Hello friends, It's me Josh and for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen a super cool episode that has it all engineering, strange, physics, elon musk. What else do you want? What more could you ask for? Also, by the way, I'm pretty sure that the contest we talk about in the listener mail is no longer around, since it's many, many years old. At any rate, enjoy this episode about the future of transportation. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Chuckers, Brian Yeah, and this is Oh is that where you're going with? Sure? Yeah, my bus right into CC writer all the style. How would going with the Muppet Show? Oh? Yeah, it was time we put on makeup? Yeah, what was that somebody's giant stomach? Something like? What was that? It's weird? That was crazy. That couldn't have been Jerry's stomach. There's no way, all right, what's chuck? Yes? Uh, you remember our Magnet podcast. Yeah, I've personally thought it was a great episode because we explained how magnets work. Yeah, it was just good, tough but good. Yeah, it was tough, but it was also kind of um. It was one of those ones where you're like, oh, okay, that explains pretty much everything about magnets, the thing that I've used before in my life, and I just kind of took for granted some people think that they're magic, but we kind of said, this is how they work. I liked it. So, um, I liked this EPI, this um article in theory, the one we're about to do a show on. Yeah, yeah, about Maglev trains. Yeah, we did a video on Maglev trains. Remember that one of our one of our interstitial shorts was on mag left trains, do we Yeah, I remember doing the quantum levitation was that it? Are you sure? Yeah? Because that's the only way I knew about any of this was the fact that we had talked about it before. Well what did we talk about, uh, maglob you know the basic principle in one minute behind magnetic levitation. Well, that's pretty much what we're gonna do here, Yeah, except slightly longer. Yeah. So um that was my intro but intro and we should say also, um, everyone, it is next to impossible to get up to the minute up to the year information about what maglev trains are in operation, what are still planned, what's still going on. So it is possible we may get that part a little incorrect, but we're going to try our best to be as accurate as possible. Yeah, and the reason why is because magnetic levitation to power a train so new. Well, it's actually not that new, because they've been doing it for a while and well start it was proposed ever since Tesla started noticing what was going on in the late nineteenth century. But it's so new in this regard as far as super fast speed trains powered by magnets transporting lots of people over distances, maybe great distances. That is so new, and there's so a few different technologies that it is kind of hard to keep track on which one is in the forefront, which ones are being funded because the stuff is expensive, it is it's hard to get funding, especially here in the States. Yeah, and if you go on, if you just type mag LEVI into Google or your favorite search engine UM or Duck duck go, if you're you know, kind of watching who's watching you? Oh, is that a like a secret? It's like an anonymous search engine okay. Um, you will find there's projects all over the United States and all of them are like, we're shove already, We're ready to go. Just give us some money. And they're not getting any money because the construction costs are so enormous because with maglev trains you can't use existing railways. It's all new. And uh, I saw one quote and again who knows how recent this is, but fifty million euros per mile. I can believe this is what the German Consortium is quoting. The thing is is, once you get it built, maintenance is not bad. Yeah, not bad at all, because there's not a lot of wear and tear on it. As you'll see no friction baby. Um. And if you do look into maglev, you will see that it is very much like the the transportation technology of the future that's going on today. Um, especially after looking into Elon Musk's um T hyper loop thing. I heard of that. So basically Elon Musk, who is like our good friend, uh, super rich guy, right, he basically just jotted down this idea on a cocktail napkin and all of a sudden it's like the new thing. But um, it's a an enclosed tube system that just you put in a little car or whatever that seats twelve people or something comfortably and you suck all the air out of it no resistance, so you can go really fast. Basically, I think it goes about seven a little under the speed of sound, so you can get from the west coast to the east coast or vice versa very very fast. The thing is, the construction costs for this or just preposterous. But if it can come along or come down a little more, then it will give Maglev a run for its money. But if it, if Maglev can start to really kind of get some traction and get some line going, it will be the the movement of the future for at least a decade or two. Yeah, I saw where they're proposing both in the future Maglev trains that operate inside vacuum tubes as fast as two thousand miles an hour as crazy. Right now they're breaking records like three miles an hour plus what's the fastest right now? The So apparently this is kind of mind boggling because Maglev as again we realize everybody, we haven't explained what Maglev is talking here, but um, Maglev, the the great advantage it has is that it's supposedly goes faster than the normal steel wheel train. Apparently a TGV train, which is a steel wheel train. UM in Europe, they they beat a maglev land speed really that was held by the Japanese Maglev of about three hundred and fifty one miles an hour. I think it went like three sixty. Man. I don't if i'd feel safe. Yeah, I can imagine. I was. I was reading a quote from a Maglev rider and they were saying, like, you can tell you're going really fast, like on the bullet train. He was gonna be so disappointed because she's taught me how to say it in Japanese so many times a night. I don't want to BUTCHERP. But the bullet train it goes pretty fast, like hundred fifty miles an hour or something, but it just looks like everything's a blur. You don't feel like you're going fast. Apparently in a maglev it goes fast enough to wear like you feel like, holy cow, we're going three d and fifty miles an hour. Well, our very unparent company did a show World's Fastest Trains, and I watched the maglev segment in the dude. You know. I was in the front room with the driver and they were like, all right, we're going three hundred miles an hour now, and it's hard to tell on the TV. You know exactly how fast you're going, because I looked and I was like, well, then you know, it looks like about a hundred to me. But um, yeah, I think being on the train and I think the key to not feeling two or it is obviously you're not being shot out like a bullet. You're you're ramping up to that speed, so that helps. Plus if you dressed normally for your train ride, you'll feel less weird too, that's right. Um. Also, hold on one more thing, um that we're talking very high speeds. That's the that's the speed record of a maglev. But they're averaging like to fifty or more, which means if you, if you get these things built, you're going to expand the range of where people can live and commute and go to work every day tremendously. Um. So there's a lot of value in creating these mag levs. Right are we there yet? Well, before we do that, let's just might as well do a message break now, huh. I think it's a good time, all right, So now can we get down to brass tacks. Yes, let's okay. Um, this is kind of confusing because I read a paper in night, I think, where this guy was saying, like, there's a lot of people calling all these different technologies maglev. This is all very early stage proposal hadn't been proven yet, but he was saying, there's at least seven different kinds of technology here that everyone's calling maglev that are different enough that it doesn't They're just different. But for the purposes of this podcast, we can get it with maglev, but we have to point out that there are some really different systems that are in use in being proposed right now, and a lot of them have to do with the suspension systems. Yeah, I think what's going on now? There are three pretty much leading competing systems, right. Yeah, because we should say, chuck. A maglev train is a train that uses magnets to float above a track by either a half a centimeter too. I saw one that floats up to a foot off the track, and that's a little scary. It seems a little scary, but apparently the higher you go, and that that high end of the range, the more stable it is. Alright, yeah, but so the the train is literally not touching the tracks and it floats along. And the reason that's why it can go so fast is because there's no friction, no friction, The only resistance is air. And they're super sleek of course, so even the error is cut down. Uh. So let's go. Let's go to Germany first, because they have a system, uh, trans Rapid. It's called the actually company is called trans Rapid International. There's also a trans Rapid USA. Now I think USA, that's right. Uh. And the German version is electro magnetic suspension. And the way that the guy on the Discovery Channel show described it was that electro magnets, Well, when you use electro magnets, they're only um magnetize when there's a power source, when there's electricity running through exactly. So that's important to remember it is and we'll point out why later because in the German system, uh, the e m S system, it's all about attraction. It's not repelled magnets repelling each other. It's magnets that are attracted to each other. And the reason that they float is they're basically switching it on and off, pulsing the electromatic magnets so fast that it creates that hovering attraction. Okay, so that's the German version, so um okay. And apparently this German version, I think they do use repulsive magnets, but on the sides for the guidance magnets. So to make it hover, they're turning it on an awful lot. So it wants to stick but no, but stick but no. And there's not a dude on a switch doing it really fast. It's all programmed to pull. Right. They have computers handling um. And then so this is the the suspension system you're talking about, right, the electro magnetic suspension. And the word suspension is kind of easily overlooked, but in this case we're literally talking about how the train is suspended in mid air above the track in this case, and with the e M S it's about I think, uh, half a centimeter to a centimeter. It's it's very close to the to the track, and they use the electro magnets to attract and they use the guidance magnets, which are magnets installed on the side of the train, uh that are along the side of the track to repel magnets along the side of the track to keep the train from bumping into the guide rails. But the it requires a um UH computer system that constantly make adjustments to the current that's going through these electro magnets to either um to either attract the train to make it float or to repel it from the sides to adjust it to make sure it never bumps into the rails or the track, because if you're going fifty miles an hour and your train scuffs the track, you're in big trouble or big trouble. One advantage of this UH the German system is that you only need the power on for the section of track that you're using at the time, So they literally will turn on a section of track, the train goes over it, and then they'll turn it back off. Right, So it's very like economically fuel will not fuel efficient because it's not fuel right, and that's the power efficient right. And it doesn't use fossil fuels in the sense that a normal train does, although if you go far enough down the line, that electricity has to come from somewhere, so ultimately it is coming from fossil fuels. But the efficiency. Fuel efficiency is incredible compared to you know, a normal train that burns cossal fuels just to move right, the guy's shoveling coal into a fire. Yeah, I should say so. My understanding of the delivery of electricity to the track is the same for both suspension systems that you propel like that. So the whole track is made of electro magnets, right, come on both systems, and you're just sending electricity to the electromagnets that are immediately in front of and immediately behind the train immediately under. Yeah, because you need it. You need to float the train, then you need to propel it, right, And the way you're propelling it is the magnets that are just ahead of the train are going to be positive, and so that's going to attract the train, meaning it's gonna pull it forward. And then the the magnets behind it are going to be charged so that they're negative and they're going to repel the train push it. So in the front, the magnets are pulling it in the in the back, the magnets are pushing it. And again remember there's no friction here, it's just air, so it doesn't take a whole lot to make this train go really really fast, just using magnets. Yeah, and they in two thousand two debuted commercially in Shanghai, China, a pretty short run transporting people um from airport to airport, basically um at a speed it speeds over two fifty miles an hour. So I read that the journey the nineteen mile journey. Now it takes about seven and a half minutes as opposed to about an hour in a cab, and they were going to expand it, but that was halted in two thousand eight over radiation fears by people. And now it's being proposed as an underground system, like to go underground to halt those fears. But in two thousand ten, another high speed train in the area was a non maglev system opened, so they basically said, well, we probably won't do this. Uh, we probably won't extend the Shanghai line now, So yeah, I heard it's definitely on hold, but I didn't hear that they decide that they weren't going to do it. Well, the regular bullet train popped up and they're like, well, now that we have that, I guess we don't need the mag left. Well, oh, well, so Japan's got the other, um big rival system. Uh so the propulsion systems are the same. You use magnets ahead of the train and behind the train to attract or repell it right to push it forward, I believe so so um, the suspension systems are what differ. In Germany you're using magnets to um repel it, right, to attract it, to attract it. In Japan you're using something called the Meisner effect. So basically, chuck. The Meisner effect is where you take a super cooled superconductor, right, yes, I think like liquid helium temperature, which is very very cold, and you put it in a magnetic field. The magnetic field basically hugs it. It goes around it rather than through it. Okay, yes, um, so when you do at the field actually levitates the thing. So if you take enough superconductors that are at the right temperature and you put them in the presence of a magnetic field, a whole bunch of magnets, say on a train, the the magnet will float, it will levitate, and that's the electrodynamic suspension that the Japanese are using. So basically you have a tunnel, a magnetic field tunnel that these things are traveling through, which means that there they don't they don't need any extra magnets on the sides, or they don't need any on the bottom or extra magnets on the bottom. It's just going to stay put within this bent magnetic field that's warped to wrap around it. It's never going to drop, and it's totally stable, which is the big that's a big advantage from what I understand of the Japanese system over the German system. The stability doesn't require a bunch of pewters to constantly adjust it, and it is just inherently more stable because it's not just being held up from the bottom and then a little on the sides. It is wrapped in this basically blanket of an electromagnetic field. Uh. It can conduct power electricity even when the power is cut off, so that's a definite advantage. Um Although the German system does have like battery backups, it's not like if the power went off, the train would just go and stop. But the German one doesn't never doesn't need tires, and the Japanese one does, yeah, because it needs to ramp up to a certain speed in order to begin the float. It doesn't just start immediately. What is it like eighty eight miles that's back to the future sixty two. And I think they use liquid nitrogen and it's just expensive to super cool these UH coils, and I think that's one of the drawbicks. But they're all expensive. They're none of this is they haven't figured out a cheap way to do any of this. Now, there's a proposed line um in Japan. It's already it's the one that set the UH that land speed record for maglev trains. It's the j R tok Um that's the railway company to kind of close, but it's their line um supposedly, supposedly is already in operation. I read somewhere that it's moved like a million people already. But they have a proposed line that they want to open by seven and it's from Tokyo to Nagoya, and then they want to extend that from Tokyo to Osaka by and they're talking like it's like a fifty billion dollar project, and I think that's just the first line that's Yeah, it sounds about right. But the reason that it probably will happen is they're they're um basing all of this on data showing that people are going to keep moving to Japan and Osaka, so they're going to have customers and they're not relying on any money. They have so much money they're just going to fund it themselves. Is privately funded. Yeah. Yeah. Another con though of the Japanese version is that if you have a pacemaker, you don't want to get on that train because, um, that magnetic field will reek havoc and you probably won't live. It will shut you down. It will shut you down. And then there's the in duct track and that is another type of E d S system, which is the Japanese system, except that they use room temperature magnets. And from what I could tell, this is as close to just the whole thing of two magnets, regular magnets opposing each other and they're just gonna use that, right, Yeah, Like it's as close to we get as you going out to the store and getting two magnets and putting their like poles against each other so that they repel. Yeah. There's actually something called the hull Bock array, which is a way to just line up the magnets um in certain directions so that they're holes are facing north, southeast or west. UM. And when you put them together in a clump, basically, the the magnetic field below the magnets doubles, the magnetic field on the top of the magnet cancels one another out right, So you have your extra strong magnetic magnetic field that can produce this Meisner effect basically UM without this super cooled superconductor. Yeah. And these aren't even electro magnets. I don't think. Aren't they just magnets. I think they're permanent room temperature magnets. It's crazy. Yeah, there are three UM designs right now the in duct track one, two, and three. UM One is high speed, two is slow speed, and three is heavy load slow speed. Yeah, so I guess just freighting stuff back and forth. You know they did this in London at one point, but then shut it down. Like in the eighties they had a maglife train. Yeah, just a very slow moving like it might have been an airport type situation. And I looked up the one here in Atlanta, the new airport trainer. I thought it might have been maglev, but of course it's not. It's just wheels, just stupid wheels. UM although they held Atlanta have its day. Well, they have proposed one Atlanta is one of the city's um that's trying to get maglev going between Atlanta and Chattanooga. And there's one proposed between d C and Baltimore. One in Las Vegas, Yeah, La in Vegas. Um. And I think one from Pittsburgh to someplace, but I'm not sure exactly where I saw that one too. I don't remember where it might have been, d C, Dtsburg, Philly. Yeah. Well, hold on, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Man. Well, no, these are just proposals, and and they're having a hard time getting the funding they need for any of these to really take off, right, because it's expensive, it is, chuck, how about a how about a message break? Huh hey, let's do it alright. So, um, this whole idea of going three fifty miles an hour through space even without friction is um awesome. It is awesome. It can also be deadly. They've they've already been maglev accidents. Yeah. The one in Germany was a little distressing because in two thousand and six it crashed into a repair car that was accidentally left on the track, And this was a test too, so it's like everything should have been Yeah, like why do you leave a car on the track? Period? I don't know, I don't know. Uh. So they actually people died in that one. The train was going at least a hundred and twenty miles an hour when it struck the car, so it must have just been getting up to speed, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, twenty nine people died on that one. There was another one in Shanghai on that line that is an operation. Yeah. That was just a fire though, and I don't want to make light of that, but it wasn't like a crash or an incident like that. Yeah. I'm just glad no one got hurt exactly. Uh. And this is breaking news, dude. This was in the paper today as we record it in real time. Okay, the Washington Post said that Northeast Maglev. Everyone's getting in on the maglev game. Uh, because I mean, like it really is a great idea. Yeah, it's just really really expensive, but if you can get it up and running, it's awesome. I Mean I imagine in literally in a hundred years, there'll be a lot of this as major transportation, you know, but not we won't see it. But as of today November four, Northeast maglev is UH has raised fifty million dollars in private funds. They can build five inches of track with that exactly. And they're trying to get the Washington Baltimore lag going with private funding because the government's not pony any money for that. I think we'll see it in our lifetime. They think ten billion between d C and Baltimore. Yeah, um, although they're not. They don't have a firm cost yet. But um, I wonder how long it would take because I mean that's not even that long of a drive anyway. Yeah, I agreed. Let maybe maybe ten minutes, which I mean if you live in Baltimore and work in d C. I'm sure that would be extremely attractive. Yeah, that's true. Um, I don't know about the Atlanta at Chattanooga thing. Who cares? Yeah right, you know people in Chattanooga be psyched, I guess because they could get to the airport in like thirty minutes. Yeah, I guess, not just in Chattanooga. I'll go there and pain for gold. I saw this, um this it was some Discovery show video from a Discovery show too, um, and it had our good friend Michio Kaku, and he was talking about a train, bullet train that could get you from one side of the world to the other in an hour. Wow. And the way that it would do that is to go through the middle of the Earth. Basically, you would have to create this to basically like Alon Musk's idea, you create a tube, you evacuate all of the air out of it so that there's no resistance whatsoever, and you just drop in the force of gravity takes you up to about eighteen thousand miles an hour, and then once you make it to the center and out the other side, your gravity starts to work against you, so it slows you down. So within an hour you should be able to make it from one side of the Earth to the other. But as Dr Coku put put it, um, it's going to be very difficult getting through the center of the Earth. I love all these theoretical ideas these guys come up with it like it's not even even then remotely possible. And he'd probably said, like, I was just talking about what they asked me to talk about. It's like, dude, I was like McDonald's one day when I said that I was waiting in line at McDonald's. So what else you got? I got nothing else? Mag Lev? Yeah, the way but the future. Yeah, we've got a we have a standing bet. Now we will see a Maglev train in operation that we can ride on while we're both alive. That's my bet, you say now that we will, Like I mean, if we went to Shanghai, we could do it right now. So I feel like I just want my bet health that you're gonna pay for us to go to here in the United States. Um, within our lifetime, which for me is gonna be about twenty years. We're both still healthy enough to to ride it. Okay, I'll take that bet. Okay. Uh, let's see. If you guys want to learn more about Maglev, you can type that word in the search part how stuff works dot Com. And since I said a search part, it's time for listener mail. That's right. This is I'm gonna call this opportunity for students filmmaking students, So get your film on. Hey, guys who work for nonprofit Antiquity Now, which is dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of preserving our cult cultural heritage by demonstrating how antiquities legacy influences and shapes our lives today. Yeah, they have good stuff. We follow them on Twitter. Oh you do nice? We do, Yes, we do. Many of us at Antiquity Now are big fans of you guys. We thought you would be interested and this upcoming project that we are holding the first ever Legacy Quest International Children's Film and Video Festival, which aims to get tweens and teens excited about history. The festival will be held in conjunction with the Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival on May nine through and Eugene, Oregon. So here's what you gotta do, kids, young people, if you're between twelve and fifteen, you can submit videos that represent antiquities legacy in our contemporary life. For example, you could depict how the invention of the wheel or calendar has contributed to modern society, or how ancient methods of solar energy have informed today's green technology. You got that. Yes, Entries may be submitted by an individual student or by a group or class under the guidance of a teacher. As the festival was designed in accordance with the United States National Curriculum standards for Social Studies, Legacy Quests would be a great project for teachers to do with their classes. Creating the video will support the development of literacy research skills, writing skills, visual communication, and storytelling and they have prizes first, second, and third prize among along with ten honorable mentions. Will be announced at the Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival and promoted online by both the Archaeology Channel and Antiquity Now and US and us so uh. For more information and submission forms, go to antiquity now dot org. And that is from Chandra Goldfinger, not Chandra, she points out, it's Chandra gold Finger, which is a great name, it really is. And again that's May nine, throught of next year. Teachers, students, where can they go to find out more info? Yeah, antiquity now dot org or you can follow them on Twitter and ask them yourself. Yes uh. If you want to let us know about any cool stuff you've got going on that you want to share with everybody who listens to Stuff you Should Know, your fellow s y s K family, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, or you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot Com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hello friends, It's me Josh and for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen a super cool episode that has it all engineering, strange, physics, elon musk. What else do you want? What more could you ask for? Also, by the way, I'm pretty sure that the contest we talk about in the listener mail is no longer around, since it's many, many years old. At any rate, enjoy this episode about the future of transportation. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Chuckers, Brian Yeah, and this is Oh is that where you're going with? Sure? Yeah, my bus right into CC writer all the style. How would going with the Muppet Show? Oh? Yeah, it was time we put on makeup? Yeah, what was that somebody's giant stomach? Something like? What was that? It's weird? That was crazy. That couldn't have been Jerry's stomach. There's no way, all right, what's chuck? Yes? Uh, you remember our Magnet podcast. Yeah, I've personally thought it was a great episode because we explained how magnets work. Yeah, it was just good, tough but good. Yeah, it was tough, but it was also kind of um. It was one of those ones where you're like, oh, okay, that explains pretty much everything about magnets, the thing that I've used before in my life, and I just kind of took for granted some people think that they're magic, but we kind of said, this is how they work. I liked it. So, um, I liked this EPI, this um article in theory, the one we're about to do a show on. Yeah, yeah, about Maglev trains. Yeah, we did a video on Maglev trains. Remember that one of our one of our interstitial shorts was on mag left trains, do we Yeah, I remember doing the quantum levitation was that it? Are you sure? Yeah? Because that's the only way I knew about any of this was the fact that we had talked about it before. Well what did we talk about, uh, maglob you know the basic principle in one minute behind magnetic levitation. Well, that's pretty much what we're gonna do here, Yeah, except slightly longer. Yeah. So um that was my intro but intro and we should say also, um, everyone, it is next to impossible to get up to the minute up to the year information about what maglev trains are in operation, what are still planned, what's still going on. So it is possible we may get that part a little incorrect, but we're going to try our best to be as accurate as possible. Yeah, and the reason why is because magnetic levitation to power a train so new. Well, it's actually not that new, because they've been doing it for a while and well start it was proposed ever since Tesla started noticing what was going on in the late nineteenth century. But it's so new in this regard as far as super fast speed trains powered by magnets transporting lots of people over distances, maybe great distances. That is so new, and there's so a few different technologies that it is kind of hard to keep track on which one is in the forefront, which ones are being funded because the stuff is expensive, it is it's hard to get funding, especially here in the States. Yeah, and if you go on, if you just type mag LEVI into Google or your favorite search engine UM or Duck duck go, if you're you know, kind of watching who's watching you? Oh, is that a like a secret? It's like an anonymous search engine okay. Um, you will find there's projects all over the United States and all of them are like, we're shove already, We're ready to go. Just give us some money. And they're not getting any money because the construction costs are so enormous because with maglev trains you can't use existing railways. It's all new. And uh, I saw one quote and again who knows how recent this is, but fifty million euros per mile. I can believe this is what the German Consortium is quoting. The thing is is, once you get it built, maintenance is not bad. Yeah, not bad at all, because there's not a lot of wear and tear on it. As you'll see no friction baby. Um. And if you do look into maglev, you will see that it is very much like the the transportation technology of the future that's going on today. Um, especially after looking into Elon Musk's um T hyper loop thing. I heard of that. So basically Elon Musk, who is like our good friend, uh, super rich guy, right, he basically just jotted down this idea on a cocktail napkin and all of a sudden it's like the new thing. But um, it's a an enclosed tube system that just you put in a little car or whatever that seats twelve people or something comfortably and you suck all the air out of it no resistance, so you can go really fast. Basically, I think it goes about seven a little under the speed of sound, so you can get from the west coast to the east coast or vice versa very very fast. The thing is, the construction costs for this or just preposterous. But if it can come along or come down a little more, then it will give Maglev a run for its money. But if it, if Maglev can start to really kind of get some traction and get some line going, it will be the the movement of the future for at least a decade or two. Yeah, I saw where they're proposing both in the future Maglev trains that operate inside vacuum tubes as fast as two thousand miles an hour as crazy. Right now they're breaking records like three miles an hour plus what's the fastest right now? The So apparently this is kind of mind boggling because Maglev as again we realize everybody, we haven't explained what Maglev is talking here, but um, Maglev, the the great advantage it has is that it's supposedly goes faster than the normal steel wheel train. Apparently a TGV train, which is a steel wheel train. UM in Europe, they they beat a maglev land speed really that was held by the Japanese Maglev of about three hundred and fifty one miles an hour. I think it went like three sixty. Man. I don't if i'd feel safe. Yeah, I can imagine. I was. I was reading a quote from a Maglev rider and they were saying, like, you can tell you're going really fast, like on the bullet train. He was gonna be so disappointed because she's taught me how to say it in Japanese so many times a night. I don't want to BUTCHERP. But the bullet train it goes pretty fast, like hundred fifty miles an hour or something, but it just looks like everything's a blur. You don't feel like you're going fast. Apparently in a maglev it goes fast enough to wear like you feel like, holy cow, we're going three d and fifty miles an hour. Well, our very unparent company did a show World's Fastest Trains, and I watched the maglev segment in the dude. You know. I was in the front room with the driver and they were like, all right, we're going three hundred miles an hour now, and it's hard to tell on the TV. You know exactly how fast you're going, because I looked and I was like, well, then you know, it looks like about a hundred to me. But um, yeah, I think being on the train and I think the key to not feeling two or it is obviously you're not being shot out like a bullet. You're you're ramping up to that speed, so that helps. Plus if you dressed normally for your train ride, you'll feel less weird too, that's right. Um. Also, hold on one more thing, um that we're talking very high speeds. That's the that's the speed record of a maglev. But they're averaging like to fifty or more, which means if you, if you get these things built, you're going to expand the range of where people can live and commute and go to work every day tremendously. Um. So there's a lot of value in creating these mag levs. Right are we there yet? Well, before we do that, let's just might as well do a message break now, huh. I think it's a good time, all right, So now can we get down to brass tacks. Yes, let's okay. Um, this is kind of confusing because I read a paper in night, I think, where this guy was saying, like, there's a lot of people calling all these different technologies maglev. This is all very early stage proposal hadn't been proven yet, but he was saying, there's at least seven different kinds of technology here that everyone's calling maglev that are different enough that it doesn't They're just different. But for the purposes of this podcast, we can get it with maglev, but we have to point out that there are some really different systems that are in use in being proposed right now, and a lot of them have to do with the suspension systems. Yeah, I think what's going on now? There are three pretty much leading competing systems, right. Yeah, because we should say, chuck. A maglev train is a train that uses magnets to float above a track by either a half a centimeter too. I saw one that floats up to a foot off the track, and that's a little scary. It seems a little scary, but apparently the higher you go, and that that high end of the range, the more stable it is. Alright, yeah, but so the the train is literally not touching the tracks and it floats along. And the reason that's why it can go so fast is because there's no friction, no friction, The only resistance is air. And they're super sleek of course, so even the error is cut down. Uh. So let's go. Let's go to Germany first, because they have a system, uh, trans Rapid. It's called the actually company is called trans Rapid International. There's also a trans Rapid USA. Now I think USA, that's right. Uh. And the German version is electro magnetic suspension. And the way that the guy on the Discovery Channel show described it was that electro magnets, Well, when you use electro magnets, they're only um magnetize when there's a power source, when there's electricity running through exactly. So that's important to remember it is and we'll point out why later because in the German system, uh, the e m S system, it's all about attraction. It's not repelled magnets repelling each other. It's magnets that are attracted to each other. And the reason that they float is they're basically switching it on and off, pulsing the electromatic magnets so fast that it creates that hovering attraction. Okay, so that's the German version, so um okay. And apparently this German version, I think they do use repulsive magnets, but on the sides for the guidance magnets. So to make it hover, they're turning it on an awful lot. So it wants to stick but no, but stick but no. And there's not a dude on a switch doing it really fast. It's all programmed to pull. Right. They have computers handling um. And then so this is the the suspension system you're talking about, right, the electro magnetic suspension. And the word suspension is kind of easily overlooked, but in this case we're literally talking about how the train is suspended in mid air above the track in this case, and with the e M S it's about I think, uh, half a centimeter to a centimeter. It's it's very close to the to the track, and they use the electro magnets to attract and they use the guidance magnets, which are magnets installed on the side of the train, uh that are along the side of the track to repel magnets along the side of the track to keep the train from bumping into the guide rails. But the it requires a um UH computer system that constantly make adjustments to the current that's going through these electro magnets to either um to either attract the train to make it float or to repel it from the sides to adjust it to make sure it never bumps into the rails or the track, because if you're going fifty miles an hour and your train scuffs the track, you're in big trouble or big trouble. One advantage of this UH the German system is that you only need the power on for the section of track that you're using at the time, So they literally will turn on a section of track, the train goes over it, and then they'll turn it back off. Right, So it's very like economically fuel will not fuel efficient because it's not fuel right, and that's the power efficient right. And it doesn't use fossil fuels in the sense that a normal train does, although if you go far enough down the line, that electricity has to come from somewhere, so ultimately it is coming from fossil fuels. But the efficiency. Fuel efficiency is incredible compared to you know, a normal train that burns cossal fuels just to move right, the guy's shoveling coal into a fire. Yeah, I should say so. My understanding of the delivery of electricity to the track is the same for both suspension systems that you propel like that. So the whole track is made of electro magnets, right, come on both systems, and you're just sending electricity to the electromagnets that are immediately in front of and immediately behind the train immediately under. Yeah, because you need it. You need to float the train, then you need to propel it, right, And the way you're propelling it is the magnets that are just ahead of the train are going to be positive, and so that's going to attract the train, meaning it's gonna pull it forward. And then the the magnets behind it are going to be charged so that they're negative and they're going to repel the train push it. So in the front, the magnets are pulling it in the in the back, the magnets are pushing it. And again remember there's no friction here, it's just air, so it doesn't take a whole lot to make this train go really really fast, just using magnets. Yeah, and they in two thousand two debuted commercially in Shanghai, China, a pretty short run transporting people um from airport to airport, basically um at a speed it speeds over two fifty miles an hour. So I read that the journey the nineteen mile journey. Now it takes about seven and a half minutes as opposed to about an hour in a cab, and they were going to expand it, but that was halted in two thousand eight over radiation fears by people. And now it's being proposed as an underground system, like to go underground to halt those fears. But in two thousand ten, another high speed train in the area was a non maglev system opened, so they basically said, well, we probably won't do this. Uh, we probably won't extend the Shanghai line now, So yeah, I heard it's definitely on hold, but I didn't hear that they decide that they weren't going to do it. Well, the regular bullet train popped up and they're like, well, now that we have that, I guess we don't need the mag left. Well, oh, well, so Japan's got the other, um big rival system. Uh so the propulsion systems are the same. You use magnets ahead of the train and behind the train to attract or repell it right to push it forward, I believe so so um, the suspension systems are what differ. In Germany you're using magnets to um repel it, right, to attract it, to attract it. In Japan you're using something called the Meisner effect. So basically, chuck. The Meisner effect is where you take a super cooled superconductor, right, yes, I think like liquid helium temperature, which is very very cold, and you put it in a magnetic field. The magnetic field basically hugs it. It goes around it rather than through it. Okay, yes, um, so when you do at the field actually levitates the thing. So if you take enough superconductors that are at the right temperature and you put them in the presence of a magnetic field, a whole bunch of magnets, say on a train, the the magnet will float, it will levitate, and that's the electrodynamic suspension that the Japanese are using. So basically you have a tunnel, a magnetic field tunnel that these things are traveling through, which means that there they don't they don't need any extra magnets on the sides, or they don't need any on the bottom or extra magnets on the bottom. It's just going to stay put within this bent magnetic field that's warped to wrap around it. It's never going to drop, and it's totally stable, which is the big that's a big advantage from what I understand of the Japanese system over the German system. The stability doesn't require a bunch of pewters to constantly adjust it, and it is just inherently more stable because it's not just being held up from the bottom and then a little on the sides. It is wrapped in this basically blanket of an electromagnetic field. Uh. It can conduct power electricity even when the power is cut off, so that's a definite advantage. Um Although the German system does have like battery backups, it's not like if the power went off, the train would just go and stop. But the German one doesn't never doesn't need tires, and the Japanese one does, yeah, because it needs to ramp up to a certain speed in order to begin the float. It doesn't just start immediately. What is it like eighty eight miles that's back to the future sixty two. And I think they use liquid nitrogen and it's just expensive to super cool these UH coils, and I think that's one of the drawbicks. But they're all expensive. They're none of this is they haven't figured out a cheap way to do any of this. Now, there's a proposed line um in Japan. It's already it's the one that set the UH that land speed record for maglev trains. It's the j R tok Um that's the railway company to kind of close, but it's their line um supposedly, supposedly is already in operation. I read somewhere that it's moved like a million people already. But they have a proposed line that they want to open by seven and it's from Tokyo to Nagoya, and then they want to extend that from Tokyo to Osaka by and they're talking like it's like a fifty billion dollar project, and I think that's just the first line that's Yeah, it sounds about right. But the reason that it probably will happen is they're they're um basing all of this on data showing that people are going to keep moving to Japan and Osaka, so they're going to have customers and they're not relying on any money. They have so much money they're just going to fund it themselves. Is privately funded. Yeah. Yeah. Another con though of the Japanese version is that if you have a pacemaker, you don't want to get on that train because, um, that magnetic field will reek havoc and you probably won't live. It will shut you down. It will shut you down. And then there's the in duct track and that is another type of E d S system, which is the Japanese system, except that they use room temperature magnets. And from what I could tell, this is as close to just the whole thing of two magnets, regular magnets opposing each other and they're just gonna use that, right, Yeah, Like it's as close to we get as you going out to the store and getting two magnets and putting their like poles against each other so that they repel. Yeah. There's actually something called the hull Bock array, which is a way to just line up the magnets um in certain directions so that they're holes are facing north, southeast or west. UM. And when you put them together in a clump, basically, the the magnetic field below the magnets doubles, the magnetic field on the top of the magnet cancels one another out right, So you have your extra strong magnetic magnetic field that can produce this Meisner effect basically UM without this super cooled superconductor. Yeah. And these aren't even electro magnets. I don't think. Aren't they just magnets. I think they're permanent room temperature magnets. It's crazy. Yeah, there are three UM designs right now the in duct track one, two, and three. UM One is high speed, two is slow speed, and three is heavy load slow speed. Yeah, so I guess just freighting stuff back and forth. You know they did this in London at one point, but then shut it down. Like in the eighties they had a maglife train. Yeah, just a very slow moving like it might have been an airport type situation. And I looked up the one here in Atlanta, the new airport trainer. I thought it might have been maglev, but of course it's not. It's just wheels, just stupid wheels. UM although they held Atlanta have its day. Well, they have proposed one Atlanta is one of the city's um that's trying to get maglev going between Atlanta and Chattanooga. And there's one proposed between d C and Baltimore. One in Las Vegas, Yeah, La in Vegas. Um. And I think one from Pittsburgh to someplace, but I'm not sure exactly where I saw that one too. I don't remember where it might have been, d C, Dtsburg, Philly. Yeah. Well, hold on, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Man. Well, no, these are just proposals, and and they're having a hard time getting the funding they need for any of these to really take off, right, because it's expensive, it is, chuck, how about a how about a message break? Huh hey, let's do it alright. So, um, this whole idea of going three fifty miles an hour through space even without friction is um awesome. It is awesome. It can also be deadly. They've they've already been maglev accidents. Yeah. The one in Germany was a little distressing because in two thousand and six it crashed into a repair car that was accidentally left on the track, And this was a test too, so it's like everything should have been Yeah, like why do you leave a car on the track? Period? I don't know, I don't know. Uh. So they actually people died in that one. The train was going at least a hundred and twenty miles an hour when it struck the car, so it must have just been getting up to speed, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, twenty nine people died on that one. There was another one in Shanghai on that line that is an operation. Yeah. That was just a fire though, and I don't want to make light of that, but it wasn't like a crash or an incident like that. Yeah. I'm just glad no one got hurt exactly. Uh. And this is breaking news, dude. This was in the paper today as we record it in real time. Okay, the Washington Post said that Northeast Maglev. Everyone's getting in on the maglev game. Uh, because I mean, like it really is a great idea. Yeah, it's just really really expensive, but if you can get it up and running, it's awesome. I Mean I imagine in literally in a hundred years, there'll be a lot of this as major transportation, you know, but not we won't see it. But as of today November four, Northeast maglev is UH has raised fifty million dollars in private funds. They can build five inches of track with that exactly. And they're trying to get the Washington Baltimore lag going with private funding because the government's not pony any money for that. I think we'll see it in our lifetime. They think ten billion between d C and Baltimore. Yeah, um, although they're not. They don't have a firm cost yet. But um, I wonder how long it would take because I mean that's not even that long of a drive anyway. Yeah, I agreed. Let maybe maybe ten minutes, which I mean if you live in Baltimore and work in d C. I'm sure that would be extremely attractive. Yeah, that's true. Um, I don't know about the Atlanta at Chattanooga thing. Who cares? Yeah right, you know people in Chattanooga be psyched, I guess because they could get to the airport in like thirty minutes. Yeah, I guess, not just in Chattanooga. I'll go there and pain for gold. I saw this, um this it was some Discovery show video from a Discovery show too, um, and it had our good friend Michio Kaku, and he was talking about a train, bullet train that could get you from one side of the world to the other in an hour. Wow. And the way that it would do that is to go through the middle of the Earth. Basically, you would have to create this to basically like Alon Musk's idea, you create a tube, you evacuate all of the air out of it so that there's no resistance whatsoever, and you just drop in the force of gravity takes you up to about eighteen thousand miles an hour, and then once you make it to the center and out the other side, your gravity starts to work against you, so it slows you down. So within an hour you should be able to make it from one side of the Earth to the other. But as Dr Coku put put it, um, it's going to be very difficult getting through the center of the Earth. I love all these theoretical ideas these guys come up with it like it's not even even then remotely possible. And he'd probably said, like, I was just talking about what they asked me to talk about. It's like, dude, I was like McDonald's one day when I said that I was waiting in line at McDonald's. So what else you got? I got nothing else? Mag Lev? Yeah, the way but the future. Yeah, we've got a we have a standing bet. Now we will see a Maglev train in operation that we can ride on while we're both alive. That's my bet, you say now that we will, Like I mean, if we went to Shanghai, we could do it right now. So I feel like I just want my bet health that you're gonna pay for us to go to here in the United States. Um, within our lifetime, which for me is gonna be about twenty years. We're both still healthy enough to to ride it. Okay, I'll take that bet. Okay. Uh, let's see. If you guys want to learn more about Maglev, you can type that word in the search part how stuff works dot Com. And since I said a search part, it's time for listener mail. That's right. This is I'm gonna call this opportunity for students filmmaking students, So get your film on. Hey, guys who work for nonprofit Antiquity Now, which is dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of preserving our cult cultural heritage by demonstrating how antiquities legacy influences and shapes our lives today. Yeah, they have good stuff. We follow them on Twitter. Oh you do nice? We do, Yes, we do. Many of us at Antiquity Now are big fans of you guys. We thought you would be interested and this upcoming project that we are holding the first ever Legacy Quest International Children's Film and Video Festival, which aims to get tweens and teens excited about history. The festival will be held in conjunction with the Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival on May nine through and Eugene, Oregon. So here's what you gotta do, kids, young people, if you're between twelve and fifteen, you can submit videos that represent antiquities legacy in our contemporary life. For example, you could depict how the invention of the wheel or calendar has contributed to modern society, or how ancient methods of solar energy have informed today's green technology. You got that. Yes, Entries may be submitted by an individual student or by a group or class under the guidance of a teacher. As the festival was designed in accordance with the United States National Curriculum standards for Social Studies, Legacy Quests would be a great project for teachers to do with their classes. Creating the video will support the development of literacy research skills, writing skills, visual communication, and storytelling and they have prizes first, second, and third prize among along with ten honorable mentions. Will be announced at the Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival and promoted online by both the Archaeology Channel and Antiquity Now and US and us so uh. For more information and submission forms, go to antiquity now dot org. And that is from Chandra Goldfinger, not Chandra, she points out, it's Chandra gold Finger, which is a great name, it really is. And again that's May nine, throught of next year. Teachers, students, where can they go to find out more info? Yeah, antiquity now dot org or you can follow them on Twitter and ask them yourself. Yes uh. If you want to let us know about any cool stuff you've got going on that you want to share with everybody who listens to Stuff you Should Know, your fellow s y s K family, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, or you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot Com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.