July 5, 2012 • 46 mins
We all know the potentially dangerous effects of microgravity, but what are the long-term effects? Join Robert and Julie as they wonder what life will be like if evolution continues in space. Imagine the plants and the strange humans who will tend them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm truly
Douglas Julie. Are you ready for life in space in
the witless Void? Yeah? Pretty much. Yeah, I've been in
training for it. Okay, yeah because zero Yeah, of course
(00:26):
you have to stay in training, that's the thing, right, Yeah,
yeah you can't. I mean that that is the problem
of our bodies, right, We're not really built for for
the void. Yeah, the void. It's quite a quite a
hurdle to overcome when we're trying to envision this long
term future in which humans really get serious about waiting
out into the cosmic ocean. Right to steal Sagan's term there. Yeah.
(00:50):
The thing is, though, I mean, it is on the horizon.
I mean, this is one of those moments you can
probably pause and think, Okay, all of this has seemed
like some sort of crazy agenda that will never get
to But the fact of the matter is that space
colonization is sort of around the corner if you take
the wide view angle, right, Um, I mean think of
someone like Elon Musk, the PayPal guy, I mean, he's
(01:12):
publicly stated that his long term goal is to privately
fund the colonization of Mars, and he doesn't wanted money
to do that. Right. Um, you have the Polar Explorers
Tom and Tina Shorgen, and they're designing a private flight
to Mars, and recently the europe based Mars one project
announced the school of establishing a human colony on Mars
(01:32):
by three. All these things are being funded privately, which
gives them a little bit more in terms of their realization. True, okay,
these are all great plans, but but I can't help
but be reminded. I think a lot of us in
our state early twenties, we may have gotten in our
mind at one point, I'm going to move to New York.
I'm totally gonna move to New York and I'm gonna
(01:53):
be I'm gonna get a job there, and the Department's
just going to movie and all. And granted, some of
us actually do that, but for the rest of us,
there comes a point when you realize that there's a
there are a series of steps between the idea and
the reality that have to be carried out. And um,
and it's easy to skim over those when you're dreaming. Um.
(02:14):
We in our recent episode about the movie Prometheus, we
discussed magic anti gravity and or magical gravity boards spaceships.
In these dreams where we try and envision what the
future of a man's space flight will be like, we
often will just throw out a cheap uh. Not all
that will explained is explained at all our artificial gravity scenario,
(02:38):
so that we don't have to deal with the realities
of weightlessness, zero g and micro g um during the flight.
Because as we know that, and as we're going to
discuss in this podcast, uh, gravity is really essential to life.
It's essential to life as we know it, to the
evolution of life as we know it, and life as
(02:59):
it exists all around this lives in a state that
depends on gravity. Okay, So, getting back to your New
York analogy to moving in your twenties, are you talking
about something like if you don't go in your twenties
and get used to living in two hundred square feet
of space and instead you stay in your comfy place
of a thousand square feet by the time you're thirty,
you'll never be able to adapt back to that two
(03:20):
hundred square foot foot of space. Well, I think that's true,
because you do get the impression that once people moved
to New York, they cannot move out, and then they
make you know, they'll say, oh, well, you know, I
love the art here, I love the culture here, and
I'm living my dream and and all this. But but
perhaps it's simply that if they actually moved to another location,
their bodies would just fall apart on them. Okay, so
(03:43):
there's yeah, that New York has its own gravity, that's
what you're saying, much like outer space has, you know,
micro gravity. So that's the problem here, right, this adaptability,
and yet we know that we are pretty adaptable as
a species. That's right, at least over the long term.
And they've been a number of science fiction and uh,
you know, ponderings about life in a weightless environment. But
(04:04):
one that comes to mind most readily because I'm reading
it right now, are the Alsters in Hyperion, Dan Simon's
novels uh kind of a you know, an epic philosophical
space opera type of deal. And there are these uh,
these humans that have uh in the past, traveled out
into the void and have grown used to a microgravity situation.
(04:24):
So now they're like long slender humans that have to
wear powered exosuits. If they're gonna go into a world
with gravitation, they have their their suits will often have
a robotic tail on the end that helps them, uh
navigate like weightless corridors, and we and like kind of
propelled them a little bit forward. Yeah. Yeah, which is
(04:47):
an interesting idea, you know, because you're you're bringing in
ideas of not only physical changes in a weightless environment,
but also uh cybernetic augmentation, uh to cope with this
new environment of space, which is something and we've gone
into in the past when we discussed cyboards and when
we discussed the future of man space travel in the
werewolf principle. So you know, if you guys have already
(05:08):
cleared into it, this is what we're talking about today.
This idea of, um, you know, when we colonized space. Uh,
what will that be like, you know, a hundred years out,
two hundred years out, a hundred thousand years out. Not
that we can necessarily answer answer that, but we can
talk about some of the challenges we have in the
way that we have been uh genetically modified for life
(05:30):
here on Earth as opposed to space. Yeah, and not
just our journey into space, but life itself, because we're
ultimately talking about not just taking humanity and granted we're
pretty vain, so pretty vain species, So we're largely talking
about thinking humanity, but we're we're essentially talking about taking
that seed of life elsewhere. What happens when the seed
of life, Earth, life, life as we know it is
(05:52):
taken to a weightless environment or another world with a
different gravitational situation going on. It's so the most logical
starting point here is really to discuss some of what
we know about micro gravity and humans. Um. Ultimately, we
really didn't have a firm idea about the micro gravity's
(06:13):
effect on the human body until we actually got human
bodies up there. And uh, and research still continues into
how these how the effects of microgravity ravage us, how
we adapt to those of this environment, what effects it
has on the the life cycles of humans and the
bodies and life cycles of countless other organisms. Yeah, so
(06:35):
let's talk about what happens in microgravity when you throw
up a human in space. Um, yeah, and they just
stick up there. Um. What they have observed, among many
many things, is something called puffy face and skinny legs,
also known as Charlie Brown head. Okay, I like that
because he essentially up looking like Charlie Brown. Well, yeah,
because spaceflight causes a fluid shift from the legs toward
(06:58):
the head, and so you get the puffy face and
then your your legs begin and your muscles obviously to
begin to atrophy and become a bit thinner. And this
is what they call the bird like legs syndrome. Well,
our bodies are I mean, our veins are like rivers, right,
they have to flow and gravitation, gravitation, gravity, the pull
of gravity is factored into that quote unquote design. Well,
(07:20):
it's right, that makes perfect sense on Earth because you know,
you've got this heavy intercore of the Earth that is
pulling us toward it. Right that the gravity down is
so the fluid would flow down. But then you there,
you are in space, and what does it do? It
just flows up. So that is a huge problem actually,
and that's one of the reasons why, um, you do
have this muscle atrophy. And as you had noted earlier,
(07:44):
astronauts have to and crew members have to constantly work
out in order to try to keep the stasis in
their body. Yeah, there's not Basically, our skeleton is a
load bearing um structure, and if we if there's no gravity,
then there's not really any load to bear. So we
end up just constantly said constant atrophy of our muscle
uh and our skeleton system. Yeah, your muscles become dormant,
(08:06):
and your spine even begins to straighten because it doesn't
again have that gravity, um, that weight that it's fighting against.
So people tend to get taller. Innocence, Yeah, and then
of course you're rather disoriented. I mean, you get more
or less used to the environment. But here on Earth,
our brain receives information about the environment through visual cues,
the eyes, muscles and tendons. Um. You have a set
(08:31):
of sensors to detect liquid movement located in the inner ear,
and when you're in a weightless environment, it throws all
of this out of whack. So again, just the way
we've perceived the environment around us, we've evolved to proceed
a an environment with gravity that is an updown gravity,
right right, Um, So what I think is interesting about
(08:51):
that is you you talked about the vestibular system, which
is in the inner ear. It's organ way deep in
there and it's covered in thousands of tiny hair cells,
and then on top of these hair cells are tiny
little crystals that move and bend the hair cells, sending
information to the central nervous system to guide eye movements
and posture and balance. So if you don't have this
updown orientation, then all of a sudden, you don't have, um,
(09:14):
you know, a stable platform for this organ to work on.
And you began to get two different sets of data,
which caused something called space adaption syndrome, where you know,
there's nausea and vomiting. And of course I believe and
tell me if I'm right on this, this is something
that's just just happened in the first couple of days
of space flight, that your body does kind of even
(09:35):
itself out. But that's certainly a problem if you're gonna,
you know, puking for seventy two hours. Yeah, there's like
a whole series of phases one goes through on prolonged space,
well not really space journeys, but prolonged space in microgravity.
I have a blog post under somewhere I'll I'll be
linked to it in the in the blog post of
companies this podcast. But you end up basically going from
(09:57):
early on starting off with that, those feelings of nausea,
you're vomiting, um, you just feel all out of sorts,
and eventually you're reaching states where you're feeling rather euphoric,
and then there's some crankiness and just some and flash
once unless you're one of the few people that that
doesn't do that, the perfect astronaut. Uh. So we we
(10:19):
have all these things that can happen to the body
that will happen to the body in a in a
micro g environment, but we also have ways that we
try and combat it. Right. Uh. The big own of
course is exercise. Uh we're not we're not standing, we're
not walking, we're not we're not running around. So we
need to use those muscles. We have to use it
or lose it. So that's when you have things like
that like the cold Bear treadmill on I S S.
(10:41):
You know, it's it's let's get people on treadmill, let's
strap into a treadmill, and let's keep them moving. Let's
let's just keep the body active, uh, because it's I mean,
you can think of it in terms of say, say
someone's a powerlifter, they they can't take a year off
from training for powerlifting and then go back and expect
to lift gigantic weights. Right, you need to keep that
muscle tone up to do this abnormal activity. Well, your
(11:05):
body goes into the zero G and it's adapting, right,
it's saying, oh, well, we don't have to do that
work anymore. Uh, So you have to train for the
abnormal activity of daily life on earth. Yeah, there you go.
So that's a good way to try to combat it. Um.
And this is something I just wanted to say to
you that you know, for twenty three years we've had
human beings that have lived off Earth for periods of time.
(11:27):
So this is a lot of information that we have
about what's going on inside our bodies and also with
plants and other animals. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've put a
lot of thought into what happens when when people go
out there and they come back. We've studied them. Uh,
the Soviets did. They did a lot of interesting work too,
where they were answering some of like the early questions
like what happens if a man goes into space and
(11:48):
then a woman goes into space, and what if you know,
could could they could they even have have children? At
that point you know what I mean, so many questions. Uh,
we're raised early on and we're still answer during a
lot of the finer questions. Well, it's also leading us
to to look at their species like bears for instance,
to get those guys in space, you gotta get those
dudes in space. But more more to the point of
(12:10):
when they're hibernating, the fact that they don't have any
calcium loss, that their bones really strong. So you know,
we're studying their systems to try to figure out what
the magic is UM that we might be able to
that you're just getting out that we needed to get
grizzly bears in space, Well, we just do. We do. Absolutely.
Another thing that has been toyed around with UM it's
(12:30):
the use of exoskeletons UM. For instance, there was the
Russian Penguin suit back in the seventies which featured elastic
bands and pulleys UM to create the artificial force of
muscles and bones UM. And then there have been a
number of other suits have been that have been rolled
out and experimented with as well. And it's a really
interesting concept. You know, it's instead of an exoskeleton that
(12:52):
gives you superhuman strength, it gives you you have to
it gives you strength you have to struggle against. You know,
it's it's not trying to help you, it's workout. So
as I reach across this waitless environment, uh, and just
to grab my iPod or whatever that's floating in front
of me, the suit would actually make that more of
a chore than than micro gravity actually makes it. Um
(13:14):
So then that that is an interesting concept as well.
And both of these ideas show up in a little something.
I sent you a clip off earlier, and I'll i'll
clue this clip on the blog post that goes along
with this podcast. But there's a movie called The American
Astronaut by Corey mcabee. Came out several years ago. Really weird,
really fun flick, kind of US based musical, Western great
(13:39):
depression kind of a thing, very hard to descress, dustful
feeling to it, for sure. Yeah. Well there's there's a
scene where they encounter the silver Miners who are flying
around and under space in this barn shapes. It's like
it's a spaceship. It looks like a barn and they've
they have this weird thing where they're looking for this
source and this there's a star map and uh, they're
(14:01):
they're just as crazy as I'll get out because they've
been cooped up in these barns flying around in space.
Um totally waitless. So their bodies have become these distorted
things with giant swollen heads and long slender limbs and
uh and that they call it space punis in the
movie Get the Space PUNI. Yeah, And they're training one
of they have this one child is like the chosen
(14:22):
one to return to Earth to find this chart for them,
And so they've outfitted him in this body suit that
that has this kind of this kind of exoskeleton technology
that I'm talking about here, this penguin suit technology. The
idea being that this will train him up, and this
will make the child strong enough to sustain uh, the
Earth's gravitational pull. And yet and yet he's stupid, so
(14:46):
it doesn't work out. He's a good kid, But you
have to see the movie to find out how that goes.
But but I always found that that whole scenario interesting
because as silly as the film is, that actually ends
up tying into a number of interesting scientific questions. Actually,
I mean it's it's pretty great. It's very entertaining. Um,
all right, so let's talk about the space punis and animals. Yes,
(15:08):
so experiments on animals, that's uh and goes hand in
hand with space exploration and uh. And you know it
also allows us to do things like we're not gonna
be able to test when we certainly don't want to test, say,
human birth in space. We don't want to test. We
we can't test like longer life cycles of humans. So
(15:28):
we're we're very interested in seeing how various animals behave
And we've done this from the beginning, before we even
to put people in in um a spacecraft we launched
I think it was for seresis monkey, right, and then
a dog, and then various other animals insects, bears, no bears, Yeah,
but I mean it's it's really kind of surprising though,
(15:51):
because you look at some of these animals and some
adapt surprisingly well, and others that you think would would
just get along swimmingly um no fun intended don't don't
do quite as well as you would think. For instance,
they say that within five minutes, mice are floating around
in their living spaces, grooming themselves, eating, just carrying them
(16:11):
along like normal, whereas I can't help but imagine that
if I took my cat up there, Okay, would just
freak out the whole time. Oh yeah yeah. Um, fish
and tadpoles swimming loops rather than straight lines. There's just
no updown orientation here, which is interesting because you're they're
in a buoyant environment when we train, uh, we partially
(16:33):
train the astronauts in submerged environments to help them get
a handle on what's a weightless environment, what we like.
So so you would think things you think they wouldn't
they would adapt byther well, but it's not really the case.
Baby mammals have a hard time and space because they
normally huddle for warmth and space. Uh. And they are
usually going towards the nipple to to get milk. So
(16:53):
if you're floating away from the nipple, that makes it
difficulty traumatizing. That's a really horrifying image to imagine the
kitten floating away in the nipple. To see how many
times we can stay clotting away from the nipple. And um, yeah,
both birds and fish who can move three dimensionally in
their normal environments, um, they end up just going in
these loops. Um when they're when they're actually in a
(17:16):
micro g environment, so it just throws them off, even
though you would think a bird in a UH and
and a fish would do really well. Yeah. Orb spiders, Oh,
the orb spiders are pretty amazing. Now. They on you know,
on Earth, we've exquisite web designs, beautiful um you know,
very symmetrical, but as you would imagine in space, they
(17:39):
weave very wacky configurations. Again, they don't have some you know,
this access to to work off of UM and they
they're not anchored, so you do see some of the
similar actually reminded me of some of the studies of
hallucinogens and spiders and some of the strange configurations that
come out of that. What's interesting though, I was reading
(17:59):
about the one of the first spider investigations. This is
back in the nineteen three Skylab. They took two garden
cross spiders, which is a type of war weaver, up
and they let him do the thing and then uh.
And then more recently they did another experiment on the
I S s UH this speck in two does eight.
But in both experiments, the spiders initially built really distorted
(18:20):
crazy webs. But when within a few days the spiders,
they say, seem to adapt to microgravity and begin to
spend more symmetrical webs, so you still see a certain level,
you know, the spiders up there, the animals up there.
It gets its bearings and then it's been is able
to to behave with this new environment. It works. There's
(18:40):
also this idea to you that size matters. The larger
the thing that that's there, the human or the spider
or the bacteria, the better the chances of survival and adaptation. Yeah,
and then the spider, it does seem like it would
it would do particularly well because here's a creature with
multiple limbs, um, very dexterior spinning webs to move around.
(19:02):
Like if if you had to pick an animal that
would behave well in a in a weightless environment, you
think the spider would would be great, especially web building spiders. Indeed,
all right, let's talk plants, because I thought this was
really interesting. Um that it's not just that they want
to study um, you know the way that plants behave
(19:22):
in space. But there is this idea to you, there's
a psychological level for astronauts, for crew members that if
they can see a seedling, if they can see a
bit of green, um, that this is really helpful in
terms of grounding them and making feel a little bit
more like, Okay, here I am, you know, living in
you know, very sterile environment. And yes, and yet I
(19:43):
feel connected to the earth in some way. Yeah, I
can't help me be reminded of Did you ever see
silent running sci fi film with Bruce Dearn in it
where he was he was in space and he had
these three little robots with him and he's he's caring
for these gardens, these massive biospheres in space. It's a
classic film, but better anyway, the idea that you're in space,
(20:06):
but then here are these natural green environments. There was
a film with a strong ecological message, but in watching
it you saw high tech space travel and green environments
together and it was very comforting. Um uh. The Danny
Boil movie Sunshine also had scenes where you see people
growing things and uh, and yeah, you can imagine going
a little seer crazy if you didn't have that around you.
(20:26):
But these movies also had artificial gravity. And when you
do not have a form of artificial gravity going along,
things get rather complicated because I mean, think of your plants,
I mean they're growing in soil. How does how does
this the soil nourish the plant? How does the plant
get water? Well? And you've got your window plant right,
so it's getting some you know, dright sunlight right there. Um,
(20:47):
you've got the soil and the water water droplets in
space floating away. Um. So yeah, I mean it's it's
a bit of a conundrum. Yeah, I mean you end
up with to depend more and more on hydroponic type
systems or um. Interesting, I saw you've seen these plants
that grow upside down, right, It's like an upside down planner.
(21:08):
You can maybe see something like that working working well
adapted because that too depends on gravity because you're putting
the water in the top of it. But yeah, but
I can imagine specialty planters might become popular. Well. University
of Arizona has a mock up of a giant pod
like greenhouse for space and US plants some pods and
basically they would supply half of the daily calories for
(21:31):
astronauts as well as all of their daily drinking water
and their oxygen. What kind of plants are we talking?
They didn't go into specifically what kind of plants because
you know, this is just a prototype phase right now.
Handfuls of algae. Right, Um, possible because actually the vegetation
we're looking at is is actually not land vegetation. Vegetation.
(21:53):
We're just looking at let's grow carrots in space. But
let's see what what we can grow that's nutritious that
actually might work well. And you it's something that was
really hardy, that didn't need a ton of sunlight, um, etcetera, etcetera.
But the idea here is, um, it's pretty cool because
you can recycle the nutrients in the water and uh.
But you know, as it always comes down to, it's
it's a matter of practicality because something like this has
(22:16):
a larger payload, it's harder for you to get it
up into space. Right. But it is the first step
to possibly creating this sort of crop like system. UM.
I also read that if we were to grow algile
mats in space, they would end up actually growing in
these three dimensional communities like almost like big cubes of
of of matter. It's interesting to think about that like
(22:39):
a scaffolding situation, or just that the structure themselves would
begin to scaffolding. But but it becomes becomes interesting to
imagine how we might tinker genetically with our vegetation to
maybe engineer the type of plant that would sort of
grow in floating clumps. Yeah yeah, I mean, lord, no
stuff grows on space on space stations, because I've read
(23:03):
some of the accounts of how how grungy uh like,
uh like the Soviet stations particularly, but would sometimes get
you're talking bathrooms here. Yeah, yeah, So so that that's
the thing that a lot of microbial life, I mean,
it's particularly hardy, and and we'll be able to grow
both inside and outside potentially the spaceships. So all right, Well,
(23:24):
let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
we'll talk about not only our own evolution here on life,
but the possibility of evolution humans evolving in space. All right,
we're back. Um experts seem to agree that life as
we know it is again very very much tied to
(23:45):
gravity if there was no I mean in a very
large in a very large sense. Gravitation is one of
the primary um uh stitches in the fabric of reality.
And if you take that out of the equation, things
tend to sort of fall apart. It becomes hard to
imagine the structure of the universe itself, much less this
little thing that happens to be growing on some of
(24:07):
some of the the orbs in this grand design. So
naturally gravity is important to life. Um. That being said,
life is pretty hardy. So uh, it seems that once
life has evolved on a world with gravity, it had
had a chance to travel into a witless environment, it
(24:29):
would be able to thrive as long as the resources
were there. It would probably have to have some help.
It would probably have to have an intelligent work worker
architect there to make sure everything is getting water, that
thing manipulating the environment in a way that that would
nourish it. So creating an environment within an environment in space,
is that what you're talking about? Yeah? Um, And I
(24:51):
think that some of the clues that we have about
this this um ptation or this ability for us to
really um kind of more ourselves to environments is best
looked at in the context of when we kind of
crawled out of the sea, right, because that's where you
really see gravity come into play and how species were
formed or or became more and more complex and adapted. Yeah.
(25:14):
I mean it's you have this buoyant environment in in
the water and then if you're you're climbing out of
that suddenly you're gonna we're talking a lengthy process here,
and not just not just yesterday it was a dolphenomenal wolf.
You know, life moves at a small smaller pace than that,
but but still that's a huge change, and you could
(25:35):
you could definitely um compare that change to the the
Earth to micro g or the micro g back to
Earth scenario, right, because if you're just crawling out and
you're you know that's you're some sort of creature who's
on all fours then and you're quite small, then you're
gonna have a different gravitational load than another creature that
can can actually get up on its hind legs and
(25:57):
become vertical and even larger. So you get this idea
that as as a result of all these different changes,
these directional changes, right horizontal versus vertical, you have moving
fluids within the organism and structures that help support this
load and and uh musculature that supports this load real quick.
(26:19):
In case study that the kind of that ties into
that snakes um snakes lood in various environments, and it's
really interesting when you compare tree snakes to sea snakes.
Tree snakes spend most of their time either going up
or down trees. So they're they're in a they're in
a vertical alignment in a in a world full of gravity.
(26:42):
Sea snakes, on the other hand, they're swimming around in
this buoyant environment. Um. As a result, tree snakes have
their hearts located closer to their brain, and in experiments
are the most gravity resistant. Sea snakes, of all snakes,
the least gravity resistant because their hearts further away from
their brain. And we have that same problem with our
(27:02):
astronauts in which the fluids are flowing upward. Right. So
for your tree snakes, it's perfectly fine because it's you know,
all the machinery is pretty close together. It's pretty interesting. Yeah,
Like I said, it's a little a little more light
on what we're talking about here, um in terms of
the effects of gravity and their lack of gravity on
an organism. Okay, so we've seen what has happened over
(27:25):
you know, from four billion years ago when it was
just you know, a bit of bacteria to us, you know,
emerging out of the sea and becoming a more and
more complex species and a larger species and therefore more
prone to the effects of gravity. Let's talk about this
really very cool idea of how we might evolve in space. Yeah,
(27:47):
I mean it's I mean cool, but also potentially horrific
because we're talking about people get a little uncomfortable when
you talk about fundamentally changing the human form and and
shifts and what it is to be human. And we
talked about that with with cyborgs. The idea that as
we continually augment ourselves to deal with new environments, to
(28:07):
what extent does that the humanize us? And then to
what extent do do we let environments change us? And
how does that alter the human argument? And yet you know,
we're we're kind of a migratory animal, right, Like this
is going to happen um and and I think according
to too many, it's vital to the long term survival
(28:27):
for human rights, right uh. And whether or not you
agree with that, still, you know you have this idea
of the human body adapting. I mean just think about
like the Neanderthal, right, a very different person I guess
you could say than than Homo sapien in terms of
this really heavy muscle liture. And we were you know,
much more successful because we didn't have to have all
(28:48):
of that that body weight in that mass, and we
didn't need quite as much energy. So when you start
to look out a hundred years, five hundred years, a
hundred thousand years from now, you know, what will the
human body look like if we be um space dwelling beings. Well,
it was interesting. I was reading this article The Impact
of Gravity and Life by Emily are More, a Holton's
(29:08):
NASA Research Center researcher, and she made the argument that
ET is basically a good or reasonable model of what
humans who continue to evolve in in a micro g
zero G environment might look like. Well, and you take
the leg situation right, I don't necessarily need legs of space. Yea,
(29:29):
So they're they're stumpy and barely usable. However, long skinny arms,
not a lot of muscles going on there. Um, you
know ET doesn't really have guns, but but video has
very long arms and and dexterious fingers for manipulating buttons.
Um kind of a swollen manatee like body and uh
in a giant head and fluids. Giant. Yeah, because you
(29:55):
get into issues of looking at at how bodies behave
in a buoyant and ironment. Look at look at mammals
that live in the ocean. Uh so some scientists, so
that you can you can see that as a potential
model of what what prolonged exposure to zero G might
might do to the human body. We've sort of become humanities,
(30:17):
if you will, well in your posture, which change. Um,
they're there are all these different elements that you wonder
how your body might adapt. But still, of course life
is more than just this form. It is also the
the the the the continuing cycle of life and the
propagation of new species and new generations. So um, at
(30:39):
some point these e t s are going to have
to uh, well, they're gonna have to do it. Uh. Actually,
which there there has been a at least a wee
bit of research into that. There have been there there
have been you know, studies and papers where they argue
that you would need certain docking harness situations to really
make um, human intercourse possible in outer space. So I
(31:02):
don't know how et s do it, but they would,
they would, they would find a way of to talk
each other basically, probably be some sort of special space
furniture involved. But then what happens when the animal is
going to give birth? Right? Well, here's here's though. The
idea that before we can even get to et um
the et versions of ourselves, um, if we are to um,
(31:26):
you know, propagate out in space. That if we were
to do that, and we're to do colonize Mars, for instance,
then we would really have to make sure that there
would be a fairly large mix of genes expressed. What
am I? What am I saying here? Like, we don't
want a small population of that ends up? Um, you know,
basically you don't want an inbred colony of of people
(31:49):
with space penis. Right, that's gonna say. Then then you
just have the space penis. Um. So you know, you'd
want to make sure that there was enough genetic material
that essentially that people were returning to Earth and propagating
there and then again, um, maybe you'd have more and
more generations, more people colonizing that. You need diversity for
(32:09):
any population to survive not only the ravages of some
sort of off world potentially hostile situation, but things as
simple as UH diseases, the emergence of a disease. If
you don't have enough gene genetic diversity, one illness could
wipe out everyone because everyone has the same weaknesses. Um,
just expressed over and over again. Well, and there's also
(32:30):
this idea too that if the body is now trying
to naturally select for living for long periods of time
in space, that this is going to play out in
increased infant mortality. So you're probably gonna see this because
the body is trying to figure itself out. UM. And
you know this, it may be sort of difficult to
(32:50):
to have UM children, at least at first in space. Again,
because we're trying to adapt and we we've conducted experiments
with animals UM giving birth in space or while I
see giving birth, for instance, frogs. We've looked at the
development of tadpoles in micro g and UH and there
are often complications. We don't see lungs developing like they should, etcetera. Well,
(33:14):
and this is from the article that you spoke of. UM.
She's actually talking about Native Indians and people of Tibet
who have independently evolved more efficient oxygen transport systems in
the blood. And she does say that they do sustain
higher death rates for infants born at altitudes and actually
mothers this is very interesting, mothers who although they evolved
(33:37):
to have an UH, there's really efficient oxygen transport, they
actually will descend to the more oxygen richer altitudes to
have children. So her idea is that you might have
to do the same thing. You might have to have
these sub orbital pods birthing pods essentially that you have
to drop down to in order to have a healthy,
successful birth, like like special nurse stations it existed lower orbits,
(34:03):
you know. Yeah, yeah, you could have like the I S.
S Nurtury Station at least starting out with right, um,
so there's it's possible, right, There's there's things that we
know about how we work here on Earth that we
can extrapolate in space. Yeah, and then of course there
are there are proposals on the table for how we
could achieve we can achieve a an artificial gravity situation, right,
(34:27):
which we could do. We could and probably should do
a whole podcast just on those. But you could have
a situation where most of the space stations or ships
that this human population um are using our zero or
micro g. I think you would have a few that
are that are augmented to to spend and create a
centrifical uh artificial gravity, and and those would be the
(34:51):
places you would go to to actually have your child. Well,
and then there's this really interesting idea of let's say
there's been enough generations which intends gneration at some point
that have lived in space and it's still possible to
go back to Earth. At what point can you not
return because you have adopted um like the the person
who's lived in New York for a decade, But right, right, right,
(35:12):
you just can't go back to it because we already
know that when astronauts reinter space they have tons of
problems at the beginning of at least trying to recalibrate
their systems. You know, they all of a sudden, they
forget how gravity works. They're dropping things all the time
because everything has weight to it, they're feeling sick, and
(35:33):
then they've lost the bone mass, you know. Yeah, that's
an interesting question. Yeah, and so do you end up
with a scenario where you and where you have humans
that have become sort of their own subspecies out of
the void, you know, these these alsters and uh or
or or it becomes sort of it's it's easy to
(35:54):
imagine like a cast system where the the the humans
the subspecies that has you all to thrive and the
boy becomes sort of the like the the pilot class
that that, you know, sort of like like the gold
navigators in in the Dune books. Okay, so I'm gonna
take it down to a bread level. Just sour dough.
(36:15):
Sour dough bread, you know, is created from a mother
dough and in fact, in San Francisco, Yeah kid, you not,
the mother dough exists. So I've heard about various things
in fermentation where you have a mother and you use
that to create more. But I didn't know sour dough
was like that. Yeah, the mother does in San Francisco,
and there's one there's one mother like that. Well, I
(36:36):
don't know if if it's the mother do like the
alien queen, Let's say all the Sara dough in the
universe comes from this mother dough just for fun, No,
but um, but there's this idea of, you know, maybe
the other species or humans that have evolved more begin
to look at Earth and humans as this mother dough like, well,
(36:57):
if we need to get back to the genetic material,
we can. But they're just a bunch of doughs sitting
around in San Francisco. So this, but this brings to
mind an even more potentially a horrific scenario where original
humans are something that you keep stored away, frozen, but
when you have to return to it's it's something precious
to be to be to be kept locked away and
(37:19):
then uh some sort of cryostasis um and the and
while all these other new forms of human life continue
to thrive. Wow, so we become like a like a
museum of humans or tomb of humans. Yeah, we're just
a source code that is occasionally pulled out and augmented.
That's that's cheery enough. I'll go with that. Well, but
(37:41):
I mean that if the driving force is that you
want life to continue, and you want some form of
human life to continue in other worlds, then isn't worth
the bargain? I guess. I just you know, you don't
want to be relegated, not that we'll ever see that day,
but relegated to being like part of the museum stick, right,
you know, like they're there visiting us just to visit
the museum. Hey, kids, Look, well, on one hand, maybe
(38:04):
maybe we're in a museum. Maybe we're relegated to the
you know, we're like the mummy that a child looks
at and picks their nose doesn't realize saw awesome it is.
Or maybe we're worshiped like God's We're like we're the
the original, We're the were the source code, were the
seed and uh and and we're revered. M hm, I
feel doubtful about that. Well, someone will find out one day.
(38:26):
Al Right, Well, there's there's just a taste of some
of the science involved in in micro G zero g living, uh,
the evolution of life beyond the planet. Uh. So hopefully
we just sort of uh got everyone's feet a little
more wet on that topic. And uh, I'll link out
with some of these sources too that we used in
the blog post to come to this episode. Well, let's
(38:49):
call over the robot here and look at some listeners.
All right, Well, we received a few different Um it's
a feedback from the episode the horror Um where we
talked about our fascination with horror fiction, horror movies and
what that means, how our brains work when we're watching
a scary movie, that kind of thing. So I'm going
(39:11):
to read a few of those here. Kyle writes in
and says, Robert, you had mentioned a VHS cover of
a poorly done puppet coming out of the Toilet on
your Horror podcast. I just wanted to write in and
second your childhood reaction to the Googley's VHS cover. I
distinctly remember seeing this VHS in many rental locations over
the course of my eighties nineties childhood. I have even
mentioned it in my I've even mentioned it to my
(39:33):
wife on a couple of occasions. Even as an adult,
I find myself every once in a while getting a
little creeped out when I'm alone in the house late
at night and i need to use the restaurant. I've
never seen the movie and probably never will, but I
thought it was funny to hear you mentioned it on
the podcast. I wonder how many other people out there
carried this vaguely creepy image around in their head. Uh,
it's okay, I'm going to listen to the rest of
(39:54):
the podcast. Keep out the great work, Kyle Um. I
had to actually had to look up this this VHS
cover again, and I was reminded that the Googley on
the cover this horrible little green puppet with Faron. He's
also wearing suspenders for some unimaginable reason, which makes it
even more awful. Yeah, but still I mean, I'm glad
(40:15):
to hear that other uh, other people have had the
same experience with that that cover. Um, I just uh,
I'm about halfway through creating a blog post that I'm
gonna it's gonna go live sometime today probably where I'm
just gonna go through ten different VHS horror covers from
the nineties video store that kind of warped me or
(40:37):
traumatized me as a child, because I really started to
think about it, and I'll often, you know, I'll look
up old these old VHS coveris and look at them
and kind of become a bit nostalgic. But it's really
interesting to look at them and think about, like, what
did that do to me? What kind of effect it
seeing bad as a child, um, you know have on me.
There's there's something magic able, magical about a about the
(40:58):
video stores of the eighties and ninety that we just
we don't have anymore. Well, it made you into the
wonderful note that you are today. Yeah, yeah, it did
in the whole generation. I mean, it's it's a I'll
get into this in the foot in the blog post, inmate,
But it was it was like this this chamber of
ideas you know, the video store, all these little boxes
with these often amazing illustrations on the cover or provocative illustrations.
(41:23):
But but it wasn't like a library. The library you
can pick up the book and you can instantly get
a taste of it. And uh. And if you go
on the internet anywhere, you can generally drinking about as
much of any given idea or film or whatever as
you want, even if it's not out yet. You can
you can quench your thirst on anticipation and speculation and
and what and and source uh inspiration for that particular piece.
(41:47):
But back in that those those video stories, you didn't
you didn't have IMDb, you didn't have any of this
you so if you saw this provocative bit of art there,
you you didn't have anything else to go on. And
to find out more, you would you would have to
see it. You would have to rent that. And if
you're a child, you you either didn't have the power
in many cases to rent it, or or even the
inclination or the desire because it looked frightening. Anyway, I'm
(42:09):
going on and on, but um uh, thank you Kyle
for writing in. I'm glad, Like I said, I'm glad
to know that other people were horrified by goolies as well.
We also listened. I heard from a listener by name
of Lauren Lauren Rights, and it says, I just listen
to your Heart episode, and I quite enjoyed it. I've
always had a fascination with other with others fascination with heart.
I don't like horror movies myself, but I'm always interested
(42:31):
to hear why other people do. I wrote in to
mention that I read Dune when I was about thirteen
or fourteen years old, and ever since I've recited his
fear Mattra throughout my life. It began as a fan
girl ish, deliberate habit and turned into one I didn't
notice that much when I did it. I especially respond
to the line fear as the mind killer, which really
rings true to me about how crippling fear can be
(42:53):
if you don't deal with it. I still recite it
to myself in times of stress and fear. It was
nice surprise to hear you guys mention it as it's
unintentionally becoming a deep part of my life. I love
the podcast. Keep it up, Lauren, there you go, um
and uh yeah, I have some more feedback from the
horror episode, but I'll wait to do that on another episode, Okay, Yeah,
And I do want to mention too that we got
(43:16):
a second listener email from someone who is a clown
who uh took issue with talking about um clowns as
figures of figureheads of horror, and so I did want
to say that I hope that no clowns out there
are feeling bad about that. We certainly don't want to
disparage any wants profession if you are a clown um.
(43:39):
And the listener Mandy also said that she felt like
it was discounting actual, real phobias. That you know, if
someone were to say that they had a fear of clowns,
that you know, that's not necessarily a real phobia that
that do exist, right, Um, So I did want to
say that we're not trying to discount that. And I
think she had also said that it was sort of
(43:59):
a and in for humor, the like hipster ish humor,
that if you bring up a clown is a standing
for real humor. The reason why we brought up the clowner.
I brought up the clown um issue is because I
really do think that Stephen King did such an amazing
job by using the clown as an example of um
our fear of this idea of of the unknown, of
(44:21):
how we're unknowable to ourselves, and that clowns essentially are
wearing these masks that are really confusing is about what
their intents are. So it's not to to make fun
of clowns. I just want to mention that well. And
it's like, I mean, the thing about clowns too, scary clowns,
it's like creepy dolls. You know. It's like the reverse
of benign violation, and it's gonna and it's gonna of course,
(44:45):
it's going to have a powerful effect on our imagination.
The idea that something seems innocent but it's actually evil
is u is a powerful idea and one that we
will always come back to, right And that's why I
think Stephen King just did such a great job with us.
You can really kind of see that in a lot
of people's imaginations. So while I can say that I
am unsettled by clown imagery, um, I will say that
(45:05):
that doesn't mean that we don't understand how much joy
that some clowns bring to some people in the population,
and that's a great thing. The whole world loves a clown.
So hey, if you have something you would like to
share with us, be it related to the horrors or
joys of clown them, be it related to horror movies
and VHS covers. Be it related to gravity and the
(45:28):
lack of gravity, and the effects of these situations on
life as we understand it, let us know about it.
One quick way to get in touch with us, you
can find us on Facebook, where we are stuff to
Blow your Mind. You can like us there, you can
follow us uh, and you can interact with us in
a number of ways. And then you can also go
to Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind, and
(45:50):
you can always email us at blow the Mind at
Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Staff Work
Staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. M
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm truly
Douglas Julie. Are you ready for life in space in
the witless Void? Yeah? Pretty much. Yeah, I've been in
training for it. Okay, yeah because zero Yeah, of course
(00:26):
you have to stay in training, that's the thing, right, Yeah,
yeah you can't. I mean that that is the problem
of our bodies, right, We're not really built for for
the void. Yeah, the void. It's quite a quite a
hurdle to overcome when we're trying to envision this long
term future in which humans really get serious about waiting
out into the cosmic ocean. Right to steal Sagan's term there. Yeah.
(00:50):
The thing is, though, I mean, it is on the horizon.
I mean, this is one of those moments you can
probably pause and think, Okay, all of this has seemed
like some sort of crazy agenda that will never get
to But the fact of the matter is that space
colonization is sort of around the corner if you take
the wide view angle, right, Um, I mean think of
someone like Elon Musk, the PayPal guy, I mean, he's
(01:12):
publicly stated that his long term goal is to privately
fund the colonization of Mars, and he doesn't wanted money
to do that. Right. Um, you have the Polar Explorers
Tom and Tina Shorgen, and they're designing a private flight
to Mars, and recently the europe based Mars one project
announced the school of establishing a human colony on Mars
(01:32):
by three. All these things are being funded privately, which
gives them a little bit more in terms of their realization. True, okay,
these are all great plans, but but I can't help
but be reminded. I think a lot of us in
our state early twenties, we may have gotten in our
mind at one point, I'm going to move to New York.
I'm totally gonna move to New York and I'm gonna
(01:53):
be I'm gonna get a job there, and the Department's
just going to movie and all. And granted, some of
us actually do that, but for the rest of us,
there comes a point when you realize that there's a
there are a series of steps between the idea and
the reality that have to be carried out. And um,
and it's easy to skim over those when you're dreaming. Um.
(02:14):
We in our recent episode about the movie Prometheus, we
discussed magic anti gravity and or magical gravity boards spaceships.
In these dreams where we try and envision what the
future of a man's space flight will be like, we
often will just throw out a cheap uh. Not all
that will explained is explained at all our artificial gravity scenario,
(02:38):
so that we don't have to deal with the realities
of weightlessness, zero g and micro g um during the flight.
Because as we know that, and as we're going to
discuss in this podcast, uh, gravity is really essential to life.
It's essential to life as we know it, to the
evolution of life as we know it, and life as
(02:59):
it exists all around this lives in a state that
depends on gravity. Okay, So, getting back to your New
York analogy to moving in your twenties, are you talking
about something like if you don't go in your twenties
and get used to living in two hundred square feet
of space and instead you stay in your comfy place
of a thousand square feet by the time you're thirty,
you'll never be able to adapt back to that two
(03:20):
hundred square foot foot of space. Well, I think that's true,
because you do get the impression that once people moved
to New York, they cannot move out, and then they
make you know, they'll say, oh, well, you know, I
love the art here, I love the culture here, and
I'm living my dream and and all this. But but
perhaps it's simply that if they actually moved to another location,
their bodies would just fall apart on them. Okay, so
(03:43):
there's yeah, that New York has its own gravity, that's
what you're saying, much like outer space has, you know,
micro gravity. So that's the problem here, right, this adaptability,
and yet we know that we are pretty adaptable as
a species. That's right, at least over the long term.
And they've been a number of science fiction and uh,
you know, ponderings about life in a weightless environment. But
(04:04):
one that comes to mind most readily because I'm reading
it right now, are the Alsters in Hyperion, Dan Simon's
novels uh kind of a you know, an epic philosophical
space opera type of deal. And there are these uh,
these humans that have uh in the past, traveled out
into the void and have grown used to a microgravity situation.
(04:24):
So now they're like long slender humans that have to
wear powered exosuits. If they're gonna go into a world
with gravitation, they have their their suits will often have
a robotic tail on the end that helps them, uh
navigate like weightless corridors, and we and like kind of
propelled them a little bit forward. Yeah. Yeah, which is
(04:47):
an interesting idea, you know, because you're you're bringing in
ideas of not only physical changes in a weightless environment,
but also uh cybernetic augmentation, uh to cope with this
new environment of space, which is something and we've gone
into in the past when we discussed cyboards and when
we discussed the future of man space travel in the
werewolf principle. So you know, if you guys have already
(05:08):
cleared into it, this is what we're talking about today.
This idea of, um, you know, when we colonized space. Uh,
what will that be like, you know, a hundred years out,
two hundred years out, a hundred thousand years out. Not
that we can necessarily answer answer that, but we can
talk about some of the challenges we have in the
way that we have been uh genetically modified for life
(05:30):
here on Earth as opposed to space. Yeah, and not
just our journey into space, but life itself, because we're
ultimately talking about not just taking humanity and granted we're
pretty vain, so pretty vain species, So we're largely talking
about thinking humanity, but we're we're essentially talking about taking
that seed of life elsewhere. What happens when the seed
of life, Earth, life, life as we know it is
(05:52):
taken to a weightless environment or another world with a
different gravitational situation going on. It's so the most logical
starting point here is really to discuss some of what
we know about micro gravity and humans. Um. Ultimately, we
really didn't have a firm idea about the micro gravity's
(06:13):
effect on the human body until we actually got human
bodies up there. And uh, and research still continues into
how these how the effects of microgravity ravage us, how
we adapt to those of this environment, what effects it
has on the the life cycles of humans and the
bodies and life cycles of countless other organisms. Yeah, so
(06:35):
let's talk about what happens in microgravity when you throw
up a human in space. Um, yeah, and they just
stick up there. Um. What they have observed, among many
many things, is something called puffy face and skinny legs,
also known as Charlie Brown head. Okay, I like that
because he essentially up looking like Charlie Brown. Well, yeah,
because spaceflight causes a fluid shift from the legs toward
(06:58):
the head, and so you get the puffy face and
then your your legs begin and your muscles obviously to
begin to atrophy and become a bit thinner. And this
is what they call the bird like legs syndrome. Well,
our bodies are I mean, our veins are like rivers, right,
they have to flow and gravitation, gravitation, gravity, the pull
of gravity is factored into that quote unquote design. Well,
(07:20):
it's right, that makes perfect sense on Earth because you know,
you've got this heavy intercore of the Earth that is
pulling us toward it. Right that the gravity down is
so the fluid would flow down. But then you there,
you are in space, and what does it do? It
just flows up. So that is a huge problem actually,
and that's one of the reasons why, um, you do
have this muscle atrophy. And as you had noted earlier,
(07:44):
astronauts have to and crew members have to constantly work
out in order to try to keep the stasis in
their body. Yeah, there's not Basically, our skeleton is a
load bearing um structure, and if we if there's no gravity,
then there's not really any load to bear. So we
end up just constantly said constant atrophy of our muscle
uh and our skeleton system. Yeah, your muscles become dormant,
(08:06):
and your spine even begins to straighten because it doesn't
again have that gravity, um, that weight that it's fighting against.
So people tend to get taller. Innocence, Yeah, and then
of course you're rather disoriented. I mean, you get more
or less used to the environment. But here on Earth,
our brain receives information about the environment through visual cues,
the eyes, muscles and tendons. Um. You have a set
(08:31):
of sensors to detect liquid movement located in the inner ear,
and when you're in a weightless environment, it throws all
of this out of whack. So again, just the way
we've perceived the environment around us, we've evolved to proceed
a an environment with gravity that is an updown gravity,
right right, Um, So what I think is interesting about
(08:51):
that is you you talked about the vestibular system, which
is in the inner ear. It's organ way deep in
there and it's covered in thousands of tiny hair cells,
and then on top of these hair cells are tiny
little crystals that move and bend the hair cells, sending
information to the central nervous system to guide eye movements
and posture and balance. So if you don't have this
updown orientation, then all of a sudden, you don't have, um,
(09:14):
you know, a stable platform for this organ to work on.
And you began to get two different sets of data,
which caused something called space adaption syndrome, where you know,
there's nausea and vomiting. And of course I believe and
tell me if I'm right on this, this is something
that's just just happened in the first couple of days
of space flight, that your body does kind of even
(09:35):
itself out. But that's certainly a problem if you're gonna,
you know, puking for seventy two hours. Yeah, there's like
a whole series of phases one goes through on prolonged space,
well not really space journeys, but prolonged space in microgravity.
I have a blog post under somewhere I'll I'll be
linked to it in the in the blog post of
companies this podcast. But you end up basically going from
(09:57):
early on starting off with that, those feelings of nausea,
you're vomiting, um, you just feel all out of sorts,
and eventually you're reaching states where you're feeling rather euphoric,
and then there's some crankiness and just some and flash
once unless you're one of the few people that that
doesn't do that, the perfect astronaut. Uh. So we we
(10:19):
have all these things that can happen to the body
that will happen to the body in a in a
micro g environment, but we also have ways that we
try and combat it. Right. Uh. The big own of
course is exercise. Uh we're not we're not standing, we're
not walking, we're not we're not running around. So we
need to use those muscles. We have to use it
or lose it. So that's when you have things like
that like the cold Bear treadmill on I S S.
(10:41):
You know, it's it's let's get people on treadmill, let's
strap into a treadmill, and let's keep them moving. Let's
let's just keep the body active, uh, because it's I mean,
you can think of it in terms of say, say
someone's a powerlifter, they they can't take a year off
from training for powerlifting and then go back and expect
to lift gigantic weights. Right, you need to keep that
muscle tone up to do this abnormal activity. Well, your
(11:05):
body goes into the zero G and it's adapting, right,
it's saying, oh, well, we don't have to do that
work anymore. Uh, So you have to train for the
abnormal activity of daily life on earth. Yeah, there you go.
So that's a good way to try to combat it. Um.
And this is something I just wanted to say to
you that you know, for twenty three years we've had
human beings that have lived off Earth for periods of time.
(11:27):
So this is a lot of information that we have
about what's going on inside our bodies and also with
plants and other animals. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've put a
lot of thought into what happens when when people go
out there and they come back. We've studied them. Uh,
the Soviets did. They did a lot of interesting work too,
where they were answering some of like the early questions
like what happens if a man goes into space and
(11:48):
then a woman goes into space, and what if you know,
could could they could they even have have children? At
that point you know what I mean, so many questions. Uh,
we're raised early on and we're still answer during a
lot of the finer questions. Well, it's also leading us
to to look at their species like bears for instance,
to get those guys in space, you gotta get those
dudes in space. But more more to the point of
(12:10):
when they're hibernating, the fact that they don't have any
calcium loss, that their bones really strong. So you know,
we're studying their systems to try to figure out what
the magic is UM that we might be able to
that you're just getting out that we needed to get
grizzly bears in space, Well, we just do. We do. Absolutely.
Another thing that has been toyed around with UM it's
(12:30):
the use of exoskeletons UM. For instance, there was the
Russian Penguin suit back in the seventies which featured elastic
bands and pulleys UM to create the artificial force of
muscles and bones UM. And then there have been a
number of other suits have been that have been rolled
out and experimented with as well. And it's a really
interesting concept. You know, it's instead of an exoskeleton that
(12:52):
gives you superhuman strength, it gives you you have to
it gives you strength you have to struggle against. You know,
it's it's not trying to help you, it's workout. So
as I reach across this waitless environment, uh, and just
to grab my iPod or whatever that's floating in front
of me, the suit would actually make that more of
a chore than than micro gravity actually makes it. Um
(13:14):
So then that that is an interesting concept as well.
And both of these ideas show up in a little something.
I sent you a clip off earlier, and I'll i'll
clue this clip on the blog post that goes along
with this podcast. But there's a movie called The American
Astronaut by Corey mcabee. Came out several years ago. Really weird,
really fun flick, kind of US based musical, Western great
(13:39):
depression kind of a thing, very hard to descress, dustful
feeling to it, for sure. Yeah. Well there's there's a
scene where they encounter the silver Miners who are flying
around and under space in this barn shapes. It's like
it's a spaceship. It looks like a barn and they've
they have this weird thing where they're looking for this
source and this there's a star map and uh, they're
(14:01):
they're just as crazy as I'll get out because they've
been cooped up in these barns flying around in space.
Um totally waitless. So their bodies have become these distorted
things with giant swollen heads and long slender limbs and
uh and that they call it space punis in the
movie Get the Space PUNI. Yeah, And they're training one
of they have this one child is like the chosen
(14:22):
one to return to Earth to find this chart for them,
And so they've outfitted him in this body suit that
that has this kind of this kind of exoskeleton technology
that I'm talking about here, this penguin suit technology. The
idea being that this will train him up, and this
will make the child strong enough to sustain uh, the
Earth's gravitational pull. And yet and yet he's stupid, so
(14:46):
it doesn't work out. He's a good kid, But you
have to see the movie to find out how that goes.
But but I always found that that whole scenario interesting
because as silly as the film is, that actually ends
up tying into a number of interesting scientific questions. Actually,
I mean it's it's pretty great. It's very entertaining. Um,
all right, so let's talk about the space punis and animals. Yes,
(15:08):
so experiments on animals, that's uh and goes hand in
hand with space exploration and uh. And you know it
also allows us to do things like we're not gonna
be able to test when we certainly don't want to test, say,
human birth in space. We don't want to test. We
we can't test like longer life cycles of humans. So
(15:28):
we're we're very interested in seeing how various animals behave
And we've done this from the beginning, before we even
to put people in in um a spacecraft we launched
I think it was for seresis monkey, right, and then
a dog, and then various other animals insects, bears, no bears, Yeah,
but I mean it's it's really kind of surprising though,
(15:51):
because you look at some of these animals and some
adapt surprisingly well, and others that you think would would
just get along swimmingly um no fun intended don't don't
do quite as well as you would think. For instance,
they say that within five minutes, mice are floating around
in their living spaces, grooming themselves, eating, just carrying them
(16:11):
along like normal, whereas I can't help but imagine that
if I took my cat up there, Okay, would just
freak out the whole time. Oh yeah yeah. Um, fish
and tadpoles swimming loops rather than straight lines. There's just
no updown orientation here, which is interesting because you're they're
in a buoyant environment when we train, uh, we partially
(16:33):
train the astronauts in submerged environments to help them get
a handle on what's a weightless environment, what we like.
So so you would think things you think they wouldn't
they would adapt byther well, but it's not really the case.
Baby mammals have a hard time and space because they
normally huddle for warmth and space. Uh. And they are
usually going towards the nipple to to get milk. So
(16:53):
if you're floating away from the nipple, that makes it
difficulty traumatizing. That's a really horrifying image to imagine the
kitten floating away in the nipple. To see how many
times we can stay clotting away from the nipple. And um, yeah,
both birds and fish who can move three dimensionally in
their normal environments, um, they end up just going in
these loops. Um when they're when they're actually in a
(17:16):
micro g environment, so it just throws them off, even
though you would think a bird in a UH and
and a fish would do really well. Yeah. Orb spiders, Oh,
the orb spiders are pretty amazing. Now. They on you know,
on Earth, we've exquisite web designs, beautiful um you know,
very symmetrical, but as you would imagine in space, they
(17:39):
weave very wacky configurations. Again, they don't have some you know,
this access to to work off of UM and they
they're not anchored, so you do see some of the
similar actually reminded me of some of the studies of
hallucinogens and spiders and some of the strange configurations that
come out of that. What's interesting though, I was reading
(17:59):
about the one of the first spider investigations. This is
back in the nineteen three Skylab. They took two garden
cross spiders, which is a type of war weaver, up
and they let him do the thing and then uh.
And then more recently they did another experiment on the
I S s UH this speck in two does eight.
But in both experiments, the spiders initially built really distorted
(18:20):
crazy webs. But when within a few days the spiders,
they say, seem to adapt to microgravity and begin to
spend more symmetrical webs, so you still see a certain level,
you know, the spiders up there, the animals up there.
It gets its bearings and then it's been is able
to to behave with this new environment. It works. There's
(18:40):
also this idea to you that size matters. The larger
the thing that that's there, the human or the spider
or the bacteria, the better the chances of survival and adaptation. Yeah,
and then the spider, it does seem like it would
it would do particularly well because here's a creature with
multiple limbs, um, very dexterior spinning webs to move around.
(19:02):
Like if if you had to pick an animal that
would behave well in a in a weightless environment, you
think the spider would would be great, especially web building spiders. Indeed,
all right, let's talk plants, because I thought this was
really interesting. Um that it's not just that they want
to study um, you know the way that plants behave
(19:22):
in space. But there is this idea to you, there's
a psychological level for astronauts, for crew members that if
they can see a seedling, if they can see a
bit of green, um, that this is really helpful in
terms of grounding them and making feel a little bit
more like, Okay, here I am, you know, living in
you know, very sterile environment. And yes, and yet I
(19:43):
feel connected to the earth in some way. Yeah, I
can't help me be reminded of Did you ever see
silent running sci fi film with Bruce Dearn in it
where he was he was in space and he had
these three little robots with him and he's he's caring
for these gardens, these massive biospheres in space. It's a
classic film, but better anyway, the idea that you're in space,
(20:06):
but then here are these natural green environments. There was
a film with a strong ecological message, but in watching
it you saw high tech space travel and green environments
together and it was very comforting. Um uh. The Danny
Boil movie Sunshine also had scenes where you see people
growing things and uh, and yeah, you can imagine going
a little seer crazy if you didn't have that around you.
(20:26):
But these movies also had artificial gravity. And when you
do not have a form of artificial gravity going along,
things get rather complicated because I mean, think of your plants,
I mean they're growing in soil. How does how does
this the soil nourish the plant? How does the plant
get water? Well? And you've got your window plant right,
so it's getting some you know, dright sunlight right there. Um,
(20:47):
you've got the soil and the water water droplets in
space floating away. Um. So yeah, I mean it's it's
a bit of a conundrum. Yeah, I mean you end
up with to depend more and more on hydroponic type
systems or um. Interesting, I saw you've seen these plants
that grow upside down, right, It's like an upside down planner.
(21:08):
You can maybe see something like that working working well
adapted because that too depends on gravity because you're putting
the water in the top of it. But yeah, but
I can imagine specialty planters might become popular. Well. University
of Arizona has a mock up of a giant pod
like greenhouse for space and US plants some pods and
basically they would supply half of the daily calories for
(21:31):
astronauts as well as all of their daily drinking water
and their oxygen. What kind of plants are we talking?
They didn't go into specifically what kind of plants because
you know, this is just a prototype phase right now.
Handfuls of algae. Right, Um, possible because actually the vegetation
we're looking at is is actually not land vegetation. Vegetation.
(21:53):
We're just looking at let's grow carrots in space. But
let's see what what we can grow that's nutritious that
actually might work well. And you it's something that was
really hardy, that didn't need a ton of sunlight, um, etcetera, etcetera.
But the idea here is, um, it's pretty cool because
you can recycle the nutrients in the water and uh.
But you know, as it always comes down to, it's
it's a matter of practicality because something like this has
(22:16):
a larger payload, it's harder for you to get it
up into space. Right. But it is the first step
to possibly creating this sort of crop like system. UM.
I also read that if we were to grow algile
mats in space, they would end up actually growing in
these three dimensional communities like almost like big cubes of
of of matter. It's interesting to think about that like
(22:39):
a scaffolding situation, or just that the structure themselves would
begin to scaffolding. But but it becomes becomes interesting to
imagine how we might tinker genetically with our vegetation to
maybe engineer the type of plant that would sort of
grow in floating clumps. Yeah yeah, I mean, lord, no
stuff grows on space on space stations, because I've read
(23:03):
some of the accounts of how how grungy uh like,
uh like the Soviet stations particularly, but would sometimes get
you're talking bathrooms here. Yeah, yeah, So so that that's
the thing that a lot of microbial life, I mean,
it's particularly hardy, and and we'll be able to grow
both inside and outside potentially the spaceships. So all right, Well,
(23:24):
let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
we'll talk about not only our own evolution here on life,
but the possibility of evolution humans evolving in space. All right,
we're back. Um experts seem to agree that life as
we know it is again very very much tied to
(23:45):
gravity if there was no I mean in a very
large in a very large sense. Gravitation is one of
the primary um uh stitches in the fabric of reality.
And if you take that out of the equation, things
tend to sort of fall apart. It becomes hard to
imagine the structure of the universe itself, much less this
little thing that happens to be growing on some of
(24:07):
some of the the orbs in this grand design. So
naturally gravity is important to life. Um. That being said,
life is pretty hardy. So uh, it seems that once
life has evolved on a world with gravity, it had
had a chance to travel into a witless environment, it
(24:29):
would be able to thrive as long as the resources
were there. It would probably have to have some help.
It would probably have to have an intelligent work worker
architect there to make sure everything is getting water, that
thing manipulating the environment in a way that that would
nourish it. So creating an environment within an environment in space,
is that what you're talking about? Yeah? Um, And I
(24:51):
think that some of the clues that we have about
this this um ptation or this ability for us to
really um kind of more ourselves to environments is best
looked at in the context of when we kind of
crawled out of the sea, right, because that's where you
really see gravity come into play and how species were
formed or or became more and more complex and adapted. Yeah.
(25:14):
I mean it's you have this buoyant environment in in
the water and then if you're you're climbing out of
that suddenly you're gonna we're talking a lengthy process here,
and not just not just yesterday it was a dolphenomenal wolf.
You know, life moves at a small smaller pace than that,
but but still that's a huge change, and you could
(25:35):
you could definitely um compare that change to the the
Earth to micro g or the micro g back to
Earth scenario, right, because if you're just crawling out and
you're you know that's you're some sort of creature who's
on all fours then and you're quite small, then you're
gonna have a different gravitational load than another creature that
can can actually get up on its hind legs and
(25:57):
become vertical and even larger. So you get this idea
that as as a result of all these different changes,
these directional changes, right horizontal versus vertical, you have moving
fluids within the organism and structures that help support this
load and and uh musculature that supports this load real quick.
(26:19):
In case study that the kind of that ties into
that snakes um snakes lood in various environments, and it's
really interesting when you compare tree snakes to sea snakes.
Tree snakes spend most of their time either going up
or down trees. So they're they're in a they're in
a vertical alignment in a in a world full of gravity.
(26:42):
Sea snakes, on the other hand, they're swimming around in
this buoyant environment. Um. As a result, tree snakes have
their hearts located closer to their brain, and in experiments
are the most gravity resistant. Sea snakes, of all snakes,
the least gravity resistant because their hearts further away from
their brain. And we have that same problem with our
(27:02):
astronauts in which the fluids are flowing upward. Right. So
for your tree snakes, it's perfectly fine because it's you know,
all the machinery is pretty close together. It's pretty interesting. Yeah,
Like I said, it's a little a little more light
on what we're talking about here, um in terms of
the effects of gravity and their lack of gravity on
an organism. Okay, so we've seen what has happened over
(27:25):
you know, from four billion years ago when it was
just you know, a bit of bacteria to us, you know,
emerging out of the sea and becoming a more and
more complex species and a larger species and therefore more
prone to the effects of gravity. Let's talk about this
really very cool idea of how we might evolve in space. Yeah,
(27:47):
I mean it's I mean cool, but also potentially horrific
because we're talking about people get a little uncomfortable when
you talk about fundamentally changing the human form and and
shifts and what it is to be human. And we
talked about that with with cyborgs. The idea that as
we continually augment ourselves to deal with new environments, to
(28:07):
what extent does that the humanize us? And then to
what extent do do we let environments change us? And
how does that alter the human argument? And yet you know,
we're we're kind of a migratory animal, right, Like this
is going to happen um and and I think according
to too many, it's vital to the long term survival
(28:27):
for human rights, right uh. And whether or not you
agree with that, still, you know you have this idea
of the human body adapting. I mean just think about
like the Neanderthal, right, a very different person I guess
you could say than than Homo sapien in terms of
this really heavy muscle liture. And we were you know,
much more successful because we didn't have to have all
(28:48):
of that that body weight in that mass, and we
didn't need quite as much energy. So when you start
to look out a hundred years, five hundred years, a
hundred thousand years from now, you know, what will the
human body look like if we be um space dwelling beings. Well,
it was interesting. I was reading this article The Impact
of Gravity and Life by Emily are More, a Holton's
(29:08):
NASA Research Center researcher, and she made the argument that
ET is basically a good or reasonable model of what
humans who continue to evolve in in a micro g
zero G environment might look like. Well, and you take
the leg situation right, I don't necessarily need legs of space. Yea,
(29:29):
So they're they're stumpy and barely usable. However, long skinny arms,
not a lot of muscles going on there. Um, you
know ET doesn't really have guns, but but video has
very long arms and and dexterious fingers for manipulating buttons.
Um kind of a swollen manatee like body and uh
in a giant head and fluids. Giant. Yeah, because you
(29:55):
get into issues of looking at at how bodies behave
in a buoyant and ironment. Look at look at mammals
that live in the ocean. Uh so some scientists, so
that you can you can see that as a potential
model of what what prolonged exposure to zero G might
might do to the human body. We've sort of become humanities,
(30:17):
if you will, well in your posture, which change. Um,
they're there are all these different elements that you wonder
how your body might adapt. But still, of course life
is more than just this form. It is also the
the the the the continuing cycle of life and the
propagation of new species and new generations. So um, at
(30:39):
some point these e t s are going to have
to uh, well, they're gonna have to do it. Uh. Actually,
which there there has been a at least a wee
bit of research into that. There have been there there
have been you know, studies and papers where they argue
that you would need certain docking harness situations to really
make um, human intercourse possible in outer space. So I
(31:02):
don't know how et s do it, but they would,
they would, they would find a way of to talk
each other basically, probably be some sort of special space
furniture involved. But then what happens when the animal is
going to give birth? Right? Well, here's here's though. The
idea that before we can even get to et um
the et versions of ourselves, um, if we are to um,
(31:26):
you know, propagate out in space. That if we were
to do that, and we're to do colonize Mars, for instance,
then we would really have to make sure that there
would be a fairly large mix of genes expressed. What
am I? What am I saying here? Like, we don't
want a small population of that ends up? Um, you know,
basically you don't want an inbred colony of of people
(31:49):
with space penis. Right, that's gonna say. Then then you
just have the space penis. Um. So you know, you'd
want to make sure that there was enough genetic material
that essentially that people were returning to Earth and propagating
there and then again, um, maybe you'd have more and
more generations, more people colonizing that. You need diversity for
(32:09):
any population to survive not only the ravages of some
sort of off world potentially hostile situation, but things as
simple as UH diseases, the emergence of a disease. If
you don't have enough gene genetic diversity, one illness could
wipe out everyone because everyone has the same weaknesses. Um,
just expressed over and over again. Well, and there's also
(32:30):
this idea too that if the body is now trying
to naturally select for living for long periods of time
in space, that this is going to play out in
increased infant mortality. So you're probably gonna see this because
the body is trying to figure itself out. UM. And
you know this, it may be sort of difficult to
(32:50):
to have UM children, at least at first in space. Again,
because we're trying to adapt and we we've conducted experiments
with animals UM giving birth in space or while I
see giving birth, for instance, frogs. We've looked at the
development of tadpoles in micro g and UH and there
are often complications. We don't see lungs developing like they should, etcetera. Well,
(33:14):
and this is from the article that you spoke of. UM.
She's actually talking about Native Indians and people of Tibet
who have independently evolved more efficient oxygen transport systems in
the blood. And she does say that they do sustain
higher death rates for infants born at altitudes and actually
mothers this is very interesting, mothers who although they evolved
(33:37):
to have an UH, there's really efficient oxygen transport, they
actually will descend to the more oxygen richer altitudes to
have children. So her idea is that you might have
to do the same thing. You might have to have
these sub orbital pods birthing pods essentially that you have
to drop down to in order to have a healthy,
successful birth, like like special nurse stations it existed lower orbits,
(34:03):
you know. Yeah, yeah, you could have like the I S.
S Nurtury Station at least starting out with right, um,
so there's it's possible, right, There's there's things that we
know about how we work here on Earth that we
can extrapolate in space. Yeah, and then of course there
are there are proposals on the table for how we
could achieve we can achieve a an artificial gravity situation, right,
(34:27):
which we could do. We could and probably should do
a whole podcast just on those. But you could have
a situation where most of the space stations or ships
that this human population um are using our zero or
micro g. I think you would have a few that
are that are augmented to to spend and create a
centrifical uh artificial gravity, and and those would be the
(34:51):
places you would go to to actually have your child. Well,
and then there's this really interesting idea of let's say
there's been enough generations which intends gneration at some point
that have lived in space and it's still possible to
go back to Earth. At what point can you not
return because you have adopted um like the the person
who's lived in New York for a decade, But right, right, right,
(35:12):
you just can't go back to it because we already
know that when astronauts reinter space they have tons of
problems at the beginning of at least trying to recalibrate
their systems. You know, they all of a sudden, they
forget how gravity works. They're dropping things all the time
because everything has weight to it, they're feeling sick, and
(35:33):
then they've lost the bone mass, you know. Yeah, that's
an interesting question. Yeah, and so do you end up
with a scenario where you and where you have humans
that have become sort of their own subspecies out of
the void, you know, these these alsters and uh or
or or it becomes sort of it's it's easy to
(35:54):
imagine like a cast system where the the the humans
the subspecies that has you all to thrive and the
boy becomes sort of the like the the pilot class
that that, you know, sort of like like the gold
navigators in in the Dune books. Okay, so I'm gonna
take it down to a bread level. Just sour dough.
(36:15):
Sour dough bread, you know, is created from a mother
dough and in fact, in San Francisco, Yeah kid, you not,
the mother dough exists. So I've heard about various things
in fermentation where you have a mother and you use
that to create more. But I didn't know sour dough
was like that. Yeah, the mother does in San Francisco,
and there's one there's one mother like that. Well, I
(36:36):
don't know if if it's the mother do like the
alien queen, Let's say all the Sara dough in the
universe comes from this mother dough just for fun, No,
but um, but there's this idea of, you know, maybe
the other species or humans that have evolved more begin
to look at Earth and humans as this mother dough like, well,
(36:57):
if we need to get back to the genetic material,
we can. But they're just a bunch of doughs sitting
around in San Francisco. So this, but this brings to
mind an even more potentially a horrific scenario where original
humans are something that you keep stored away, frozen, but
when you have to return to it's it's something precious
to be to be to be kept locked away and
(37:19):
then uh some sort of cryostasis um and the and
while all these other new forms of human life continue
to thrive. Wow, so we become like a like a
museum of humans or tomb of humans. Yeah, we're just
a source code that is occasionally pulled out and augmented.
That's that's cheery enough. I'll go with that. Well, but
(37:41):
I mean that if the driving force is that you
want life to continue, and you want some form of
human life to continue in other worlds, then isn't worth
the bargain? I guess. I just you know, you don't
want to be relegated, not that we'll ever see that day,
but relegated to being like part of the museum stick, right,
you know, like they're there visiting us just to visit
the museum. Hey, kids, Look, well, on one hand, maybe
(38:04):
maybe we're in a museum. Maybe we're relegated to the
you know, we're like the mummy that a child looks
at and picks their nose doesn't realize saw awesome it is.
Or maybe we're worshiped like God's We're like we're the
the original, We're the were the source code, were the
seed and uh and and we're revered. M hm, I
feel doubtful about that. Well, someone will find out one day.
(38:26):
Al Right, Well, there's there's just a taste of some
of the science involved in in micro G zero g living, uh,
the evolution of life beyond the planet. Uh. So hopefully
we just sort of uh got everyone's feet a little
more wet on that topic. And uh, I'll link out
with some of these sources too that we used in
the blog post to come to this episode. Well, let's
(38:49):
call over the robot here and look at some listeners.
All right, Well, we received a few different Um it's
a feedback from the episode the horror Um where we
talked about our fascination with horror fiction, horror movies and
what that means, how our brains work when we're watching
a scary movie, that kind of thing. So I'm going
(39:11):
to read a few of those here. Kyle writes in
and says, Robert, you had mentioned a VHS cover of
a poorly done puppet coming out of the Toilet on
your Horror podcast. I just wanted to write in and
second your childhood reaction to the Googley's VHS cover. I
distinctly remember seeing this VHS in many rental locations over
the course of my eighties nineties childhood. I have even
mentioned it in my I've even mentioned it to my
(39:33):
wife on a couple of occasions. Even as an adult,
I find myself every once in a while getting a
little creeped out when I'm alone in the house late
at night and i need to use the restaurant. I've
never seen the movie and probably never will, but I
thought it was funny to hear you mentioned it on
the podcast. I wonder how many other people out there
carried this vaguely creepy image around in their head. Uh,
it's okay, I'm going to listen to the rest of
(39:54):
the podcast. Keep out the great work, Kyle Um. I
had to actually had to look up this this VHS
cover again, and I was reminded that the Googley on
the cover this horrible little green puppet with Faron. He's
also wearing suspenders for some unimaginable reason, which makes it
even more awful. Yeah, but still I mean, I'm glad
(40:15):
to hear that other uh, other people have had the
same experience with that that cover. Um, I just uh,
I'm about halfway through creating a blog post that I'm
gonna it's gonna go live sometime today probably where I'm
just gonna go through ten different VHS horror covers from
the nineties video store that kind of warped me or
(40:37):
traumatized me as a child, because I really started to
think about it, and I'll often, you know, I'll look
up old these old VHS coveris and look at them
and kind of become a bit nostalgic. But it's really
interesting to look at them and think about, like, what
did that do to me? What kind of effect it
seeing bad as a child, um, you know have on me.
There's there's something magic able, magical about a about the
(40:58):
video stores of the eighties and ninety that we just
we don't have anymore. Well, it made you into the
wonderful note that you are today. Yeah, yeah, it did
in the whole generation. I mean, it's it's a I'll
get into this in the foot in the blog post, inmate,
But it was it was like this this chamber of
ideas you know, the video store, all these little boxes
with these often amazing illustrations on the cover or provocative illustrations.
(41:23):
But but it wasn't like a library. The library you
can pick up the book and you can instantly get
a taste of it. And uh. And if you go
on the internet anywhere, you can generally drinking about as
much of any given idea or film or whatever as
you want, even if it's not out yet. You can
you can quench your thirst on anticipation and speculation and
and what and and source uh inspiration for that particular piece.
(41:47):
But back in that those those video stories, you didn't
you didn't have IMDb, you didn't have any of this
you so if you saw this provocative bit of art there,
you you didn't have anything else to go on. And
to find out more, you would you would have to
see it. You would have to rent that. And if
you're a child, you you either didn't have the power
in many cases to rent it, or or even the
inclination or the desire because it looked frightening. Anyway, I'm
(42:09):
going on and on, but um uh, thank you Kyle
for writing in. I'm glad, Like I said, I'm glad
to know that other people were horrified by goolies as well.
We also listened. I heard from a listener by name
of Lauren Lauren Rights, and it says, I just listen
to your Heart episode, and I quite enjoyed it. I've
always had a fascination with other with others fascination with heart.
I don't like horror movies myself, but I'm always interested
(42:31):
to hear why other people do. I wrote in to
mention that I read Dune when I was about thirteen
or fourteen years old, and ever since I've recited his
fear Mattra throughout my life. It began as a fan
girl ish, deliberate habit and turned into one I didn't
notice that much when I did it. I especially respond
to the line fear as the mind killer, which really
rings true to me about how crippling fear can be
(42:53):
if you don't deal with it. I still recite it
to myself in times of stress and fear. It was
nice surprise to hear you guys mention it as it's
unintentionally becoming a deep part of my life. I love
the podcast. Keep it up, Lauren, there you go, um
and uh yeah, I have some more feedback from the
horror episode, but I'll wait to do that on another episode, Okay, Yeah,
And I do want to mention too that we got
(43:16):
a second listener email from someone who is a clown
who uh took issue with talking about um clowns as
figures of figureheads of horror, and so I did want
to say that I hope that no clowns out there
are feeling bad about that. We certainly don't want to
disparage any wants profession if you are a clown um.
(43:39):
And the listener Mandy also said that she felt like
it was discounting actual, real phobias. That you know, if
someone were to say that they had a fear of clowns,
that you know, that's not necessarily a real phobia that
that do exist, right, Um, So I did want to
say that we're not trying to discount that. And I
think she had also said that it was sort of
(43:59):
a and in for humor, the like hipster ish humor,
that if you bring up a clown is a standing
for real humor. The reason why we brought up the clowner.
I brought up the clown um issue is because I
really do think that Stephen King did such an amazing
job by using the clown as an example of um
our fear of this idea of of the unknown, of
(44:21):
how we're unknowable to ourselves, and that clowns essentially are
wearing these masks that are really confusing is about what
their intents are. So it's not to to make fun
of clowns. I just want to mention that well. And
it's like, I mean, the thing about clowns too, scary clowns,
it's like creepy dolls. You know. It's like the reverse
of benign violation, and it's gonna and it's gonna of course,
(44:45):
it's going to have a powerful effect on our imagination.
The idea that something seems innocent but it's actually evil
is u is a powerful idea and one that we
will always come back to, right And that's why I
think Stephen King just did such a great job with us.
You can really kind of see that in a lot
of people's imaginations. So while I can say that I
am unsettled by clown imagery, um, I will say that
(45:05):
that doesn't mean that we don't understand how much joy
that some clowns bring to some people in the population,
and that's a great thing. The whole world loves a clown.
So hey, if you have something you would like to
share with us, be it related to the horrors or
joys of clown them, be it related to horror movies
and VHS covers. Be it related to gravity and the
(45:28):
lack of gravity, and the effects of these situations on
life as we understand it, let us know about it.
One quick way to get in touch with us, you
can find us on Facebook, where we are stuff to
Blow your Mind. You can like us there, you can
follow us uh, and you can interact with us in
a number of ways. And then you can also go
to Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind, and
(45:50):
you can always email us at blow the Mind at
Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Staff Work
Staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. M
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