A Problem Squared - 096 = Movie Pairs and Moving Flares

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

🎞 Why would competing studios release movies in the same year that have the same concept or plot?  🔭 Why are we seeing the Aurora Borealis in the UK?  📈 Business of an any other nature.  If you want to have a listen to Bec on Tom Scott’s podcast ‘Lateral’ you can do that here, at some point soon: https://open.spotify.com/show/1TthQOE4Fx6gBPW8l48cfN  Their book can also be brought here! It’s really good: https://lateralcast.com/book/ To see a history of solar flare data going back to 1700, follow this link here: https://www.sidc.be/SILSO/ssngraphics Please send your problems and solutions into the website: www.aproblemsquared.com. If you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on the ‘Sup ‘Zards’ pinned post!   And if you want (we’re not forcing anyone) to leave us a review, show the podcast to a friend or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps.  Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

Intro music. Hello and welcome to a problem square the podcast where we try to solve listeners problems and you could say that this podcast is a bit like a repetitive joke. a repetitive joke. It gets funnier the longer you listen to it. I'm joined by my perpetual co-host Beck Hill who is a lot like, like a repetitive joke. Where there's just more and more of the things she does. Writing live comedy shows, TV shows, books, you name it, she's doing it. It's Beck Hill. And I'm Matt Parker, a mathematician who is a bit like, a bit like,

like a repetitive joke, where I have been accused of going on and on. But thankfully here I have Beck to keep me reined in. Yeah. That was a great intro. Your voice is saying one thing and your words are saying a different thing. I don't... Do you wanna do the end on this episode? Yes, I do.

And on this episode. I'll be looking at cinema rivalries.'ve worked out should we be surprised at Aurora Borealis at this latitude at this time of year. I Think that's right. I can find entirely in the sky Yeah Entirely in your kitchen and I'll answer can I see it? And we'll answer, can I see it? And we'll have some any other banter? I'm trying to go for the any other business, but like link it to the repetitive joke, repetitive

joke. That's a repetitive joke. Joke recurring. So Beck, how have you been? I've been good. I got to guest on Tom Scott's Lateral. Oh, there you go. Now I know that you were on episode number one.

Correct. I beat you because I was a guest on the first ever live podcast recording at the Clapham Grand. A live lateral. In London. Wow. This is the podcast where they will say something enigmatic like, why do hats have a brim?

And then you got to think laterally about the thing to explain it in a way that you wouldn't expect. I would say it's more like how you've got to work out how something is related. So it's more like how you've got to work out how something is related. So it's more like a cryptic crossword I find in the way that they ask the questions. So it might be something like, whenever someone closes their curtains,

another person in China- Loses their hat. Loses their hat, exactly. You got it, yeah, yeah. They have a book that's either out now or out soon. They sent me a copy for me to say nice things about which I'm officially doing now nice book Yeah, excellent. And who was the officer you were there Tom Scott was there anyone else? I find listeners would know yes Stu Goldsmith and Lizzie Skippiak, which I've most likely mispronounced her surname, but that would be very on-brand for this show. So We can call it deliberate right it was nice being able to mention your name and know

that most of the people in the audience knew who I was talking about yeah yeah I've have to admit if there's ever an audience who may be familiar with my work it's probably people at a Tom Scott show yeah yeah and they were lovely it was absolutely delightful it It was interesting because Tom backstage was mentioning that it was the first live show that they had done. The last one had been in 2017 for Technical Difficulties, which is the other podcast. Tom was like, oh, I was a bit nervous. Absolutely could not tell. At all. Not in the slightest. Like a real pro. But because I've not been not performing that much recently on stage and trying to shake off all of the rustiness,

it made me feel better going, oh, OK, it's not just me. Everyone feels a little bit rusty. And yet it doesn't come across in the slightest. Yeah, you'll notice, but that's just because you are more critical of yourself and you've got a better reference frame because you know what you've done previously. Well, that's it. We're always comparing ourselves to our best moments. Yeah, to our highlights reel. Yeah, which is interesting.

And we know our best moments, whereas our audiences don't. How about you, Matt? How have you been? Well, we are recording remotely, so we are not both in the office for this record. I'm in the Southern Hemisphere. Yeah, I requested that. You did. I was like, get away from me, you smell.

Go to the other side of the world. Hey, it just makes being back in the office more special when we have at great distance. Are you doing a whole like Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder thing? Pretty much. Are you likening this to like when couples are like, oh, we just need some time apart so that we can enjoy each other's company more. I don't think you meant to deliberately have the absence anyway. So I'm in Perth, Perth, Western Australia, and the population of Perth are like the opposite of people that are Tom Scott live podcast recording. They have no idea who I am, which is part of the charm.

And I've had one person say hi, but it was the most Perth saying hi ever. I went out with my brother, Steve, for a drink and we're enjoying our beverage and someone very politely just pops over and says, Oh, hi, are you Matt Parker? I'm a science teacher. Love your videos. I use them in my lessons. I'm, you know, always happy to say hello to a teacher or anyone who enjoys the videos. And then they turn around to look at the person I'm having a drink with and they're like, Oh, hi, Steve. Turns out they know Steve's wife's brother. Okay. Which is as bad as Perth is, like Perth is just a small country town inflated to the

size of a city. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very much like Adelaide. So I love the idea that this guy was actually a couple of degrees separation from you all along and- Yep, had no idea. Had to see you in person to find that out He's like, oh wait, you're my friends, sisters, husbands, brother We're basically BFFs already

Come on mate But then, now You also know that I've been wondering Cause my current record, my personal best Has been recognized twice in the same day Which has happened three times On three occasions Because my current record my personal best has been recognized twice in the same day Which has happened three times on three occasions Yeah, got about my life two different people on the same day. I've said hey like your videos

I've never had three people in the same day like obviously I can't count when I do a show because Yeah, everyone's gonna say hi. I discount if I'm at like a university campus. Here's a gray area. I think this doesn't count because that's not the only time I've been recognized this time in Perth. My brother said, oh, hey, I've got tickets to a They Might Be Giants concert. Do you wanna come and see the band?

They Might Be Giants. And I said, that sounds great. And so last night we went to see, they might be Giants at the Astor Theater. Yeah, because you are white men of a certain age. Exactly, 100%. We were there, we were standing down near the front. I was like, hey, wait here, I'll go get us some drinks. So I walked to the bar at the back, buy beverages, walked back down to where my brother Steve was waiting. On that one lap, three separate people stopped me to say, hi, I like your videos. I don't think that counts. I feel like being at a, they might be giants concert.

No, it absolutely does not. I'm sorry, but being at a concert for a band who does the intro track for Big Bang Theory, they used, They Might Be Giant song for their theme tune. There's gonna be crossover in that video. 100%. And there were wildly different people who recognised me. They weren't all the same demographic but it was, I think all the people of a nerdy persuasion in Perth had shown up for the show. So hello to everyone who said hi. I have discounted that. Doesn't count.

I was really hoping that that story was gonna go. And as I came back with my drinks, the lead singer from They Might Be Giants stopped. I said, excuse me, are you Steve Parker's brother? Exactly. All right, I suppose we should answer some problems. Let's do an episode. Let's do a repetitive joke.

See, it's fun. First problem was sent in by someone named Saindon. I think I'm pronouncing that one of the possible ways. And they say that they have a problem for Beck. Well Saindon, you don't really get to choose who's going to solve your problems on this podcast, but you were right. There was a problem for Beck. They would like to know that given the time that Beck has spent in LA and their time in

the TV and film industry, does Beck have any extra insight into this question? Saindon wants to know, why does it always seem like two different studios will release movies in the same year that both have effectively the same concept or plot? They get the sense this happens every couple years. They've got a few examples, both from the same year, might I add. I guess these are the famous ones, that A Bug's Life came out in the same year as Ants, spelled with a Z, don't know if I pronounced that correctly. And Armageddon came out in the same year as Deep Impact.

Same film, as far as I'm aware. Those were both in 1998. I imagine there have been other examples in the last quarter century, but they wanna know, is that some kind of studio espionage going on where they're copying each other? Is it a conspiracy?

Is there a common point of origin that these ideas are coming from? And I guess they're splitting into two different films. Or is it just convergent evolution where the studios are iterating in on the same film ideas? So, oh, then they've got some blah, blah, blah, love the show, keep doing it, et cetera, et cetera. Beck, can you solve this problem for us? Yes. And to answer those last bunch of questions, yes. Excellent.

All of the above. Yeah, so there is actually a term for this phenomenon. It's called twin films. Twin films. Yeah, so it's when films with the same or similar plot is produced and released at the same time by two different film studios and most of the time it's because production companies and film studios are working on a number of scripts and film ideas at any one time. Oh yeah, they've optioned a lot. And

there's so many that statistically there will be some similar ideas. So it's actually more the fact that it's so hard to get a film made, like the amount of TV shows and films and things that get made or are starting to be made and then don't make it past that point. Oh yeah, it's phenomenal. The number of projects I've been involved with that never happen, it's definitely worse than one in 10 in my experience. And that's just because I'm like the kiss of death

to a production. That's a reasonably standard thing where just because you've made it into a pilot does not mean it's likely this show will get made. I think a lot of people feel like they're the kiss of death for something. But actually I think that's just indicative of the industry. I mean, you send in a script and they option it and they want to develop it. It does get a budget and you start production, but then the industry changes.

I've had so many shows not happen. That's normal. That's just the way it works. Yeah. So this happens all the time. So the chances of there being similar ideas being explored in these things, like actually quite high. It's like if you put a bunch of balls into a sack, if you keep drawing balls out of the sack, at some point you might end up drawing out two of the balls of the same color. Right. But the chances increased when certain elements are at play. So biopics are huge.

You'll notice it quite often. You'll end up with like two documentaries about Steve Jobs that just came out. Right. Or that kind of thing. And it's like, oh, around the time that around the time that he passed like yeah of course because people are scrambling for it. Documentaries are a really big one but also you might get them leaking into just fiction so for instance if a film department's got a bunch of volcano based scripts that they've been sitting on and And then a volcano happens and they go, Ooh, if we turn this round fast enough, we will get the zeitgeist that they will, we'll hit this zeitgeist. And so you might end up with several production companies jumping in to try and

make those things that have been on shelf for a while to get them made. I'm more inclined to go and see a film if the topic is something that has recently interested me. And in fact, I've had this whole thing myself. I wrote a pilot for a sci-fi comedy series that was about the Mars mission. It got optioned, it got touted around to various channels in the States. They said no, and I, about three months later, Space Force came out, Avenue Five came out, there was a drama series called Mars that came out. They all looked at this script and went,

no, no, no, no, no, we're about to release something that covers this. We've got plenty of them. Yeah, and that makes sense. I think a lot of people started to think more about space and everything because SpaceX was starting to break world records. And I mean, that's what led me to think of it. I was starting to think more about where we're going as a spacefaring species. So that's quite common.

And in fact, what's more common than not, is that movie studios will find out that other movie studios are developing something and will then do something with the one that they are working on. So there's some examples. What do they know that we don't? Let's do ours. Or the opposite. And they'll be like, let's drop the thing we're working on. So an example is a film in 2008 called Who Do You Love?

It was about the American record label Chess Records, but it had its release delayed until 2010 because Cadillac Records, which is also about a recording company, had a higher budget and was being slated to release in 2008 as well. So they took a step back and released it two years later. I sure remember reading that Breaking Bad was already far enough in production that despite weed seeming like a very similar premise. I think Vince Lastname, I think in an interview they said if weeds had come out much sooner, they wouldn't have made Breaking Bad, which is I think phenomenal given that now everyone's forgotten weeds, that Breaking Bad is now like...

I hadn't even heard of weeds. Yeah, but it was like the mom starts selling weed. Right. On paper, if you reduce them both down to one sentence, very similar. Suburban parent sells drugs. Right. It's kind of the one liner for both of them. Yeah, and I think that's the other thing is like, when does the content end up being different

enough? Um, interestingly, there's a really nice example of two production companies realizing they were working on a very similar film. So, uh, in 1974, there were two films that were set in a burning skyscraper over in production. So the ones producing it went, Oh, why don't we join forces? And so they, they turned it into one film called The Towering Inferno. So it had an all star cast. That's hilarious. Yeah.

So science space where you'll have an idea on your list and then a different channel will do that idea. And you're like, oh, and it's mildly annoying if it's like an idea you've been meaning to do for ages but never got around to. Mm. Because you're like, oh, that was a good idea, I just never did it. But if you're a long way into production and then someone else does it, you're like, ah, I got Derek again. But it's just, you know, there's only a...

You know, there's only a finite number of interesting things and maybe an article or something came out and it bumped a lot of us to go, oh, that's an interesting topic. I wonder if there's only a finite number of interesting things and maybe an article or something came out and it bumped a lot of us to go Oh, that's an interesting topic. I wonder if there's a video in that so, you know, it happens. Yeah Finally did briefly have a shared Google Doc between a bunch of maths youtubers where we were meant to put in things We're working on but we were none of us were organized enough for that bored with not wanting to duplicate effort, accidentally James Grime did a video on a thing called Super Permutations

right when I was working on a Super Permutation video. I just shelved it for a couple of years. There were advancements in the field because of James's video. And then I did a video a couple of years later about all the stuff that had happened since his video. And by then I was like, oh, there's now enough new things that it's worth someone else doing a video on it with, you know, since I'm two videos on it, because then more things happen

after the first video and so on. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Now I've been talking a lot about the chance stuff, but sometimes it is a conspiracy. Sometimes there is a bit more to it. So Ants, which was made by DreamWorks, was released a month before Disney slash Pixar's A Bug's Life. Cause apparently Pixar had been working on Bug's Life for ages as, you know, that

sort of animation does, especially did back then. Ants was put into production by Jeffrey Katzenberg, who then teamed up with Spielberg and David Geffen because he'd left Disney on terrible terms. So they sped up the production and deliberately to battle Disney. Now, I actually saw Ants in the cinema instead of A Bug's Life. What? I know.

I think it was like, I think it was- You chose poorly. Yeah, I don't think it was my choice. I think I was taken by a grandparent or something. Right, right, right. But I did feel- I saw Bugs Life in the cinema, so yeah. Well, yeah, and I felt like a real,

just because I'd gone to see ants, I felt really angry at like, not angry, but like territorial. I found myself being like, yeah, ants have been in Bugs Life. Oh yeah, you've now picked a side. Yeah yeah but I just hadn't seen Bugs Life and I saw it later and was like do you know what they're both fine they are both fine films. Incorrect. Bugs Life was better. There you go. Yeah. Obviously the opposite of twin films now has its own phrase which is much more recent. Can you guess what it is? Friend of me films. Oh, so close. Second cousin, twice removed films. It's actually when they're so opposite in every way that they end up.

Oh, this is like the Barbie Oppenheimer. Barbenheimer. So Barbenheimer is now the official term for when people decide to see two completely different films on the same day because they want to see something that is completely contrasting. There have been some other instances. Universal deployed counter programming, which is, I mean essentially what what Barbenheimer was Universal did that in 2002 it released about a boy opposite Star Wars Episode 2, Attack of the Clones. So people who will watch one might not watch the other they're hedging. Exactly it happens in video games as well

Animal Crossing New Horizons was released the same time as Doom Eternal. Now what's interesting about the Barbenheimer thing is that it was somewhat concocted. Oh really? I thought it was like accidental. Yeah, so I say somewhat. So basically, as we know, Nolan is famously known for wanting his films to be theater releases. He doesn't like the idea of people watching them on smaller screens. And he'd been distributing his films with Warner Media for years. But in December 2020, Warner Media stated that they were going to be releasing all of its upcoming 2021 films

on HBO Max. Now, Christopher Nolan, not very happy with that, so then decided to release Oppenheimer with Universal Pictures instead of Warner. The following month, Universal announced that Oppenheimer would be released on the 21st of July, 2023. So this was in 21 that they announced that it was going to come out in 23. All right, Two years out. Warner Brothers had already scheduled to release a Looney Tunes related comedy, Coyote vs. Acme on that day.

But in 2022, they went, actually, no, let's release Barbie that day instead. So it would directly compete against Oppenheimer. And they never released that Looney Tunes film. To my knowledge, no. To come back to Sanden's question, is it some wild studio espionage conspiracy that two films of similar subjects can come out at the same time? Uh, sometimes, yes. Sometimes.

Yeah. Like with The Bug's Life and Ants, there is a little bit of studio conspiracy going on there. Sometimes it is a common point of origin. Sometimes scripts will end up taking on a different path as it gets developed and passed to new script writers and rewritten and blah, blah, blah. And sometimes it is a case of convergent evolution in the predictive models. So for instance, Dante's Peak and Vol volcano, both centered around volcanoes, both around

the time the volcanoes were... They were hot right then. So the answer is yes. Yes, the answer is yes. Yes to all those things. Well, Bec, I feel like this time, given you've just confirmed all of the different aspects of the problem. Ding ding. That you have solved that problem very nicely.

Thank you. I would quite like to do a podcast covering twin films now. Where you watch the two twin films. That's your solution to everything. Do another podcast. And compare them. I know. It's almost like a repetitive joke. This next problem comes from Martin, who says, it seems like the Northern Lights

are more visible in the UK than they ever have been before. Is this the case or is it just advancements in personal photography slash self-publishing making it seem like everyone is seeing awesome auroras or better notifications to let people know when to go looking? Matt? This is the second one. All right, great. Yeah. Or better notifications to let people know when to go looking Matt this is second one. All right, great. Yeah done done Well, actually, you know what there is one mild nuance. So Just to backtrack quite recently and then earlier this year They've been very good Aurora scene from the. People may have seen this on social media. I have missed both of them. I have been in the wrong place. I've been not in the UK on both

occasions and not been somewhere else where I can see the aurora, which is very upsetting. But I can see why because it does feel like we're seeing more auroras at the moment than we have previously. And you know what? That is slightly because there are more happening at the moment on quite a short time scale. But on a longer time scale it is technology, both to be able to take photos and to be able to share those photos. So the Northern Lights or Southern Lights caused when the Sun produces magnetic field, be it a coronal mass ejection, be it stuff swept up in the solar wind. Is that radi- so when it creates magnetic field is that like radiation linked or? Because the only way I know... No.

I don't actually know how magnetic fields work. It's complicated. Okay, I'll accept that. That feels like a different problem to answer. But what you need to know to understand to a medium depth what's going on here is the Sun has a magnetic field same as the Earth, depth what's going on here is the Sun has a magnetic field same as the Earth but it's far more complicated. So the Earth's one is often drawn like you would the field lines around a bar magnet. Lines come out the top they go in the bottom. The Sun is you know a plasma or a fluid is moving around. Plasma moving charge

particles moves the magnetic field around. So it's a very complicated field. And the reason I can talk about it slightly well is my wife is a solar physicist who studies the magnetic field in the sun. So none of us should feel stupid for not being able to understand more than you. No, I have a surface level understanding because that's fundamental to the success of my marriage. Most people can ignore the sun. What Lucy studies are moments when instabilities in the field cause bits of it to fly off towards

the earth. Yeah. Specifically what are called coronal mass ejections, which are different to flares. Flares are when you get a lot of photons and light and that kind of radiation. Coronal mass ejections are actual mass, it's particles, it's the plasma and the magnetic field, they're kind of linked together, being launched at the sun at once. And while light...

Is it like if you were to shake around a can of soft drink and eventually it would go tsss tsss in different places. Yes and the sound would be like a flare and then being hit by the spray would be the coronal mass ejection. Yeah. Don't hold me to that in any rigorous way. No, you're not saying that the pressure is built up within the sun because invisible forces are shaking it around. Shaking it? No. No. But flares are basically light and photons and they get here in eight minutes whereas coronal mass ejections and the solar wind, which is different but not wildly dissimilar, take days to arrive because there's actual matter moving. Yeah. So the magnetic field when it gets here interacts with the Earth's magnetic field,

we call this space weather, and that has all sorts of impacts. One of which is it can cause particles, like matter gases that are already up in the Earth's magnetic field to be accelerated down the field lines towards the poles. Because of all this disturbance in the field it basically Shakes out all these all these gases and as they accelerate on the field lines they glow and that's the northern lights, okay? So we see the northern lights Ultimately because of activity on the Sun messed around with the magnetic field on the Earth. Cool. Now, there's not a direct one-to-one because, I mean, you have to have something coming from the Sun to get the Northern Lights and the Southern Lights, but there can be coronal mass ejections,

there can be activity on the Sun that goes, that doesn't hit the Earth, goes in a different direction, misses us. So, just because the Sun's active doesn't mean we're going to get Northern Lights necessarily. And the very recent ones, Lucy saw the part of the sun where the activity had launched from. And she said, oh, knowing that part of the sun at the moment, the magnetic field that will have been released is probably orientated in the opposite direction to the Earth's field. So when it impacts the Earth, it'll have a bigger influence than normal. And so things like even the orientation of what hits the Earth, depending on which way it's facing, you'll get more dramatic northern lights or you might get less impressive ones. Now could the... So there's a lot of complicated things along the way.

Could the magnetic fields ever be so strong that it suddenly goes fling and goes towards the sun or is instantly repelled away? No. Good. All right, thanks. They can get severe enough that they would induce currents into power lines and train lines and any kind of big long metal things like we can There's a lot of impacts we can get on the earth But it won't move the earth. So it's like how if you have fridge magnets near each other generally They're not strong enough to like Start sticking to each other or anything, but they might affect

Whether whether they can hold on to it I'm gonna to say yes. I don't know. I don't know. You shouldn't be thinking of the magnetic fields on the earth and the sun as like magnets are attracting or repelling. You should think of them more as one big joint magnetic field along which current and material can flow,

as well as things like the solar wind moving between. It's complicated. However, the headline stat is that if there's more activity on the sun, that's when we're likely to probably get more Northern Lights on Earth. And if the sun is not doing much, then the Northern Lights won't be doing much, broadly speaking, within all these other factors. And the Sun waxes and wanes over an

11-year cycle. So the activity on the Sun wraps up roughly every 11 years and then it goes quiet again. So we tend to get big bursts of interesting northern lights roughly every 11 years So everyone's saying oh, they're more happening at the moment over the last 11 years Yes, because we've now gone through another solar cycle and we're at the peak That said there can be big eruptions during the quiet parts of the solar cycle. So none of this is hard and fast But to answer Martin's question, we are seeing more at the moment because we've reached the peak of this solar cycle

and then we'll see the same thing again roughly 11 years from now. The one 11 years ago was actually a particularly quiet solar cycle, relatively speaking. So actually, over recent smartphone history, this is the first particularly big solar cycle we've had where there's been a lot of activity, which is not to say we haven't had lots of Northern Lights,

but anyway. So in the short term, yes, like we're at a bit of a peak and it's a bigger peak than the previous one. If you go back historically though, there've been way bigger peaks. This constant 11 year cycle has been going for a long time. There will have been all sorts of crazy northern lights, way more spectacular than we have at the moment, going back.

I've actually got a website that Lucy sent to me. It's a bunch of sunspot number graphics. And the number of sunspots doesn't exactly represent the level of solar activity, but it's a pretty good proxy for it to get a sense of it. And you can see these plots have this up and down wave pattern over different time periods. And I mean, one of these plots goes back to the year 1700 and shows you all these solar cycles. We've been counting sunspots for a long time.

And the kind of size of the peaks is how big that cycle was and so historically we're Nothing to speak of in terms of the men way bigger solar cycles in the past now that said the impact of us having phones that can take photos is Phenomenal because human eyes are not very good at seeing faint lights in the sky. So a lot of the time there probably were Northern Lights and we often didn't notice. Or we wouldn't bother keeping an eye out. So recently Lucy was flying.

Or we did but we couldn't get a good photo of it. Because like I've seen very faint Northern Lights when I've been in Scotland. But it didn't look that much different from like say if there was something happening in the nearby town and the lights were reflecting off the clouds. And a lot of the time you wouldn't know if the Northern Lights were happening. So back in May Lucy was flying home from Poland was looking out the window, she was on the correct side of the aircraft to see the Northern Lights and she saw a haze. And like you were saying,

you're like, oh is that Northern Lights or is that something else? But she got her phone out, did a quick long exposure, nothing fancy, wasn't trying to get a good photo, but when she looked at the long exposure there was a green tint to it. And she's like, oh, well that's, I think it's oxygen? She's like, oh, well that is the Northern Lights because a long exposure shows color, which you wouldn't get for other possible atmospheric explanations for the lighting you were seeing. And she did this at home, like one night she's like, oh, I wonder if

that's the Northern Lights. Did a quick 10 second exposure on a phone, saw green and red. She's like, oh, there's other Northern Lights. Therefore, it's worth staying up to keep an eye on it because it might get more impressive. So the fact that we can do long exposure photos means now we can be a lot more certain if something is the Northern Lights

and if it's worth watching, which I think is very interesting. It's become a tool to determine if something's a Northern Lights or it's just some haze or lighting for some other reason. Yeah, well, I think also it's just like, I'm imagining it's a bit like you can't quite capture it until recently. Like, sometimes you'll take a photo and it just won't, as you say, because of the exposure, can't do it. But you might see them, but you can't share a photo and so people aren't aware.

This is the other factor that now not only can people take photos which look better than if you were looking at it with your naked eyes but often people don't realize that. You can take these spectacular photos, you can share them online and people are suddenly aware oh northern lights are happening and they'll go out and try and see them, or they'll see them the next night, and so the awareness, from seeing these spectacular photos, the awareness is up, and we can just communicate now in advance. And this is before we get to the fact that,

I mean, a lot of Lucy's work is, how would you predict space weather? Now, I mean, Lucy could say, oh, there's been an eruption from this part of the sun, it's coming our way, the magnetic field is probably the right way around. We have some ability to predict in advance when this is happening, which we wouldn't have had until quite recent in terms of, you know, human timescales. So the fact that we can now immediately communicate on social media that this is happening and share phenomenal photos of it in the moment because like even When we had cameras that could do long exposure on film you got to get them developed like it takes forever Whereas now you can immediately take a photo look at it share it like long exposure photos Anyone can do that on their phone now, which is phenomenal and and share them

So does this mean that we can predict when would be good times to go to somewhere like Iceland to see the normal lights? Sadly, probably not on the scale of flying to somewhere like Iceland, but on shorter time scales, yes. So there's something called the KP index for like Kilo Papa. I forget what it stands for, German words from memory, but the KP index is how much solar activity is there. And you can also look up for your latitude what KP index would be required to see the northern or southern lights where you are. Because the further you are from the pole,

the harder it is to see them. We're a bit annoyed because if they'd happened two weeks later, we're about to do a trip down to the south coast of Australia where it would have been perfect. We'd be like super dark skies facing south out over the ocean. Like there wouldn't have been the slightly higher latitude than you want. Australia's closer to the equator than I often remember, but it would have been like near optimal viewing conditions But we were off by two weeks from when the Sun decided to throw some extra magnetic field at the earth That's annoying. Classic Sun. Yeah, so keep we'll provide some links in the show notes Find out what KP index you're looking for and then keep an eye out for when it comes up So that's why you might see Aurora Borealis at this time of year, at this time of day,

in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen. Thanks Matt. I mean, for me, I feel that you've answered the question, so I'm going to give that a K ding. Hey, hey, well done. KP. I was trying. I was trying really hard.

A dingus Borealis. Let's go have some steamed hams. Is that original dialect? KP, yeah, I love what you're doing. I was trying, I was trying really hard. A dingus borealis. Let's go have some steamed hams. Is that a regional dialect? It is now time for any other business where we go through things that our fantastic listeners have sent in. They go to the problem posing page.

They often choose solutions. Sometimes they just pick it as a problem and put it in there. I got a personal favorite here from someone who has put in almost exactly the same comment twice Yes So on the 25th of September we heard from random problem poser Who said I've only just started listening to the podcast if I listen to one episode a day and you release one episode a month From episode one how long would it take me to catch up?

And then on the 8th of October, a random person with problem also wrote in, I've only just started listening to the podcast. If you release episodes at the rate you do, and I listen to one episode a day, when will I catch up? I'm guessing because they realized we released more than one episode a month. That must be when they got to the point where we switched, because we were one a month and then we changed to one every two weeks. That's right. Is it the specific number of episodes that equals the difference

between the days that they wrote in? I was wondering that. We release episodes. Well, this is episode 96, 096, and we release episodes once every two weeks, so once every 14 days and if you listen to one a day It means you can squeeze in 13 old episodes between the new ones which means you can listen to the back catalog at the rate of 13 episodes per 14 day window and

Let's say Someone started now, so they've missed 96. They've got 96 to catch up on. So if you started now, it would take you 104 days to catch back up to then have to wait two weeks between episodes. That's a lot of episodes to listen to. That's a lot of episodes. Wow, we've almost done a hundred. I checked and our first ever episode back was on the 30th of November 2019. Wow.

Ah, we had no idea what was ahead of us. So we will celebrate our five-year anniversary on the 30th of November 2024 which is coming up. Mm-hmm. And Coincidentally because we haven't released episodes at a standard rate because we switched from monthly to fortnightly, but just by accident by pure serendipity we will release the 100th episode on the 23rd of December 2024. So we'll hit five years and a hundred episodes So we'll hit five years and a hundred episodes within a month of each other just by luck, which is pretty exciting. Yeah, it is.

Oh, thanks to everybody who listens. That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. You're all great. So it'll take a hundred and four days for random problem poser or random person with problem to assuming that they were to start today. Yes. I mean- They've been going from at least September sometime, because that's when they sent in

the first version of the problem. That's true, yeah. So it'll take them about at least two, maybe around the time that our 100th episode comes out they might- Oh my goodness. Be up to date and know that we have answered their question. You know what, it's gonna be real close because if they ask that problem on the exact first day that they started listening to the podcast, they'll catch up to the new ones as of the 7th of January next year, 2025.

So they'll be listening to this one a couple days before that. But they may have started earlier than that. That's like the latest. I suspect they were listening to it for a bit before they decided to chip that in. So it's well within likelihood that they will catch up perfectly on the 100th episode, which is pretty special. And until then, I look forward to getting this question next month. Yes, every other month until they realise we've actually answered it. Yep, yep.

We also heard from William who said, hello backer Matt, this isn't a solution to a poster problem but an extra AOB for Patreon membership to a problem squared. After becoming a supporter, I printed out and laminated my APS Wizard supporter membership card from Patreon. Did we do that? No, I think they made their own. They probably just printed out the page with the perks on it. It's great. We should have made a card. This is great. I've found that whenever I show this card in any gas station or convenience store in the country of Sweden I get a cup of coffee at regular price

And and at no extra charge the personnel will most often mispronounce My name is written at the bottom of the card who knew I wonder if this works in other countries as well It's a hidden benefit of being a patreon supporter I Mean and thanks to all our patreon supporters, and who knew that printing out, I guess, the page with the perks gets you a cup of coffee at regular price from any gas station or convenience store. At least in the country of Sweden.

Other countries may apply. Matt, that gives me an idea. Yeah. Okay, so you know how normally at Christmas every year we send an e-card to all of our standard Patreon supporters and anyone who is a wizard level supporter gets a Christmas card from us? Yeah, yeah, and we sign them all. Yes, yeah.

What if this year instead of a Christmas card, we come up with a Patreon supporter card. Oh, right. That is either a personalized one, which is in an E-format. If people want to print them out at home, got it. or we send out a little business card. That's very funny.

We'll sign it to authorize it for wizard supporters. The way it works is Beck designs the card traditionally and then I use my terrible Python code to automatically put everyone's names in the ones that we email and then we actually write out everything for the wizard supporters. But we could do the same thing with membership cards. But you'd have to print out your own if you're not a wizard and laminate it. But if you're a wizard level, we will, yeah, properly initial it, sign it each, send it out to you in the post. Okay. And given this will be our 100 episode, two days before

Christmas, if anyone wanted to buy us a Christmas present or a 100th episode anniversary gift, you could just support us on Patreon for a couple months. You'll get the card, you give us some extra support. Maybe two months, if you do Wizard. Like, we don't want to, because it costs a bit to post everyone the card, we don't want to lose money. Everyone signing up for a week and then leaving. Give us a month or two just to say thanks. You don't have to do it long term.

We don't mind the big drop off after Christmas, that's fine. And it's valid. There's no expiry date, yeah. No. It might be superseded by future cards. We're like those Fred Barth and Beyond coupons that people talk about. Oh yeah, the perpetual ones, there you go.

The other benefit, we offer our fantastic Patreon supporters other than the bonus episode that is once a month I didn't factor that into the listening time. I'm not going back and doing it again is We thank a random combination of three supporters that I pick using a spreadsheet which this episode includes Gory Fog. That sounded like you gave up halfway through, but I can see in front of me, yeah, Fog.

Fog. Jompy. So just so you know, this name is spelt Y-O-M-P-I Yeah, and I love that you've decided to pronounce the Y as a J I'm guessing is a reverse version of how J's are usually pronounced as Y's Yeah, as a Y, yeah. I figure these things are symmetric. Mm-hmm. It's got pi on the end. I was tempted by Yom-Pi. Don't get me wrong. Yeah Jompey Rube N I was tempted by yum pie. Don't get me wrong. Yeah jumpy

Rube and Shaka raka do I Didn't think you better resist a rub at the opening of that one, but you did so good on you. Oh, yeah rub Enchilada That's exactly as written. So thank you so much to all our Patreon supporters, and I know we've been talking a lot about Patreon because it pays the bills, but we love everyone who listens to this podcast. New time listeners, old time listeners, everyone, thank you for listening. It's an absolute honor to be able to ramble into a microphone and then people actually listen to it. It's great. So that is it. That's the end of the episode Thank you so much for listening listening to myself Matt Parker and back hill and our producer Lauren Armstrong Carter

Who's a bit like? She a bit like she's a bit like oh like a repetitive joke in that she's always still there for us Bye Bye Now back we're recording separately at the moment, and I didn't bring my battleship game with me. No, me either. But- Now I'm trying to find-

I did take a photo of it before I left, yes. Okay, I got my photo up. I too. I too. I'm also playing Battleship. Oh, heck yeah! Unbelievable. Oh, I'm gonna have to switch that to a red symbol in my edit.

Ah nuts. Oh yeah, I forgot. How have you got the first hit? Yes. Well, I'm not deviating. That's one point for chaos theory. Well, let's go back to Team Regular. I know that's not what the chaos theory is.

E5. Miss. Ah, now you're way out in front.