Today you’ll learn about the recent eruption of the world’s biggest active volcano, how researchers have created wifi-emitting windows, and how we might be able to use evaporating ocean water as a new freshwater source.
Today you’ll learn about the recent eruption of the world’s biggest active volcano, how researchers have created wifi-emitting windows, and how we might be able to use evaporating ocean water as a new freshwater source.
Mauna Loa Eruption
Wifi Windows
Catching Vapor
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/mauna-loa-eruption-wifi-windows-catching-vapor
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about the recent eruption of the world’s biggest active volcano, how researchers have created wifi-emitting windows, and how we might be able to use evaporating ocean water as a new freshwater source!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, did you hear that the largest active volcano on Earth erupted recently? That sounds remarkably chaotic.
CALLI: Okay, wait, wait. Are you talking about Mauna Loa?
NATE: Yeah.
CALLI: Okay. You don't need to worry about that.
NATE: Says you.
CALLI: Okay. I know you have a trip to Hawaii planned soon, but Mauna Loa isn't actually all that dangerous. The only difference.
NATE: Uh. Giant volcano. Giant amounts of lava.
CALLI: I know, I know, but hear me out. The only difference between Mauna Loa and other volcanoes are its size and its age. And I promise you, nobody's presently in any danger. So the volcano erupted November 27th, 2022. And it is true that the lava flowed for a few weeks, but there's no eruptive activity expected near any property or people. And the only thing unusual is that Mauna Loa woke up after a really long nap.
NATE: Okay. What do you mean? How do mountains nap?
CALLI: Yes, actually, volcanoes sort of do. Historically, Mauna Loa worked on a cycle. It would sleep for about seven years, wake up, spew lava everywhere, and then repeat. So when Mount Aloha began shooting 50 meters of lava into the air on November 27th, it hadn't done so in 38 years.
NATE: All right. That does seem a bit of a gap. What was it that made it take so long this time?
CALLI: This is my favorite part of the story. Scientists don't know.
NATE: Oh.
CALLI: So there is a theory. Magma from Mauna Loa was being diverted to Kilauea. It's another nearby volcano which saw a major eruption in 2018. If true, the current eruption of Mauna Loa could help volcanologists, which is a real term, understand more about connection between Mauna Loa and Kilauea. And again, volcanologists, the study of volcanoes, not something from Star Trek. As one researcher puts this, “It's currently impossible to understand the plumbing system where the magma separates between these two volcanoes.”
NATE: I guess we can't really send a diver down to figure out where all the branches of the lava and magma. That's fair. That's fair. But that means we have a we have a giant volcano next to a giant volcano. Fantastic.
CALLI: You're halfway right. It's next to four other volcanoes on the island of Hawaii. So there's Kilauea, Mauna Kea, I apologize if I get this one incorrect, Hualālai, and Kohala. Kohala is extinct. There's zero chance of it ever erupting again. And by far, Mauna… I’m going to call it Moana and I don't mean to.
NATE: You know, we. We aren't. We aren't fluent Hawaiian speakers. Apologies.
CALLI: We’re getting there. But by far, Mauna Loa is the biggest of the five with 51% of landmass on Hawaii.
NATE: Wow. So Hawaii is really one volcano with some non volcano bits thrown on there. This isn't a little bit you know, it's a it's a volcano with an island. Uh huh. Okay. So do we know this is happening? Were there warning signs? You say it was 38 years since it had last erupted, but did we know it was coming ahead of time to, like, prepare people get out of the way?
CALLI: It sort of depends on what you mean by warning. Mauna Loa has been showing signs it was ready to wake up since 2015. Now, there was a huge increase at the time in the rate of local earthquakes, as well as GPS observations of land deformation. So land surfaces bulges upwards. It indicates magma bubbling underground. But that was in 2015, and nothing like that had happened again until the spring of 2022. And it wasn't until an hour and a half before the actual eruption that scientists knew Mauna Loa was about to blow. In volcanology, again study volcanoes, it’s known that a swarm of earthquakes indicates that the eruption is about to occur. Now, this sort of short notice is how Mauna Loa has always worked. The only difference was that she hadn't done it in 38 years. So this time they were better prepared because technology has changed a lot since 1984. There are radars to see earthquakes and detect more frequencies from volcanic activity. Electronic tilt meters can measure deformation continuously, and when the upward shift happens, we can keep an eye on it. So the volcanologists were able to detect not only the land deformation, but also that the deformation was changing over time.
NATE: Okay. So things have progressed quite a bit since 1984. How was this done in 1984? What tech did they have back then?
CALLI: They didn't. Okay. So back then, researchers would measured the deformation by hand. They would actually hike up to the volcano's summit every few weeks or so. And there was this technique called EDM or electronic distance measuring, and it's basically just shining a laser into a reflector so you could get more precise distance measurements. It wasn't terribly accurate, though, and didn't paint as full the picture as today's technology does.
NATE: Okay. Okay. That'll make sense. So you were saying I don't have to be worried about this. Mauna Loa erupting doesn't pose a threat. Why not?
CALLI: Why not?
NATE: Why not be worried about it?
CALLI: For starters, it stopped erupting on the 15th of December 2022. Yes, it's already already all done. Now nobody died. No infrastructure was affected in the long term. And people were actually almost a little excited about it. Hawaii County civil defense administrator called it the best situation we could have asked for from Mauna Loa. And even the scientists in charge of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory called it his favorite eruption. Now, the most unfortunate side effect of Mauna Loa erupting is it halted data collection for something called the Keeling Curve.
NATE: Not being a volcanologist, what is the Keeling Curve?
CALLI: Sorry, I had to look this one up. The Keeling Curve is a nearly unbroken 60 year record of atmospheric carbon dioxide that shows a steady rise in the levels of gas. So basically, scientists collect carbon dioxide data at Mauna Loa Observatory. But because of the eruption, power went down for days. Even worse, the site's access was cut off by the lava flow. And right now, it's not clear how devastating the damage will be on the research. That said, this wasn't the, quote unquote, big one. This was just a natural occurrence that technology helped us keep under control.
NATE: All right. Well, I guess I won't be too worried about it, especially since I'm not going to the island that has active volcanoes.
CALLI: You'll still have a wonderful vacation.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: In the past few years, there have been some really cool breakthroughs in solar energy, and I assume that we're going to keep seeing some cool ones coming out in the next few years. But can you imagine a world where this podcast is powered by the sun?
CALLI: Okay, so first off, sounds really cool, but I am seeing a potential problem where that might be really inefficient for night listeners.
NATE: Okay, so it's not just this podcast. I'm talking about a solar powered internet.
CALLI: Okay, that makes more sense. Sure. Tell me how this works.
NATE: So this has been developed by some scientists in Saudi Arabia, and they developed a tech that transmits wireless Internet signals through specialized glass that generates electricity. And the researchers are hoping to power office buildings for a fraction of the cost of their monthly electric bill.
CALLI: So it's interesting that the first thing they thought of was to power an office building instead of, I don't know, anything else, like a car or an entire city, something like that. But why the Internet? How how is this going to work and why haven't we seen it yet?
NATE: Well, I assume office buildings, because they need a lot of Internet and electricity and they're the most common large building to be covered in glass. So more glass real estate there. As for why we haven't seen it before, it I mean, this project is new. It's still in its early stages. And so even with their tests that they've been doing, the Internet only has a broadband speed of around 15 kilobytes per second. Ouch. For reference, basic wi fi offered in most public places is going to run 3 to 8 megabytes per second, and one megabyte is a thousand kilobytes. So short version: is so far this is actually really slow internet compared to what we're used to.
CALLI: Slow, but still a really cool concept. So I want to know how these wi fi windows are actually working.
NATE: Think of the glass windows as an internet modem. The modem collects sunlight the way a more typical modem might gather electricity. These windows use something called dual cell liquid crystal shutters or DLS for short to build up the energy needed. DLS relies on directional sunlight flows to transfer data from point A to point B, and this is also known as wave polarization. Now, wave polarization is one of the properties of all electromagnetic waves, including visible light. So, for example, polarized sunglasses, they use wave polarization to filter light out of your eyes by blocking reflected light and only allowing in useful light. So the windows function on the same logic only instead of letting light in for sight, it's letting light into power circuitry. A more direct comparison could also be the wireless smart windows they just made at the University of Maryland. These can harness solar energy through a flick of the switch to keep temperatures moderate in homes and to also change colors depending on the time of day, which can completely eliminate the need for blinds or curtains. They use solar energy to power up, but also to store energy to use to power other devices.
CALLI: Okay, so this actually sounds like it's going to be pretty revolutionary, but how is this going to work for the Internet?
NATE: Well, the polarization allows each ray of light to be organized in different channels of energy. And the researchers call organization a kind of one in zero language predetermined by the original data coming through a cable connected to the edge of the smart glass. Now that cable, which is connected to a window, then goes to a router creating a Wi-Fi signal.
CALLI: That sounds a lot like how LEDs work.
NATE: It's a good observation because this was modeled after light emitting diodes or LEDs, and it even functions like one. But what makes the Saudi team's approach innovative is it controls intensity of natural sunlight while also encoding Internet data through the glass. Unfortunately, these signals need to go through glass that is fitted with DLS, which are specifically made to pick up and distribute signal.
CALLI: Okay, I'm on board. This sounds awesome. The question that always comes up when we talk about new tech like this is when is it going to be good enough for us to be using at home? When can I be streaming Final Fantasy 14 through my windows?
NATE: We're probably years away from that at this point because like I said, this is pretty new. But the results are promising enough that the researchers did reveal that they've been in discussions with a few smartphone companies that want to expand the tech so that it can pull in faster Internet speeds. So if the right amount of money funds this project, we might be getting wireless window wi fi sooner than expected.
CALLI: Try saying that five times fast.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Something we haven't really touched much on in this show but is kind of a big deal is global water scarcity and it can actually possibly be ended by harvesting oceanic water vapor.
NATE: So that would be the air above the oceans that has like all the evaporated water just hanging out in there. Right?
CALLI: Yeah, actually, yeah. There's practically a limitless supply of freshwater floating above the nearly 333 cubic million miles of water covering the planet. But nobody is actually taking advantage of it. And considering that freshwater scarcity is an issue facing most of the planet right now. This is a cheap and effective way to gather fresh water. The current methods, like conservation or using recycled water won't be enough to hydrate the billions of people we have alive.
NATE: I think one of the main issues there is that vapor water is a gas, right? If you take the heat away from that gas, it can become water. But how would you even begin to collect water vapor at a sustainable scale?
CALLI: Okay. You start by targeting subtropical regions like the western U.S., where nearby oceans are evaporating water constantly due to the increased presence of the sun. Very little cloud coverage equals more sunshine and more sunshine equals more solar radiation. And the team of researchers hypothesize that an offshore vapor capturing machine about 210 meters in width and 100 meters in height should be sufficient for the study. And through their yeah, and through their analysis, they found that the amount of vapor captured in just one week could hydrate the largest populations in subtropical areas.
NATE: Okay, that does sound pretty cool. It's a fascinating idea. But I do want to talk about climate change for a second. I think it's mostly common knowledge at this point that dry regions are going to keep getting drier and the wet areas are going to keep getting wetter. So if we're collecting vapor, that seems like it could work for the wetter regions of the earth. But how does it work for the drier regions? Will it work?
CALLI: That actually surprised me when I was reading about it. But yes, 100%. Current climate projections show that oceanic vapor levels are actually increasing over time, even in drier areas. That's more freshwater for even the most climate vulnerable places.
NATE: Okay. I'm going to want you to elaborate just a little bit, because if these areas are drier than most, how would water vapor collection even work?
CALLI: Well, the solution being proposed works a lot like the natural water cycle already in place throughout the world. So sunlight hits water, turns into vapor, enters the atmosphere, comes rain. The only difference here is that we would be guiding where the evaporated water is actually going. So instead of raining on an already wet region, that vapor can be turned into water for a drier region as long as there is water on earth. This would be a completely limitless solution.
NATE: Okay. I mean, this does sound pretty simple. So has it been done before? Has anyone tried this yet?
CALLI: Okay. According to the team behind the project, no. And I spent a lot of time asking myself that same question and doing additional research. But I am kind of shocked because it doesn't look like anybody has ever tried this before. If this is really the first time an experiment like this has been attempted, it's probably because most water scarcity solutions rely on pre existing freshwater sources.
NATE: What what kind of sources?
CALLI: Waste water recycling is one which is where water used from everything from bathing to cleaning cars is filtered, cleaned and dumped back into water systems across the globe. Another solution has been desalination, where saltwater has its salt removed from it through a relatively simple filtration process. Both of these methods face a hurdle when it comes to brine, heavy metals, and microplastics in most water sources. In fact, desalination has proved to be so ineffective that California recently rejected measures to add new desalination plants.
NATE: Okay, well, does water vapor eliminate those pollutants?
CALLI: That's the best part about this method. So some studies say that one of the biggest contributors to the greenhouse effect that's amplifying climate change is water vapor. This is really cool. I am really excited about this. As the planet is getting hotter, more vapor enters the atmosphere contributing to climate change. If we manage to collect water vapor at a wider scale, we could not only end the water scarcity crisis, but actually stop one of the largest natural contributions to climate change on the planet.
NATE: Hooray!
CALLI: Yay! We figured it out.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: For the first time in nearly forty years, the world’s largest active volcano erupted. Nobody died, very little infrastructure was affected, and some called it the “best possible outcome” for an eruption. It’s not clear why it took Mauna Loa forty years to wake up, but some scientists believe it’s because it shares lava flow… with at least one other volcano!
NATE: Solar powered WiFi might sound like a weird game of Madlibs gone wild, but it’s actually a reality that might arrive to the general public sooner than you think. Through the use of wireless smart windows, researchers out of Saudi Arabia have found a way to create WiFi signals we can pick up from our phones - all without electricity or radio signals! The signal is only a fraction of basic internet speed right now, but in due time, we may be able to run the internet through our household windows!
CALLI: What could end water scarcity AND climate change at the same time? How about water VAPOR? New research shows that by harvesting water vapor in some of the warmest oceans on Earth, we could convert water vapor into fresh water that within just a week could hydrate the entire subtropical US. Right now, it’s just a hypothetical study: but with time, money, and resources, some scientists may have cracked the code on how to make the world a much, much better place!