Why Sharks Attack The Internet

Welcome to the rest of the science. I am Hannah Frye. And I'm Michael Stevens. I think it's the tone she doesn't like. It should be Michael Stevens. It's no big deal. Should we let the audience in on why we laughing for we've even started? Yeah. Okay. So basically my wife came up to me and she's, she's listened to the podcast, which I love, right? And she's like, please stop introducing yourself as, and I am Michael Stevens. And make a contraction out of it. I'm Michael Stevens. It sounds like you're, you think you're really important or something? And I am Michael Stevens. You are really important. Oh, Hannah, Hannah Frye, please. I am Michael Stevens. I'm Hannah Frye and I am. So I'm trying to do the opposite. So say, say your name, Hannah. I'm Hannah Frye. So today we're going to, that's what she wants. I like the flannel flag, right? It's like, claim in the land. I personally like it. Okay, well, Michael Stevens, now that we know that you're here, flag flanted. I am here. I've got a field notes episode for you. I'm really excited about this. I know you are. I can't wait to see what it is because I have no idea. Okay. So yesterday I was filming a little experiment in a pub. I'll tell you about that another time. But once we finished filming, the doors of the pub opened and people came in and were buying drinks at the bar. And because this big show in the UK has just been on, there were a few people who were asking for photographs and whatever asking me about this show. And then as part of that, this guy came over to me and he was like, I need to talk to you. And I was like, okay, sure, you know, if you'd like to have whatever, he was like, no, no. I need to talk to you about deep sea internet cables, and I was like, okay, you immediately have my attention. You're like, I need to talk about this too, thank you. Yes, please. Because the thing is, I actually have had a secret obsession for deep sea internet cables for quite some time. Anyway, it turns out, by the way, while all of this was going on, this guy's wife was there. She, I think, was quite mortified to come over to try to come session with me about deep sea internet cables. But I could not have been more excited because not only did he tell me loads of really cool stuff about deep sea internet cables, he then let me borrow the one that he had in his house. Look at that. How fun is this? It just feels so grateful that we've now got to the point in our lives where people approach us with really interesting things and really interesting stuff that not only do I get really excited about, but also I can bring on here to show you. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We know that DNA holds a lot of information, but here's a way to visualize it. If we encoded all the movies ever made in all of history into DNA, that comp of DNA would be smaller than a sugar cube. It is packed with data. So Cancer Research UK scientists are analyzing cancer DNA to understand what makes every cancer different. We need searching through what was once considered genetic junk. That's because uncovering these differences could lead to more personalized and precise ways to prevent, detect and treat the disease. Over the last 50 years, Cancer Research UK's work has helped to double cancer survival in the UK. And today it's continuing to save and improve lives around the world. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org/restiscience. Hi, this is Garolinica from Goldhangers, The Rest Is Football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So, when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee and get on with it. Join millions, saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, TZC's apply. Observe. The North American dad, 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana and offers appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, "Dang, that's a good offer." The highest form of approval, no haggling, no hassle, no one called him boss. He's still on the couch, astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com, pick up these may apply. Yeah, not only is that so cool to look at, it's beautifully presented with this kind of steered pattern. This is like one thick wire and the layers have been cut in a staggered way so we can see. What you're holding up looks like the tower of Babel. It does. That's a really good description. It looks like a cake where the layers get a little thinner as you go up and they're all cylindrical. Some of them are black. Some of them are silver in color. One is white. Some are copper in color and at the very tip, it becomes just like thin copper electrical wire. Yes. And then poking out of the top are almost like these hairs. Oh, they're like hairs. They're so thin. They're super duper duper duper duper thin. Can you see that? But the whole thing is about the size of like a can of soda. They're sort of nearly the size of my hand, right, from bottom to top. Okay, so here's the thing, right? Is that I think everybody knows that subsidy cables exist, but I, before I know about this, I was imagining these like gigantic sort of sewage pipe size things that kind of run between continents, allowing there to be internet connectivity in the same way that you see great big pipes that run under our streets, you know, like a massive giant network of them. I think that's sort of what I was imagining. But this thing that I'm holding in my hand, which, you know, I can, I can really easily pinch it between my thumb and my finger. This is like the whole width of the entire whole thing, but it lies on the bottom of the whole thing, this is like, it's basically the diameter of a garden hose, okay? So the different layers here, I should also add, most of these layers do not exist in the main. So what you have here, right, the, the very bottom one is, is just a stand. So this first layer here, this is like the outer coating, then you have this like, this arm and reinforcement essentially, you've got two layers of that and then two layers of this waterproof coating, so waterproof coating, bit of reinforcement, waterproof coating, bit of reinforcement. Now all of those, the two layers of reinforcement, they only appear in the cable that is near to a shoreline, oh, because near to a shoreline, people are dropping anchors, you've got trawlers, you've got that kind of thing going on, and you want to protect the delicate interior from potential damage, but for most of the ocean, the only thing that is lying on the bottom of the sea floor, the ocean floor, is just the thickness of that white bit, that's literally it. No kidding, and what do these do? Because surely the internet goes through satellites as well, what do the deep sea ocean ones do? Oh, they are way more important than the satellites, they're the main arteries of the internet. I should tell you, in fact, actually, the entire Starlink fleet, everyone's been going on about Starlink, aren't they amazing? They're great. The entire Starlink fleet only carries as much internet as one of these cables, and I'm talking, when I say one of these cables, the actual bit that matters are these little hairs that are poking out inside, okay, is that it? That is it, that's it. So the cable is only about as thick as a soda can, but how many of them are needed? No, we're near as thick as a soda can, I was saying, let me see if I can get this up. Hold it, hold it so I can see the base, how thick is that bottle? I guess the base is quite thick, so it's basically see the silver bit, it's that bit, right? That's with the armory, but the actual diameter, we're talking the actual cable, the bit that's in the bottom of the main ocean, the white bit, is 21mm thick. Wow. It's tiny, teeny, teeny tiny, and then even inside that, you've got this copper layer, which is conducting the electricity so that you can boost the signal across this cable, but the bit that really matters, the fiber optic bit, are these hairs inside, which is where light is sort of sent down it in a really efficient way so it can travel really long distances and it gets boosted at various stages by this kind of electrical current. You have to think some of these cables are 10,000 kilometres long, and so it would be so expensive to try and arm a plate all of it, which is why you only just have this laughably little skinny thing that is sitting there at the bottom of the ocean. Okay, so right now, you and I are traveling through. one or some of these right now. - Oh, we absolutely are. You're in the States, right? I'm in London, absolutely guaranteed. Just me talking to you is passing through, passing through some of these. - And if you're watching or listening to this show, it's probably coming to you through one of these cables from a server across an ocean. I don't even know where this stuff is stored. Where are the servers? They can be anywhere, but they get to you because of this network. - Right, that this thing is as correct as. - Now the thing is about these cables, okay? They are so skinny that in the early days when they first started laying them, they didn't interlate them properly from the electromagnetic field that's created as you have this electricity and light kind of traveling down these wires. And so when they lay down the first ones, sharks, which are really sensitive to electromagnetic fields, were really confused by them and would go along and bite them. And so when they were repairing them, when there were problems with it and brought them up, they would see all of these shark bites and like teeth that had been caught in them. So now there's like, there's a bit more insulation to try and leave the poor sharks alone. - Talk about sharks breaking the internet. (bell rings) - Sharks in the night. - The laboratory tests, they identified the culprit as the crocodile shark instantly, which lives about two kilometers down, really near the bottom of the ocean. But they've also been stories about whales that have died getting tangled in these things. And the thought is that what whales are doing is at the bottom of the ocean and they're sort of like using their mouths to sort of scoop up any potential food, getting tangled in this cable and getting like in a real knot and then basically dying. - So there must be redundancies in the system. Like if one gets damaged, it's gonna take a while to get out there and repair it. - Surely there's loads of them. Surely there's billions of these things. Is that what you're thinking? Surely it's like a fishing net laid along the bottom of the ocean. - Well, there's probably at least like a dozen. - I think a dozen is a very small number. (laughs) - Yeah, but these seem like such powerful things. I'm like, I'm trying to guess an appropriate number. - So I don't know, my guess, right? And maybe this is because you're smarter than me, but my guess is that given that this is like the width of the actual fibers that are going in, I mean, these are like hairs that I'm handing up, right? My guess was that given how skinny each one of these is, there must be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of these things along the bottom of the ocean. But in actual fact, connecting America and the UK, there is about a dozen. - Oh yeah, I'm looking this up and I'm seeing the number 14. How's that for a guess? - That was pretty good. - I am Michael Stevens. - Yeah, but overall, telegeography's interactive submarine cable map hit a new milestone, 709 cable systems. - That's across the entire world. - Across the entire world and that's a system, not like just a big long length that stretches the ocean. So, you know, but this is giving us some ballpark figures of what's down there. - Yeah, but there's not many. - What surprises me is that we don't hear more about them and their vulnerabilities. Why are these not attacked more often? - Oh, they're attacked. Oh, they are attacked. And when they go down, it can really cause really serious problems. So sometimes, in fact, one of the things that has been happening as a sort of act of war is that sometimes you will see people divers going down with sores. There's a little bit in viewed in Cornwall, which is where the main sort of artery comes in from America. You know, when I say the main artery, I'm talking like half a dozen glorified garden hoses, okay? It's nothing. And that comes in through Cornwall and it's extremely carefully protected this area because if that were to be damaged, we would, I mean, how would you survive really, right? Like a lot of stuff would shut down if you suddenly lost all access to the internet, which is one of the reasons why you have both satellites and these deep sea cables so that you're protected from solar storms and this sort of vulnerability of someone physically cutting the cable. My favorite story though is in Georgia, so Georgia in Asia, rather than Georgia in America, where they had this cable that kept on getting severed and as it got severed, I mean, essentially would knock out the internet for Armenia. Right. And it turned out there was this woman who had a spade who was trying to scavenge copper. Oh, really, it was just kind of an innocent, not me, maybe not innocent, but it wasn't some big military action. It wasn't some big military action, no. I know that on the other side of the states, there's a place in Whittier Alaska where cables come up and it is very protected. I mean, first of all, Whittier Alaska is literally only accessible periodically by going through a tunnel in a mountain, but I looked at that, I remember, and I was like, what is that? And they were like, that's the internet. And I was like, what? Right, I just think that's the coolest thing. I mean, there was a big explosion in attention in this stuff when high-frequency trading really started to take off because with high-frequency trading, let's say I say to you, hey, Michael, can I buy that watch, please? And you say, yes, you can, right? And then someone else, Bob comes in and they've got really extremely fast internet access. Bob comes in, he hears me saying it to you and then very quickly gets into you first and says, I will buy 10 of them, please. Buy 10, 10 of your watches. And then by the time my order actually arrives, I have increased the value of the watches by virtue of the fact that there is now this demand for them. So end up paying you more and then they can go off and sell their watches elsewhere, now their prices higher. So it's like these tiny, tiny, tiny little changes in price that you can exploit if your internet is faster than other people. - That's right. It just comes down to a matter of milliseconds. - Oh, yeah. And we're talking out where the speed of light is your limiting factor. So people started buying offices closer and closer and closer to where these DC cables came out from the ocean floor, right? Like if you were 100 meters down that way in Manhattan, forget it, you know? Even like the floor of your building, as to how close you were to the floor of your building, would allow you to be exploited by these extremely fast-paced algorithms. People were tunneling through mountains to lay a cable straight rather than go around just in order to get the fastest possible access to the internet for these trades. That makes me think about how financial markets will deal with an interplanetary human species. Like once light speed really matters. And I mean, already whether you go through a mountain or around it or whether you're a hundred feet this way or that way does make a difference of nanoseconds. And if your machine can work really quickly, then you've got an advantage. What do you do when you've got traders on Mars and traders on Earth? And they're like, wait a second. How do we protect this action? Because it's going to take it minutes for my order to get there. And if it's intercepted along the way, the time it takes for the. I don't know enough about light, but you see where I'm going with this. I see where you're going with this. I tell you what, can I tell you something about light, though? Because I think the way that these things work is so interesting. Because what you've got is you've got this little tube of glass and you're essentially bouncing a laser down the tube of glass. And the glass is designed to have as little resistance as possible so that this beam of light can travel unimpeded. The thing is, is that if you vibrate the tube of glass, there is a disturbance in the light beam as it arrives. And if you do some very clever calculations, you can reverse engineer what kind of vibration and where that vibration happened. So this technology, this sort of the clever bit of math, basically, was originally developed for when these cables were laid in roads and there would be a pneumatic drill getting close to the cable. And then this sort of internet company could come and say, please step away from. Please, step breaker, or proactively go and send somebody out to repair the cable. But what they realized as the technology got more and more sensitive was that you could use this network of cables on the ocean floor to detect seismic changes. So now some of the best sensors that we have about earthquakes, about tsunamis, about all these kind of geological events are through the way that the light vibrates according to what's going on to the cables on the bed of the ocean floor. Wow, isn't that cool? It won't be that long until we're able to do that with electrical lines running through cities, you know? And also like fiber cables for internet in cities, suddenly we can like track where everyone is just by looking at the tiny little nano fluctuations in that light signal. I mean, it turns out you can go even further than this because I told you already about the whales who are scooping up things on the bottom of the floor. Actually, the sensitivity of these things is so extraordinary. ordinary, that you can detect whales passing overhead. Now, right, you can detect in the servers of the signal, you can detect whales passing overhead, but you can also detect submarines passing overhead. See exactly. So now this has like this obvious military application, where if you want to monitor where all the submarines are around the world, you can use your deep sea internet cables in order to do so. That's amazing, totally unsurprising, but it also makes me convinced that in 10 years, the government is going to know how many times I go to the bathroom each day. I think they probably already do, Michael. They might already know that, of course, I take my phone with me most of the time. Right. I think what they definitely know is how long it takes you to year and eight, because as we all know, it's 21 seconds. They already know mathematically on average how long I take, just because I'm an animal. You know what? If someone heard me say that and hadn't seen any of our previous episodes, that would sound so weird. It would sound really weird, especially me being like, because I'm an animal. You know how long it takes me to pee. But this is a throwback to a real. No, I don't think we should say. I don't think we should say. I think we should just leave it like that. Okay, let's not explain it. Forget what I said. You're an animal who takes 21 seconds to pee. Okay, let's leave it. Okay, I have one more thing to tell you about these cables. How the hell does all of the internet go through something that is that skinny? How? Yeah, that's what I was gonna wonder. What is the bandwidth? What is the internet? What is going on? What is actually going on? Yeah. Okay, so it turns out the internet is basically fancy Morse code. Right. It's like genuinely what it is. So you could imagine, I've got a torch and I switched it off to be zero and on to be one, right? I could kind of blink out a message and I could spell out different letters. I could use binary essentially to blink out a message to you. And especially if we agreed, okay, I'm going to do one bit, one bit per second. So every second is going to be either on or off and that's how we're going to communicate with each other. So that's essentially what you're doing down these cables is you're just going on, off, on, off. So that would be one bit per second, which is great, right? And they just happen to be really skinny because the lasers are really good and toners on. But that only allows you to do one bit per second, okay? And that is going to be way too slow, right? It would take you, it would take you 40 seconds just to spell out hello, right? Which is not, you're not going to, you're not going to be streaming the rest of science very easily if that's how the internet actually works. But then somebody was like, okay, this is horrifically slow. But these lights, they don't just need to be on or off. What if we use the, how bright they are to encode information? So off could be 0, 0. And then low light could be 0, 1. And medium light could be 1, 0. And really bright light could be 1, 1, okay? And then someone was like, well, hang on a second, you could use different colors here instead of just sending white light as like on or off or a bit on very on medium on, you could send through blue light as on or off and red light as on or off simultaneously, simultaneously, exactly. And then at the other end, you split it back off into red and blue and you can then re, I mean, essentially you're sending two messages at exactly the same time across those two channels. So the number of messages you can send is only limited by the frequency sensitivity of the sender and receiver. In terms of how quickly they can go on and off. In terms of how big of a difference between colors they can detect because each difference is a whole new message. Yes, because you can have red, you can have blue, you can have green, you can have turquoise, you can have maroon, you can have whatever, whatever, whatever. Well, even within green, you could have 500 nanometers, 501 nanometers to speed of wavelength now, exactly, exactly. And we're talking the narrowest, narrowest, narrowest bands that get end up getting shared. But they also, what they can do is rather than it being every second on off, medium on, high intensity, blue light, red light, whatever, you can also fluctuate it incredibly quickly. You can switch it on and off, essentially incredibly quickly. So when you put all of this together, so as fast as computers can, can, can flash lights on and off and as fast as you can read it on and off, the record here, me with a torch going on and off once a second is one bit per second. The record is 450, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, bit per second along one single fiber. In the quadrillions? So it's almost half a quadrillion bits per second. It's half a quadrillion bits a second. Delicious. Isn't that incredible? I mean, that is basically enough for, I think, the whole population of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Belgium, England and France to watch this video. Through one hair thin, fiber optic cable. What a thief in one second. How many of those are in an undersea cable? Because they're all kind of wrapped up in the core. Yeah. Well, this one, thanks Andre from the popping knowledge, has gone on to about 10 max. So the reason why I love this, right, is not only is this just the most absurd story, a human optimization, my God. What is it? It's ridiculous to me that this engineering and marvel, where we have harnessed the speed of light in this unimaginably powerful way. And Ashley, we just use it to watch cat videos. As we shook the complete spectrum of human excellence to human stupidity all contained within one single fiber. Well, yeah, it's the entirety of human society now flattened to the thickness of the speed of light, which from its perspective is nothing. So it's incredible. Yeah. But my other favorite thing about this, you know, apart from what it tells us by humans, is that, okay, all of this is sort of infrared spectrum, by the way. So when I talk about light colors, it sort of is all shifted. But if you if you did shift it back so that it would be visible and then you slowed it down so that our eyes could see the flashing, what it means is that if you were watching the internet, it would look with all of these colors flashing on and off. It would look like a glittering rainbow. Yeah, it would. It's like a little disco. If you watched it not slowed down, would it just look like a bunch of white light with slight? There wouldn't even be slight changes. I bet it would just look white. Yeah, I don't think you I could perceive it. It would not perceive the split second changes. Because if you think about how many channels are being used, it's sort of like a, you know, sort of statistical average of all of the different channels, you just wouldn't get enough. You wouldn't get fluctuations at the sort of the ground level, the kind of meta level. That would be cool. You could plug the entire internet into your brain. Just look at it. Your retina is just not sensitive enough to make sense of it. But what if it was? Someday it could be. Someday it could be. So there we go. That's my that's my delightful, delightful object for this week. Thank you very much, Andre. I really appreciate it. I will get this back to you post-taste, but I cannot tell you how excited I was to bump into somebody nerdy and a pub. Thank you. Should we go for a break? Let's go for a quick break and when we come back, we've got a question from you all. This segment is brought to you by British Airways. We've all heard that phrase in your own little world. And when you are settled in British Airways business class, that can feel particularly true. But is there actually any science behind it? First of all, neuroscientists have shown over and over again that the brain does more than just record the world around us. Our brains combine what our senses tell us and also what we expect to find, which means that right now you aren't seeing the world as it is in and of itself. You are seeing your brain's interpretation. Exactly. I mean, two people can experience the exact same moment but come away with two very different versions of it. So today, we are asking, if we each live in our own version of reality, how do we make ours count? Should I go back to some of the neuroscience for this, Michael? Because we've said this a thousand times, but your brain is, you have to remember, it's sitting inside your skull, it's dark in there, it's quiet in there, there's sort of no sensory signals at all, just electrical signals that are being fed in from other parts of your body, your eyes, your nose, your skin, et cetera. On the flip side, outside of your body, the physical world, there are all of these different signals that you could absorb, you know? So you have to imagine that your version of reality, it's like looking at the universe through a keyhole. You are sensing a tiny sliver of what is potentially out there. There are other animals, for example, bees or a mantish shrimp that have completely different colour perception to what we do. Humans, we only see this very narrow band of visible lightwaves. Bees can see ultraviolet lightwaves and when you look at flowers under ultraviolet light, there's like runways, there's like arrows, there's all kinds of crazy disco stuff going on that is just completely invisible to us. That man to shrimp, we think they have 27 primary colors, right, we have three. You cannot even conceive of what the world looks like to a man to shrimp. Our perception is just a sliver, a sliver of what is potentially available out there. I will even go one step further and say that we aren't looking through a keyhole because that presumes that there's a looker and something to look at through the keyhole, a subject and an object. But look at a cup of coffee, okay? It's got color, it's got an aroma, it's got a taste, but where the heck are those qualities? Are they in the coffee? Not really because people disagree on what it tastes like, is it within you? Not really because you can't create that exact sensation all by yourself. It only happens when you are together with the coffee combined, the subject and object become one. And how can that happen by exploring the world, by traveling, by having new experiences? And if you're gonna have new ones, they better be nice. You better believe they'd better be nice because I tell you what else is going on inside of your brain, is that you are this amazing prediction engine. You are change detector extraordinaire. And when everything is the same again and again and again and again, your brain's like, I've seen this before. I can relax here, I can chill out. It's when you have new experiences that your brain knows to sit up and pay attention. - That's right, it's when you have those new unpredictable experiences that you exist when everything's monotonous, you're not even there, you're on autopilot literally. We've all been there before, you're at the airport, you get your tickets and you're told, hey, you have a great flight and you respond to you too. To a person who is not going to be flying today, okay? That's your autopilot on, you aren't there. But we can take this even further. When you are present, when your awareness is present, more memories are formed, your experiences are richer. And what winds up happening is that time flies and you have a bunch of fun and when you reflect on that activity, it fills up your life. It defines you, it's full of great things and great stories to tell. - Right, so if you're going to form some memories, you may as well make them good ones, you may as well make them ones that allow for a collaboration between your brain and the environment around you. Every new experience that you do gives your brain something to draw on and over time that can change what you expect to see from the world itself. - And with British Airways business class, new experiences start from the moment you get to the airport. - A glass of something you'd ever tried before in the lounge maybe, a dinner on board is worth remembering. - Oh, and then Hannah, there's Club Suite. A six foot six, fully flat bed with a door for prizes. - Six foot six. - So you arrived. - What? - Six foot six, thank you very much. - Wow. - You're going to arrive, rested, ready to take in all the sights and sounds of somewhere new, joining object to subject, boom, qualia, qualities, existence. - Your brain's gonna build the same version of reality the way it may as well make your version count. So to plan your next trip in business class, visit British Airways.com. - This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. 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(upbeat music) - And we're back, we've got questions. From you, I love your listeners. The first one is from Enzo, who asks, who named Earth? - I mean, we know who named Pluto. We know who named Uranus. - I don't think I know. - Well, I don't know off the top of my head, but there is a person who named it. Same with Uranus, right? It was like, should we call it Herschels? Should we call it George? Let's call it Uranus. Funny story, do you know Uranus? I am gonna answer your question, by the way, but I just, I have to get this out of my system. So Uranus, the seventh planet, it sounds like part of the digestive tract. That's one of the, like, almost at this point, like, higher some jokes about it. I've said before that we should just change its name to be its Latin form, which is Kylus. Okay? Every other planet, except for Earth, uses a Latin name. But then for some reason, Uranus is here using a Greek name. Let's just call it by the Greek version of Uranus, which was Kylus. It's cool, you know, Kylus, Neptune. It's still, it sounds spacey. But also, listen to this. Not only does Uranus sound like part of the digestive tract, its actual etymological root is where we get the urinary tract. Uranus and urine are related. They come from the same root, protoindo-European language word, that meant, like, it's like the ur sound, which meant to moisten. But why is Uranus cool, though? Because naturally, where does moisture come from? The sky, rain and fog and all these things they're in the air. So, Uranus came to mean the sky after it originally meant moisture. And then from there, it doesn't take you very long to get to Uranus, which is the mythological personification of the sky. And it's great granddaughter, Urania, who's the muse of astronomy and astrology. Okay, so you've got this. And then there's another kind of moisture, which is much less heavenly. And that becomes urine. - Much less heavenly, yes. - Yeah. - I'm really resisting the urge to make some weird jokes right now, by the way, to be absolutely clear. Just to say you know what's going on in my mind. All right. - Don't resist the urge to make weird jokes. - No, mine will really feel safe, carry on. - Okay, all right. Well, the filthy ones will save for our members only. The rest is science after dark, which maybe we'll do someday. Point is who named Earth? Wouldn't it be cool if we knew the exact person, like how we know America is named after a Marigo Vespucci? But we don't know who named Earth it individually. We know that Earth came from, we can trace it etymologically back to again, proto-Indo-European languages, where er meant soil, okay? That's even where we get words like ardvark, Earth that er sound. We also know that human comes from another word for dirt, humus, like the rich soil. That's where we get the word human. We don't know where the word body comes from. The furthest back it's been traced is like old high German, but we just don't know what the heck body meant. I personally feel like almost every word is an onomatopoeia originally. I think that noises replicated the things, like indicated them much more directly, and then slowly they took on abstract meanings. So why dirt would be er, er, I don't know. It doesn't really make a sound, but er is also a very basic noise that you can make. - I guess it's also, yeah, no, I mean, I love it though. I really love it. It's also, I like the idea of the various meanings of it, so Earth is in literally the soil, the thing that you're touching, the ground beneath your feet, and then that definition sort of expanding to the entire planet itself. There's something quite nice about that, but it's like as our understanding of what we were standing on expanded, so too did the meaning of the word. - Well, yeah, and so many of the place names we have for just regions on Earth are what its indigenous people used to mean everything, the planet, the ground. Okay, so moving on to another question. A porva asks via email, why are mathematicians so obsessed with knots? Ah, tell you why they're so obsessed with knots, because knots are absolutely amazing, and I love them. Unfortunately, I'm not a not theory mathematician. In another life, I would be, because they are so delicious and incredible. So it all started in about the 1860s or 70s or so, when there was a theory that may be different atoms, although they hadn't worked out their atoms yet, but different elements maybe, were just some kind of smoke that was like knotted in a different way. That was kind of how the ideas started to like, is it just that this one's like a little loop like this, and this one's sort of like this? - That sounds like string theory today. - It sort of does, doesn't it? Anyway, it turns out not the case. But that sets some mathematicians off because they were like, well, okay, how do you categorize and not, if you get something that's like wrapped up in a particular way, sometimes you you cannot actually fundamentally change the knot, but you can rotate it so it looks like something else. An example of this is I could hand you a piece of string that looks extremely knotted, but all you have to do is pull the two ends and it completely unfolds into a straight line. And so that's when is a knot, not a knot, when can you unfurl a knot? And is there a sort of fundamental nature of knots that is like that you can simplify things down to and then categorize them? Anyway, it started as sort of like a mathematical playground, essentially, and for maybe nearly a hundred years, that's all it was, was people sort of toying around with them. The reason why I really love it, you see videos of this on sort of TikTok and YouTube of people doing things that look like they should be impossible, managing to get a plug through the leg of a desk in a way that it shouldn't just like it should happen. Or people having a necklace where they managed to thread the loop through the hole of the necklace despite it not actually fitting, right? Essentially what they're doing is like using tricks from knot theory. My favorite example is when you get two people and you tie them by their wrists. So sort of where one has their hands perpendicular to the other. So it's almost like, maybe we should do this as a live version when we're next in person, Michael, and I can try this on you. - Ooh, yes. - Where you have one person with their wrists tied together and the other person's hands are also tied together, but they're sort of in between. So you're locked together, you cannot escape. - Right, yes, I've seen that. - And then the question is not using any, not cutting anything, not tying anything, is there a way that you can both free yourselves from that setting? And it's just another great example of knot theory of like finding a way that to set up so identical. I'm not gonna tell you the answer. - If you know the answer, then you and I shouldn't get tied together. You should tie me to like a producer and see if we can topologically picture the solution, 'cause I'm assuming there is one. - Oh yeah, there's a solution and it's great. And it's really great and it's really counterintuitive and it's really surprising and it feels like a magic trick, but Ash, it's just knot theory. - Okay, I'm game, I wanna do this. - Anyway, the thing is is that this was all just like, mathematical amusement, sort of mathematical recreation almost for a really long time. But as with most things in mathematics, it turns out that just like following our own curiosity ends up, because math is so completely fundamental to the nature of the universe, ends up being extremely applicable in numerous different ways. So one is in the way that DNA is tightly, tightly, tightly bound inside of a cell. And there are all kinds of elements of knot theory that really come into play when you're trying to untangle that, understand what's happening in the kind of code of the DNA and how that then presents itself in the human more generally or the organism more generally. The other place where it ends up being incredibly useful is in quantum computing, where you are tracing the path of quantum states passing between two different plates. And you can kind of think of this as though it's like, it's a knot of like this one has gone from here down to here. This one has gone from here down to here and they passed over each other. It's sort of like an imaginary knot that has been created between the two. There's this real idea that actually knot theory is gonna be really, really fundamental to getting quantum computing to end up working. - Wow, I did not know that, that's cool. I mean, I just think they're very amusing. There's something really, really powerful about understanding the topology of a knot. Like, oh, I get why it works and how to undo it and how it's different. It's just a kind of mastery that tickles that like niche, I think we're all evolved to in some, in our own way, explore. - It's very like recreational mathematics. You know what, let's say we're gonna do a field notes on this, at the very least we'll do a field notes. Maybe something more, but we'll wait until we're in person. We've got better cameras then. - Okay, last question is from Charlotte Walton, who says, you're both obviously very rational, science-led people, but I was wondering if there are any irrational, perhaps superstitious or spiritual police practices that you like to indulge in. - Let me think. So, when it comes to watching American football games, it's really hard to avoid the impulse to be superstitious. Like, I'll go to the bathroom and something good happens. And I'm like, okay, I should stay in the bathroom or I should go there next time we need some points. I wear the same jersey every time I watch a game. Until it stops working and then I'll be like, oh, okay, I need to find something new. And I don't think, I clearly, I don't believe that it's having some effect on the players, but I think it does allow me to feel like I'm participating in some way. - Right, of course. - And even though I know, I have absolutely no belief that what I'm doing is actually changing the psychic fabric of the world and helping the result happen that I want. I still do it for me. It's for me alone to be like, yes, I have made a choice and I'm committing to this and my life is different because I wouldn't normally wear this shirt. You know, it feels like how I like having an office and not working at home because it makes me feel great to just be in a different location. There's something psychological about it. I want to have to put on shoes. I need to travel and then my brain can change wavelengths. Putting on the right jersey or having the right snack before a game puts me into the mood that I want to be in. So, I guess I'm kind of describing it like it's not supernatural or superstitious. Instead, it's just about setting and my own psychology. But it certainly looks superstitious from the outside. - Yeah, I like that though. I mean, I do think that it's like actually, we might be rational, we might be science level, we're still just human, right? And it's like actually, we still like all the same things with other people like, yeah, and it just feels good. - It feels good. My one is, I like manifesting you guys, right? Like, I know that it's all a bit woo-woo and I know that people take the piss out of people for manifesting stuff. But I actually think that sitting down and like really carefully thinking about what it is that I'm trying to achieve and really carefully thinking about what my goals are and what I'm looking for. And like in the word of sort of the woo-woo like asking the universe, I actually think there's something really good about that about like, it's not that I then think that the universe responds. But I do think that you are priming yourself to be more open to seeing opportunities as they arise. I think it's like, it's somewhere between, similar to you, right, somewhere between just superstitious nonsense and actually I think there's a credible theory behind it. - Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, it helps so much to be clear about what you want and to express it through language or through writing, get other muscles involved. And like now, you're even non-consciously just more aware of those opportunities and whatnot. I mean, I don't think that there's anything that ultimately couldn't be rationally explained about why manifesting would work. I don't think there's a patron ghost of manifesting who goes, aha, because you put that on Instagram, I will now make it happen. But I think that that mystical, you know, manifest ghost is made out of your perspective and also other people in the world knowing and now being able to help you because you have expressed what you want. - Yes, exactly. I'm manifesting right now. - Okay. - Manifesting privately in your own mind. How manifested does it have to be? - I think it's all about an internal thing. I think it's all about what you want in your own mind. - All right, well, I guess that brings us to the end. - It sure does. Thank you for watching everybody out there. If you have other questions, you would like us to answer. Email them to us at the rest of [email protected]. Our subreddit, I love that place. There's amazing stuff going on there. - Isn't there? - Isn't there? And I just, I can't engage unless I make a new account. I'm trying to get someone to please give me access to my old account. - Manifested. Manifested, Michael, manifest it. - Well, I have. I've talked about this before. I've done even more than manifesting. I've talked to our producers and they've, I don't know if they've done anything about it. I think it's hard to do. I might just have to make a new account because I want to engage with people there and all over Reddit. - They say they're working on it. They've just sent us a message saying, we're working on it. I promise. - They're working on it. Do you see how they're meeting about it today, apparently? - No kidding. That is wonderful news, guys. See, now is the best time to start engaging with us on the rest of his science on Reddit because we're all gonna soon be there. We should also follow us like us on whatever platform you're using. And until next time, we'll see you soon. - Bye bye, everyone. (upbeat music) This holiday, all plans even unlimited are just $15 a month. A holiday deal, this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song. Like all I want (beep) Right, okay, we can't afford that. You know, forget the music budget. 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