Space Bubbles And Scientific Eras

Welcome to the Rest of Science. I'm Hanna Fry. And I'm Michael Stevens. Today on this episode of Field Notes, I've brought some very cool things that are important to me And I'm going to just ask that you indulge me as I nerd out b about mechanical pencils. This is a kind of nerding out I can get behind my. I try to nerd out to everyone I meet about this and by everyone I meet, I meet my wife and daughter. My daughter's into it. My wife is just done with all the little things that I need to say about mechanical pencils, but today I'm gonna get it out of my system. Okay, do we need to make this into a two partter, three partarter, seven partter I think It's going be a new podcast Yeah. Or we just have a third episode every week, you know, for the rest of time. Hopefully not. My goal is to get to a point where I'm exactly happy with all the features. It's exactly what I want. and I'm thinkin I'm gonna have to make it myself. Okay. All right, well, this is something for us to look forward to. Yeah, let's get on with it This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Here is something strange Your DNA contains more ancient viral fragments than genes The genes that build our cells make up only two percent of our DNA. and for years, that is what scientists focused on. They treated the rest, the ancient viruses and stuff as junk. But now we know that that hidden majority, sometimes called the dark genome, influences how our biology works and how disees like cancer It's a reminder that progress rarely comes as a single breakthrough. It builds gradually. Cancer Research UK plays a central role in that progress, supporting decades of research into over two hundred types of cancer, work that's helped double survival in the UK over the past fifty years. 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Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack So I used to be a pen guy. okay, I've got one of those stories, one of those like conversion stories. Yeah. I thought pencils were ridiculous. And honestly it began with my father who did crossword puzzles every day. The New York Times crossword. and you know how they get harder through the week, you know, he got And he was very adamant that you do it in pen Confidence, commitment, confidence, commitment, being bold. Pencils for people who are like,, I'm not really sure. is this the answer? Well we'll erase it later. And he's like, G up When you commit to a letter, it's the way it is. Yeah, he's mliner. And I said, that's me. And I made this my mantra. and I got really into pens and I had my favorite types of pens. And the pens said they were archival quality pens that the ink was waterproof and fade proof And that was all a lie Oh, go on. So I have a shelf of note books, of all of my ideas and thoughts and E it's not really a journal. and maybe it journals my thoughts, but I fill these notebooks up and I've got them on a shelf And they're all in pen. Well one day I had like four of them that kind of alt togetherether had all my thoughts about some topic. Had them in a bag With an energy drink. I was an energy drinker back then. And they were just like a little plastic bag And the energy drink exploded in the bag spilled liquid all over the journals and it just washed the ink away. I'd say about two thirds of each journal lost Like I can't even tell what it used to say because the ink bled through the pages. and these were moleskin notebooks. I'm gonna name brands, okay. It It was a sugar free rockstar energy drink. Yeah that spilled on moleskin notebooks. That's why you're not allowed to have energy drinks in libraries, you know? I know now. Yeah I know now, human knowledge, it's too fragile. All three of the notebooks Many of the pages are just, I can't even recreate what they were. I quickly dried them, I put them on a heater and they're dry, they're all crispy and wrinkled up now, and they don't shut all the way And so much of what was in them is lost. ed into it and I found that like pencils just better. You can't wash them away, essentially. They don't wash away. U, but they erase Here's the thing They can be erased But They scratch the paper so much, they leave a groove. You can see it. Like is The frustrating part of pencils is that when you try to erase, you can always tell There's always a ghost left, even like a mechanical actual physical groove in the paper where it was scratched, but that means it's still there. Rockstar energy drinks can't get rid of that. Okay, here's a question though, because what about the indelible mark that those notes made on your mind Right? Because the thing is is that if they were really, really good ideas, you wouldn't have forgotten them. Yeah, I haven't forgotten the details. Like I can kind of get a sense of like, oh, this is more stuff about philosophy of the past the exact words are important to me. In fact, some of the words I would scratch them out and I would like choose a different word. I want to see that process. and that's all gone. With pencil, you're talking about carbon on the paper. It's not going to fade. Again, it can be erased, but there's still something left. whereas In journals gone. I mean because there are some people. I remember talking to, I think it's Stehven Moffat, the guy who writes He wrote Sherlock, the one with Ben Cumbat. I rem I was having a chat with him once and he was saying that actually, a lot of the time he doesn't write down his ideas. for the purpose that act of him managing to remember them or not, demonstrates whether it was actually ever a good idea. And he said he was like Having a really amazing idea is like being complimmented by God, right? And like what you're just gonna forget being complimmented by God. No I think that's a little lie he tells himself I think that there are a lot of good ideas that you still don't remember. Okay. evenven if they're good. I don't think that's enough. to trust that the idea won't go away And I also think that some bad ideas are worth keeping because of what they can inspire later I mean, definitely a pencil and paper It has this I mean, you're right. you can't wash it away I mean you could burn it away. Yes, you can. But at that point you can also burn something written in pen away But it's also, you know, like a hard drive, you can't magnet it away. No. It does it is, you know, it's one step below tablet and chisel. I. So I haven't even mentioned tablets in the electronic, modern sense tablet and chisel would be great. I think there's also something for me at least. This is a personal episode. For me, I need to get as many different modules in my brain involved to really remember own and move forward with an idea It can't just be, o, I thought it, or I typed it or I voice recorded it. I need the muscles to get into it. And then really I really have that idea So I write And I fill up notebooks of stuff Um for For the fiction that I read I don't underline stuff because I didn't get indelibly deep enough into my brain. I copy down verbatim. Is it all long hang on, your're writing is so tiny. It has to be tiny in order to ' got two lines per line. P l two lines per line. This is like, youember when well, do you remember Darwin when he went off on his voyage? I remember, ye. Yeah. you know And paper was really short so he would write, you know like this and then he would also write like that and then sometimes like that. And if you're really careful, you could actually make get out all of it It's incredibly neat. I think Pentil's just a bit smudgy though, you know? Gandalf continues. O evils there are that may come for Sauronis himself but a servant or emissary M You really are writing down the quotes. I really am writing down the quotes. So obviously, that's when I was reading Lord of the Rings. And look at what kind of notebook I'm using by the way. It's not earlier brand I mentioned, it is right in the rain, all weather universal. Oh, so this is waterproof paper Yeah. Pens actually don't really work on it I think you can use maybe a permanent marker, but pencils work best. And the same company that makes these waterproof journals also makes pencils I mean, a pencil, it can get wet, whatever and get a new one, but they make waterproof mechanical pencils as well So that's what I'm using now. And I have I bike to and from work and it'll rain on them while they're in my pocket and they're just like, I don't care. And I'm like finally, I feel so much stronger But then the question became what type of pencil? do I use? And my favorite is wooden pencils. All right? I mean, I mean classic lines. It's classic. The feel of it is great. What kind of soften does we talking here to be? Oh I'm talking four H. Yeah. Let me give some background to those exam who might be wondering. So pencil lead comes in different hardnesses and softness To distinguish them, they're given names B is soft. B means black because soft graphite will just it'll smear off onto the page so thickly that the line is very black, B for black. In the other direction, you get into the H ls, where H means hard These are hard. There's less clay in the graphite So the line that it leaves is much fainter. it's almost more of a silvery color It doesn't, of course, ont wear down as fast, it'll keep a sharp point for longer There are some four Hs. Mark art makes a four H that is actually still quite dark, but it's like you're scratching a needle on the paper and I love the physicality of like, I'm doing this to you You know, but a soft like, you're using like a six B, you're just smudging around paint on the page basically. It you're massaging the paper into something brilliant. It's too kind, It's too massagy. I need to be scratching and tattooing the page. U So problem Wooden pencils You have to sharpen Eventually they get too short, they don't really fit in your hand very well. Also, I became too obsessed with constantly sharpening my pencils. And so I was just I would write a sentence and then half halfway through it, I'd be like,, I I could give this a few more cranks. So I moved on to mechanical pencils. And mechanical pencils, you know, you can get lead of any kind of softness or hardness that you want You can also get mechanical pencils with different lead widths. So you can get thinner and thinner leads, which simulate a sharper and sharper pencil Now where should I begin Here's what I'll say For the last few months, My go to pencil has been the Graph Gear five hundred zero point three millimeter with H lead And it's this one right here. And here's what I'm proposing. I think that we should write with these on a sheet of paper And I don't know if we can do this. The producers can tell me, but we should like sign this and write on it and then give it away to some listener. Auct it for charity. We should auction it for charity Can you guys can't say no to charitable causes? Maybe leave your bid in the comments. And frankly, if your bids won pe, like you're gonna win it. So you may as well start withinning. start. I don't know if we'll bid that way, But yeah, leave us comments anyway because it's good for engagement. This also this feels bit like this feels a bit like, you know that scene in American Psycho where they're comparing their business cards? Yes. It I think it was when you gave me the exact name of this What was it called again The graph gear five hundred Now that's zero point three millimeter lead Which is quite thin.'s very thin. Usually a mechanical pencil that you might find like in an office supply closet is going to be zero point seven millimeter It's still very thin I love the amount of control I have with such a thin lead. It's almost like It slows me down and it makes me write more legibably., I think it's quite scratchy. You think it's too scratchy? Well, that's lead as well. so it's hard For me, I mean, look It was a continuous experience, right? Like if you get a really hard pencil, I find it scratchy but it sort of the lead doesn't flow smoothly across the table, it sort of catches almost But yeah, it is like writing with a needle Yes, it is Okay, so let me give you the opposite. Now this is a pencil that is known as the Roting six hundred It is a completely metal body. This is much heavier This one has a lead indicator on the end. so I can actually dial in which kind of lead I've put in it so you don't forget. Yeah and U it's zero point five millimeter lead. So this is thicker. Also, this is incredibly soft. This pencil, let me just make sure it's working before I hand it to you Because some of the leads have broken inside. I don't actually know what lead is made from because's obviously not lead It's not made from lead, the metal. Good question. It's made from graphite, which is a form of carbon, an allotrope of carbon, just like a diamond, but the atoms are arranged differently. But there are other things added to it to make it either stronger or softer. Like I think pure graphite would be extremely soft That would be like a thing that you would It's like a piece of chalk and you would be putting down a lot Pure graphite, I think would be too a little too hard, but you can add like clay or something to it to make it soft enough, It's smooth Be if you get pure graphite and you rub it, I mean you can basically get down to like Incredibly thin layers of graphite. That's right, that's right Okay, so When it comes to again, just to give you context Pencil leads range from B to H and the number before the letter is a degree of blackness or hardness. So like a six B is much softer than a two B The number two pencil that we use in school is right in the middle. It's an HB. So it's a hard black. it's right in the middle. If you want to get any softer, you're gonna move into the two B, three B, four B, any harder, you're gonna to be moving towards, actually F comes first. F is very close to a number two.ool first F is for fine. Okay, because it's a little harder than a number two pencil so that it keeps a fine point longer After that in hardness is the pure H And then two H, three, H, four, H and so on. Whatere does it go up to U Biggest H I've ever seen is only four age biggest B I've seen is like twelve be. Yeah. And that stuff is goop. L riding with a cloud. It's like riding with a oil slick. All right. so here try the Re Ting six hundred Okay and this has four B lead in it Okay That's what I use for underlining in Nonfiction books See, this is more my thing You love that? I like that love. Yeah. I didn't know we were doing this day. Otherwise I would have brought in my fountain pen conect. we should do fountain pens '. Obviously I am as nerdy about fountain pens as you are about mechanical pencils. And the thing that I like in a fountain pen is what's known as a wet noodle. See, I don't even know what that means. This is why we need to do this episode because I don't know fountain pens at all. Oh fountain The delight. I want to be like a drawing with the sloshiest pen nib that exists. I want to be pouring ink onto that paper. I want the paper to be like a sponge So can That's so great. I love this b personal side of writing implements because my opinions that are being expressed today are mine that might not work for you What's interesting though is that my reasoning is exactly the same as yours, which is that I like the slosshiest pens because it makes me slow down Interesting, they make me speed up. Do they? Beause it's just too much of an amusement park ride.. I need a surgical instrument where I'm like, I'm just delicately slicing into the brain as I copy things down or as I write down my thoughts, otherwise, I can't read them later because it's too sloppy I think you're right, it is a bit like an amusement puck ride, but it'sort of like it makes me really take care over the beautiful shape of the letters, you know So let's keep going. This is going to be coming a three hour long episode, which is fine. It's the way it's going to be everybody. Now, you'll notice that those two pencils you've used are drafting pencils. They have really sharp points on them. And the lead comes out of what's called a lead pipe That's very long And that's so that you can use thin leads, but also so that when you're using a ruler or a stencil, they fit in and the sides of the pencil don't get in the way The problem with having a long lead pipe is that it's fragile. I mean, this thing is so thin. If you drop the pencil That lead pipe gets vent Leed's not going to come out of it again. You've broken your pencil. You've broken it and it can be very difficult to fix. I dropped the Rotring six hundred on the third day that I had it. And that lead pipe got bent and I had to bend it back and I think I got it. It works now. it works again There's no cap. There's no way to protect it. That's how it is. You put this in a pocket You're going to reach in and stab yourself on that. hpideemic needle. It's gonna rip into fabric and it's gonna bend itself again. So I have to use these little protective caps Which fit on these pencils, and that's how I carriryed in my bag. Wait, where'd you get the protentive caps from? I got these at a craft store in London actually. just But it's not a branded one. It's like it's just a generic thing. It's a generic little thing. It's like a piece of aluminum that's formed into a cap with a little slit on it so it can expand and then tightly hold ono whatever you shove in there. It looks a little like a bullet It looks a little bit like a bullet shape. That's right. and it's curved here and so it's protecting You can use these on wooden pencils to protect the lead, but on this it's protecting the pipe of the mechanical pencil Now. Here's what I want to say I want to show you I want to show you twelve more things. just kidding, but it's close to twelve. I do think you might love this. Now this is right in the Rins mechanical pencil and it uses lead that is One point two millimeters thick. Whoa, fat boy. It's a fat boy. And this came with two B lead and I'm sorry to say, knowing that you now like the soft ones, I've replaced it with two H lead. Okay this doesn I wanted it to hold a sharp point. So if you look, it's pretty sharp and that's because I've sharpened it using a special sharpener that can sharpen mechanical pencil lead That? This one was called. That's called the rightight in the Rain one point twoo Millimeter What do you think? I prefer it to the scratchy scratchy boy. Got it. Yeah. and look how much darker your writing is. It also feels nice to touch. It's got a really, really nice weight to it. and Best eraser. ever invented in human history Try that eraser out. Oh that is That is actually quite good. That's really good. You know, I once actually I was reading the Japanese Stationary Awards which which is the kind of thing that I do. And there was a new eraser which won or it Clean swepe ItQ quite nice to imagine an eraser getting comple completely sweet. But I think it rivals this. Okay, so I haven't tried every er. I shouldn't say that this. This is a very good eraser. It's the best eraser I've ever experienced. Yeah That's why the perfect mechanical pencil for me is gonna to be Frankenstein out of all these. It's gonna to be the things's gonna be the eraser from Wright in the Rains Mechanical pencil It's going to be like the form factor of the graph gear five hundred with protected lead pipe So watch this How do you protect the lead pipe? Well, one way to do it is to have a cap that actually comes with the pencil. On the market right now, there are only two mechanical pencils that are capped One is the Kuru Toga Dive, which is like one hundred and twenty dollars if you wanted to I' having an out of fty experience, everybody. I could work at a mechanical pencil store and never make a sale because I won'top I won'top talking. Right, T what it was called again? The Kuru Toga Dive. Okay. Are you familiar with the Kuru Toga mechanism? I have a feeling I'm about to. You're about to find out Honestly, I don't like it, but it's changed a lot of people's lives. So imagine that this is the lead in the pencil. As you're writing, what happens is that it hits the page and you draw and you pick it up and you draw another letter and blah, blah, blah. And it gets cut obliquely. so it actually becomes thicker. And so your lines wind up being Th thicker and thicker as you draw because the lead is not wearing down even there doesn't. If you wrote straight up and down, the lead would hit the page and it would just get shorter. But because you write it at an angle, it's getting cut this way and you wind up with a much larger surface area at the tip Kuru Toga fixes that by having a little mechanism inside such that each time it tou the lead touches the paper The lead is actually rotated a little bit So you draw, lift and it comes up And then you go back down and it keeps going around and around. So the lead, that tiny zo point five millimeter lead is actually being sharpened by being used, amazing U that is pretty good. That's pretty amazing. That is pretty good. For me It's too much movement. I don't want to feel the lead moving a little feel it. You can feel it. And I'm a guy who wants that scratch. I want to be doing old school cuniform like en clay on stone type work. I don't want this like delicate little hello, I'm doing a little dance for you, right Kuritogo Dive has that mechanism in a cap can' tell Care Has a cap, and it's just a more standard one now. This looks like a fountain pen from afar. Check it out What's cool? is that when you put the cap on the back push it all the way in, the lead can still be advanced even though you've put a cap on the back of it. the button goes through. I think the feeling of this is like this is sort of like what I would describe as a lady pen, you know? I do have ladyli like with it, especially the sparkliness, the the shininess. I think Mont Blanc actually literally make lady sized pens for smaller hands. I'm not actually joking My hands are re prettytty small. Your hands though. G They are absolutely ginoma. Famously ginnoma. Ginnoma. I'm kidding. There was once where you were like hiding your hands ' you were showing showing something up close to the camera and thought it made them look too big. Now that has that also has like three or four be lead in it What is this one cool again? That's called the Pintel carry It's one of the oldest continuously manufactured mechanical pencils But you can buy that today for about six bucks U yeah, I don't like it as much. It's too small. It's too small. Fair enough. I do appreciate that it's got a cap so I can throw it in my pocket, walk around, never worry about the pen getting damaged. Yeah, this one, I feel like, you know, it could sort of double up a screwdriver. Yes. so quiet. That's the right in the rain one point three millimeter pencil It is for like work outdoors. It's for you're doing construction, you need to draw lines on boards and whatnot. That's why it has thick soft lead. Not to gender your pencils, but this one feels very manly. It's a manly pencil. Yeah. ye. Okay, so the last thing I'll say is that I reached the end of my journey by discovering that you can get lead that's even thinner than thezo point three millimeter you tried with graph ge you might actually enjoy these because when lead when lead gets that thin T about a fifth of a millimeter. these look like hairs. They break way too easily. You can't put them in a normal mechanical pencil. They need to have some special protective mechanism. And so here, I'll give you this one first This is called the Pintel OureNs, and they're the only people at the moment who sell zero point two millimeter lead pencil Now when you look at it, you won't see any lead sticking out. And that's because the pipe protects the lead and it's got a little bevel on it So that when it touches paper, it moves up a little and exposes the lead. Oh, See how thin that is? This is incredibly thin. What's this one called again? That's called the Pintel Ouren It has the ability to hold the thinnest Mechanical pencil leads being made right now And because it protects it so well, you can put in very soft lead. So you are right now writing with a fifth of a millimeter thick lead that's two be softness. So it's a quite dark compared to the stuff at the top, the graph Gear five hundred Graft Gear's H lead looks like grreay. It does, it does. Even though it's incredibly thin, you're just putting way more way more graphite atoms per per stroke, right? Then this is the same pencil but with a metal grip And so that's been my go to and I think I'm kind of Done. It's got a little bit of a different weight distribution. It's a little bit heavier Pintel also makes an advanced version of the ONs called the ON Nero. and automatically shoots more lead out so you don't have to push the button I don't like it. I think a lot of people will agree that the mechanism that moves lead out is too sensitive. So when you use the eraser on the pencil, it shoots more lead out and you have to keep fixing it every time you erase. This one's your absolute favorite. That's my favorite. How much actually are these My favorite pencil that metetal Grip Pintel Ons, that was nine dollars. Oh. Well, nine dollars and ninety cents. so ten bucks. How about the one that looks like a screwdriver That one That one was more. That was like seventeen dollars,. Okay. I mean look, I'll be honest with you. Before we started, I was quite jealous of the number of options that you had here to show me because I was like, well, I' really invested here knowing that my Fantopaine collection is not not as extensive as yours. These are substantially cheaper than fountain pens. You a good way make more money if you want. Like there there are Pentel Onzes with like newew fangled metal grips that'll cost you like twenty three bucks I mean, that's a lot more than a wooden pencil. great. However It's worth it in the long run U So I think yeah, today When I walk around, I carry the Pintel carry and I also carry the Pintel ONs If you hold down the button, you can push the pipe all the way in. Oh, so it doesn't Stop you. So it doesn't stab you and it also doesn't get bent. So this is like, you know, nice and protected. And so I keep this in my pocket and this one And so if I need to write something, I'll use this. but because it's a bit weird, you have to like just push once and then don't look for lead coming out I't want An another person to have to use it. They'll think it's annoying and they'll think that I'm being difficult and fancy. I'll just give them This non fancy one. I give them this one because this works like you would expect a mechanical pencil to work. And that works even if they've got lady hands. Even with the lady hands, this won't overwhelm them. You know, Yeah, so I love it. And this is the one I've been like, I just love fidgeting with it too. It's got like the perfect size for my hands, just kind of have some fun with. Yeah. Thankk you for that tour. That was I think that that will have what I'm interested in looking at is the retention statistics on this episode to see how much you' flpp. It's going to be one of those rare episodes where Viewership goes up the longer it lasts. L peopleeople are inexplicably like showing up. theirir friends are saying, Wh did you come from? Where did you come from? Yeah Yeah Well, if you are still watching, you're a hardcore pencil fan likeike Michael You need to sign this as well order I know, I realized I wasn't writing, because I mean, the microphone's in the way of the table What did you write down? Yeah just write down what the name of the pencil were? What I'm going to do is I'm going put my own handwriting on here with all the pencils. and when we come back, we're going to get to your questions. I live seven thousand six hundred and thirty six kilometers away from Hannah, so we rarely get to see each other in person That's what makes this such genuinely thrilling news for us and maybe for you too. because for the first time ever, you can see both of us live on stage at Goldhanger's Inaugural Festival. It's going be amazing to be able to reach through the screen and meet those of you who watch and listen to the show in the flesh The restest is Fest runs from the fourth to the sixth of September at London's South Bank Center. General sale goes live on the second of June at ten AM. so get some tickets and get ready for some fun Some serious Go to southbankccenter. co. uk to find out more Hi, this is Garalinica from Goldhangers The restest is foootball. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than one hundred sixty countries and with over forty currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly Wise uses the mid market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, G get Wise, Ts and T's apply. No one goes to Hanks for a spreadsheet They go for a darn good pizza Lately though, the shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the one dollar slice. He asks Copopilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now Hanks has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m three sixty five coopilot dot com slash work Okay, welcome back. have we've got some questions from you guys. First up, weve got a question from Justin. who asks, what happens to the bubbles inside a soft drink when you open up a bottle on the International Space Station onn Earth, they flow upwards, seemingly against gravity, true. What happens in space when there is no up It's funny. I was just watching a British astronomer astronomer, a British astronaut? Was it Tim Pake? Was he ginger I don't remember. I don't see there is really country are so obsessed with hair color. likeike hair color and cloth. right. Where I grew up, you were a redhead and that was like what it was. And here it's all like gingers and the whole like they don't have souls in. I'm like, what the heck? Excuse me, that was little South Park. That is very much I know it's in American. I first heard about it from them and it was like out of nowhere My whole childhood, I'd never heard that gingers were like outcasts worthy of derision and outcasts. Well ye, but you know why?'s because I mean I have not fact checked this to be absolutely clear. So. But we had like invaders from, you know, like the French and the Nordics. and then all the Celts were like pushed to the outer borders, so like up in Scotland and over in Ireland. And so they're really considered the sort of savages they're more indigenous to these isles. Maybe not more indigenous because I think there were you know Europeans floating around the whole time. And when did this isle become an isle, et cetera. Right. But yeah, the sort of the Celtic blood was considered sort of The saavages, the like Oh yeah, who then the Normans, the Yeah Yeah. I'm not just saying that bit is absolutely completely true by the way that for example, there was lots of stuff during the Irish famine where in Britain they were sort of like, well, it's because they're just A bit lazy Dinner. So that's why gingers were considered genuinely sub humuman. You know in Iceland when they we've gotten to gingers now again. sorry. just it seeks out the edges But yeah, the ginger people who came from Ireland, that the Vikings stopped off in Ireland on the way to Iceland, picked up loads of women which you can see in the DNA of modern Icelandic people that it was females from Ireland. Anyway, when they were had churches and stuff, all of the ginger people had to sit the back Really? Yeah? Yeah yeah It's fun that We can all have a little bit of fun insulting gingers and it's like saafer. safer than insulting other people? Bea we don't really mean it. Like I guess to me, it just never felt like it was real. It was like a South Park joke. I I thought they'd made that up until I met people from England from Britain and they were just like, oh no, like Oh it's real. It's real. Yeah, I think it's less real than it used to be. Okay. I think like in the eighties it was much more real than it was real. Yeah. Anway but that's why Tim Tim Pek's the ginger guy I just I don't remember because yeah, again, I see everyone as a human Okay. The pointoint is though that he had a big blob of water there in the weightless International Space Station and he stuck an Alkaeltzer tablet a buszy tablet in it. And the bubbles form, but they don't go up instead, they just go around. They just expand. They just expand. So on the International Space Station a can of carbonated liquid will expand. and it'll be like a kind of a foamy mess, but it's gonna to all come out as that pressure change causes the gas to come out of solution. and now it's going to be probably quite quick. I don't know if they've actually done this. I haven't seen if they've done it on the ISS. It would make a mess I think it would be like if you'd shaken it up and opened it And then just the explosion. But this is what's happening inside the human body. I mean, because gases are released when you're digesting. and on eararth, you know, it's fine sort of like it kind of comes up to the top and you end up burping out. But on the SSS, it's like incredibly uncomfortable apparently. the bloating that you end up getting, they talk about having like sort of wet burps where it's kind of all coming out of the edges Which is a bit disgusting. Yeah, it makes you thankful for gravity keeping things down. Right, exactly. So yeah, there you go, there's your answer with a little bit of ginger stuff thrown in.. Okay, here's a question for you, Michael. Okay, Adam asks, I've been reading Bill Bryson off the back of Michael's recommendation. And I had been wondering, if you could be alive in any era of science, when would it be Well how be in the future? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I stipulated, so I think you can do whatever you like. I think's so many cool historical eras of science You like be there and I'd be a little bit like,, we've moved past this, but also I can't really explain to you how we did, so I'm of no use But I think that it'd be cool to go I don't know how far though. I'd like to go to where We've paradigm shifted away from current thinking where someone someone's come along and said, guys, all this discussion of u quantum electrodynamics and Cosmology at really big scales. like all of that is actually part of something else kind of like what Einstein did and Copernicus did. I want another level to red when ye, when there's that new way of looking at reality where we go, oh of course Yeah. Of course, Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics are all just approximations still and there's still something else there. and that's what's going to push us over the edge too Faster than light travel, creating wormholes, stuff like that Yeah, I hear ye. I hear ye. I sort of think that there's, I don't know, I think if you look back through the history of science, Get these eras where I don't know, I think that a lot of the really simple stuff to discover has sort of maybe already happened. You know I don't think that there's an equation of biology in the same way there's an equation of equals Mc squared. I think that the systems that we are that are now at the frontier are so phenomenally complex that it's probably beyond the human brain to be able to understand the full intricacies of the entire systems all simultaneously I mean, even really I think even if you go back a hundred years or so, it was possible for you as one individual person to pick up on a piece of science and make one breakthrough that actually ended up having this gigantic repercussion. Yeah by yourself B yourself. But I think now we're really in an era where there's like that just doesn't really happen anymore. You need gigantic teams of people. You need gigantic teams, you need gigantic equipment. need like neutrino detectors and particle accelerators the size of a country or telescopes that take a decade to build, right And having big teams of people is exciting in itself, but it also means that you as an individual only ever get to like fully grasp one tiny bit of it, you know? I like the idea of being able to fully understand literally all of it. I just prefer pulling apart things that are mechanical because I can really understand how they're made and how they're designed. Whereas pulling apart something that's, I don't know, like a laptop or a smartphone or whatever,' like they're just too complicated for one person Yeah, you could be a real Rennaissance woman if you went back to a time when you could know a bit of everything I think historically, I would like to go back and hang out with Leewinhook and his microscope.. When was that? Like the sixteen hundreds, late sixteen hundreds? A Little bit later maybe, seventeen hundreds. Let's check it out. Eranhook But he was the one who first saw sperm, right? Yeah, he is. That imagine that. You just get like a little instrument. It' just like, well, what I put under it next? famously Lewinhook did not invent the microscope, but made some adjustments to make it like three hundred times stronger magnification wise and like scooped out some gunk from his infected tooth and looked at it and saw microorganisms and he called them Animal cules N animals. Yeah, like molecules, but animals And he was the first human to see a sperm And he was like convinced because there seemed to be a lot of detail in them. He was convinced that there was an entire little baby person in it. Yeah and that this this this proved the notion of preformation. Absolutely. that when life began everyvery individual that ever would be already existed and that like my children are in my sperm as little tiny things. And inside them Boys have some sperm. They're Russian dolls, my friends. Russian dolls all the way down In the shape of a human, this is well that then when it goes ono the woman, it's like tiny little human, and then they just get slightly bigger, slight bigger. Yeah, And it gets bigger. and the woman's egg provides some kind of maybe it's a light force, maybe it's just whatever It turns out that's not true, but no on the on the way' got a bit more to do with they may have a little bit more to do with it. but on the way over here before the show, I finished Ted Chang's stories of your life and others. And he's got a short story in here. This is all sci fi, where he imagines a world where preformation is true And the story is set in Victorian times, where some scientists have found a way to I won't give too much away. They found a way to look closer and closer at all these like nested homunculi, little people that are inside the sperm. and they realize that after the next five generations, it doesn't keep going. The whole human species. It's about to come to an end. It's about to come to an end. Great It formed. however it formed. Its creator or nature only gave it whatever two hundred. gener Nested generations. And they're like, how are we going to fix this? And I won't tell you how they fix it, but it's a pretty neat story. That's a great story. Yeah, good answer. goodood answer. I think being there at the beginning of the microscope is a really good one Okay, last question. This is from Otis who asks, in your opinion, what is the most beautiful phenomenon of the cosws. Oh Now, okay, on this, I think that I mean sure there's like Sudberinavian stars and blah blah, blah, blah blah. But I think we're really biased towards vision in all of this I think that the most beautiful phenomenon, I'm gonna to go gravitational waves H Because I think I just think that's really pretty spectacular actually. this idea that you can have something like two black holes colliding together. And it has these measurable ripples In space time. In space time. Yeah. that you can get lasers that are ninety degrees to one another And then measure the difference. I mean that is it's also the fact that You know, we turned on Seti to listen, the bias towards vision has always been there, but we turned on Seti to listen, to hear if there was sounds being made by alien civilizations. And there was nothing, really. We haven't heard anything. There's no cacophony of sounds. But when LIGO was turned on to look for gravitational waves took about how long was it before they detected the first wave? It was like forty eight hours or something, wasn't it? I don't know. I just it was really funny if I pretended like, oh, yeah, most. Hang on one second. It was really quick Oh, okay, this is interesting. H. So they hadn't they were supposed to turn it on to do the first official observation on september eighteenth They actually found the first gravitational wave On september the fourteenth Four days before the original start date when it was in engineering mode. Wow. How cool is that Very cool what a feeling for you to be like, guys, this is working so well. We're detecting the target and we haven't even started. Yeah. I mean, they literally turned it on and we' like, Oh no there's one. Wow. Yeah, I think that's really. Gravitational waves, right. It's not like a wave in water or it's a wave in Whatever it is we are on the stage that all the matter is set on. Yeah Not a wave in matter, a wave in the thing that we're in and are moving through space and time. I think someday we'll get a better idea of what spaceet timee really is. It's such a shame that we can't conceive of things in the fourth dimensional. I know. becausecause the two dimensional analogies where it's like, oh, it's like you live on a curtain and then the curtain is being rippled. Like, sure, okay, fine just doesn it's not satisfying. No Be becauseuse it makes you think of a curtain and how a curtain will bend and fold into a third dimension. and that doesn't exist for in our minds for a three dimensional spaceet timee. So it just winds up becoming Like it feels made up and it has to be too mathematical for everyone to really appreciate. Yeah, agree, agree Okay, well, that's a bit of a depressing point to leave on. Sorry, guys, the most beautiful phenomenon in is sped you can't imagine, whichich I think is kind of beautiful in its own way. Hey. Hey there you go. There's the philosophical Always a good answer. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Field Nes. 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