January 6, 2011 • 33 mins
NASA has been experimenting with solar sails that could become the future of spaceflight. But how do they work, exactly? Tune in as Julie and Robert break down the science of solar sails in this podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie,
I was thinking about hobo's earlier. Of course you are,
and of course a great thing about hobos as we
you know, think of the classic you know, a great
(00:25):
Depression era wanderer with his bendel stick and his handkerchiefs
handkerchief and his weird codes and uh, you know, it's
like they would they would ride the rails. They would
get from one from point A to point B by
an accepted highway that existed between those, which was typically
the rails, right. So um, and and you know, for
the hobo, he's not really having to expend. He's kind
(00:47):
of a a lazy individual, or at least he does.
He has he has found value in other aspects of
life that don't revolve around vigorous labor. So he will
ride the rails and let the rails do all the
work for him as he plays cards, yeah or whatever.
So I was thinking, like, what if a hobo, a
galactic hobo, as it were, needed to get from here
(01:07):
to Proximu centuri, which is the the closest star to
our own. Did you realize that we are equating astronauts
with hoboes. Yes, and that's perfectly fine, Yes, yes, I
just want to state that that's that's spot on right.
I wish I had the internet here, I would do
a certainty who was the first hobo astronaut? If we've
had one, um or you know, and if we haven't,
(01:29):
we need to see about fulfilling that if there are
any hobos left. Right, So Proximus century, like I said,
closest star to our own, which means it's an insane
distance away. Um. To put that in a little in
a little scale, it is two hundred and seventy one
thousand astronomical units or a use away all right. Now,
don't let that number throw anybody off. Two two hundred
(01:52):
and seventy one tho a US. I'm there with you, okay,
one a U a single astronomical unit is the distance
between Earth and the Sun. Okay. So it's that distance
laid out two hundred and seventy one thousand times, all right,
So let's put all that in in even another friend
of reforens here Okay, all right, this is a classic
(02:14):
analogy and I got this off of off of a
NASSA website. Uh, if the Sun were the size of
a typical half inch diameter marble, Okay, the distance from
the Sun to the Earth again an astronomical unit, would
be about four ft. The Earth would barely would be
barely thicker than a sheet of paper, and the orbit
of the Moon would be about one fourth an inch
in diameter. And on this scale, the closest to Star
(02:37):
Proximus centuri would be about two d ten miles away.
So that's about the distance between Cleveland and Cincinnati. Yeah,
so we're we're talking a massive distance here, and there
are no trains traversing that distance. So how would one
get to that destination? Well, I mean you post a
(02:57):
pretty lofty question there. I mean we're talking about uh
trillion miles away, right, Okay, so it's definitely not gonna
be a day trip, right, not a day trip. Okay,
what's what's the farthest we've ever gone? Well, the voyage
probe reach the farthest distance of man made object is gone.
So we're talking a colossal journey pretty much. Um, for
(03:20):
all intents and purpos, it's kind of an impossible one
at this point. I mean, we could was we'll get
into we could do it, but we have to have
a phenomenal amount of will and energy. Yeah, and we'd
have to maybe not be so into the idea of
the hobo still being alive when you reach proximate centurion,
right right, Um, So it comes down to energy, right right,
And and it comes down to what's already making that trip.
(03:41):
And I think as the as the title of the
podcast should spoil, um light is the is the railway
that one might traverse. That's right, Yeah, there's why a
little photons. Yes, So the idea of using a solar
sale and you know, it's it's a pretty basic concept,
and it's it's exactly how you might think of it.
You know, it's like you put up a sail on
(04:01):
a ship and you catch the breeze and you ride
the ride the wind across the lake. Say, well, the
solar sail concept is pretty much the same thing. There's
like a breeze of light, you put up the sail,
the the it'll catch the breeze and push the object,
push the sail. I mean, at first glance, it really
does seem kind of whimsical. Yeah, it seems. Yeah, it
sounds like it's a delightful you know, it sounds like
(04:23):
something from some sort of like French animated film, you know,
something on a fantastic planet. Indeed, you do see these
these designs show up like unrealistically in things from time
to time, like I think there's one in tron I
think that second um Star Wars prequel has some sort
of a solar sail thing, and uh so, so it's
easy to sort of dismiss it is just as being
(04:43):
like sailing ships and outer space is kind of a deal.
But but the idea has been around for a while. Um.
The astronomer Johannes Kepler, who we recently talked about in
another podcast Um he actually can't is perhaps the earliest
to come up with the concept back in the sixteen century,
and he noticed that comet tails always point away from
(05:04):
the sun, implying the sunlight itself is pushing them around
like cosmic wind socks, right right, So he thought that
you could just simply, you know, get like a ship
with the sail, and you know, it was properly put together,
you could sail around out there, which which again, that's
kind of that sounds kind of fantastic. It was really
on the right track. So his hunch was right. Yeah,
(05:26):
I do have to point out that they as he
also thought that comments were formed of fatty globules and ether,
which for two, you can't get everything right. Okay, you're
really asking a lot of limitations back man too. Um,
but but but just start to run down exactly how
this is working. All right, Scientists now know, um, with
the you know, the advent of all the things we've
learned since the sixteenth century, that sunlight is a little
(05:48):
more than a stream of photons, tiny particles of light,
and they don't possess mass, but they do boast linear momentum, right,
and then the smallest quantum of light, right, And when
they bounce off of a reflective sour face, they push
against that surface. There's actually a push. So just you know,
you know, just look at anything like I'm looking right
now at a at a lamp and a canister of
(06:11):
tissue paper, you know, and and it granted that the
tissue paper is not crawling across the desk pushed by
the light, but there, but even though it's not visible
of the naked eye, there is um. There is a
certain amount of momentum to that light. Yeah, and if
that tissue were a tissue box, I should say we're
super light and it was reflective, and when we'd see
more momentum right right, and if it were an outer
(06:33):
and uh, you know, free of the confines of Earth's gravity,
then we start, you know, opening up the rules a
little bit. So um. After Kepler had was long dead,
eight seventy three had James Clark Maxwell, and he first
demonstrated that sunlight exerts that a small amount of pressure
on photons. In nineteen sixty, we launched a little something
(06:53):
called Echo one, uh and observed the sun pushing it around.
Echo one and Leaveacko too. We're both pretty awesome because
they were basically super balloons. They were they rose up
to an altitude of a of a thousand miles and uh,
you know, we're actually space balloons in a very real
sense of the word. And they look kind of like
giant giant they're huge spheres. They kind of like giant
(07:18):
Christmas tree ornaments, just a very thin, you know, layer,
reflective surface with the gas. Yeah, I can't help but
think up hot air balloons without the bucket. Yeah, So
so in this case they observed the sun actually pushing
on it. So the basics behind that then is that
you've got a reflective surface. You've got light, right, and
(07:38):
like you said, you're you're we're not just reflected highly
reflect like a sheet of metal or a plastic coated
with metal and uh, and then it's reflecting the light. Okay.
And so the sales that we have right now, they're
thin sheets of metal like you said, and they've got
the plastic substrate in between, and then the reflective film
faces the sun. Right, Is that right? And it seems
(08:00):
again it seems really whimsical to think that this might
be something that could empower us to alpha century. Yeah,
it sounds far fetched, but but actually the more you
look at it, the more realistic it is. We've actually
um I was taught, actually talked about this subject with
the Dr Gregory L. Matt Loff, who is you can
(08:22):
look him up online. He's a pretty brilliant dude and
just can talk about sales, solar sales at the drop
of a hat. Just tell you all about him. So
the things that I get right in this podcast to
attribute to him, and the any errors I make are
purely my own doing. Um. But Marion or ten is
an example of a probe that we sent out that
it was not in its in and of itself a
(08:45):
solar sale, but it had solar cells on it. It
had it was gaining some energy from the Sun because
it was on a on a mission around Mercury right
where there's lots of solar energy due the proximity of
Mercury to the Sun. So they were running low on
the on gas to power it's you know, corrective boosters.
(09:06):
So they were able to use it's a solar cells
as a as an impromptu solar sale to maneuver it
a little, and they had some success with that. And
uh and so since that point we've had a number
of other experiments. The US especially had a habit of
like putting a lot of work and thought into them
and then not doing anything with it right, usually because
(09:27):
the funding dried up. Yeah, exactly, Like in the seventies.
Dr Lewis Friedman wanted to send a pro about to
Hayley's comment, and they were going to use the solar
sales for the rendezvous, but that was scrapped. The Russian
Space Agency had the whole uh spinning space mirror program, Uh,
the zan Maya one and two and UH and possibly three.
(09:49):
I'm not sure if three actually came to fruition. But
but the whole idea was they were going to reflect
sunlight uh back to the Earth so that they could
give sunlight to some of the you know, the far
northern regions that we're pretty short on it during the
winter and uh. And in at any rate, that was
able to successfully demonstrate some of those uh, those properties
of the solar sale even though those those projects were
(10:09):
far from you know, tremendously successful and um but though
just as a side note, they were apparently designed to
the point where they could provide luminosity between five and
ten times a full moon. So well, you know, um
uh India's INSAT two A and three A communications satellites
in two thousand three. Uh, they were there was like
(10:33):
a four panel solar array on one side, and they
were able to use some aspects of solar sale technology
to maneuver it. And of course then the Japanese finally
beat us to the punch by getting you know, it's
like we're just as the years get up, right, we
sort of see this as a trend that. Yeah, they
were left a little bit in the the dusts they were
able to launch this wonderful little device called Karros and
(10:55):
uh it's I I say little, but it had. It's
basically a square some twenty meters in a diagonal line,
and it's as thin as like point zero zero seventy
five millimeters and it's made from a poly need resident. Right,
it's called the space yacht. Right, just to give you
an idea of how big it is. Yeah, and uh yeah,
the headlines really loved using that space shot, thank too.
(11:16):
But it's pretty cool because it would it would it
was like it would be it was like this the
central hub that would rotate and then the sales would
would would spread out on all sides around it, and
it was it was. They used a rocket to get
it up there right right, okay, and then it unfurled okay,
and uh yeah, and it's it's it's been pretty successful
(11:37):
so far, um there, and we're still keeping eyes on
it to see how it's gonna how it's gonna do
in the near future. But the spacecraft itself was launched
May two, ten, uh, and with the whole idea that's
going to spend a six month trip traveling to Venus
and then it was gonna been a three year journey
to the far side of the Sun. So it's the
(11:58):
world's first solar powered aircraft employing both the photon propulsion
and then film solar power generation. So it's it's it's
getting some energy from the sun for it's uh for
it's uh, it's for some sun for some of its thrust.
But then it's also using solar sales, okay, and they're
able to manipulate that yeah, yeah, yeah. But the really
cool thing is, you know, no fuel, it's all based
on on the Sun, some of its solar sales, some
(12:19):
of its solar cells, uh, to to power these these
little thrusters. And uh. Then there's of course NASA's Nano
Sale D which is currently as of this recording, NASA
has lost contact with it. Um. It was you know,
recently launched just in the past month, and it is
it's what's called a nano satellite or a cube SAT,
(12:40):
and it's merely designed. It's it's one of several different
experiments where launched and it's up there just to test
the potential for solar sales in atmospheric breaking. And that's
when you have an interplanetary vehicle and you send it,
say to Mars, and you want it to slow down
when it gets to Mars. Right. It was also ejected
from another satellite, right, which is kind of a cool
way to get multiple satellites up there or betting at
(13:00):
the same Timeeah, it's like, let's get a satellite up
there loaded with some nano satellites, each one like testing
some particular technology. So in this case, this one tested
tested solar sales. But you know, so keep your fingers
crossed right now, it's not looking too hot for it.
But you know, I don't know, maybe it's just part
of the curse with with US solar sale technology, the
(13:22):
curse nano sale d Okay, So it's worth wondering just
how fast are these things going? Because again I'm looking
at the cleanex box. It's not moving, so it's you know,
just looking at that. Uh, It's it's hard. It's not
it's not moving to me, but it's hard to look
at that and then imagine oh the sun pushing uh,
you know, these satellites or even a spaceship with a
(13:43):
hobo inside it, Like, you know, how is that gonna
reach any amount of speed, but you'd actually be surprised,
all right, um, if you if you were to reduce
them the mass of of one of these devices significantly,
you could see it eventually traveling at about like fifty
six miles per second, which it's just crazy. Yeah, Like
that's basically like two hundred thousand miles per hour UM.
(14:05):
That's ten times faster than the Space Shuttle's orbital speed
of five five miles per second. And uh and it
would be like traveling from New York to Los Angeles
in less than a minute UM. If NASA order to
launch an interstellar probe powered by solar sales, it would
take only eight years for it to catch Voyager one spacecraft,
which is which has been traveling for twenty years and
(14:25):
is the most distant spacecraft from Earth, like we mentioned earlier.
So the speed can really pick up UM and and
the key with it with any kind of interstellar voyage
because again, as you want to start as close to
the Sun as possible, it's kind of like imagine that
you have a fan in a room, like an electric
fan and a paper airplane, and you want to use
(14:45):
the power of that fan to sail that paper airplane
across this big room. You want to start it as
close to that fan as possible to give them the
biggest to meet push, Yeah, to give them as momentum.
And so is the idea too that the greater the distance,
the greater the velocity, it's gonna go a lot faster. Yeah.
And and and you want to have as lighter materials
as possible, you know, as reflective as possible. So um,
(15:09):
you know, it's talking to Matt Loft and he said, yeah,
if you had using you know, sort of current technology,
you would you get this thing close to the sun
as possible, probably within the orbit of mercury, and uh,
get it in position, and then you unfurl those sales,
right it starts and then all that reflection starts taking place,
and uh you could you could probably reach two hundred
(15:30):
astronomical units in something like fifteen years, ten or fifteen years.
That that kind of uh, that kind of field. So
if you were putting a hobo on that, I don't
know how forget about how much a hobo ways, let's
just you know, for just to just just jazz it up,
we'll say hobo is aboard. Even if it's like a
nano hobo. Yeah, and uh you're going to launch in
(15:50):
the future, y. Yeah, that's it's coming. They're gonna be
made out of nanotubes. Um, you were going to launch
him from mercury uh towards proximate centuri Uh, you would
probably we'd probably take seven thousand years for him to
reach it. Yeah. So so again that sounds really really slow.
It is a colossal distance. I mean at that point
you need a generationship, right so that the hobo could
(16:12):
make other little hoboes that or your hobo has to
be purely mechanical or even a program like. One of
the really cool things about nanotechnology is when you start
looking at the possibilities of deep space probes, they don't
have to be as big as a room, right is
the technology improves, we can seevably make smaller and smaller
uh probes capable of of you know, of going out
(16:33):
there and relaying a message or or even you know,
carrying a sensory equipment. Right again, how carbon nanotubes are
changing our life exactly? And in fact, that was one
thing Matt Low touched touched on too. It's like it's
with this improves and we're able to make say a
fifty nanometer uh, you know, thick sale if you built
it in space, you know, and you could probably make
(16:54):
an interstellar void and as little as two thousand years
and go uh in in so the lie or you
go uh and you could go even faster. One one
possibility to would beat it. You have that you have
like holes in your sale if it perforated, because you're
still you know, cover a huge space, still reflective, but
taking up less mass. So it's just a game of
like cutting down how much space they take? How how
(17:16):
small can you get in order as you can Yeah,
and just you know huge sales as well, right, well, yes,
I guess smaller meaning point Yeah. And so Matt, I've
also said that, you know, as we get into these
carbon nanotubes and and and graphines and and all these
type of futuristic um materials, he thinks we'll do a
lot better than than two thousand years. He you know,
(17:38):
he thinks we may even get you know, below a
thousand years. Uh. And he says he has his doubts
when we get into talking about like a couple of
hundred years. So it would still take our current technology. No, No,
this would be with with with forthcoming nanotechnology, we would
he and this is just talking about you know, getting
into the orbit of mercury and sling shotting at out
(18:00):
on that beam of light. I mean, but we're using
some current technology to sort of Yeah, current technology, you're
looking at a seven thousand trip, but with conceivable more
or less near future technology, you could get it down
to a thousand years maybe a number of central Okay,
So some of the technology we have right now, it's
just a matter of decreasing in the size that we
(18:20):
needed to be. Yeah. Okay, so let's go back to
the get that right in my head. Yeah, So let's
get back to that that paper airplane in the room
with the electric fan. Let's say you're shooting it off
and it's not making it all the way. What's one
thing you can do to increase the chances of delivering
that paper airplane to the far side of the room.
I can harness it with nuclear arm heads no, no, no, no.
(18:45):
But but what you can do is say you've got
a different fan, a more powerful fan. Right. So we
can't really replace the sun right right, Um, I mean
not with any kind of conceivable technology. If we could
reach the point where we could replace the sun. We
wouldn't be trying to figure out how to travel to
the far side of the galaxy because you're probably doing
it every day. So but one thing we can do
(19:07):
is we can concentrate those particles by use of a
laser or a particle accelerator, because these are basically just
concentrated um photons, right, Okay, so we know the photons
have momentum. So if we did have giant lasers, then
you would have so much more energy to concentrate that.
What you're saying, you could have a solar pumped laser,
(19:28):
which is basically a laser that's feeding off solar energy
that's absorbed. Okay, So the idea here is you would
point you if you've got one of these just crazy
advanced lasers, you could point it in the direction that
you want to solar sail you know, kind of like
laying a train track, uh, point in the direction of
say proximate centuri and then you just you know, you
(19:49):
coast that solar sail craft into the stream and then whammo,
it just takes off. It's like like grabbing hold of
you know, being on a skateboard and grabbing hold of
a passing vehicle. Suddenly you're you're office. Do you have
a couple of things at work. You've got the added
acceleration of the beam, right, and then you've get the
fact that the greater the distance to travel, the faster
(20:12):
you're going. So two of those those forces working on it. Yeah,
provided you built a large enough laser, a large enough sail,
and a light enough spacecraft and you know, had light
enough Hobo in it, um, you could conceivably, according to
Mount laft Uh, according to his estimations, um, with this
higher velocity, you could conceivably deliver that ship to another
(20:34):
to the nearest start to proximate injury within a human lifetime.
Well okay, so that's how we get to see it
in this lifetime, well not this lifetime, but within the
space our forbearers will. This presentation is brought to you
by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. So yes, future generators and
(21:00):
of Hobo could conceivably do this. Right. Now, you get
into questions of like energy costs for that laser right
because um, I think some of the estimates are looking
at like all the power generated on the Earth would
have to go into that laser. Um and then some right, yeah,
and then some yeah, there you go. That's that's a
bit of a logistics problem, not to mention your pointing
(21:22):
a laser at like a distant point in the galaxy.
Like you've got to sort of think, is that what
if there's somebody over there and they're like, whoa, they're
firing a laser at it, and then there are they
going to overreact and fire laser back at us? Yeah?
You know, we we think we're just laying some train track,
but we're actually firing the first shot in the Earth's
first and last galactic war. That would kind of suck. Now,
(21:45):
another cool idea is to send off a slow moving
vessel and uh and have and and use lasers as
a form of transport between us and that vessel. Okay,
explain more. Okay, So again it's like like you send
off a slow moving maybe unmanned vessel, all right, just
(22:06):
powered by more conventional um you know systems kind of
these generationships you here, you know, talk to talk about
in sci fi and cosmology, where it's traveling such a
vast distance that you would have generations live and diet
aboard it. Well, instead of that, you just you sort
of keep it tethered by this this laser or you
maybe you don't have the laser fired up at all times,
but whenever you need to, you know where it is,
you know where you are. You were able to fire
(22:28):
up the laser and use solar sale technology to travel
between the two. Yeah, So that's another possible use for
for some of this uh and uh. But going back
to just sort of non laser solar sale technology, there
are a number of cool possibilities here involving, say, using
the solar sale to send cargo ahead of say a
trip to Mars. Um. There have been some some cool
(22:51):
studies into how we could use it to um to
mitigate a near Earth object that's getting a little too
close to our planet. Okay, so if there is an
asteroid coming at us, Yeah, then we could like some
some plans involved like actually putting a solar sail on
it and then it catches the light and it steers
it away and nudges it out of the way and uh.
(23:13):
And then there's somewhere it's like it's like there's like
a satellite beaming, putting a beam of light on the
the asteroid and pushing it with light. And then there
are there are also plans where you just like splash
it with white paint and then yeah, and it and
itself reflects and then right. So and I thought that
was interesting because I was reading it a little bit
about it and said something about how it would be
(23:34):
really hard to sort of tether an asteroid because it's rotating,
it's maybe tumbling, so you really have to get a
system of gimbals to anchor it, you know, you know,
get your solar sail anchored to the surface of it.
But we have, we have successfully landed vessels you know before,
so it's not you know, completely crazy, but but it's
still it's better than the nuclear option, right of shooting
(23:56):
down an asteroid and turning it into a giant shotgun
blast still headed for the Earth. Um and then another
really cool thing like we talked about with with acros.
You know, it has it doesn't need fuel, it has
it's all sunlight. So this is a tremendous opportunity for
for instance, that there's some some plans to you know,
put out some sort of approbe to keep an eye
(24:17):
on solar flare so we'll have advanced warning dangerous radiation
levels headed to the Earth. You put us you put it,
you know, more of a traditional satellite out there in
a high solar area. Um, you're gonna need fuel so
that it can correct itself with with with its with
its thrusters to maintain its position. But if you could,
if you could have all of that solar base, then
(24:37):
there's you know, there's no need to worry about how
much food fuel it has. Uh, it's just you know,
for for all intents and purposes, it's self sufficient. Okay,
So I mean it sounds to me like it's just
a in the very short term, there's an easy way
to collect more data. Yeah, um, and in a more
efficient way. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's basically just really
(24:57):
it's the thing that really amazes me about it is
that it's just kind of like a really common sense idea.
Now it's not, it's it's it's common sense of the
idea is needless to say, as you know, we need
to work out the engineering to to make it to work,
to really perfect it, um, you know, and we need
to not lose contact with the satellites they are testing it.
But but it's but still you talk to talk to
(25:18):
guys like Matt Loff and and other experts in there,
they're really you know, they really believe in this technology,
and they really see it as as playing is playing
a role in our cosmic future. So yeah, and I
think a lot of people will say, well, that's crazy too.
You know, why would you spend the energy and the
money to create this technology to go to alpha century
(25:39):
our proximate century, whichever you prefer. But I mean, if
you think about it, that that purportedly would have planets
of a century that would be earthlike, at least that's
what we think. And so if we ever had the
at least other systems, I'm not so sure. I'm not
sure what the outlook is on. I think that the
suspicion is that they might sort of like rocky um
(26:01):
planets like Earth. And so the suspicion is, Okay, let's
let's go out there and have this opportunity to observe
planets if we could, and the suns if we could,
and and take that data back home and and even
use it to get a better understanding of our own planet,
which I think that sometimes people think there's too much
of a disconnect between space and Earth, and the fact
(26:24):
of the matter is that that's if you never try
to find out anything about space, it would be like
never leaving your house, your entire life being born inside
this one house and dying inside this one house. And
you would never have a full understanding of your life
if you didn't have other things to compare it to
and to get a perspective on. So that's why I'm
I think it's so fascinating that this technology exists right
(26:48):
now and how far it can get us in the future. Yeah,
and just in terms of practicality to um when it
comes to deflecting potentially dangerous potentially like extinction level near
Earth asteroids, like we've never we've never done that before,
we've never had to do it. But should we ever
do that, that will be the one time in human
history that humans have ever done anything to save the
(27:09):
planet in a very literal sense, Like you watch you
watch big dumb summer action films. It's like people save
the world every week. You know, every comic book hero
that's ever existed to save the world at least once,
But in reality, we've never done that. This is the
one realistic chance we ever have at saving the planet.
I mean, aside from the things that we know can
do to keep ourselves from destroying it. That's right, And
(27:31):
we can't rely on Bruce Willis to to save No,
he's he's got gigs that you're doing it bars, I mean,
you just can't expect to get him at the job
of a hat. So, hey, we have some listener mail.
Let's bring it, let's do it. Have one here. Both
of these relate to our recent podcast about music Rebuilding
the Mind. We talked about the connection between music and
(27:54):
our brains and what's going on when we listen to
music or or you know, partake of any kind of
musical exercise. We've received a lot back from people on that,
especially when it comes to earworms. So Justin writes us,
and he says, hey, guys, I just discovered your podcast
a couple of days ago, and your literal blow the
Mind episode about people's heads blowing up. It was fantastic.
(28:16):
Since then, I've listened to almost a dozen more, and
I just listened to listen to your podcast on music
in the mind. As far as non lyrical earworms, none
of mine focus on what is being said. However, what
is strange is the tone of the vocals is what
gets stuck in my head. Um example, rushes closer to
the heart. Yeah, yeah, how's it go? Um, I can't
(28:36):
say like the word, but I can't do the time.
That wasn't you know what I'm saying. So there we
just got him again if we were listening there, Justin
Um he says, so when he says, when the song
floats back, it is never the actual content, but instead
the sounds of the vocal exactly like you couldn't remember
the words of him and you could remember the the
(28:57):
And this is no slight to rush. But I kind
of feel like I could use that example for every
single one of their songs. That's that one little melody there. Uh.
And then Justin also added p s. I did a
neat undergrad collateral study UM on the the predicators of
crime and found that a that states a state's power
energy usage and uh and how each state voted Republican
(29:19):
or Democrat were correlated to crime, amongst other things. So
he recommends were looking at that for a possible future episode.
That sounds pretty cool. Uh. And I have another email
here and this is pretty cool too. This is from
this dumb By the end of Gabriel and Gabriel got
a big kick out of the term auditory cheesecake, and
I thought it's uh, sounds delicious. But he also pointed
(29:43):
out quote, by the way, if there's an earworm that's
bugging you, there's a little site called www dot unhear
it that's you in H G A R I T
dot com that will replace a song that's that's been
peanut buttered on your brain by peanut buttering another song
onto ukranium. Give that a try next time. Poker Face,
(30:03):
where's its ugly head? Um? And uh and I actually
check this out and it seems to work. It's kind
of dangerous. It's kind like playing Russian roulette with sometimes
bad songs like I just you know. You can click
through it and each time it'll bring up a SoundCloud
file with a particular song. Uh and uh and I
actually I did not have an earworm earlier today when
(30:24):
I checked it out, but it did get some sort
of like I don't even know what it was, but
some sort of a little electronic tune was momentarily caught
in my head. But you could conceivably replace poker Face
with whoop there it is. Yeah, I don't know that's
that's a dicey prospect because right now I have got
my seasonal earworm going on, which is simply having a
wonderful Christmas time, thanks a lot, Paul McCartney. Um, so yeah,
(30:48):
I'd have to kind of go there and see if
if it was. If I can't imagine a worse warm
ear worm, though, then pal McCartney's simply having a wonderful
Christmas time. So I guess the bets are pretty good
in favor. Thank you of Whoop there it is. It
does remind me and and I'm not trying to make
light of mental illness here that I once went to
a local grocery store and it was at night, and
(31:09):
it was one of these grocery stores that's it's a big,
big grocery store, and it's kind of like everybody goes there.
It's like you'll see hipster's there, you'll see um, but
you also see people that are down on their luck.
And this one particular gentleman, who was I think a
little down on his luck, seemed to only be able
to speak the words whoop there It is like he
was just constantly saying, whoop there it is. And then
when when people would like, a guy came up to
(31:30):
you know, ask him something, you know, before we entered
the store, he was like responding, like in a conversational tone,
but the only words coming out were whooped, there it is. Okay.
I thought at first that you meant that he was
sort of like capping his thoughts with groop there. No, no,
like that was the only the only words he was saying.
Like he was just kind of walking on, whoop there
it is. Whoop there it is. And then like somebody
talked to him and he's like, whoop there it is.
Whoop there it is, Like that was that was the
(31:51):
only way he could different inflections, Yeah, different inflections, So
it was it was really fascinating and there I it's
like it was, is this like the terminal? This is
what happens if you cannot get into your worm out
of your head? Yeah? Probably not, it was. There probably
a lot a lot of other stuff going on there,
but it was so weird that this was the one
song that ended up being his you know, all that
(32:13):
he was. It's too bad you couldn't have introduced him
to the other Yeah, you found about that website? Yeah,
a lot of hassle. And speaking of websites, you can
check us out on two particular websites, uh, that being
Facebook or Twitter. We're blow the mind on both of those.
Oh and also we do have an excellent article on
(32:34):
the main side about solar sales, how solar sales work.
So I just dropped drop that into the search bar
and you find a really you know, it's it's really
good oversight of just how it just worked. So if
anything that I told you kind of throw you and
go there, and you should clear any questions up. Yeah,
and if you have any questions or comments at hobos
and solar sales, drop us a line at below the
(32:56):
mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie,
I was thinking about hobo's earlier. Of course you are,
and of course a great thing about hobos as we
you know, think of the classic you know, a great
(00:25):
Depression era wanderer with his bendel stick and his handkerchiefs
handkerchief and his weird codes and uh, you know, it's
like they would they would ride the rails. They would
get from one from point A to point B by
an accepted highway that existed between those, which was typically
the rails, right. So um, and and you know, for
the hobo, he's not really having to expend. He's kind
(00:47):
of a a lazy individual, or at least he does.
He has he has found value in other aspects of
life that don't revolve around vigorous labor. So he will
ride the rails and let the rails do all the
work for him as he plays cards, yeah or whatever.
So I was thinking, like, what if a hobo, a
galactic hobo, as it were, needed to get from here
(01:07):
to Proximu centuri, which is the the closest star to
our own. Did you realize that we are equating astronauts
with hoboes. Yes, and that's perfectly fine, Yes, yes, I
just want to state that that's that's spot on right.
I wish I had the internet here, I would do
a certainty who was the first hobo astronaut? If we've
had one, um or you know, and if we haven't,
(01:29):
we need to see about fulfilling that if there are
any hobos left. Right, So Proximus century, like I said,
closest star to our own, which means it's an insane
distance away. Um. To put that in a little in
a little scale, it is two hundred and seventy one
thousand astronomical units or a use away all right. Now,
don't let that number throw anybody off. Two two hundred
(01:52):
and seventy one tho a US. I'm there with you, okay,
one a U a single astronomical unit is the distance
between Earth and the Sun. Okay. So it's that distance
laid out two hundred and seventy one thousand times, all right,
So let's put all that in in even another friend
of reforens here Okay, all right, this is a classic
(02:14):
analogy and I got this off of off of a
NASSA website. Uh, if the Sun were the size of
a typical half inch diameter marble, Okay, the distance from
the Sun to the Earth again an astronomical unit, would
be about four ft. The Earth would barely would be
barely thicker than a sheet of paper, and the orbit
of the Moon would be about one fourth an inch
in diameter. And on this scale, the closest to Star
(02:37):
Proximus centuri would be about two d ten miles away.
So that's about the distance between Cleveland and Cincinnati. Yeah,
so we're we're talking a massive distance here, and there
are no trains traversing that distance. So how would one
get to that destination? Well, I mean you post a
(02:57):
pretty lofty question there. I mean we're talking about uh
trillion miles away, right, Okay, so it's definitely not gonna
be a day trip, right, not a day trip. Okay,
what's what's the farthest we've ever gone? Well, the voyage
probe reach the farthest distance of man made object is gone.
So we're talking a colossal journey pretty much. Um, for
(03:20):
all intents and purpos, it's kind of an impossible one
at this point. I mean, we could was we'll get
into we could do it, but we have to have
a phenomenal amount of will and energy. Yeah, and we'd
have to maybe not be so into the idea of
the hobo still being alive when you reach proximate centurion,
right right, Um, So it comes down to energy, right right,
And and it comes down to what's already making that trip.
(03:41):
And I think as the as the title of the
podcast should spoil, um light is the is the railway
that one might traverse. That's right, Yeah, there's why a
little photons. Yes, So the idea of using a solar
sale and you know, it's it's a pretty basic concept,
and it's it's exactly how you might think of it.
You know, it's like you put up a sail on
(04:01):
a ship and you catch the breeze and you ride
the ride the wind across the lake. Say, well, the
solar sail concept is pretty much the same thing. There's
like a breeze of light, you put up the sail,
the the it'll catch the breeze and push the object,
push the sail. I mean, at first glance, it really
does seem kind of whimsical. Yeah, it seems. Yeah, it
sounds like it's a delightful you know, it sounds like
(04:23):
something from some sort of like French animated film, you know,
something on a fantastic planet. Indeed, you do see these
these designs show up like unrealistically in things from time
to time, like I think there's one in tron I
think that second um Star Wars prequel has some sort
of a solar sail thing, and uh so, so it's
easy to sort of dismiss it is just as being
(04:43):
like sailing ships and outer space is kind of a deal.
But but the idea has been around for a while. Um.
The astronomer Johannes Kepler, who we recently talked about in
another podcast Um he actually can't is perhaps the earliest
to come up with the concept back in the sixteen century,
and he noticed that comet tails always point away from
(05:04):
the sun, implying the sunlight itself is pushing them around
like cosmic wind socks, right right, So he thought that
you could just simply, you know, get like a ship
with the sail, and you know, it was properly put together,
you could sail around out there, which which again, that's
kind of that sounds kind of fantastic. It was really
on the right track. So his hunch was right. Yeah,
(05:26):
I do have to point out that they as he
also thought that comments were formed of fatty globules and ether,
which for two, you can't get everything right. Okay, you're
really asking a lot of limitations back man too. Um,
but but but just start to run down exactly how
this is working. All right, Scientists now know, um, with
the you know, the advent of all the things we've
learned since the sixteenth century, that sunlight is a little
(05:48):
more than a stream of photons, tiny particles of light,
and they don't possess mass, but they do boast linear momentum, right,
and then the smallest quantum of light, right, And when
they bounce off of a reflective sour face, they push
against that surface. There's actually a push. So just you know,
you know, just look at anything like I'm looking right
now at a at a lamp and a canister of
(06:11):
tissue paper, you know, and and it granted that the
tissue paper is not crawling across the desk pushed by
the light, but there, but even though it's not visible
of the naked eye, there is um. There is a
certain amount of momentum to that light. Yeah, and if
that tissue were a tissue box, I should say we're
super light and it was reflective, and when we'd see
more momentum right right, and if it were an outer
(06:33):
and uh, you know, free of the confines of Earth's gravity,
then we start, you know, opening up the rules a
little bit. So um. After Kepler had was long dead,
eight seventy three had James Clark Maxwell, and he first
demonstrated that sunlight exerts that a small amount of pressure
on photons. In nineteen sixty, we launched a little something
(06:53):
called Echo one, uh and observed the sun pushing it around.
Echo one and Leaveacko too. We're both pretty awesome because
they were basically super balloons. They were they rose up
to an altitude of a of a thousand miles and uh,
you know, we're actually space balloons in a very real
sense of the word. And they look kind of like
giant giant they're huge spheres. They kind of like giant
(07:18):
Christmas tree ornaments, just a very thin, you know, layer,
reflective surface with the gas. Yeah, I can't help but
think up hot air balloons without the bucket. Yeah, So
so in this case they observed the sun actually pushing
on it. So the basics behind that then is that
you've got a reflective surface. You've got light, right, and
(07:38):
like you said, you're you're we're not just reflected highly
reflect like a sheet of metal or a plastic coated
with metal and uh, and then it's reflecting the light. Okay.
And so the sales that we have right now, they're
thin sheets of metal like you said, and they've got
the plastic substrate in between, and then the reflective film
faces the sun. Right, Is that right? And it seems
(08:00):
again it seems really whimsical to think that this might
be something that could empower us to alpha century. Yeah,
it sounds far fetched, but but actually the more you
look at it, the more realistic it is. We've actually
um I was taught, actually talked about this subject with
the Dr Gregory L. Matt Loff, who is you can
(08:22):
look him up online. He's a pretty brilliant dude and
just can talk about sales, solar sales at the drop
of a hat. Just tell you all about him. So
the things that I get right in this podcast to
attribute to him, and the any errors I make are
purely my own doing. Um. But Marion or ten is
an example of a probe that we sent out that
it was not in its in and of itself a
(08:45):
solar sale, but it had solar cells on it. It
had it was gaining some energy from the Sun because
it was on a on a mission around Mercury right
where there's lots of solar energy due the proximity of
Mercury to the Sun. So they were running low on
the on gas to power it's you know, corrective boosters.
(09:06):
So they were able to use it's a solar cells
as a as an impromptu solar sale to maneuver it
a little, and they had some success with that. And
uh and so since that point we've had a number
of other experiments. The US especially had a habit of
like putting a lot of work and thought into them
and then not doing anything with it right, usually because
(09:27):
the funding dried up. Yeah, exactly, Like in the seventies.
Dr Lewis Friedman wanted to send a pro about to
Hayley's comment, and they were going to use the solar
sales for the rendezvous, but that was scrapped. The Russian
Space Agency had the whole uh spinning space mirror program, Uh,
the zan Maya one and two and UH and possibly three.
(09:49):
I'm not sure if three actually came to fruition. But
but the whole idea was they were going to reflect
sunlight uh back to the Earth so that they could
give sunlight to some of the you know, the far
northern regions that we're pretty short on it during the
winter and uh. And in at any rate, that was
able to successfully demonstrate some of those uh, those properties
of the solar sale even though those those projects were
(10:09):
far from you know, tremendously successful and um but though
just as a side note, they were apparently designed to
the point where they could provide luminosity between five and
ten times a full moon. So well, you know, um
uh India's INSAT two A and three A communications satellites
in two thousand three. Uh, they were there was like
(10:33):
a four panel solar array on one side, and they
were able to use some aspects of solar sale technology
to maneuver it. And of course then the Japanese finally
beat us to the punch by getting you know, it's
like we're just as the years get up, right, we
sort of see this as a trend that. Yeah, they
were left a little bit in the the dusts they were
able to launch this wonderful little device called Karros and
(10:55):
uh it's I I say little, but it had. It's
basically a square some twenty meters in a diagonal line,
and it's as thin as like point zero zero seventy
five millimeters and it's made from a poly need resident. Right,
it's called the space yacht. Right, just to give you
an idea of how big it is. Yeah, and uh yeah,
the headlines really loved using that space shot, thank too.
(11:16):
But it's pretty cool because it would it would it
was like it would be it was like this the
central hub that would rotate and then the sales would
would would spread out on all sides around it, and
it was it was. They used a rocket to get
it up there right right, okay, and then it unfurled okay,
and uh yeah, and it's it's it's been pretty successful
(11:37):
so far, um there, and we're still keeping eyes on
it to see how it's gonna how it's gonna do
in the near future. But the spacecraft itself was launched
May two, ten, uh, and with the whole idea that's
going to spend a six month trip traveling to Venus
and then it was gonna been a three year journey
to the far side of the Sun. So it's the
(11:58):
world's first solar powered aircraft employing both the photon propulsion
and then film solar power generation. So it's it's it's
getting some energy from the sun for it's uh for
it's uh, it's for some sun for some of its thrust.
But then it's also using solar sales, okay, and they're
able to manipulate that yeah, yeah, yeah. But the really
cool thing is, you know, no fuel, it's all based
on on the Sun, some of its solar sales, some
(12:19):
of its solar cells, uh, to to power these these
little thrusters. And uh. Then there's of course NASA's Nano
Sale D which is currently as of this recording, NASA
has lost contact with it. Um. It was you know,
recently launched just in the past month, and it is
it's what's called a nano satellite or a cube SAT,
(12:40):
and it's merely designed. It's it's one of several different
experiments where launched and it's up there just to test
the potential for solar sales in atmospheric breaking. And that's
when you have an interplanetary vehicle and you send it,
say to Mars, and you want it to slow down
when it gets to Mars. Right. It was also ejected
from another satellite, right, which is kind of a cool
way to get multiple satellites up there or betting at
(13:00):
the same Timeeah, it's like, let's get a satellite up
there loaded with some nano satellites, each one like testing
some particular technology. So in this case, this one tested
tested solar sales. But you know, so keep your fingers
crossed right now, it's not looking too hot for it.
But you know, I don't know, maybe it's just part
of the curse with with US solar sale technology, the
(13:22):
curse nano sale d Okay, So it's worth wondering just
how fast are these things going? Because again I'm looking
at the cleanex box. It's not moving, so it's you know,
just looking at that. Uh, It's it's hard. It's not
it's not moving to me, but it's hard to look
at that and then imagine oh the sun pushing uh,
you know, these satellites or even a spaceship with a
(13:43):
hobo inside it, Like, you know, how is that gonna
reach any amount of speed, but you'd actually be surprised,
all right, um, if you if you were to reduce
them the mass of of one of these devices significantly,
you could see it eventually traveling at about like fifty
six miles per second, which it's just crazy. Yeah, Like
that's basically like two hundred thousand miles per hour UM.
(14:05):
That's ten times faster than the Space Shuttle's orbital speed
of five five miles per second. And uh and it
would be like traveling from New York to Los Angeles
in less than a minute UM. If NASA order to
launch an interstellar probe powered by solar sales, it would
take only eight years for it to catch Voyager one spacecraft,
which is which has been traveling for twenty years and
(14:25):
is the most distant spacecraft from Earth, like we mentioned earlier.
So the speed can really pick up UM and and
the key with it with any kind of interstellar voyage
because again, as you want to start as close to
the Sun as possible, it's kind of like imagine that
you have a fan in a room, like an electric
fan and a paper airplane, and you want to use
(14:45):
the power of that fan to sail that paper airplane
across this big room. You want to start it as
close to that fan as possible to give them the
biggest to meet push, Yeah, to give them as momentum.
And so is the idea too that the greater the distance,
the greater the velocity, it's gonna go a lot faster. Yeah.
And and and you want to have as lighter materials
as possible, you know, as reflective as possible. So um,
(15:09):
you know, it's talking to Matt Loft and he said, yeah,
if you had using you know, sort of current technology,
you would you get this thing close to the sun
as possible, probably within the orbit of mercury, and uh,
get it in position, and then you unfurl those sales,
right it starts and then all that reflection starts taking place,
and uh you could you could probably reach two hundred
(15:30):
astronomical units in something like fifteen years, ten or fifteen years.
That that kind of uh, that kind of field. So
if you were putting a hobo on that, I don't
know how forget about how much a hobo ways, let's
just you know, for just to just just jazz it up,
we'll say hobo is aboard. Even if it's like a
nano hobo. Yeah, and uh you're going to launch in
(15:50):
the future, y. Yeah, that's it's coming. They're gonna be
made out of nanotubes. Um, you were going to launch
him from mercury uh towards proximate centuri Uh, you would
probably we'd probably take seven thousand years for him to
reach it. Yeah. So so again that sounds really really slow.
It is a colossal distance. I mean at that point
you need a generationship, right so that the hobo could
(16:12):
make other little hoboes that or your hobo has to
be purely mechanical or even a program like. One of
the really cool things about nanotechnology is when you start
looking at the possibilities of deep space probes, they don't
have to be as big as a room, right is
the technology improves, we can seevably make smaller and smaller
uh probes capable of of you know, of going out
(16:33):
there and relaying a message or or even you know,
carrying a sensory equipment. Right again, how carbon nanotubes are
changing our life exactly? And in fact, that was one
thing Matt Low touched touched on too. It's like it's
with this improves and we're able to make say a
fifty nanometer uh, you know, thick sale if you built
it in space, you know, and you could probably make
(16:54):
an interstellar void and as little as two thousand years
and go uh in in so the lie or you
go uh and you could go even faster. One one
possibility to would beat it. You have that you have
like holes in your sale if it perforated, because you're
still you know, cover a huge space, still reflective, but
taking up less mass. So it's just a game of
like cutting down how much space they take? How how
(17:16):
small can you get in order as you can Yeah,
and just you know huge sales as well, right, well, yes,
I guess smaller meaning point Yeah. And so Matt, I've
also said that, you know, as we get into these
carbon nanotubes and and and graphines and and all these
type of futuristic um materials, he thinks we'll do a
lot better than than two thousand years. He you know,
(17:38):
he thinks we may even get you know, below a
thousand years. Uh. And he says he has his doubts
when we get into talking about like a couple of
hundred years. So it would still take our current technology. No, No,
this would be with with with forthcoming nanotechnology, we would
he and this is just talking about you know, getting
into the orbit of mercury and sling shotting at out
(18:00):
on that beam of light. I mean, but we're using
some current technology to sort of Yeah, current technology, you're
looking at a seven thousand trip, but with conceivable more
or less near future technology, you could get it down
to a thousand years maybe a number of central Okay,
So some of the technology we have right now, it's
just a matter of decreasing in the size that we
(18:20):
needed to be. Yeah. Okay, so let's go back to
the get that right in my head. Yeah, So let's
get back to that that paper airplane in the room
with the electric fan. Let's say you're shooting it off
and it's not making it all the way. What's one
thing you can do to increase the chances of delivering
that paper airplane to the far side of the room.
I can harness it with nuclear arm heads no, no, no, no.
(18:45):
But but what you can do is say you've got
a different fan, a more powerful fan. Right. So we
can't really replace the sun right right, Um, I mean
not with any kind of conceivable technology. If we could
reach the point where we could replace the sun. We
wouldn't be trying to figure out how to travel to
the far side of the galaxy because you're probably doing
it every day. So but one thing we can do
(19:07):
is we can concentrate those particles by use of a
laser or a particle accelerator, because these are basically just
concentrated um photons, right, Okay, so we know the photons
have momentum. So if we did have giant lasers, then
you would have so much more energy to concentrate that.
What you're saying, you could have a solar pumped laser,
(19:28):
which is basically a laser that's feeding off solar energy
that's absorbed. Okay, So the idea here is you would
point you if you've got one of these just crazy
advanced lasers, you could point it in the direction that
you want to solar sail you know, kind of like
laying a train track, uh, point in the direction of
say proximate centuri and then you just you know, you
(19:49):
coast that solar sail craft into the stream and then whammo,
it just takes off. It's like like grabbing hold of
you know, being on a skateboard and grabbing hold of
a passing vehicle. Suddenly you're you're office. Do you have
a couple of things at work. You've got the added
acceleration of the beam, right, and then you've get the
fact that the greater the distance to travel, the faster
(20:12):
you're going. So two of those those forces working on it. Yeah,
provided you built a large enough laser, a large enough sail,
and a light enough spacecraft and you know, had light
enough Hobo in it, um, you could conceivably, according to
Mount laft Uh, according to his estimations, um, with this
higher velocity, you could conceivably deliver that ship to another
(20:34):
to the nearest start to proximate injury within a human lifetime.
Well okay, so that's how we get to see it
in this lifetime, well not this lifetime, but within the
space our forbearers will. This presentation is brought to you
by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. So yes, future generators and
(21:00):
of Hobo could conceivably do this. Right. Now, you get
into questions of like energy costs for that laser right
because um, I think some of the estimates are looking
at like all the power generated on the Earth would
have to go into that laser. Um and then some right, yeah,
and then some yeah, there you go. That's that's a
bit of a logistics problem, not to mention your pointing
(21:22):
a laser at like a distant point in the galaxy.
Like you've got to sort of think, is that what
if there's somebody over there and they're like, whoa, they're
firing a laser at it, and then there are they
going to overreact and fire laser back at us? Yeah?
You know, we we think we're just laying some train track,
but we're actually firing the first shot in the Earth's
first and last galactic war. That would kind of suck. Now,
(21:45):
another cool idea is to send off a slow moving
vessel and uh and have and and use lasers as
a form of transport between us and that vessel. Okay,
explain more. Okay, So again it's like like you send
off a slow moving maybe unmanned vessel, all right, just
(22:06):
powered by more conventional um you know systems kind of
these generationships you here, you know, talk to talk about
in sci fi and cosmology, where it's traveling such a
vast distance that you would have generations live and diet
aboard it. Well, instead of that, you just you sort
of keep it tethered by this this laser or you
maybe you don't have the laser fired up at all times,
but whenever you need to, you know where it is,
you know where you are. You were able to fire
(22:28):
up the laser and use solar sale technology to travel
between the two. Yeah, So that's another possible use for
for some of this uh and uh. But going back
to just sort of non laser solar sale technology, there
are a number of cool possibilities here involving, say, using
the solar sale to send cargo ahead of say a
trip to Mars. Um. There have been some some cool
(22:51):
studies into how we could use it to um to
mitigate a near Earth object that's getting a little too
close to our planet. Okay, so if there is an
asteroid coming at us, Yeah, then we could like some
some plans involved like actually putting a solar sail on
it and then it catches the light and it steers
it away and nudges it out of the way and uh.
(23:13):
And then there's somewhere it's like it's like there's like
a satellite beaming, putting a beam of light on the
the asteroid and pushing it with light. And then there
are there are also plans where you just like splash
it with white paint and then yeah, and it and
itself reflects and then right. So and I thought that
was interesting because I was reading it a little bit
about it and said something about how it would be
(23:34):
really hard to sort of tether an asteroid because it's rotating,
it's maybe tumbling, so you really have to get a
system of gimbals to anchor it, you know, you know,
get your solar sail anchored to the surface of it.
But we have, we have successfully landed vessels you know before,
so it's not you know, completely crazy, but but it's
still it's better than the nuclear option, right of shooting
(23:56):
down an asteroid and turning it into a giant shotgun
blast still headed for the Earth. Um and then another
really cool thing like we talked about with with acros.
You know, it has it doesn't need fuel, it has
it's all sunlight. So this is a tremendous opportunity for
for instance, that there's some some plans to you know,
put out some sort of approbe to keep an eye
(24:17):
on solar flare so we'll have advanced warning dangerous radiation
levels headed to the Earth. You put us you put it,
you know, more of a traditional satellite out there in
a high solar area. Um, you're gonna need fuel so
that it can correct itself with with with its with
its thrusters to maintain its position. But if you could,
if you could have all of that solar base, then
(24:37):
there's you know, there's no need to worry about how
much food fuel it has. Uh, it's just you know,
for for all intents and purposes, it's self sufficient. Okay,
So I mean it sounds to me like it's just
a in the very short term, there's an easy way
to collect more data. Yeah, um, and in a more
efficient way. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's basically just really
(24:57):
it's the thing that really amazes me about it is
that it's just kind of like a really common sense idea.
Now it's not, it's it's it's common sense of the
idea is needless to say, as you know, we need
to work out the engineering to to make it to work,
to really perfect it, um, you know, and we need
to not lose contact with the satellites they are testing it.
But but it's but still you talk to talk to
(25:18):
guys like Matt Loff and and other experts in there,
they're really you know, they really believe in this technology,
and they really see it as as playing is playing
a role in our cosmic future. So yeah, and I
think a lot of people will say, well, that's crazy too.
You know, why would you spend the energy and the
money to create this technology to go to alpha century
(25:39):
our proximate century, whichever you prefer. But I mean, if
you think about it, that that purportedly would have planets
of a century that would be earthlike, at least that's
what we think. And so if we ever had the
at least other systems, I'm not so sure. I'm not
sure what the outlook is on. I think that the
suspicion is that they might sort of like rocky um
(26:01):
planets like Earth. And so the suspicion is, Okay, let's
let's go out there and have this opportunity to observe
planets if we could, and the suns if we could,
and and take that data back home and and even
use it to get a better understanding of our own planet,
which I think that sometimes people think there's too much
of a disconnect between space and Earth, and the fact
(26:24):
of the matter is that that's if you never try
to find out anything about space, it would be like
never leaving your house, your entire life being born inside
this one house and dying inside this one house. And
you would never have a full understanding of your life
if you didn't have other things to compare it to
and to get a perspective on. So that's why I'm
I think it's so fascinating that this technology exists right
(26:48):
now and how far it can get us in the future. Yeah,
and just in terms of practicality to um when it
comes to deflecting potentially dangerous potentially like extinction level near
Earth asteroids, like we've never we've never done that before,
we've never had to do it. But should we ever
do that, that will be the one time in human
history that humans have ever done anything to save the
(27:09):
planet in a very literal sense, Like you watch you
watch big dumb summer action films. It's like people save
the world every week. You know, every comic book hero
that's ever existed to save the world at least once,
But in reality, we've never done that. This is the
one realistic chance we ever have at saving the planet.
I mean, aside from the things that we know can
do to keep ourselves from destroying it. That's right, And
(27:31):
we can't rely on Bruce Willis to to save No,
he's he's got gigs that you're doing it bars, I mean,
you just can't expect to get him at the job
of a hat. So, hey, we have some listener mail.
Let's bring it, let's do it. Have one here. Both
of these relate to our recent podcast about music Rebuilding
the Mind. We talked about the connection between music and
(27:54):
our brains and what's going on when we listen to
music or or you know, partake of any kind of
musical exercise. We've received a lot back from people on that,
especially when it comes to earworms. So Justin writes us,
and he says, hey, guys, I just discovered your podcast
a couple of days ago, and your literal blow the
Mind episode about people's heads blowing up. It was fantastic.
(28:16):
Since then, I've listened to almost a dozen more, and
I just listened to listen to your podcast on music
in the mind. As far as non lyrical earworms, none
of mine focus on what is being said. However, what
is strange is the tone of the vocals is what
gets stuck in my head. Um example, rushes closer to
the heart. Yeah, yeah, how's it go? Um, I can't
(28:36):
say like the word, but I can't do the time.
That wasn't you know what I'm saying. So there we
just got him again if we were listening there, Justin
Um he says, so when he says, when the song
floats back, it is never the actual content, but instead
the sounds of the vocal exactly like you couldn't remember
the words of him and you could remember the the
(28:57):
And this is no slight to rush. But I kind
of feel like I could use that example for every
single one of their songs. That's that one little melody there. Uh.
And then Justin also added p s. I did a
neat undergrad collateral study UM on the the predicators of
crime and found that a that states a state's power
energy usage and uh and how each state voted Republican
(29:19):
or Democrat were correlated to crime, amongst other things. So
he recommends were looking at that for a possible future episode.
That sounds pretty cool. Uh. And I have another email
here and this is pretty cool too. This is from
this dumb By the end of Gabriel and Gabriel got
a big kick out of the term auditory cheesecake, and
I thought it's uh, sounds delicious. But he also pointed
(29:43):
out quote, by the way, if there's an earworm that's
bugging you, there's a little site called www dot unhear
it that's you in H G A R I T
dot com that will replace a song that's that's been
peanut buttered on your brain by peanut buttering another song
onto ukranium. Give that a try next time. Poker Face,
(30:03):
where's its ugly head? Um? And uh and I actually
check this out and it seems to work. It's kind
of dangerous. It's kind like playing Russian roulette with sometimes
bad songs like I just you know. You can click
through it and each time it'll bring up a SoundCloud
file with a particular song. Uh and uh and I
actually I did not have an earworm earlier today when
(30:24):
I checked it out, but it did get some sort
of like I don't even know what it was, but
some sort of a little electronic tune was momentarily caught
in my head. But you could conceivably replace poker Face
with whoop there it is. Yeah, I don't know that's
that's a dicey prospect because right now I have got
my seasonal earworm going on, which is simply having a
wonderful Christmas time, thanks a lot, Paul McCartney. Um, so yeah,
(30:48):
I'd have to kind of go there and see if
if it was. If I can't imagine a worse warm
ear worm, though, then pal McCartney's simply having a wonderful
Christmas time. So I guess the bets are pretty good
in favor. Thank you of Whoop there it is. It
does remind me and and I'm not trying to make
light of mental illness here that I once went to
a local grocery store and it was at night, and
(31:09):
it was one of these grocery stores that's it's a big,
big grocery store, and it's kind of like everybody goes there.
It's like you'll see hipster's there, you'll see um, but
you also see people that are down on their luck.
And this one particular gentleman, who was I think a
little down on his luck, seemed to only be able
to speak the words whoop there It is like he
was just constantly saying, whoop there it is. And then
when when people would like, a guy came up to
(31:30):
you know, ask him something, you know, before we entered
the store, he was like responding, like in a conversational tone,
but the only words coming out were whooped, there it is. Okay.
I thought at first that you meant that he was
sort of like capping his thoughts with groop there. No, no,
like that was the only the only words he was saying.
Like he was just kind of walking on, whoop there
it is. Whoop there it is. And then like somebody
talked to him and he's like, whoop there it is.
Whoop there it is, Like that was that was the
(31:51):
only way he could different inflections, Yeah, different inflections, So
it was it was really fascinating and there I it's
like it was, is this like the terminal? This is
what happens if you cannot get into your worm out
of your head? Yeah? Probably not, it was. There probably
a lot a lot of other stuff going on there,
but it was so weird that this was the one
song that ended up being his you know, all that
(32:13):
he was. It's too bad you couldn't have introduced him
to the other Yeah, you found about that website? Yeah,
a lot of hassle. And speaking of websites, you can
check us out on two particular websites, uh, that being
Facebook or Twitter. We're blow the mind on both of those.
Oh and also we do have an excellent article on
(32:34):
the main side about solar sales, how solar sales work.
So I just dropped drop that into the search bar
and you find a really you know, it's it's really
good oversight of just how it just worked. So if
anything that I told you kind of throw you and
go there, and you should clear any questions up. Yeah,
and if you have any questions or comments at hobos
and solar sales, drop us a line at below the
(32:56):
mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
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