Stuff You Should Know - Can we build an elevator to space?

Episode Date: August 2, 2012

With the end of the shuttle program and an International Space Station still in need of supplies, the aerospace industry is working the kinks of out of a century-old idea to build a service elevator from Earth to outer space. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that makes this Stuff You Shouldn't Know. Did you hear Snoop Dogg's son got a football scholarship to, I think, E.C. L.A.? Yeah, so did Peter Deese. No way. Yeah, and actually Sean Combs was the

first to happen. It was about a month ago and a lot of people got upset because they were like, we shouldn't be paying for this millionaire, multimillionaire son to go to college. I could see that. But it was all explained. The sports guys came out and really defended it and said, it's not you paying for it. It's athletic scholarships that are earned by athletes and it's a separate, well, probably, but it was like basically it's not like some kid is missing out on an education because Peter Deese's son earned a football scholarship. Okay. He should be treated the same and so should Snoop Dogg's son. Was there an outcry about Snoop Dogg's son? Not as much because he's the G, you see. Right. No one likes Puffy. I don't want to paper that.

I don't understand. He seems like a nice enough guy. Who's friends with Biggie Smalls? I was in his house once. Did I ever tell you that? No. I was working on a music video with him and I had to deliver as a PA something to his home in Beverly Hills and I went to the door and I rang the doorbell and some really large guy in a warm-up suit and like a Kangol hat invited me in and took my thing and then escorted me out. So I was like in the little foyer and it was like lots of white marble and I mean, it could have been like the king of France living there as far as I know. Yeah. There's like a fountain of Srirac vodka. It was really like pretty plush. Of course,

you know, he's rich. But I took your thing. Is that legal? You talking about everything above the board? Oh, yeah. It was like a videocassette for the shoot or something like that. I wouldn't be delivering anything illegal. Well, I didn't know if he did something illegal to you by taking your thing as you put it. It was all in the up and up. Good going, Chuck. Anyway, I haven't been to Snoop's house yet. Although I did see him one night in Atlanta. You did. Yeah. I can't tell that story though. Oh, really? He lives here part-time, doesn't he? I don't know. I'm used to, I believe. I'm not sure. What a weird start for the show. Yeah, it is a little weird, especially since we're talking about space elevators.

That's nothing to do with it. This is not like we're talking about like P. Funker, George Clinton or anything like that, or even Bill Clinton. Although I bet George Clinton could build a space elevator in his mind, you know. He has many times, Chuck. Well, I've got, I've got something. I have an actual. Okay, a real intro. Yeah. It seems kind of stupid now. Let's hear it. Well, okay. 5.57 a.m. on July 21st, 2011, about a year ago, something big ended. Something that really helped with our childhood, like really was an icon of our childhood. I'm not even going to let you guess. Okay. The space shuttle program. Of course. The program ended. Yeah. It started in 1981 and it went all the way to 2011. Yep. 30 great years. She had a

good run. Yeah. And more than 100 missions. 135. Wow. And actually, there's this awesome thing on Gizmodo. You can watch all of the space shuttle launches at once. Really? It's just like 135 little tiles on the screen. And it's like, you know, starting from countdown to lift off and like, it's got everything. Well, they probably don't have the one ill-fated attempt. There were two accidents. One, yeah, it's there. I think I found it and it just goes dark at about the time the Challenger exploded. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. But it was, this was a huge deal for our childhood, but it was also, you know, a huge deal for the space program because when they launched the first shuttle, I think it was Columbia, it was the first time that anyone

had ever shot a spacecraft into space and then brought it back intact. Yeah. Reusable is huge. Yeah. We're not talking like a capsule where like Larry Hagman comes down and splashes into the sea and then gets out. Yeah. Because those capsules weren't reused. This was like, we have an appropriately named space shuttle. Yeah. Space plane. There and back. Basically. Exactly. It even looked like a plane. So it was a big deal when this happened and approved. Like, okay, we can go to space and back using the same equipment. It brought costs down tremendously. Sure. They're still pretty high. And then the space shuttle program ends and everybody's like, how are we going to get to space and back now, Obama? Yeah. Did you think this through? Right.

And Obama didn't say it, but I'll bet he was thinking it when he was kind of skulking away after being shouted at for basically closing NASA. Not true. He probably thought, have you ever heard of the space elevator dummy? He should say that. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're going to talk about, Josh. And I thought this was a thrilling article. You thought the article itself was thrilling? No, no, no. The concept of the space elevator. Well, it is. Yeah. The article itself was a little meh. It was a little 2005. Yeah. It's a little outdated, but it's pretty cool. So you mentioned the space shuttle. Even though the space shuttle took place over the span of what did you say, 30 years? Yeah, 81 to 2011. The price

of getting the thing going didn't change a whole lot, which was pretty remarkable. Yeah. It stayed about $10,000 per pound. Right. And they originally predicted when they were working on the shuttle program before it started that it was going to be about 50 million a mission. Yeah. It came to about 500 million a mission. Yeah. And every mission, they spent half a billion dollars on the shuttle, the shuttle mission. Yeah. And that $10,000 per pound, 90% of that is fuel. Yeah. Is that the per pound of everything on there? Yeah. I think it's just like that kind of equation. So a lighter astronaut would be cheaper? I don't really think. It's just symbolic. I think. Yeah. I know. I think it's more like, like if you, if you take the full weight of this, this.

Yeah. And divide it by the money spent. Yes. I get it. So in theory, a lighter astronaut would make it cheaper, but not really. Not really. Okay. Because I think they have those astronauts like weighed down to the gram exactly what they wanted in the way. Sure. Like they would probably be like, you need to excrete because you're about to suit up, go excrete. Yeah. You need to pee six ounces right now. I'd be a great astronaut then because I can pee on command. Can you really? Almost always. Okay. So I've got something for you about six ounces. Have you seen the little diagram of a solo cup? You know, the lines on a solo cup? Yes. They're measurements. The bottom one. Are they really? Is an ounce. The top one. So like liquor. Yeah. The middle one,

five ounces for wine. And then I'm not kidding. The lowest top band is for Port wine. That's the 16. No, it's 12 ounces for beer. Huh. I never knew that. Yeah. That's ingenious. It is. I love little tidbits like that. Like the amount of matches in a matchbook is equal to the amount of cigarettes in a pack. I didn't know that makes sense. Sure. Huh. We should just talk about those things all day instead of space elevators. No, let's talk about space elevator. All right. Let's talk about it. Um, quickly a space elevator and we'll get into the specifics here. But what it basically is, it's a, a ribbon, a carbon nanotube composite ribbon, right? Anchored to a platform offshore. Yeah. Way out in the Pacific Ocean. Yeah. And it has a counterweight way up in space,

62,000 miles. And they basically would, that would be the elevator shaft and they would send stuff crawling up and down this ribbon, uh, to outer space. Yes. Have you ever seen somebody like a piano mover lift a piano into a second story apartment that except in space? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah. I don't like the comparison to the game of tether ball here. I thought it was a terrible, terrible analogy. So let's just skip it. Yeah. Because it didn't make much sense to me. Yeah. I think you, I think you said it like basically we're, we're connecting a line between a platform in the ocean and the satellite up in space. Yeah. And we're putting something on it that can go up and down. Yeah. And the whole thing of,

we should just stop right there. The cool thing about this is to me is that every single part of this is feasible right now to do except for the one thing that they need to do it, which are the carbon nanotubes that go 62,000 miles into space. Yes. They're around. Right. But we can't make them that long yet. Right. There's, um, that's, I think you, I think that's, that's a really good point. Like we, all of this is just waiting. Yeah. And I saw a little video that Michio Kaku or Kaku, um, made about this explaining it. I saw that. And he was saying like everything's been surmounted now. Like now it's all in the realm of physical possibility. There's just a few more breakthroughs and it's all carbon nanotubes, which are, we've talked about

graphene before, right? Yeah. Strongest substance known to man or humankind. That's right. Um, it's a one atom thick layer of carbon, incredibly strong. It's like a hundred times stronger than steel at about one fifth of the weight. And a carbon nanotube is a layer of graphene, rolled into a tube. Yep. Like it looks like chicken wire. Exactly. Like a soccer ball, chicken wire. Yeah. It like, if you spread out a length of chicken wire and then roll it up, nanotube, yeah. And we say soccer ball because the shape of the traditional soccer ball, not these crazy ones are used in these days. I don't even recognize it as a soccer ball. Yeah. But the old school soccer ball, that shape is the same, uh, the same shape as,

as these carbon atoms, which is the key to it. It's strength. Exactly. Um, I've been, it, I've seen it described as, um, stiff, but flexible, like a steel guitar string. So it moves, but it's still super, super strong. And, um, even though it's just a few atoms across, they are 10 million times as long as they are wide once you get this thing going. Right. So like a guitar string. Yeah. Well, because these are nanotubes. So like they're diameters, like a few billionths of a meter. I think one billionth. Is that right? Yeah. Because a nano was a billion. A billionth. Yes. Yeah. So, so it's very thin. Very thin. Um, that's the point. That's the point. And ultimately I saw that the 62,000 mile cable would be, it could be as thin

as a piece of saran wrap. Yeah. But it would still be strong enough to not snap. So crazy under its own weight. 62,000 miles. Like there is no quality of material outside of this that wouldn't just snap. Yeah. Like a hair, like pulling one of your hairs in half. Yeah. Agreed. This one will. But the problem is, is you don't make carbon nanotubes. You grow them. Yeah. There's a really cool Nova video too on YouTube where it shows a guy in the lab pulling a braided forest of carbon nanotubes and he starts pulling it and you see it all like coalescing together and he gets like 10 feet away and then it finally snaps. Yeah. And then it just, it's like smaller than a human hair. It just like floats away almost. Okay. So that's, that's longer than I've, I've seen the

record that I saw was four centimeters in length. Yeah. Well, this was, uh, I don't think he, I think it was stretching. I don't think it was the original size. I got you. Okay. So they, they, they, the carbon nanotubes grow and then after like, that's the world record, four centimeters, which is like a 1.6 inches, right? That's short. And then it just stopped growing 1000 miles. One of the, right, exactly. One of the problems with them not being able to figure out why it stops growing is that scientists don't know why it grows in the first place. Like they, they have no idea. They're just like, Oh, this happens when you, when you do this. Right. Um, and they figured out that there are some things like hydrogen gas in certain amounts makes it grow

longer. Um, if you do a little too much hydrogen gas, it won't grow at all. So like there's, they're, they're figuring this out, but they still are really at a point where they're not, they don't understand carbon nanotubes at all. They were only officially discovered in 1991. Yeah. Which is a blip in the scientific community, but we're making headway. And like you said, once the carbon nanotube technology is able to be made into things that are maybe several meters long, or they can figure out how to basically wrap it smaller pieces together in like, you know, how you insulate wires with plastic, something like that without the, the, the alloy coming away, then we'll be able to make this space ribbon, the ribbon for the elevator,

the space ribbon, which essentially is going to be like a, they would braid these things together like a rope, correct? Yes. Which would still be tiny though. Yeah. So it'll either be like, you know, several meters in length, braided together or really short ones braided together, but either way, they're not just going to make one continuous 62,000 meters. There's 62,000 mile strand. Yeah. The one thing I didn't get though, if it's so small, like it needs to be a certain size to have these lifters attached to it, you know, like it can't be a human hair. Right. Like that. What could you attach to that? They have to gain traction with it. Okay. So yeah, there, it couldn't, it couldn't just be as thin as plastic wrap, even though strengthwise. Right.

It could be. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And now I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for

what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends,

and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So that's one of the things they're working on is bulking it up?

I guess so because you have to put the lifter on it like you're saying. So the lifter from now on, everything like this all exists, we can make this today. You and I can make it right now. Well, let's get it into space first. What the idea is that they would spool this thing up once they've created it. They would shoot it into space with some kind of spacecraft. Right. Once it's in space, they would start lowering it back to the earth toward the platform out in the middle of the sea while it's still going out into space. Right, they'd start lowering the ribbon. Yes, so the spool would continue. It's still going in two opposite directions. It'd be like some kid walking the dog. And eventually it gets lowered and there's a dude standing on a platform saying,

and all right, back it down. Then he would take it and clip it on to a sea platform, although it would be much more complicated than that. Think about that operation. So this platform is going to be like 400 miles from any shipping or airlines. Which is important. In the equatorial Pacific. Yes. And a 62,000 mile long strand of rope even say it's as thick as like a cable. One of the cables holding the Golden Gate Bridge. Okay. Imagine catching that. I mean, it's obviously not going to be some guy catching it, but it's still like there's somebody piloting a machine that like and you I don't know how you would move the counterweight around the spool so that it's 62,000 miles away. How are you going to get the thread? This is the most difficult aspect of the whole

program, if you ask me, grabbing that ribbon and connecting it. Although they act like they've got that all figured out. They're like, oh, we had this nanotube that was this long. We're all set. Like they've got a guy out on a platform just sitting around waiting for this thing to come down from space. So that guy catches the ribbon, ties it off, probably with the pretty decent sailor's knot. Yeah. And then you attach the lifter to it, right? That's right. The lifter is a robotic thing. It basically it's sort of like a train track. It uses these traction tread rollers and it would clamp onto this ribbon and through something a little more advanced than a gasoline engine. I think what are they using a free electron laser to create the energy to do

this? Basically what they're doing is they're going to put solar panels but made of stuff that really absorbs light from a laser on the bottom or on the top, probably on both sides, and then they're just going to shoot lasers up and down the ribbon. And then that laser just powers, it's basically like directing sunlight onto photovoltaic cells and then converting that to electricity. It's the same thing. Then it's just plain old mechanical energy. It's like a little motor that would crawl at 118 miles an hour, mind you. It's exactly a crawl. That's 190 kilometers. It would shoot up this ribbon into space to the final destination, which would be anything, I think that first they talked about capturing an asteroid to serve as the counterweight to

what I think is smart, which would potentially be a satellite or the spacecraft that brought it out there to begin with. Yeah, just unfolding or reconfiguring or whatever and then all of a sudden, bam, there's your counterweight. There's the other end of the string, right? Dude, that's it. I mean, after they get this going, they're saying it can basically be a constant operational elevator to the sky, lifting as much as 13 tons of payload at a time, in some cases. Humans maybe? Eventually, yeah. Crazy. I guess the whole point now would be to just shuttle stuff to say the International Space Station. Yeah. Supplies, that kind of thing, gruel, food. Or if you had some sort of asteroid mining operation, you could take your daily haul to

the space elevator to be brought down. The point is this thing could be used for trips to lower Earth orbit every day, several times a day, because I think lower Earth orbit is between 500 and 1500 miles. So that's like four to 12 hours trip, basically. And they're talking about going further than that though. Right, but lower Earth orbit is where all of the, that's where all the action is generally. The problem is, is that's also where all the space debris is. Yeah. And I think, I don't think we mentioned what the best part about all this is, is that it would cost about, the closest estimate I've seen is about $200 a pound to deliver stuff to outer space. And what was the space shuttle cost? $10,000 a pound.

So that's why they're pursuing this, is because it's much, much more affordable. They likened it to the transcontinental railroad back in the day. Right. Linking space to Earth. Yeah. Okay. So the problem's Josh, avoiding junk flying around in space. Like, it would suck if you got this thing all hooked up. And some asteroid came flying out of nowhere and snapped this thing in half. Well, not just asteroids, apparently space debris largely refers to junk, manmade junk. Yeah. And lower Earth's orbit is lousy with it. Oh yeah. One, there was a satellite, an old out of use satellite collided with a new in use satellite recently, and blew it up. And all of a sudden, two pieces became 4,000 pieces. Yeah. And that's nothing. That's a drop in the

bucket. It is. So the problem is, is like even a small like one centimeter diameter piece is a threat to the space elevator. Yeah. So right now, NORAD tracks things as small as 10 centimeters. Did you know that? I didn't once I read this, but I was pretty, I was pretty shocked. But they're going to have to start tracking stuff down to one centimeter. So this is another kind of challenge that I don't think people talk about is tracking space debris. Or they're also proposing that we just go up there and get rid of it. Like pay contractors to go to space and bring these things down and clean up our mess. Exactly. That'd be a unique approach. Right. It's called active avoidance. And it's pretty amazing that you could actually potentially because this thing is tethered

to a C platform, move the C platform to dodge these things. Yeah. But that would mean that there's like some guy whose job it is to like. Yeah. Joystick it. Yeah. That's crazy. It sounds very far fetched, but it's supposedly not super far fetched. No. I mean, this company, Lyftport, they're one of the private firms that are have been, I think they've partnered with NASA for a while until NASA, you know, their funding has dried up to a large degree. So they had to scrap things like partnering with Lyftport. But Lyftport as of now, I think I read in 2011, they have sort of scrapped or not scrapped, but they put on the back burner, the space-to-earth version. And they're working on a lunar version. Oh, yeah. So they want to put one of these on

the moon, which can be done right now. Yeah. If they had the money. That makes sense to me. Not as much gravity. So they don't need the carbon nanotubes. Oh, really? Yeah. They could use this stuff called Xylon. It's a synthetic polymer. And apparently they could like do this within the decade. Like everything's in place. It's just a matter of doing it. Wow. So yeah, I thought about having one that goes from the earth to the moon or one that goes from the earth to Mars or, you know, and you just, well, and then from the moon to Mars, you know, you could connect them. Right. Like station one is here, then you have another one that goes there. And the ideas are going to build a bunch of these. Right. That's the idea. Because if one goes down, because of some space

debris, hey, no problem. We've got another one that we built even cheaper over here in this part of the ocean. Right. So that's the idea. What's awesome is this is, I mean, this is far reaching. It sounds futuristic. It's actually pretty smart, simple idea like where it's going to build an elevator that goes to space. And it's actually kind of an old idea. There was a Russian scientist named Konstantin Siokovsky who proposed this in 1895. Yeah, I heard about that. And then it kind of went, I think everybody thought he was a crackpot for a while. They thought Da Vinci was too though. Yeah. Or actually, did they? No, not Da Vinci. They think he was a genius back then too?

Probably. Except for his flying machine, I think. Well, that's what I was talking about. But then Arthur C. Clark comes along and writes about this in Fountains of Paradise in 1978. And he was, he very clearly saw like the big problem was the ribbon. If you could figure out the ribbon, everything else would be fine. Which is still the problem. Yeah. Arthur C. Clark way ahead of his time. Man. So that's pretty much it. I mean, if they get this lunar we're going there, they're talking about deep space exploration from a lunar based system, which, you know, the benefit there is, is it costs a lot of money to get from here to the moon. If you could shuttle the components of a rocket up to the moon and

just get it going up there, it'd be a lot cheaper. Right. We talked about that with asteroid mining, that that was another idea is you could launch things from these asteroids or whatever. Because a vast majority, remember 90% of the weight of a space shuttle is in the fuel? Yeah. Almost all of that is just used within the first like 10 miles. Yeah. Then after that, you start to escape Earth's orbit and don't need much juice. Exactly. So, um, yeah, if you could, if you could get rid of all that, like you just drop the cost tremendously. Pretty cool stuff. Space. I know. I mean, I'm curious to see within a decade, if we're going to have a space elevator from the moon to something else, we will be riding one.

You think so? Yeah. Well, it all depends on funding. That's like these ideas are all great in practice, but unless you have billions of dollars to get it going. Right. But think about Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars. Sure. Um, Elon Musk. Kurt Cameron. What's the James Cameron? Elon Musk. These guys have cash and this is what they're putting their money into this kind of thing. So I don't think it's going to come down to NASA funding. I think it's going to come down to the will of guys like Kurt Cameron. Well, Kurt Cameron does not have billions of dollars, but he does have a fine collection of faith-based movies. Yeah. Direct to video. Oh, no. That you can check out. But not the dirty kind of direct to video. No, no, no.

The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, pay dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember

Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends vapor because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I guess it's about it, right? It's pretty much. I'm looking forward to it. Private space exploration is definitely the way of the future. We should put in a request for this article to be updated, but I'm afraid to think they'll be like,

have at it. Yeah, I'm afraid to do that, too. Well, if you want to read a hilariously out-of-date article on how stuff works, that still captures what's going on with the space elevator. Oh, yeah, sure. And with some cool artists rendering of stuff, you can type in space elevator that's at the handy search bar and a great little website called HowStuffWorks.com. And I said search bar, which means it's time now for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this Dead Sea follow-up. And I should mention we got a lot of emails from Dead Sea visitors and tourists and a lot of photos. And one thing we did not cover because I haven't been there and experienced this, but we said swim in the Dead Sea a lot. There ain't a lot of swimming going on in the Dead Sea.

There's a lot of floating and flailing because they just say it's really disorienting because you're so used to the way you move in water and all of a sudden it's totally different. So people are like gasping and eventually they'll learn to trust and relax and float on their back. You don't want to go on your stomach. You don't want to try and swim. And you don't want to get it in your face because it will really sting your eyes and it tastes really bad. And we had this one night there and his husband was suffering. They advised you not to go on with cuts or open sores obviously. Her husband was suffering from a little, it's called many different things. When you walk a lot and you get chafed between the legs, it goes by many different crude names. He had a bad case

of this and didn't tell his family that he was traveling with his wife and he went in the Dead Sea, promptly got out and the family was like, where did the son-in-law go? And she was like, maybe he's just not into it. All right. So this is from Daniel, but thanks to everyone else who wrote in. Just finished the Dead Sea podcast, had a couple of interesting tidbits. You briefly mentioned the Great Salt Lake when talking about the high salinity, the Dead Sea. These two lakes actually have quite a bit in common. Both lakes are located in a desert region, although the elevation is drastically different. Like the Dead Sea, the Great Salt Lake here in Utah has a very high salt content, about 27%, making it hard for anything but halophilic bacteria and some

brine shrimp to grow. This guy's a graduate student, by the way, at BYU. Both lakes are fed mainly by a smaller freshwater lake, roughly 50 miles away. The Dead Sea being fed by the Sea of Galilee to the north by way of the Jordan River. The Great Salt Lake is fed by Utah Lake to the south, also by the Jordan River. Coincidence? Not sure. In both cases, the water leaves the lake only through evaporation. And like the Dead Sea, there are many areas, the Great Salt Lake, that are quite stinky at times, mainly in the muddy waters where the level is low. The Great Salt Lake is also dense enough for you to float with little to no effort. So if you are not able to ever make it over to Europe to visit the Dead Sea, I would say the Middle East, wouldn't you? Sure. You can head

on over for a float in its little American cousin out here in Utah. Keep up the good work, guys. I really enjoy the wide variety of topics. And that is from Daniel, who is a grad student at BYU, studying microbiology. So good for you, my friend. Nice. Much smarter than I am. Yeah. Well, yeah. Grad students, I have to say. English undergrad, microbiology grad. That is a well-rounded human being. Agreed. Oh, wait. You're the English undergrad. Yeah. Let's put the two of you together. You're a well-rounded human being. Exactly. If you have some ideas of how to put me and Chuck together to form another superhuman, we want to hear them. Also, if you just want to say hi or you have something cooler, interesting to tell us,

great fact. We love those. Love them. That you'd like us to tweet. Yeah. Or put on Facebook. You can send those to via Twitter, S-Y-S-K podcast, via Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email, electronic mail, to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boring. I'm probably on TV right now.

David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J, Quinta Brunson, and so many more new episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.