The Kardashev Scale and Civilization Growth

Hello and welcome to the Rest is Science. My name is Michael Stevens and I'm how to Fy. And today on Field Notes, I've brought an object from my childhood that we're gonna do some experiments on. And by experiments, I mean one experiment that I've been waiting to do four twenty five years. Yeah. Yeah. I w to finally do it. It's gonna be recorded so it's worth it. Has much of your life been building up to this precise moment, Michael? No, I'd say about once every seven years, I remember and I go, oh yeah, I should do that.omeone. It ends today. Play the game for me here. be like, yes. a dream I'm sorry. I dream about this every night I sweat constantly worrying about it and today it's gonna finally all happen. It's a big day This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Scientists have found that cancer risks usually increase with age and size, but some species defy the odds. For example, deep sea Greenland sharks. They can grow over six meters long more than a small car and yet live for up to four hundred years. Now understanding how greenage shhark's cellular repair and immune systems seem to have managed to keep them cancer free for centuries, that could open up exciting research pathways. Essentially over millions of years, evolution has been running the world's most successful cancer prevention trial. And sometimes breakthroughs can be found in unusual places So by exploring the unexpected, canancer Research UK scientists are uncovering new ways to tackle over two hundred types of cancer. Their work has helped to double survival in the UK over the last fifty years and continues to save and improve lives around the world. For more information about Cancer Research UK their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them Visit cancerreesearchuK. org slash the rest is science Queen Carvania stood haled by the morning sun Army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. 'Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it Tonight, we feast An offer you can feast on, sell your car today on Carbana Pick up these many Hey parents How do you make smarter choices for your kids college today? That's where Sally can help With Sally, you can find scholarships, funding options, tools, and guidance all in one place And if you need a loan, Sally has options for different families and different situations College is only worth it if you do it right So don't just help your kid go Help them go smarter Sally d. com slash go parents ould you do that first? Let's do let's do that. get out of the way it's gonna to be quick. We' do audienceQ and A after. And we willll do a Q and A. yeah,. we're going to look at your questions afterwards. So here's the deal U I don't know if you know this about me, but I went to space camp As a kid Three summers in a row. Okay. earn my gold wings I'm kind of a big deal. I like to brag. I don't like to brag, but where is space camp? Okay, I think you're going to you're going to have to give us a bit more detail because the whole summer camp thing is not really a British thing. Yeah, so it's a summer camp for kids who are like, yeah, I don't really want to be doing like outside stuff. I don't want to. But do you stay away from home? Yeah, yeah, it's like a sleep away camp. How long does it last for? It lasts for like maybe just a week or two weeks. I actually remember I did there's multiple places where you can do space camp I did the space camp in Hudchinson, Kansas at their cosmosphere. And I loved it. I mean, you train like you're an astronaut. How old are you at this point? U High school age. Okay. so I would say like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Got you. those ag I'm there. Yeah. Okay So they've got the like gyroscope thing that you have to get spun around on and plug all the cables in and pass these tests. and then you're assigned to a crew, a space shuttle crew, and you're either the commander, the pilot, the mission specialist, whatever. And youve got to do a whole mission And you're like judged based on how well you do the mission. so fun. It's very fun and you learn so much. The different years had different focuses. You'd focus on the history of space fllight U And then another year it was like the future of spaceflight, which was sort of just like all robotics, especially back then. I had to like get SCuba certified because a lot of weightless training on Earth is done in a neutral buoyancy suit. in water. Be neutrally buoyant means you don't sink or float. You're just floating there And they've got these things called busy booards underwater. and've got the busy booard is full of different nuts and bolts and switches and things. and you've got to like tighten a bolt. But of course, you tighten it and your body moves. So you've got to relearn how to position your arms and like be stable Anyway, I absolutely loved it and As a memento from the cosmosphere, I bought a space pen And I never used it because it was just so special. Okay. And I still haven't used it Is that what you haveve brought with you today, Michael? That's what I've brought with me. It the exent that we get to write a F space Pen. A Fisher space pen. What's a space pin? Many of you may know, but for those who don't, a space pin is based on the pinens that Fisher made for the astronauts in the Apollo program and maybe other programs. I don't actually know its history. It's been a while since I was in space camp. That's okay. What makes the space pen different? This is the bullet variety. It looks like a bullet. It looks like a space age pen And this isn't the one that the astronauts used. They used a one that looked more like a regular pen. This one really leans into the whole like, do I look space age? Right. Anyway, a regular pen, like a regular ballpoint pen really needs gravity. to work you have a ball at the tip that's covering the opening that the ink is filled into. And when you roll that ball, the ball rolls, the ink falls onto the ball and as the ball rolls, the ink goes onto the paper But if you don't have any Wait If you're in a weightless environment, then there's nothing to pull the ink down, right. So famously, you can't use a regular ballpoint pen very well upside down. Absolutely. And the inks and the mechanisms don't really work underwater, all these things. But the space pen was built to work in a zero G environment. Now this is there is that old story, isn't there that the NASA space program spent seventy squillion trillion billion pounds in creating a pen that would work in space and the Russians just used a lead pen. What what? Yeah. however that's not That's not true. Okay Basically, yeah, every time you bring up a space pen, there's always that one dude who's like, know, the Russians just used a pencil. And it's like, dude, no, they didn't I mean, maybe they did, but I don't know what they did. It's a bad idea. It's a bad idea because What a pencils do, they create a lot of debris When you write with a pencil, there's in a weightless environment, like up in orbit There's little pieces of graphite that float around and now you're going to breathe them in orr they're going to get into the electronics. And graphite can conduct electricity. It can cause a lot of problems. If You want to erase something, you've got little bits of rubber floating in the air. your pencil breaks, you can always sharpen it, which creates an enormous amount of debris. And without gravity to get all the debris into one place, the floor, it's just polluting your entire spacecraft. the pen was a great idea. It works by having, let me open it up. It hasn't been opened I like, likeike I said, like twenty five years. Exciting. It's got A A A Tube of ink inside And then it's filled with above that, a pressurized gas. Okay. So instead of using gravity to feed the ink, it uses pressurized gas to push it out When you've used up the pen, you have to buy these special space pen pressurized refills Be of that and because of the qualities of the ink, this can write underwater, it can write upside down Yeah. There was even a Seinfeld episode about space pens and like everyone couldn't believe that you could write upside down with it I don't know What happens after twenty five years? Well I'm wondering, will the ink have dried out? They say no It says that the pen It stays good for like a hundred years. Beause I guess if you can wr underwater, it can't be water soluble, which means there's no water in. It doesn't nally dry out. Yeah. Yeah So I'm looking at it right now and I see a little what looks like a speck of ink Two specks of ink What color is it Ink, I think, is like a dark blue. And if I look at the tip, it looks pretty gunky, to be honest, I'll get some footage for you guys, up close footage before we use it It's It's really I don't know if this is clear. It's really Gross It looks like it's been used a lot and a bunch of ink has collected. Did you use this when you first got it? No I've never used it because it was a space pen. Oh my gosh, if I use it up, then I won't have any ink and I won't be able to do upside down writing. So I never did any upside down writing I would like for you to do the honors thing. No, I don't feel special enough. Okay That looks really neat. It does. It's really put the cap on the back. That looks so sweet. Okay, here's some paper G, hereere's the pencil the pen. Really, really? Oh my gosh, I feel so honored Should I start by writing up What I guesses I actually, I don't think it's going to work. Okay Let's see if it works. Does it work? Straight away, straight away How's it feel? Is it look smooth or It feels like a normal biro? Okay Now go upside down. one hundred and eighty degrees, Yeahah, like that Like you're floating around, you're approaching the moon, you need to make a note My writing's a lot less neat up here. Yeah, but but it's still working, isn't it? It is nice. Now let's do it underwater. Yeah, I don't have any water, but I mean,'m just I'm gonna I'm just gonna Trust them on that It does That's amazing. All let me try it. Could you imagine a twenty five year old Oh wait, how long how yeah, you were fifteen, right? A twenty five year old pen likeike a normal borrow, that just you'd have to scribble it for ages Oh yeah, straight away, this is working like it's fresh out of the box. like it feels fresh. That's exciting. Wow, Fisher, nice job with the Space Pin Bullet edition. Mine is, hereere's what's so funny. I looked up I was trying to find exactly what year this was made and I couldn't find it exactly. It isn't written on any of the literature that came with it. So I looked on eBay to see if other people had said and I found the same model with this like red velvet interior. And o man, talk about feeling old. They're all on eBay as Vintage Fisher space pen and I'm like vintage. Things from my childhood are vintage. They are now vintage, I'm afraid. Retro old gezer Man space pen. But we're talking probably from the nineties, right? Yeah. Yeah, this is going to be late nineties, so more than twenty five years old. Yeah, I think I was probably more like twelve thirteen when I started space cam So' it's held up well. I'm really excited. I like how the font that they've chosen for Space Pen is really similar to the font that you see at the beginning of Star Wars when they're going into the distance. Yes they've got pretty much the same type face and it's even warped, so it looks like it's receding away Just like Star Wars just like space That's cool. I mean, as I've established previously, I'm not really a pen guy, so I'm probably not gonna just start using this a bunch. I don't think you should It's good for another seventy five years For another seventy five years. I think you should put it in a time capsule. Bury in your garden and say if you find this and the year is two thousand one hundred answer this sururvey using thisen Using M Pen. Don't worry, it'll work. Oh I love that Well, I mean, that's all I wanted to It's great. I really enjoy b field nototes journey. That's absolutely lovely. That's absolutely lovely. Yeah, I'm really glad. I'm glad that we tried it out Because I was always afraid to. I was afraid. firstirst of all, I was like, it needs to be recorded. You got everything needs to be turned into content. Absolutely. And we've done it. We have I want to see what the Soviets use instead of a space pen. Okay, yeah do they have their own Soviet space pen Or did they actually use pencils and they just suffer the consequences. Beared it What did you say? Fisher? Paul Fisher Butew he did it himself. Paul Fisher, it was he paid for it of his own company's money Oh Yeah And then he picked it wasn't c afterwards. it wasn't like, hey, we need a pen, we need a writing utensil that will work in a weightless environment. Yeah. He just said, I've got this for you for a problem, I think you might have. So here's the thing. He did all of the research with his own money, invested about a million dollars of his own company's money to develop it. A million dollars is off. Money and then he pitched it to NASA And they were like, yeah, great. they tested to make sure it wouldn't explode or burn. And then they were like, well I have four hundred six dollars a pen. Oh no, that's it. That's only got back. Well, that explains why they sell them so aggressively to this day. Yeah. They're like, we've got to make back somehow a lot of millions of dollars in today's money. So here's the sort of punchline to the whole story about the Soviets using pencils Actually it turns out So obvious' used the exact same fish space pen as well You know was was this guy like During the Cold War, he's like playing both sides. He's like, you know, NASA, NASA's got space pins and the Russians are like, fine, fine. The Soviets are like Oh we gott to have them too and there's like this Not an arms race, but but an ink race. Yep to see who can have the best upside down riding. like it.re both using the same one. B both using the same one. At least in the ISS, you only need one form of ink to stock Do they use these on the ISS still? I would think you'd have to. Maybe they don't use this bullet shaped one as I've seen actual astronauts using space pens and they've got like clips and they look more like a regular writing utensil, you know, this is less practical, but again, it's more, you know, flashy space Yes, they do. They still use them on the ISS. I reckon he made his million dollars back by now, do you? I hope so It's the universal standard apparently in space he's actually got a monopoly in space. Well, who Who else is making a pen like this? I mean, it's kind of like You only need one Yeah, apparently there are two main models that are officially NASA approved. The AG seven which is the classic one and the CH four which is slightly sleeker,'s the house pen of the ISS. Yeah, I quite want one. E though I don't really like writing with ballpoint pens and the fact that you have to buy a pressure pressure cartridge. Yeah, I know but I know. Well, you can't have this one because That's going in your time's go in to find time capsule. Yeah, it's you right T right All right, should we have a break come Let have a break. you hang back, we're gonna to look at your questions. Yeah This segment is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. For years, many of the proteins that cause cancer have been considered undruggable. In fact, around eighty five percent of our proteins are considered undruggable, which is like a biological iceberg. Our current drugs only touch the fraction, the tiny fraction that's above water. But canancer Research UK scientists, they are working to change that. Their scientists are diving beneath the surface try and target these proteins. And to do it, they are taking inspiration from a household chore that most of us try to avoid. So today we are asking, can taking out the trash save lives. Okay, here's the thing, right Cancer starts when our genes end up going wrong and make and spit out these faulty proteins that tell cells to grow uncontrollably, right? And what standard drugs do, they are designed to block the cancer causing actions of faulty proteins. It's a little bit like plugging a leak,? It sort of physical that stops it from working. but it relies on the faulty protein having this plugggable leak, right a rigidly shaped area that drugs can get in and attach to to physically stop the protein from working. The problem is that lots of cancer causing proteins are really disordered. There's no clearly shaped part that the drugs can attach onto And that's essentially why they are considered unduggable But some of these proteins, they end up driving cancers in children and young people. and that is where it is especially challenging to develop really effective treatments because right now, virtually all the treatments that we have for kids and young people are just borrowed from adult treatments. But the biology of children and young people and their cancers are just completely different And so we need to find different ways to treat it. Here's the question. What if the key to drugging the undruggable was already inside of us? Well, our cells have their own sophisticated waste disposal system to help them get rid of the rubbish proteins that are damaged or misshapen or no longer needed. Basically the cell attaches these tiny molecular trash bags to the proteins that it wants to throw out. And then those tags tell the whole machinery inside the cell to take that protein and unfold it, shred it and recycle its parts. and those parts are basically just amino acids, the building blocks of proteins that the cell can then use to build new proteins. Interestingly, this whole cell recycling disposal system is called UPS It really is a kind of parcel delivery system, by the way. But is it united? No. UPS stands for Ubiquitin prroteosum systemystem. Biquitin is the tag and the proteosum is the bin. So let's talk about rubbish. How can we hijack our body's internal rubbish disposal system to treat cancer? Well, cancer grand Challenges and their partners are supporting a team of international scientists to find ways to develop therapies for solid tumors in children including degrader drugs, which hijack this ben system, this rubbish disposal system to go after proteins that scientists once thought were undruggable. they can attach trash tags, not trash bags, trash tags, okay? to cancer causing proteins that tell the cells to chuck them out. So the teams are designing degrader drugs to target five faulty proteins. and they've already identified a few promising compounds that could put a protein that drives childhood neuroblastoma in the bin. A neuroblastoma is a cancer that develops in nerve cells of children mostly younger than five years old. Right, You can see the potential for this and what an unimaginable difference it could make to really countless lives. This idea of Cancer Grand Challenges, by the way, is it's an initiative that supports international, interdisciplinary teams try and solve these big unsolved mysteries in cancer research. I mean, you can imagine a giant scientific escape room, you know, you' got the puzzles are like nothing you've ever seen before and you get teams all together But the prize at the end, if you manage to solve them, it could change really everything. But this idea, these degraders, they have this power to potentially cross the blood brain barrier also treat brain tumors, which is a wall that most drugs really struggle to penetrate. Yeah, this trash tagging technique could help us treat children and young people with better drugs that aren't as harsh on their developing bodies. Yeah, this is the next step in a very long legacy over the last fifty years thirty five thousand six hundred children and young people with cancer in the UK have survived into adulthood, thanks in part to Cancer Rsearch UK's work And with continued breakthroughs like that, the number is only going to keep growing So it turns out Taking the bins out really can save lives. For more information about cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearch UK dot org forward slash restestist science I'm Arch Manning. I'm Madison Skinner, I'm Ev Yovich. I'm Coria Moo. W want to train like a Red Bull athlete? Tell us your fitness goals this summer to enter the Red Bowull Athlete challenge You'll get to try each of our workouts for a chance to win an ultimate Red Bowull experience. D you have what it takes So good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to sixty percent off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. 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 All right, well we've had one question that has come in that actually quite relates to what you're describing. It's from Luthian, who says, I was listening to your episode about orientation I now want to know if astronauts, especially those in deep space, internally experience the sensation of bodily rotation Or if rather, they lack an internal sense of orientation due to the lack of gravity, and thus the lack of up and down, and therefore experience something more akin to the world moving around them I mean, the pens definitely feel it. Yeah. The pens definitely feel the lack of gravity. The pens have a built in gravity though. They have this built in direction, which is the direction that the pressurized gas is pushing for a human O our inner ear, the little like stuff floating around in that fluid, it doesn't have an up or down. It doesn't have an up or down. Well, there is a little bit of gravity going on in there, but generally you can tell rotation. That's essentially what it canest. So I think if you are spinning in space, you still know that you're spinning. But loads of astronauts, they talk about how If don mean you're not getting like blood rushing into your head the same way. That sort of same physical sensation. When you're upside down, it doesn't feel any different. Yeah. So instead, it doesn't feel like, oh, look I flipped upside down relative to the spaceship. It's more like, o, the spaceship has rotated around me. Interesting Astronauts say that their frame of reference, as it were, is where their feet are. So R. Up and down to them remains fixed and everything else changes around them. Oh, that makes so much sense. I never even thought about that though. And when I first heard that question, I thought, oh no, they they're going to feel rotation because you can But you're only going to really feel rotation if you rotate quickly, R. Um, but if you're just doing stuff and you're incidentally You've turned yourself one hundred and eighty degrees in your process of work or slowly while you're sleeping or something. They're strapped down sleeping You're gonna of course, you're gonna say, hey, the whole ship's upside down. Yeah. It's not me. And of course, upside down is like a very arbitrary concept up there. Absolutely, because there's no such ways up, really? I mean, there's like down towards Earth, but you certainly don't feel a force pulling you to Earth. There's definitely gravity. That's why I'm always careful to say weightless I'm okay saying zero G becausecause they don't feel a G a G because that's the force. They're not accelerating in a particular. I don't like saying zero gravity because there's definitely gravity There's gravity. That's why the International Space Station doesn't just drift away. In fact, the gravity that they feel up there is still, it's not one hundred percent what you feel on the surface of Earth but it's more than fifty. It's somewhere in between. Yeah, if you built I think we talked about this in a previous episode. the space elevatorm. Yeah, I think it maybe was that one. We talked about if you built a skyscraper that was so tall, it's roof the height of the International Space Station's orbit I think it would have something like seventy percent gravity up there. You would maybe feel different, but you certainly wouldn't be like, whoa, I'm on top of the building. You'd be like, I'm on top of the building. Well wait, why is that not the same on the ISS then? Because they're falling They are in freefall. If you imagine yourself in an elevator that cable has been snapped, you're going to be floating weightless in that elevator because there's nothing to resist your attraction to Earth. And so that's what they're doing. It's just that they're falling, but they're also moving to the side so quickly that as they fall, the curvature of the earth falls with them So they never get any closer to it. that's what an orbit is, a successful, you know, orbit, a stable orbit. Absolutely. So it is weird to think that you could stand on top of a building that was what what How high? four hundred kilometers You could stand on the top of such a building and you could see the ISS sw just fly by so quickly. it wouldn't feel like it was falling as you watched it because it would be traveling horizontally so fly that you would just be like, ye, you was there and now it's it's way past me. Absolutely. But it would be falling because if you imagine drawing a like tangent out from where you are. as it follows the curvature of the Eth, it will be below that line very quickly. And of course, it does fall U over time because of friction. There's enough air up there that they do Slowdown And that means they fall closer to the Eth. or hold on, let me rephrase that. Because of the friction, over time, like over the course of weeks and months, the ISS does drop in altitude and it needs periodic boosts to go back up a little bit higher And so I did I actually did a short video about this where I was like, if All life on Earth was destroyed by some calamity And the only living things left were the astronauts in the ISS. How long would they have? Well, they would eventually spiral down into earth, right? They would, because they need periodic deliveries of propellant for the boosts to reboost them back up into their or cor. Yeah. They could certainly very easily have enough food, enough water They generate oxygen, the ship is going to give them enough of all that stuff The limiting factor is altitude. That's what they will run out of first. How long would it take A year and a half, maybe fifteen months.. Yeah. Like that's that's how long they would have And they'd be like, lookook, we've got you can easily have enough food You could have enough water and air to last more than fifteen months. You could have two, three years worth of those kind of supplies, but altitude you will run out of ver. Altitude' the thing. You know some astronauts on the ISS in particular, they also say just going back to the question, that if they close their eyes, they sort of lose perspective of direction altogether. it feels like they're just a disembodied brain And then they kind of open their eyes like, sururprise, You've got a like the space the ISS is in disorientation. Wow. ye That would be trippy. Yeah, completely the spit trick doesn't work basically. spit trick that you can see in avalanche spit And watch where it goes to figure out which way is up or down. No go. no go. Okay This is a question from David Could a building be damaged by resonance if everyone clapped in unison all at once What if the entire world clapped at once? What if they were all dently packed in the Isle of White and clapped Okay Well, okay Here's the thing I look this up And you can find like little short videos other people have made about this question of like how damaging would it be if we all clapped at the same time? And a lot of them are just what you would expect. It's like a whole bunch of like AI animations of the Earth exploding While they tell us that everyone clapping at once would be like maybe as loud as a jet engine for like a second if you were close. And you're like, give me a break. It's a It's kind of anti climactic U But the problem is, first of all, you got to get everyone together in one place Because if we all just clapped where we were, it would attenuate through the air and it would basically not even matter. Well also, the speed of sound is extremely slow. So if you clapped where you are when you're in you know in Kansas or Denver, whatever I in London, effectively by the time those two claps would meet each other, they'd just be off. They're not they're not yeah, they're synchronized clap is compressing air and then that compression wave travels, but it gets weaker and weaker and weaker. So when I clap in Colorado, you don't hear it here Anyway, if we got us all into one place, we could all clap together and sound adds up in a way that isn't quite like just normal arithmetic. but we could probably get billion people to clap together and make a noise in the like two hundred Dciebel range. that's pretty loud.'s veryy loud. Yeah But you're still limited by how close you can get everybody world record Loudest clap was actually achieved just in twenty twenty one. by a guy named Stephen Wallace who I could not find how far away they measured the loudness because of course, loudness goes down by where do they call it a square? Inverquare law. Inverse square law. So if you're twice as far away, it's four times quieter An anyyway Guitness World Records did not tell me what the rules were for how far away they measured, but there's a video of it And he clapped and he hit one hundred and seventeen decibels broke a record that had been around for fifteen years. Before him, the loudest clap was one hundred and thirteen Dcibels Now. I've watched the video. Right. W wasas it something special? Did he have like ginormo hands Was he doing a special technique W was it cupped hands, fat hands? I don't w want to be catdy on this podcast very often But it seemed like one in five episodes is okay. Because Guinness World Records made such a point to mention the audio company that did all of the recording and measurements, it sounded a little bit like they themselves forinness to do this like, hey, we should do a loudest clap thing hasasn't been broken in fifteen years and they just got like their intern to go in and the guys just I mean, they're loud claps. likeike I'm not putting his technique is solid, but he didn't wake up You know, one day as a child and be like, you know what I need my life's mission to be. I've worked it out. It's going to be clapping. Yeah. no. it wasn't that. C lookook at it Look it up. Yeah, lookook up, Steven Wallace. And you'll find there's like a video on Facebook of it. It's during the pandemic also, so everyone's wearing masks. in the video, which is it's always such a like, oh gosh, yeah, there was that period Yeah, that's nothing that does look like an intern You're right. Right. I mean, again D don't want to put anyone down. I do. that's rubbish. But just listening to that clip, I'm like, that's applause. That's regular. I think I've done a lotouder clap than that in my. I want to see someone who trained since childhood Yeah and they only trained because When when they were a kid, people made fun of how like cuppy their hands were. and they were like, I'm gonna triumph over this. And they like that turned out to make their claps really loud. and then like they even spent time in jail for clapping once and it was so loud, it hurt children's eardrums nearby. That's what I want to see. I want someone who has dinner plates for hands, right? Yes. And maybe webbing between each of their fingers in order to really focus those sound wways. Exactly. Yeah. I want someone who's got like a technique and it almost feels illegal You're like, well, yeah, I can clap loudly and they're like, oh yeah, watch this. I invented this And they do this like weird claap backwards upside down And physicists get involved and go, wow, it actually is like twice as efficient to clap that way. And there's like a whole new way of clapping invented. Don't give me this like, uh, hey guys, what's up? I're here to set a world record. Yeah, nice I know how hot it And there are there are new styles of clapping I'm discovering every day. A And by every day, I mean like maybe Fifteen years ago, I found the fastest clapper. That is a record that I very very much respect. Can I guess? C I guess? Instead of doing the normal way, Do they do something where they like Kind of, kindind of like hold the hand into andap forwards and backwards. Kind of. They do it like this Not regular clapping, but clapping like this Oh, I've seen it Yeah. so I'll slow it down. For the purposes for people who are listening. You just saw, Michael Dew, what was a really amazing impression of a circus seal? Yeah, basically sliding my palms across each other long ways But then allowing enough of a gap Howre you practicice this I gott to work out more, but the point is that that is currently the way you can set most claps per minute, you know record. Yeah, which I love because it's a different way of clapping and it reminds me of things like The high jump And how people used to jump over it with like a scissor kick. and then someone invented the flop. Yeah the Fosberry flop. And it was like, oh my gosh, yes, that allows them to raise their center of mass higher. Um than than before. allows them to clear a higher bar at least. I forget the physics behind it That stuff really, I love it. Yeah, we need more competition on this Record your claps, see what see how loud they come out. Let's let's get a community going. Let's get let's get an annual conference. Let's get a clapicon Yes, we should do that and I think it's important because guess what? You All of us always clapping This is not my joke. but the joke is that you never stop clapping Distance between your claps just gets really long Nice. That's a lovely idea. It's a little bit of a like You know, paradigm shift. loveovely idea to welcome Yeah. it's a bit like when I was about thirteen years old, I deliberately opened a bracket and I've actually just been writing inside the bracket find Yeah ever since. Oh yeah, there I think I saw a tweet once where a guy was like, oh my gosh. in ninth grade, I said Qote, bl blah, blahahah and I forgot to ever say end quote. So the like most of my life has been something I've attributed to Ernest Hemingway. Yeah. Okay. to answer your question then, David, we're not damaging any buildings. No, no, no, no, no. It would be loud, It would be uncomfortable buildilding would be more in danger of just all those people phically trying to try to physically packet full of like as many people as you could. That would be much more damaging than the combined volume of a clap Unless the new clapping technique really elevates this Unless and until Clapreon generates a whole new style of human clapping, which it will. Okay, all right, last question. This is from Jordan. What are your thoughts on the Kardashheev scale? Have there been further developments on this theory since its inception over sixty years ago Where do you think we, a civilization land on it currently? and do you think we'll get it in your lifetimes? Okay, we should probably start with what it is. Yeah. So this is an idea from the nineteen sixties, the Soviet astronomer, Nikolai Khardashheev And he was trying to categorize how hypothetical alien civilizations might distinguish themselves from one another based on the amount of energy that they can harness, right? So type one This is a civilization that is totally able to use all of the energy resources that are available on their planet, right? So you know, all of the energy that's floating around on Earth, by the way, we're about nero point seven at the moment. Maybe ero point seven three, I think. what are we missing? I mean, loads, We're still like digging up dead dinosaurs and using that to power most st So so this scale doesn't actually mean all energy. like we find a way to break the laws of thermodynamics. And waste heat energy back into, right? No, it's more like there's loads of wind power that we're missing That's loads of solar power that we're missing I'm not sure about nuclear power actually. I think that does that still count? I think it does still. Yeah, so I guess I'm wondering I'm only vaguely familiar with the scale, but I'll be honest with me to reach one, to use all the energy of your planet, does that mean that you're literally creating nuclear explosions out of all the matter in your planet? Obviously not. I think it must mean that it's within your technological ability to harness energy of all kinds But no or you are harnessing it. No, I don't think it's beyond your technical ability. I think it's that you have the ability to harness all available energy that your planet has, apart from destroying matter. Okay Okay. all right I think it's that. I mean, honestly, can I be honest, I think the whole thing's nonsense. Yeah, I find it really annoying because they get so into it and they're like, o, when are we? it emotionally matters to them that we become a type three civilization. And I'm like Yeah why are why? Okay, so let's let's to finish off so type one is like you use everything up and you can use all the energy in your own planet Type two is that you can use the entire energy output of your star.. So the idea that we to be able to do that is maybe you have something like a Dyson sphere or maybe like an entire cluster of mirrors that surround the sun, these satellites that go out and surround the sun and take all of the sunlight and then transport this single beam into a way to harness all of that energy and then that can be used to you know do whatever you want. And then type three is that you have a civilization that is capable of using the entire energy resource of a galaxy. R R which raz. And then this one thing that this leads to is the idea that, okay, well, if there are highly intelligent lifeforms out there that have reached u level two. sure. thenen we should be able to see There's stars, you flickering because of the spheres of energy collectors put around this Be they've got loads of mirrors around thatight R. And there was a situation a few years ago Tabby star where astronomers got really excited. ammateur astronomer found it first. this is Tabatha Boyeran, who found this star about fifteen hundred light years away from Earth And it was like dimming and brightening in an unusual way. Now normally when you get an exoplanet that passes in front of a star, it does dim the light, but it does so in actually a really tiny way. Even if you get a planet like the size of Jupiter, it in a really small way. But this particular star was like the dimming was really significant. And everyone got very excited about it and were like, we found one. found plan we found an alien civilization that is using a dysonphere to harness energy from their own sun And there you go. And it turned out it's just actually interpletary dust. R. So probably not. But people were really excited. They were like, there's a genuine possibility. And that's thing this scale gets people very excited. There are so many videos on YouTube about the scale, about Dyson spheres, Dyson rings And it's exciting because it's like Sci fi technology. And because I think it's it's not just a cool futuristic idea, but it's like a hierarchy of like, okay, that means that you're at two. It feels quantitative, right evenven though it's actually very hand wavy. Yes.. know So Carl Sagan calculated that we're at ner point seven. The current estimates are that we're at nzero point seven three, you know, around about now I mean If you project forwards and we continue with an increase in global energy consumption of three percent per year, then we'll become a type one civilization who sort of less than one at the moment in like one hundred years or ten hundred years. Yeah, so it gives you like a personal goals, right? Like I'm going to help us get to a type one civilization sooner That means that we need to get fusion or whatever. We need to better harness this other form of energy, the energy in the tides and the waves, right I mean, sure Sure. Then there's also this whole philosophical thing about, oh, the most difficult part is the transition from nero point seven to one. because that's the bit when you've got enough power to exterminate your own planet. But you don't have all the role exactlyam. The great filter being the answer to the idea of why Haven't we heard this cacophony of sounds when we turned on when we turned on Seti, when we turned on the ability to look for other alien life forms, and we didn't find any, is it because they all wiped themselves out? Is it because there's this filter that essentially you get powerful enough, intelligent enough able enough that you knock out your own civilization. Y I think maybe the reason why I feel a bit M dismissive it maybe dismissive is a bit too far because I think it's a fun idea. But I think it's that. I think it's a fun idea. I think it's like a false quantification of things. and I think that it is just taken a bit too seriously. Yeah, perhaps. I think it's fun. I think it's too focused on just energy and specifically certain ways of getting certain kinds of energy where I think You could also build a scale about how broadly a species has has u pioneered or What level of consciousness do they have? That could be a whole other thing where maybe like harnessing more energy just actually becomes completely uninteresting. And what is more important is, you know your lives inside the digital world or something. There's just a certain group of people who are like really obsessed with growth You know, trrue. More and more and more expansion, expansion and expansion And I don't know whether this is just because I'm a bit older U more female. but I'm more interested in there just being a point where it's like, you know, this is actually enough But this actually is enough Like I'm really I think that there's an endless bound to my curiosity. constantly want to know more. that that I want more of. I'd like cleaner forms of energy, but I don't think we need more Well yeah, more for the sake of more for the sake more so that energy prices can basically hit zero and we have access to everything and everyone has access to what they need., that would be nice. But you're right. I think there is this feeling of, well, but yeah, but there could be more. And then we could move up the scale and score more points. And you're like, for what reason? And they're like, well because cool story. Like when a lot of people ask me about the scale, I can tell that what they really want is to just listen to really cool speculative science fiction, Which is awesome. but that's not what I'm good at That iss not my job. Yeah. I think that's exactly it. That's it. Speculative science fiction is really fun. Yeah, but it's fiction It It's a different thing. It's not like, ah, yes, guys. Well, you know, next year the European Space Agency is going to be doing this thing that's going to move us up to a point on the scale, and everyone's like, yes, of course. this is a real thing. Maybe we're being too harsh by this. Maybe everyone's' been about twenty minutes just. It is quite fun It is quite fun. It is fun. I don't have anything else to add about it though like. U oh, but here's Here's what no one talks about What if you're a negative one on the scale? Right, which is so this is the idea that it's like you go down smaller rather than bigger. So you manage to harvest all of the energy from like atoms. Yeah, why can't you just cease needing energy . where you're like, actually, once you get to like One you start to realize and become a species that needs to be at zero and you exist statically. nd How's that for speculative science fiction? Just we we find that the most intelligent lifeformms in the universe are all just statues because they've realized that that just existing, just to be without change is the ultimate. It is the ultimate. I mean, that's what the Buddhist think, isn't it? They're way ahead of intelligence And if you listen to this podcast, you are way ahead of intelligence. The compliments are in abundance here. Maybe energy isn't, but there's no shortage, no scarcity of compliments. Thank you Aher for watching and listening to us. You can send us emails, the rest of science at goalhanger. com. askk us questions, either re on an email or in the comments. maybe we will be whining and moaning about your. We weren't if we weren't whining and moaning about the scale. Okaykay. We were we were just reacting to it, I think is people who have spent the last twenty years Yeah. constantly being told about it and asked about it. Yeah. Whatait he? So you're seeing us wrong This is real. This is real life guys See you later. Bye Your package says deelivered, but delivered where exactly The hallway, the lobby, your neighbor's apartment? Instead of playing detective with your deliveries, get a mailbox at the UPS store. We'll sign for your packages. teext you when they arrive. And keep your deliveries low key. Under loocking key, get three months free mailbox services with a new annual agreement at the UPS store For full details and to get your coupon Visit the UPSore d. com slash offer Hear that. That's the sound of busy. To a restaurant, all that shouting and banging might as well be a symphony. It means the long days and longer nights are paying off. Sure, it's noisy, but there's a worse sound. 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