Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Can you roast a marshmallow in space, and other listener questions.

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Daniel and Jorge talk about space marshmallows, our cosmic date with Andromeda, and surviving micrometeors. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/...listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System
Starting point is 00:00:33 On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone.
Starting point is 00:01:01 Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy, which is more effortful to use. unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier.
Starting point is 00:01:33 Denials is easier. Complex problem solving. Takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grazias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with
Starting point is 00:01:51 some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending
Starting point is 00:02:05 with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dresses Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Jorge, I have an important star-gazing question for you. Hmm, hit me. So obviously, to fortify yourself for a cold night of dark sky watching,
Starting point is 00:02:39 everyone needs to make smores on the campfire after dinner. Is that even a question? It's, smores are required when you go camping. Yeah, absolutely. But my question is, how do you like your marshmallows? You like them white, gently toasted, or totally blackened. Actually, I'm pretty picky about my smores. they need to be like just slightly toasted.
Starting point is 00:02:58 But mostly I just want some more of them. I should have known the marshmallow jokes we're going to make for a rocking road. That makes more of them. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle. physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I have strong opinions about marshmallow toasting. Interesting. Is there a special physics technique to make perfect s'mores?
Starting point is 00:03:35 You have to keep it at exactly the right distance for exactly the right time and any deviation from that results in inedible garbage. Interesting. And I guess you have to rotate it too. That's very important. Do you have like a, you know, experimentally determined rotation rate that you rotate your marshmallows at and did you hook up some kind of motor to it? So it's always precisely the same. I will say I have done a lot of extensive experimentation on this front, you know, for science. You have a lot of data points in your stomach and around your waist. That's right. Exactly. My data collection device gets bigger and bigger as I keep taking more data.
Starting point is 00:04:09 Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeard radio. In which we twist and turn the entire universe around, trying to understand exactly the right distance to look at it so that it makes some sense. We ask the biggest, the deepest, the squishiest, the tastiest, the tostiest of questions about the nature of the universe. What's in it? How big is it? And how can we possibly understand it? Yeah, because it's important to understand the universe, not too much so that it gets toasted, but not too little so that it's too hard and the chocolate doesn't melt. You think it's possible to understand the universe too much? Like, ah, we ruin the mystery. It's no fun anymore. Yeah, you know, it's sort of like knowing too much about a movie before you go in. It's hard to enjoy it, you know, or it's like knowing too much about writing and then you can't enjoy a book or a TV show anymore.
Starting point is 00:04:56 Oh, man, give me all the physics spoilers. I want to know them. I'm happy to have all those surprises be ruined. I don't want to hear about the next year's Nobel Prize. I want to know about it now. But then you're going to spoil it for everybody else. Isn't that the whole point of physics to disseminate the knowledge and spoil it for everyone that's in the clubhouse plaque, right? That is part of it. But, you know, I think that it's impossible to know the universe too well because I think, honestly, jokes aside, there's an infinite amount of things to know. I think we will never know everything about the universe. They will always be more marshmallows to toast and more physics puzzles to unravel. Maybe you should preface every research paper you published with that, you know, warning.
Starting point is 00:05:34 Spoilers ahead. Finding the spoilers is exactly the job of physics, right? Physics is basically the spoilers. Or maybe we should just like figure out the universe and very slowly dole it out. You know, we should talk to the Marvel folks and like have plot. twists and stuff like that. Yeah, and sequels. Lots of sequels.
Starting point is 00:05:53 That's important. And multiverses, I guess, now that's the thing. Yeah, I would definitely like sequels and multiverses for my funding. I guess if you spoil one universe, there's always more universes, technically, to watch movies, right? With different actors. There's an infinite audience out there and an infinite possible box office. The infinite spoiling war will be the name of the big culmination movie. Marvel, we get a cut of that.
Starting point is 00:06:17 One millionth of infinity. But it is an amazing universe, a delicious universe, and an incredible universe to think about and to ask questions about it and especially to be curious about. That's right. And it's not just academic physicists who are toasting marshmallows and thinking deep thoughts under dark skies while on camping trips. It's everybody out there who looks up at the night sky and wonders what's going on around that star. Is there an alien looking back at me or what's the physics of this marshmallow? How is it really getting roasty and toasty? Everybody out there who is curious about the universe is doing physics and being a physicist. That's right.
Starting point is 00:06:52 We get questions on this podcast from little kids from seven years old to 77 year olds who look at the universe and wonder how it all works and what makes it the way it is. And we love that because we think that being curious is part of being human and that science belongs to everybody. So if you're the kind of person who thinks about the universe and wonders how things work, then write to us. Please send us your questions. Don't feel alone. We are all sharing these mysteries together. Write to us to Questions at Danielanhorpe.com. We answer every email.
Starting point is 00:07:24 We write back to everybody. And let me send a special encouragement to those of you who've been listening to the podcast for years and haven't written to us yet. I know you have questions and we'd love to answer them. It sounds like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel now, Daniel. But actually, you get a ton of questions every day. You get questions every day through Twitter, through email,
Starting point is 00:07:43 and also through our Discord channel. We have a Discord channel. That's what it's called, right? That's what my 14-year-old tells me. It's called a Discord server, I think it's called. A server, right, yeah. It's not a Discord TikTok or something. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:07:57 We interact with people on Twitter. We answer dozens of questions over email. And on Discord, we have a community, not just me answering questions, but other listeners talking about cool things they've read, interesting stuff they've seen, and talking about the episodes, asking questions about things they heard.
Starting point is 00:08:11 So please come, interact. You're not out there alone wondering about the universe. Well, have you gotten listeners to answer their own questions? Like one listener answers questions of another listener? Sounds like you might, you know, put us out of the job here. That's exactly what happens. You know, somebody asks a question at like 2 a.m. And then by the time I log on at 7 a.m. or so, there's a whole discussion in people
Starting point is 00:08:33 proposing answers. And it's a lot of fun. Obviously, you need to stay up all night, every night on Discord, just like your 14-year-old son. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we should work in shifts. up that time anyway. Yeah, there you go. But yeah, we do get a lot of amazing questions because people are curious.
Starting point is 00:08:50 They look at the world. They listen to this podcast. They hear about things happening out there in the cosmos and the very nature of our atoms and quarks. And questions come up. Questions do come up and they send them to us. And sometimes those questions are so fun that I think other listeners would like to hear the answers.
Starting point is 00:09:06 So we pick a few of them and answer them right here on the podcast. And so today on the podcast we'll be tackling. Listener questions, number 24. 24. Is that like the TV show 24? Are we going to talk about, you know, nuclear bombs? And if we don't answer it, something terrible is going to happen? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:09:28 Which one of us is Jack Bauer? Are you going to torture physics answers out of me? Torturing physicist. Hmm. That might make a good show. I hope it doesn't get a big audience. Who wants to see a physicist suffer? Come on.
Starting point is 00:09:42 That's right. are self-torturing anyways. Exactly. Why else would you choose that career if not to torture yourself? Otherwise, we just would have been a cartoonist, you know. Easy, laid-back, no-stress career. That's right. You eat cereal at 11 a.m., you put on your earphones, and you hop on a podcast.
Starting point is 00:09:59 Yeah. Twice a week. Easy-living. I do get wrist cramps, though. That is the one hazard in the job. Also, your pajama pants, it sometimes get a little itchy, but, you know, you have to remember to change them. So are you ambidextrics?
Starting point is 00:10:11 Can you switch to the other wrist when you, You know, the right wrist runs out of good jokes. No, I just turned my computer around. I don't know how that works. You're the physicists. You tell me. Yeah, I think you just violated parody symmetry. Did you just say I violated parrot tree?
Starting point is 00:10:24 I think I did. Yeah, the parrots are very upset. About their tree. Yeah, this is the 24th episode in which we answer listener questions. And so people send us questions and how does it work, Danny? You ask them to record it and then send it to us? Yeah, if there's a question, I think we'll work well on the podcast. I ask them to just record themselves at home.
Starting point is 00:10:43 They use the phone, they use the computer, they use whatever they have, and they just email it to us. And so it's very easy, no big deal. And so that's why we get this fun audio from listeners all around the world with cool accents. Yeah, very cool. And so today we'll be answering three pretty awesome questions from listeners. And they're pretty exciting and kind of delicious as well to think about. One of them is about roasting marshmallows in space. The other one is about the impending collision of our galaxy with another galaxy.
Starting point is 00:11:10 And the last one is about, I guess, what would you call that? A space rain, dangerous space rain. About how to survive the cosmic weather between here and other stars. Interesting. Yeah, I guess if you're roasting marshmallows out there, you want to be safe as well. You don't want to be extra crunchy. That's right. So we have deep questions about the future of our galaxy and practical questions about how to roast marshmallows.
Starting point is 00:11:33 All right. Well, let's tackle our first question. And this one comes from Aiden, who has a question about eating snacks. Hi, Daniel and Jorge. I was wondering, how close would you need to get to the sun? to safely roast a marshmallow or basically how close could a single person get to the sun and be safe or how much closer to the sun would the earth need to move for humans to even notice a difference thanks all right thank you aidan and i'm a little confused he sort of posed the same
Starting point is 00:12:02 question in three totally different ways i feel i think his question is trying to understand sort of the temperature things get when you get closer or further from the sun because you know the earth is sort of like at the perfect temperature for water to be liquid on the surface and for humans to have like nice relaxing vacations in Hawaii and not get too hot. But if we were any closer, things would get a little toastier. And so I think he's really asking about like, what is the temperature gradient? You know, how close do you have to get to the sun before things get uncomfortable? I see. Well, he painted a picture of roasting marshmallows in space. So I guess I'm picturing Aidan in a space suit, holding a stick with a marshmallow on it. And is he wondering,
Starting point is 00:12:43 how close does he have to get to roast the marshmallow or how close can he get without, you know, burning up? Yeah, it's a good question because he's using the marshmallow as a probe, right? Like what happens to the marshmallow is he going to survive? The problem is that if the marshmallow gets toasted, he's probably also getting toasted because, you know, unlike a fire, if you're near a fire, then the temperature drops off really quickly. So, you know, you can have the marshmallow be a foot or two closer to the fire than you are and
Starting point is 00:13:10 it'll get toasted and you won't. But when it comes to the sun, the temperature drop off is, you know, over a much larger scale. And so if the marshmallow is a foot closer to the sun than you are, you're probably getting just as toasted as the marshmallow. I see. Unless I guess you have some kind of shielding, special shielding. Like, what if he's behind like a big shield with a little hole that you can stick the marshmallow through so that it gets roasted by the sun, but not you? Yeah. Or his stick is like really, really long. That's a good Physicist solution there
Starting point is 00:13:42 Just make a roasting stick That's, you know, 300,000 miles long Yeah, exactly I just pawned off the problem to the engineers Like please, you know, send me three prototypes by tomorrow Yeah, just don't make it out of chocolate Because I would defeat the purpose Like a chocolate cover roasting thing
Starting point is 00:13:58 I'm going to write that down, Daniel That's my next patent Okay, yeah I wonder how many of those will actually make it out of the lab Well, I made it 300 kilometers long but it seems to have been chewed on. That's right. And I had a heart attack before I could write the pen.
Starting point is 00:14:13 But I think there's actually two interesting questions here about roasting this marshmallow in space, assuming that Aden can somehow get to a safe distance or has shielding. And, you know, one is like what happens to a marshmallow when you put it out in vacuum? And the other is then how close do you have to bring it to the sun to get it toasted? I see. You're thinking like maybe let's just send a marshmallow by itself. Like, let's throw it into orbit around the sun. And when it comes back, it'll be nice and toasty.
Starting point is 00:14:37 Yeah. But also I'm wondering, like, will this thing actually be edible? If you put a marshmallow into outer space, it might like explode, right, because of the internal pressure. And so then even if it is toasted, is Aden really going to want to eat it? I mean, I just want to deliver to our listeners the treat that they're looking for. It sounds like you just said that the marshmallow would explode or get bigger, which both of them sound good. But you're not going to get more marshmallow, right? It would be the same marshmallow just less dense.
Starting point is 00:15:03 The idea, of course, is that marshmallows have air bubbles inside them. way you make a marshmallows, you whip up all this fat and this sugar. And so it's really like a little froth. It's like a big foam. And so when you take that into outer space, it might just explode because all those air bubbles no longer have air pressing on them from the outside. Interesting. But wait, is it a marshmallow like a sponge or does it actually have air trapped inside? You know, like a sponge you can squeeze and somehow all the holes are connected to each other, right? It's a really good question. You know, I think that there is some air trapped inside this marshmallow.
Starting point is 00:15:36 So I actually went and did some research and there's a physicist at UC Santa Barbara that did this experiment. He took a marshmallow and he put it in a vacuum chamber. So he's got a vacuum chamber in his lab probably for other real physics reasons. Probably cut a few million dollars funded by the NSF, but sure, yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Probably exactly. You mean the National Snack Foundation for research in snack physics? Yeah, not to be confused with the NIH, which is the national invites. headquarters. The National Indigestion Headquarters. Well, he took some marshmallows and put them in a bell jar, a vacuum chamber, and
Starting point is 00:16:12 the marshmallow expanded to about twice its normal size. And so that suggests that there is some air trapped in there. And if you reduce the pressure on the outside of a marshmallow, it really will inflate. Wow. Did he or she publish these results? Just on a blog. So this is not peer-reviewed, right? So take it with the grain of salt people.
Starting point is 00:16:29 Right. Or a piece of chocolate, yeah. But there's another question because the vacuum of space, of course, it's much, much colder than the atmosphere in this lab. And so you might also imagine that the marshmallow might flash freeze, in which case it wouldn't expand. It might freeze first, and then the air would sort of leak out through cracks. And so it wasn't exactly clear what would happen in that case.
Starting point is 00:16:50 They need to do more experiments, which also, you know, thinking about it, sounds like exactly the kind of research that goes on, the place like you see Santa Barbara. Oh, they followed up more experiments. They took the marshmallow and dipped it in liquid nitrogen and then put it in the vacuum chamber. and it didn't expand as much. And so, you know, that's not exactly what would happen in space, but I think it's a pretty good proxy. And so I think this marshmallow before it gets toasted
Starting point is 00:17:14 is going to puff up a little bit, but still be recognizably marshmallow-y. I see. But then as you get closer to the sun, it's going to heat up then. It's going to heat up, exactly. And so then it might expand to twice its size. Yes, because as marshmallows heat up, they do expand, right? Because the air that's trapped inside them gains in pressure and volume.
Starting point is 00:17:32 So it might not explode. Or maybe it depends on how quickly you put it in a vacuum, too. So then you put this marshmallow out in space, it expands. And then how close do you have to be to the sun before it gets nice and toasty? It's a good question. And you have to make some assumptions here about how you're going to heat the marshmallow because there's some subtleties. Like if you take an object and you put it at the same distance from the sun as the Earth,
Starting point is 00:17:54 it'll get heated to about 5 Celsius. So that's like, you know, 45 or so degrees Fahrenheit. Just from being out in space. Just from being out in space and getting radiation from the air. the sun and that's assuming that it gets thermalized that like the energy coming on one side goes through the object and heats up also the other side of the object and it goes into sort of thermal equilibrium that's not true for example of the moon the moon is an object you know very similar in distance as the earth from the sun but it gets very very hot on one side and cold on the other
Starting point is 00:18:24 side because it doesn't thermalize like the moon gets more than a hundred C on one side and it's very very cold in the other side because the heat is all trapped on one side doesn't like like bleed all the way through the moon. So if we're talking about a smaller object or an object that's like spinning so the heat gets evenly through it, then something at the distance of the earth gets to about 5C. I see. Thinking about kind of the physics, I guess, you know, it's getting all this radiation and energy from the sun on one side.
Starting point is 00:18:50 But I guess all around it, it's still in a vacuum and a really cold vacuum. And so it's shooting off heat in all directions, right? It's like just trying to get cold, but then it also has this source of energy from the sun. And so you're saying at some point maybe it gets to eclarium and it gets to an even temperature. Yeah. And things here on earth, they also cool off, right? You have something really hot like a pie. You put it on your counter.
Starting point is 00:19:12 It's going to cool off. That happens mostly because the heat is diffusing. It's the molecules of the pie are bumping up against the air molecules and they're warming them up. And then that air gets pushed away and you get new cold air. There's another mechanism for cooling, which is that you can just radiate off heat, like things that are hot, get red hot or white hot. they glow. They give off heat through radiation. And so in space, you don't have air to cool things down, but you can still radiate heat. So things cool down slower in space than they do on Earth. It's harder to lose your heat in space than it is here on Earth because there's no air
Starting point is 00:19:47 to, no wind basically to cool you down. But you're exactly right. We're talking here about an object that comes into thermal equilibrium where it's gaining energy from the sun and radiating some energy away, but it comes into equilibrium. And so what that equilibrium temperature is, depending hands on how close you are to the sun. If you're very, very close to the surface of the sun, you're going to be basically at the sun's surface temperature, which is like thousands of degrees. And if you're out where the earth is, you'll be around five degrees Celsius. But I guess the question is, you know, at what point will it get toasty? You know, like if it's facing the sun and you get close enough to it, I would imagine that
Starting point is 00:20:21 at some point the side of the marshmallow facing the sun is going to start to melt, maybe, and maybe even toast. Yeah. And so I did a little calculation using Stefan Boltzman approximation, et cetera. And I'm figuring that you need the marshmallow to get to be about 50C in order to toast, in order to melt, which is a temperature with the marshmallow melts. And in order to get to that temperature, you need to be about 0.4A.U. So 40% of the distance between the Earth and the sun is a temperature where an object will get to 50C in equilibrium, somewhere between Venus and Mercury.
Starting point is 00:20:54 I see. That's an equilibrium meaning. I guess if you're constantly rotating your marshmallow or you give it a little bit of a spin in space before you throw it out there, it might reach them sort of equilibrium, right? Because it's going to be, you know, kind of basting comb almost. Rotisserie marshmallow, solo rotisserie. That's right. That's really what you're doing when you're rotating the stick, right? Yeah, that's right.
Starting point is 00:21:15 The poor man's rotissary. And so that's assuming that it spins as equally distributed. If it's not, then one side of it will get hotter. So, for example, if you have a marshmallow that's just stationary and all the energy is going to the surface of the marshmallow, then it's going to be like the moon where it gets really hot on one side, even at our distance, you know, a marshmallow in space that isn't rotating is going to get roasted on one side, even at one AU from the sun. Oh, I see. So just putting a marshmallow out in space in orbit around Earth, it's going to get toasted or melted at
Starting point is 00:21:47 least. Yeah, if it gets like tidily locked to the sun, so one surface of it is always facing the sun, then the sun will eventually toast it. It'll heat it up to like, you know, more than 100 C. Oh, and then what will happen? It'll become like goo floating in space. And then it'll Which sentience and attack Earth? It will be warm and so it'll be liquid. I don't know if life can spontaneously form inside space marshmallows. I think that's a topic for another podcast. But then you're saying that it can't actually roast.
Starting point is 00:22:13 Like you'll never get that nice brown color because in space you can't have that. Yeah, the roasting, that browning is actually an oxidation effect. Right. That's reacting with the air. And so that can't happen because there isn't any air out there. So you can melt a marshmallow in space, but I don't think you can brown it because there's no oxygen out there. Really? It wouldn't at least like, you know, totally convert into carbon or something, you know? I find it hard to be heat up something in space even to a million degrees. It wouldn't
Starting point is 00:22:40 like char at least. I think the charring and some biochemist out there should correct me involves a process where you are, you know, using oxygen to react with the elements and doing chemical transformations. If all you're doing is heating it up and you're just going to be heating it up, you're not going to be making any other chemical transformations. But I guess there is a little bit of oxygen, right, because the marshmallow does have some air trapped into it, as scientists have found out. Oh, that's true. So if the marshmallow freezes and cracks and expels a little bit of oxygen, so now it has its own tiny little atmosphere and you heat it up fast enough, it could also use that oxygen to brown, I suppose, yeah. There's like an interdisciplinary study here. We need
Starting point is 00:23:18 like biochemists and physicists and engineers to build this giant stick. Well, we're writing a grant proposal to the National Snack Foundation, and maybe they'll fund this study. But they don't give you money. They just give you more snacks. That's right. In-kind costs, they call it. All right, Aidan, well, I think that's the answer for you there. You need to put the marshmallow to roast it in space. You need to put it about 0.4AU, so 40% of the way to the sun. So somewhere between Venus and Mercury, if you put a marshmallow out there, spin it around, it will eventually melt and turn gooey delicious and maybe even a little crispy.
Starting point is 00:23:54 Let us know and don't forget to publish your work. And stay tuned for our next episode in which we ask the same question for chocolate. But in the meantime, we'll answer more questions from listeners. When we come back, we have questions about galaxy collisions and micrometeers. So we'll get to those. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush.
Starting point is 00:24:24 Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism.
Starting point is 00:24:54 Law and order criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.
Starting point is 00:25:36 He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them.
Starting point is 00:25:53 I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps and their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten, Monica Patton, Elaine Welteroff. I'm Jessica
Starting point is 00:26:28 Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them. Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on She Pivots, now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you you get your podcasts. I don't write songs. God write songs.
Starting point is 00:26:59 I take dictation. I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years. I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about Thurley before it happened. Was there a particular moment where you realize just how instrumental music culture was to shaping all of our global ecosystem?
Starting point is 00:27:31 I was eight years old, and the Motown 25 special came on. And all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana Raw. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are answering listener questions and also getting a little hungry, talking about marshmallows and s'mores. We should stop recording this podcast around lunchtime. I think it focuses our jokes around food. Or at least after lunch, you know, so then we're hungry for dessert. But then we're going to be full and sleepy.
Starting point is 00:28:17 But who needs dessert when you have the knowledge and the mysteries of the cosmos to snack on? Exactly, but we're supposed to be soothing our listeners to sleep and not going to sleep ourselves on the podcast. What do you mean? We're actively trying to make people sleepy? No, but I got a lot of listeners who write in and say that they enjoy listening to our voices as they fall asleep, which I think means we put them to sleep.
Starting point is 00:28:41 Or did they like our voices to be the last thing they hear before they fall asleep? Wow, that's very, feels very intimate. You're getting very sleepy. How was your day? I don't know. Did you turn off the lights? Now you're going to give them nightmares. Is the stove still on?
Starting point is 00:28:59 Is there somebody right behind you staring at you? Now you're going to give me nightmares. Is there a physicist standing over your bed right now? Did you lock the windows? Everything is fine. Nothing is screwed up. Go to sleep. The universe is going to turn on without you.
Starting point is 00:29:19 Everything's out of control. I mean, in control. But as you go to sleep, think about the nature of the universe and what your questions are. That's right. Yeah. And a lot of people have because they send us their questions. And we are answering them here today on the podcast. And so our next question comes from Ryan, who is a question about our impending collision with the Andromeda Galaxy.
Starting point is 00:29:38 Hey, Daniel and Jorge. I have a question that's been in my mind for a while regarding galaxies and their galactic collisions that can occur. So my question is, how is it the galaxies like Andromeda and Milky Way are a dead? destined to collide with each other in the far future. I know that the universe is expanding and therefore all matter isn't a constant motion, but how can two massive objects like galaxies just be going towards each other? Thanks for answering the question. Bye. All right. Thanks, Ryan. It sounds like it's something that he's been thinking about for a long time. Yeah, maybe Ryan falls asleep wondering about the cosmic fate of the galaxy. Well, he would have to sleep a lot for it to happen
Starting point is 00:30:16 in his sleep, right? Maybe he's wondering, how long can I sleep? Should I set my alarm clock for a million years for a billion years. I don't want to miss it. Or do I have to set my alarm or will a giant galaxy crashing into us wake me up? If you can sleep through that, then like, wow, that's a superpower. I've managed to sleep through my morning, our kids' morning routine. So maybe if a galaxy collision happened, I wouldn't notice. Well, that's another question. How many galaxies would it take to wake up Jorge? Or any cartoonist. But yeah, Ryan asked about our impending collision with Andromeda. And so fill us in, Daniel. We're going to collide with another galaxy. Andromeda is headed our way. Andromeda is the nearest galaxy to us, but it's still pretty far away. It's millions of light years away. But there's something really cool that I think is not widely enough appreciated about Andromeda. And that's how big it is. It's millions of light years away. But it's actually so big that if you could see it in the night sky, it would be bigger than the full moon. It would be like a huge.
Starting point is 00:31:18 huge object in the sky. Well, I mean, if it's right next to us, it would occupy our entire night sky, right? That's right. But even millions of light years away, it's still enormous. You know, somebody wrote me and asked me a question about seeing distant objects using telescopes. And the thing that telescopes do is not so much magnification as gather more light so you can see dim things, right?
Starting point is 00:31:41 They're like, enhance the brightness of things more than they make them bigger. Because a lot of exciting things in the sky are already really big. they're just too dim to see. So Andromeda is like that. It's incredible. If you can see Andromeda in the night sky, it's really very dramatic. Oh, I see. You're saying, like, if we could keep our eye cones open enough and looked at the sky at night,
Starting point is 00:32:02 we would see Andromeda and it would be about the size of the moon. Yeah, it would be larger than the full moon. People imagine that all the galaxies are out there are like the tiniest, dimmest little dots. They're even dimmer and further than stars. But this is like, look up in the night sky. you'd see this enormous spiral galaxy like right there. It would be incredible. But it's just so dim that you can't see it's not nearly as bright as the full moon
Starting point is 00:32:24 or many of the other stars in our galaxy. Maybe it's a good thing we can't see it, you know? Imagine if every time he looked up at the sky, you saw this giant galaxy coming towards you. I mean, it'd be frightening, right? Like, oh, look at that beautiful moon. And that giant galaxy coming towards us every night. Yeah. You'd be like, ah, is it getting bigger?
Starting point is 00:32:43 Is it coming this way? It is getting bigger, but by a very small amount every year. And this is a question people ask kind of often. They're trying to reconcile two things they've heard. One is that Andromeda is coming towards us. And the other is that space between galaxies is expanding. And the whole universe is expanding. And everything is getting further and further apart.
Starting point is 00:33:02 And these two things seem to be in contradiction. So I get a lot of people writing in asking this kind of question or this very exact question. That's right. Because we have talked a lot in this podcast about how the universe is expanding due to dark. energy and the universe is getting bigger and bigger. And so I guess Ryan's question is like, if everything's getting bigger and bigger and farther and farther away, how is it that we are even in danger of colliding with another galaxy? Yeah. And so there are two effects happening there, right? One is the universe is expanding. New space is being created all the time. And that new space is
Starting point is 00:33:33 not just being made out there in deep space. It's made everywhere. It's made between me and you. It's made between the atoms in your body. It's made between the earth and the sun. It's made between the sun and other stars. It's everywhere home geniusly, like everywhere in space is expanding. But that expansion is not that dramatic. You know, over a light year or so, it's like a centimeter per year. And so it's sort of like a very gentle breeze. And the other effect that's going on, of course, is gravity or other bonds. The reason that dark energy is not tearing you apart is because the bonds in your body are more powerful than dark energy over short distances, they win. And over distances like between the Earth and the Sun, gravity wins. So gravity, even though it's super duper weak compared to the other
Starting point is 00:34:18 forces, is more powerful than dark energy over these short distances. But as distances get larger and larger, gravity gets weaker and weaker, right? You don't feel the gravity of distant objects as much as you feel the gravity of nearby objects. So as distances get larger, gravity gets weaker, but dark energy doesn't. Dark energy gets more powerful with distance. So at some point, over long distances dark energy winds and over short distances gravity wins like right now dark energy is trying to pull our solar system apart or even you apart right but the gravity is sort of keeping things tightly bound together yes like there's a very gentle breeze but you and your friend are holding each other's hands so you're not getting pulled apart but over large distances that that gentle breeze
Starting point is 00:35:01 becomes like a hurricane almost right like it's additive like the debris just gets more massive the longer you sample it and gravity gets weaker because if we're talking about that gravity between galaxies or between clusters of galaxies, now we're talking about hundreds of millions of light years. And while gravity's extent is infinite, right, you do feel the gravity of Andromeda and other galaxies, it drops off like one over the distance squared. And so if you get twice as far, it's four times weaker. So over those vast distances, gravity gets pretty weak and then dark energy takes over. So if you looked at the universe only at the scale of like super clusters of galaxies, right? The structure is our solar system, then our galaxy, then clusters of clusters of
Starting point is 00:35:46 galaxies that we call superclusters. Between superclusters, dark energy is winning. Superclusters are moving away from each other faster and faster every year. Gravity cannot hold them together because the distances are too great. Yeah, it's almost like we're on a tiny little island and the other galaxy clusters and another tiny little island somewhere over the vast ocean and the ocean is getting bigger. Yeah, and the largest thing that gravity can hold together is sort of one galaxy cluster. So like the Milky Way and Andromeda and the other galaxies in our cluster that we call the local group, these things are gravitationally bound. Gravity is strong enough to hold them together like a little group of islands,
Starting point is 00:36:23 but the ocean between our cluster and other clusters is expanding. Like a super cluster, astronomers argue about whether it's even really a thing because they're not sure whether it's gravitationally held together or just sort of currently right now, near each other, but dark energy will eventually tear it apart. I see. That's kind of sad. But I guess, you know, it sort of depends on the distances, right? Like if our cluster was closer to another cluster or close enough, then they would maybe feel
Starting point is 00:36:49 more gravity towards each other. It just so happens that there's a bunch of space in between. There is a bunch of space in between. And so that lets us answer Ryan's question, you know, how is it possible if space is expanding for Andromeda and the Milky Way to be coming close to each other? Well, the answer is that gravity wins over dark energy between. neighboring galaxies. Even though Andromeda is millions of light years away, it's got a lot of gravity and that gravity is pulling us toward it and our gravity is pulling it towards us.
Starting point is 00:37:17 So wait, you're saying that the Milky Way does feel gravity towards Andromeda? Like we feel it? Like it's actually changing our trajectory? Absolutely. Yeah. It's a huge object. It's much, much bigger than the Milky Way. It's much more massive than the Milky Way. So we do feel its gravity. And, you know, it's going to take a long time. It's billions of years for these large, distant objects. to pull each other together. But eventually, that's what gravity does. You know, gravity operates over large distances in long times, but it's very patient.
Starting point is 00:37:45 It just keeps going. It's like the energizer bunny of the universe. And you know, I kind of interpreted Ryan's questions a little bit different because he used words like destiny and like, why is our galaxy destined to crash into another one? And so I think his question sounded more like he was wondering, how is it a coincidence that we, in this vastness of space, our galaxy is on a crash collision course with another galaxy
Starting point is 00:38:06 when, you know, it could have easily, you know, be aimed to miss us or, you know, it's almost like trying to hit two pebbles out there in the vastness of space. Yeah. And if you just imagine like a bunch of bouncy balls in a huge volume of space, you figure they're never going to hit each other. But these bouncy balls are attracted to each other. Gravity is pulling these things together. So it's not random that these things are pointed towards each other.
Starting point is 00:38:29 It's not just bad luck or good luck, depending on which side you're rooting for. Gravity is actively pulling this stuff together. The whole reason the galaxy exists is. is because gravity has pulled the matter together to make the stars and then pulled those stars together to make galaxies. And now it's pulling those galaxies together to make bigger galaxies. And this wouldn't be the first collision for the Milky Way. We've collided with many other galaxies.
Starting point is 00:38:51 We have other little dwarf galaxies inside our galaxy that we've already gobbled up and eaten. And most galaxies out there have been through several rounds of collisions. And so more collisions definitely in our future. But I guess that, you know, there is sort of an element of luck to it. as well, right? Like, we're not destined, like our whole galaxy cluster isn't all destined to crash into each other at some point in the future, right? Like, it's not all going to be just a giant black hole. Eventually, is it? Yeah, actually, it kind of is
Starting point is 00:39:19 destined to become a giant black hole. If you look really far into the future, these islands that gravity is controlling, eventually they will pull them all into a black hole. The only thing that lets us resist that is angular momentum. Like the reason our Milky Way hasn't yet collapsed into a black hole is because those stars have a lot of velocity so they can maintain an orbit around the black hole. But eventually they'll lose that. They'll radiate away some of that energy and gravitational waves or they'll bump into each other and they will collapse into the black hole. And similarly, all the galaxies in our local group eventually will coalesce into one mega galaxy with a super duper black hole at its center, which eventually
Starting point is 00:39:57 will eat all the stuff. Wow. But we're talking like trillions of years now, right? Not like billions. we're talking like maybe even like you know hundreds of trillions of years yes exactly but the deep deep future of the universe assuming dark energy keeps going is that it's nice and cozy a little crowded it's a bunch of super isolated super massive black holes and it's going to take a really really long time but the cool thing is that if you took like a time lapse movie of this process it would look like it's happening really fast it would make a lot of sense you're like oh crash crash crash and then a whole thing coalesces. We're just sort of watching it in super duper slow motion. Interesting. So it's a little bit of a coincidence. We're crashing into Andromeda in the next couple
Starting point is 00:40:37 of billion years, but it's not a coincidence in the long term of things where, you know, eventually everything's going to collide with itself. Exactly. It wasn't predestined that we would collide with this galaxy at this particular time, but there was no way we were going to avoid colliding with other galaxies at some point. So either way, it's still a few trillion or billion years. And so Ryan, you still have a lot of time to sleep in. That's right. And roost your marshmallows. So rest easy. All right. Let's get to our last question of the day here. And it's about micrometeers and surviving being out in space. But first, let's take another quick break. luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.
Starting point is 00:41:34 There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:42:19 My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up.
Starting point is 00:42:41 Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?
Starting point is 00:43:03 To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten. Monica Patton. Elaine Welteroff. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go.
Starting point is 00:43:30 I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them. Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on She Pivots, now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't write songs. God write songs. I take dictation. I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years.
Starting point is 00:44:02 I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about thoroughly before it happened. Was there a particular moment where you really? realized just how instrumental music culture was to shaping all of our global ecosystem. I was eight years old, and the Motown 25 special came on. And all the great Motown artists,
Starting point is 00:44:37 Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana Ross. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are answering the listener questions here today on the podcast, and we've had two awesome questions. And our last one is about micrometeers, and it comes from Bess. Hi, Daniel, Jorge. My name is Boss.
Starting point is 00:45:11 I'm from Utrecht in the Netherlands. I have a question for you guys. So if you travel really quickly to space, like you go really fast at maybe almost a speed of light, what would happen if you would hit like a tiny piece of? debris or maybe like a tiny rock would it bounce off or would it explode the ship and if so like how are we able to to travel in the future without having to worry about exploding with flight i was really curious about that thank you bye-bye all right awesome question here about um being out in space i guess space is not a complete empty vacuum right there's stuff floating out there in space
Starting point is 00:45:50 There is a lot of stuff out there in space and not just like the tiny quantum fields that are fluctuating and very low energies. There's really stuff out there. You know, the sun pumps out the solar wind, which is filled with particles. But also there's lots of space dust and micrometeers and all sorts of things whizzing around out there in space. Yeah, he talked about micrometeers. And so what is a micrometeer? Micr Meteor is just like a pebble that's out there in space. You know, micromeeting really, really small.
Starting point is 00:46:16 And the stuff that's out there in space has been coalescing in the solar system. a long time. And so most of it's in the form of like the sun and the planets and even big asteroids. But sometimes those things collide and leave debris. And we talked on an episode recently about space dust, which are like little particles of stuff that are out there in the solar system. Nobody's exactly sure where they come from. Maybe they're whipped off of storms on Mars. Maybe they come from collisions of asteroids and the asteroid belt. We're not exactly sure. Exploded marshmallows, perhaps, from failed experiments by aliens, alien campers. That's right. edible space junk.
Starting point is 00:46:51 Just open your mouth in space. And there is also a lot of debris. You know, there's a lot of debris near Earth from, you know, satellites that have fallen apart and burned up and, you know, screws dropped by astronauts and stuff like that. And some of this stuff is moving pretty fast. Yeah. And in fact, the Earth sort of gets pelted by micrometeers all the time, right? Like we're literally getting showered by these tiny little rocks, except that they get
Starting point is 00:47:14 burned up in the atmosphere. Yeah, the size of the rock is inversely proportional to the frequency, the chances that it hits Earth. So really, really big rocks like the one that killed the dinosaurs, really rare. Small enough rocks to make shooting stars, not that rare. Like you can see them on a random night. Really, really tiny rocks that don't even make shooting stars happen all the time, like constantly. And so like if you see it as a shooting star, it means the atmosphere burned it up. But if you are above the atmosphere, those things can hit you, right? Absolutely. Those things can hit you. And they're moving pretty fast. You know, the Earth is moving around the sun at like 30 kilometers per second. So these speeds are
Starting point is 00:47:49 are really high, and things are flying through the solar system, you know, like five to 20 kilometers per second is totally not unusual for micrometeers, these tiny little space pebbles. Whoa, you just made me realize that maybe it's not the meter hitting you. It's like you hitting the meteor. Like it was just floating out in space peacefully and then the earth just kind of, you and the earth sort of came barreling around and you hit the little rock. Yeah, the rocks have their own little podcast like, hey, I'm worried about people coming and hitting me at high speeds.
Starting point is 00:48:19 Yeah, I had this dream or a giant marshmallow Totally engulfed our ecosystem It was delicious and it had a lot of air in it But now everything's really sticky I don't know embedded in a giant marshmallow Pretty good way to go What if our entire Milky Way Hit like an endromatized marshmallow
Starting point is 00:48:37 Right? That would be pretty nice It depends, is it melted marshmallow Or is it nice in room temperature Because I don't want to be boiled alive It's like a molten marshmallow That sounds horrible That's true That would probably also ruin the marshmallow
Starting point is 00:48:49 And nobody wants to eat marshmallows with boiled cartoonists inside. That's right. Nobody wants more of those. But Boss's question is also about like how do we survive this field of micrometeers? Like if we are moving through space at high speed, you know, then these things basically coming at us at high speed. How can we possibly survive transit between stars? Right.
Starting point is 00:49:09 It's kind of like being shot at by bullets, right? Like these things are going faster than a bullet. Yeah, these things are super fast. And like bullets, they can be small, but they can carry a lot of energy. A bullet rips right through you because it's going super duper fast. So it has a lot of kinetic energy. So yeah, these things are dangerous. And everybody that goes out into space, even near Earth, needs shielding to protect
Starting point is 00:49:32 themselves from these things. Remember, we talked about the Juno spacecraft that went out to explore the outer reaches of the solar system. And it was pelted by space dust so much so that its solar panels had all these little spilations that came off that helped them even measure the amount of space dust. So yeah, it's like being in a dust store. where it can shred you kind of, right? Because these things are going like kilometers per second,
Starting point is 00:49:54 like three to 18 kilometers per second. Exactly. Imagine being in a dust storm where the winds are kilometers per second velocity. It's like sandpaper, right? It would totally shred you. And so I guess the solution if you're at there in space is to have shielding, I guess,
Starting point is 00:50:08 like something to block those incoming bullets. Yeah. And so we got a lot of stuff out there in space. And so NASA has worked on this kind of thing. And for example, the ISS, the space station, has shielding. And the standard solution to this is something called a Whipple shield, named after an engineer whose last name is Whipple. And the basic idea is to have like multiple layers of shielding.
Starting point is 00:50:29 So you have like your internal shield and then you have a gap and you have another layer of shielding. And the outer layer of shielding, its job is to break up the micrometeorite into even smaller pieces. So instead of having like a bullet, instead you have like a bunch of smaller bullets. And the idea is that it spreads out so it's not like one localized impact. on your inner shield, it like spreads it out over multiple smaller impact sites. Interesting. But what is this outer shield made out of? Doesn't it get destroyed when a bullet hits it? Yeah. So eventually it can get used up. It cannot last forever. You don't want to get hits twice in the same spot. Though some people are working on these shields that are self-healing that will like repair a hole in themselves.
Starting point is 00:51:11 Interesting. How does that work? Well, they use some sort of gel so that at low temperatures, it's solid and it can act as a shield. but then when something passes through it, the friction of it heats it up. And so it becomes liquid and then it like flows to close up the hole automatically. Oh, whoa. Interesting. Now, of course, you made me think of what if we make it out of marshmallows? Like, would it bounce? Would it get absorbed? And would the heat also, you know, reseal it? I think we're going to have to consult the marshmallow lab at UC Santa Barbara to find out.
Starting point is 00:51:43 I'm thinking like a layer of marshmallows to slow down the meteor, then a layer of chocolate to really take out the kinetic energy and then maybe some graham cracker plates to really fortified. And when we walk into the lab and see somebody heating this thing with a laser and you're like, no, seriously, we're doing space physics here. You see somebody with like a gun pointed at a s'mores sandwich they're doing real science. Yeah, and so this is sort of the state of the art.
Starting point is 00:52:12 It's a whipple shield. You have like a thin outer bumper and then you have a gap. And you can have multiple layers of it, right, to try to like make yourself protected from even higher energy objects. So you can break them up in several stages. You can do things like stuff the gap with materials that could help absorb the energy, like Kevlar, et cetera. Like a bulletproof vest, literally.
Starting point is 00:52:31 Yeah, like a bulletproof vest. But in the end, you have to build shielding because as Vass says, if this thing passes through your ship and punctures it, then boom, you toast. Right. So this could be a real problem. And it is going to be a real problem if we ever do get to try. traveling between the stars. Yeah, I've always wondered, like, if you're going through space and you're going really,
Starting point is 00:52:50 really fast, almost at the speed of light, like if a tiny rock hits you, it's your toast, right? Like, it would have so much energy. Exactly. Unless you have really good shielding at the front of your ship that can break it up so that it becomes like many smaller rocks. And the key here is the pressure applied for each rock, right? It's amount of kinetic energy delivered like per area. Same kinetic energy that's in a bullet isn't a big deal if it hits over a much broader.
Starting point is 00:53:15 area like that's how a bulletproof vest works right it takes a bullet which is trying to put a lot of energy into like one half a square centimeter and it just spreads it out over your entire chest and so that's why when you're hit with a bullet and you're wearing a bulletproof vest you get knocked over right but you don't get penetrated it doesn't like go into your body so that's the idea is to spread out the energy over a larger area but yeah if it gets through then you've been shot with a bullet and you're dead i guess the international space station that's covered in all this shielding yeah they have all sorts of shielding on the space station. They have like a hundred different kinds of shields based on like how much time the astronauts spend there because you have to balance mass, right? These things
Starting point is 00:53:55 are heavy and so lifting them into space costs energy and money. So you don't want a bunch of shielding where you don't need it. So they have like more shielding with the astronauts spend more time and then they have like one special room that's like super shielded. So if they see like a shower of these things coming, the astronauts can like, you know, basically go into their panic room. And recently one of these things like smacked into the one of the windows they have this like observation room in the ISS you have big windows you can look out on the earth and a micrometeator right hit one of those windows and you know took out a little divot and so that was a little bit scary because if it cracks the window it's kind of a panic time there yeah exactly then it's time
Starting point is 00:54:33 to do space marshmallow experiments yeah quickly before you run out of oxygen and like you said these things were out right like they're constantly getting pelted by micrometeers and so they wear out, right? So is the space station, does it have like a maintenance program where it replaces its shields every now and then? Yeah, exactly. You got to replace them and launch new ones. And that's why everything in space is constantly getting degraded. And so when you hear people talking about like, you know, launching space-based solar power or space-based this or space-based that, remember that these things will not last that long in space, this huge radiation to fry the electronics, but there's also basically space sandpaper wearing down
Starting point is 00:55:09 everything. This is, you know, constant wind of stuff just like trying to destroy in space. Remember, the atmosphere protects us from all of this. You know, it's basically a huge shield. It sounds like you want to have maybe some air trapped around your space station to protect you, maybe trapped in the form of marshmallows. Yeah, or maybe we should use the plan. We talked about once instead of flying somewhere else away from our solar system, we should just move the entire solar system. Like we want to go visit another star. We just turn. turn our sun into a rocket. Remember that idea? Yeah. Yeah. We had a whole podcast about it. Yeah. And that would solve a lot of these problems, right? Because you could bring your atmosphere shield with you as you move around
Starting point is 00:55:50 the galaxy. And you also need shielding if you're going out in space by yourself, right? In a space suit. Yeah, that's one of the dangers of these EVAs when the astronauts leave the space station and they're just protected by their suit. They have some shielding on these suits as well, but you know, that's pretty dangerous. If you're hit by a micrometeorite, it could puncture your suit. And so they do have them shielded and they do some calculations. You know, they say we want less than a 1% chance that we're going to lose an astronaut per decade. And that's the threshold they apply to figure out like how much shielding they need. Yeah, I guess it's like walking out into a middle of a gunfight kind of hoping you don't get hit.
Starting point is 00:56:27 Yeah, you're doing science in the middle of a gun range. That's gutsy, Daniel. How dangerous is your day job? I'm not taking any risks like that. I'm just eating too many marshmallows for science. So you're building a little, you know, shielding around your middle section there. Not so little anymore. All right.
Starting point is 00:56:48 Well, that answers a question for boss. I guess micrometers would shred you is the answer to his question. You know, if you're out there without any shielding, eventually, probably something is going to start poking holes or start training your outer suit. That's right. So before you make plans to move out of the Milky Way to avoid the collision with Andromeda, pack a lot of marshmallows and also pack a lot of a lot of shields. And a suit of armor if you can, I guess. Be Iron Man if you can.
Starting point is 00:57:14 Or Carbon Fiberman, maybe. All right, well, that answers all of our questions. Thank you to all of our listeners for sending in their questions. We really enjoy answering them here online. Yeah, please don't be shy. Write to us to questions at danielanhorpe.com and keep being curious. And keep toasting those marshmallows just right. If not while you're awake, then while you're asleep, which hopefully most of you are by
Starting point is 00:57:36 now, if we did our job. Maybe we should be talking quieter and quieter as the podcast gets on. Yes, we should start whispering. Good night. Pleasant dreams. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
Starting point is 00:57:59 Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeart Radio. For more podcasts from IHeart Radio, visit the IHeart Radio. visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:58:59 My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, It's back-to-school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:59:32 Hi, it's honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grazacias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there.
Starting point is 00:59:50 Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dacias Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an I-Heart podcast.

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