Into the Dyson Sphere

When it's not showing up in episodes of "Star Trek" or imprisoning Necron Star Gods, Dyson spheres are the brainchild of physicist Freeman Dyson. But what exactly are they are? Join Robert and Julie as they break down the nature of Dyson spheres.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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 lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
where are the aliens? Where are they are hiding? In
plain sight? Like like where like you like in this room? Um, well, no,

(00:28):
not this room, but somewhere out there in the universe
because they were in here, they could be I mean,
I guess they could be in the recording booth there,
which is the I mean, we're in the sort of
the podcast chamber, and then there's like this soundproof booth
at the end that kind of looks like a like
a phone booth, and I can't really see inside it,
So there could be an alien in there. Well, it
could be like nano sized aliens like enmeshed in this

(00:50):
and the foam batting, but around us. But could they
be out there? You're saying they could be out there,
like their whole planets could be hidden, their whole civilizations
could be in their press in in the the universe,
could be hidden from us. And so the whole reason
that we haven't found aliens could be because we just
cannot see them. That's right, it's a possibility, Steady. Have

(01:11):
you looked into this, Yes, they have. I don't think
they've found anything yet. I don't know if they're doing
much looking at the moment without the funding at all.
But but yeah, so what does this have to do
with the Dyson sphere? Uh, it's nothing to do with
vacuums not. Yeah, that's every time I mentioned this podcast
and my wife she was like, oh, you're doing what
I'm back, I mean, she was, well, that's what an

(01:34):
intriguing product that is, and the adventure that that everybody
thinks about this Dyson dude. Yes, but it's not about that, No,
not about that at all. The dycen s fear is
one of those things that imagine a lot of you
do not need any explanation at all. You're like, yeah,
totally diycens fear. I know what the concept is, but
it is, Uh. It has shown up in various sci

(01:54):
fi works, so like like anyone has ever watched like
Star Treking next generation probably has seen one, or you've
read enough sci fi books. But for the rest of you,
it is basically the concept of all right, we have
the sun, and the sun is just this giant generator
of energy, like our entire solar system is powered by
the sun. So how would one harness the energy of

(02:15):
the sun if you wanted to greedily take all of
it up, if you wanted to be like my sister
when my family used to go out to have Mexican
food for my one sister would order the cheese dip
and then we would try and eat the cheese dip
and she would say, no, no, this is my cheese
dip because I ordered this cheese dip as my meal,
and so only I get to eat it. So if
you were gonna have that, take that attitude and and

(02:36):
use it on the sun, how would you collect all
of it and make sure that you greedily um uh
dipped all of the solar energy up on your chips
for yourself. And I was an alien and you were
an alien, I would laugh, so it you weren't okay
if you were an alien, and take it with me,
or I would construct a giant shell around it. Exactly

(02:57):
there you go, giant shell around it that were the
interior of the shell absorbs the energy and doesn't let
anything escape so that nobody else gets to enjoy the sun.
And uh and all it's been. She's dipped for all
aliens and only aliens, right, Yeah, So yeah, this is
this idea of this Dyson sphere, ye sort of. I mean, yeah,

(03:20):
this whole podcast is gonna be getting a little deeper
into the idea what it means. But first, why don't
we call it a Dycen sphere. What's the Dyson part?
We're of course talking about a man by the name
of Freeman Dyson, who is a pretty amazing guy. He's
still he's still with us. He's eighty seven years old,
and um, he was something of a mathematics prodigy. Um

(03:43):
he uh you know, a British extract, came here at
the age of like twenty three and was like immediately
contributing like in major ways to our understanding of physics,
unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory. And he he really, I
mean he's been there through some through through the development
of modern physics. Really, I mean some very exciting development,

(04:06):
hanging out with Einstein, um Fineman bore Firmy, um up Oppenheimer.
I mean, the list goes on. And he's and and
he's still just the sharp incredible mind. Yeah, he's an
incredible thinker, and Oliver Sacks is a good friend of
his and says like his plasticity of mind is amazing
and the fact that he can still think so vitally

(04:29):
at this age and have so many interesting ideas is
pretty incredible when most twenty holds are walking around with
probably less less imagination. And um, and not just imagination,
but I mean, this is someone who has made huge
contributions to his field. Yeah, and uh, and was influenced
by sci fi and uh, you know, grew up you know,

(04:49):
reading about spaceships and he is a boy he sketched
plans for a rocket ship that would you know, explore
the universe. And then when he we got older, he
actually worked on the the Ryan Project, which I've blogged
about in the past. I can't remember if we've mentioned it.
We may have mentioned it on a previous podcast. It
was in passing. But the project to Ryan was was
going to uh be powered by nuclear detonations. Like imagine

(05:15):
a spaceship where every time instead of like having like
a thruster blast coming out the back, imagine some dude
standing in the back of it and just pitching an
atomic bomb out every time they needed to blast forward.
A little bit. No, imagine how awful that would be
for us earthlings. Yeah, Like basically for the ship to
leave the planet, you would have to have like multiple

(05:37):
atomic detonations and then just steady atomic detonations to to
fly this thing around. But at the time, but there
was a time when this was like, well when before
we realized how environmentally disastrous this concept was, it was like, well,
this could work as an actual solution, is an actual
solution and uh um, and Dyson was one of these
guys that was like, yeah, we can we can totally

(05:58):
do this, we can build this and we'll be exploring
uh we'll be flying off the Saturn within like two decades.
So he's he has a great futurist mind. Um, and
when when he's handed a problem, he's great at tackling
and figuring out, well, let me let me take a
shot at it. So he took a shot at this
question that we uh sort of fumbled with at the

(06:19):
very beginning of this podcast, where are the aliens? If
there is alien life elsewhere in the universe, why have
we not seen it? And for him, it's it's because
they're all hiding out in this sphere right right, but
not in a sense of like, oh, there are humans
out there, let's not let them see us, let's get
behind the these. No, it comes down to two to energy,

(06:41):
all right, And we should probably just mentioned briefly the
Kardaschef scale, which is the is not the Kardashian scale
that would entail, but I'm sure it would be it
would entail something. Yeah, basically it comes into two. Uh.
It comes immediately to this idea of let's look for

(07:01):
alien life else elsewhere in the universe. What would it
look like, how would we tell that it's there? And uh,
there's the theory is that it would come down to
energy consumption. So the scale divides civilizations into three basic types.
There's a type one civilization, and I should point out
that we are not yet a type one civilization, right.
You have to master this level of energy consumption and harnessing,

(07:25):
right in order to be a type one. Yeah, it's
like dungeons and dragons. You know, it's like you're you're
leveling up, you know, to your right. Now you're a
level zero, um, haffling thief. Right. If you get enough
experience points, then you get to level one, and that
comes with new benefits and this would be your your
own planet, right Type one. So if if master masters

(07:46):
of planetary Internet means they can harness the some energy
of an entire world. So we're not there yet. There's
a lot of energy that we can't master, uh, that
we can't that we haven't figured out how to how
to use and uh, and so we're not there yet.
Then there's a type too civilization, and they can summon
the power of an entire star system. So basically they
can enslave a star. They can take a star and

(08:09):
claim it as their own cheese dip. And then a
type three civilization uh commands the energy on a galactic scale,
all right, so they can they control a lot of
cheese dip, an enormous amount of cheese dip, and and
are using a kind of technology that we can barely fathom,
like it's beyond our real understanding of how it might

(08:30):
even work. So a lot of what we're talking about
is type we're gonna be talking about in this podcast
is type two technology. But but some of it is
is conceivably Type one as well, So it would make
sense those type to civilization Likenalian civilization, which is a
bit more complexness, a lot more complex would be able
to construct this sphere. Right, yeah, yeah. The idea that

(08:52):
that the Dyson hat was all right, if there are
type too civilizations out there, what should we look for? Alright, well,
all right, there harn sing all this energy. They have
to use all this energy to to power their civilization,
to power their um, their interstellar transportation. How are they
going to harness the energy of a star? And this
was a scheme that he came up with. It basically

(09:14):
comes down to to the to the idea of of
just completely surrounding a son with energy collectors. All right, now,
don't think of Uh. I've sort of avoided talking about
the sci fi stuff, but I should probably mention it now.
Most people, I think have encountered the Dycen sphere on
one episode of Star Trek the Next Generation called I

(09:36):
think the Relic, and it had like the dude who
played Scottie was in it. That's I mean, it's been
like a decade since I've seen it. I remember that
there was a Dicen sphere. It was awesome because it
was like this giant metal thing and you flew through
an The Enterprise flights through a door in it, and
on the inside there is a son and they're like
continents and cities all on the interior of this giant's

(10:00):
this giant sphere. Well, okay, see this is where it
gets murky because, as you said, Dyson is someone who
can actually create real um solutions to problems. And so
here's the stycen sphere that he actually is trying to
create to not only explain aliens, but also saying, how
can we actually harness the star here and all the

(10:21):
energy we put these collectors around it? So there there
are some actual real applications and and something that might
be able to be done a version of it. Right. Um,
But then it's also butting up against sci fi right,
and um it one is begetted by the other because
if you look at Dyson's vision here, it's based on

(10:41):
a sci fi model. Yeah, it's very confusing that Dyson
himself says, oh, you should really call it like a
stapledon um of sphere because he was inspired by a
book called Book by the Name of Starmaker by Olaf
Staples Stapledon, which was written in so a lot of
people encounter thet our trek thing, which is need in

(11:02):
its own in its own way or they have encountered
it and in various other books. Uh. But but the
original idea was was basically the idea of a lot
of independent solo collectors um in orbit around a sun
to the point where it almost blocked out right, like
a hundred thousand of these collectors in orbit. Right if
you see, like if you seen the movie Wally and

(11:22):
when Wally leaves the planet and the spaceship, that the
Earth is just choked by satellites, Like, imagine that kind
of situation, except multiplied and in surrounding a start. Well.
And some people would even say that a satellite is
sort of the first step to doing this anyway, um,
and that there are multiple ways to try to play
this out if we wanted too. Um. But so we

(11:45):
should probably discuss the different types of spheres. Um. You
know that the sci fi one that most people know,
which is the type two, the one with a shell
around it and talking about what is feasible and what's not. Yeah,
so the swarm one is pretty the one we're talking
abut where it's like a lot of um independent pieces,
which is sometimes called a Dicen swarm one. Al So

(12:05):
type one, and uh, and and the other thing about
this is there's a lot of a lot of our
dealings with the with the diycen sphere are kind of
as a just imagineering, as a thought experiment is kind
of a you see physicist online who are just kind of,
I wonder how this would work, and they start crunching
the numbers on it because it's you know, it's kind
of amazing and it's a cool thing to do in

(12:27):
your spare time. So there are a lot of different
just you know, just d y I your own sphere, yeah,
your own cosmic mega architecture. But but yeah, so if
you're going for something rigid though, an actual like giant
eggshell surrounding a sun like the star Trek one, like
the star Trek one, um, Yeah, that's a slightly different

(12:49):
thing because when you're doing like the gravitational effects of
having all these little satellites around the Sun, it's just
these independent little things that are affected, right, it's a swarm.
But if you're talking about one giant structure, you're talking
about one enormous structure. I mean it's gonna be um
like one or two astronomical units wide. An astronomical unit

(13:10):
is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, um
well huge. Yeah, And it captures our imagination because there's
this idea that you could create out of this shell
land so to speak, or habitable areas that would greatly
outnumber the amount of land that we have here on Earth,
and that on the interior, like a hollow earth kind

(13:31):
of a thing. Yes, yeah, And I actually had to
draw several pictures of this to sort of cement it
in my mind because you hadn't seen the Star Trek episodes,
so he didn't have no no, but I still was
thinking to myself what area is going to be habitable
and what areas are going to have gravity and what
aren't because if that sphere surrounding the Sun was not spinning, um,

(13:52):
you know, there's not going to be any real I
mean there's there might be depending on the mass of
the of the actual structure, there might be some gravity,
but but ultimately you would need either artificial gravity, which
does not exist in some according to some cannot exist,
or you're going to need that thing to spin, to
create to rotate, to create a kind of forces necessary

(14:13):
for people to live on the inside of it. Right,
And the other cool parture of this too, is that
it really could be hospitable in the sense that if
you are to enclose a star, you would actually have
the sort of temperatures that like room temperature that you enjoy. Now, um,
you might not have gravity unless you're rotating, but you
would have then, perhaps only at the equator. Yes, yes, exactly.

(14:34):
So if you're going to enclose this thing, and um,
you're gonna do it, right, then you're probably going to
have a structure that's really heavy, right, and it's gonna
you're also gonna want to rotate it, and it's going
to have to withstand the force of the rotation. Right.
So that's where a lot of the problems come into
I mean, this is again it's very interesting thought experiment,
but we don't currently have the materials that could actually

(14:57):
do this, that could withstand the rotation. Yeah, and then
what if an asteroid hits it right, Yeah, you get
knocked off center all of a sudden, you're colliding with
the with the sun itself and melting. Yeah, that's no good.
That that does nobody any good. Yeah, but that would
make a really great Bruce Willis film right there, I
think where he has to save the dicensphere. Yeah. I

(15:19):
just think if you're a civilization capable of building a dicensphere,
Bruce Willis is probably not ranked too highly in your
your backup plans if things go wrong. I mean, it
seems like you probably have something more impressive to turn town.
I don't know. Do you talk to Jerry Barckheimer. Um.
The other thing is you would have no night right right,
unless you had some sort of scheme in mind. Um

(15:40):
and which which reminds me I believe you know we're
talking about like only the this the slim center of
it would be habitable, which kind of leads the idea
of a ring world like the Larry Niven uh invented concept,
which would be kind of like a dicensphere, but instead
of being a giant circle that closes a star, it
would be like a tire, like an artificial Rings of

(16:03):
Saturn kind of situation, um, where you'd still have people
on the inside, but it would just be like the
inside of a wheel. Uh. Like Like imagine a spare
tire and there's a sign in the middle, and then
there are cities all up in the inside of the tire. Okay,
like that I've also heard it explained sort of like
a canister too, right, So you're capped off. And then yeah,
again the center where it's habitable. And this again is

(16:26):
because you've got the gravitational effects or optimal at this
sort of equator line of this area at the polls,
we would have virtually no gravity whatsoever. So yeah, and
again there's the asteroid problem. Yeah, but this is the
this is the sci fi configuration that we're talking about,
this this other one that Dyson one would just go

(16:49):
back to really quickly. Again, you've got these stationary or
not stationary, but you've got these orbiting collectors of energy
and that actually could be used in the future. You
could store it the anti matter um there you know,
they're there are things you could do with this. Yeah,
And the thing is you would you would collect all
this energy with all these satellites and then in this scenario,
you would being that to another uh, habitable space station

(17:13):
or ship course or even a planet. Um. So that's
how that system would work. It would not be people
necessarily living in each of all these little things orbiting
the Sun, which would be kind of cool in and
of itself that it's kind of like there's some arguments
saying that we should have solar harvesters on the Moon
and then being the energy back to our planet. It's
some of the same concepts in play here. But of

(17:35):
course the problem is we haven't even mastered our type
one civilization yet, and that's we are really talking about
a type to civilization here. And there's some even more
advanced like ideas. They're like I've seen some some proposals
for a like a type three um dicen sphere which
would would can use even thinner materials um and would

(17:55):
it would be kind of like a big bubble around it. Um.
I've seen like really a concepts. So I mean this
would definitely be a tie three uh for the shock
Shocked of Thruster concept, which would involve like basically the
the star, like the structure around a star becomes a
spaceship and just takes a start with it. M M yeah, okay,

(18:20):
so like again, but that's just crazy advanced future. Oh yeah, yeah,
I'm just I'm trying to Yeah, that's not really screwing
in my head right now, I have to say, but
I do think it's an interesting proposition about the aliens, uh,
not because I believe that we have aliens roaming around
in the universe per se a little green men in
that in that scenario. But what I do think is
interesting is that people have brought us up as an

(18:42):
explanation for dark matter. And we'll get to that after
this quick break. This presentation is brought to you by
Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're back matter. Dark matter.
It's a problem for us, right because there's a bunch

(19:05):
of it. We don't know what it is. We know
that's uh composing something like of of the universe, and
yet we can't see it. But we know just with
our mathematical equations that it's there. So people have said, okay,
if it's perhaps the situation here. The crux of it
is that these aliens, who are you know, type two

(19:26):
type three civilizations, have you know, created so many different
dice in spheres that it's all being contained in there,
like the universe is just more developed than we thought. Yeah, yeah,
and we just can't spot it. Like you know, there's
a there's a gazillion of these dice in spheres out there.
It's like the SRaw right, Yes, it's like it's like

(19:47):
everywhere exactly exactly enclosed in the structure um. And it
really is an intriguing idea, but there are a couple
of reasons why I just couldn't be I'm sorry to say. Well.
One of the big ones, of course, is just the
amount of materials required, especially when you start talking about
this solid enclosure, because but even the satellites to build

(20:08):
that many satellites, I mean, the Sun is huge, guys,
it's a it's it's tremendous. Most stars are enormous, and
and ours isn't even particularly enormous sun um. I mean,
there there's there would be a problem just getting enough
materials out of our own solar system to build this
sort of right, there aren't enough heavy materials in the
universe to actually construct the amount of dicen spheres that

(20:32):
you would need to house all of these aliens hiding
out and and hoarding the dark energy. Yeah, it's like
the dark matter, and what are you building it for
if the yeah? Yeah, so, but again it's very clever
the idea that they might be doing that. And then
there's the fact that we could still detect a dicen
sphere because it would be radiating key, right, Yeah, they
would have to be jetting some radiation, you know. I

(20:55):
mean it can only be self contained to a certain point.
Uh far as physics go, they would they would would
have to be able to detect it. So I mean
that was the back to Dyson's original argument, Like he
was just saying, we haven't seen aliens. Well maybe this
is what we should look for, because this is what
their energy collection might be like, even sufficiently advanced technology.

(21:17):
And and so um you know said he looked for
it a few times, you know, and and they didn't
see it. I mean, so we followed up on Dyson's
idea and we're like, no, well we don't really see
Dyson spares um and uh and Dyson didn't have I
mean he's I've seen interviews where he's kind of dismissive
of the whole thing too. You know, he's just kind
of like, oh, yeah, Dyson spares I did that. But yeah,
He's like, that was this thought that I had on

(21:38):
a Sunday afternoon. Yeah, So it's not like he was
disappointed that that we haven't found a dicens fere yet.
But the concept continues to really resonate with everyone. I mean,
besides the fact that it's just a really awesome idea. Uh,
it's it's like the modern or like the space age
Tower of Babble, you know, the Tower of Babble, the
old you know Bible story idea of the of early

(22:02):
man became became so pompous in their technological prowess that
they built that they were building this tower that would
they would actually they would touch the sky, that would
they would rival heaven, that you'd be able to that
the crews working on it would be able to shoot
arrows in the air and wing angels and watch them
plummet to the ground. You know that it was just
a yeah, but it was just an offense to God,

(22:24):
and it was about how awesome man was. And so
you know, we built towers like that every day now,
so it's no big deal. But but but what's the
space age version of that? It would be, what if
we built something so big and so awesome that we
could fit the Sun in it? Like that's that's just
that's just like we're just up in the game in
terms of of what's the most pompous thing we could

(22:46):
possibly do with technology. You know, we could build a
shell around the Sun and then keep it for ourselves.
Let's see. That's what I think is so awesome about
it too, because it shows this level of creativity we
cannot stop imagining for ourselves going beyond the boundaries that
that we know or suspect are there. Yeah, And that's
the thing it's interesting to think about because in terms
of because you could, you could come up with more

(23:07):
grandiose ideas, like what if I built a giant steel
egg and put the entire solar system in it? All Right,
well that's grandi yes, but it's that's that's that's beyond
the pale um. Whereas the idea of building a Dycen
sphere is is advanced, you know, and it's certainly pushing
the limits of what's possible in terms of matter within
our own solar system. But it's it's conceivable. We can

(23:30):
say like, well, yes, that could possibly be. And so
it's it's it's interesting to sit around and do the
math and and uh and and and also just envisioned
what it would be like to encounter it. Yeah, dycens
an interesting cat um. I remember looking up some stuff
for another podcast, doing some research, and there's an article
in Slate and he was was that for this podcast

(23:52):
for the Moment podcast. No, not for the mom podcast, Uma,
because that the mom podcast, we are always talking about
a theoretical physicist. Um. But but anyway, he was talking
an article a slate. He was actually asked what our
descendants could possibly look like a trillion years from now
when the stars have disappeared in the universe is dark

(24:12):
and freezing and so diffuse that it's practically empty from
the article, and he said, the most plausible answer is
that conscious life will take the form of interstellar dust clouds.
So for him, consciousness is just a bunch of charged
particles hanging out in a dust cloud. And he actually
thinks that our consciousness will merge into one great mind
and actually be able to transcend the locality of the physicality. Really, see,

(24:35):
that's beauty of ourselves. I know. I really think that
he's a very um exciting thinker. I think that he's
a thinker that I like thinking about. Well, excellent, UM,
give me some give me some mail to think about. Okay, yeah, yeah,
let's move on. Let's let's exit the dising sphere and
see what we have from our listeners. Here a listener

(24:57):
mail from a listener by him of Zach the a
k He says, uh high stuff to blow your mind. Crew.
I just got the house Stuff Works app, which is
available for various various platforms. Now, Um, definitely check that
out and have started listening to your podcast. I really
enjoy it. But have a notice that you don't have
any podcasts on space propulsion. I would love a podcast

(25:19):
on a realistic deep space propulsion i e. Warp drive
or hyper space or any other ideas floating around out there.
Great show, keep it up. Um. Did we do one
on solar sales or Mike? We did do one on
seller sales, so yes, I check that out. Yeah, that's
definitely space propulsion. Did we do want on warp? Uh? No,
I wrote some articles on warp, so maybe I could

(25:41):
brush up and we could do an episode on war
and the sellar sales. I think we talked about the
the nuclear warheads too as as a means of propulsion.
Oh yes, yes, yes, yeah um so so yeah, go
back through the through the catalog. We we have touched
on some space propulsion, but there are a number of
cool concepts we we have it um, and this is

(26:01):
kind of tied to It's not so much propulsion, but
it's definitely in the same field as some of these uh,
these these ideas about uh of taking science by the
horns and using it to conquer the galaxy. UM, here's
another one. This one is from Eric. Eric writes a
few years ago my local paper paper Rio Vista, California,
about twenty miles northeast of San Francisco. UM wrote a

(26:25):
headline that began a man walked into an an Isleton
bar with a porcupine. Isleton is right across the river
from Rio Vista. This sounds like the intro into yet
another joke, but it really happened. Apparently another patron of
the bar was unhappy with this probably upset animal being there,
and he and the porcupine owner began to fight. When

(26:46):
police arrived, the porcupine owner fled on his motorcycle and
led police on a on a high speed chase over
the winding levy roads. UH. The man crashed and was arrested,
but the fate of the porcupine was unknown. UH. Indeed,
there is so much wonderful, full and wrong with that story,
and and it's it's great that he brought up headlines though, because,
as we talked about in our Laughter podcast, which is

(27:07):
responding to here um, laughter and humor. You know a
lot of it comes down to this idea of the
nine and in the violation, but also to like absurd parallels.
And there's there's a classic saying about headlines. Uh that
dog bites man. It is not a good headline because
that's very natural, you know, that's the natural recession of

(27:28):
things that would happen. But man bites dog. That's a
headline that gets our attention because it's it's in a
way it's humorous because it's turning everything on its head
and so getting the pants. Yeah, so it's dancing you,
it is panting you. And as a former newspaper person myself,
I I really love a good, uh juicy headline like that,

(27:50):
that that that plays with your your expectations, that turns
words around on themselves, um and uh yeah. And any
time that you can get a sort of man by
dog effect in a headline, it's it's instantly kind of funny.
But also you're like, well, I've got to know how
that happened. I gotta know what happened to this porkpine
it was you know, never explained one of the That's

(28:12):
the other thing about the newspapers may never follow it up.
I don't know it's news when the porcupine does something wrong,
but what about when they are the porcupines exonerate? Doesn't
make the headlines at all. Porcupine exonerate, Well, that would
be a good headline, but anyway walks away list a
normal life. Yeah, that's not a story. So hey, if
you have anything to share with us, if you have

(28:33):
thoughts about Dyson spheres or want to point out any
of the numerous examples of Dyson spheres and other cosmic
megastructures from science fiction, let us know. We would love
to read us some listener mail about that on the podcast,
and you can find us, by the way, on Facebook
and Twitter. We have accounts on both of those. We
are blow the Mind, look us up, like us, follow

(28:56):
us all that and that you will be rewarded with
links to all sorts of cool stuff, and don't forget
to email us at Below the Mind at how stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities

(29:18):
of tomorrow.