November 15, 2016 • 38 mins
Humans existed before their mastery of fire, albeit in a rather primitive state -- and yes, even Earth itself knew an age when fire itself was not only scarce, but chemically impossible. In this two-part episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe venture back to a time before the flame and consider the curious, interconnected ascension of man and fire. In part one, explore the chemistry of a flameless Earth and the possibility of alien technology without fire.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Jean McCormick. And Robert,
did you ever have a geology textbook or any kind
of old science textbook that showed those illustrations way back
(00:25):
in the day of what the Earth looked like, what
the surface of the Earth looks like before, you know,
in previous geological eras you go way way back, what
was it like to be on planet Earth? And and
you always see the like the volcanoes and they've like
caught right in the middle of an illustration some kind
of meteor bombardment, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Yeah,
(00:45):
there's always some sort of cataclysmic scenario going on, you know,
something that makes for a nice painting other than just say,
you know, a dead sea. Yeah. And in the really
early ones where you see the Earth as a kind
of primordial landscape, there is very often I have found
on a red orange tint to them, you know what
I'm talking about, Yeah, Like they paint the Earth at
(01:08):
that period as a world of fire like that at
one point, Earth was how we imagine hell yeah, you know,
I believe the the original Fantasia film has a as
a segment in there which is sort of the primordial
Earth that invokes some of this sort of imagery sort
of red orange. I think, so that may be a
little more technicolor huge, but but I think there's some orangine.
(01:32):
Never sure as if there's like an off screen fire
that's illuminating everything gels. But so I want to go
back to say, okay, let's look at what we do
know about the geological history of the Earth and try
to paint a picture of the landscape from say, you know,
maybe some early part of the Archean eon. So going way,
way way back, if you were wells time traveler in
(01:54):
the time machine and you accidentally you know, you know,
I don't lean your leg up against the dial, and
I went back all the way, what would it be like. Well,
first of all, we're gonna be talking about a time
when the Earth has a very different atmospheric composition. So
it's got a reducing atmosphere with almost no significant amount
of free oxygen gas. And if you look across the landscape,
(02:17):
you're going to see a lot of rocks, but you
are not going to see visible plants or animals. Because
the land part of the Earth has not been colonized
by life. You're gonna see a hot, barren, rocky landscape.
But there is life in this period. So where's the life. Well,
if you go to the coastal regions, you might see
(02:38):
these strange vertical bulbs protruding up out of the tidal
pools around the Rocky coast and they're like black brains
that are just jutting up out of the surf. These
are the stramatolites. Have you seen these roberts? I don't
think I've seen an image of this now. Oh yeah,
so some of them still exist on Earth today. You
can look at things that there were probably things very
(02:59):
much like the stramatellites. Just Google image search. It is
pretty cool. They're little black brains coming up out of
the water. And these are these crazy bio sedimentary structures
made by mats of of cyanobacteria, you know, these these small,
tiny photosynthetic organisms trapping grains of minerals to build these
(03:19):
bacterial mountain bulbs. And it's probably hot. It's probably hot out,
but if you think about it, this is a world
completely without fire. Yeah, there's no fire on planet Earth.
And it's not just in a sense of like, oh,
there are no there are no people having camp fires,
there's no there's no there's no fire to be maintained. No,
(03:41):
this is a time when Earth was a a fireless world,
like fire was not possible. It was a time before fire. Yeah,
so you can create some some very hot scenes in
this geological period, but there's not going to be any ignition.
There will be no fire on planet Earth at this period. Yeah.
It's immordial as fire is to us. It's it's it's
(04:03):
it's just mind boggling to think back on a time
when it didn't exist. It was it's almost as if
it had not been invented yet. Yeah, and that's crazy,
because how could there be a world without fire. Fire
is not like an invention of human beings as as
you just alluded to. It's a natural product of chemistry.
It seems like it's should be something that's just universal.
There should be fire everywhere, right, it's physics and chemistry.
(04:26):
But I guess we should look at what it takes
to make a fire. Yeah, so most people are probably
familiar with this. You have a have three prerequisites for fire,
the fire pyramid, the fire fire triangle. Yeah, when we
were researching this, I found some rather elaborate ways to say, hey,
the stuff that makes a fire. Uh so you gotta
(04:48):
have your heat obviously, that's one's that's one line. You've
got to have your fuel. Another, what is burning? You
gotta have something that burns, and you have to have
oxygen for that fire to consume oxidizer. Yeah. So one
of the things that you can see from this, though,
is that fire is the interaction of these three elements.
(05:10):
It's not so much a thing in itself as it
is an event or a process. It's an interaction between
these three elements. And that's kind of counterintuitive to us
because like when you carry a torch and it feels
like you're carrying a substance of something somewhere. Yeah, you
don't think of it as is the same as being
a sayn explosion, which of course is also a chemical reaction,
(05:33):
but it's more of an instantaneous effect. A fire is
almost you can almost think of it as a as
an explosion and slow motion or something like that. You know,
it's a but but since it takes place over time,
we think of it as a thing as a substance, right,
But it is an interaction. So let's look a little
deeper at this interaction. What happens when a fire starts? Well,
you know, it comes back to those three ingredients we're
(05:55):
talking about. Uh, and it's interesting to to break down
each of those and get where they come in to
the long deep history of planet Earth. Okay, Well, one
source is heat. That's not really a problem, right, That's
never really been a problem obviously on the planet. Um,
you know, a sparkle do it, Lightning strikes, Volcanic activity
(06:15):
is sparking rocks like one rock falling down, scraping another one, Um,
that sort of thing, meteorites, all of these have taken
place throughout Earth's deep history. So that's that's never been
We've never wanted for heat. Okay, so we've got heat,
But what about the other two planks oxygen and fuel?
Was we alluded to earlier? You had a different atmosphere
back exactly? Yeah, Uh, it wasn't until five hundred and
(06:39):
forty million years ago, that's the beginning of the Paleozoic era,
that the photosynthetic organisms essentially terraformed the planet's atmosphere into
an oxygenated balance, capable of providing the necessary the necessary
second ingredient for fire, that being oxygen. Right, they did
to Earth what what we might want to do to
Mars in a thousand years or something. Yeah, transformed, it
(07:01):
changed its atmosphere through some chemical engineering. And uh, and
one thing you might have noticed is, and when I
was painting the picture earlier, you know, I said, we
had some photosynthetic organisms, but we didn't really have an
oxygen atmosphere yet. It took a while, right, So, photosynthetic
organisms appeared, and they were creating some oxygen, but for
a long time it seemed like oxygen was accumulating in
(07:23):
the oceans or sort of reacting with stuff on the
surface of the Earth and oxidizing it. But over time
we did start to build up a serious oxygen atmosphere.
And uh, this didn't go so well for a lot
of organisms, right, yeah, yeah, I mean it was an apocalypse.
Everything became great poison of everything that came before. But
(07:44):
you know, okay, so so at this point, we've got
our we've got our heat, and we finally have our
oxygen available, and this of course brings us to fuel
what is actually going to burn yeah, you can't burn rocks, right,
have you ever tried? That doesn't work out? So well, Uh,
this is actually the last ingredient. They became available for
hire since you've got to have a terrestrial plant matter
that builds up and you know, is burnable, and terrestrial
(08:07):
plant matter was scarce in this early age. In fact,
the earliest evidence of charred vegetation dates back a mere
four hundred and forty million years ago. That's not that
long ago, I mean geologically speaking. So that's the evidence,
of course, right, But so if the Earth has been
here four point five billion years and so it's only
been within the last billion years that we have evidence
(08:29):
of fire on Earth. But then it took off after that,
because we'll be exploring it got huge. It's really big. Yeah,
it became a rather big deal. Um. It came to
define the new Earth. You had geologic ages in which
fluctuating oxygen levels contributed to the rise and fall of
terrestrial burn rates. Um. And then and of course the
(08:49):
humans eventually came along. They took a shine to fire,
and the rest is history. You know. I think it's
interesting to think about Earth as the fire planet, right,
because where where else in the universe, do we know
for sure there is fire? It is my understanding that
there is nowhere else in the universe that we know
for sure has fire. Now, there could be fire, there
(09:11):
could be, but what you would need that triangle you'd
write the fuel, you'd need the oxidizer or the oxygen,
and you need the heat and that just I don't
know of anywhere else other than Earth that you have
all three of those things, right we Yeah, we do
not know of a place that has fire other than
the Earth right now. Maybe out there many people believe
(09:33):
it exists, but for now, there is no such thing
as extraterrestrial fire. You know, they call Earth the water planet,
but this makes me think that we should also think
of it as the fire planet. I mean, fire seems
even more unique to Earth than water does. There's water
ice on plenty of other planets or moons and stuff
in the Solar system, right And of course one can
(09:55):
certainly imagine a water world in which fire is possible,
but even more rare because if you just have oceans,
if you don't have we well just to wet, or
if you don't have plenty of dried materials around, they're
gonna they're gonna be able to fill that uh that
the third notch on the ingredients list, then it's not
gonna happen. Yeah. This also makes me think about how
(10:17):
the atmospheric composition and just the basic nature of a
planet create the environment under which fire can arise. But
also it sort of turns the knobs, right, It's not
just like you can have fire or you can't. Fire
is a chemical reaction, and chemical reactions tend to be uh,
they tend to be degrees of susceptibility to them, right,
(10:38):
Like you can increase all of the catalytic conditions that
make this chemical reaction right to take place. So, for example, uh,
can you imagine a science fiction story? Can you imagine?
Of course you can. You have a great imagination. Let's
imagine the science fiction story where space space explorers they're
flying around, they're looking for a safe planet they can
(10:59):
land end on with a breathable atmosphere because they're having
engine trouble or something, and the only planet nearby is
this planet that has an oxygen atmosphere. But they sat
down and they realized, whoa, it's got a really oxygen
rich atmosphere. So not just oxygen, but much higher concentrations
of oxygen than we're used to in Earth's atmosphere today.
(11:21):
And then let's also say it's got high temperature, is
in low moisture, you could actually have a sort of
maximally flammable planet, right because it would be Yeah, for
the same reason one does not smoke while using an
oxygen mask, exactly. Yeah. And also for the same reason
that you can see tragedies in like NASA history for example,
(11:42):
So you know the crew deaths during testing for the
Apollo one mission. They were during testing for this mission,
they were they were trying to test the capsule for liftoff,
and there was a cabin fire. It was probably ignited
by a spark from some bad wiring, but the problem
was that the capsule was filled with pure oxygen environment,
which combined with the high pressure and then the presence
(12:04):
of flammable materials in the cabin meant that any fire
could just completely easily rage out of control in a
in a heartbeat. And that's exactly what happened, and it
killed the three astronauts while they were testing on in
January nine seven. Then that was grisome, white and chaffey,
and so you can imagine in a in a whole
planet like this, if like your whole planet's atmosphere is
(12:28):
somewhere closer to what it was like in that Apollo
one test cabin. That's not that's not an easy place
to live, right, and to the environment, right, wander around like,
am I afraid of dropping a tool and accidentally causing
a spark? And you'd have to also be careful way
for your compost, that's, of course, because that's another way
(12:48):
that you can have a combustion, the sort of spontaneous
combustion that occurs certainly with compost hay bales, but arguably
with people as well. Uh, spontaneous seeming combustion, which is
another topic. Wait, Robert, you've got to give me the
straight on this. Okay, spontaneous human combustion. Is it real
or not? It's been a while since I researched it.
(13:09):
We have, we have an older episode on it, which
I can link to on the landing page for this episode.
As I recall, it is certainly possible, but it gets
difficult when you look at individual instances because a lot
of times there are other explanations that could could be
in place. Yeah, I remember some skeptical takes, at least
(13:30):
thinking that I'd come across people saying, you know, almost
all these cases can be explained just by people accidentally
setting fire their clothes, smoking in this sort of thing.
Um as I recall, though there are some there are
some theories for how it could take, how it could occur,
had it. But it's kind of a case by case
situation though. So if it can happen with fertilizer, could
(13:51):
happen with us. Yeah, if your body is enough like fertilizer,
then you then then then you could go up like
a torch. I think my body is much like fertilizer.
All right, we're gonna do a quick break and when
we come back, we're going to discuss how fire shaped
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(15:00):
we're back, so today in this episode, we're gonna be
referring to this excellent two thousand nine paper from Bioscience
called a Burning Story, which would be a great Pixar movie.
But it's a Burning Story call and the Role of
Fire in the History of Life by Julie GI Pausas
and John E. Keiley, and I want to start with
a quote that they have from their paper that they
(15:21):
write quote, A world without fires is like a sphere
without round nous. That is, we cannot imagine it. Wildfires
have shaped our world since long before humans emerged. We
cannot understand our biota and biota means all of the
biomass that makes up a certain area, you know, all
(15:41):
all of the life there. They say, we cannot understand
our biota in terms of adaptations and ecosystem distribution without
including fire as a process in the natural history of
the planet. So they're they're saying fire is not just
something that happens occasionally and you know it's suddenly like,
oh there's a fire, freak out, got a run from it.
(16:02):
They're they're casting fire more as a very standard, regular
part of Earth life that shaped the life forms that
exist on the planet today. Yeah, because they think back
to the three ingredients, think back to the the the
ways that those things occur um. So you have lightning strikes, meteorites,
(16:23):
et cetera, volcanic activity, these are all things that can
that can and do touch off natural wildfires, and so
periodic wildfires in the exact um you know, the schedule
of the wildfires, the exact regime of the wildfires, which
we'll get into a bit, will vary, but you're going
to have whole ecosystems that evolve with fire being in play.
(16:48):
Now on our planet. It's important to note there is
no such thing as a fireproof organism, and certainly we
have some wonderful examples of creatures in sci fi and
fantasy that you know that roll aroun sound in fire,
or particularly thinking of in Dungeons and Dragons, you have,
you know, an entire plane of fire, and they're all
these like salamander like beings that live there and fire elementals.
(17:11):
But life as we know it here on Earth is
not so rugged. Now I'm trying to think what that
would even be. Let's let's cut out the magic, no
Dungeons and Dragons stuff. No, no, no dark curses or protections,
just biologically. Could there be an organism that survives in fire.
I don't really see how that would happen, unless maybe
(17:31):
if it's something kind of like a weird like combination
of a turtle and like B B eight from the
Force awakened, so it's like a shell all around with
maybe some holes that it can slide open and close
or something. Yeah. I mean, we certainly have species that
are fire resistant, and we have plenty of species that
(17:53):
are able to to varying degrees game wildfires and certainly
exploit the benefits of wildfire fires. But we haven't We
have nothing that is fireproof. Nothing that that that that
is not destroyed by the flame, its flame is present
in sufficient amounts, right exactly, So fire excites molecules. The
structure of our molecules is rather important to us. You'd
(18:16):
have to find some organism to which I guess it's
surrounded by molecules that can be burned and don't really
matter fire. And this is important for the ways that
humans use fire, Like fire breaks things down, Fire changes
the chemistry of things. Uh and uh and and it's
we're just not I mean, we're just highly susceptible to that. Nevertheless,
(18:36):
the the fire world is a real part of the world,
and it's something that all kinds of organisms have come
up with these adaptations too. So like, like we said,
there's no fireproof organism, but what does it mean to
be a fire resistant organism? Okay? Well, one example that
often comes up or sequoias. Okay, So, so some plant
species actually depend on fire is part of the reproductive cycle,
(19:00):
while some simply evolved long ago to weather regular wildfires.
So some can get through it, right. Uh. Sequoia seeds,
for example, actually remain dormant until fire breaks down the
outer coating as such a good control. Burn can can
also aid the environment by stimulating local vegetation. Um, you know.
And on on top of this, you have a situation
(19:21):
where the fire is going to uh, it's not going
to burn down the larger plants in the various forest
environments are just gonna be scorched. And yes, some will succumb,
but for the most part, it's gonna be the smaller
things that get burned away, the undergrowth, and then that
opens up that area for new vegetation to move in.
It also allows various animals new opportunities to thrive. So
(19:44):
it it's a dynamic aspect of of many different environments
and and it's not just limited like it's easy to think, oh, well,
you know, like California dry hills or grasslands, and certainly
those are areas dry areas with vegetation are going to
be very susceptible to wildfire. But wildfire also exists in
tropical jungle environments. There are plenty of examples of that.
(20:06):
Because those areas are gonna have dry spells as well,
there's gonna be combustible materials, and therefore it's a part
of those environments is as well. Yeah, totally you see
it in grasslands, you see it in savannahs. There is
such a thing as desert fire. And also one of
the things about fire on earth is that wildfires trigger
cycles of wildfires. Fire begets fire in a certain way because,
(20:29):
for one thing, you can look at how fire prevents
bigger fires. This makes any sense, there's another reason for
control burns, Yeah, exactly. So, like small fires in a
certain area will clean out the underbrush, you know, dry
vegetation near the ground that if allowed to grow unchecked
(20:50):
by fire, could eventually lead to larger fires that actually
catch you know, the crowns of trees on fire, and
those become very hot and spread very uncontrollably. Yeah, it's
there was There was certainly a time in like forest
management and agriculture where I think we we just we
just said, Okay, fires are bad, We're gonna we're gonna
cut them out wherever possible. But yeah, you just you
(21:10):
just destabilize the natural environment and the environment's ability to
roll with periodic wildfires. And on the subject of periodic wildfires,
we mentioned regimes of fire rightlier, and that's a that's
a great term, yeah, because it sounds like, you know,
fire demons ruling them a broken world, a new flaming
king since to the throne of coals. Yeah, yeah, that's
(21:31):
some dark imagery, Joe. But but it's a good day
for that sort of thing. Um. Yeah, So you have
you have a single forest fire that's an event, just
a fire event, but then a series of fires over time.
That's a fire regime, and that a fire regime. That
is what organisms evolve to roll with, not an individual fire,
but but regimes of fire. It's sort of like how
(21:54):
organisms are not going to be adapted to an individual storm,
but they will be adapted to the local climate, right. Yeah,
And of course the regimes are gonna vary in some areas,
some areas gonna be more prone to wildfires than others,
as we discussed, because you're talking about about the various
factors here. Human agriculture of course alters the situation somewhat.
(22:14):
You have interactions of humidity, conditions, fuels, ignition sources. All
these determined the particular regions fire regime. You also have
to take into account topography and wind, like what's gonna
how are those going to affect the spread of the flames.
And certainly I think any of our listeners who live
in more in places where wildfires are more of a
(22:35):
regular concern um. And so we think about California, Arizona,
places like that. You know, you're gonna be far more
familiar with these realities than than a lot of our listeners.
You know, one of the craziest looking wildfires I've ever
seen was from some footage I saw of wildfire in Australia.
Have you ever seen video of like the the Australian
fire storms and like Canberra? Oh? I don't think I have.
(22:58):
Oh man, it's otherworldly. It does not look like Planet
Earth where it is like those old illustrations from the
previous geological areas where the entire sky is orange and
like flames and sparks are just whipping around in the wind.
It is unreal. You should look that up. Fun fact.
I bring up Ian and Banks a lot in his
(23:20):
Culture series of novels because he always has some fabulous
sci fi visions that he's discussing being a technology or
certainly visions of alien life in alien worlds. And in
his just absolutely excellent book The Player of Games, Uh,
there is a there's a planet that pops into it
since it's a it's a water world. So you just
have this ring of land with this constant fire that
(23:42):
moves all the way around it, and it's an essential
part of the of of the the eco system. So
if the fire were to get put out, that seems
like that could just be like the end of life
terrestrial life on this planet. Yeah. Yeah, it's like this
alien vision on It is even more dependent on fire
than anything we could, you know, experience here on Earth.
But it serves as a kind of an interesting model too,
(24:05):
to exemplify the importance of wildfires in our own ecosystem,
to say that, yes, they do occur, and they and
in the appropriate cycles, they play an important role. All Right,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
back there will be more about alien worlds and fire. Hey.
I'm Chuck and I'm Josh and we're the host of
(24:26):
Stuff you should know the podcast, that's right, And if
you're into understanding cool and unusual and seemingly ordinary and
even boring things that are made interesting, you should check
us out. Please and thank you. We're on iTunes, Spotify,
Google Play Music, anywhere you get podcasts. All right, we're back, Okay, Robert,
(24:48):
I have a question for you because thinking about alien
worlds and fire and the fact that we live on
the only fire world, and the fact that we know
of a time in the history of the Earth where
fire was not possible on this planet was just chemically
not going to happen. Um, my question is could technological
(25:09):
civilization arise on a planet that doesn't permit fire? So
we think about um, other planets and other other biologies
were always considering this. You know, we're like, oh, you know,
our closed minds. We think everybody's got to be like
us in the universe in order to have some kind
of technological intelligence. Maybe our our minds are not too closed,
(25:34):
Maybe they're too open when we're trying to imagine, uh,
you know, powerful alien technologies, aliens with spaceships and radio
transmitters and stuff like that, arising on planets that have
different atmospheric compositions, or might be water worlds or something
like that. Because I just started to think, how on
Earth could we put on Earth it not intended? How
(25:56):
could we possibly have generated tech knowledgy on this planet
without the chemical readiness to create fire in our atmosphere?
Just imagine the life forms that arise on a planet
with a non oxygen atmosphere and no other gases that
could play the role of an oxidizer. First of all,
(26:17):
you've got the question about how how would they cook
food and stuff like that, And actually, we're gonna do
this is gonna be a two part episode about fire.
In the second episode, we're gonna talk more about the
ideas of how cooking informed the intelligent beings we became.
But also here's a maybe even a much bigger one.
What about smelting or to create metal tools? Like, how
do you create metal tools without fire? You might be
(26:39):
sitting there thinking for a second, like, well, you know,
there's other hot things, and uh, really, what else could
you use? What are you saying you would stand over
a volcano and somehow find a way to use that
to create metal tools? I mean it is it starts
becoming very difficult trying to figure out how you would
do this. And then without metal old tools, could you
(27:00):
actually expect discoveries of things like electricity, optics, fundamental forces.
Um So, it just made me wonder, well, is there
any non fire equivalent? Is there a margarine of fire
in the chemistry that's available to this universe? You know,
is there some other universal exothermic chemical reaction, a reaction
(27:21):
that puts off heat that that can be transported around
as easily as fire and started as easily as fire. Yeah,
I don't know. It's easy to think of various sci
fi visions of sort of you know, organic purely organic
species that have organic spaceships and organic technology. And you know,
I'm not totally discounting that vision, but when you start
(27:43):
breaking it down and look at look at the only
model we have for technological ascension, that the role of
fire just cannot be divided front it right, Yeah, we're
forcing one of the scenarios where we just we cannot
envision or it's very difficult to envision another system that works.
You know, I did think of one example, one counterexample
(28:04):
for cooking, and it's when when Rachel and I were
in Iceland. We were we went to a little town
called hivera Garthy where they have a basket that you
can boil an egg and well it's not boiled, where
you can steam an egg by putting in a in
a basket that hangs over a geothermal vent. This team
comes out of Yeah, I can see that working. I
(28:25):
thought you were going to go with the other like
fermentation methods of preparing food, because certainly you can make
an argument there, right, oh yeah, yeah, but that's that's
not cooking. Well, it's in a way it's cooking. It's
a it's it's cuisine. It's cuisine. Yeah, but yeah, it's
it's reatherly different from cooking. I guess. Uh. So we
were talking about this the other day and we're and
(28:45):
we were looking around and thinking, you know, somebody, somebody
has to have tackled this. There has to be a
scientist out there who's really gone in deep on this
question of technological without fire. No, I I gotta say, Robert,
this is all you. I had no idea anybody would
have written on this. Well, uh yeah, because I was surprised,
pleasantly surprised to find this a wonderful article by a
(29:06):
scientist by the name of Michael D. Swords. Swords Like
the Weapon right, uh, is titled could extraterrestrial intelligences be
expected to breathe Our air? And it was published in
a edition of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Okay, now
we should put up a big skeptics asterisk here and
say that the Journal of Scientific Exploration is a publication
(29:28):
that deals with friends fringe science like u apology and
the paranormal, the horizons of science, as they would put it. Yes,
and it has been accused by critics of promulgating pseudoscience.
I don't know how to adjudicate that here, But we
don't want to give the impression of an endorsement in
general of this journal or its contents. Uh just put
(29:48):
up this big red asterisk on the credentials of the
journal in general. But we do want to talk about
this one very interesting and at least seemingly solid paper. Yeah.
And and likewise, Sword himself is certainly no pure skeptic either.
He uh is was an editor for the journal. If
you have a UFO Studies board member of the J.
Allen Heineck Center for UFO Studies. Uh So, he's very
(30:11):
much a man who wants to believe he's retired now,
but at the time of this publication he was with
Western Michigan University. Uh and uh and and yeah, I
think that the paper itself, though, so a gainfully employed
scholars right right. So this is not like a guy
in a cabin somewhere writing about UFOs. This is this
is a and this was. And also it's worth pointing
out this again, this is a pure of view journal,
(30:32):
you know, for what it's worth. But again, when you
when you look at the actual paper, I think the
paper holds up pretty well. Well yeah, well, let's let's
see what it says. Being judged for yourself. All right. So, Swords,
whose doctorate studies are centered around the history of technology,
points out in this article that the essential nature of
fire is often overlooked by academics. He said, quote, the
(30:53):
role of fire is partially obvious and maybe not so obvious.
The maybe not is the necessar city of fire control
fire to manipulate materials and break them down into their
elemental components. Breaking materials down is the road, the only
road to establishing material technology that makes sense to me.
I think that's in line with what I was just saying. Yeah.
(31:15):
He mentions that the critics of this only road approach
that insisted there are alternatives such as depending on additive
approaches uh, the addition of one substance to another components elements, alloys, etcetera.
As a means up for new material science is without fire. Wait,
how would you create alloys without fire? Well, that's the
(31:37):
that's the argument point, isn't it. Uh So this is
this is how he responds to those critics, he says,
and he has some wonderful vinegar here to his response.
He says, I am open to someone demonstrating this sort
of non fire based material science. But where these components,
elements and alloys will originally come from without fire somewhere
down the road remains a complete puzzle to me. It
(31:59):
is in the breakage, manipulation and recombination of materials that
one achieves achieves metallurgy, much of chemistry, glass technology, polymers, etcetera.
Without fire leading to metals technology, there is no control electricity,
no electric age, and certainly no nuclear age. Yeah. That
(32:20):
that's a totally different thing here too. Uh. Nuclear age
makes me think about the energy we use to power
our society, not just the creation of tools, but we
depend on on free access to two easy energy for
everything that makes modern life, you know, easily livable and
modern science easy to do with all the equipment and
(32:41):
electronics and stuff like that we have. Uh, in a
world without that, what would your energy source be? I mean,
I guess you could have I don't know, hydroelectric dams.
But if you don't have metals to conduct, I don't know.
I mean, yeah, I'm I'm I'm at a loss. Yeah.
He kind of summarizes this all by saying, all technology
(33:04):
on a fireless world would be the simple utilization of
what nature gives one, an almost passive interaction. Fire is
the gate to the possibility of high technology, the only gate.
So so the idea is that certainly you could have
individuals finding stuff, exploiting natural environments, boiling their fish and
event or what have you. But can they actually make anything?
(33:25):
Can they actually achieve high technology? Can they build a
spaceship or say even a toaster? Uh? The argument Swords
would make is no, and he sort of And he
also goes on to sort of challenge anyone out there
show me an idea that's not complete, like fantasy, fantasy
sci fi. Uh, and I will accept it, but I
haven't seen it yet. Well, I guess for me, the
question would be looking at chemistry. I mean, I was
(33:47):
trying to find is there an example of something else
like fire? Again, with fire not being a substance so
much as a chemical reaction and interaction or process, is
there another universal exother chemical reaction you could come up
with where well, if you mix heat and these other
two readily available types of substances, you will get an
(34:09):
easy to produce chemical reaction that heats things up, and
you can do it almost anytime anywhere on the planet.
I don't know, I don't know of any evidence of
what that would be, but perhaps there is such a thing. Yeah,
he he goes on in his paper to say, I mean, basically,
you need to have that free oxygen um. You know
you can. You can. There their arguments for other combustion supporters,
(34:33):
chlorine and other halogens, mainly, he says, but but really
you keep coming back to the necessity for oxygen. Now.
He also brings up we mentioned sea worlds earlier, the
other water world or whatever you want to call them, um,
And in the past episode we tried to imagine this too.
If you had like a dolphin race on a on
a on a water world, would they be capable of
(34:53):
achieving technology? Would mermaids be able to build your soul
like a like a race of intelligent dolphin creatures, not
like a dolphin race, like they're trying to get to
the finish. No, no, not not a not not a
race in that sense, but but powerful civilization, right, yeah,
would that be possible? Or mermaids or deep ones or
whatever a vision of undersea life you want to toy
(35:15):
with here, Cathulhu has no technology. Yeah, I mean that
would be the argument here, because this is what what
old Mike Swords has to say. He says, for those
who suggest that an alternative world not caring about such
wildfires because it was all oceanic is a possibility for
a high oxygen atmosphere, I say the idea is clever,
but all wet. The technological life form needs to control
(35:38):
fire where it lives. Underwater seems a poor combustion environment.
Occasional fire seeking dog paddling at the surface seems worse.
We need a land animal, and we therefore need a
well behaving atmosphere with oxygen in a controlled fire zone.
So that kind of that that kind of underlines it
(35:58):
rather well, I think. Okay, Well, so it seems like
doctor Swords here is agreeing with our intuitions about the
necessity of fire for the development of technological civilization. But
I still I would like to hear arguments to the contrary.
I haven't found any. I don't know if you did
not run across any other in any other voices on this.
But yeah, if y'all out there have any have any
(36:20):
great ideas about how no, here's the way they could
do it, Here's how you could make metal tools without fire,
I would love to hear them. Yeah, I'm fascinated, and
I don't think uh Swords has necessarily dropped the final
word here, But but so far I remained with my
mind unchanged. Uh. And certainly there have to be some
great examples from sci fi out there as well, varying
(36:43):
levels of you know, scientific authenticity, But I'd love to
love to hear those models. Okay, I mentioned this earlier
in the episode, I think, but this is actually going
to be part one of a two part episode we're
doing about the scientific history of fire, where this time
we tried to look at a little bit more at
the chemistry of the world, the atmosphere, possibilities on a
on a no oxygen planet, and how fires shaped life.
(37:05):
But next time we are going to be turning our
eye to the world of the human, the divine spark,
and what fire means for human life. In the meantime,
be sure to check out stuff to blow your mind
dot com. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes,
blog post videos, links out to our various social media
accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and more. And
(37:27):
as always, if you want to get in touch with
us directly with feedback about this episode or any other,
or with a great idea about how aliens on an
oxygen free, fireproof world can make some exothermic reactions and
get some swords maybe or other metal metal tools, you
can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and bathands of
(37:57):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Y
f F Far Far far f
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Jean McCormick. And Robert,
did you ever have a geology textbook or any kind
of old science textbook that showed those illustrations way back
(00:25):
in the day of what the Earth looked like, what
the surface of the Earth looks like before, you know,
in previous geological eras you go way way back, what
was it like to be on planet Earth? And and
you always see the like the volcanoes and they've like
caught right in the middle of an illustration some kind
of meteor bombardment, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Yeah,
(00:45):
there's always some sort of cataclysmic scenario going on, you know,
something that makes for a nice painting other than just say,
you know, a dead sea. Yeah. And in the really
early ones where you see the Earth as a kind
of primordial landscape, there is very often I have found
on a red orange tint to them, you know what
I'm talking about, Yeah, Like they paint the Earth at
(01:08):
that period as a world of fire like that at
one point, Earth was how we imagine hell yeah, you know,
I believe the the original Fantasia film has a as
a segment in there which is sort of the primordial
Earth that invokes some of this sort of imagery sort
of red orange. I think, so that may be a
little more technicolor huge, but but I think there's some orangine.
(01:32):
Never sure as if there's like an off screen fire
that's illuminating everything gels. But so I want to go
back to say, okay, let's look at what we do
know about the geological history of the Earth and try
to paint a picture of the landscape from say, you know,
maybe some early part of the Archean eon. So going way,
way way back, if you were wells time traveler in
(01:54):
the time machine and you accidentally you know, you know,
I don't lean your leg up against the dial, and
I went back all the way, what would it be like. Well,
first of all, we're gonna be talking about a time
when the Earth has a very different atmospheric composition. So
it's got a reducing atmosphere with almost no significant amount
of free oxygen gas. And if you look across the landscape,
(02:17):
you're going to see a lot of rocks, but you
are not going to see visible plants or animals. Because
the land part of the Earth has not been colonized
by life. You're gonna see a hot, barren, rocky landscape.
But there is life in this period. So where's the life. Well,
if you go to the coastal regions, you might see
(02:38):
these strange vertical bulbs protruding up out of the tidal
pools around the Rocky coast and they're like black brains
that are just jutting up out of the surf. These
are the stramatolites. Have you seen these roberts? I don't
think I've seen an image of this now. Oh yeah,
so some of them still exist on Earth today. You
can look at things that there were probably things very
(02:59):
much like the stramatellites. Just Google image search. It is
pretty cool. They're little black brains coming up out of
the water. And these are these crazy bio sedimentary structures
made by mats of of cyanobacteria, you know, these these small,
tiny photosynthetic organisms trapping grains of minerals to build these
(03:19):
bacterial mountain bulbs. And it's probably hot. It's probably hot out,
but if you think about it, this is a world
completely without fire. Yeah, there's no fire on planet Earth.
And it's not just in a sense of like, oh,
there are no there are no people having camp fires,
there's no there's no there's no fire to be maintained. No,
(03:41):
this is a time when Earth was a a fireless world,
like fire was not possible. It was a time before fire. Yeah,
so you can create some some very hot scenes in
this geological period, but there's not going to be any ignition.
There will be no fire on planet Earth at this period. Yeah.
It's immordial as fire is to us. It's it's it's
(04:03):
it's just mind boggling to think back on a time
when it didn't exist. It was it's almost as if
it had not been invented yet. Yeah, and that's crazy,
because how could there be a world without fire. Fire
is not like an invention of human beings as as
you just alluded to. It's a natural product of chemistry.
It seems like it's should be something that's just universal.
There should be fire everywhere, right, it's physics and chemistry.
(04:26):
But I guess we should look at what it takes
to make a fire. Yeah, so most people are probably
familiar with this. You have a have three prerequisites for fire,
the fire pyramid, the fire fire triangle. Yeah, when we
were researching this, I found some rather elaborate ways to say, hey,
the stuff that makes a fire. Uh so you gotta
(04:48):
have your heat obviously, that's one's that's one line. You've
got to have your fuel. Another, what is burning? You
gotta have something that burns, and you have to have
oxygen for that fire to consume oxidizer. Yeah. So one
of the things that you can see from this, though,
is that fire is the interaction of these three elements.
(05:10):
It's not so much a thing in itself as it
is an event or a process. It's an interaction between
these three elements. And that's kind of counterintuitive to us
because like when you carry a torch and it feels
like you're carrying a substance of something somewhere. Yeah, you
don't think of it as is the same as being
a sayn explosion, which of course is also a chemical reaction,
(05:33):
but it's more of an instantaneous effect. A fire is
almost you can almost think of it as a as
an explosion and slow motion or something like that. You know,
it's a but but since it takes place over time,
we think of it as a thing as a substance, right,
But it is an interaction. So let's look a little
deeper at this interaction. What happens when a fire starts? Well,
you know, it comes back to those three ingredients we're
(05:55):
talking about. Uh, and it's interesting to to break down
each of those and get where they come in to
the long deep history of planet Earth. Okay, Well, one
source is heat. That's not really a problem, right, That's
never really been a problem obviously on the planet. Um,
you know, a sparkle do it, Lightning strikes, Volcanic activity
(06:15):
is sparking rocks like one rock falling down, scraping another one, Um,
that sort of thing, meteorites, all of these have taken
place throughout Earth's deep history. So that's that's never been
We've never wanted for heat. Okay, so we've got heat,
But what about the other two planks oxygen and fuel?
Was we alluded to earlier? You had a different atmosphere
back exactly? Yeah, Uh, it wasn't until five hundred and
(06:39):
forty million years ago, that's the beginning of the Paleozoic era,
that the photosynthetic organisms essentially terraformed the planet's atmosphere into
an oxygenated balance, capable of providing the necessary the necessary
second ingredient for fire, that being oxygen. Right, they did
to Earth what what we might want to do to
Mars in a thousand years or something. Yeah, transformed, it
(07:01):
changed its atmosphere through some chemical engineering. And uh, and
one thing you might have noticed is, and when I
was painting the picture earlier, you know, I said, we
had some photosynthetic organisms, but we didn't really have an
oxygen atmosphere yet. It took a while, right, So, photosynthetic
organisms appeared, and they were creating some oxygen, but for
a long time it seemed like oxygen was accumulating in
(07:23):
the oceans or sort of reacting with stuff on the
surface of the Earth and oxidizing it. But over time
we did start to build up a serious oxygen atmosphere.
And uh, this didn't go so well for a lot
of organisms, right, yeah, yeah, I mean it was an apocalypse.
Everything became great poison of everything that came before. But
(07:44):
you know, okay, so so at this point, we've got
our we've got our heat, and we finally have our
oxygen available, and this of course brings us to fuel
what is actually going to burn yeah, you can't burn rocks, right,
have you ever tried? That doesn't work out? So well, Uh,
this is actually the last ingredient. They became available for
hire since you've got to have a terrestrial plant matter
that builds up and you know, is burnable, and terrestrial
(08:07):
plant matter was scarce in this early age. In fact,
the earliest evidence of charred vegetation dates back a mere
four hundred and forty million years ago. That's not that
long ago, I mean geologically speaking. So that's the evidence,
of course, right, But so if the Earth has been
here four point five billion years and so it's only
been within the last billion years that we have evidence
(08:29):
of fire on Earth. But then it took off after that,
because we'll be exploring it got huge. It's really big. Yeah,
it became a rather big deal. Um. It came to
define the new Earth. You had geologic ages in which
fluctuating oxygen levels contributed to the rise and fall of
terrestrial burn rates. Um. And then and of course the
(08:49):
humans eventually came along. They took a shine to fire,
and the rest is history. You know. I think it's
interesting to think about Earth as the fire planet, right,
because where where else in the universe, do we know
for sure there is fire? It is my understanding that
there is nowhere else in the universe that we know
for sure has fire. Now, there could be fire, there
(09:11):
could be, but what you would need that triangle you'd
write the fuel, you'd need the oxidizer or the oxygen,
and you need the heat and that just I don't
know of anywhere else other than Earth that you have
all three of those things, right we Yeah, we do
not know of a place that has fire other than
the Earth right now. Maybe out there many people believe
(09:33):
it exists, but for now, there is no such thing
as extraterrestrial fire. You know, they call Earth the water planet,
but this makes me think that we should also think
of it as the fire planet. I mean, fire seems
even more unique to Earth than water does. There's water
ice on plenty of other planets or moons and stuff
in the Solar system, right And of course one can
(09:55):
certainly imagine a water world in which fire is possible,
but even more rare because if you just have oceans,
if you don't have we well just to wet, or
if you don't have plenty of dried materials around, they're
gonna they're gonna be able to fill that uh that
the third notch on the ingredients list, then it's not
gonna happen. Yeah. This also makes me think about how
(10:17):
the atmospheric composition and just the basic nature of a
planet create the environment under which fire can arise. But
also it sort of turns the knobs, right, It's not
just like you can have fire or you can't. Fire
is a chemical reaction, and chemical reactions tend to be uh,
they tend to be degrees of susceptibility to them, right,
(10:38):
Like you can increase all of the catalytic conditions that
make this chemical reaction right to take place. So, for example, uh,
can you imagine a science fiction story? Can you imagine?
Of course you can. You have a great imagination. Let's
imagine the science fiction story where space space explorers they're
flying around, they're looking for a safe planet they can
(10:59):
land end on with a breathable atmosphere because they're having
engine trouble or something, and the only planet nearby is
this planet that has an oxygen atmosphere. But they sat
down and they realized, whoa, it's got a really oxygen
rich atmosphere. So not just oxygen, but much higher concentrations
of oxygen than we're used to in Earth's atmosphere today.
(11:21):
And then let's also say it's got high temperature, is
in low moisture, you could actually have a sort of
maximally flammable planet, right because it would be Yeah, for
the same reason one does not smoke while using an
oxygen mask, exactly. Yeah. And also for the same reason
that you can see tragedies in like NASA history for example,
(11:42):
So you know the crew deaths during testing for the
Apollo one mission. They were during testing for this mission,
they were they were trying to test the capsule for liftoff,
and there was a cabin fire. It was probably ignited
by a spark from some bad wiring, but the problem
was that the capsule was filled with pure oxygen environment,
which combined with the high pressure and then the presence
(12:04):
of flammable materials in the cabin meant that any fire
could just completely easily rage out of control in a
in a heartbeat. And that's exactly what happened, and it
killed the three astronauts while they were testing on in
January nine seven. Then that was grisome, white and chaffey,
and so you can imagine in a in a whole
planet like this, if like your whole planet's atmosphere is
(12:28):
somewhere closer to what it was like in that Apollo
one test cabin. That's not that's not an easy place
to live, right, and to the environment, right, wander around like,
am I afraid of dropping a tool and accidentally causing
a spark? And you'd have to also be careful way
for your compost, that's, of course, because that's another way
(12:48):
that you can have a combustion, the sort of spontaneous
combustion that occurs certainly with compost hay bales, but arguably
with people as well. Uh, spontaneous seeming combustion, which is
another topic. Wait, Robert, you've got to give me the
straight on this. Okay, spontaneous human combustion. Is it real
or not? It's been a while since I researched it.
(13:09):
We have, we have an older episode on it, which
I can link to on the landing page for this episode.
As I recall, it is certainly possible, but it gets
difficult when you look at individual instances because a lot
of times there are other explanations that could could be
in place. Yeah, I remember some skeptical takes, at least
(13:30):
thinking that I'd come across people saying, you know, almost
all these cases can be explained just by people accidentally
setting fire their clothes, smoking in this sort of thing.
Um as I recall, though there are some there are
some theories for how it could take, how it could occur,
had it. But it's kind of a case by case
situation though. So if it can happen with fertilizer, could
(13:51):
happen with us. Yeah, if your body is enough like fertilizer,
then you then then then you could go up like
a torch. I think my body is much like fertilizer.
All right, we're gonna do a quick break and when
we come back, we're going to discuss how fire shaped
life on Earth. I want to position yourself for career success.
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visit about hb X dot com slash how Stuff Works. Okay,
(15:00):
we're back, so today in this episode, we're gonna be
referring to this excellent two thousand nine paper from Bioscience
called a Burning Story, which would be a great Pixar movie.
But it's a Burning Story call and the Role of
Fire in the History of Life by Julie GI Pausas
and John E. Keiley, and I want to start with
a quote that they have from their paper that they
(15:21):
write quote, A world without fires is like a sphere
without round nous. That is, we cannot imagine it. Wildfires
have shaped our world since long before humans emerged. We
cannot understand our biota and biota means all of the
biomass that makes up a certain area, you know, all
(15:41):
all of the life there. They say, we cannot understand
our biota in terms of adaptations and ecosystem distribution without
including fire as a process in the natural history of
the planet. So they're they're saying fire is not just
something that happens occasionally and you know it's suddenly like,
oh there's a fire, freak out, got a run from it.
(16:02):
They're they're casting fire more as a very standard, regular
part of Earth life that shaped the life forms that
exist on the planet today. Yeah, because they think back
to the three ingredients, think back to the the the
ways that those things occur um. So you have lightning strikes, meteorites,
(16:23):
et cetera, volcanic activity, these are all things that can
that can and do touch off natural wildfires, and so
periodic wildfires in the exact um you know, the schedule
of the wildfires, the exact regime of the wildfires, which
we'll get into a bit, will vary, but you're going
to have whole ecosystems that evolve with fire being in play.
(16:48):
Now on our planet. It's important to note there is
no such thing as a fireproof organism, and certainly we
have some wonderful examples of creatures in sci fi and
fantasy that you know that roll aroun sound in fire,
or particularly thinking of in Dungeons and Dragons, you have,
you know, an entire plane of fire, and they're all
these like salamander like beings that live there and fire elementals.
(17:11):
But life as we know it here on Earth is
not so rugged. Now I'm trying to think what that
would even be. Let's let's cut out the magic, no
Dungeons and Dragons stuff. No, no, no dark curses or protections,
just biologically. Could there be an organism that survives in fire.
I don't really see how that would happen, unless maybe
(17:31):
if it's something kind of like a weird like combination
of a turtle and like B B eight from the
Force awakened, so it's like a shell all around with
maybe some holes that it can slide open and close
or something. Yeah. I mean, we certainly have species that
are fire resistant, and we have plenty of species that
(17:53):
are able to to varying degrees game wildfires and certainly
exploit the benefits of wildfire fires. But we haven't We
have nothing that is fireproof. Nothing that that that that
is not destroyed by the flame, its flame is present
in sufficient amounts, right exactly, So fire excites molecules. The
structure of our molecules is rather important to us. You'd
(18:16):
have to find some organism to which I guess it's
surrounded by molecules that can be burned and don't really
matter fire. And this is important for the ways that
humans use fire, Like fire breaks things down, Fire changes
the chemistry of things. Uh and uh and and it's
we're just not I mean, we're just highly susceptible to that. Nevertheless,
(18:36):
the the fire world is a real part of the world,
and it's something that all kinds of organisms have come
up with these adaptations too. So like, like we said,
there's no fireproof organism, but what does it mean to
be a fire resistant organism? Okay? Well, one example that
often comes up or sequoias. Okay, So, so some plant
species actually depend on fire is part of the reproductive cycle,
(19:00):
while some simply evolved long ago to weather regular wildfires.
So some can get through it, right. Uh. Sequoia seeds,
for example, actually remain dormant until fire breaks down the
outer coating as such a good control. Burn can can
also aid the environment by stimulating local vegetation. Um, you know.
And on on top of this, you have a situation
(19:21):
where the fire is going to uh, it's not going
to burn down the larger plants in the various forest
environments are just gonna be scorched. And yes, some will succumb,
but for the most part, it's gonna be the smaller
things that get burned away, the undergrowth, and then that
opens up that area for new vegetation to move in.
It also allows various animals new opportunities to thrive. So
(19:44):
it it's a dynamic aspect of of many different environments
and and it's not just limited like it's easy to think, oh, well,
you know, like California dry hills or grasslands, and certainly
those are areas dry areas with vegetation are going to
be very susceptible to wildfire. But wildfire also exists in
tropical jungle environments. There are plenty of examples of that.
(20:06):
Because those areas are gonna have dry spells as well,
there's gonna be combustible materials, and therefore it's a part
of those environments is as well. Yeah, totally you see
it in grasslands, you see it in savannahs. There is
such a thing as desert fire. And also one of
the things about fire on earth is that wildfires trigger
cycles of wildfires. Fire begets fire in a certain way because,
(20:29):
for one thing, you can look at how fire prevents
bigger fires. This makes any sense, there's another reason for
control burns, Yeah, exactly. So, like small fires in a
certain area will clean out the underbrush, you know, dry
vegetation near the ground that if allowed to grow unchecked
(20:50):
by fire, could eventually lead to larger fires that actually
catch you know, the crowns of trees on fire, and
those become very hot and spread very uncontrollably. Yeah, it's
there was There was certainly a time in like forest
management and agriculture where I think we we just we
just said, Okay, fires are bad, We're gonna we're gonna
cut them out wherever possible. But yeah, you just you
(21:10):
just destabilize the natural environment and the environment's ability to
roll with periodic wildfires. And on the subject of periodic wildfires,
we mentioned regimes of fire rightlier, and that's a that's
a great term, yeah, because it sounds like, you know,
fire demons ruling them a broken world, a new flaming
king since to the throne of coals. Yeah, yeah, that's
(21:31):
some dark imagery, Joe. But but it's a good day
for that sort of thing. Um. Yeah, So you have
you have a single forest fire that's an event, just
a fire event, but then a series of fires over time.
That's a fire regime, and that a fire regime. That
is what organisms evolve to roll with, not an individual fire,
but but regimes of fire. It's sort of like how
(21:54):
organisms are not going to be adapted to an individual storm,
but they will be adapted to the local climate, right. Yeah,
And of course the regimes are gonna vary in some areas,
some areas gonna be more prone to wildfires than others,
as we discussed, because you're talking about about the various
factors here. Human agriculture of course alters the situation somewhat.
(22:14):
You have interactions of humidity, conditions, fuels, ignition sources. All
these determined the particular regions fire regime. You also have
to take into account topography and wind, like what's gonna
how are those going to affect the spread of the flames.
And certainly I think any of our listeners who live
in more in places where wildfires are more of a
(22:35):
regular concern um. And so we think about California, Arizona,
places like that. You know, you're gonna be far more
familiar with these realities than than a lot of our listeners.
You know, one of the craziest looking wildfires I've ever
seen was from some footage I saw of wildfire in Australia.
Have you ever seen video of like the the Australian
fire storms and like Canberra? Oh? I don't think I have.
(22:58):
Oh man, it's otherworldly. It does not look like Planet
Earth where it is like those old illustrations from the
previous geological areas where the entire sky is orange and
like flames and sparks are just whipping around in the wind.
It is unreal. You should look that up. Fun fact.
I bring up Ian and Banks a lot in his
(23:20):
Culture series of novels because he always has some fabulous
sci fi visions that he's discussing being a technology or
certainly visions of alien life in alien worlds. And in
his just absolutely excellent book The Player of Games, Uh,
there is a there's a planet that pops into it
since it's a it's a water world. So you just
have this ring of land with this constant fire that
(23:42):
moves all the way around it, and it's an essential
part of the of of the the eco system. So
if the fire were to get put out, that seems
like that could just be like the end of life
terrestrial life on this planet. Yeah. Yeah, it's like this
alien vision on It is even more dependent on fire
than anything we could, you know, experience here on Earth.
But it serves as a kind of an interesting model too,
(24:05):
to exemplify the importance of wildfires in our own ecosystem,
to say that, yes, they do occur, and they and
in the appropriate cycles, they play an important role. All Right,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
back there will be more about alien worlds and fire. Hey.
I'm Chuck and I'm Josh and we're the host of
(24:26):
Stuff you should know the podcast, that's right, And if
you're into understanding cool and unusual and seemingly ordinary and
even boring things that are made interesting, you should check
us out. Please and thank you. We're on iTunes, Spotify,
Google Play Music, anywhere you get podcasts. All right, we're back, Okay, Robert,
(24:48):
I have a question for you because thinking about alien
worlds and fire and the fact that we live on
the only fire world, and the fact that we know
of a time in the history of the Earth where
fire was not possible on this planet was just chemically
not going to happen. Um, my question is could technological
(25:09):
civilization arise on a planet that doesn't permit fire? So
we think about um, other planets and other other biologies
were always considering this. You know, we're like, oh, you know,
our closed minds. We think everybody's got to be like
us in the universe in order to have some kind
of technological intelligence. Maybe our our minds are not too closed,
(25:34):
Maybe they're too open when we're trying to imagine, uh,
you know, powerful alien technologies, aliens with spaceships and radio
transmitters and stuff like that, arising on planets that have
different atmospheric compositions, or might be water worlds or something
like that. Because I just started to think, how on
Earth could we put on Earth it not intended? How
(25:56):
could we possibly have generated tech knowledgy on this planet
without the chemical readiness to create fire in our atmosphere?
Just imagine the life forms that arise on a planet
with a non oxygen atmosphere and no other gases that
could play the role of an oxidizer. First of all,
(26:17):
you've got the question about how how would they cook
food and stuff like that, And actually, we're gonna do
this is gonna be a two part episode about fire.
In the second episode, we're gonna talk more about the
ideas of how cooking informed the intelligent beings we became.
But also here's a maybe even a much bigger one.
What about smelting or to create metal tools? Like, how
do you create metal tools without fire? You might be
(26:39):
sitting there thinking for a second, like, well, you know,
there's other hot things, and uh, really, what else could
you use? What are you saying you would stand over
a volcano and somehow find a way to use that
to create metal tools? I mean it is it starts
becoming very difficult trying to figure out how you would
do this. And then without metal old tools, could you
(27:00):
actually expect discoveries of things like electricity, optics, fundamental forces.
Um So, it just made me wonder, well, is there
any non fire equivalent? Is there a margarine of fire
in the chemistry that's available to this universe? You know,
is there some other universal exothermic chemical reaction, a reaction
(27:21):
that puts off heat that that can be transported around
as easily as fire and started as easily as fire. Yeah,
I don't know. It's easy to think of various sci
fi visions of sort of you know, organic purely organic
species that have organic spaceships and organic technology. And you know,
I'm not totally discounting that vision, but when you start
(27:43):
breaking it down and look at look at the only
model we have for technological ascension, that the role of
fire just cannot be divided front it right, Yeah, we're
forcing one of the scenarios where we just we cannot
envision or it's very difficult to envision another system that works.
You know, I did think of one example, one counterexample
(28:04):
for cooking, and it's when when Rachel and I were
in Iceland. We were we went to a little town
called hivera Garthy where they have a basket that you
can boil an egg and well it's not boiled, where
you can steam an egg by putting in a in
a basket that hangs over a geothermal vent. This team
comes out of Yeah, I can see that working. I
(28:25):
thought you were going to go with the other like
fermentation methods of preparing food, because certainly you can make
an argument there, right, oh yeah, yeah, but that's that's
not cooking. Well, it's in a way it's cooking. It's
a it's it's cuisine. It's cuisine. Yeah, but yeah, it's
it's reatherly different from cooking. I guess. Uh. So we
were talking about this the other day and we're and
(28:45):
we were looking around and thinking, you know, somebody, somebody
has to have tackled this. There has to be a
scientist out there who's really gone in deep on this
question of technological without fire. No, I I gotta say, Robert,
this is all you. I had no idea anybody would
have written on this. Well, uh yeah, because I was surprised,
pleasantly surprised to find this a wonderful article by a
(29:06):
scientist by the name of Michael D. Swords. Swords Like
the Weapon right, uh, is titled could extraterrestrial intelligences be
expected to breathe Our air? And it was published in
a edition of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Okay, now
we should put up a big skeptics asterisk here and
say that the Journal of Scientific Exploration is a publication
(29:28):
that deals with friends fringe science like u apology and
the paranormal, the horizons of science, as they would put it. Yes,
and it has been accused by critics of promulgating pseudoscience.
I don't know how to adjudicate that here, But we
don't want to give the impression of an endorsement in
general of this journal or its contents. Uh just put
(29:48):
up this big red asterisk on the credentials of the
journal in general. But we do want to talk about
this one very interesting and at least seemingly solid paper. Yeah.
And and likewise, Sword himself is certainly no pure skeptic either.
He uh is was an editor for the journal. If
you have a UFO Studies board member of the J.
Allen Heineck Center for UFO Studies. Uh So, he's very
(30:11):
much a man who wants to believe he's retired now,
but at the time of this publication he was with
Western Michigan University. Uh and uh and and yeah, I
think that the paper itself, though, so a gainfully employed
scholars right right. So this is not like a guy
in a cabin somewhere writing about UFOs. This is this
is a and this was. And also it's worth pointing
out this again, this is a pure of view journal,
(30:32):
you know, for what it's worth. But again, when you
when you look at the actual paper, I think the
paper holds up pretty well. Well yeah, well, let's let's
see what it says. Being judged for yourself. All right. So, Swords,
whose doctorate studies are centered around the history of technology,
points out in this article that the essential nature of
fire is often overlooked by academics. He said, quote, the
(30:53):
role of fire is partially obvious and maybe not so obvious.
The maybe not is the necessar city of fire control
fire to manipulate materials and break them down into their
elemental components. Breaking materials down is the road, the only
road to establishing material technology that makes sense to me.
I think that's in line with what I was just saying. Yeah.
(31:15):
He mentions that the critics of this only road approach
that insisted there are alternatives such as depending on additive
approaches uh, the addition of one substance to another components elements, alloys, etcetera.
As a means up for new material science is without fire. Wait,
how would you create alloys without fire? Well, that's the
(31:37):
that's the argument point, isn't it. Uh So this is
this is how he responds to those critics, he says,
and he has some wonderful vinegar here to his response.
He says, I am open to someone demonstrating this sort
of non fire based material science. But where these components,
elements and alloys will originally come from without fire somewhere
down the road remains a complete puzzle to me. It
(31:59):
is in the breakage, manipulation and recombination of materials that
one achieves achieves metallurgy, much of chemistry, glass technology, polymers, etcetera.
Without fire leading to metals technology, there is no control electricity,
no electric age, and certainly no nuclear age. Yeah. That
(32:20):
that's a totally different thing here too. Uh. Nuclear age
makes me think about the energy we use to power
our society, not just the creation of tools, but we
depend on on free access to two easy energy for
everything that makes modern life, you know, easily livable and
modern science easy to do with all the equipment and
(32:41):
electronics and stuff like that we have. Uh, in a
world without that, what would your energy source be? I mean,
I guess you could have I don't know, hydroelectric dams.
But if you don't have metals to conduct, I don't know.
I mean, yeah, I'm I'm I'm at a loss. Yeah.
He kind of summarizes this all by saying, all technology
(33:04):
on a fireless world would be the simple utilization of
what nature gives one, an almost passive interaction. Fire is
the gate to the possibility of high technology, the only gate.
So so the idea is that certainly you could have
individuals finding stuff, exploiting natural environments, boiling their fish and
event or what have you. But can they actually make anything?
(33:25):
Can they actually achieve high technology? Can they build a
spaceship or say even a toaster? Uh? The argument Swords
would make is no, and he sort of And he
also goes on to sort of challenge anyone out there
show me an idea that's not complete, like fantasy, fantasy
sci fi. Uh, and I will accept it, but I
haven't seen it yet. Well, I guess for me, the
question would be looking at chemistry. I mean, I was
(33:47):
trying to find is there an example of something else
like fire? Again, with fire not being a substance so
much as a chemical reaction and interaction or process, is
there another universal exother chemical reaction you could come up
with where well, if you mix heat and these other
two readily available types of substances, you will get an
(34:09):
easy to produce chemical reaction that heats things up, and
you can do it almost anytime anywhere on the planet.
I don't know, I don't know of any evidence of
what that would be, but perhaps there is such a thing. Yeah,
he he goes on in his paper to say, I mean, basically,
you need to have that free oxygen um. You know
you can. You can. There their arguments for other combustion supporters,
(34:33):
chlorine and other halogens, mainly, he says, but but really
you keep coming back to the necessity for oxygen. Now.
He also brings up we mentioned sea worlds earlier, the
other water world or whatever you want to call them, um,
And in the past episode we tried to imagine this too.
If you had like a dolphin race on a on
a on a water world, would they be capable of
(34:53):
achieving technology? Would mermaids be able to build your soul
like a like a race of intelligent dolphin creatures, not
like a dolphin race, like they're trying to get to
the finish. No, no, not not a not not a
race in that sense, but but powerful civilization, right, yeah,
would that be possible? Or mermaids or deep ones or
whatever a vision of undersea life you want to toy
(35:15):
with here, Cathulhu has no technology. Yeah, I mean that
would be the argument here, because this is what what
old Mike Swords has to say. He says, for those
who suggest that an alternative world not caring about such
wildfires because it was all oceanic is a possibility for
a high oxygen atmosphere, I say the idea is clever,
but all wet. The technological life form needs to control
(35:38):
fire where it lives. Underwater seems a poor combustion environment.
Occasional fire seeking dog paddling at the surface seems worse.
We need a land animal, and we therefore need a
well behaving atmosphere with oxygen in a controlled fire zone.
So that kind of that that kind of underlines it
(35:58):
rather well, I think. Okay, Well, so it seems like
doctor Swords here is agreeing with our intuitions about the
necessity of fire for the development of technological civilization. But
I still I would like to hear arguments to the contrary.
I haven't found any. I don't know if you did
not run across any other in any other voices on this.
But yeah, if y'all out there have any have any
(36:20):
great ideas about how no, here's the way they could
do it, Here's how you could make metal tools without fire,
I would love to hear them. Yeah, I'm fascinated, and
I don't think uh Swords has necessarily dropped the final
word here, But but so far I remained with my
mind unchanged. Uh. And certainly there have to be some
great examples from sci fi out there as well, varying
(36:43):
levels of you know, scientific authenticity, But I'd love to
love to hear those models. Okay, I mentioned this earlier
in the episode, I think, but this is actually going
to be part one of a two part episode we're
doing about the scientific history of fire, where this time
we tried to look at a little bit more at
the chemistry of the world, the atmosphere, possibilities on a
on a no oxygen planet, and how fires shaped life.
(37:05):
But next time we are going to be turning our
eye to the world of the human, the divine spark,
and what fire means for human life. In the meantime,
be sure to check out stuff to blow your mind
dot com. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes,
blog post videos, links out to our various social media
accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and more. And
(37:27):
as always, if you want to get in touch with
us directly with feedback about this episode or any other,
or with a great idea about how aliens on an
oxygen free, fireproof world can make some exothermic reactions and
get some swords maybe or other metal metal tools, you
can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and bathands of
(37:57):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Y
f F Far Far far f
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