Learn how we could look for advanced civilizations that are using tiny black holes as fuel; how fast you’d have to run on the Moon in order to stay on top of water; and which countries gave us the most world-famous magicians, pirates, and astronauts. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: If Advanced Civilizations Are Using Black Holes as Fuel, Here's How We'd Find Them — https://curiosity.im/2HWNwa1 Humans Can Run on Top of Water (on the Moon) — https://curiosity.im/2HZNcYi Which Countries Give Us the Most World-Famous Magicians, Pirates, and Astronauts? — https://curiosity.im/2u671Vj If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn how we could look for advanced civilizations that are using tiny black holes as fuel; how fast you’d have to run on the Moon in order to stay on top of water; and which countries gave us the most world-famous magicians, pirates, and astronauts.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/using-black-holes-as-fuel-how-to-run-on-top-of-water-and-origins-of-the-world-famous
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn how we could look for advanced civilizations that are using tiny black holes as fuel; how fast you’d have to go if you wanted to run on top of water on the Moon; and which countries gave us the most world-famous magicians, pirates, and astronauts.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If Advanced Civilizations Are Using Black Holes as Fuel, Here's How We'd Find Them — https://curiosity.im/2HWNwa1 (Republish) (Ashley)
ASHLEY: There’s been a lot of great research lately into alternative energy sources. But one energy source that might be even more awesome than solar and nuclear energy is… BLACK HOLE energy. And one mathematician suggests that we might be able to find extraterrestrials by looking for spacecraft that are powered by tiny artficial black holes. As reported by Universe Today, this idea comes from a pair of papers published by researchers at Kansas State University. In 2009, a mathematician named Louis Crane co-authored a paper about the possibility of black hole spacecraft. Basically, the paper outlined the possibility of using Hawking radiation from an artificial black hole to power a spacecraft, and concluded it was at the edge of possibility — assuming they could get past the effects of quantum gravity, which are currently unknown. Here’s how Dr. Crane explained it in an email to Universe Today: quote, “An advanced civilization would want to harness a microscopic black hole because it could throw in matter and get out energy. It would be the ultimate energy source. In particular, it could propel a starship large enough to be shielded to relativistic velocities. None of the starship concepts NASA studied turned out to be viable... It might be the only possibility,” unquote. To produce an artificial black hole, you’d have to focus a billion-ton gamma-ray laser to nuclear dimensions, so the sheer scale is straight-up beyond the current world economy. A civilization would have to utilize an entire solar system to have the resources for this, meaning it would have to be a Type 2 civilization on the Kardashev Scale. And that’s just one of a bunch of technical challenges that are beyond what humanity could do right now, including the sheer amount of power it would take to start up that gamma-ray laser and where that energy would be stored. But in February 2019, Dr. Crane published a new paper that says we can use gamma telescopes to find evidence of spacecraft that run on tiny black hole fuel. We could use space-based telescopes like the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities like VERITAS and the High Energy Stereoscopic System, to figure out if gamma-ray sources could be artificial, up to a thousand light years away. It’s an exciting idea, but space is big, so try to be patient — this could take a while. [CODY: I just have one question about these spacecraft powered by tiny black holes: can they do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs?]
Humans Can Run on Top of Water (on the Moon) — https://curiosity.im/2HZNcYi (Cody)
Know what’s a little closer than a thousand light years away? The Moon. And you know what’s cool about the Moon? If you ever get the chance to visit, you’ll learn that if you’re in good enough shape, you can run on top of water there. And we know this thanks to the winner of a 2013 Ig Nobel Prize. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people laugh and then THINK, and the prize in physics that year went to a team of Italian scientists who wanted to know if you could run on top of water on the Moon. To get their results, the team devised a brilliant simulation of lunar gravity made up of a springy harness hanging from the ceiling. Then, they equipped their study participants with swim fins to mimic the broad feet of basilisk lizards, because while low gravity, high speed, and broad feet can each help with the endeavor on their own, the best way to get results is to combine all three. The researchers rigged the harness to simulate various amounts of gravity and found that the most physically fit of their participants was able to stay afloat at about 22 percent of Earth's gravity. Reduce that amount down to 10 percent, and almost everybody was able to do it. Since the gravity on the moon is about 17 percent of Earth's gravity, that means that running across a lake is certainly possible — it's just closer to the "elite athletes only" side of the spectrum. By the way, if you think that the sight of somebody strapped into a complicated harness, wearing floppy swim fins, and splashing frantically at the top of a pool of water would be a pretty funny sight, shame on you. This is serious science. And also, you're totally right. By the way: you could also run on water here on Earth, but to do that, you’d have to run about 67 miles per hour, or about 108 kilometers per hour. Usain Bolt’s fastest speed ever was less than half that, so… good luck with that one.
[NHTSA]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstriation.
CODY: Texting and driving isn’t just a dangerous problem, it’s deadly. And if you drive while distracted, you’re THREE TIMES more likely to crash. But far too many people still don’t recognize the dangers.
ASHLEY: Did you know that when you send or receive a text, you take your eyes off the road
for about 5 seconds? And at 55 miles per hour, that’s like driving more than the length of a football field, with your eyes closed. Between 2012-2017 nearly 20,000 people died in crashes involving a distracted driver.
CODY: And if your own safety isn’t enough reason to stop driving while distracted, here’s another one. It’s also illegal. That’s why cops are writing tickets to anyone caught texting while driving. And they’re doing it to save lives.
ASHLEY: So remember, if you text while driving, you WILL get caught. U Drive. U Text. U Pay.
Which Countries Give Us the Most World-Famous Magicians, Pirates, and Astronauts? — https://curiosity.im/2u671Vj (Both)
CODY: Do you know which countries gave us the most world-famous magicians, pirates, and astronauts? Well you’re about to. Because today, we’re wrapping up with a story on a data visualization tool from the MIT Media Lab, called Pantheon.
ASHLEY: The team at Pantheon defines being famous as being someone who’s shaped “global culture.” Culture itself is a huge and confusing concept, but at Pantheon, they’re interested in culture as being a particular way of life. And because they’re interested in global culture throughout history, they’re really interested in a million particular ways of life. Also… kind of broad. So they’ve focused on the key figures who’ve shaped, or produced, global culture. And they’ve defined that set of people pretty specifically: anyone with a Wikipedia page in more than 25 different languages. As of 2016, that meant the team was looking at 11,341 people.
CODY: Now, Wikipedia is pretty reliable, but certainly vulnerable to inaccuracies and distortions. And it used a person’s birthplace, meaning that, for example, Che Guevara was categorized as “from” Argentina -- which is true -- even though he’s best KNOWN as a Cuban revolutionary. But overall, the Pantheon websites offer some interesting insights into the lives and locations of the world-famous.
ASHLEY: You can sort through Pantheon’s data on MIT’s website, which we’ll link to in today’s show notes. But here are some fun highlights: the U.S. produces mostly actors, singers, and musicians; more than half of Argentina’s notable people are soccer players; and Zimbabwe almost exclusively exports politicians and tennis players.
CODY: As for professions, most magicians and astronauts come from the U.S., but most pirates hail from the U.K. France leads for most mathematicians, and a full half of religious figures from history came from Italy. Visit Pantheon for yourself and see what you can find in the data!
ASHLEY: Read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com!
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!