Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseIf we needed to move the sun, could we do it?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield savings account through Applecard, apply for Applecard in the wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member, FDIC terms and more at applecard dot com.
Have you boosted your business with Lenovo Pro yet? Become a Lenovo Pro member for free today and unlock access to Lenovo's exclusive business store for technology expert advisors and essential products and services designed just for you. Visit Lenovo dot com slash Lenovo Pro to sign up for free. That's Lenovo dot Com slash Lenovo Pro Lenovo unlock new AI experiences with Lenovo's think Pad x one carbon powered by Intel Core ultraprocessors.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact, but the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is US Dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit us dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
Hey Danielle, if you could travel to another solar system, would you sign up to do it? Oh?
I would so love to be in another solar system, but I'm not sure I'm up for actually taking the trip.
Or really, do you get spasic easily?
Yeah, especially after forty years of eating the same food.
Well, what if you just take the Red Eye? You know, like you go into hibernation and then you wake up when you get there. That's kind of like almost I do like.
Naps, but I'm not sure I'm up for a forty year nap. I have to pay for economy plus and or have enough room to really sleep comfortable.
To sleep well for forty years. Well, if you could visit another solar system without actually traveling there, how about that would you be up for? Then?
Totally? If I could just sit on my couch and then like open the door to see another world. I'd be in.
Oh man. Then I've got an idea for you. I just need four hundred trillion dollars. If you have that in your pocket.
Let's crowdsource it from our listeners.
Hi. I am Hora. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics.
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I dream about traveling the universe from my couch.
Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we take mental trips all over the universe, from the heart of neutron stars to what's happening inside a black hole to crazy stuff at the microscopic level, and try to explain all of it to you in a way that also maybe makes you laugh.
Yeah. Think of us as your audio guide in your tour of the universe as you travel from the farthest reaches to the smallest places in the universe.
That's right, and we might not just be limited to a mental trip. It might be possible to actually take a trip somewhere else in the galaxy. Maybe someday sometime in the future, humans will actually set foot on planets in other solar systems.
Yeah, it's been a dream of humanity for a long time, I think, right, it hasn't it been to travel to another star and discover new world and maybe discover different civilizations out there in space. But it's always been kind of a difficult thing to get out into space and to travel somewhere because the distances are so big and it's a pretty hostile environment out there in space.
Yeah. Do you think it's a dream of humanity as a species or like of all humans, because I would love for.
The difference between and all humans.
Well, I would love for humanity to explore the galaxy and learn all these things and send us pictures back. But I don't particularly want to be in a spaceship or be an astronaut, though I'm like a big proponent of the you know, humanity doing it one small step for some other man.
Oh, I see, you just want to sit that, but you don't want to be the one who actually discovers another world or to be the one who's who travels to another world. So even if we discovered another world, you wouldn't want to go there.
Unless I could do it from my couch. You know, I'm not up on I don't even like going skiing, you know, so I'm not that up on like physical danger.
Oh, I see, But you just want to know that somebody else went there.
Yes, totally. I will pay more taxes and encourage people to work on these projects, and I want us as humans to do it, But I don't necessarily want to be that one. I wonder how common that feeling is, though. I want if everybody else out there who's pro space travel also actually wants to do it themselves.
Yeah, I can see what you mean. I mean not maybe not everyone can get over the fear of possibly dying while you're exploring, but everyone probably thinks it would be cool for someone else to discover a new place.
Yeah, And I think for some people that fear of death is living. You know. Some people really want that thrill of living on the edge and doing something dangerous, and I want to hear all about it when they get back.
You want to live in the centers, comfortably, in the center of things.
I do. I like my couch.
Well, it is sort of an impediment for you know, a big challenge for humans to travel into space is that space is sort of big and there's really nothing out there, and you could die at any moment because it's such a hostile there's no oxygen, you know, the vacuum would kill you, the temperature would kill you. It's it's a pretty big barrier to overcome if we want to discover other things out there.
Yeah, and one classic solution is, you know, try to take what you need with you, make a little box and fill it with air and food and all that stuff, and sort of take the minimum human survival necessities and pack them with you. But you know, that's sort of like camping. You know, it's fun for a while, but it can be a little uncomfortable, and you know, you don't want to do it for forty years or forty thousand years. And so people are wondering, like, is it possible to maybe explore the universe without ever leaving your home?
You mean teleporting? Can we teleport your couch, you and your couch. Can we make a couch that teleports Daniel somewhere else?
You know, that's a good question on Star Trek. How come they have to stand up when they're in their teleporter? Why can't there just be a chair there.
Oh man, we can't even get you to stand up to teleport. You're like, I have to stand up. Forget about it. Forget about it.
I forget about it. I'm turning into an old man. Every time I go somewhere, I'm always looking for a chair. You know where can I sit down?
Now? Are you laying down as you were recording this?
Daniel on the advice of counsel, I refuse to answer that question.
Well, this is a pretty big topic and a pretty big question. And so one of our listeners had maybe a good idea or came upon a good idea for maybe how we could travel comfortably to other solar systems.
Yeah. I got a wonderfully hilarious email from one of our listeners who heard our podcast about terraforming and found that it came in handy in a random conversation he had.
So here's what Daniel saunder Is from London wrote to us.
He says, Hi, I just want to say thanks for the terraforming episode. It came in surprisingly handy. When I was loading my groceries under the checkout at the supermarket, two checkout assistants were talking across to each other about whether or not we could ever move to another planet, maybe Mars. They didn't seem to have much idea on the subject, So after a minute or two, I couldn't help myself and I began explaining all the things I learned from your podcast, making a magnetic feel, the giant mirror for heating, dumping microbes, et cetera. They were pretty amazed that some random guy happened to know these things. I gave credit where credit is due and pointed them to your podcast. But then they asked me if it would ever be possible to physically move our planet or our solar system somewhere else in space. So I'm writing to you to.
Ask, Wow, what an awesome email. And where is this supermarket where if people talk about science at the checkout line?
Nowhere here I've never overheard somebody asking such a complicated physics question in public where I feel like ching. I know that's what I got a PhD In physics for. So somebody would be like, what is the branching ratio of the top quark to the bottom cork. I wonder if anybody knows.
At the checkout line, You're like, oh my god, this is the moment I've been preparing for for thirty years.
Or you're on an airplane and they're like, excuse me if someone have a PhD in particle physics on the plane. We have an emergency calculation we need to do. Never happened to me.
We have an emergency particle collision we need to analyze. What are these courts? We don't know what to do with them.
But he does raise a fascinating question. So I'm really glad that Daniel in London had this interaction and generate this wonderful, fascinating question.
Yeah, it's awesome to think that our listeners are having these conversations with other people, and even more awesome that they're telling them about our podcasts.
That's right. So if you are one of those checkout assistants from that supermarket, welcome to the podcast and thank you for listening. This one is for you.
But it's an interesting idea. And so the idea is that Daniel wrote in about is that you know, it is sort of hard to pack everything with you to go on a trip into outer space to another solar system, because you know, you have to build your house, your spaceship, and you have to bring in enough food and air and be able to recycle everything. And so I guess the idea here is that instead of building a spaceship, think of it as us already being in a spaceship called Earth.
That's right, Yeah, just make Earth our spaceship, like Earth is now a mobile home or a camper van, right, take your house with you as you.
Travel, or not even just to Earth. The entire solar system could be our you know, our camper Yeah.
Well, I think you'd need to bring the Sun otherwise you'd end up in the Rogue Planets episode that we just did, and that would be pretty cold.
That's a whole different episode.
Who different episode.
There is a movie actually in Netflix that I know you've seen it where they something like I think either a meteor is coming or the Earth gets knocked out of orbit, and so they build these giant engines to push the Earth to another solar system.
Wow, And would you rate the physics in it as excellent?
I would rate these special effects as not bad? Okay, not bad.
By not answering the question, you've answered the question.
And so the question we'll be tackling today is is it possible to move our solar system somewhere else?
I think that sounds like a wonderful way to explore the galaxy. I stay on my couch and you just let me know when we're getting near another solar system, you know.
But then what would you do? You wouldn't even want to visit the neighbors because you have to stand up.
What well, you could just train the telescopes, you know, we could like turn hubble on those now nearby planets, right.
I see, you just want to look at pictures while sitting on your couch.
And if we get if we get close enough to some alien solar system and there are aliens, I'm sure they'll come meet us and we can send our you know, strapping young representatives, young women and men of our species to go and meet them. It doesn't need to be some forty five year old grumpy physicist podcaster. Right, I'm not the prime candidate to meet aliens.
What if everyone refuses?
Everybody refuses.
Okay, it's like he's staying in his couch. Why should I get up and risk my life?
We're all five years old now, all right. If nobody else will do it, I will sign up. I will go. Yeah, yes, all right, take one for the team.
Absolutely, let's let's up the petition, okay for once to go into space. No One, Daniel Europe.
I'm pretty sure this is not a situation I'm ever going to actually encounter. So I'm comfortable volunteering in that scenario.
You're comfortable in the craziness of other human beings to do more reglicent.
Yeah, people want to do that stuff. There's always like thousands and thousands of people applying to be astronauts, so there's no need for me to try to elbow my way in there.
Well, I'm surprised that this idea is out there. You know that people had been thinking about this, and it sounds like you did some research and you found some stuff in it.
Yeah, there are definitely people have been developing concepts for how this could be possible, and it's kind of important. There are reasons why we might want to move our sun, not just out of curiosity, not just out of the desire to explore the universe and be lazy on our couch, but also, you know, for the survival of our solar system there could be times we need to move it. So I thought it was a fascinating question.
But as usual, we were wondering how many people out there had even heard of this idea, much less think that it's possible. And so, as usual, Daniel went out there and asked people in the street if they thought it's possible to build a machine that could move a star.
So here's what people had to say, Yes, but.
Maybe in the far future, not with the materials we have right now.
How would you do it?
Maybe some concepts involving stretching the space behind the star and condensing it.
In front, okay, like a warp drive.
Like a warp drive.
Yeah, no, no, I don't think so. I don't think the technology is there yet right now.
What I think it might be possible.
I think it would be hard with the resources on the planet here, just because we have such finite resources, you know, and we have to think, well, how much are we taking away from Earth to try and move something.
That's even bigger than the Earth. And it's kind of hard.
But I think it's a maybe for me. Know, I wouldn't say no, I wouldn't say yes.
You might not fund it, breathing it's possible, yeah, probably, Yeah, I believed be possible because photons to carry momentum.
So if you were able to harness the the energy from photons, you wouldn't like but also like being able to put that force into the Sun.
You wouldn't be able to move the Sun to use the Sun's own energy. Yeah, like an energy. Yeah, yeah, I think that's impossible. Impossible.
Yeah, no, but I think we could get away with lying about it.
That's awesome.
You have to be a very strong machine.
Yeah, is it possible. I don't know.
I feel like it caused a lot of havoc with the whole circulating around its systems.
Or that would make it a bad idea.
But imp not impossible, yes, all right, not a lot of confidence in the concept.
People were shocked. Sometimes I had to repeat myself because people thought they must have misheard the question because it was so ridiculous.
To move a star, not necessarily a sun, but just like a star is there and you're moving it. Mm hmmm.
Yeah. It's a crazy concept. In fact, it's a the central feature of one of my favorite science fiction series by Alistair Reynolds, where they try to tackle this problem of having an interstellar empire, you know, where the distances are so vast it takes forever to travel or even communicate, and they solve the problem by dragging a bunch of stars close to each other so they can have an interstellar empire that's not actually that big. And so you know, it appears in science fiction, it's in the realm of people's thoughts, but not most people. Most people thought this was a crazy idea.
Oh, I see, you've read about this in a science fiction novel.
Yeah, yeah, it's a cool idea, and you know, all best ideas start in science fiction novels.
All right, but it's a crazy concept. Everyone out there thought it was kind of crazy, just the idea of moving a star, much less our star. So there's all kinds of questions here. Why would you want to do it, how would you do it? What would it mean to do it? So let's dig into all of these crazy questions. But first let's take a quick break.
With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price your thoughts you were paying magically skyrockets. With Mintmobile, You'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan, they really mean it. I've used Mintmobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear. I can recommend it to you. So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. You can use your own phone with any mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So dit your overpriced wireless with mint Mobiles deal and get three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot com slash universe. That's mintmobile dot com slash universe. Cut your wireless bill to fifteen bucks a month. At mintmobile dot com slash universe, forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower about forty gigabytes On unlimited plan. Additional taxi speeds and restraints apply. Seement Mobile for details.
AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested so buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power, So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control. It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing, and of course nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, like Uber eight by eight and Data Bricks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at Oracle dot com slash Strategic. That's Oracle dot com slash Strategic Oracle dot com slash Strategic.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield savings account through Apple Card, apply for Apple Card in the wallet app. Subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners, subject to eligibility Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms and more at applecard dot com.
All right, Daniel, So moving a star? How do we move a star? Why would we want to move a star? And how could it even be practical or plausible to move an entire star like our sun to somewhere else in the galaxy.
It's a crazy idea, mostly because stars are really really big. I mean, the mass of our Sun is ten to the thirty kilograms, and it's a lot of it's a lot of kilograms, you know, it's it's.
Like a million earths.
It's more than a million earths. And the Earth already pretty big. Of course, the Sun is already moving. It's orbiting the center of the galaxy. And what we're interested in is changing its motion. Right, And because F equals MAA tells you that you need a force in order to move something with mass. You want to accelerate the sun move it somewhere else, You got to apply a force and them in the air.
The bigger something is, the harder it is to move it. Yeah, so it's hard to get Daniel off the couch. Imagine getting the Earth off the couch, and now imagine moving one point three million Earth out of the couch.
You know, since you're suggesting I'm so massive, maybe we should be measuring the sun and the units of Daniel right.
There, you go, isn't it about to say one point three million Daniels?
That's right, I am the Earth. I've eaten everything. It's big. So you'd need a really big force, like we're talking cosmic scale engineering, which is awesome think about and to read about in signce fiction novels, but very difficult to actually pull off.
Well. So the basic idea is that you would build like an engine or how would you even approach this problem of moving a whole star?
So you need a lot of energy, and you need something that produces a lot of energy, and the only thing nearby that sort of produces enough energy to move a star is a star. I mean, a star is a huge fusion engine and it's pumping out an enormous amount of energy. And the simplest idea is to think about all the fusion energy that it's pumping out, mostly in terms of photons and protons and stuff like that. And that's not creating a force on the star because it's pointing in every direction. Like the Sun pushes out and pushes down to push his left, to push his right. Every time it shoots out a photon to the left that gives a little bit of force to the right. But on the other side, it's shooting out photons to the right, which gives it a force to the left. So it's balanced.
It's like a rocket, but it's shooting in all directions at the same time.
Yeah, exactly. What would happen if you attached eight rocket engines to yourself and set them all off at once, right, Well, you wouldn't go anywhere.
Like in all different directions. Yeah, it perfectly balanced.
Perfectly balanced in all different directions. I guess they would just squish you. But that's essentially what the Sun is right now. So the idea is, instead of having the Sun pushing in all directions, to somehow get it to only push in one direction so it uses its own energy to fly through the galaxy.
Wait, this is one idea. So one idea for moving the Sun is to somehow coax it or fool it into only shooting in one direction so it naturally moves.
Yeah, and you can't really change the way the Sun operates. What you got to do is sort of like reflect it. So you remember, once we talked about solar sales, we talked about like sailing through space by capturing the momentum of photons. And the idea there was basically, have a huge mirror and when a photon hits the mirror, it bounces off and that pushes the mirror. Well, if you built a really big solar sail, like the side eyes of the Sun, okay, and you put it next to the Sun, what he would do is bounce some of those photons, the ones that hit the solar sail, that would bounce it back the other direction.
So wouldn't the sale get blown away?
The sale would definitely get blown away because it's a huge solar sale. And that's the idea. But if you could somehow attach it to the sun, right, attach it to the Sun.
I see the small problem of building a sale the size of the Sun and the small problem of attaching it to the Sun.
Well, actually that problem is not that tricky because the Sun has a huge amount of gravity, and so if you just put it in the right place, then the amount of pressure you're getting on the solar sale is balanced by the gravity of the Sun pulling on it, and it would sort of stay in the same place. It would become in a sense, part of this larger gravitational system of the Sun plus the sale, so the Sun would hold it in the right place.
Give it like a gravitational chain there to attach it to.
Yeah, so actually attaching a solar sale to the Sun not physically like strapping it to the core of the Sun, which is you know, sort of the way it works in your brain, But you can do effectively the same thing gravitationally.
Did you actually run the numbers like put in it need to be super heavy for it to have a gravitational effect on the Sun.
Yes, But anything you're building that's going to be the size of the Sun is going to be heavy. If you build this thing and it's like a micron a very thin aluminum or something, a micron of thin aluminum, that's you know, one auy that's ninety million miles wide, that's still a lot of aluminum.
That's a lot of microns. But is there even that much aluminum that we in our solar system.
That's such an engineering question.
Man.
I see, if we could magically create matter is what you're saying, and make it a the size of the Sun, then no problem.
No, we probably do have enough materials if we like liquidate you know a planet or two, or you know, some asteroids. There's probably enough stuff out there. But actually fabricating that thing, I mean, we'll talk about that later. It would cost a lot of money. The physics of it sort of does make sense, yeah, And the reason is that, you know, the Sun puts out a lot of energy. It makes like ten to the forty five photons per second, and so it's pomping a lot of energy.
So you're saying, capture some of it and have it pull the Sun along with it gravitationally.
Yeah.
So you'd imagine having a huge mirror, for example, and then you position this mirror next to the Sun, and half of the photons will come out of the Sun, would get reversed in their direction and go the other way, and so the net force would be It'd be like if the Sun just had a huge flashlight and it was shining it off into space, that would push the Sun. It would get pushed in the direction away from this beam. So in the direction of the solar sail, and so that would move the Sun. It would accelerate the Sun. Now there's some limitations there, like you can't have this solar sale in the plane of the planets, you know, like if you have in the plane of the planets, then it's shooting a huge beam of photons, you know, into the solar system. You could like fry a planet. We don't want to do that, So you're sort of limited also in the direction you can aim this thing. You don't want to strap a huge rocket to the Sun and point it at the Earth for example.
I don't know. It sort of sounds to me like like if you're in a boat and you put up a sail and then you blow in it with your mouth and expecting that to move you across the sea, Like you know, you're blowing on it, and somehow it feels like it kind of feels like a closed system.
Exactly right, If you were only blowing on the sail, you'd go nowhere. But if you're blowing on the sale and your friend is blowing the other direction, right, your friends blows will actually push you somewhere. So if we could just turn off half of the Sun. That'd be great. This is effectively like turning off half of the Sun and having it only blow in one direction.
Oh, I see. And then but then and then the sale would push also pull the Sun.
Yeah, well, the Sun would actually be pushing itself, right, be pushing itself because it's the photons that are going away from the sale would be pushing the Sun effectively. And then the Sun would have this sale sort of captured in its gravitational system, and so hopefully it'd be stable. But that's one of the problems is that it's it might not be that stable a situation. You know, if this thing like gets twisted a tiny bit, then all of a sudden it's unstable and it's falling into the Sun and your four hundred trillion dollar engineering project is literally toast.
And the whole reason that you melt it down Mars could have been for.
Nothing, and the Martians are pissed.
All right, So that but that's just one idea. One idea is to use like a giant solar sale and focus the Sun in one direction. What's another way that we could maybe move the Sun.
Another way is to sort of use the fuel of the Sun to power an enormous rocket. So you know, if you were like a five year old and you thought how would I do this? You say, okay, well, I'm just going to build a huge rocket and attach it to the Sun. And that's basically this idea. But you know, a rocket like that is going to take a lot of energy, and fortunately the Sun is you know, it's a huge ball of fuel. Basically it's helium, it's hydrogen. So if you could build a big enough rocket, then you could just use the fuel from the Sun itself to power that engine and push the sun.
Wow. And how would you push it again gravitationally?
That's a great question. Like you know, if you build an engine and you want to move something, you imagine like strapping it to something. But you don't want to strap this thing to the sun, and nobody can be able to leather strap the size of the Sun. So you'd actually have to build a two directional rocket, so one that sort of pushes the rocket and another one that pushes the sun, so it keeps the Sun sort of in front of it. Imagine it's sort of like a tugboat pushing a really big ship. You can't touch the ship, so it has like a little like a particle accelerator or a rocket to sort of keep the Sun in front of it? Does that pause mean that made perfect sense or no sense at all?
This all to me, so maybe stem me through it. So you build a rocket, you build like a little spaceship, right, and then you put it out in front of the sun for a form in front of the in the direction you want to go, or behind the sun in the direction you want to go.
You put it behind the sun. So the Sun is in the direction you want to go, and the rocket is behind it, and the rocket is burning away from the Sun. Uh huh Okay, so the rocket is pushing towards the Sun. But then so that the rocket doesn't fall into the Sun, it shoots out a beam in front of it that pushes the sun.
Oh you're saying, shoot a beam of.
What of whatever? You know, hydrogen, helium, whatever comes out of your reaction. You can push anything, sort.
Of blow on the sun to get it to move.
Blow on the sun. Yeah. So you're you're imagine you're pushing some enormous ball, right, you have some like twenty meters high basketball and you have trying to push it. You're running and you're pushing, you're blowing on this thing to keep it in front of you. Yeah, oh boy, all right, it's complicated.
My rocket is getting energy from the Sun.
Yeah, you're stealing matter from the Sun to fuel it. So you have to like slurp stuff off of the Sun, you know, the Sun's plasma and the winds and all that stuff in order to fuel this thing.
Oh what like with the straw, how would you scoop things up from the Sun?
That's how much. Well, you could use magnetic fields to sort of channel large areas of the Sun's radiation into this thing to sort of grab it. Or you might have to build like a dice in sphere to capture more of the Sun's emissions and focus that into your rocket. So it would be pretty complicated.
Build like a giant catcher's mid use that to power your rocket. And whatever it is you're throwing at the Sun to push it mm hm. So you grab some of the stuff it's shooting out and you use it to push it back out.
That's right. And if you're worried that this would like eat up the Sun pretty quickly, the Sun is pretty big and even this ridiculous contraption would take a pretty small fraction of the energy of the sun, so we don't have to worry about that.
All right. So those are I think, two pretty solid ideas. I don't know, they seem pretty both pretty crazy, but they're out there. Those ideas are out there, and they're not I guess what you're saying is they're not impossible. They're physically possible, but maybe maybe they might be engineeringly impossible. I just quote it coined that term. But at least they're technically possible to do these things.
Yeah, there's sort of like what you would come up with if you had a chalkboard and ten minutes to solve this crazy problem. And we haven't really gotten that much further than those first ideas because it's a crazy minute.
That's the total amount of time. I think we're talking about these ideas more than anyone has actually thought them through.
No, there's a whole field and people like published papers thinking about the details of these things in more depth, but in sort of you know, big idea concepts. How could you attack this problem, not like the gritty details of how you would actually build this, How could you attack this problem? In general, there haven't been that many more like great ideas for directions to attack other than the solar sale and the massive engine.
Is there an actual journal where people discuss these things? Is the International Journal of Physics fan Fiction.
International Journal of Absurd Concepts, Physics Ideas, the Journal Engineeringly Impossible Concepts.
Yeah, engineeringly all right, Well they're plausible at least at least in the chalkboard. They work. But I guess maybe a bigger question is why would we want to do this? And is it even practical or feasible? And so let's get into those questions. But first, let's take a quick break.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth or enjoy a rich spoonful of greeky, ok, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite. But the people in the dairy industry are US. Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times the same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US Dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit usdairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
With the United Explorer Card, earn fifty thousand bonus miles, then head for places unseen and destinations unknown. Wherever your journey takes you, you'll enjoy remarkable rewards, including a free checked bag and two times the miles on every United purchase. You'll also receive two times the miles on dining and at hotels, so every experience is even more rewarding. Plus, when you fly United, you can look forward to United Club access with two United Club one time passes per year. Become a United Explorer Card member today and take off on more trips so you can take in once in a lifetime experiences everywhere you travel. Visit the Explorer Card dot com to apply today. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC subject to credit approval offer subject to change.
Terms apply.
California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake. Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours. Visit Strengthen your House dot com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage. The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days. Strengthen your home and help protect your family. Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow. Does it strengthen your house dot com?
All right, Daniel? So, also on the table on our talkboard is this idea of moving the sun, our sun to another solar system as a way to you know, see the sites out there in the universe. And so we talked about ways in which we could do it. Possibly they sound kind of crazy, but it sounds possible now. But no other question is why would we want to do it. Why would we you know, we we're pretty good here in this part of the galaxy, things are pretty stable. Why would we want to get off of our solar system couch.
I don't know, you sound kind of skeptical. When we start out, you were sort of excited by the possibility of doing something crazy that I told you what the plans were, and now you seem like, I'm not so sure this is going to happen.
Well, engineeringly, it's kind of ridiculous. To be honest, it sounds like as an engineer, I'm just like, you know what, just stay on the couch. This is not this is not anywhere near a plausible but you know, it's fun to think about. And so or maybe maybe the reason the need isn't grid enough, you know, maybe if there was need, I would, you know, get off my couch here and.
All right, let's talk motivation.
Let's motivate, talk motivation this galactic tackle this crazy problem.
Well, one reason, of course, it's just exploration. Like if we wanted to explore other parts of the galaxy, this is one way to do it, and you could effectively move all of humanity and all of our resources and you wouldn't have to build spaceships and send people out there into space. And you know, space travel is annoying, and who wants to like be born on a colony ship and die in a colony ship and never sit foot on a planet. That sounds kind of depressing. And so you could sort of just gradually explore the whole galaxy, you know, imagine like taking our star instead of just sort of floating along in the galactic swirl going the other direction. Then we could be like every few years or so, visiting a new solar system may be like being on a cruise, maybe without the coronavirus.
Yeah. So the idea is that we would then get close to other stars so we can look at them better or actually like you know, send probes out to visit other solar systems.
Both. I mean, you wouldn't want to get too close because you don't want the gravity of that star to interfere with the gravity of our solar system and perturb some orbits and cause you know, cataclysmic events. But close enough that you could send probes in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah, and hey, it's like a cruise, you know, you can either get off and go explore the local scenery, or you could stay on the boat.
You're saying it's more practical to build a giant engine around the Sun than it is to just go a little bit further with a probe.
I think it's it's sort of a longer term plan. You could build a ship to go visit one solar system, but this is a plan to like visit all of them. This is you're retired and you bought an RV and you want to see the country, and so you decide instead of taking a lot of little trips, you just drive all around in your house.
All right, So the exploration is one reason to get off the couch. But what are some other possible needs that we might have to do this.
Well, we might see a danger to our solar system, and we might have a lot of warning, Like we track all the other stars in the galaxy, and it might be that, you know, one swirl around the galaxy, we see something coming another star is headed for a near collision with ours, or you know, close enough that it could steal some of the planets, and we might want to change the trajectory of the Sun in order to sort of get out of the way.
Well, I see. If there's something that might destroy our solar system, then we might want to move it somewhere.
Else, yeah, or move our solar system out of the way precisely.
Like a rogue planet, or like a rogue star.
Well, a rogue planet would be really hard to see far in advance because they're not bright, So it have to be a star that's on a near collision course with ours. You know, earlier in the history of the galaxy, I think more of this kind of stuff happened. That things are sort of calmer now because all the bumps that have happened have mostly happened, but there could still be more. And you know, in the very far future when we collide with Andromeda, then there's going to be a lot of chaos, and so, you know, long term planning, we might want to be able to sort of shift where our house is.
You know, you might want to jump ship, yeah, or just take your.
Ship with you. You know, like if you saw a huge rock about to fall in your house, it'd be nice if you could wheel your house over to the next.
Block, right, Oh, I see, instead of getting off the couch, you'd be like, move my couch please. They call the movers, move the couch with you in it to or move the whole house.
Yeah, and it doesn't have to be just that a star is going to collide with us. We might, for example, spot a star and be able to predict that it's going to go supernova, and that could be really dangerous if it's a star goes supernova close enough, you know, within fifty or one hundred light years, you could fry the Earth the X rays and the gamma rays. It's a huge amount of radiation. So if we get to a point where are the science of supernovas is better because right now it's really hard to predict exactly when they blow. Then and we see one coming, then we might want to get out of the way before we all get sterilized.
We'd have to move the entire solar system to be safe, right to sort of continue Earth as it.
Is, yeah, or we all have to get on chips and hope to land in another solar system. But it seems to me like we have one. We like, let's just move it out of the way rather than abandoning it. It's starting to seem more and more practical now. Huh.
Yeah, Yeah, I guess if it's that or getting fried by a supernova. Let's do it. Let's build out this giant crazy rocket slash solar sail.
And there's just one more idea I wanted to put out there, which is we're sort of far from the galactic center, where like thirty thousand light years from the center of the galaxy, which is a comfortable distance. Right now, you wouldn't want to be any closer because the center of the galaxy is filled with crazy radiation from all the stuff that's happening at the center. You've got the black hole, all the gas and dust. He's getting squeezed and radiating. So it's like an death zone. And we don't know sort of the future of that death zone. Like as the black hole in the center of the galaxy grows and eats more stuff, that radiation from the center of the galaxy might get larger and larger as you get out to sort of the suburbs, and so we might need to sort of like escape that radiation by pushing ourselves further out and having a larger radius.
Oh I see, So get away from the dangerous part of the galaxy, move to the.
Suburbs, move to the excurbs.
Right, we'll learn house to the subs to the suburbs, not just move to the suburbs. You know, put your house and wheels and move it to the suburbs.
Yeah, we're already in the suburbs. So this would be like moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere, might be safer.
Yeah, all right, but then we wouldn't be able to explore anything.
We wouldn't be But you know, and thinking really really long term, like we could use this strategy to go visit other galaxies. We could like leave the Milky Way behind. We could float our Sun and like go to Andromeda or go to another galaxy entirely.
Yeah, because we have our own little battery pack, which is the Sun.
Yeah, we don't need anything else in the galaxy. It's not doing anything for us. So our star and planets together could survive out there in intergalactic space for a long long time as we float towards another galaxy.
All right, Well, let's get into the final part of this, which is easy. Is it even practical? Let's say we did have a big need to do it to move our solar system, is it even practical or feasible?
I will say it's definitely not in the near future. You basically have to be a civilization that's capable of building a dice in sphere already in order to make this possible, and we are far far from.
That, right because we don't even you need where do you get all these materials and the energy to build it?
Yeah, you need a lot of wrong materials, and so you need a very vigorous like space mining operation. There are asteroids out there that are just like, you know, a trillion tons of platinum or whatever. You probably can find those materials, but that means you have a heavy industry in space that can go search these things and tow these asteroids and fabric these things and put them together. I mean, you're talking about a thousand years of technology. We haven't even.
Started on Wow, a thousand years, I don't know.
I mean, these things accelerate rapidly, so it's hard to make very far future predictions. But I can't imagine we're gonna have a heavy space industry in the next twenty thirty forty years.
So we're just not there in terms of the industry required to do it. But let's say we even if we are, is it still possible, Like it wouldn't like I feel like, if you move the Sun, wouldn't that leave all the planets behind or disturb their orbits or you know, just kind of you're risking throwing the whole Solar system at a whack.
I was really worried about that also, and all of my reading I didn't find anybody addressing that. You know, if if you give a push to the Sun, you're not giving a push to the planets, and so the planets are going to fall behind a little bit. Yeah, exactly, So.
This has to be going to a different orbit.
Yeah, or you could just lose them entirely, and that would not be a good outcome.
So yeah, definitely, what if you blow on them too, Daniel, what if we attach rockets and everything we want to keep?
Well, the problem is you can't build a solar sale on the Earth because it's not solar, right, it doesn't produce photons. And you don't want to build a rocket on the Earth and then like have it push on the Earth because that would be really destructive. So it's you'd have to just get tugged along by the gravity of the Sun, which means you'd have to be pretty gentle, Like you'd have to start out really slowly to not perturb all these other orbits.
If you ramp up slow enough, then the planets would follow, because I guess the orbits are sort of stable and they would sort of stabilize.
Yeah, but I don't think we know that very well, and you'd have to do a lot of calculations, you know. It's it's like somebody is spinning plates on their fingers and now you want them to also start running. Yes, probably they could do it, but you'd want to start really really gradually.
All right, Well, we'll make those calculations, Daniel and submit it to the Journal of six fan Fiction.
But the good news is that none of these engines are that powerful. I mean, even if you built this solar sail, it would take like two hundred million years to go just one hundred light years. And that's because the Sun is just really massive and moving it takes a huge amount of energy. So this engine would just sort of like very very gently push the Sun.
It would take two hundred and thirty million years before we even see the next star.
Well, the next star is only a few light years away, but yeah, one hundred light years is not that far on galactic distances. You know, the galaxy is one hundred thousand light years across, so you're not visiting the entire galaxy very quickly using that solar sale. And that's one reason why people are thinking about the rocket engine approach, because even though it's ridiculous, you know, to build a rocket engine that could push the sun, it is more powerful and has more potential to push the Sun.
Oh I see, that would do it in a less amount of time.
Yeah, you could do it, like you could go one hundred light years and only like two million years.
But still it's a that's a huge long term project. Like humanity has been around for thirty thousand years. You're saying, let's have a project that lasts two million years.
Yeah, let's take a trip that last two million years. Yeah. It's like you've been dating somebody for a month and you propose going on a fifty year cruise, Right.
What could go wrong with the coronavirus?
Maybe those folks ar going to be on that cruise ship for fifty years. You never know.
Yeah, i'd never let him out, all right, So it's well, but again it all depends on the need. Like if we have to move the sun. Then we have to move the sun, even if it takes a few million years.
That's right. You know. Sometimes you just got to call Bruce Willis, whether you have the budget for it or not, because you just got to solve the.
Problem, and you know, freeze him so he lasts a million years and only bring him out at critical moments.
I think my favorite aspect of this, though, is not thinking about how humanity might do it, as awesome as that is, but thinking about aliens doing it, because if aliens pull this off, we might see them doing it, and that could prove they exist the same way like spotting an alien civilization, building a dice in sphere could prove that there are aliens. If we see a son like doing weird things, moving non gravitationally, that's a clue that there's something interesting happening.
I see. That's like option see like you know, option A, Daniel does it, Daniel doesn't want to do it. Option B. Somebody else does it, some other human does it, No other human wants to do it. Off just see, hey look somebody else is doing it. I'm done. Yeah, that's all I needed to know.
And that's the ultimate stay on your couch, because then the aliens do all the work and they take the trip. Right, You're like, why don't you come visit us at our house. We'll just make dinner.
Just put a big sign out saying open for dinner.
Yeah, free banana smoothies for any aliens who come to visit. And it's not just spotting aliens who are doing this, so we could and see that they exist, but maybe they would come and visit. You know, they could drag their star on their tour around the galaxy and they could stop over here and tell us all about the mysteries of the universe.
All right, Well, it's super fun to sort of think about these crazy ideas and giant engineeringly complex projects because you know, it kind of forces you to think about what is possible and how physics works out there in the universe.
Yeah, and a lot of things that are very normal, very banal every day in our society seemed impossible and crazy just a couple of hundred years ago. And so what seems crazy to us now could be ho hum in the future, you know, And maybe this is a thing that our children's children's children's children will enjoy getting to pick the next solar system that humanity visits.
You know, you don't even need to get off the couch to make more children. So that's what all works out.
This plan is perfect.
All right, Well, I guess until then, couch potatoes, keep on dreaming. There's a lot that humanity can do just thinking about these things from the comfort of your couch.
I prefer to refer to this community as couchstronauts.
I see fearless non explorers.
Exactly explorers of the mind.
All right, we hope you enjoyed that. See you next time.
Before you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Have you boosted your business with Lenovo Pro yet? Become a Lenovo Pro member for free today and unlock access to Lenovo's exclusive business store for technology expert advisors and essential products and services designed just for you. Visit Lenovo dot com slash Lenovo Pro to sign up for free. That's Lenovo dot com slash Lenovo Pro Lenovo unlock new AI experiences with Lenovo's think Pad x one carbon powered by Intel Core ultraprocessors.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is us dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as Dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. eBay Motors is here for the ride.
With samelbow grease, fresh installs, and a whole lot of love, you transformed one hundred thousand miles and a body full of rust into a.
Drive that's all your own, break kits, led headlights. Whatever you need, eBay Motors has it, and with eBay Guaranteed Fit, it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time, every time, or your money back plus. At these prices, you're burning rubber, not cash. Keep your ride or die alive at ebaymotors dot com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply
