Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and my pick for s Y s K Selects this week is the one we did on the ten thousand year Clock. Uh. Just looking back, I think it's probably one of the coolest episodes we've ever done. And it's just kind of me and Chuck operating on all cylinders talking about something we're super jazzed about. So we hope you enjoy it. And my apologies for being sick in this one. It's still good. Welcome to stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, Josh Clark. There's Charles W. W Chuck Bright and that makes this stuff you should That's right. How are you, sir? I said, it's a little under the weather. Other than that, I'll find I've got that. Remember the Happiness audio book. We talked to it guy David Pierced and trans humanist about separating a susception pain, like the physical experience of pain, from suffering, like just getting rid of suffering, like I've reached that point and being sick where like I see how intertwined the two are. Like I just keep saying, like woe is me? Like I am suffering. It's pretty bad. So do you feel bad, like in a flu sense or is it just the head full of stuff it makes it unbearable. Uh? No, Luckily I don't have any flu symtom because that's what puts me under this when you literally feel those eggs in your skin is really sensitive. Was just what I had before you. We're taking turns. I don't know if I got it from you or not. Air air travel often will do that, so yeah, I got I got mine after air travel too. Stupid air travel. It's two thousand and twelve, you know you don't. Can we do better with the recirculated air on a plane? Maybe? Yeah, just like surely you can crack a window a little bit or something, right, get some fresh air in there. There's gotta be something there, right, So um, I guess we should do this one. No, we're not, you know why, because we got all the time in the world. Man, slow down, That's what I was saying. Yeah, and I'm just reiterating, well, thank you. There's no hurry, Josh. Well, let's just stay here for a little while. We're in the foundation of the long now. Uh, you're misreading. It's the long now foundation. I like the foundation of the Long Now you Longer? Yeah it is. It's a couple of extra wards there named by Brian Eno. Yeah, the great musical composer, father maybe of techno producer. I think he's called a rock musician in this article. Well the guy I watched a Setti talk from Alexander Rose, who you said is the project manager of the Long Nail Foundation's um clock of the Longmail project, which we're going to talk about, And when he was doing his presentation, he said mentioned Brian Eno and he said, who was an ambient music guy? Is that what he called him? Yeah? I was like, this is Brian Eno? Come on? What did he write? Um? What was his album music for Spaceports? Uh? Something like that? That was a solo thing after Roxy Music. Yeah wait, Brian you know was in Roxy Music? Yeah? I know, Brian Ferry was. They were, and they famously butted heads and Brian Eno left I think after one album did solo work until he hooked up with you two and the Talking Heads and as an uber producer. Cool man, where you go, Chuck. Thanks, that was a great explanation. Okay, Mr Brian the ambient music guy? Right? But yeah, you're right, He's the one who coined the the name the long now Um. And uh, this whole foundation, this group of people, the long now Foundation or the foundation of the long now Um, are dedicated to forcing um hoisting upon humanity. Like you were saying, like just the idea of slowing down, of taking a longer view of everything, the long now. Yeah, And I think the way they put it was to try and think in the terms of if you live to be one thousand years old, so long term thinking for the world is better than short term thinking, although I would argue you need both. You know what I'm saying, Yeah, because it's like, because exactly when should I get out of the way of the speeding car? We don't live to be a thousand that is, but I do like you hear it behind it, I have a question for you. Would you want to live to be a thousand years old if we aged like normally and would be like you don't turn into the dungeon Master from the from the cartoon. Uh, you mean if it was like a thousand years old would be the equivalent of like a hundred Heck, yeah, would you really? Why not? Well? I can think of a lot of reasons why not name one, Um, boredom you'd be worried about boredom. Boredom. I mean, think about all the stuff you can do in a century. Now, multiply that by ten. There's an amount of stuff to do on this planet. Well, if you I think everybody would end up with huge, massive drug problems by age four, you might be right, but hey, four year old should be able to handle his h So okay, despite how you feel about living, do a thousand long now foundation is Um, they're kind of into that way of thinking. Like you said that long term thinking can lead to short term gain and a good example of this is climb it change, right, So, UM, I think one of the people who are on the side of who are in favor of taking great action against climate change would would say that, Um, if we can take steps now, if we can think further out, then you know, we'd be able to mitigate this. But we're not. We're thinking about very immediate concerns, which some are are reasonable, like economic concerns, that kind of thing. But it's just two schools of thought exactly. So, UM, you can kind of understand where the long Now Foundation UH would side or sit on that. UM, debate. But what they figured out is that we basically we humans to think like this, we need something to um lead our minds in that direction, because just saying like, man, what's it gonna be like ten thousand years from now? It's like who cares? You know, I'm thinking about food, like I am literally right now. I just pose the question, and I'm thinking about food already long term, right. But if they were saying, like a two ft clock in front of me that I knew was designed to tick off ten thousand years, I might take a much longer view of things. A beacon, if you will, a beacon. Indeed, so the long Now Foundation has undertaken its flagship projects and there's a bunch of other projects to UM called the Clock of the long Now a k a. The ten thousand year clock. Very cool, Yeah, and I think it's pretty awesome. I can tell you're a fan. Well, but if for no other reason than to uh get attention for for their foundation and their their school of thought, you know, right, And that's the whole point. Like, and it's gotten some pretty good attention, I think, Um, A lot of people have heard of the ten thousand year clock already. UM, But it's actually being created. One's already done a tabletop version. Yeah, tabletop meaning eight ft. But the well, the prototype, um, and the whole thing was proposed by a guy named Danny Hillis. Um back in UH wrote in a like a Wired magazine scenarios article, the idea for this, the concept behind it, and um, there's been coome this kind of rallying cry that he wants a cuckoo to come out every millennium. Everybody that shows up in every article I've read on it, that's what they say. That's his thing, like, he wants a cuckoo to come out on the millennium. What's crazy is I don't see anywhere in here that there actually will be a cuckoo. Yeah. I didn't see that either. So poor Danny Hillis will have to wait. But he's he's the guy behind the Long Nail Foundation, right. Yeah. The first thing that I noticed when I look at any of the writings about them and the long now clock is the zero that they just placed in front of the current year. So in when he wrote that article, he proposed, you know, not that they actually change it, but the way they look at things is zero one, nine, nine five and Just seeing a date written in that way kind of makes me breathe a little relief, because all of a sudden, twenty twelve doesn't look like the future. Oh to one two looks like, oh well, we got a long way to go, like we're backwater Yokel's time wise. Yeah does that make sense? Oh yeah, totally, because I think they said we've been around, like civilization has been around for ten thousand years or so. So essentially this clock would represent our entire past. Well yeah, moving forward. Yeah, it would place us directly in the middle of two, which I love so which I was curious about. Why they're not starting over then? Why not started zero years? Clark's clock, um starts you want to name it a Clark it's a millennium yea, uh maybe because they just they don't want to disrespect you know, time served if you will. But also so, what they've come up with is a clock then that will run until the year twelve thousand, twelve thousand, twelve twelve thousand and fifteen, depending on how how fast they can get this thing built. Um, but that's their idea, is to come up with a ten thousand year clock, the clock that will run without human intervention for ten thousand years one um that can be easily understood by anybody. Um, which I think that they could have done something slightly different with the design, Like my eyes crossed when I look at like the face. Yeah, um, I feel like I'm living in zero two one two um. But there there's some challenges to all this, right, Like there's humans haven't really made too many things, um that have lasted ten thousand years yet. Yeah, why should this be any different? Well, you you outlined a couple of the base. I think they have the five basic principles they were aiming for, and you outlined a couple of them. There to work relatively free of regular maintenance? Was one? Uh, simple enough to maintain that if all of a sudden we go into some post apocalyptic world where there's no technology, we could still maintain it. Right, They were saying they estimate it couldn't go back prior to the Bronze Age. But as long as we have Bronze Age technology, which begin and the hallmark of the Bronze Ages metallurgy and um in black magic and of metal or separating ores from metal and um uh metal alloys. Okay, Well if dude, if we're sent back beyond the Bronze Age, then this clock is not gonna matter very much. You know what I'm saying. Uh, A close inspection of the operational principles should reveal the principles behind its operation. It's a little bit of word play there that sounds like Danny hillis and then uh what else? No matter when someone comes upon it, it should be able to be improved upon. And finally it should be able to be constructed small enough to fit on a table. That's what the prototype. So success, Yeah, success, And then for the rest of them, they're they're kind of abandoning that because, like we said, this thing is going to be the one that's being constructed right now, is going to be two ft tall. Yes, um, but looks like it I have ourselves, um powering such a clock. There's if you're looking at ten thousand years, I think it seems kind of likely that civilization will suffer at least one collapse, if not several, And we have no idea how far back humans will be set, hopefully not for the Bronze Age. But um, so this clock needs to somehow gain power from the environment, and Danny hillis came up with a bunch of different ideas, right, like atomic power. Yeah, most of that, Uh, that's poor manageability and transparency. Most of these are scalability Like they may have been good ideas, but they're just what too large to fit their their needs either that there either they're too big or they there already like they're perfect for this clock, but you can't use that to power Maybe if if something need if something's added on that requires more power, t s. You already are using all the power you can, or you can't scale it up and it wouldn't work the same maybe exactly so that would be chemical pre stored potential, geothermal, tidal, gravitational changes, and seismic and plate tectonics. Those all had poor scalability, so says Hill us Um, you can't use pressure change because you would need like a bellows or a seal. You want this thing to be as um simple as possable, because as any engineer knows, the more moving parts you have, the more parts you have that can break down. Um. And the flow of water. That's a good one, right, there should be water on the on the planet for ten thousand years. Sorry, you're exposing the clock to water, so inherently waters is self defeating energy source. Wind. Yeah, any kind of exposure to weather. That's why this thing is buried inside of a mountain, right, So what did he come up with? He came up with two ideas to power this humans. That's one. Yeah, human winding, that's one, a novel idea. The other is temperature change, that's right, but yeah, he wanted He said his favorite was human winding because it fosters responsibility for the clock, which is a great, great idea, I think, because ultimately the clock is for humans, even though it's sequestered in a mountain and it can run by itself for ten thousand years, if no human ever lays eyes on it, it's for humans. And we'll explain on that. If it sounds like we're talking out above side to our amounts, will explain on that by saying doesn't need humans. Yet, it doesn't need humans. I bet people can't wait. I could just feel attention. The hairs in the back of their necks bristly. All right. So for the prototype, um, it's sort of like an old school clock in a way. Uh. They used to helical weights, Uh, similar to the weight gravity systems just like clock towers, old clock towers, and they drive the energy going up and down these tubes which will drive the pendulum, right yeah, um. And ultimately the prototype, the drive assembly as you'd call it, Um, it served its purpose. There was a prototype and that it said, okay, we need to do something different, and they have. But for the prototype, Yeah, there's helical weights we're not familiar with, are you okay? Um, But the the prototype also still had like a solar synchronizer, which we'll talk about later, um, and a pendulum, which will also get a little more into But the pendulum is kind of key to keeping the time. We should do that now you want to Yeah, yeah, okay. So back in the six D people were trying to figure out how to keep time better than they have him more accurately. UM. And somebody a Dutch astronomer. Back in the day the best astronomers were Dutch Christian holligans. He said, hey, why don't you try using a pendulum because a pendulum has pretty cool property and that the only two um things that affect the swing of a pendulum. Nothing else affects the swinging of a Pendlum, not changes in temperature, not humidity, not anything else except the force of gravity and the length of the pendulum. I didn't know this well I didn't either. Um, if you take a pendulum and put it just about anywhere on Earth, you're gonna find that the gravitational field is is so close to the same that a pendulum will swing the same way anywhere on Earth. So the same rate to right, right, So what affects that rate The period, which is the amount of time it takes for a pendulum to swing all the way from one side to the other. So not just one side, it's it's both. That's a pendulum period. So really the only thing that affects it is um, the length of the pendulum. Right. The shorter the pendulum, the faster uh they go. The longer the pendulum usually uh, the um the longer it takes. And once you get a pendulum going, which doesn't require a lot, it will keep going. Yes, it takes a very small amount of energy input to keep it going, right, yeah, which is perfect for something like a ten year clock. Right. So if you put a pendulum and attached it to something called an escapement, right, Yeah, this is a part I got confused on. Okay, we'll check this out. So you have a pendulum, and you've figured out the exact length you need for a pendulumce period to take one second to tick off one second on on a second hand. That's exactly right. So you can attach the pendulum to this thing called an escapement. An escapement is just like a wheel with some gears to it, right, And these gears are attached to the second hand, Okay, and the escapement is always wanting to go forward, but it's being held in place by the pendulum, which is attached to an anchor. But we'll just call it the pendulum, right, So as the pendulum swings one way, the escapement gear is being held in place, and it's when it swings the other way, which is the end of a second, the pendulum opens up, allowing the escapement gear to take forward one tooth, thus moving the second hand forward one movement in a second. So that's how you do it. And if you're very, very clever, you can design the escapement gear so that as it moves, as it escapes, it also nudges that anchor that's a touched to the pendulum, transferring energy back to the pendulum to keep it swinging and that's basically the basics of a clock, mechanical clock, right, and that's what they use for the ten thousand year clock too, very smartly inappropriately to Yeah. I love how when they do design something to work ten thousand years they go back to bronze age and well this wasn't bronze age, but a lot of just old mechanical technology. Well yeah, I mean it's I think we've advanced in a lot. I mean, if you're gonna make a digital clock, yeah we know what we're doing, but how are you going to power it? And you want to just use some really old, perfect technology exactly? That's called long thinking, Josh. So we've got winding and temperature changes, differences in temperature changes that are powering this clock, now right, that's right, um. And then those are the two principles that are powering the clock. And there are different parts of the clock that need to be powered, like your favorite the Geneva wheels, right Yeah, Aneva wheel sounds intimidating a Geneva drive until you look it up on YouTube and see what it is, and it's really just um. And it can come in all kinds of shapes and in this case, it's sort of the shape of a star, and it's imagine each point of a star has a notch cut in it, and sitting underneath that is a is a wheel, a drive wheel that spins with a peg coming out of it, and it slips into the little slot on the star, advancing it one little click, keeps turning and and spins out of it and then by the time it comes back around, it slips back into the next one. So it's just a slow ticking around in a circle. Right, And so there's I think twenty of these for the big clock. But they're designed with a bunch of holes in a pins and holes system basically, which essentially is making a mechanical Babbage Babbage difference engine like an early computer, like a punch hole computer. Yeah. Right, they use before calculators. They is mechanical summers or actors, and this is you. But it's adding in binary ones and zeros. So it's carrying out digital calculations through mechanical means, which is astounding. And they're using this astounding technology to power basically what um in this article that we're reading. It's the world's slowest computer, and that computer is being used to calculate, uh, an algorithm that will produce a different chime using ten different chimes or two bells, um so that this thing supposedly will never make the same chime twice. Yeah. I think the algorithm maxes out at three point five million chimes of course, designed composed by Brian Eno, the ambient music guy, right and uh and that that doesn't have anything to do with the powering of the clock. That's just the chimes. No, but the dirty secret of the Long Mouth Foundation is that three point five million different possible chime tones uh or combinations is about ninety thousand days short of ten thousand years. Oh really, yeah, it wasn't ninety thousand days and years. I don't know, you have a binary add we need some Geneva wheels in here. Stat Well, they're not telling anyone that though obviously no they did actually wired. Yeah, They're like, you know, this thing's not gonna chime every day, so I'm sure it'll be fine, Okay, But basically no one's speaking to probably Needo right now. He's been demoted to ambient music guy from legendary producer. Uh. So the prototype, that's the prototype. It's eight ft tall roughly eight and a half. It is um at the Science Museum in London. You can go see it there. And it first started ticking on December thirty first, nineteen or O one if you're a long hour, and it worked the gong twice at the turn of the millennium to indicate that two millenniums are now past, which is funny because technically the millennium didn't start until two one. That's true. But they don't care. They don't care about a lot of stuff I'm finding out. Uh, So let's talk about the real deal when this article is written. The real deal was just proposed and it was going to be about sixty ft tall. That was two years ago. Well, that one is the one in Nevada. I think that's still gonna be sixty. They just decided to start on the Texas one first, gotcha because Bezos was like, Hey, here's forty two million bucks, can we get started? Well, go ahead and spill the means there. I just Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon dot com, UH is heavily involved in this, to the tune of money and UH it being built on a mountain inside a mountain in West Texas, on his property. Yeah, so he he owns it sort of kind of. I get the impression that, yes, he definitely has This project is his, but it's one of many that are going to be built around the world, Like they got approval to build one in a Smithsonian just this past year. Um and uh also Bezos by the way, he said that the two are unrelated. It's just a cool coincidence or whatever. But he's also building a spaceport by the mountain too, and he says that's unrelated to the clock. Yeah, he just said, Hey, that's why not there's a space port. There's gonna be ten thousand year clock. We'll see what happens. But if you want to see he's um funding this, uh this space program called Blue Origin. And you know how like in the fifties, like science fiction rockets would like land just going straight up and straight down, you know, yeah, yeah, Okay, that's what his rockets do. And there's you can see video of It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen that. I'm I'm like, is this real? Like we're pretty good at after effects these days, it's gotta be. I think it's real. You can make it happen blue Origin dot com. I will I will look that up, sir. So, like you said, Bezo says, or the one in Texas, I guess is what you should call it. The one that's under construction is going to be about two hundred feet tall, um, and it's kinda it's out in the middle of nowhere, very purposefully. Yeah. I think it's hours from the nearest airport. It requires a full days hike to reach the mouth of the cave opening, which is like a steel door, and it's a mountain rising up from the the desert, so you have a fifteen hundred foot climb just to get to the steel door the first door. So vandals, not only will you be trespassing, but you need to be a mountaineer if you want to go mess with this thing, which we don't encourage one, but they have they The first door is going to be jade, which is pretty cool. It's gonna be hidden behind the rock face, so like you have to, I guess you could stumble upon it. I think that's part of the idea, the fun. Yeah. Um, but you will know when you do stumble upon it that there's something very cool there because it's going to be a carved jade door in the rock face. Well, they're gonna open it up when they finish, they said they are. But I'm saying, like, if if this if the location or the idea or anything you're having to do with the clock, it'll still be there and people can find it accidentally. Yeah. What really bothers me about this is I'm not going to know the result. You know, if you lived to a thousand, maybe you would, but I can't live to ten thousand regardless. But does that bother you? Yeah? Like I want to know how this ends. I want to know if in ten thousand years, if it's still running, Well, what happens if if? Okay, so just the clock just you don't care what happens like hundred years from now, not just the clock. Um, So, if you want to access this thing, you go through those two doors. It's in complete darkness. It's not all lit up, which is kind of cool, right because I guess any kind and they don't want any kind of electricity to be needed obviously why they're building it. They're using stuff but for a visitor later on, Yeah, exactly, a post Bronze age visitor. It's going to be housed in a five hundred foot tall tunnel about twelve ft in diameter, Yeah, a vertical tunnel. Yeah, it's like a shaft. Basically, it's a twelve ft diameter shaft that's five ft tall, very tall. And um, it's got a very precise rock staircase that was carved with a robot slicing machine. You see video that I think it was awesome. And it starts at the top, which is cool. Basically it starts at the top with this just big hunk of rock and just cuts in a circle, down, down, down, one stair at a time, like the golden ratio kind of nautilus. Yeah, very cool. Yeah, And so that's how you're gonna access the gears. So let's go ahead and get to that. Let's go ahead and get to the counterweights at least. Well that's the first thing you would kind of come upon if you walked in on this thing and it's completed. And the counterweights are made up of stone discs, each about the size of a car, each waying about ten thousand pounds um. And we said that winding is winding in differences in temperature change of the principles that provide energy for this clock, but um, the weights are what keep it running. Um. And when you come upon the weights, you're gonna come upon a platform. And you know there's like old um those old movies or whatever where there's you know, slaves or um, somebody on a ship and they're having to like crank a wheel. Like there's three guys like all moving in the same direction, and each one has like a pole that is pushing like a horizontal wheel. Right. Yeah, they're gonna have one of those for visitors to crank, and that will raise these enormous counterweights and once they're fully raised, they'll have enough stored potential energy to power the clock for about a century without a single dash of sunlight or another human visitor. So that's essentially winding the clock. I think they said two or three people it takes to do this, and um it what's it called a cap stand? I think that that is what it's called. It's called a cap stand, right, Yeah, that's the horizontal wheel. That's yeah. Yeah, so it's pretty cool, like it requires human intervention. But as we said, and let's go ahead and spill the beans how that works. If no one came around ever, it would still run because of uh differences, and it collects sun's rays. The prism that sticks out at the top a sapphire couple of I bet that looks nice. And that's the only part that's visible from outside. They said, yes, And it collects the sun's rays and then channels them down through metal rods. And the difference in that was it the cave, the interior cave temperature and the temperature that collects between day and night. It changes okay and night, which is pretty ingenious because you think about what they're probably still will be over ten thousand years, there probably will still be day and night. Yes, and that's ultimately what powers this. Well, they're with no human intervention, Yeah, exactly. This dude though, the Alexander uh what was his name? Rose? He said that what they had to figure out there's something called the equation of time, and it's not constant, like the Earth is slowing its rotation by about a second every couple of hundred years, and all this stuff sounds like you have a big deal, but when you look on a ten thousand of your timeline, it is a big deal. Um, So the Earth is slowing by about a second every couple of hundred years. Uh, it's also processing on its pole every twenty six thousand years, so they have to take that into account. And then climate change, it's gonna if poles continue to melt, water is gonna be pushed out, it's gonna rotate even slower. So what they figured out there was a variance, Well, normally there's a variance of about ten or fifteen minutes throughout the course of a year from where the Sun should be. And they designed this thing too self correct to still be able to pick up the Sun's rays. Yeah, pretty ingenious, but they needed to do it on a ten thousand year scale. So they basically formulated this massive equation and they figured out how time would evolve over ten thousand years according to all these variables, and they found out it is a plus or minus and this worst case scenario with climate change of twenty three days from where they think the sun should be over ten thousand years, which means that the clock is way off by the end of the ten thousand years. Well, but they accounted for that with this equation they did. And the way that they accounted for it though, also is through the solar synchronizer. So every sunny day that um. At noontime, the sun will hit that prism. We'll heat up this little rod that sends a signal to the clock center working. So the the smart part of the clock that keeps time all the time, no matter what um and says, hey it's solar noon, and they the clocks readjusts itself. So the most it's ever going to get off is say, you know, however, many days or maybe a couple of centuries without sunlight if there's some sort of horrible nuclear winner or whatever. But let's say a couple of hundred years without sunlight. The next time there's sunlight, it'll say, oh, it's noon, and the clock will just readjust itself kind of wake back up. Yeah that's crazy, but but it will go back to Okay, it's noon now. No matter how far it drifted, it will now know it's noon. Solar nude. It is very awesome. And the timber. The differences in temperature also, it's it's called the thermoelectric effect UM. The electrons. If you have a thermoelectric device, electrons will go from a hot side to the cold side. And you know as well as I do that the flow electrons equals electricity, that's right, So that will keep things in check as well. That will keep the inner workings powered too. They thought of everything they did, and they also thought of ways to store energy or to keep from using energy, saving energy. He's another way to put it, well, yeah, I mean over time. I think they said that if the difference in temperature is great enough, it will just store that temperature and over a timeline. If that keeps happening, it won't even have to you know, stop and catch up. It'll just start operating fully mechanically by itself. Right. So here in the order of winding exactly, So in the order of um preference or of importance, the solar energy or the diurnal temperature change energy UM goes from the inner workings of the clock, yes, spills over to the weights, yes, and then if the weights are wound, then you will have the Geneva drive operating. Right, So it goes basically like the clock knowing the correct time, the clock operating and showing the correct time or whatever information that's supposed to and then the clock making sounds. Those are the levels of importance as far as energy distribution. Sure, yeah, that makes sense because the chimes, they gotta come last they do. It's nice and all, but they're also they're meant for human consumption. But if enough of that diurnal temperature difference uh energy spills over to the weights, then the clock will ostensibly um be chime when nobody's there. That's pretty cool. That's very cool. And next to his little rocket station. Right, he's got it all. He's got all figured out. Um So, while we mentioned the Geneva gears on on the on the main uh the two ft when they're building these are about eight ft in diameter, each one weighing about a thousand pounds. Yeah, and it's it's pretty remarkable. I mean, if you think if you ever been inside a clock tower and seeing that, it's like, imagine that times twenty. And remember the Geneva drive system is the the mechanical computer that's come that's calculating the algorithm to play the chimes. It's the whole reason it's there, that's right, and it's being powered by winding or the weights. Winding the weights. Uh So, if you keep climbing up in this thing, you will get to the primary chamber, and that is where you finally see the face of the clock, which is the most important thing. If you're building a clock, it's also gonna be baffling thing. Yeah, I mean the face of this clock is uh or if it's anything like the prototype, it's not like any clock I've ever seen. It's very awesome, Like you can clearly say, oh, I see the century, and I see them the millennium, maybe even the year. But like when I get to the star field, I imagine like so the starfields being displayed, I get that. I think that that means that if it were nighttime and you can see the star field and you went outside and looked up, you would see the same stars, right right, Okay, But the horizons are what's throwing me off the most. The ret r e t e. It shows horizons. I don't understand what that, what that means, or what you're gonna it from that fortunately, and I haven't seen it. But supposedly there's going to be a manual, some sort of explanation. Yeah, I'm sure they'll have it, some sort of uh it. Once they open it up for people to come visit. There'll be some like a little button you push and it will be Morgan Freeman's boy explaining our works or what the horizon means. Um If you want to know the time of day, though, you have to ask the clock. Chuck I thought this was one of the coolest parts of this whole deal because they built it to to operate at its most frugal over the years, obviously, and one thing that you don't need is a current read out if no one's there to read it. And so they says, well, why don't you ask the clock, like you said, So whatever time you see when you approach the clock is the last time that it read when someone wound not the clock itself, but the clock's face right the display the yeah, the clocks. So there's two ways to win. The cap stay and that raises the weights, and then there's the there's a little hand wheel that just one single person can do to wind the clock the clocks display and it'll correct itself and say, we'll ring it's now you know whatever time it is. And here's the horizon, which Josh doesn't get. Here's where the moon and sun phases are, and here's what year it is with the zero in the front of it. It's pretty cool. So the clock always knows what time it is. It's just not necessarily displaying it. It's just not gonna tell it's asked. Pretty cool, so chuck. Um, there's some pretty obvious reasons to choose the inside of a mountain to put this clock in earthquake protection, nuclear bomb protection mountains. They're they're long lasting, yeah, um. But there's other reasons that they chose the interior of a mountain as well, Like, um, the differences in temperature between seasons and day within the mountain um are very minimal, which means that you're not gonna have a freeze thaw cycle, which is apparently very corrosive. Yeah, but it's great enough to where you're gonna get the energy out of it, right, especially at the top. So remember like there's the mountain top that from the entrance the bottom of the clock, the top is five feet, but the clocks only two d feet, so the extra three feet is above there is where the temperature differences will really be noticeable. Right. Uh. So they've picked a very good place. And also the one in Nevada has got similar conditions, I think so, which is why they picked that high dried desert, highdried desert. Uh. And then the parts this is remarkable to me, Um, if you're going to construct something at last for ten thousand years, you're not gonna want to throw a bunch of thirty weight oil in there, because oil uh has the potential to fail and leak, and oil will attract dirt like crazy, and little hairs in like fuzzy pieces of grit over ten thousand years will stop any machine from running. So what they did was they barring from NASA, who originally developed ceramic bearings to use on satellites. So because you don't want to have satellites that need oiling either, uh, they used uh ceramic, which nowadays can be harder than diamonds. Ceramic bearings, like the moving parts are ceramic. And remember earlier I said, like humans haven't made too many things that have lasted ten thousand years. Ceramic pot shirts are one example of something. Boom Uh we have pot shirts that are like seventeen thousand years old, and that's just like from a pot. What they're making today should be able to last way longer because these parts move so slowly they don't require any lubrication. So the ceramic ball bearings are keeping the metal parts away from one another, because if you have to like metals that are in contact and aren't moving really like the millennium dial um basically won't move the whole time you or I are alive, children are alive. Um. And if you have the same kind of metal and like one gear touching the other gear, um, they're's gonna fuse together. You know. Micro vibration. I did not enlighten me. No, it's micro vibration, Like it's not moving, quote unquote, but micro vibration over ten thousand years will cause it to weld itself. That's pretty cool. And that's if it's a like metal, and if they're unlike, they will corrode over time in that right, Yeah, it's um galvanic corrosion. If they're dissimilar metals, they'll just eat into each other. So either either way, you don't want these metals touch you another. So the ceramic ball bearings that don't need any lubrication are perfect. It's right. The rest of it is made from three sixteen sainless steel, which this Alexander guy said that'll last ten thousand years. And even if it starts to rust. The movements of this clock because it moves so slowly, because it's so large Um, the the precision doesn't need to be like thousands of an inch, that's what's cool. It can be like a quarter of an inch. Last plenty of room for rust, right, so if there is rust, it really doesn't matter. And also saw where he said in the video that all the gear teeth were cut three dimensionally, and uh, what that means is it uses rollers to roll the gear, so it's a rolling mechanism instead of what he called a scrubbing friction. So I guess a rolling friction is much easier on the parts and scrubbing. And um, I was reading a Wired article on it, and the reporters said that he came upon a Geneva wheel, remember their eight feet in diameter. Yeah, these are um and they had the ceramic ball bearings in it and he could turn it very easily with just like gentle pressure from his finger. So they're going to be working just fine. I can't I want to visit this thing when it's done, at least I know I won't see the end, but I'd like to be there for the beginning. Well you can actually you can go join the long Now Foundation at long now dot org. Right, Yeah, they operate on don't nations. I don't think we ever even mentioned. It's a private organization and funded by people like Bezos. And I think the the UM basic membership costs like eight bucks a month. Um, you probably have a pretty good idea of where your money is going. Uh, their website long now dot org, long now dot Oregon. Then there's also now ten thousand year clock dot net and that's bezos website. Yeah, and there's not a whole lot there yet, but no, I mean it's just give overview, but um, there's there. We were left out this one part and the one in Texas Bezos is millennium Clock. There's gonna be little alcoves, different rooms. There's a one year room, a ten year room, hundred a thousand and ten thousand year room, and like they're leaving it to later civilizations to figure out what artifact to put in there. But in the one year room they're putting the ory which tracks the motion of the calculates the movement of the planets, and it also is an animation of I think Voyager two on this grand tour of like some of the outer planets. UM. And that's going into one year and they're going to figure out what to put in the tenure. So they're soliciting um ideas from any if you have an idea of what you what should be put in the ten year alcove. But I guess some of that stuff would require electricity though, right, I know, I don't think so now, I don't think any of it's going to or if it does, it will just be a thermoelectricity. Right, So I feel like we covered that pretty well. Yeah, ten year clock. I mean it's a way more basic than it appears like when you first look at it. It's like simple gears moving pendulum swinging. It's also going up and fully and genius. Though, Yeah, the way they put it together overcame problems that it may not encounter for thousands of very smart, dudish indies. If you want to learn more about the ten thousand year clock, you can type in ten thousand year clock in the search bart how stuff works dot com And that I said search bar, So that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh, I'm gonna call this the cone snail saved my life. Yes, remember when we talked about the cone snail in the Venom podcast No, it wasn't venom. What was it? It was? Probably? Was it just called venom? No, it's like, what's the most venomous animal on earth? That's right? This from David Miami. Hey, guys, love the show. I recently listened to the show on venom and you mentioned the cone snail. Five years ago, cone snail venom saved my life. Was diagnosed with cancer and due to the cancer chronic pain. After many years have failed attempts to control my pain with conventional medication, I was extremely frustrated and still suffering intolerable pain. Luckily, I found out about the ziconotide cone snail venom because remember I think we talked about scorpion venom being used in cancer. Yeah, that's right, okay. Uh. The only problem with using the cone snail venom to control pain is that I needed an implant. It can't be taken in pill form. One needs to be implanted with a hockey puck sized implant that slowly releases the medication into my intrathecal fluid. What which is the fluid surrounding the spinal cord? I might be pronouncing it wrong. Every three months, I need to go in for a refill so using a small needle. This guy's like Iron Man. The doctor refills the pump that's inside of his body with Cone Snail venom. It has been a godsend and greatly improved my quality of life and some days I am completely pain free. That is cool. So David Miami, kudos to you, sir and continued good health. Hats off to your medical pioneering. Absolutely, what's old is new again and thank you Cone Snail. Yeah, thanks Cone Steele. Uh let's see if you have an email about a past episode and how it affected your life. We always want to hear that kind of thing. Sure, you can tweet to us at s y s K Podcast. That's our handle. Um, you can enjoin us on Facebook at facebook dot com slash Stuff we Should Know. Oh, also, we have a newsletter. You can go to Stuff you Should Know his Facebook page and there's a tab to sign up for the Stuff you Should Know Electronic email newsletter. It's all free. It's over on the left side under our picture. On the very bottom you'll see uh S Y S Game news Letter. Yeah, and it's pretty cool. It comes out once a week, right, is it something like that? It's it has like our links to some of our favorite articles Just cool Stuff. Link to the newest episode, It's just neat. It's It's one of the better things you'll get in your inbox. Agreed um. And speaking of inboxes, you can send us a good old fashioned email to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for moral this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dotm. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.