Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: What's the 10,000 Year Clock?

Episode Date: May 6, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, in a desert in Texas a 200-feet-tall clock is being constructed deep inside a mountain. Once completed, it will keep time for the next 10,000 years, even if there are no humans around to use it. Tune in as Chuck and Josh get to the bottom of the Long Now. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 gonna 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. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And my pick for SYSK Selects this week is the one we did on the 10,000 year clock. Just looking back, I think it's probably one of the coolest episodes we've ever done.

And it's just kind of me and Chuck operating on all cylinders talking about something we're super jazzed about. So we hope you enjoy it. And my apologies for being sick in this one. It's still good. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from housestuffworks.com.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And that makes this Stuff You Should Know. That's right. How are you, sir? Besides a little under the weather. Other than, I'm fine.

I've got that. You remember in the Happiness Audio book, we talked to a guy, David Pierce, from Transhumanist, about separating no-susception pain, like the physical experience of pain, from suffering, like just getting rid of suffering. Right. Like, I've reached that point in being sick,

where I see how intertwined the two are. Like, I just keep saying, like, whoa is me. Like, I am suffering. It's pretty bad. So do you feel bad, like, in a flu sense, or is it just the head full of stuff that makes it unbearable? No.

Luckily, I don't have any flu symptoms. Yeah, because that's what puts me under, is when you literally feel those aches. And your skin is really sensitive. But a bad cold was just what I had before you. We're taking turns. I don't know if I got it from you or not. I doubt it.

Air travel often will do that. So, yeah, I got mine after air travel, too. Jerk, stupid air travel. It's 2012. You know, can we do better with the recirculated air on a plane? Maybe. Yeah, just like surely you can crack a window a little bit

or something, right? Get some fresh air in there. There's got to be something there. So I guess we should do this one. Yes. We're stalling. No, we're not. You know why I'm stalling?

What? Because we got all the time in the world, man. Slow down. That's what I was saying. Yeah, I'm just reiterating. Well, thank you. There's no hurry. There's no hurry, Josh.

Well, let's just sit here for a little while. We're in the foundation of the long now. Your misreading is the long now foundation. I like the foundation of the long now. No, it's just the longer. You know why? Because it's longer. Yeah, it is.

It's a couple extra words there. Named by Brian Eno. Yeah, the great musical composer, father, maybe, of techno producer. I think he's called a rock musician in this article. Well, the guy, I watched a SETI talk from Alexander Rose, who you said is the project manager. Of the Long Now Foundation's Clock of the Long Now project.

Which we're going to talk about. And when he was doing his presentation, he mentioned Brian Eno. And he said, who is an ambient music guy? Is that what he called him? Yeah, I was like, dude, that's Brian Eno. Come on. What did he write?

What was his album, Music for Spaceports? Something like that. That was a solo thing after Roxy Music. No, wait, Brian Eno was in Roxy Music? Yeah. I know Brian Ferry was. They were. And they famously butted heads.

And so Brian Eno left, I think, after one album did solo work until he hooked up with you two in the talking heads and as a uber producer. Cool. Man. Way to go, Chuck. Thanks. That was a great explanation of Mr. Brian Eno.

The ambient music guy. Right. But yeah, you're right. He's the one who coined the name the Long Now. And this whole foundation, this group of people, the Long Now Foundation, or the foundation of the Long Now, are dedicated to forcing, hoisting upon humanity. Like you were saying, the idea of slowing down,

of taking a longer view of everything, the Long Now. Yeah. And I think the way they put it was to try and think in the terms of if you live to be 1,000 years old. Right. So long term thinking for the world is better than short term thinking. Although, I would argue, you need both.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, because it's like, exactly when should I get out of the way of the speeding car? Yeah, we don't live to be 1,000, that is. But I do like the spirit behind it. I have a question for you. Would you want to live to be 1,000 years old? If we age to like normally and would be like the credit

you don't turn into like the dungeon master from the cartoon. You mean if it was like 1,000 years old would be the equivalent of like 100? Sure. Heck yeah. Would you really? Yeah, why not? Well, I can think of a lot of reasons why not.

Name one. Boredom. You'd be worried about boredom? Yeah. Wow. A boredom. I mean, think about all the stuff you can do in a century. Now multiply that by 10.

I know. There's a finite amount of stuff to do on this planet. I just, well, I think everybody would end up with huge massive drug problems by age 400. You might be right. But hey, a 400-year-old should be able to handle his H. So OK, despite how you feel about living to 1,000, Long Now Foundation is kind of into that way of thinking.

Like you said, that long-term thinking can lead to short-term gain. And a good example of this is climate change. So I think one of the people who are on the side of or who are in favor of taking great action against climate change would say that if we can take steps now, if we can think further out, then we'd be able to mitigate this.

But we're not. We're thinking about very immediate concerns, which some are reasonable, like economic concerns, that kind of thing. Yeah, not pooping it. But it's just two schools of thought. Exactly. So you can kind of understand where

the Long Now Foundation would side or sit on that debate. But what they figured out is that we basically, we humans, to think like this, we need something to lead our minds in that direction. Because just saying, man, what's it going to be like 10,000 years from now? It's like, who cares? I'm thinking about food.

Like, I am literally right now. I just posed a question, and I'm thinking about food already. Which is not long term. Right. But if there were, say, like a 200 foot clock in front of me that I knew was designed to tick off 10,000 years, I might take a much longer view of things. A beacon, if you will.

A beacon, indeed. So the Long Now Foundation has undertaken its flagship project. And there's a bunch of other projects, too. Yes, all that. Called the Clock of the Long Now, a.k.a. the 10,000 year clock. Very cool. Yeah.

I think it's pretty awesome. I can tell you're a fan. Well, if for no other reason than to get attention for their foundation and their school of thought, you know? Right. And that's the whole point. Yeah. Like, it's gotten some pretty good attention.

I think a lot of people have heard of the 10,000 year clock already. But it's actually being created, and one's already done. Yeah. A tabletop version. Yeah, tabletop, meaning eight feet. Right. Well, the prototype.

Yeah. And the whole thing was proposed by a guy named Danny Hillis. Back in 1995, wrote in a, like, a Wired Magazine Scenarios article, the idea for this, the concept behind it. And there's been come this kind of rallying cry that he wants a cuckoo to come out every millennium. Everybody that shows up in every article, I've read on it. That's what they say.

That's his thing. Like, he wants a cuckoo to come out on the millennium. What's crazy is I don't see anywhere in here that there actually will be a cuckoo. Yeah, I didn't see that either. So poor Danny Hillis will have to wait. But he's the guy behind the Long Now foundation, right? Yeah, the first thing that I noticed when I look at any

of the writings about them in the Long Now clock is the zero that they just placed in front of the current year. So in 1995, when he wrote that article, he proposed, you know, not that they actually change it, but the way they look at things is 01995. And just seeing a date written in that way kind of makes me breathe a little relief.

Because all of a sudden 2012 doesn't look like the future. 0212 looks like, oh, well, we got a long way to go. Like we're backwater, yokels, time-wise. Yeah, does that make sense? Oh, yeah, totally. Because I think they said we've been around, like civilization's been around for 10,000 years or so. So essentially, this clock would represent our entire past.

Well, yeah. Moving forward. Yeah, it would place us directly in the middle of the two. Which I love. So I was curious about why they're not starting over then. Why not start at 0? You're in that clock starts.

You want to name it a clock, don't you? It's a millennium clock. 2,000-year clock, yeah. Maybe because they don't want to disrespect time served, if you will. So what they've come up with is a clock, then, that will run until the year 12,000. 12,012, 12,015, depending on how fast they can get this thing

built. Yeah. But that's their idea is to come up with a 10,000-year clock, a clock that will run without human intervention for 10,000 years, one that can be easily understood by anybody. Which I think that they could have done something slightly different with the design.

Like my eyes crossed when I look at the dial face, yeah. I feel like I'm living in 0,212. Agreed. But there's some challenges to all this, right? Like humans haven't really made too many things that have lasted 10,000 years yet. Yeah. Why should this be any different?

Well, you outlined a couple of the base. I think they have five basic principles they were aiming for. And you outlined a couple of them there to work relatively free of regular maintenance was one. Right. Simple enough to maintain that if all of a sudden we go into some post-apocalyptic world where there's no technology, we could still maintain it.

Right. They were saying they estimate it couldn't go back prior to the Bronze Age. But as long as we have Bronze Age technology, which begin in 3,500 BC, and the hallmark of the Bronze Age is metallurgy and black magic, and metal or separating ores from metal and metal alloys. OK.

Well, dude, if we're sent back beyond the Bronze Age, then this clock's not going to matter very much. No. You know what I'm saying? A close inspection of the operational principles should reveal the principles behind its operation. It's a little bit of wordplay there. That sounds like Danny Hillis.

And then what else? No matter when someone comes upon it, it should be able to be improved upon. And finally, it should be able to be constructed small enough to fit on a table. That's what the prototype. So success. Yeah, success.

And then for the rest of them, they're kind of abandoning that. Because like we said, the one that's being constructed right now is going to be 200 feet tall. Yes. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Powering such a clock, if you're looking at 10,000 years, I think it seems kind of likely that civilization will suffer at least one collapse, if not several.

And we have no idea how far back humans will be set, hopefully not before the Bronze Age. But so this clock needs to somehow gain power from the environment. And Danny Hillis came up with a bunch of different ideas, right? Like atomic power. Yeah, most of them.

That's poor manageability and transparency. Most of these are scalability. Like they may have been good ideas, but they're just too large to fit their needs. Either that, either they're too big, or they're already, like they're perfect for this clock, but you can't use that to power maybe. If something's added on that requires more power,

TS, you already are using all the power you can. Or you can't scale it up, it wouldn't work the same. Maybe exactly. So that would be chemical, pre-stored potential, geothermal, tidal gravitational changes, and seismic, and plate tectonic. So those all had poor scalability. So says Hillis.

You can't use pressure change because you would need like a bellows or a seal. You want this thing to be as simple as possible. Because as any engineer knows, the more moving parts you have, the more parts you have that can break down. And the flow of water, that's a good one, right? There should be water on the planet for 10,000 years. Sorry, you're exposing the clock to water.

So inherently, water is a self-defeating energy source. Same with wind. Yeah. Any kind of exposure to weather. That's why this thing is buried inside of a mountain. Right. So what did he come up with? He came up with two ideas to power this.

Humans. That's one. Yeah, human winding. That's one. A novel idea. The other is temperature change. That's right. But yeah, he said his favorite was human winding

because it fosters responsibility for the clock. Yeah, which is a great, great idea, I think. Because ultimately, the clock is for humans, even though it's sequestered in a mountain and it can run by itself for 10,000 years if no human ever lays eyes on it. Right. It's for humans.

And we'll explain all that. If it sounds like we're talking out of both sides of our mouths, we'll explain all that. By saying, doesn't need humans, yet it does need humans. I bet people can't wait. I can just feel the tension. I know. The hairs on the back of their necks are bristling.

All right, so for the prototype, it's sort of like an old school clock in a way. They use to helical weights similar to the weight gravity systems, just like clock towers, old clock towers. And they drive the energy going up and down in these tubes, which will drive the pendulum, right? Yeah. And ultimately, the prototype, the drive assembly,

as you'd call it, it served its purpose. There was a prototype in that it said, OK, we need to do something different. Right. And they have. But for the prototype, yeah, there's helical weights, which I'm not familiar with, are you? No.

OK. But the prototype also still had a solar synchronizer, which we'll talk about later, and a pendulum, which we'll also get a little more into. But the pendulum is kind of key to keeping the time. We should do that now. You want to? Yeah, yeah.

OK, so back in the 1600s, people were trying to figure out how to keep time better than they have been more accurately. And somebody, a Dutch astronomer, back in the day, the best astronomers were Dutch. Christian Huygens. He said, hey, why don't you try using a pendulum? Because a pendulum has a pretty cool property

in that the only two things that affect the swing of a pendulum, nothing else affects the swing of a pendulum, not changes in temperature, not humidity, not anything else, except the force of gravity and the length of the pendulum. I didn't know this. Well, I didn't either. If you take a pendulum and put it just

about anywhere on Earth, you're going to find that the gravitational field is so close to the same that a pendulum will swing the same way anywhere on Earth. At the same rate, too, right? Right. So what affects that rate, the period, which is the amount of time it takes for a pendulum to swing all the way from one side to the other.

So not just one side, it's both. That's a pendulum's period. So really, the only thing that affects it is the length of the pendulum, the shorter the pendulum, the faster they go. The longer the pendulum, usually, the longer it takes. And once you get a pendulum going, which doesn't require a lot, it will keep going. Yes.

It takes a very small amount of energy input to keep it going, right? Yeah, which is perfect for something like a 10,000-year clock. Right. So if you put a pendulum and attach it to something called an escapement, right? Yeah, this is the part I got confused on.

OK, well, check this out. So you have a pendulum, and you've figured out the exact length you need for a pendulum's period to take one second. To take off one second on a second hand. That's exactly right. OK. So you can attach the pendulum to this thing called an escapement.

An escapement is just like a wheel with some gears to it, right? And these gears are attached to the second hand. OK. OK. And the escapement's always wanting to go forward. But it's being held in place by the pendulum, which is attached to an anchor.

But we'll just call it the pendulum, right? OK. So as the pendulum swings one way, the escapement gear is being held in place. And when it swings the other way, which is the end of a second, the pendulum opens up, allowing the escapement gear to tick forward one tooth, thus moving the second hand forward one movement in a second.

So that's how you do it. And if you're very, very clever, you can design the escapement gear so that as it moves, as it escapes, it also nudges that anchor that's attached to the pendulum, transferring energy back to the pendulum to keep it swinging. And that's the basics of a clock. A pendulum clock.

A mechanical clock. Right. Yeah. And that's what they use for the 10,000 year clock, too very smartly and appropriately, too. Yeah. I love how when they design something to work 10,000 years, they go back to Bronze Age.

And well, this wasn't Bronze Age. But a lot of just old mechanical technology. Well, yeah. I mean, I think we've advanced in a lot. I mean, if you're going to make a digital clock, yeah. We know what we're doing. But how are you going to power it? You want to just use some really old, perfect technology.

Exactly. That's called long thinking, Josh. Right. On the podcast, Paydude, 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 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.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So we've got a winding and temperature changes, differences in temperature changes,

that are powering this clock now, right? That's right. And then those are the two principles that are powering the clock. And they're different parts of the clock that need to be powered. Like your favorite, the Geneva wheels, right? Yeah, Geneva wheel sounds intimidating, a Geneva drive,

until you look it up on YouTube and see what it is. And it's really just, and it can come in all kinds of shapes. And in this case, it's sort of the shape of a star. And imagine each point of a star has a notch cut in it. And sitting underneath that is a wheel, a drive wheel, that spins with a peg coming out of it. And it slips into the little slot on the star, advancing at one little click, keeps turning,

and spins out of it. And then by the time it comes back around, it slips back into the next one. So it's just a slow ticking around in a circle. Right, and so there's, I think, 20 of these for the big clock. But they're designed with a bunch of holes in them, the pins and holes system, basically, which essentially is making a mechanical,

babbage-difference engine, like an early computer, like a punch hole computer. Yeah, that's what they use before calculators. They use mechanical summers or adders. And this is you, but it's adding in binary ones and zeros. So it's carrying out digital calculations through mechanical means, which is astounding. And they're using this astounding technology

to power basically what, in this article that we're reading, it's the world's slowest computer. And that computer's being used to calculate an algorithm that will produce a different chime, using 10 different chimes, or two bells, so that this thing supposedly will never make the same chime twice. Yeah, I think the algorithm maxes out at 3.5 million chimes, of course, designed,

composed by Brian Eno, the ambient music guy. And that doesn't have anything to do with the powering of the clock. That's just the chimes. No, but the dirty secret of the Long Now Foundation is that 3.5 million different possible chime tones, or combinations, is about 90,000 days short of 10,000 years. Oh, really?

Yeah. What's 90,000 days in years? I don't know. Do you have a binary adder? 365. We need some Geneva wheels in here stacked. Well, they're not telling anyone that, though, obviously. No, they did, actually.

Oh, did they? Yeah, they're like, you know, this thing's not going to chime every day, so I'm sure it'll be fine. But basically, no one's speaking to Brian Eno right now. He's been demoted to ambient music guy from legendary producer. So the prototype, that's the prototype. It's 8 feet tall, roughly, 8 and 1 half.

It is at the Science Museum in London. You can go see it there. And it first started ticking on December 31, 1999, or 01999, if you're a long hour. And it worked at Gong twice at the turn of the millennium to indicate that two millenniums are now passed, which is funny, because technically, the millennium didn't start until 2001.

That's true. But they don't care. They don't care about a lot of stuff I'm finding out. So let's talk about the real deal. When this article was written, the real deal was just proposed, and it was going to be about 60 feet tall. That was two years ago. Well, that one is the one in Nevada.

I think it's still going to be 60 feet tall. Oh, really? Oh, they just decided to start on the Texas one first? Yeah. Gotcha. Because Bezos was like, hey, here's 42 million bucks. Can we get started? Well, go ahead and spill the beans there.

I just did. Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is heavily involved in this to the tune of money and it being built on a mountain, inside a mountain, in West Texas on his property. Yeah. So he owns it, sort of. Kind of.

I get the impression that, yes, he definitely has. This project is his, but it's one of many that are going to be built around the world. Like they got approval to build one in a Smithsonian just this past year. Oh, cool. And also, Bezos, by the way, he said that the two are unrelated.

It's just a cool coincidence or whatever. But he's also building a spaceport by the mountain, too. And he says that's unrelated to the clock. Yeah. He just said, hey, why not? There's a spaceport. There's going to be a 10,000-year clock. We'll see what happens.

But if you want to see, he's funding this space program called Blue Origin. And you know how in the 50s, science fiction rockets would land just going straight up and straight down? Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. OK.

That's what his rockets do. And you can see video of it. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Really? That I'm like, is this real? We're pretty good at after effects these days. Right. But it's got to be.

I think it's real. Yeah. So when you've got that kind of dough, you can make it happen. BlueOrigin.com. I will look that up, sir. So like you said, Bezos is, or the one in Texas, I guess, is what you should call it. The one that's under construction is going

to be about 200 feet tall. Yeah. And it's out in the middle of nowhere, very purposefully. Yeah, I think it's hours from the nearest airport. It requires a full day's hike to reach the mouth of the cave opening, which is like a steel door. And it's a mountain rising up from the desert. So you have a 1,500 foot climb just to get

to the steel door, the first door. Yeah, so vandals, not only will you be trespassing, but you need to be a mountaineer if you want to go mess with this thing. Yeah. Which we don't encourage anyone to do. But they have, the first door is going to be jade, which is pretty cool.

It's going to be hidden behind the rock face. So like you have to, I guess you could stumble upon it. I think that's part of the idea. The fun. Yeah. But you will know when you do stumble upon it that there's something very cool there because there's going to be a carved jade door in the rock

face. Well, they're going to open it up when they finish, they said. They are, but I'm saying like if the location or the idea or anything you have to do with the clock, it'll still be there. Sure. And people can find it accidentally. Yeah, what really bothers me about this

is I'm not going to know the result, you know? If you lived to 1,000, maybe you would. But I can't live to 10,000, regardless. But does that bother you? Yeah, like I want to know how this ends. I want to know if in 10,000 years it is still running. Well, what happens if, OK, so just the clock. Yeah, just the clock.

You don't care what happens like 10,500 years from now. No, just the clock. OK. So if you want to access this thing, you go through those two doors, it's in complete darkness. It's not all lit up, which is going to cool. Right. Because I guess they don't want any kind of electricity

to be needed. Obviously, while they're building it, they're using stuff. For a visitor later on? Yeah, exactly. A post-bronze age visitor. It's going to be housed in a 500-foot tall tunnel about 12 feet in diameter.

Yeah, a vertical tunnel. Yeah. That's like a shaft. Basically, it's a 12-foot diameter shaft that's 500 feet tall. Very tall. And it's got a very precise rock staircase that was carved with a robot slicing machine. Did you see video of that thing?

Yeah. It was awesome. And it starts at the top, which is cool. Basically, it starts at the top with this just big hunk of rock and just cuts in a circle down, down, down one stair at a time. Like the golden ratio kind of, like a nautilus. Yeah, very cool. Yeah.

And so that's how you're going to access the gears. So let's go ahead and get to that. Let's go ahead and get to the counterweights, at least. Well, that's the first thing you would kind of come upon if you walked in on this thing and it's completed. And the counterweights are made up of stone discs, each about the size of a car, each weighing about 10,000 pounds. And we said that winding is winding and differences

in temperature change are the principles that provide energy for this clock. Yeah. But the weights are what keep it running. Right. And when you come upon the weights, you're going to come upon a platform. And you know those old movies or whatever

where there's slaves or somebody on a ship and they're having to crank a wheel. Like there's three guys all moving in the same direction and each one has like a pole that is pushing. Yeah, like a horizontal wheel. Right, yeah. They're going to have one of those for visitors to crank. And that will raise these enormous counterweights.

And once they're fully raised, they'll have enough stored potential energy to power the clock for about a century without a single dash of sunlight or another human visitor. So that's essentially winding the clock. I think they said two or three people. It takes to do this. Yeah.

And it's what's it called, a capstan? I think that that is what it's called. It's called a capstan, right? Yeah. That's the horizontal wheel that people, yeah. So it's pretty cool, like it requires human intervention. But as we said, and let's go ahead and spill the beans how that works, if no one came around ever,

it would still run because of differences. And it collects sun's rays through a prism that sticks out at the top. Yeah, through a sapphire cupola. I bet that looks nice. Yeah. That's the only part that's visible from outside, they said. Yes.

And it collects the sun's rays and then channels them down through metal rods. And the difference in the interior cave temperature and the temperature that collects? Between day and night, the changes in day and night, which is pretty ingenious because if you think about what there probably still will be over 10,000 years, there probably will still be day and night.

Yes. And that's ultimately what powers this with no human intervention. Yeah, exactly. This dude, the Alexander, what was his name, Rose? I think so. He said that what they had to figure out, there's something called the equation of time.

And it's not constant. Like the Earth is slowing its rotation by about a second every couple of hundred years. And all this stuff sounds like, yeah, big deal. But when you look on a 10,000 year timeline, it is a big deal. Yeah. So the Earth is slowing by about a second

every couple of hundred years. It's also processing on its pole every 26,000 years. So they have to take that into account. And then climate change, if poles continue to melt, water's going to be pushed out. It's going to rotate even slower. So what they figured out, there was a variance. Well, normally there's a variance of about 10 or 15

minutes throughout the course of a year from where the sun should be. And they designed this thing to self-correct to still be able to pick up the sun's rays. Yeah, pretty ingeniously. But they needed to do it on a 10,000 year scale. So they basically formulated this massive equation. And they figured out how time would evolve over 10,000

years, according to all these variables. And they found out it is a plus or minus, and this is a worst case scenario with climate change, of 23 days from where they think the sun should be over 10,000 years. Which means that the clock is way off by the end of the 10,000 years. Well, but they accounted for that with this equation.

They did. And the way that they accounted for it, though, also is through the solar synchronizer. So every sunny day at noon time, the sun will hit that prism, will heat up this little rod that sends a signal to the clocks that are working. So the smart part of the clock that keeps time all the time, no matter what, and says, hey, it's solar noon.

And the clocks readjust itself. So the most it's ever going to get off is, say, however many days or maybe a couple of centuries without sunlight, if there's some sort of horrible nuclear winter or whatever. But let's say a couple hundred years without sunlight. The next time there's sunlight, it'll say, oh, it's noon, and the clock will just readjust itself.

Kind of wake back up. Yeah, that's crazy. But it will go back to, oh, OK, it's noon now. No matter how far it drifted, it will now know it's noon, solar noon. So awesome. It is very awesome. And the differences in temperature also,

it's called the thermoelectric effect. The electrons, if you have a thermoelectric device, electrons will go from the hot side to the cold side. And you know, as well as I do, that the flow of electrons equals electricity. That's right. So that will keep things in check as well. That will keep the inner workings powered, too.

But they thought of everything. They did. And they also thought of ways to store energy or to keep from using energy, saving energy is another way to put it. Well, yeah. I mean, over time, I think they said that if the difference in temperature is great enough,

it will just store that temperature. And over a timeline, if that keeps happening, it won't even have to stop and catch up. It'll just start operating fully mechanically by itself. Right. So in the order of self-winding, essentially. Exactly. So in the order of preference or of importance,

the solar energy or the diurnal temperature change energy goes from the inner workings of the clock. Yes. Spills over to the weights. Yes. And then if the weights are wound, then you will have the Geneva drive operating, right? That's right.

So it goes basically like the clock knowing the correct time, the clock operating and showing the correct time, or whatever information that it's supposed to, and then the clock making sounds. Those are the levels of importance as far as energy distribution is. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

Because the chimes, they've got to come last. They do. It's nice and all, but they're also they're meant for human consumption. But if enough of that diurnal temperature difference energy spills over to the weights, then the clock will ostensibly chime when nobody's there. That's pretty cool.

That's very cool. And next to his little rocket station, right? He's got it all figured out. So while we mentioned the Geneva gears on the main, the 200 foot when they're building, these are about eight feet in diameter each one weighing about 1,000 pounds. There's 20 of them, right?

Yeah. And it's pretty remarkable. I mean, if you think if you've ever been inside a clock tower and seen that, it's like imagine that times 20. And remember, the Geneva drive system is the mechanical computer that's calculating the algorithm to play the chimes. It's the whole reason it's there.

That's right. And it's being powered by winding or the weights, winding the weights. Yes. OK. So if you keep climbing up in this thing, you will get to the primary chamber. And that is where you finally see the face of the clock,

which is the most important thing if you're building a clock. It's also the most baffling thing. Yeah. I mean, the face of this clock is or if it's anything like the prototype, it's not like any clock I've ever seen. It's very awesome. I mean, like you can clearly say, oh, I see the century

and I see the millennium, maybe even the year. But like when I get to the star field, I imagine like so the star field's being displayed. Yeah. I get that. I think that that means that if it were nighttime and you could see the star field and you went outside and looked up, you would see the same stars, right?

Right. OK, but the horizons are what's throwing me off the most, the REIT, R-E-T-E. Yeah. It shows horizons. I don't understand what that means or what you're going to get from that. Fortunately, and I haven't seen it,

but supposedly there's going to be a manual or some sort of explanation. Yeah, I'm sure they'll have it some sort of. Once they open it up for people to come visit, there'll be some like little button you push and it'll be Morgan Freeman's voice. Explaining how it works or what the horizon means. Right.

If you want to know the time of day, though, you have to ask the clock, Chuck. I thought this was one of the coolest parts of this whole deal because they built it to operate at its most frugal over the years, obviously. And one thing that you don't need is a current readout if no one's there to read it. And so they says, well, why don't you ask the clock,

like you said? So whatever time you see when you approach the clock is the last time that it read when someone wound, not the clock itself, but the clock's face. Right? The display. Yeah, the clock's display. So there's two ways to wind it.

The cap stand that raises the weight. Yeah. And then there's a little hand wheel that just one single person can do to wind the clock, the clock's display. And it'll correct itself and say, all right, it's now whatever time it is. And here's the horizon, which Josh didn't get.

Here's where the moon and sun phases are. Here's what year it is with a zero in the front of it. It's pretty cool. It's very cool. So the clock always knows what time it is. It's just not necessarily displaying it. Yeah, it's just not gonna tell you. Until it's asked.

Pretty cool. So Chuck, there's some pretty obvious reasons to choose the inside of a mountain to put this clock in. Earthquake protection, nuclear bomb protection. Mountains, they're long lasting. But there's other reasons that they chose the interior of a mountain as well. Like the differences in temperature

between seasons and day within the mountain are very minimal, which means that you're not gonna have a freeze-thaw cycle, which is apparently very corrosive. Yeah, but it's great enough to where you're gonna get the energy out of it. Right, especially at the top. So remember, the mountain top, from the entrance, the bottom of the clock, the top is 500 feet,

but the clock's only 200 feet. So the extra 300 feet is above there is where the temperature differences will really be noticeable. Right. So they picked a very good place. And also the one in Nevada has got similar conditions, I think, which is why they picked that.

Hydride desert. Hydride desert. And then the parts. This is remarkable to me. If you're gonna construct something that lasts for 10,000 years, you're not gonna wanna throw a bunch of 30-weight oil in there because oil has the potential to fail and leak

and oil will attract dirt like crazy. Yep, and little hairs and like fuzzies from your sweater. Tiny little pieces of grit over 10,000 years will stop any machine from running. Right. So what they did was they, borrowing from NASA, who originally developed ceramic bearings to use on satellites,

so, because you don't wanna have satellites that need oiling either, they used ceramic, which nowadays can be harder than diamonds, ceramic bearings, like the moving parts are ceramic. Yeah, and remember earlier, I said like, humans haven't made too many things that have lasted 10,000 years.

Ceramic pot shards are one example of something. Boom. We have pot shards that are like 17,000 years old. And that's just like from a pot. And what they're making today should be able to last way longer. Way longer. And because these parts move so slowly,

they don't require any lubrication. So the ceramic ball bearings are keeping the metal parts away from one another. Because if you have two like metals that are in contact and aren't moving really, like the millennium dial, basically won't move the whole time you or I are alive or our children are alive. Right.

And if you have the same kind of metal and like one gear touching the other gear, they're just going to fuse together. You know what? Microvibration. I did not enlighten me. No, it's microvibration. Like it's not moving quote unquote,

but microvibration over 10,000 years will cause it to weld itself. That's pretty cool. And that's if it's a like metal. And if they're unlike, they will corrode over time. Isn't that right? Yeah, it's galvanic corrosion. If they're dissimilar metals,

they'll just eat into each other. So either way, you don't want these metals touching one another. So the ceramic ball bearings that don't need any lubrication are perfect. That's right. The rest of it is made from 316 stainless steel, which this Alexander guy said, that'll last 10,000 years.

And even if it starts to rust, the movements of this clock, because it moves so slowly and because it's so large, the precision doesn't need to be like thousands of an inch. That's what's so cool. It can be like a quarter of an inch. Yeah, that's plenty of room for rust. Right, so if there is rust, it really doesn't matter. And I also saw where he said in the video

that all the gear teeth were cut three-dimensionally. And what that means is it uses rollers to roll the gear. So it's a rolling mechanism instead of what he called a scrubbing friction. So I guess a rolling friction is much easier on the parts than scrubbing. And I was reading a wired article on it. And the reporter said that he came upon a Geneva wheel.

Remember, they're 8 feet in diameter. Yeah, these are. And they had the ceramic ball bearings in it. And he could turn it very easily with just gentle pressure from his finger. Wow. So they're going to be working just fine. I can't.

I want to visit this thing when it's done, at least. I know I won't see the end. But I'd like to be there for the beginning. Well, you can, actually. You can go join the Long Now Foundation at longnow.org, right? Yeah, they operate on donations. I don't think we ever even mentioned. It's a private organization and funded by people like Bezos.

I think the basic membership costs like $8 a month. You probably have a pretty good idea of where your money's going. What's their website? Longnow.org. Longnow.org. And then there's also now 10,000YearClock.net. And that's Bezos' website.

Yeah, and there's not a whole lot there yet. No, I mean, it just gave some overview. But we left out this one part. And the one in Texas, Bezos' Millennium Clock, there's going to be little alcoves, different rooms. There's a one-year room, a 10-year room, 100,000 and 10,000-year room. And they're leaving it to later civilizations

to figure out what artifact to put in there. But in the one-year room, they're putting the ori, which tracks the motion of the, it calculates the movement of the planets. Right. And it also has an animation of, I think, Voyager 2 on this grand tour of some of the outer planets. Awesome.

And that's going in the one-year. And they're going to figure out what to put in the 10-year. So they're soliciting ideas from any side of that. That's crazy. If you have an idea of what should be put in the 10-year alcove. And I guess some of that stuff would require electricity, though, right? No, I don't think so.

In the side rooms, no. I don't think any of it's going to. Oh, wow. Or if it does, it will just be a thermoelectricity. Right. Yeah. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude 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 HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS,

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. So I feel like we covered that pretty well. Yeah. 10,000-year clock. I mean, it's way more basic than it appears when you first look at it. It's like simple gears, moving, pendulum-swinging weights. It's also incredibly ingenious, though.

Oh, yeah, yeah. The way they put it together overcame problems that it may not encounter for thousands of years. Very smart, dudes. Yeah, and ladies. If you want to learn more about the 10,000-year clock, you can type in 10,000-year clock in the search bar at howstuffworks.com.

And then I said search bar. So that means it's time for Listener Mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this The Cone Snail Saved My Life. Yes. Remember when we talked about The Cone Snail in the Venom podcast? No.

It wasn't Venom. What was it? It was probably. Was it just called Venom? No, it was like what's the most venomous animal on Earth? There you go. That's right. This is from David in Miami.

Hey, guys. Love the show. I recently listened to the show on Venom. And you mentioned The Cone Snail. Five years ago, Cone Snail Venom Saved My Life. In 1994, I was diagnosed with cancer. And due to the cancer, chronic pain. After many years of failed attempts

to control my pain with conventional medication, I was extremely frustrated and still suffering intolerable pain. Luckily, I found out about the ziconotide Cone Snail Venom. Because remember, I think we talked about scorpion venom being used in cancer. Yeah, that's right. OK.

The only problem with using the Cone Snail Venom to control pain is that I needed an implant. It can't be taken in pill form. One needs to be implanted with a hockey puck sized implant that slowly releases the medication into my intrathecal fluid. What? Which is the fluid surrounding the spinal cord.

I might be pronouncing it wrong. Every three months, I need to go in for a refill. So using a small needle, this guy's like Iron Man. Yeah. The doctor refills the pump that's inside of his body with Cone Snail Venom. It has been a godsend and greatly improved my quality of life. And some days, I'm completely pain free.

That is cool. So David Miami, kudos to you, sir, and continued good help. Hats off to your medical pioneering. Absolutely. What's old is new again. And thank you, Cone Snail. Yeah, thanks, Cone Snail. Let's see.

If you have an email about a past episode and how it affected your life, we always want to hear that kind of thing. Sure. You can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast, that's our handle. You can join us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Oh, also, we have a newsletter.

You can go to Stuff You Should Know's Facebook page. And there's a tab to sign up for the Stuff You Should Know electronic email newsletter. It's all free. It's over on the left side under our picture on the very bottom. You'll see SYSK Newsletter. Yeah, and it's pretty cool. It comes out once a week, right?

Is it? Something like that. It has our links to some of our favorite articles. Just cool stuff, link to the newest episode. It's just neat. It's one of the better things you'll get in your inbox. Agreed. And speaking of inboxes, you can send us a good old fashioned

email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. 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.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.