The Rest Is Science - Dying In Space, Trapped Water, and What's Hidden In Pi?

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

Almost every human who has ever lived has one thing in common: they were born and died on Earth. Except for three people. Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens uncover the extraordinary story of Soyuz 11, the Soviet cosmonauts who became the only humans ever to die in outer space, and what their deaths meant for the future of human spaceflight.But that raises a bigger question: what exactly is trapped on Earth, and what can escape? Is the water left inside discarded plastic bottles being locked away forever? Is Earth itself slowly leaking water into space? Can you really trap a monkey simply because it refuses to let go of something shiny? And are your phone number, your name and every other possible sequence of numbers really hidden somewhere inside the digits of pi? From space exploration and the Soyuz 11 disaster to Earth's water, animal behaviour and one of mathematics' biggest unanswered questions, Hannah and Michael investigate what gets trapped, what escapes, and what might have been hiding in plain sight all along. ------------------- For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ. ------------------- Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠ ------------------- Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack MeekAnimator: Sam BensonVideo & Social: Bex TyrrellAssistant Producer: Lucy LipscombeProducer: Simona RataSenior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-CarterChief Digital Officer: Samuel OakleyExec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the rest of science. I'm Hannah Fry. And I'm Michael Stevens. And every single human ever has been born and died on Earth. Yeah. Short episode today. Or is it? What? Except for three people. I want to start today by talking about the only three humans to have not died on planet Earth.

Oh, Lord. Okay. We're talking astronauts. No. What? We're talking cosmonauts. Oh, okay. A cosmonaut is what the Soviets called someone who went to space. And I like that name so much more because what is an astronaut?

There's someone who knots, who travels the astros, the stars. But we don't. We travel around one star the sun. Right. What does a cosmonaut travel around? The universe. in a way we're all cosmonauts though so actually they're both kind of bad names

but it would have been better to be like an outer space knot yeah or like a solar system nought I mean to be honest I'm sorry but if you're at the ISS yes you're in space technically well done but you're only just I know I don't want to be the guy but you started it the ISS astronauts are basically still on earth right I mean if the earth was the size of an apple where are they you can't even get your fingernail

close enough to the apple. I mean, you can. You can dig your fingernail into it. But you put your finger on it. Your fingernail is further away from the apple than the ISS astronauts. It's pathetic, really. You're still within the magnetic protection of the planet. You're not getting, you know, radiation in the same way. Look, I'll accept the people who've gone to the moon, right? Artemis, that crew, I accept that they are something noughts. But really, they're moon-earth noughts. Moon-Earth-Norths. Yeah, they are cis-luner-nots.

This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. As if they weren't cool enough already, some astronauts have now added cancer scientists to their CV. They are making use of microgravity conditions in space to carry out experiments. That's because the same thing that lets astronauts experience weightlessness also affects how cancer cells grow, behave, and respond to drugs. And back down on Earth, Cancer Research UK is working with astronomers to explore tumours with technologies that are typically used to map the Milky Way,

which I think gives you an idea of just how complex this disease is. That's right. There are over 200 different types of cancer. But by pushing boundaries and embracing the latest technologies, Cancer Research UK has helped double cancer survival in the UK over the past 50 years. And today it is continuing to save and improve lives around the world. For more information about Cancer Research UK, there are certainly. and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancer research, UK.org slash rest of science. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaiaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable

decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So Bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. So, I mean, we're getting ahead of ourselves, but you're right. The Artemis 2 crew holds the record for the farthest a human has ever gone from Earth. And they recently broke that record by going 1.6% further than the previous record holders, which was the crew of Apollo 13.

So the record stands at $406,000. 711 kilometers. It's about 250,000 miles away from Earth. Yeah. That's the furthest we've gone. Robots that we've made have gone a lot further. Agree. The robot record is currently 25.6 billion kilometers.

Oh, wow. Billion. What's that? Voyager 1. But not only have humans, you know, gone not that far from Earth, really. Even our robots have gone far but like barely left the solar system. They're not even up to another star yet. Voyager 1 is 0.006% of the way to another star. Okay, I could find you seven experts today that would tell you that technically it's still in the solar system.

Right. It's left the heliopause, but is that really the edge of the solar system? If it slowed down to a stop, it's going back to the sun. Give me a break. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, then no.

But every human who's left. Even the ones who have gone, record-breakingly far, have come back, except for three. Well, they did come back, though, but they didn't come back alive. But that's the, I'm spoiling the end, kind of. I mean, I already said that they died there. Well, no, actually, you haven't said that they died. You just said that they weren't. They didn't die on planet Earth.

They couldn't be living on Venus. You said born, too, right? So I don't want to, like, preempt the end of this. But it might be that they were born in space. Oh, I've just said, I've just said, not everyone's been born and died. There's still a great mystery that I'm waiting for you to uncover. All right. So we got to start way back at the moon landing.

The United States puts people on the moon first. And so the Soviet Union basically scraps any lunar landing plans for people because that's been done. The next big challenge they figure is living in space. So they proceed to create and launch and install the very first space station. And it was called Salute One. Salute is Russian for salute. It's also Russian for fireworks. Is it?

So they call fireworks salutes. Trying to look up how to pronounce solute, you know, as the Russian word. I just found a whole bunch of videos about fireworks. Amazing. But that was the very first space station. Solute one was installed in orbit around Earth in 1971. I mean, in the history of space travel, that feels like, well, okay, well, they've done quite a lot of stuff by then. But if you think about what was happening on Earth in the 1970s,

I mean, this is like your computers are still using punch cards, right? What was the microchip invented? Around about then. Yeah. I seem to remember reading once that the Wheely suitcase was invented after people landed on the moon. Yeah, it was. And it's kind of a shock. But at the same time, there are so many reasons why.

Have you dove into this? Yeah. Well, the thing is, is that airports went. big in the same way that they are now. You wouldn't like go on a big family holiday in quite the same way. Men were the ones who were mostly traveling. I mean, there are reasons. It's not that we couldn't have invented it.

It's not like the idea was impossible. It wasn't like people were going to LAX back in the 70s and having to walk miles and miles just like we do today. And no one ever thought, I wonder if I could put wheels on this. No, it was a very different situation. But I think the point is, is that irrespective of the wheelie. suitcase thing. At the same time, I think when you get, oh, this is some technology from the 1970s from Earth, it's like, wow, that is, that's primitive. But the Russians were sending

people to live up in orbit, in orbit at this point in time. In a space station. Which, like, honestly, 1971, that's still the 60s. Yeah. Okay. culturally in America, or even in, well, I don't know anything about what it was like to live in Soviet Russia. But the point is that right away, they send up a mission, which was called Soyuz 10. And they're going to have these guys, these three guys, live on Solute 1. But they fail to dock. They kind of get attached, but they can't get a hard dock accomplished, so they abandon the mission, come back down.

Soyuz 11 goes up, and it has three people aboard. They are Georgi de Brovalski, Vladislav Volkov, and Victor Pesayev. Okay. The three of them go up. They launch on the 6th of June 1971. The very next day, they're docking with Saluet 1, and it's successful. So they go inside and start just living there. They do experiments.

They do all kinds of, you know, looking down at Earth, evaluating its ice caps and its climate patterns. And they try all these things. They're living there 22 days. Right. More than three weeks. They're up there. Yeah. On the 11th day, there's an electrical fire.

Okay, that sounds serious. That sounds really scary. Also, when they got there, their first step. into the space station were also terrifying because it was like full of smoke. What? And no one had even been in there yet. Okay, so hold on. So the space station gets sent up on its own, gets into orbits, orbiting around. Then they take a Soyuz capsule to go up and meet with it and dock into it. They open the doors, smoke everywhere. Yeah. I would be, oh my gosh, can you even imagine? I know. So they have to like go in,

figure out what's causing the smoke and then go back into their so use capsule and wait for the smoke to get filtered and cleared, then they get to go back in and they live there and they do for, for again, 22 days. Okay, so a little bit more than three weeks. There's an electrical fire on the 11th day. Like, this is a scary, a scary trip. Sorry, I thought the electrical fire in the smoke were the same thing. No. What was the smoke when they first arrived? I actually don't know. I don't think anyone knows. Just happened to be filled with smoke. The Soviet Union, not famous for telling everything to the whole world. And that's going to come up later. So even after the electrical fire on the 11th day, they still stay for

another 11 days. And then it's like, okay, let's go back to Earth. So they get in. This is on the 29th of June, 1971, they leave, undock. And they go radio silent. But the Soyuz capsule is automatic. It's going to come back down to Earth. It's got parachutes. It crashes into the ground, which is by design. They don't like the Americans fall into the ocean. They parachute. slow down and then they've got rockets that explode just before they hit the ground. Just to soften their landing. I mean, soften is an exaggeration. It's survivable.

Right. But it was not comfortable. How long between them undocking and then landing? Only a matter of hours. Right. So the rescue crews get there, as they normally do to help the crew out. They knock on the capsule, no response. Oh my gosh.

The rescue crews open the hatch and the crew is dead inside. Whoa. Oh, but do they know when they died? They do now, and they may have known then, but for two years, the Soviet Union didn't tell anyone what had happened. They did a state burial for the astronauts, for the cosmonauts, but they wouldn't say what happened. And this caused a lot of panic in America for all space agencies. This was an experiment to see what happens when people are in space for, like, longer than the Apollo astronauts were. Is it that experience of being in space is the thing that ends up causing your death?

We don't know. I mean, we think we've thought of everything, but what does having no wait force do to you over three weeks? What does just, I don't know, what other things could be up there? There could be space viruses for all we know. We know that the Apollo missions haven't encountered that yet. They put the first Apollo crew in quarantine for weeks just in case there were moon viruses. I mean, you have to get yourself into that mindset. And now you've got these three Russian cosmonauts who didn't survive.

And you don't know why. Dead on arrival. Dead on arrival. Did they die in the arrival or before? No one knows. So America is like freaking out. Should we go ahead with Skylab? Should we be doing space stations?

What happened? And it wasn't until two years later that the Soviet Union finally said, okay, here's what happened. When they undocked at 1047 Greenwich meantime on the 29th of June, all of the explosive. bolts that were supposed to go in sequence, all went at once. And that explosive force broke the seal that's supposed to automatically shut off and keep the air pressure where it should be. So the air came out. Oh, wow. So they suffocated. They suffocated. Oh, that's awful. They suffocated way above the Carmen line, which is at 100 kilometers. That's where we define space as being because to fly at that height, you have to go at orbital speed just to get enough lift from the air. So

Basically, you're orbiting. You're not, you're in space. You're in outer space. They were at 168 kilometers, so 104 miles above the surface when they lost all air in their capsule. And again, the capsule automatically came back down to Earth, but they were all dead already, probably within the first minute. And one of them was found near the ventral valve thing, like he was trying to cover it up. But later on, where the air was escaping from. where the air was escaping because it didn't close.

Later on, a cosmonaut who was afraid of this, who did not trust this system, tested that even if you tried to manually close it, it took too long to close. So there was no hope. That's such a tragic detail that they were trying, that they knew what was happening, had worked out what the problem was and were trying to amend it before it was too late. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So their capsule landed back on earth, 90 kilometers southwest of Karazal, Kazakhstan. And on that spot, an obelisk, a three-sided obelisk, has been erected with a little circular fence around it. And I've never been there.

But it's one of my dream bucket list locations because it is the memorial and the site, not of their demise, but of our recognition that for the first time in human history, our species, did not end on earth. Yeah. That we could die beyond the cradle. Right. Goodness me. So hang on. That means then that no one else has ever lost their life in space.

That is also a wild idea. It is wild. I mean, it shows how serious we are about safety. There have obviously been disasters since. Challenger, for example. Those accidents all happened under the, the Carmen line, much, much more within Earth's atmosphere. This is where the NASA space shuttle exploded after takeoff. Yeah. And all seven people who were on board lost their lives. Yeah,

I was five days old when that happened. And it was my grandma's birthday. And I went to space camp for three years when I was a teenager. And everyone still felt the guilt and the terror of that day. Well, because there was a teacher on board, wasn't there? There was a teacher on board. Like a non-an astronaut. Yeah, it was a non-astronaut. And Richard Feynman found that it was a problem with the O-rings on the solid rocket boosters. And that was the responsibility of a team. And there was a lot of terrible feelings.

Then there was the Space Shuttle Columbia on re-entry, lost the whole crew. But only three people have died far enough away from Earth that we consider the place of their death outer space. Goodness me. earlier this summer I got to spend some time with Christina Koch who was one of the Artemis astronauts and one of the conversations I had with her was about how she had mentally prepared for the idea that death

was on the table and she told me that NASA had been sort of a bit evasive about putting an exact percentage on the chances that the mission would fail A few days before they launched NASA finally revealed they did a press conference or whatever it might be, where they revealed that their chance of a catastrophic failure where the astronauts would lose their lives was about one in 30, which is about whatever that is 96% chance of success. And then Christina was like, okay, that's higher than I thought it was going to be.

And then I thought we were like 99% sure we were coming home. Yeah, 99 versus 96. It's a big difference when it's life or death. It's spicy. But she also talked about how her crew had had these conversations with each other about what they would do if the worst thing happened. And for them, the worst thing that could possibly happen would be that you would be in the capsule and know that you were not coming home. You would know that there was something that had happened that meant that you are not going to make that return journey. You are essentially going to be in the unbelievable.

blackness of space and slowly lose your life yeah which I think is like such a dark thing to imagine but her and her crew they all had like spoken about it they had like therapists their psychologist they had a whole team of people supporting them with the the mental aspect of all of this and she said that they were all like okay you know what we're going to be pretty stoic about this we're going to we're going to manage to be really stoic about it but then she said that this whole thing came back to basically bite her on the ass when they were doing reality entry because as they were doing reentry one of her crewmates was reading out the gravitational force on the reentry vehicle and was reading out you know i can't remember what the numbers are but like

let's say 3.1 3.4 3.8 3.9 but her audio wasn't working perfectly so she just heard as they're going through this unbelievably the riskiest moment of all is the reentry okay it's so easy for the vehicle to just essentially burn up on arrival, right? It's really, the angle that you come in out, it's just extremely delicate. But the audio wasn't working properly. So all she heard her crew mate say was like 7G, 8G, only heard the second digit. Didn't hear the point, exactly. Oh my gosh. So she was there thinking, okay, okay, we're going to die. That's it. But then she was like, but hang on a second, if we're going to die, surely he'd be less chill about this than he is. Yeah.

And then she thought, well, no, because we've spoken about this. We've all decided that we're going to be stoic. Oh, no. So maybe we are going to die. Oh, no. Yeah, so you should always agree, guys, if we're in trouble, let's panic. That way I will know. Exactly.

Because, yeah, I've talked about this before on airplanes. When turbulence is bad, I look at the flight attendants, and they're almost always bored. And that calms me down so much. Right. If I saw a flight attendant being like, I'd be like, oh, no. Okay. Oh, no. We're in trouble.

Do you know what? Actually, this summer I had the first time I've ever had a really spicy flight. Oh. I've been on a lot of flights and you get bad turbulence sometimes and it's like, okay, it's not that bad. Yeah. But this one, we got caught in a thunderstorm really badly, got hit by lightning over and over and over again. The captain tried to make these landings and then had to abort the landings twice. But in the aborted landing, he was like climbing, climbing, climbing, getting the hell up dodged.

And the turvents was so bad. and I around me there were people who one person was like hiding their passport in their pants because their their reasoning was okay well when we die then you'll be able to identify my body maybe my children will know I mean yeah this is worth a go there were people like writing letters to their children honestly everyone was really scared and when we got off the flight I was like don't get me wrong I wasn't like completely zen about it I was like okay this doesn't look good this is like this is not this is definitely the worst situation I've been in but when we landed when we We also then had to do an emergency landing at another airport,

and then we got more fuel, and then we were able to take off. And then by that point, the storm had cleared. But when we were at the luggage carousel, I was sort of standing there waiting. And there was a couple of people who came up to me, and they said, they're like, they know about the show, whatever, they know the rest of the sights and so on. And they came up to me, and they were like, they said, during the flight, they were looking to see if I was panicking. Oh, wow.

So had they listened to our earlier episode about turbulence? I don't think so specifically, but they were like, okay, look, if Hannah Frye is banicking, I'm panicking too. That's a problem, yeah. Well, I mean, reasonably, like rationally, turbulence doesn't take down airplanes. It can be very dangerous because of injuries. If you're not strapped in, you can hit your head. That's how fatalities happen from them. It's like a head injury just because you weren't strapped in.

But, yeah, turbulence just means the air all around you is moving. Okay? You're like a raisin, suspended in jelly. or jello and it's wobbling and it doesn't feel good and they try to avoid it on commercial flights it can so I think that that is definitely true when you're in cruising attitude I think on landing is a slightly different beast oh what because you're like closer to the ground well I think that it ends up affecting your landing especially if you're like trapped in a storm with extremely low visibility I think it can be pretty dangerous okay so there is a time when you should be

panicked by turbulence. I mean, look, it's still the safest, safest mode of transport per mile, which I always think was a bit of a cheat. Okay, back to Soyuz 11. After that tragedy, the Soviet Union changed the routine and now they only sent up two cosmonauts in a capsule. That way there was room for them both to wear their pressure suits. So if pressure was lost in the capsule, they would still have air.

Right. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. And do they still do that now? They still wear those suits today in the Soyuz capsules. I mean, you would wouldn't you? You'd be like, I'd just...

Why not? I'd rather have it on. And when they're like, you know, guys, we're going to try to pack three in today, so no suits. I'd be like, sorry, I can't make it. Yeah, I'm all right. Got to take my daughter to school. Exactly. So let's take a break.

And when we come back, we're going to talk about some other things that may or may not be leaving Earth. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better.

Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. When Westjet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board.

Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. I wanted to tell that story, the story of the three humans to be the first to have not died on planet Earth. Yorgi, de Brovalski, Vladislav Volkov, and Victor Petsayev. They represent the beginning of a story.

They were the first humans to die not on planet Earth. But unfortunately, they will not be the last. Unless we stop all space travel right now. Unless we stop all space travel altogether. Seems unlikely. Which we won't.

And we shouldn't. But that was a very big moment in human history. And I have a watch. Actually, it's not this one I'm wearing today, but I have a watch that has a little engraving on the back commemorating them and the Soyuz 11 crew. Because, yeah, it's a story you don't hear that often. No, I didn't know those names. A lot of it comes from the secrecy of the space race and the Soviet Union, not wanting to say what they were doing or what happened.

But the capsule, yeah, it landed in Kazakhstan. And as I was reading about this story again, I got really into Kazakhstan. Let me tell you this. There are 44 countries on earth that are landlocked. They have no access to the oceans from their borders. There are only two countries that are doubly landlocked. I remember this is a quiz question. Okay, what are they?

Okay, Kazakhstan. Nope. It's one of the 44 that are landlocked. Okay, Azerbaijan. It's one round there. It's around there. And one of them is not around there. It's one of the stands.

Yeah, one of the stands. Uzbekistan? Correct. By the way, you can remember this because you've got Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is closer to Turkey. That's how on a map I can always get it right. Uzbekistan is north of Turkmenistan and it's doubly landlocked. To get to the ocean from Uzbekistan, you've got to go through at least one country that is also itself landlocked.

Yeah, yeah. What's the other one? Is it in Africa? Nope. then I don't know. Is it somewhere really small like Lichtenstein? It's Lichtenstein. You got it.

That's pretty good. I would not have gotten that right until I read it. I feel so smart. That's really good. Thank you so much. That was really good. Kazakhstan is the largest by area landlocked country. But here's the bonus lightning round for all the Marbles question.

What is the largest landlocked country? by population. Oh. I would never have got this right. Okay, so I think not in Europe. That's me searching through. It's not in Europe. That's me searching through you.

All of you listening or watching, write your guest down below and hit the like button to lock in your answer. Oh, man, I hear that so often on reels and I just can't stand it. I know me neither. It drives me insane. But still, do press like.

But still, yeah, like. And if you really want to lock it in, subscribe. Yeah. Okay, I think not South America. Nope. Not North America. Nope.

So we're talking Asia or Africa. Mm-hmm. It could be like Mongolia, like around there. No. Bhutan. Nope. Still the wrong continent. Also, is, oh, wait, Africa.

Yeah. Okay. Landlocked country in Africa. So right in the center. DRC. No. Central African Republic. Mm-mm. Is it in the middle of Africa?

Nope. Oh, I would not have, even though I could find it on a map right away, we should do an African country's quiz, by the way, because I've been doing this game called borderline. Right. Every day I'm finding them. But I guess I haven't paid enough attention to who's landlocked and who's not, because I wouldn't have even known this country was landlocked unless I really thought about it.

North of Sahara. Hmm. I would say it's east of the Sahara, maybe southeast. Ethiopia? Correct. Is it? Do you know what? I thought about that and I was like, no, I think, because you come up from Somalia, right?

And then Ethiopia, I thought it had a coast. But Ethiopia's landlocked. Yeah, it is. Okay, thank you. So I wasn't the only one who was like, oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. But yeah, I guess it's surrounded by like Somalia and Eritrea. It just doesn't touch the ocean.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. So humans have, for the most part, been trapped on Earth our whole lives. there have been some cracks in that in that rule we've got three who got far enough out that they didn't die here I don't think we'll be trapped forever but what about the water we throw away in water bottles when you throw away a water bottle and there's a little bit of water still in it or even like just some drops that water is locked in plastic and it's thrown away and will it ever come out like it's

in this like barely degradable bottle fresh potable water that's then thrown into landfills for who knows how long right i first heard about this because it went pretty viral on social media this concern that we are trapping in immense amount of usable water of usable fresh water in landfills in its own little coffin in its own little plastic like permanent coffin. And so I dove into this and there's a lot of fear-mongering around it that the calculations about how much water gets essentially sealed away from use every year ranges from 7 million to 22 million gallons a year. What? That's insane. A year? A year. That's insane. So we're talking about who's not emptying their water bottles before they recycle them. It's not even about people who were

throwing away like half-filled bottles. The 7 million gallon number, which is 29 million liters per year, that's based on if, on average, only 5% of the bottles thrown out have half a tablespoon in them. What? The 22 million gallon number, which is 83 million liters, that's based on more, like 40 drops are in every single bottle. Sorry, I don't think I realize how many bottles of water we're getting through. I didn't either. When I first looked at these, I figured the math could be wrong. And so I looked this up and it's like, no, this is very on target for how many water bottles not just are being made, but we know are being thrown away into landfills.

Like in America alone, it's like $60 billion a year. That's how many are made. How many are being thrown out we don't totally know. But it's a lot. So this sounds a little bit frightening. Yeah. But here's the truth. Okay, while it's true that we are throwing out an enormous amount of water bottles and they have moisture in them. One, plastic doesn't permanently seal stuff up forever. Because all you need is a little crack and then it will seek back into the water. A little crack is all it needs. And these bottles aren't just like thrown whole into the landfill. They are compacted multiple times.

So I have splits in them. Yeah. They're crushed with like more force than the weight of a car on them in order to compact them. There's something quite nice about the idea that all you need to do is just like give the water away to escape and it'll get back to us. Yeah. And there have been companies apparently that have worked on ways to make bottles that will more quickly give that water back up. Okay. But I'm not sure how necessary it is because again, they're compacted by the collection services.

And then at the landfill, they're compacted. They drive these huge machines over the landfills to just squish it down. And like I said, the bottles themselves don't seal things up forever. I think, you know, within 500 years, it's decomposed like a lot. But even within 100 years, you would definitely expect water to be able to get out of it. On top of that, even if we just assume that all the water in every bottle that's thrown away never gets out. They all have their lids on and they never decay away. 83 million liters, 22 million gallons of water is a lot, but it's also not.

a lot. If we did that every year for 15 years, we would have only trapped away one trillionth of Earth's water. When you say one trillionth of that's water, you're talking about all the water? All the water. Or you're talking about fresh, clean, drink of water? I'm talking about all the water. So, I mean, but I mean, still, come on, Hannah. A trillionth of Earth's water? I still don't like it. 22 million gallons is about 33 Olympic-sized swimming pools. That feels kind of big, but that's about what lands on a square mile of land when it rains one inch.

Oh, there's nothing. This is actually a really cool question because it forces you to come up with ways to figure out what is this amount. Right, totally. I mean, ultimately, the water doesn't stay trapped forever. Which I'm okay with. You know, one thing that I really want to look at. into more is this question about water and data centers because while they do use a lot of water,

I wonder whether it's one of those situations where it sounds like a lot of water, but then you compare it to, say, the meat industry. And actually, it's really pathetic in comparison. Yeah, water amounts are hard to compare because we often give them in gallons, but when it comes to like water on earth, all of the water, not just fresh, but we're talking about like, quadrillions of gallons. Just the numbers are too big, you can't make a dark. And as I'm always doing research for this, I'm finding water given in cubic miles, in tons, in gallons, in liters.

And it's like, ah, what is a lot and what isn't a lot? Also, I've got an even other twist. So Earth is already losing water. Like, literally, it's not trapping it forever, but it's jetticing it out. I mean, the Earth isn't doing this. But the water molecules themselves can leave our planet for good. and they do this through evaporating up, and they become clouds, they come back down. It's a water cycle.

But some manage to get up high enough that solar radiation can actually break the oxygen and hydrogen atoms apart. And then either through being energized by more solar radiation or just because of like random thermal reasons, there will be an oxygen or a hydrogen atom that has enough speed to literally escape velocity Earth. I mean, the only thing is there's no way you're getting that back. You're not getting that back at all, and it's not being replaced whatsoever. The stuff in the water bottles may eventually return to us.

Exactly. And so it's estimated that every year, two million gallons of water are lost from this planet. 9.3 million liters is lost to space. But there's one more wrinkle because Earth does gain water from comets, not com, I mean, maybe particles from comets. System rain. From solar system rain, which comes in the form of ice and space debris, meteors, space dust. That falls to Earth. And I saw an estimate that every year, about a million liters are gained.

So it's 270,000 gallons of water comes to Earth. But the point is, water is not trapped on Earth. And even the water that we throw away sealed up in bottles isn't permanently trapped. But have you heard of a monkey trap? honestly this this episode feels like I'm playing whack-a-mole with myself no it should feel it should feel like a smooth connected railroad track you're amazing okay sorry go on

okay corner turn monkey trap go a monkey trap I'm sure you've heard of this it's a common story that to trap a monkey or sometimes different animals are used But what you do is you build this box with a hole in it and you put something shiny in the box. Right. And then the monkey wants the shiny thing or whatever the bait is. And they put their hand through the hole and they grab it.

Right. But once they've made a fist, their hand is too wide to come back out of the hole. And it works because their brain is so simple, they cannot give up the bait, the treat, the shiny object. And so they just stay there. Oh, that's what door about. They won't let go of it. I first heard of this in the book where the red fern grows, where the main character makes a trap like this for raccoons. He takes like a tree stump, drills a hole, puts in some aluminum foil, and then hammers a bunch of nails in to make it really narrow. The raccoon is like, oh, yeah, I'm stuck.

But doesn't let go. But I won't let go of this treasure. Anyway, these types of traps. How long will they stay there? None time. None time. They're not real. Oh.

Oh. They're popular in discourse because it's this metaphor for how humans we will often want something so badly that we refuse to let go even though it's trapping us. To our detriment. To our detriment. Yes. Then we need to be able to let things go and give things up and we can free ourselves. It's a great story, but they're not real. A raccoon will reach into a trap and so will a monkey and grab a shiny thing.

But if you then come up to catch it, it lets go and runs. Right. It's got a hierarchy in its head. And shiny thing is not beaten by not wanting to be killed by being human. Yeah, exactly. So again, I still think that the lesson isn't totally, like, bad. But the analogy is to something that isn't real. Okay. There's no known animal that will refuse to let go of a treasure and allow itself to be trapped. But I wanted to make sure.

So I looked into like, what can I really trap an animal's body in? And it can't get it back out. And as it turns out, it's very common. But it's not the hand. It's the head. What do you mean? Heads are kind of wedge-shaped. And so is the fur on an animal and its ears.

Right. And so raccoons, especially in bears, often get their heads stuck in things. Wow. Because they can go in. But coming out is much about. They can't because the fur can go this way, but it can't go back this way. And same with the ears. So goats, raccoons, bears, they all.

can get trapped in things with their heads. I feel like this to happen sometimes with people in iron railings, you know? It happens to people too. So I wonder if this helps us improve the life lesson. Like, it's not so much that you need to let go of the things you treasure. You need to just stop poking your head into stuff. Basically, if someone passes you a shiny thing and it looks too good to be true, just leave it well alone. That's right.

Just leave things alone Mind your own beeswax That's the real lesson from real Animal life Don't reach for anything new With your head There's something cool about that Reach for it with your hand

You'll be able to get it out as long as you let go But don't reach for it with your head If you go in head first That's when problems can arise You know people take really great philosophers Confucius you know whatever whoever else it might be, and really elevate them as great thing. Actually, this stuff's easy.

We're coming up with these left front centre. Honestly, it's a piece of cake. You just look up animal traps and you learn everything about human behavior. Yeah, done. We should be life coaches. We should be. You got more traps. Go on.

Give me more traps. Okay, this is a bit of a stretch. Even I'm saying it's a stretch. I looked it up and your phone number and my phone number are not in the first two billion digits of pie. How do you know what my phone number is? Am I not supposed to? I'm joking. Well, why?

How do you know? You can search. I mean, you can search, like, digitally. I didn't, I didn't, like, look at all the digits with my own eyes. But hold on. Okay, right. A, I want to know how this is linked to trapped. And this is linked to traps.

Okay. B, did you specifically search our phone numbers? Yeah, with and without country codes. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Because there's just this common thing, and I've been looking into it a lot, hearing it a lot. And we've talked about it on the podcast before, which is this idea that like every finite string of digits is somewhere in pie.

Absolutely. Including your address, your phone number, a coded version of Moby Dick. It's all hidden in there. And that is not necessarily true. We have not proven yet whether or not pie is normal. And we also don't know if it's rich, where rich means that it contains every possible string. And normal means that every number or combination of numbers are equally likely to appear. That's right. None are preferred.

Right. And the reason that there are those two different distinctions is that if you are normal, then you are rich. You contain every string. But if you contain every possible string, you might not be normal. Yes. Because you can imagine a number that contains like every number in order, but there's like a million zeros between each number, in which case or an exponentially growing number of zeros. So that number contains them all, but it's mainly zeros. Okay.

So anyway, we do not know if pie is normal. And this question was first asked like, I think maybe at least 100 years ago, more than 100 years ago. and we still aren't even close to knowing how to prove whether it's normal or not. So your phone number may never appear in pie. So here is the question here, what actually is trapped within the digits of pie? Thank you. You see how obvious this was? It's about trapped.

What's trapped in pie and what's not? Honestly, I absolutely love spending time with you. This is like an excellent adventure. I've got more. Your phone number is in the first, like, trillion digits of pie. I can't tell you exactly where. Guys, if you want to know my phone number now, that's a very big clue.

That's all you have to do. It's somewhere in the first trillion digits of pie. Just try them all. Because the online encyclopedia of integer sequences has a, it's one of my favorite pages. I love that way. It's just so, it's so out of this world. It's like, okay, how many digits of pie do you need to find every digit?

how many do you need to have every two-digit number? How many does it take before every three-digit number has shown up? And we have so far found every single one, two, three, four, five-digit number all the way up to an 11-digit number. They all exist in pie within all the digits that we have found so far. But we haven't found enough of pie to say that all 12-digit numbers are inside pie. Which is what you need for a five-number number? No. Your phone number without country code is how long? It's like 10. It's 11. It's 11. Okay, so yeah, okay, right. So your phone number... Another clue to my phone number, you guys. Your phone number, there's another clue. How long is mine? Without the country code, mine's only 10.

What? Let me check. Yeah, mine's 11. Jeez, that's fancy. So hang on then. So we have proven that everyone's phone number is in Pi. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, everyone's phone number is in Pi. So long as your phone number isn't more than 12 digits long, we have not proven that yet. Now, I should say that I would guess most mathematicians have a strong suspicion that Pi is normal. It's normal. We just don't know how to prove it. And that's the wildest thing because we have proven that almost all numbers are normal.

The ones that aren't normal are the ones that we know really well, like 42. and seven and... 3.333 reoccurring. Yeah, one half, right? One quarter, one third. None of those are normal. But the vast majority of real numbers are normal. The vast majority of the irrational numbers.

Rational numbers are like never normal. Correct. But the majority of the irrationals have been proven by Boral to be normal. And the majority of real numbers are irrational. Right. When it was like astronauts dying in space, this is definitely not where anyone thought the episode was going. But here we are.

But here we are. And so I guess what I'm saying is, is the final frontier really space or is it pie? Has any human ever died within the digits of pie? I don't know, but I'd like to be the first. What a way to go. Because the thing is like pie is really overdone. Okay, it's, I get it. It sounds like a dessert.

You got pie on your t-shirt. I'm wearing a pie t-shirt, okay? It is so mainstream. Like, I'm sick of hearing about, oh, pie, it's so cool. First of all, pie is not random. I can tell you exactly what the next digit will be. It's related to the circumference and diameter of a circle, guys. Okay, it's not random.

It's non-repeating. It doesn't mean it's random. We don't have to talk about pie forever, but the point is that if I died within the digits of pie, however that could somehow happen, I don't know. But if I did, I would get like memorialized every year on Pi day. Everyone's always looking for Pi Day activities and like they need more. And I'll give them much as yours. Yeah.

I think there is a way that you could be the first person to die in Pie. Tell me. If you worked out a way, which would be easy to do, to convert the numbers into letters. Right? And then looked for the first time that a full name. appeared, a sequence of numbers that translated to Michael Stevens is alive or Joe Bloggs is dead. Yeah. There could be a first person to die in Pi.

Oh, there could be. They could be. Just using a simple, like, code. Yeah. So yeah, like zero zero is a space, zero one is A and so on. Exactly. There will be a first name and death cause found in pie. Mm-hmm.

It's probably not Michael Stevens. It's probably not Hannah Fry either. sadly. Although it all depends on how you set up your code, isn't it? I reckon there'd be a way that you could translate letters to make it so that it was you. It depends on the code. Okay, so 3.1 means H. Yes, exactly. 1-4 means A. I wonder if, yeah, how could you,

you could set up a code to make Pi say whatever you wanted. That's, see, now I'm learning things and I'm feeling, funny enough, less trapped than I did when this began. There's still so much out there to explore. Yeah. So I'm glad you guys came on this journey with us. Where we went, I don't know.

No, agreed. But I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it. And it's always fun hanging out with you, but also with all of you guys. So leave us some comments below about your questions, your thoughts, your hopes, and your dreams. And subscribe and follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. We'll be back later in the week for an episode of Filnotes. Until then.

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