
thermal energy? And how do astronomers navigating the cosmos or
refer to a star object in space? Is their GPS
equivalent in space? Thanks a lot from Jude in Bangalore.
So we're going to take these in turn. We'll start
with geo thermal So, first of all, geo thermal energy
(19:37):
is a thing, obviously something that we we harness. It
doesn't involve tapping into the Earth's core directly, although as
you'll see, there's kind of an indirect long tail version
of tapping into the Earth's core. Geothermal heat means thermal
energy or heat from the Earth. So that heat is
generated primarily from two sore says. One is that is
(20:01):
the radioactive decay of materials that are in the Earth's crust.
That accounts for about actually of geothermal energy. Really I
did not at all. The other comes from the geothermal gradient,
which is the difference between the cores temperature and the
planet's surface temperature. So you probably know heat conducts from
(20:24):
high concentration to low concentration, right, and that means that
heat is moving from the core out into the crust.
Uh So if you dig down far enough, the temperature
starts to go up. You know, I knew that, but
I had no idea how to do with this radioactive decay.
I assumed that it was because of the pressure of
the rock above it. Well, radioactive decay is again just
(20:47):
that that's part of what's generating heat, because as we've
talked about before, radioactive decay that is one of the byproducts.
But the actual heat from the core that has nothing
to do the radio activity. That's that's just basic physics
of conduct auction. So as you drill down, that temperature
goes up, and the average is twenty five to thirty
degrees celsius per kilometer or fifteen degrees fahrenheit per thousand feet.
(21:11):
That's the average, because there are some areas where that
gradient is much different. For example, if you're drilling near volcano,
you might notice that temperature goes way up way faster.
Macma will do that to you. Uh So it's thought
that this gradient actually decreases dramatically as you get through
the crust and into the upper mantle. And the basis
(21:32):
for that hypothesis is that if it were steady, if
in fact you continue to see that that rise in
temperature every kilometer, then you would eventually within the lithosphere.
That's the area of the upper cross, not the upper acrust,
the crust, the upper mantle uppercrust is a great band
um that if if that remains steady, it would eventually
(21:54):
hit the temperature where rock would melt before you got
to a point where it's no longer solid. Like we
know that the crust and upper mantle are solid and brittle,
and that's below that when you start hitting liquid and
then you get to the solid core, when you get
to the very center of the earth. Uh. And because
(22:15):
we know that, we know that this gradient has to
level off at some point. It can't continue at that pace,
or else the temperature would be too high for there
to be a solid surface there or solid material there.
It have to be liquid. So this is still just
a hypothesis. However, we don't really know what the actual
conditions under the surface of the Earth are because we
(22:38):
haven't had direct observation of it. Yes, spoiler alert, Jules
Verne wrote fiction. Yes, did not really go to the
center of the Earth. The deepest hole that humans have
ever drilled is the Cola Super Deep Bore Hole in Russia.
It's one of my favorite things. It is. That's a
great name for a thing. Anyway, go ahead. There's a
great video that shows exactly where it Isn't It just
(22:59):
looks like a little metal plate pipe sticking out of
the ground. It's it's now, it's a metal plate on
top of that pipe that is welded and bolted onto it.
So you know, but it looks like you could otherwise
just throw pennies down there. No, yeah, you can't. Like wait,
let's see let's listen for the drop. So this thing
is super deep, as the name implies, well if thou
(23:21):
actually doesn't imply it as the name states, it is
twelve thousand, two hundred sixty two or two hundred thirty
ft deep. I remember I wrote a video about this.
I did the video, and I did I did some
math and found out I can't oh, man, now that
i'm now that I'm sitting here, I don't remember the number.
But I calculated how long it would take you to
(23:42):
hit the bottom. If you could fall down this tiny
narrow shaft, it would take you a long time, right,
And uh, you know that is very deep, obviously, but
it's not deep enough to even come close to breaching
the crust and going into the upper mantle. It's the
crust is, on average underneath the continents anyway, two kilometers
(24:06):
thick or twenty five miles. This thing went twelve point
two kilometers down, so not even halfway. Now, if we
were to dig a similar hole in the ocean floor,
we might actually break through to the mantel, because the
crust along the ocean floor is around eight kilometers thick
on average. But then you'd have to get down to
the ocean floor. Yeah, so you'd have to deal with that.
(24:28):
But at any rate, we haven't even breached the crust
to get to the mantle, so we haven't gotten close
to the core. Uh, to get back to the to
Jude's question, we haven't gotten close enough so that we
could tap into the core's energy directly. Okay, so the
core is pretty much a no go, and I would
guess even in the future, we're not going to get
(24:49):
direct access to the core just because of like the
the heat and pressure involved once you get even a
tiny fraction of the way down there would kind of
make access ridiculous. Well, yeah, exactly. You know they I've
heard that when the the Super Deep hole was being uh,
when the borehole was being drilled, that by the time
they ended the project, they described the the rocks as
(25:13):
behaving more like plastic than rock. That it was. It
was it was deforming with the drill bit, which was
making it harder to actually drill. So uh. And also
you got to the mantle that's two thousand nine kilometers thick.
That's before you hit the core. So we're talking peanuts here,
Like we are nowhere close to the core yet. But
(25:34):
One cool thing I think about this is that if
if in fact we haven't drilled down and we haven't
had any direct observation, how do we know that the
mantle is the way it is or that the core
is the way it is? And the answer is we
look from other sources, for example, and indirect sources, so
meteorites for example. By looking at the composition of the
(25:56):
material and meteorites, we start to draw conclusions about what
our own planet is like. So, for example, we have
seen a lot of meteorites that have rock in them
and fewer that have iron in them, which starts to
have us draw the conclusion that iron, at least in
certain forms, is probably going to be at the core
(26:18):
of a plant. It's going to make up a smaller
portion it's going to be at the center, and that
rock is going to make up a lot much larger
proportion of that. Right, we can also guess at the
iron content of the Earth's core due to the way
that the magneto sphere is set up. That's also true,
and we can we can observe volcanic eruptions and see
the material that is spewed out because the volcanic volcanoes
(26:40):
extend down the the the magma can extend down all
the way down into the mantle, so that gives us
when it starts spewing forth, a closer picture of what's
inside underneath. There also studying seismic waves earthquakes by looking
at how they propagate. So let's say a seismic wave
occurs in uh San Francisco, and you look on the
(27:02):
other side of the world, and you detect how those
those vibrations go through when they eventually passed through there.
Because we're talking about super sensitive equipment looking at this,
by measuring the amount of time and the direction that
it came from and the frequency of the waves, we
can learn more about the medium or media that its. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. That's I keep thinking like, this is
(27:24):
amazing that we've learned so much through indirect observation. So
cool question. Yeah, definitely. The one more thing about this
question is that despite the fact that we're not getting
it from the core of the Earth, geothermal energy is
totally real. That's a power source. It's a renewable, clean
power source. I've heard that. I think some people do
have certain concerns about it because you the main version
(27:47):
I know about is steam powered basically, like you're injecting
water into hot places and then using the rising steam
to power a turbine. There might be other ways of
doing it, but I know they're I've read and some
people being concerned like, oh, is this safe to do?
Is it going to cause earthquakes or something? But as
far as we know, it seems like it's a pretty
(28:09):
good power source. That's definitely the main way that we
generate electricity, right, I mean, like, we've talked about a
lot of different methods to generate electricity, and they almost
always come down to I almost and boiled down to
you come down to steam turning a turbine. That that
pretty much is the way that we we generate electricity
for the most part. And now Jude's second question was
about celestial coordinates really, or typically it was about how
(28:32):
to ask for not to navigate their space. How do
astronomers say where a star is located? And here's the thing, guys.
The main way that astronomers describe the location of stars
is based largely off a similar way that we describe
where something is on the surface of the Earth. It's
(28:52):
like looking at the sky as if it were an
enormous sphere that completely encircled our globe. So it's like
our hebe is inside an even bigger globe which has
little pinpoints in it, and what people literally thought a
few thousand years. Yeah, and what's interesting is that that
that that remains the basis the main way that astronomers
(29:15):
end up giving coordinates two stars. Now, there are a
couple of others that we could talk about besides the
one I'm going to focus on, Like there's the galactic
method of coordinates and super galactic method, which is looking
at stars from the perspective of say our Sun or
the center of the Milky Way. But for the most part,
(29:35):
in astronomical circles, both in the amateur and professional world,
we're looking at celestial coordinates, which are much more Earth based.
And that makes sense because that's where we're looking at
them from. Yeah, well, I can see how this would
actually matter in the future, like if we encounter an
alien species and we're trying to communicate with them about
where something is. All right, So if you're standing in
(29:57):
times Square, it's totally it's like right there. Yeah, it
doesn't doesn't help. So on Earth we have the human
defined imaginary lines of longitude and latitude. UH. That's part
of our geographic coordinate system. So the vertical lines are longitude,
the meridians, and then the horizontal lines the ones that
are in parallel with the equator, that's latitude. And your
coordinates are determined by where you are in relation to
(30:19):
those lines, and the values are represented in units of degrees, minutes,
and seconds or and this is becoming more and more
common with GPS devices UH decimal degrees. So the equator
is at zero degrees latitude, and if you travel north
or south UH, you increase that latitude the north latitude
(30:39):
or south latitude from zero to ninety degrees, so north
poles ninety degrees north, south poles ninety degrees south. UH.
The Greenwich meridian represents zero degrees longitude, and longitude extends
a hundred degrees to the east and hundred hundred eighty
degrees sorry hundred eighty degrees to the east and hundred
eighty degrees to the west, So one eight east and
(30:59):
one a U west are the same. It's the same
line that's on the opposite side of the world from
the Greenwich meridian. Do you happen to know what that
line is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. You're correct on that.
Do you know what specifically? It is? The International date line.
That's why if you go to Australia from here you
lose a day. It's like a day never existed, which
(31:20):
one of our co workers just got to experience. Uh,
he's in Australian Now, Hi, Josh, how you doing anyway?
So why do we describe it in minutes and seconds
with degrees? What's the deal with that? So along the equator,
one hour of the rotation of the Earth is equivalent
to fifteen degrees of rotation. Now, if you look at
(31:42):
a circle and you divide up the circle into fifteen,
you know, increments of fifteen degrees, you get twenty four
twenty four hours in a day, thus the fifteen degrees
of rotation. So if you look at lines of longitude,
you'll see that their fifteen degree increments normally between these
um So one second of time is equal more or
(32:03):
less to about a quarter of a mile of rotation
at the equator. Uh. And the degrees can be subdivided
into minutes and seconds this way, sixty minutes to a
degree three thousand six hundred seconds to a degree. And
now we take that same system, the latitude and longitude,
and we blow up that globe. So it's this celestial
(32:23):
sphere that encompasses our planet, and we just create a
celestial equator. We take, we take where our equator is
on our Earth, extend that outward as if it just continues.
This imaginary line continues out into space, and now we
have a larger imaginary line that's uh, that's linked to
(32:46):
our equator. That's the celestial equator. But at that point
we don't call it a latitude and longitude anymore. No,
we do not, because I mean, you know, we need
to make things confusing, right, So instead of lady, we
have lines of declinetion. Uh, in lines of longity become
right ascension. So uh, the zero for for longitude or
(33:08):
right ascension really is the first point of aries. So
right ascension is described in hours, minutes, and seconds instead
of degrees. Because the passing of stars was a means
of measuring time back in the olden days, and it's stuck.
So uh, if you use this equatorial coordinate system, you
would refer to a star's position relative to the celestial equator.
(33:30):
That's the lines of declination and where it is relative
to zero right ascension, which is the point on the
celestial equator where the sun would cross the celestial equator
during the vernal equinox. Is it simple enough for you yet? Alright,
so Polaris would be at two hours thirty one minutes
right ascension eighty nine degrees fifteen arcamnuts declination, which is
(33:53):
you know, easiest pie. But what happens now, No, this
is a fixed system because it's based up on this
imaginary equator. Right, that's that's going to be the same
for anyone anywhere on Earth. I have to stress on Earth. Obviously,
if you were on some other planet, then this system
would totally not make any sense to you. But what
(34:14):
if you, Joe, wanted to tell somebody where to find
a particular celestial body, and you know, referring to the
celestial equator is not really convenient because it's not like
we have a bright line across the sky that says, hey,
here's the celestial equator. You would describe the altitude of
the star, which is how many degrees above the horizon
(34:37):
it is. By the way, a degree is essentially if
you hold out your thumb the thickness. The width of
your thumb is essentially one degree, and if you hold
out your hand, I think that's like more like fifteen.
It's kind of interesting. Yeah, so your degrees may vary,
but but your arm is longer. So so the perspective
makes it all work out. But if you have short
(34:59):
arms and thick thumb, you're in a pickle. You're you're
a bad, bad astronomer. You have no business looking at
the sky looked to your feet at any rate. How
many degrees above the horizon is the altitude, and then
you have to describe the asimuth of the star asimuth
that's how many degrees along the horizon with respect to
(35:19):
them to a compass direction. So you start from north
north is zero degrees, and then you go clockwise, so
east would be ninety degrees because that's a right angle.
From north south is one degrees, West is two d
seventy degrees. And this method of describing as stars position
is completely dependent upon the point of reference of the observer. Right,
(35:42):
I wouldn't be able to say, oh, hey, my friend
in Alaska, right, look at this star. It's right there,
per five hands exactly. That wouldn't work. Now if you
were to use the other method I mentioned before with
the celestial equator. First of all, you both have access
to math and abilities that I don't know about because
(36:06):
I can't figure this stuff out on my own. But
that would work because that's a fixed system. But the
the one that requires the the point of view of
the observer obviously that would not work in that instance.
You're exactly right. So um. Also, this means that this
system is not terribly useful once you get significantly far
(36:26):
enough away from Earth. Now, most of our manned missions
have been really close to Earth, I mean low Earth orbit.
Even going out to the Moon is not that far
in celestial terms. Yeah. Yeah, you're still in orbit of
the Earth. Yeah, so uh we. The big problem is
that if you're talking about interstellar travel, this system is
(36:47):
not useful. For one thing, it has nothing to do
with the distance of stars. This is just their relative
position within the view of the night sky from Earth.
So two stars that look close together because they seem
to be close together, and that that imaginary sphere could
be incredibly far apart in distance. One could be deeper
(37:08):
than another, right, so it would be much further away.
It's so the constellations are very um, very deceptive in
that sense. You know, the stars that appear to be
close together might be very far away from one another. Um. Now,
keeping that in mind, how do we help spacecraft that
go beyond this? Because we have had unmanned spacecraft that
(37:30):
went beyond Earth orbit. And one of the tools we
use is called the Deep Space Network or DSN. It's
network of three powerful radio antenna their a position around
the world in such a way that together they have
total coverage of the sky. So those three points mean
that we can send and receive messages from any angle
(37:51):
off the Earth. Sun never sets on the Deep Space Network,
that's correct, Yes, and up during I believe the late
nineteen Yeah, the sexually ended up becoming uh came into
effect just before the Apollo missions, and in fact, it
ended up making another navigation system that was originally going
(38:11):
to be the primary navigation system aboard the Apollo, the
secondary or backup system, because now they could do all
the calculations from Earth. Yeah. So obviously, if you're making
calculations from Earth, it doesn't matter if it's an Earth
centric thing, as long as it still applies to whatever
body happens to be out there in space. And in fact,
(38:31):
these radio antenna what they do is they send out
a signal and then they wait to get a return
signal from the spacecraft. And based on the time it
takes from the moment of transmission to the moment of
receiving that that return signal, as well as the shift
in frequencies, the the the eggheads who crunch the numbers
can figure out how quickly that spacecraft is moving where
(38:53):
it is, like to an incredible degree of precisions. So,
like judask, it kind of is like GPS in space
kind of, but only for spacecraft, right, It's only for
something that can radio back to us that. Yeah, it's
like GPS for your car. Yeah, it doesn't apply to stars,
but it applies to spacecraft. So it's something like the accuracy.
(39:14):
We can figure out the velocity two point zero five
meters per second, and we can figure out the location
within three ms, so it's even more accurate than some
GPS devices. Are just pretty phenomenal when you think of
a tiny, relatively tiny item in space that is passing
possibly outside of the Solar System, because this is how
(39:35):
we contact things like the voyager probes um so it's
pretty cool. Uh. Now, if we ever reach a time
when interstellar travel is common, we'll have to create something
called star maps or star charts that are accurate representations
of the relationships of various stars, how far away they
are in in in three dimensions, not just in two. Yeah.
(39:57):
I can imagine it being very difficult because when you
think about maps of the Earth's surface that we're used to,
these are basically two dimensional. I mean, they might have
topographical information on them, but they're they're two dimensional planes.
We've never had to think about space in three dimensions before.
It's all been like Star Trek where all the ships
to Yeah, yeah, exactly. And even in say like video
(40:20):
games where you're supposed to navigate a galaxy I'm thinking
of like, uh, in the mass effect games or something
like that, you typically get like a top down view
of the galaxy that's still a two dimensional map. You know,
you're looking down on it and everything's arranged on the
same two dimensional x y axis plane. But if you
(40:41):
were actually navigating, you'd have to be you'd be moving
to like too and past and through your points of
reference for where you were well, and not only that,
but the place you're leaving from and the place you're
going to are also in motion, right, They're not, They're
not standing still. So you wouldn't just be planning where
you're headed. You have to plan where is your destination
(41:03):
going to be by the time you get to where
you need to go. So this is this is a
grand scale of the kind of calculations astronauts have to
make and ground control has to make when launching something
to say Mars, where you know, we talked about how
to get to Mars, it takes between like six and
eight months to get there because you're not launching to
(41:23):
where Mars is. You have to launch to where Mars
is going to be. Same sort of thing here, but
now on an interstellar level, which makes it even more complicated,
really really complex. And in fact, the references I was
looking at said, you know, we just don't have the
information yet to create something that would be good for
navigational purposes. A lot of this would be stuff that
(41:46):
would have to be done in exploratory missions, where it
would be kind of like the early explorers who had
set off in ships across the ocean, not knowing where
they were going or when they would get there, and
then having to map every thing out similar in that respect,
but on an even grander scale obviously, so pretty interesting.
(42:07):
And there's also something cool I wanted to mention, Lauren,
you discovered this actually, I remember Joe was telling me
about astronauts using sextance on board spacecraft. Yeah. Sextance, of
course being the if you're unaware of them, the old
nautical tool where you it looks a little bit like
(42:27):
a pro tractor, except you site along it and yeah,
you have to take you take the horizon as a
reference and another body like the sun as a reference,
and you do some calculations to determine where in relation
to the rest of the planet you happen to be.
The astronauts did the same thing. They had a tool
(42:48):
that well, well, they didn't have a protractor looking thing.
There was like a pair of telescopes that were connected
to a very sophisticated at the time device. Uh there
was in a exposition by the way, so they couldn't
move it. You had to move the spacecraft to look
at the star you wanted to look at um. And
the reason they had it was to correct for drift, right.
(43:08):
They would plan their trajectory and they would check to
make sure that they were still on the trajectory that
they had planned. So what they would do is they
would cite two different celestial bodies, or they would use
the Earth's horizon or the Moon's horizon as one of
the reference points, and then a star, and then they
would make sure that it lined up properly. And if
it lined up properly, they knew that they were on
(43:29):
the right trajectory. If it was out of alignment, they
knew that they were drifting, and they had to do
a course correction to get that fixed. And one of
the descriptions I read of how the system ultimately worked
was really cool. So they would pick a star. The'd
say all right, we want star whatever, and they put
that into the computer saying, this is the star we're
going to use as our reference point. The spacecraft would
(43:51):
orient itself to turn toward that star. Then they would
look through the sextant and the sexton has a little
crosshairs on it, and it's star is not in the
center of the crosshairs. They knew that they had drifted.
They used controls on the sextant to move the cross
hairs over the star, push a button that sends a
command to the navigation system to do a course correction
(44:13):
so that the thrusters then do the necessary thrusting to
put them back on the correct course and correct for drift.
And I read this and I thought that's amazing. Yeah, yeah,
And and this was actually in use in several of
the Apollo missions. I think, I think as late as
Apollo eight they had a big mission. That's the one
(44:35):
that went around the back side of the dark Dark Side,
which is really really quite bright the far the far
side of the movie. But yes, yeah, and and I
think that the astronaut who specifically was using it was
it was an ex naval officer. That's kind of appropriate.
Probably had his little Bosn's whistle there too, and everything.
(44:58):
But obviously you're if you're talking about spacecraft that goes
outside the view of the Earth, then you want to
have this backup system clearly, because you aren't certain yet.
You can't be absolutely sure that the Earth based navigational
systems will stay in constant contact because once you get
behind the Moon, that's a pretty big obstacle to block
(45:19):
your radio communication. So it is clear why they needed
to have a secondary navigational tool aboard to make sure
they could correct for things like drift. Okay, well, those
are the only three questions we have time for in
this episode, but rest assured we will be getting back
to more of your questions and suggestions in a subsequent
listener mail round up episode. Yeah, this has been so
(45:42):
much fun. Yeah, but one last message I wanted to
end with, just because it's very brief and we can
squeeze it in. It was some wonderful feedback on our
Back to the Future episodes, and this came from Stephen
on email. He said, I think you missed one important
detail in your two Back to the Future podcast, the
reason why we don't have all the new technologies. I'm
(46:03):
sure he was talking about the things we were all
disappointed not to have yet, like hoverboards and telescoping baseball bats.
He says, the reason we don't have those things is
that lawyers were never outlawed. That is why Marty's kids
were convicted so quickly. Than Yeah, thanks than Steve, I
forgot that salient point Back to the Future book too.
(46:24):
Lawyers have been outlawed, and therefore the the court systems
moved much more quickly. But wait a minute, what does
that have to do with the technologies. Well, I feel
like I'm faintly grasping Steven's point, but I'm not quite saying.
Is that because this one element of the future has
not come true, the other elements can't come true. And
also without lawyers everything would move more quickly. Yeah, first
(46:46):
of all, you wouldn't sorry lawyers, it's just true. Oh well,
you know, we did just talk about intellectual property and
the chilling effect of patent law and stuff. That's so yeah,
any you this was This was so much fun. Thank
you guys so much. We're very much looking forward to
doing this again. We do have other questions, some of
(47:07):
which we have already started to research and talk about offline,
So keep those coming in because we're having a great time.
Some of these are going to be full episodes. Some
are going to be like this one, where we collect
some of the various questions that don't quite make up
a full episode. And uh, it's it's fantastic and lets
us know what you guys are interested in and we're
(47:28):
so excited to cover that. In order to let us
know what you would like us to talk about, you
should send us an email that addresses f w thinking
at how stuff works dot Com, or drop us a
line on Twitter, Google Plus, or Facebook. At Twitter and
Google Plus, we are f W thinking over on Facebook.
Just search f W thinking will pop right up, Leave
(47:48):
us a message, tell us what you think, and we'll
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
topic in the future of technology, visit Forward Thinking dot
Com Problems, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, wait a minute,
Mr Post, ma'am. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick.
(00:24):
Hi there, Lauren, Hi, Joe, Hi, Jonathan, Hi, Joe, Hi, Lauren, Hi, Jonathan, Hi, Noel.
All right, good, we got everybody. Now, Hi, how are
you doing today? Really well, well, today, I'm very excited
because we're gonna be talking about some listener requested topics.
But we've really had a lot of listener requests piling
(00:44):
up lately. Yeah, which is fantastic. Guy, We really appreciate it.
So we love it. We're not complaining, but they're they're
only piling because you're so fabulous. Yes, and we can
only record and published two episodes a week. But so
today we thought, you know what we should do, We
should do a listener mail roundup episode. Now. Unfortunately, even
(01:06):
in this episode, we're not going to be able to
get to every one of the things you all have
sent us that we want to talk about, but we
wanted to pick some of the topics that could be
addressed in a slightly shorter form and uh and take
them on all at once, and some of these may
eventually become part of an episode where we take a
deeper dive into these, but a lot of the questions
(01:28):
seem like they would have a fairly quick answer that
wouldn't justify a full length episode, which is why we
kind of grouped them together. They're they're not grouped by
any sort of theme either, because you'll see as we
go on, it's kind of all over the place, which
is cool. Yeah. Yeah, So our first listener suggestion that
we want to get to today actually came to us
on our Facebook while it was our listener Ed who
(01:49):
asked us about the future of media delivery, and Ed
said podcast idea, I want my MP three or LP
or v O D. I think that's and I want
my MTV joke for the kids who don't remember dire
Straits or just MTV. Right. Ed goes on, how will
we be listening to or getting our music, watching movies,
(02:12):
reading books and magazines and newspapers in the future. Well,
I think this is a great question. It is it's
a fantastic question, and it's one that I mean, if
I were. If I were being snarky, I would just
say streaming and move on, because I think that that's
really the the answer to a lot of this, and
it's an answer that's being pushed partly by consumer behavior
(02:35):
and partly because it's a very attractive model for companies. Sure, well,
we've got the resources in place, don't we. I mean
now that now that high speed internet is becoming the norm,
at least in some parts of the world, and more
and more of the world long term, it's kind of
hard to argue against the power of streaming. Well, you
have so much access and it takes up so little space,
(02:57):
right that. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that
WiFi was really the speed you would need in order
to get decent streaming experience, right otherwise it was going
to be a very low quality stream or you're gonna buffer.
So you know, I remember the days of trying to
listen to something on streaming and get twenty seconds in
and then suddenly the song stops, and you wait another
(03:18):
fifteen seconds, then another twenty seconds of music plays. But
now now we've gotten too speeds of WiFi, we've gotten
better speeds of of cellular service, and we've gotten better
compression uh models for streaming media to allow that to
happen where we don't have as frequent an issue with
buffering still happens once in a blue moon. It happens
(03:40):
on my my connection at home, which is pretty fast.
But well, I mean, you know, you've got to have
that trifecta of a device that can handle it, right,
connection that can handle it, and the actual service. Yeah,
I mean if you don't have if one of those
three things is deficient, you're gonna have a poor experience.
But we're we've reached the point where the norm is
(04:02):
that you can have this pretty seamlessly. Like my my phone.
Now I can use my phone, uh pretty much anywhere
in Atlanta, uh streaming a podcast, so I don't have
to download an episode anymore. I can just stream it
and it cash is enough of the podcast in local
memory so that if I do pass through an area
(04:23):
that has uh, you know, weak service, Like you know,
I often take the train. In the train here in Atlanta,
there's above ground sections and below ground, so sometimes when
you go below ground, you lose that connection, but the
CASH corrects for that, right, it has enough in the
buffer so that I can keep listening without having that interruption.
I think that because the technology has reached this point,
(04:45):
streaming is really where a lot of this is going.
It also means that we can listen or watch stuff
when we feel like it. You know, we we we can.
And a lot of those UH services also allow us
to stop at one point and pick up at that
same point even as we switch devices. So if we
go from TV to phone or tablet or whatever. Yeah,
(05:07):
I agree that digital playback is going to pretty much dominate.
It's going to be king. I can't really see that
changing for any good reason except for the sort of
small scale collector aspect. I personally, I listen to records
at my house sometimes, and I don't know why. I
guess it's just fun. It can be fun to go
record shopping, to put a record on the turntable. There's
(05:28):
something aesthetically pleasing about it. It's a fun activity. But
I'd say most of my listening I do digitally, whether
that's podcasts or I mean obviously for podcasts, but h
or music. Most of the movies I see now, I
think come to me in a digital form. And I
don't know do you'll think there's any reason that we'd
see a major comeback of physical media for say music playback. Nope,
(05:54):
m hm m m. I mean yeah, yeah, there's that
that nest Alga factor and and that esthetic pleasure that
you get from I mean, cassette tapes are a thing again?
Are they really a thing again? Are they? I mean,
I mean I know that I know that there was
the the marketing gimmick of the Guardians of the Galaxy
(06:18):
soundtrack coming back out on cassette? Are cassettes really coming back? Bands, like,
like smaller local bands are releasing some of their albums
on cassette tape? You have to there's still there's still
still electronics companies selling cassette tape players. You've got some
blood running down your force. Well, I mean, I'm just like,
I'm like, I'm like, look, guys, we're better than that now.
(06:40):
I've left those days behind. Cassettes are not great media formats, yeah,
but they're fun. Come on stick and a lot of
a lot of older cars do still have cassette decks.
I guess, so yeah, I can understand. I do agree
that it's a lot easier to form kind of that
emotional attached meant to uh to something when there's a
(07:02):
physical representation of that thing, Right, Like I have a
vinyl record collection, and there is a particular feeling I
get when I pull an album out of that collection,
put it on a turntable and listen to it. The
ritual of it is kind of lovely, exactly. Yeah, there
is a ritual that's associated with it that's very comforting,
(07:24):
and it's all part of the experience which you can't
you know, you can't really place a quantitative value on,
but it's certainly. Yeah, I never get that warm fuzzy
when I like open iTunes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, when I
when I open up my my Google radio playlist that's
based off the album that I really love. Yeah, I mean,
(07:45):
it's not the same thing. So I don't want to
I don't want to dismiss the the value of physical media,
but I think that because there is the incentive on
the part of the media company, these two maximize profits,
which you certainly can do if you don't have to
(08:05):
have a physical presence anywhere. You know, you don't have
to create inventory, you don't have to have a place
to move that inventory, you don't have to worry about
inventory loss. If someone steals your physical stuff and you
can no longer sell it. I can see a lot
of reasons why companies would shy away from it, and
this could become something that we see more on a
(08:26):
special case by case basis, as UH entities, whether it's
an author or a band or whatever, are catering to
their audience. One way I do see this changing though,
is that I think laser discs are going to come
back in a big way. I think capacity and electronic
discs are going to come back in a big way
in the future. When you want to watch Terminator two,
(08:47):
you're gonna get out that laser disc and you're gonna
flip it halfway through the movie. Yeah, I agree with
ancestors exactly. No. Actually, one thing I do want to
say that I feel pretty strongly about out the future
of audio playback is actually about the devices we use themselves.
I think we're going to continue to see a decoupling
(09:10):
of the audio reading device from the actual device that
produces the sound. So, for example, this this exists today.
You can get pretty good Bluetooth speakers or Bluetooth headphones,
so you stream audio from the Internet on your phone
or your laptop or your TV, and then you listen
to that audio through whichever speaker system phone connects to
(09:31):
a speaker system, and yeah, you seek to your player,
the headphones, the whole speaker system, and you know, that's
bye bye to the earbuds with the chords. I think
that's going to become pretty universal. Sure. I mean, I
have a I have a pair of I have a
Bluetooth headset that's meant for music and podcasts, that sort
(09:53):
of thing that uses bone conduction as well, so it's
not even over the ear, but it also doesn't have
to doesn't have a chord or anything. I definitely see
that trend continuing. Oh sure, sure. Uh you know, I
think as the technology improves, probably your big clunky headset
or small, sexy, slim headset will be the device that
(10:14):
is streaming the media directly. Uh yeah, And I just
see generally more ease of interconnectivity. So like as we
have the Internet of Things entering our homes, more devices
will be the sort of the digital basis of playback,
and then you can sink them to whatever kind of
thing it is that's making the actual noise. Well yeah, again,
(10:36):
this this kind of comes back to the idea of
Let's let's use Netflix as an example, where if I'm
watching I'm logged into my Netflix account, and I'm watching
Netflix on my phone, and then I go into my
house and I want to turn on that same movie
using a set top boxes connected there that's logged into
my account as well. So when I started, it picks
up where I left off on my phone. This uninterrupted
(10:57):
experience is also something I see continuing in to the future. Uh.
The interesting thing to me is that if you had
asked me, maybe I don't know, five or six years ago,
I would have thought that the standalone MP three player
would still remain king because back back then streaming was
not really the method you would download, and so you
would keep everything on the memory of the device itself
(11:19):
instead of it being cloud based. And I would have said,
this is how it's going to continue for the foreseeable future.
And in fact, for the longest time I carried an
MP three player and a phone because I didn't want
to clog up my phone's memory with media. I still
do have an MP three player in a phone. I've graduated.
(11:40):
I only go phone now because I use this streaming method,
so I'm not filling up my memory, the cash fills
up so that if I do lose that connectivity, I
can continue enjoying whatever it is I'm I'm listening to her,
watching or reading. But it's not it's not that I
need to have a phone with practically end less amounts
of storage because that storage isn't needed anymore. Yeah, yeah,
(12:03):
I do think that in general across media or going
to continue to see like you know, mid sized portable devices,
whether that's a tablet or a mini tablet or um tablet. Yeah,
that's what. I have very large buttons on your coat
that that can play movies back to you. I don't know,
um that that are right, that that are capable of
(12:25):
handling both music and video and and books and etcetera,
and and you know, doing the streaming thing. I don't know. Like,
like I wonder, I wonder whether at a certain point
when if like memory will become cheap enough that people
will return to I mean, it depends if the if
(12:47):
the service ends up being so seamless that it's not necessary.
I don't think it's going to be a thing, but
they're always going to be times at least that I
can see where you are going to want to have
things stored directly on the advice itself. For example, if
you take a flight somewhere and you don't want to
spring for WiFi on the flight. Plus, WiFi on flights
(13:07):
is never at the speed that here, and I think
that that's a that that's a point like like right now, um,
cellular service isn't available everywhere, WiFi can be spotty, you
have to pay for them in in many contexts, and
so therefore streaming isn't quite ready. It's not to go
not supers totally seamless. It all depends on where you look.
Like if you're in a city like Atlanta or San
(13:28):
Francisco or New York, it's probably pretty good, but that's
not universal. Yeah. I would also add to that access
anxiety if you're interested in something that is perhaps obscure,
something you're not sure is going to continue to be
provided by Netflix or whatever. You know, that's a good point,
you think, well, you know, I don't know if this
movie is still going to be on Netflix in a
(13:51):
year when I want to watch it again, I'd rather
just own the Blu Ray, right. I mean, if Tammy
and the t Rex goes away, I don't know what
I'm gonna do me there, and uh, what about what
about books? Right? Right? So, I think that more reading
is going to be done digitally as prices on reading
(14:11):
devices electronic reading devices drop, and I I suspect that
in parallel, print prices are going to rise as printing
runs get smaller as a result. I see, so you're
you're thinking of because the the market is moving more digital,
the the potential market for actual physical books is getting smaller.
(14:32):
That drives the prices up because you can no longer
print in the volumes that you would before and expect
a decent return on that investment. Right. The other way
of looking at that is that they just keep the
prices the same by cutting costs, and there will be
more typos in your print books now editor free. I'm sorry,
we only hired a copy editor for the digital version
(14:53):
of Lauren. I liked your book, but the main character's
name changed like six times. That was part of the point. John, Uh,
these modern novels. I'm actually I'm in thinking about this.
I got the sudden moment of of worry that, um,
some people might start to get priced out of easy
access to print media due to the fact that, um,
(15:14):
you know, from an entry standpoint, a paperback is a
lot cheaper than a kindle and probably will continue to be.
Um even though you know, obviously getting a kindle at
having basically unlimited access to a lot of books for
very cheap or even free in the case of classics. UM. Well,
and I love I love the move to electronic media
(15:35):
for another reason. It also gives us access to books
that otherwise have passed out of print. They're not in
the public domain. You still have to buy them. But
I'm the son of an author. My dad has a
horror novel that came out in the eighties and it's
my favorite book that my dad ever wrote. I love it.
But it's not available in physical format anymore. But you
can get it electronically, and that's something that I love.
(15:56):
It means that people can have access to works that
there's no reason from the publishers standpoint to produce more. Yeah,
there's not enough, there's not a large enough market to justify.
But electronically you can have anything out there. Yes, yes,
and that that is truly wonderful. Um And I wonder,
I wonder whether for like the generation being born right now,
(16:18):
literally right now, I salute you, um when when you're
all about to listen to this, you'll appreciate that. Yeah,
what weather for them? Paper books and like paper printed
magazines and newspapers are going to become a nostalgic, uh nostalgic.
I don't want to say fetish, but but but but
like a nostalgic uh like like like like an anachronism
(16:42):
some sort of like tape or a vinyl record. Yeah. Yeah,
if reading something on paper is going to be like, oh,
I just love the ritual of opening a book. You know,
maybe this is I'm just far too technophobic, I guess
to be talking about technology all the time. I do
admit I have a perhaps old and preference for paper books.
(17:02):
I don't have a tablet, but I don't think I
would really like to read a book length literary work
on one. I can. I'll read articles on the internet
and stuff I I I gotta. I got one of
the touchscreen kindles at some point, and I actually really
like it. I but but I also did get the
kind of case for it. It's like made of wood
and leather, and so you open it and you kind
(17:23):
of feel like you're opening a book. Um, well, maybe
I just need to get with the times. I will
say that the move to digital formats for books also
means that we'll have fewer head scratching lee odd moments
in movies like have you guys heard about the scene
in the j LO film Boy next Door where the
boy next Door hands her a quote first edition of
(17:45):
the Iliad end quote? Well, hey, there have been lots
of first editions of the Iliad. That's the problem is
that just like they're joking that it's this it's this
valuable thing, or it should have been a blind poet,
it should have been exactly just starts reciting in Greek.
(18:05):
The first edition is the first time it's fixed intangible medium. Well,
you know, if we go back into the brain waves
thing anyway, that's that's neither here nor there. But I
think I think it was great question. It was It
was interesting. Um. I do think that streaming, for at
least the foreseeable feature is going to be the way
to go. Maybe we'll eventually get to a point where
(18:26):
things will get beamed directly into our brains and we
will experience them instantaneously in their entirety. I hope. So
that would be such a time, It would really I
could get through all of those books that are on
my list in like no time flat. Yeah. Well, thanks
for your question, ed. I think now we're going to
move on to an email we got from our listener
Jude about geothermal energy and space coordinates. So Jude says, hi, there, hey, Jude, Hey,
(18:53):
oh no, I see what you did there. Go ahead,
Jude says, hi there, I've been listening to your audio podcast.
You guys are doing a great job. Thanks to that
warms my my cold heart. Yes, uh, part is very
warm Jack. Well, okay, sorry, back to the email. Can
you please cover the following topics. We all know Earth's
core is molten rock and must be a source of
(19:15):
massive untapped energy. Has anyone attempted to harness Earth's geo
thermal energy? And how do astronomers navigating the cosmos or
refer to a star object in space? Is their GPS
equivalent in space? Thanks a lot from Jude in Bangalore.
So we're going to take these in turn. We'll start
with geo thermal So, first of all, geo thermal energy
(19:37):
is a thing, obviously something that we we harness. It
doesn't involve tapping into the Earth's core directly, although as
you'll see, there's kind of an indirect long tail version
of tapping into the Earth's core. Geothermal heat means thermal
energy or heat from the Earth. So that heat is
generated primarily from two sore says. One is that is
(20:01):
the radioactive decay of materials that are in the Earth's crust.
That accounts for about actually of geothermal energy. Really I
did not at all. The other comes from the geothermal gradient,
which is the difference between the cores temperature and the
planet's surface temperature. So you probably know heat conducts from
(20:24):
high concentration to low concentration, right, and that means that
heat is moving from the core out into the crust.
Uh So if you dig down far enough, the temperature
starts to go up. You know, I knew that, but
I had no idea how to do with this radioactive decay.
I assumed that it was because of the pressure of
the rock above it. Well, radioactive decay is again just
(20:47):
that that's part of what's generating heat, because as we've
talked about before, radioactive decay that is one of the byproducts.
But the actual heat from the core that has nothing
to do the radio activity. That's that's just basic physics
of conduct auction. So as you drill down, that temperature
goes up, and the average is twenty five to thirty
degrees celsius per kilometer or fifteen degrees fahrenheit per thousand feet.
(21:11):
That's the average, because there are some areas where that
gradient is much different. For example, if you're drilling near volcano,
you might notice that temperature goes way up way faster.
Macma will do that to you. Uh So it's thought
that this gradient actually decreases dramatically as you get through
the crust and into the upper mantle. And the basis
(21:32):
for that hypothesis is that if it were steady, if
in fact you continue to see that that rise in
temperature every kilometer, then you would eventually within the lithosphere.
That's the area of the upper cross, not the upper acrust,
the crust, the upper mantle uppercrust is a great band
um that if if that remains steady, it would eventually
(21:54):
hit the temperature where rock would melt before you got
to a point where it's no longer solid. Like we
know that the crust and upper mantle are solid and brittle,
and that's below that when you start hitting liquid and
then you get to the solid core, when you get
to the very center of the earth. Uh. And because
(22:15):
we know that, we know that this gradient has to
level off at some point. It can't continue at that pace,
or else the temperature would be too high for there
to be a solid surface there or solid material there.
It have to be liquid. So this is still just
a hypothesis. However, we don't really know what the actual
conditions under the surface of the Earth are because we
(22:38):
haven't had direct observation of it. Yes, spoiler alert, Jules
Verne wrote fiction. Yes, did not really go to the
center of the Earth. The deepest hole that humans have
ever drilled is the Cola Super Deep Bore Hole in Russia.
It's one of my favorite things. It is. That's a
great name for a thing. Anyway, go ahead. There's a
great video that shows exactly where it Isn't It just
(22:59):
looks like a little metal plate pipe sticking out of
the ground. It's it's now, it's a metal plate on
top of that pipe that is welded and bolted onto it.
So you know, but it looks like you could otherwise
just throw pennies down there. No, yeah, you can't. Like wait,
let's see let's listen for the drop. So this thing
is super deep, as the name implies, well if thou
(23:21):
actually doesn't imply it as the name states, it is
twelve thousand, two hundred sixty two or two hundred thirty
ft deep. I remember I wrote a video about this.
I did the video, and I did I did some
math and found out I can't oh, man, now that
i'm now that I'm sitting here, I don't remember the number.
But I calculated how long it would take you to
(23:42):
hit the bottom. If you could fall down this tiny
narrow shaft, it would take you a long time, right,
And uh, you know that is very deep, obviously, but
it's not deep enough to even come close to breaching
the crust and going into the upper mantle. It's the
crust is, on average underneath the continents anyway, two kilometers
(24:06):
thick or twenty five miles. This thing went twelve point
two kilometers down, so not even halfway. Now, if we
were to dig a similar hole in the ocean floor,
we might actually break through to the mantel, because the
crust along the ocean floor is around eight kilometers thick
on average. But then you'd have to get down to
the ocean floor. Yeah, so you'd have to deal with that.
(24:28):
But at any rate, we haven't even breached the crust
to get to the mantle, so we haven't gotten close
to the core. Uh, to get back to the to
Jude's question, we haven't gotten close enough so that we
could tap into the core's energy directly. Okay, so the
core is pretty much a no go, and I would
guess even in the future, we're not going to get
(24:49):
direct access to the core just because of like the
the heat and pressure involved once you get even a
tiny fraction of the way down there would kind of
make access ridiculous. Well, yeah, exactly. You know they I've
heard that when the the Super Deep hole was being uh,
when the borehole was being drilled, that by the time
they ended the project, they described the the rocks as
(25:13):
behaving more like plastic than rock. That it was. It
was it was deforming with the drill bit, which was
making it harder to actually drill. So uh. And also
you got to the mantle that's two thousand nine kilometers thick.
That's before you hit the core. So we're talking peanuts here,
Like we are nowhere close to the core yet. But
(25:34):
One cool thing I think about this is that if
if in fact we haven't drilled down and we haven't
had any direct observation, how do we know that the
mantle is the way it is or that the core
is the way it is? And the answer is we
look from other sources, for example, and indirect sources, so
meteorites for example. By looking at the composition of the
(25:56):
material and meteorites, we start to draw conclusions about what
our own planet is like. So, for example, we have
seen a lot of meteorites that have rock in them
and fewer that have iron in them, which starts to
have us draw the conclusion that iron, at least in
certain forms, is probably going to be at the core
(26:18):
of a plant. It's going to make up a smaller
portion it's going to be at the center, and that
rock is going to make up a lot much larger
proportion of that. Right, we can also guess at the
iron content of the Earth's core due to the way
that the magneto sphere is set up. That's also true,
and we can we can observe volcanic eruptions and see
the material that is spewed out because the volcanic volcanoes
(26:40):
extend down the the the magma can extend down all
the way down into the mantle, so that gives us
when it starts spewing forth, a closer picture of what's
inside underneath. There also studying seismic waves earthquakes by looking
at how they propagate. So let's say a seismic wave
occurs in uh San Francisco, and you look on the
(27:02):
other side of the world, and you detect how those
those vibrations go through when they eventually passed through there.
Because we're talking about super sensitive equipment looking at this,
by measuring the amount of time and the direction that
it came from and the frequency of the waves, we
can learn more about the medium or media that its. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. That's I keep thinking like, this is
(27:24):
amazing that we've learned so much through indirect observation. So
cool question. Yeah, definitely. The one more thing about this
question is that despite the fact that we're not getting
it from the core of the Earth, geothermal energy is
totally real. That's a power source. It's a renewable, clean
power source. I've heard that. I think some people do
have certain concerns about it because you the main version
(27:47):
I know about is steam powered basically, like you're injecting
water into hot places and then using the rising steam
to power a turbine. There might be other ways of
doing it, but I know they're I've read and some
people being concerned like, oh, is this safe to do?
Is it going to cause earthquakes or something? But as
far as we know, it seems like it's a pretty
(28:09):
good power source. That's definitely the main way that we
generate electricity, right, I mean, like, we've talked about a
lot of different methods to generate electricity, and they almost
always come down to I almost and boiled down to
you come down to steam turning a turbine. That that
pretty much is the way that we we generate electricity
for the most part. And now Jude's second question was
about celestial coordinates really, or typically it was about how
(28:32):
to ask for not to navigate their space. How do
astronomers say where a star is located? And here's the thing, guys.
The main way that astronomers describe the location of stars
is based largely off a similar way that we describe
where something is on the surface of the Earth. It's
(28:52):
like looking at the sky as if it were an
enormous sphere that completely encircled our globe. So it's like
our hebe is inside an even bigger globe which has
little pinpoints in it, and what people literally thought a
few thousand years. Yeah, and what's interesting is that that
that that remains the basis the main way that astronomers
(29:15):
end up giving coordinates two stars. Now, there are a
couple of others that we could talk about besides the
one I'm going to focus on, Like there's the galactic
method of coordinates and super galactic method, which is looking
at stars from the perspective of say our Sun or
the center of the Milky Way. But for the most part,
(29:35):
in astronomical circles, both in the amateur and professional world,
we're looking at celestial coordinates, which are much more Earth based.
And that makes sense because that's where we're looking at
them from. Yeah, well, I can see how this would
actually matter in the future, like if we encounter an
alien species and we're trying to communicate with them about
where something is. All right, So if you're standing in
(29:57):
times Square, it's totally it's like right there. Yeah, it
doesn't doesn't help. So on Earth we have the human
defined imaginary lines of longitude and latitude. UH. That's part
of our geographic coordinate system. So the vertical lines are longitude,
the meridians, and then the horizontal lines the ones that
are in parallel with the equator, that's latitude. And your
coordinates are determined by where you are in relation to
(30:19):
those lines, and the values are represented in units of degrees, minutes,
and seconds or and this is becoming more and more
common with GPS devices UH decimal degrees. So the equator
is at zero degrees latitude, and if you travel north
or south UH, you increase that latitude the north latitude
(30:39):
or south latitude from zero to ninety degrees, so north
poles ninety degrees north, south poles ninety degrees south. UH.
The Greenwich meridian represents zero degrees longitude, and longitude extends
a hundred degrees to the east and hundred hundred eighty
degrees sorry hundred eighty degrees to the east and hundred
eighty degrees to the west, So one eight east and
(30:59):
one a U west are the same. It's the same
line that's on the opposite side of the world from
the Greenwich meridian. Do you happen to know what that
line is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. You're correct on that.
Do you know what specifically? It is? The International date line.
That's why if you go to Australia from here you
lose a day. It's like a day never existed, which
(31:20):
one of our co workers just got to experience. Uh,
he's in Australian Now, Hi, Josh, how you doing anyway?
So why do we describe it in minutes and seconds
with degrees? What's the deal with that? So along the equator,
one hour of the rotation of the Earth is equivalent
to fifteen degrees of rotation. Now, if you look at
(31:42):
a circle and you divide up the circle into fifteen,
you know, increments of fifteen degrees, you get twenty four
twenty four hours in a day, thus the fifteen degrees
of rotation. So if you look at lines of longitude,
you'll see that their fifteen degree increments normally between these
um So one second of time is equal more or
(32:03):
less to about a quarter of a mile of rotation
at the equator. Uh. And the degrees can be subdivided
into minutes and seconds this way, sixty minutes to a
degree three thousand six hundred seconds to a degree. And
now we take that same system, the latitude and longitude,
and we blow up that globe. So it's this celestial
(32:23):
sphere that encompasses our planet, and we just create a
celestial equator. We take, we take where our equator is
on our Earth, extend that outward as if it just continues.
This imaginary line continues out into space, and now we
have a larger imaginary line that's uh, that's linked to
(32:46):
our equator. That's the celestial equator. But at that point
we don't call it a latitude and longitude anymore. No,
we do not, because I mean, you know, we need
to make things confusing, right, So instead of lady, we
have lines of declinetion. Uh, in lines of longity become
right ascension. So uh, the zero for for longitude or
(33:08):
right ascension really is the first point of aries. So
right ascension is described in hours, minutes, and seconds instead
of degrees. Because the passing of stars was a means
of measuring time back in the olden days, and it's stuck.
So uh, if you use this equatorial coordinate system, you
would refer to a star's position relative to the celestial equator.
(33:30):
That's the lines of declination and where it is relative
to zero right ascension, which is the point on the
celestial equator where the sun would cross the celestial equator
during the vernal equinox. Is it simple enough for you yet? Alright,
so Polaris would be at two hours thirty one minutes
right ascension eighty nine degrees fifteen arcamnuts declination, which is
(33:53):
you know, easiest pie. But what happens now, No, this
is a fixed system because it's based up on this
imaginary equator. Right, that's that's going to be the same
for anyone anywhere on Earth. I have to stress on Earth. Obviously,
if you were on some other planet, then this system
would totally not make any sense to you. But what
(34:14):
if you, Joe, wanted to tell somebody where to find
a particular celestial body, and you know, referring to the
celestial equator is not really convenient because it's not like
we have a bright line across the sky that says, hey,
here's the celestial equator. You would describe the altitude of
the star, which is how many degrees above the horizon
(34:37):
it is. By the way, a degree is essentially if
you hold out your thumb the thickness. The width of
your thumb is essentially one degree, and if you hold
out your hand, I think that's like more like fifteen.
It's kind of interesting. Yeah, so your degrees may vary,
but but your arm is longer. So so the perspective
makes it all work out. But if you have short
(34:59):
arms and thick thumb, you're in a pickle. You're you're
a bad, bad astronomer. You have no business looking at
the sky looked to your feet at any rate. How
many degrees above the horizon is the altitude, and then
you have to describe the asimuth of the star asimuth
that's how many degrees along the horizon with respect to
(35:19):
them to a compass direction. So you start from north
north is zero degrees, and then you go clockwise, so
east would be ninety degrees because that's a right angle.
From north south is one degrees, West is two d
seventy degrees. And this method of describing as stars position
is completely dependent upon the point of reference of the observer. Right,
(35:42):
I wouldn't be able to say, oh, hey, my friend
in Alaska, right, look at this star. It's right there,
per five hands exactly. That wouldn't work. Now if you
were to use the other method I mentioned before with
the celestial equator. First of all, you both have access
to math and abilities that I don't know about because
(36:06):
I can't figure this stuff out on my own. But
that would work because that's a fixed system. But the
the one that requires the the point of view of
the observer obviously that would not work in that instance.
You're exactly right. So um. Also, this means that this
system is not terribly useful once you get significantly far
(36:26):
enough away from Earth. Now, most of our manned missions
have been really close to Earth, I mean low Earth orbit.
Even going out to the Moon is not that far
in celestial terms. Yeah. Yeah, you're still in orbit of
the Earth. Yeah, so uh we. The big problem is
that if you're talking about interstellar travel, this system is
(36:47):
not useful. For one thing, it has nothing to do
with the distance of stars. This is just their relative
position within the view of the night sky from Earth.
So two stars that look close together because they seem
to be close together, and that that imaginary sphere could
be incredibly far apart in distance. One could be deeper
(37:08):
than another, right, so it would be much further away.
It's so the constellations are very um, very deceptive in
that sense. You know, the stars that appear to be
close together might be very far away from one another. Um. Now,
keeping that in mind, how do we help spacecraft that
go beyond this? Because we have had unmanned spacecraft that
(37:30):
went beyond Earth orbit. And one of the tools we
use is called the Deep Space Network or DSN. It's
network of three powerful radio antenna their a position around
the world in such a way that together they have
total coverage of the sky. So those three points mean
that we can send and receive messages from any angle
(37:51):
off the Earth. Sun never sets on the Deep Space Network,
that's correct, Yes, and up during I believe the late
nineteen Yeah, the sexually ended up becoming uh came into
effect just before the Apollo missions, and in fact, it
ended up making another navigation system that was originally going
(38:11):
to be the primary navigation system aboard the Apollo, the
secondary or backup system, because now they could do all
the calculations from Earth. Yeah. So obviously, if you're making
calculations from Earth, it doesn't matter if it's an Earth
centric thing, as long as it still applies to whatever
body happens to be out there in space. And in fact,
(38:31):
these radio antenna what they do is they send out
a signal and then they wait to get a return
signal from the spacecraft. And based on the time it
takes from the moment of transmission to the moment of
receiving that that return signal, as well as the shift
in frequencies, the the the eggheads who crunch the numbers
can figure out how quickly that spacecraft is moving where
(38:53):
it is, like to an incredible degree of precisions. So,
like judask, it kind of is like GPS in space
kind of, but only for spacecraft, right, It's only for
something that can radio back to us that. Yeah, it's
like GPS for your car. Yeah, it doesn't apply to stars,
but it applies to spacecraft. So it's something like the accuracy.
(39:14):
We can figure out the velocity two point zero five
meters per second, and we can figure out the location
within three ms, so it's even more accurate than some
GPS devices. Are just pretty phenomenal when you think of
a tiny, relatively tiny item in space that is passing
possibly outside of the Solar System, because this is how
(39:35):
we contact things like the voyager probes um so it's
pretty cool. Uh. Now, if we ever reach a time
when interstellar travel is common, we'll have to create something
called star maps or star charts that are accurate representations
of the relationships of various stars, how far away they
are in in in three dimensions, not just in two. Yeah.
(39:57):
I can imagine it being very difficult because when you
think about maps of the Earth's surface that we're used to,
these are basically two dimensional. I mean, they might have
topographical information on them, but they're they're two dimensional planes.
We've never had to think about space in three dimensions before.
It's all been like Star Trek where all the ships
to Yeah, yeah, exactly. And even in say like video
(40:20):
games where you're supposed to navigate a galaxy I'm thinking
of like, uh, in the mass effect games or something
like that, you typically get like a top down view
of the galaxy that's still a two dimensional map. You know,
you're looking down on it and everything's arranged on the
same two dimensional x y axis plane. But if you
(40:41):
were actually navigating, you'd have to be you'd be moving
to like too and past and through your points of
reference for where you were well, and not only that,
but the place you're leaving from and the place you're
going to are also in motion, right, They're not, They're
not standing still. So you wouldn't just be planning where
you're headed. You have to plan where is your destination
(41:03):
going to be by the time you get to where
you need to go. So this is this is a
grand scale of the kind of calculations astronauts have to
make and ground control has to make when launching something
to say Mars, where you know, we talked about how
to get to Mars, it takes between like six and
eight months to get there because you're not launching to
(41:23):
where Mars is. You have to launch to where Mars
is going to be. Same sort of thing here, but
now on an interstellar level, which makes it even more complicated,
really really complex. And in fact, the references I was
looking at said, you know, we just don't have the
information yet to create something that would be good for
navigational purposes. A lot of this would be stuff that
(41:46):
would have to be done in exploratory missions, where it
would be kind of like the early explorers who had
set off in ships across the ocean, not knowing where
they were going or when they would get there, and
then having to map every thing out similar in that respect,
but on an even grander scale obviously, so pretty interesting.
(42:07):
And there's also something cool I wanted to mention, Lauren,
you discovered this actually, I remember Joe was telling me
about astronauts using sextance on board spacecraft. Yeah. Sextance, of
course being the if you're unaware of them, the old
nautical tool where you it looks a little bit like
(42:27):
a pro tractor, except you site along it and yeah,
you have to take you take the horizon as a
reference and another body like the sun as a reference,
and you do some calculations to determine where in relation
to the rest of the planet you happen to be.
The astronauts did the same thing. They had a tool
(42:48):
that well, well, they didn't have a protractor looking thing.
There was like a pair of telescopes that were connected
to a very sophisticated at the time device. Uh there
was in a exposition by the way, so they couldn't
move it. You had to move the spacecraft to look
at the star you wanted to look at um. And
the reason they had it was to correct for drift, right.
(43:08):
They would plan their trajectory and they would check to
make sure that they were still on the trajectory that
they had planned. So what they would do is they
would cite two different celestial bodies, or they would use
the Earth's horizon or the Moon's horizon as one of
the reference points, and then a star, and then they
would make sure that it lined up properly. And if
it lined up properly, they knew that they were on
(43:29):
the right trajectory. If it was out of alignment, they
knew that they were drifting, and they had to do
a course correction to get that fixed. And one of
the descriptions I read of how the system ultimately worked
was really cool. So they would pick a star. The'd
say all right, we want star whatever, and they put
that into the computer saying, this is the star we're
going to use as our reference point. The spacecraft would
(43:51):
orient itself to turn toward that star. Then they would
look through the sextant and the sexton has a little
crosshairs on it, and it's star is not in the
center of the crosshairs. They knew that they had drifted.
They used controls on the sextant to move the cross
hairs over the star, push a button that sends a
command to the navigation system to do a course correction
(44:13):
so that the thrusters then do the necessary thrusting to
put them back on the correct course and correct for drift.
And I read this and I thought that's amazing. Yeah, yeah,
And and this was actually in use in several of
the Apollo missions. I think, I think as late as
Apollo eight they had a big mission. That's the one
(44:35):
that went around the back side of the dark Dark Side,
which is really really quite bright the far the far
side of the movie. But yes, yeah, and and I
think that the astronaut who specifically was using it was
it was an ex naval officer. That's kind of appropriate.
Probably had his little Bosn's whistle there too, and everything.
(44:58):
But obviously you're if you're talking about spacecraft that goes
outside the view of the Earth, then you want to
have this backup system clearly, because you aren't certain yet.
You can't be absolutely sure that the Earth based navigational
systems will stay in constant contact because once you get
behind the Moon, that's a pretty big obstacle to block
(45:19):
your radio communication. So it is clear why they needed
to have a secondary navigational tool aboard to make sure
they could correct for things like drift. Okay, well, those
are the only three questions we have time for in
this episode, but rest assured we will be getting back
to more of your questions and suggestions in a subsequent
listener mail round up episode. Yeah, this has been so
(45:42):
much fun. Yeah, but one last message I wanted to
end with, just because it's very brief and we can
squeeze it in. It was some wonderful feedback on our
Back to the Future episodes, and this came from Stephen
on email. He said, I think you missed one important
detail in your two Back to the Future podcast, the
reason why we don't have all the new technologies. I'm
(46:03):
sure he was talking about the things we were all
disappointed not to have yet, like hoverboards and telescoping baseball bats.
He says, the reason we don't have those things is
that lawyers were never outlawed. That is why Marty's kids
were convicted so quickly. Than Yeah, thanks than Steve, I
forgot that salient point Back to the Future book too.
(46:24):
Lawyers have been outlawed, and therefore the the court systems
moved much more quickly. But wait a minute, what does
that have to do with the technologies. Well, I feel
like I'm faintly grasping Steven's point, but I'm not quite saying.
Is that because this one element of the future has
not come true, the other elements can't come true. And
also without lawyers everything would move more quickly. Yeah, first
(46:46):
of all, you wouldn't sorry lawyers, it's just true. Oh well,
you know, we did just talk about intellectual property and
the chilling effect of patent law and stuff. That's so yeah,
any you this was This was so much fun. Thank
you guys so much. We're very much looking forward to
doing this again. We do have other questions, some of
(47:07):
which we have already started to research and talk about offline,
So keep those coming in because we're having a great time.
Some of these are going to be full episodes. Some
are going to be like this one, where we collect
some of the various questions that don't quite make up
a full episode. And uh, it's it's fantastic and lets
us know what you guys are interested in and we're
(47:28):
so excited to cover that. In order to let us
know what you would like us to talk about, you
should send us an email that addresses f w thinking
at how stuff works dot Com, or drop us a
line on Twitter, Google Plus, or Facebook. At Twitter and
Google Plus, we are f W thinking over on Facebook.
Just search f W thinking will pop right up, Leave
(47:48):
us a message, tell us what you think, and we'll
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
topic in the future of technology, visit Forward Thinking dot
Com Problems, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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