"Dear Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure! " "How many atmospheres can this ship withstand?" "Well it's a spaceship. I'd say anywhere between 0 and 1. "
EPISODE SUGGESTION: Trash Among the things I enjoyed in this episode was the suggestion to use subduction zones as a place to dump radioactive materials, a thought I had back in my freshman geology class. It occurs to me that there are so many ways to deal with the trash we generate beyond burying it. Also, in most topics that Isaac has tackled, the question of waste products is hiding behind the curtain. For instance, a gardener ship will have a population that produces some waste products that can't be recycled (the obvious choice when practical), so do they just jettison it? Can the fleet survive such a loss of mass over time? Will it be a problem for future missions? Does this have Fermi paradox implications? If I were to place the Trash episode in a series, I think Post-Scarcity would be a natural fit. A post-scarcity existence isn't just having the things you want (or wanting the things you have), but not being bothered by the things you don't want. What's the point of having a swimming pool if it is filled with the trash you generated over the last year?
Nothing can't be recycled. It's just a question of how much energy is required. If energy is sufficiently plentiful, and new raw materials are sufficiently scarce, then everything is worth recycling. In the most extreme case, you heat your waste into plasma and sort it into base elements essentially the same way a mass spectrometer does, but on a massive scale. On a long trip in space, it's likely that you would recycle everything.
Other than waste heat and fission products (and even then you can give some of them a second life), I mostly agree with you. However, there is usually a line where the energy/effort is too high for most people to recycle. Also, unless a reactionless drive is invented, the exhaust would be a waste product.
I particularly enjoyed this episode. Isaac didn't just talk about how, but also touched on the why, which is the important first question before any major endeavor. (One does not simply say, "Hold my beer, I'm going to build an abyssal arcology.") I even enjoyed the ad at the end, since I appreciate old sci-fi.
Hey isaac great episode. What do you guys think about building a supercomputer on mercury? sinds you would have the advantage of solid ground, extream cold and heat.
“It is altogether fitting that we who have sailed the deeps of space now return again to the sea. This is in many ways a water planet, and it can be ruled from the waves. With sea power, rugged terrain can be bypassed and enemy strongholds isolated. Once naval superiority is achieved, Planet is ours for the taking.” - Col. Corazon Santiago, “Planet: A Survivalist’s Guide” (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game)
A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
The section on draining the oceans brought to mind two points: 1. It's more than a bit reminiscent of the Alantropa project proposed between the World Wars, which would essentially involve draining the Mediterranean to make new land for Europe and keep everyone peaceful and happy. Nowadays, we think this plan wouldn't have worked, for reasons ranging from "People don't work like that" to "The land would be salty and useless" to "Wait, what about people living in Africa?" If we do something like this, we'll have to watch out for those problems. 2. These days, archaeologists are seriously considering the possibility that Native Americans and Australian Aborigines used boats to get to their respective continents. Minor point, but a point.
Yes, I thought that too. On a less elaborate scale, Dutch polders. Also, one can imagine the currently proposed tidal power lagoons being drained and repurposed if fusion power comes available.
Great research (as usual) Isaac. I've been working underwater since '07, and everything you discussed (apart from any conjecture) was right on the money.
Better than mars for me ! In fact the fact we have not colonised difficult places on Earth ,to me, makes the possibility of off world colonies seem much more distant.
I suppose it's an "eggs in one basket" thing; since we think we are so precious we need to avoid a world-wide extinction event, that may include the oceans too.
Ron Schlorff - The Arctic, deserts & oceans are still on EARTH, &, hence, are still in ‘one basket’, which still doesn’t solve the problem of an ‘Extinction Level Event’. Colonizing the moon, Mars & other planets, etc. immediately expands the number of ‘baskets’, while giving us the experience needed to go elsewhere...
Congrats on reaching 300k subs Isaac!! By the way, loved the music at the very end @ 27:35. You could run it for another 5 mins and I'll be happy to listen to it. 😊
I’ve grown up on the sea, living on a small island off the east coast of Vancouver Island, for a shoestring time on a float house in a remote bay on a remoter island. I’ve been a commercial fisherman, a marine engineer, (my current profession), and just puttered about in small boats. I’ve always dreamed of living under the ocean surrounded by kelp forests and the life it attracts. I’d often steal my uncles little 10’ tinny, tie off to a piece of bull kelp, (A natural anchor), and just stare into the depths, watching the sea life swim about. I guess my playground was a tad wetter than most. Thanks for this Isaac, I may never live to see these waterborne cities, but the dream is still there... what was that about life extension?
Hey there, I know this comment is 2 years old, but it caught my eye lol this is something I've always been interested in, but never really thought ppl are working to make it actually happen! I wonder if this will happen one day!!? I always thought it was sad we know more about the moon than we know about over 50% of our own planet. I remember way back in school we had a marine biology class and we're discussing the possibility of man living underwater someday and we got so excited about it, except one little girl was like "You big water-belly fish heads aren't getting me down there!" 😆 We explained it to her that it would actually benefit humanity and the planet lol. Anyway it sounds fascinating !!
You talk about so many fascinating ideas each one is worth a small book itself I mean the idea of an island generator or under water city possess so many questions in my mind
Great episode. It's interesting to think of all the different worlds (undersea or floating cities, underground or surface cities, virtual or 'real' cities, 'space-scrapers' or space habitats, etc.) that could exist simultaneously on, in, or near a single planet.
I've never used the deep-diving air mixtures, but they were mentioned during my SCUBA training. If I recall correctly, moving gasses at such pressures, even if they're as light as hydrogen or helium, is a non-negligible effort. I don't remember the details, but it sounds like the sort of thing many people wouldn't want to do if there were other options. (Which makes it most likely for either near-future seasteading or prison colonies.)
Are you talking about "moving" as in shipping, which would probably necessitate more metal tanks, or "moving" as in carrying it underwater on your dive? All else being equal, you'd think a helium-nitrogen-oxygen mix would be _less_ dense than regular compressed air.
You ever breathe any heavier-than-air gases? It's a lot harder to breathe argon than air, for instance. Because argon has so much more inertia. Higher-pressure light gases will have the same problem. I don't think it's a dealbreaker, probably just takes some getting used to. But it's something to consider.
this is 1 of the reasons they use light gases in deep-diveing mixtures, heavy gases under high pressures feels like breathing fluides. (He/H/O or He/O) apart from the fact that N2 gets poisonos fast at high partial-pressure, even O2 gets poisonos/narcotic at some parial pressure (think it was as little as 1,6 bars if i remember correct, its 0,2 at 1 atm so 8 times normal pressure ) (pls excuse bad spelling, grammar and typos)
Mid video I was just contemplating the idea of draining the oceans and bang 21:56 Isaac Arthur once again beat me to the punch. I truly love this channel.
I'm fairly new, nearly a year following & I'm still coming across gems. It's brilliant I'm able to watch content from 5yrs ago. I've commented before and I'll comment again, thank you Isaac for your hard work and dedication. Have a great Christmas and new year to you and your family.
Two words. Transparent aluminum. lol apparently it actually is a real thing. Algae on the "glass" wouldn't honestly be an issue just have some automated cleaner drone. We can garden beautiful coral gardens around the domes even at those depths. They of course wouldn't be photosynthetic coral unless we have the excess energy to light the area enough. Then oh my god the beautiful options that could be done with glowing coral using a higher spectrum of blue type light to light the area instead of white light. You'd see a wonderful glowing coral garden of all different shapes, colors sizes, textures, and movements. The light requirements could be drastically lowered by supplementing food for the corals to make up the extra energy lost. We can easily garden and feed them via drones from inside. It would make for a wonderful past time for some of the population. It could truly be dream like if one knows even the current options for coral one has in the at home reef community. Add in gene editing and we could just give the phosphorescent gene non photosynthetic coral to make it even easier.
Malachi Muncy The study on the Australian coral reef was bullshit and flawed beyond belief. The coral is going nowhere. Also in the last 15 000 years alone the earth has had rapid changes in temperature in the magnitude for 15-17 degrees in a matter of around a decade which is extremely fast and people are screaming bloody murder 2 degrees is going to destroy the planet and the coral. It's ignorant bullshit peddled for the global warming agenda to pull in the cash for more carbon tax and more government control over the energy industry giving them a huge amount of power.
Congratulations on 300k Isaac! Still going strong! Love seeing your channel evolve, always been great but seeing you really putting the growing resources to good use is really rewarding, both as a patron and fan!
If you are running a train "upside down" why not build it to suit? The monorails that were suspended downwards comes to mind. Before tampering with the Earth's structure we should consult the white mice and the Magratheans or at least Slartibartfast.
Thanks Isaac, that was a great one. And I must say, the aging game is one I'd love play on a professional level. I am ever thankful for the media you provide, and I am also greatful for the support given to you. May the giants who's backs we stand on grow to be ever greater as we are lifted by them. Many Thanks, Nick.
Yes, which is good for fuel efficiency and overland issues, but keyword is 'minimize', they'd need to be awful quiet before we could have thousands of them flying around over land during the night without it being a major issue.
Nice video, but minor quibble about the vacuum trains. You mentioned that at 1g, you would reach Mach 1 at 35s, but that's technically not correct. The aerodynamics of an object changes drastically when it begins to move faster than surrounding sound waves. For this reason, Mach is not a static, unchanging speed, but refers specifically to the speed of sound in the fluid you are traveling through. So Mach changes depending on type of material and it's density, which is what makes it useful in describing aerodynamics. And since those trains are in a vacuum, and sound can't travel in a vacuum, Mach is undefined (or zero). I haven't done the math though, so maybe you knew this already, and did the calculations for the very, very low density air which would remain in the tunnel, in which case I salute your dedication to technical accuracy.
Strange, Disney was a very good friend of Wernher von Braun. I'm sure that if he would have wanted to teach you something than that everything is better in space (looking at Treasure Planet) ;D.
@@ryanrosen740 Even though space is often associated with total darkness XD (wich on the second though is not the case, at least until space expands at such a high rate that essentially all the emitted light shifts into the non visible spectrum).
after watching the episode about floating islands i had an interesting idea. mostly for a video game world i'd like to work on that includes a floating island as part of a sky tower that stretches from the ocean floor to an orbital ring. one of the ideas i had for doing the active support was to have it use pyroclastic flow from drilling into the mantle. (i have no idea how feasible that actually is. but if you have an orbital ring you likely know how to build tubes that hold material in place with magnets. so you could likely contain a pyroclastic flow) but yeah i want to build something with a floating island connected to active supports that go between the sea floor and an orbital ring with structures you can visit on the ocean surface, and some hanging structures bellow the surface as well. and of course some more industrial and research structures on the sea floor. and some hanging structures in the sky as well as some orbital ring structures. probably limiting the areas you can visit in each of these areas (or otherwise using procedural generation) don't know if i'll ever make any progress on this idea.... but i really want to play video games based off the content of this channel. from the more in person exploration of some of the structures talked about here. to maybe a civ/management sim game about building and maintaining the different structures this channel talks about. like a colonize the solar system and send out generation ships sorta game. but i'm not really an artist... more of a code person.
I want to say how much I enjoy your videos. Best friend and I watch at least 3-4 episodes every night. Also wanted to say that after about the 6th episode I quit using the cc option. The way you speak is NOT a problem, it is just how you speak. I really dont notice it anymore. Others, if they criticize it, are the ones with the problem. Love you! Keep explaining the confusing stuff for us that stunk at all things math...LOL.
Thanks Jojo, will do, however some folks do genuinely have a problem understanding me, hence the speech therapy. I think most are just trolls exaggerating it to complain, but I'd rather no one needed to adjust at all. :)
@@isaacarthurSFIA That's cool you take time to respond! Although some stuff you talk about is beyond me I still always feel I learned something. We discuss your videos for weeks, I consider myself intelligent, even with my math handicap, and your topics are in my interest sphere. Wish my teachers had been like you, would have probably been better at math, lol😄 please keep making videos! Question though, have/could you do one about different types of stars, what they are and made of someday? Very curious.
No problem, 'twas a time I actually could respond in detail to every comment, nowadays I'm lucky to get 1 in 10 and they tend to be rushed. There is an episode on star types, sadly not one of our better known episodes, "The Stellar Compendium"
Thanks Mr. Arthur, I've been waiting for this video since you announced it. I've got so many questions. ● Could fiber optic cabling connect the light of the surface to the sea floor? How much luminosity is lost over the length of fiber optic cord? ● Most of the human body is made of non-compressible water. Aside from the collapsing of the lungs what else is likely to be damaged by deep sea pressure? ● You speak of genetically manipulating us to have gills. I think gills would have to be very large to provide us enough oxygen to operate our bodies which I don't think would be comfortable for us in anything like our current shape. What I think might work would be an artificial gill array that could be hooked into our bloodstream through a quick-connect coupler that would probably plug into our vena cavas our back. ● I've also thought about the use of subduction zones for trash disposal. They pull down about 2" a year but over the length of a trench that's a fair bit of real estate. ● You mentioned the problem of heat with compact living. How does sea water measure up against say Antarctic ice for heat dispersion? ● Last point and I'll stop. I wonder how many large animals live in these depths that avoid our deep-sea submersibles because of noise or light and therefore we have no clue of their existence. It doesn't seem like the ocean floor is littered with corpses so either the clean-up crews are efficient or there really is a dearth of megafauna. Apparently the sharks down there live a really long time though. Maybe if we looked by dropping a bright light at one location and observing from another what passes between the two…
You mentioned going deep to escape the waves during bad weather. An aircraft carrier doesn't really feel the waves - 100mph winds only give a slight sway - so I imagine a city that size (or larger) wouldn't either.
Another amazing episode Issac! I love aquaponics and would love to possibly see some of these ideas that you bring up. Thanks for sharing and as always Keep Building👍🐟🌿🌾🌱🌻🌞
I love the way your mind works, Isaac. The way you pull all of this together in ways I'd never dream. It's absolutely fascinating. Thank you. This is great!
I must say I never knew about looking for books by what the audiobook readers have narrated. I have one in mind Allyson Johnson and she has been fantastic for the Honorverse series I have been marathoning. And a fantastic episode as always and congrats on 300K subscribers. You and your team have earned everyone of them.
As a scuba diver, I loved this episode! I've often wondered about the whole "gills for humans" angle, and the bottleneck is actually how much oxygen we "gas guzzling" warm blooded creatures need compared to most fish. We'd have to pass an obscene amount of water over those gills to extract enough oxygen for out needs!
I know this comment is old but I'm really wondering if this will be possible in our life time.... It scares me but intrigues me at the same time lol I remember in school they talked about this and the idea of gills for humans and it all sounded so bizarre to me
More plausible would be for humans to live at or near the surface in air but to genetically engineer ourselves and our crops and livestock to be saltwater-tolerant. This will probably be easy by the end of the century considering how quickly the technology is progressing.
Damn this was awesome, Isaac. I bet you spend even more time daydreaming about the future than I do, which is impressive. Might I make a suggestion for a future series? I expect that in your Earth 2.0 series you will, out of necessity, gloss over the ethics and environmental impacts of these megaprojects. Maybe one day you could do a series, or just an episode or two, looking at how things like light pollution from an aquatic civilization might impact the natural ecology. These cities may become meccas for wildlife, increasing the ocean's overall population capacity. The fish populations would explode as well as that of the predators that feed on them. The noises of industry would obscure the communications between whales just as cargo ships already do to disasterous effect. An episode here and there showing the merits of leaving room for nature in the world would be nice eventually. But I do love exploring these possibilities with you. Keep up the good work you brilliant future space colonist.
Hey I been watching some of your content Isaac and I am very impressed I will continue to watch your content because you seem to talk about real deal possible technologies that would revolutionize the world in miraculous ways one could percieve. Keep going man you got another supporter.
Excellent! This episode and the "Orbital Rings" are my favorite so far. This one really got me thinking about how we could improve the ecology of Earth, rather than degrading it. We need to really start concentrating on cleaning up our waste streams into the air, water, and land, so that they only contain substances beneficial to the environment and not toxins. Taking a holistic approach to the environment, rather than narrowly focussing on CO2 emissions (which are beneficial to plants and 1/4 to 1/2 below optimum historic levels). The last 10,000 years of human agriculture has caused many great civilizations of the past to deplete their soils causing the collapse of their civilizations. There are a number of ways to do this to create food forests, and even more importantly, the 2/3 of the Earth's land that is arid grasslands, need to be managed using the methods that Allan Savory has developed in the last 50 years to regenerate those soils, bring back a thriving wildlife population, while using domestic livestock to do it!
At about 20:00 I noticed, you could build those around the magma straws, then you’d have a giant tree-looking thing going from near the planet’s core to space. I imagine one would be named after that giant Norse tree with worlds for branches. I’d also like to note that water is great fission fuel, and we’ve got a lot of water don’t we?
As always, excellent video Isaac! You always leave me with something new to contemplate, and usually an idea or two for my PBEM Traveller game. Thank you!
Congratulations, currently as of february 2020, this video has a 5579/64 like to dislike ratio (which isn't a ratio you can simplify unfortunately, but it's roughly 87 likes for every dislike) which is a truly impressive ratio showing how good your videos are
"Rovelli said that it was his early experiences with LSD which sparked his scientific curiosity that eventually led to his theory on quantum gravity." Arthur, your content sparks genuine curiosity that is unparalleled for the next generation. I cannot thank your efforts enough. LSD got me interested in the natural world, before I could articulate my scientific views, and then there's channels like this, full of free knowledge, that help us all to refine ourselves. Thank you so much.
Currently have been showering in lore ideas for an ancient civilization in my sci fi universe that has failed to colonize the galaxy and has stagnated, yet still is rather advanced. I had run into issues of how to house a couple quadrillion people in an audience/reader friendly manner and this video not only gave me ideas but reminded me of points from other videos I've watched from you. Especially since I wrote them to be a marginally aquatic land species, evolved in a swampy island location, the fact that ocean habitation never crossed my mind baffles me in hindsight. I can see it in my head now: The humans with their sparse, decentralized empire built without the need for megastructures because of fusion and FTL (that's rather cheap when you get past the immense danger involved in researching it) meet the Nlon. The Nlon try taking them in a generation ship about to launch back to home planet after first contact before the humans just FTL jump into a planet wide city covered in a few orbital ring arrays, each housing space colonies, factories, and farms, churning out million year old designs they don't dare change from a simple problem of macro-logistics and gargantuan amounts of standardization. They move down, thinking they'll see a mined-to-hell planet, but see an ocean-island world much like Earth but with massive towers extending from the ocean each housing around a billion of these mysterious aliens. They pass over a huge landing pad for transporting kilotons of raw materials up and down for the automatic factories dotted around haphazardly. They lower into a narrow kilometer long runway, beset on either side by pillars with huge magnets to brace their decent. It takes them back to the landing pad. They get of the space ferry, which is trucked to a launch bay to ferry people up to an orbital ring later. The humans ask the aliens planet-side what those towers were for and their robots, having discussed with the humans' during this trip, respond "Farming, Manufacturing, specifically of-" Before an Nlon engineer shuts it up, stopping it from listing all 10,000 industries in just the towers they passed. The human notices a huge tower spewing what looks to be steam and asks what it is. The alien, with their translator implant calibrated, (a trait it needs to do quickly in order to communicate with those fresh off of generational ships or any subnation far removed enough to have developed an original language from the last point of contact) responds, in the human tongue, "It is a power plant primarily run by diverting the heat of extensive habitation through pressure pipes into local steam engines. Each are little cogs that push the big guy right there. *Guy* is the word for something with a long, straight object, correct? This gender concept is kind of lost on me." The humans correct them and move on to a city set into the ground by about half a kilometer. The Nlon engineer, their colleagues, and a few of their robots each answer the radically different questions of the humans. "What is that central rail? Why are their boxes under them?" The Nlon use them as public transport to city-wide jobs, most people here working in some capacity at the vehicle-tugging beasts' breeding facility. (They've been using them to skimp on metal and cybernetics materials for the 7 trillion translator bots the over-excited aristocracy ordered. - That and ever since the invention of the personalized transportation vehicle on subsystem Enlik'n a couple hundred thousand years ago, they've been stalling infrastructure reform and the addition of the necessary factory rings to the already cramped array.) Another human asks "Do you have a caste system?" Fearing the servitude status of their robots. The Nlon loks at them person with confusion, as if they've suffered a malfunction. The human groans, defeatedly. (I forgot to mention, human-built "AI's" are considered to be "human" in human society. Moving on, the humans rise above the pits to see a massive swathe of steaming water. One person asks what the purpose of this is in a rather derogatory nature, still somewhat peeved by the treatment of his friend. The Nlon, still not versed in human mannerism fully, responds happily: "This is a cooling pool! While the power plant works on ambient heat, this is to keep everyone from dying down there. The pool has a tunnel that extends all the way down to our geothermal plant powering the local beast factory. Although fascinated, the humans say they want to bring their government to meet with the aliens. Fear no ill will, they take them up on a space ferry and send them off... One last question: "How haven't you guys colinized the entire galaxy yet? You seem incredibly advanced, even if a little slow." The Nlon engineer responds: "It took us 60,000 years of waiting for colony ships to realize stable materials radiate at slow paces in space... We'd been sending out colony ships that *entire time.* We thought it better to stay conservative after that blunder."
Isaac love your show and when you mentioned draining the sea my mind jumped to Warhammer 40k. I know this is a big ask but could you possibly do an episode with 40k in mind, like what does make sense or not, I don't know but I have this notion that you can enlighten us with your perspective and I'm sure all the 40k community would love it.
That's the thing I love about this ocean talk on Earth. Even if you don't do it here, there are countless planets, many of which would for far better for this.
There was something a number of years ago, if I could find it again, which discussed moving from the coasts down into the oceans. It seemed to be a remedy of sorts for rising oceans on our coasts and moving populations and industries out. But this series has renewed my interests in the uses of the oceans before we expand further out into space. We do have to get off this rock eventually but terraforming our own world along with pushing outward would be a great way to extend the life of our world while preparing to expand humanity's reach out into the stars.
No one does. It fans with sticky fingers from eating snacks confusing their tablets touchscreens. Had it happen to me once. Thankfully I noticed it and fixed the misclick.
Of course, that big dome a Km or two down could be made of opaque metal or concrete or whatever, but covered with cameras on the outside and 8K video screens on the inside. There would need to be some lights in the mix to make it worthwhile, but there's your "deep sea glass dome" right there. I'm about to make a horrible drawing of a long, skinny island, about 2 by 6 Km, with lots of beach and some picturesque mountains running down the center, with a rocket coming out of the central "volcano" every few hours (with some fireworks added to give it the proper look). This island is the top of a dozen surface-to-seafloor towers, with that surface island the main city park. What a cool setting for all sorts of stories! Everything from a rom-com to a detective story to a superhero comic would work there. The one thing to remember is that the setting is one of the stars of the show. This video of yours was fun and informative, as I've come to expect. The next several eps have me excited as well.
Why would you want 8K screens? Your retina is less precise than 4K, even. (Less cones than pixels) Ever moar of something isn't the way to go. You don't want the 0.5nm transistor, either...
Doesn't it make a difference how big the screen is? In a 96 in. screen even 4K is overkill, but what if it's a 960 in. screen? Or maybe I don't know how this works and it's a case of so so many pixels per cm, whether the screen is 10 cm across or 10,000,000. Why don't I want the 0.5 nm transistor? I mean, I'm not sure a 0.5 nm transistor would work, but if it did why wouldn't you want it? And yeah, I get that it would be hard to connect them to stuff, but... I think I'm missing something.
I've read Jimi Hendrix, a huge fan of science fiction, felt the oceans were too neglected in the field. A lot of his music was science fiction inspired, and some of it was even about the ocean. If only he had lived longer, I could have seen him branching out from music to writing novels himself.
Ive been rewatching some of your older videos recently, and was thinking about the concept of a dyson swarm. Ive been wondering if a cloud of habitats orbiting a star is really the most efficient approach, if one has starlifting tech and efficient fusion reactors. Might it be better to disassemble the star entirely to use as fuel for artificial fusion reactors and even more matter for building cylinders? One could then arrange the habitat cloud into a more compact shape to allow for quicker travel across it, and have a lot more habitats. In a similar vein, for a society based on space habitats instead of planets, wouldnt young stars that still have a protoplanetary disk be the most attractive stars to colonize, on account of longer remaining lifespan, lower chances of native life, and access to the matter surrounding a star without needing to lift much of it out of a gravity well? Or even a nebula, as there you dont even need to worry about starlifting, you can just mine the space dust/gas for fuel and construction material.
For many years I have believed that (when the time comes for such voyages) we should recruit the astronauts for manned interplanetary missions from navy veterans who served aboard nuclear submarines. They have everything one needs for such astronauts: no claustrophobic tendencies, the ability to work and function cut off from the outside environment for months at a time, rigorous safety training, and they treat being sealed in an airtight container with a live nuclear reactor as all in a day's work.
I'm so stoked that you're going to be on Event Horizon with John next week! Great video as always, and next Thursday is pretty much going to be a DOUBLE Arthursday. Can't wait to see it! Cheers, Isaac!
"Dear Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure! "
"How many atmospheres can this ship withstand?"
"Well it's a spaceship. I'd say anywhere between 0 and 1. "
One of my favorite Futurama scenes
mine too
Did it just get warmer in here?
th-cam.com/video/O4RLOo6bchU/w-d-xo.html
Top episode.
"Who lives in a Water Dome under the sea~?" "Isaac Arthur!"
An explorer of futurist puzzles, is he!
Audibly musing of events you wish
Issac Arthur!
If you mock his voice, you're dumb as a fish!
this comment thread is hilarious
Quality as always.
Thanks, loved the recent vid you did on Sargon by the way
History Time?! I love your channel!
EPISODE SUGGESTION: Trash
Among the things I enjoyed in this episode was the suggestion to use subduction zones as a place to dump radioactive materials, a thought I had back in my freshman geology class. It occurs to me that there are so many ways to deal with the trash we generate beyond burying it. Also, in most topics that Isaac has tackled, the question of waste products is hiding behind the curtain. For instance, a gardener ship will have a population that produces some waste products that can't be recycled (the obvious choice when practical), so do they just jettison it? Can the fleet survive such a loss of mass over time? Will it be a problem for future missions? Does this have Fermi paradox implications?
If I were to place the Trash episode in a series, I think Post-Scarcity would be a natural fit. A post-scarcity existence isn't just having the things you want (or wanting the things you have), but not being bothered by the things you don't want. What's the point of having a swimming pool if it is filled with the trash you generated over the last year?
Nothing can't be recycled. It's just a question of how much energy is required. If energy is sufficiently plentiful, and new raw materials are sufficiently scarce, then everything is worth recycling. In the most extreme case, you heat your waste into plasma and sort it into base elements essentially the same way a mass spectrometer does, but on a massive scale. On a long trip in space, it's likely that you would recycle everything.
Other than waste heat and fission products (and even then you can give some of them a second life), I mostly agree with you. However, there is usually a line where the energy/effort is too high for most people to recycle. Also, unless a reactionless drive is invented, the exhaust would be a waste product.
Yeah, I wasn't counting energy sources, waste heat, or reaction mass. But none of those really fall under the category of "trash" in my mind.
"In a 'fusion economy'..."
all trash would have a place on a garden
Lon Johnson & Isaac Arthur, I think this would be a great idea for an episode!
I particularly enjoyed this episode. Isaac didn't just talk about how, but also touched on the why, which is the important first question before any major endeavor. (One does not simply say, "Hold my beer, I'm going to build an abyssal arcology.") I even enjoyed the ad at the end, since I appreciate old sci-fi.
Qanon you are free utube
Hey isaac great episode. What do you guys think about building a supercomputer on mercury? sinds you would have the advantage of solid ground, extream cold and heat.
"Hold my beer, I'm gonna build an abyssal arcology." -One
Volcryn Darkstar, you win this round.
Perhaps I should have said, "One does not simply BUILD an abyssal archology."
@@lonjohnson5161 LOL
“It is altogether fitting that we who have sailed the deeps of space now return again to the sea. This is in many ways a water planet, and it can be ruled from the waves. With sea power, rugged terrain can be bypassed and enemy strongholds isolated. Once naval superiority is achieved, Planet is ours for the taking.”
- Col. Corazon Santiago, “Planet: A Survivalist’s Guide” (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game)
I still play that game every now and then
It's a great travel game. You can put it down and pick it up between airport terminals and such, and it can easily take 8 hours off your day.
@@SeanKula same. There has never been another 4x game like it, and I fear there never will be
Underwater cities and bioengineering in same paragraph...hmm..that reminds me of something. "..Would you kindly ?.."
Finally... Someone makes a Bioshock reference.
This is the most underrated comment of the century. "I believe in no God *crackling of radio waves* no invisible man in the sky."
bio
A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
Rapture
"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man entitled to the sweat of his brow?"
Couldn't resist. =)
The section on draining the oceans brought to mind two points:
1. It's more than a bit reminiscent of the Alantropa project proposed between the World Wars, which would essentially involve draining the Mediterranean to make new land for Europe and keep everyone peaceful and happy. Nowadays, we think this plan wouldn't have worked, for reasons ranging from "People don't work like that" to "The land would be salty and useless" to "Wait, what about people living in Africa?" If we do something like this, we'll have to watch out for those problems.
2. These days, archaeologists are seriously considering the possibility that Native Americans and Australian Aborigines used boats to get to their respective continents. Minor point, but a point.
Nice analysis
You made me think of Alternate History Hub
Yes, I thought that too. On a less elaborate scale, Dutch polders. Also, one can imagine the currently proposed tidal power lagoons being drained and repurposed if fusion power comes available.
There was likely a land bridge between Asia and America, but Australia was disconnected by a bit of sea, so there boats had to be used.
The Lombok Strait.
Now yes! Congratulations for reaching 300 k subscribers
Thanks!
Well deserved milestone indeed!
The number of views are even greater. These videos are going to be viewed for years.
@@isaacarthurSFIA you deserved everyone of it and many more to come.
Great research (as usual) Isaac. I've been working underwater since '07, and everything you discussed (apart from any conjecture) was right on the money.
@Marleah Busse think he works in a submarine
But I mean, have you SEEN spider crabs? Nope, no sir, no thank you.
Have you seen giant squids? Crabs are nothing 😀
@Dante S true that. Scary enough 😀
This is a channel of undeniable historical importance..
There will surely be a notion "Before SFIA... and after SFIA..." in far future..
It’s Arthursday my dudes
Chrisket remember the R's are silent
Aothoos day
Better than mars for me ! In fact the fact we have not colonised difficult places on Earth ,to me, makes the possibility of off world colonies seem much more distant.
I suppose it's an "eggs in one basket" thing; since we think we are so precious we need to avoid a world-wide extinction event, that may include the oceans too.
Ron Schlorff - The Arctic, deserts & oceans are still on EARTH, &, hence, are still in ‘one basket’, which still doesn’t solve the problem of an ‘Extinction Level Event’. Colonizing the moon, Mars & other planets, etc. immediately expands the number of ‘baskets’, while giving us the experience needed to go elsewhere...
@@TraditionalAnglican Yes, that's my point, not well made now that I re-read it. Dinos confirm that! :)
Congrats on reaching 300k subs Isaac!!
By the way, loved the music at the very end @ 27:35. You could run it for another 5 mins and I'll be happy to listen to it. 😊
Gratz on 300k thanks for all the great videos #science #baller
I’ve grown up on the sea, living on a small island off the east coast of Vancouver Island, for a shoestring time on a float house in a remote bay on a remoter island. I’ve been a commercial fisherman, a marine engineer, (my current profession), and just puttered about in small boats. I’ve always dreamed of living under the ocean surrounded by kelp forests and the life it attracts. I’d often steal my uncles little 10’ tinny, tie off to a piece of bull kelp, (A natural anchor), and just stare into the depths, watching the sea life swim about. I guess my playground was a tad wetter than most. Thanks for this Isaac, I may never live to see these waterborne cities, but the dream is still there... what was that about life extension?
Hey there, I know this comment is 2 years old, but it caught my eye lol this is something I've always been interested in, but never really thought ppl are working to make it actually happen! I wonder if this will happen one day!!? I always thought it was sad we know more about the moon than we know about over 50% of our own planet. I remember way back in school we had a marine biology class and we're discussing the possibility of man living underwater someday and we got so excited about it, except one little girl was like "You big water-belly fish heads aren't getting me down there!" 😆 We explained it to her that it would actually benefit humanity and the planet lol. Anyway it sounds fascinating !!
You talk about so many fascinating ideas each one is worth a small book itself
I mean the idea of an island generator or under water city possess so many questions in my mind
Great episode. It's interesting to think of all the different worlds (undersea or floating cities, underground or surface cities, virtual or 'real' cities, 'space-scrapers' or space habitats, etc.) that could exist simultaneously on, in, or near a single planet.
I've never used the deep-diving air mixtures, but they were mentioned during my SCUBA training. If I recall correctly, moving gasses at such pressures, even if they're as light as hydrogen or helium, is a non-negligible effort. I don't remember the details, but it sounds like the sort of thing many people wouldn't want to do if there were other options. (Which makes it most likely for either near-future seasteading or prison colonies.)
Are you talking about "moving" as in shipping, which would probably necessitate more metal tanks, or "moving" as in carrying it underwater on your dive? All else being equal, you'd think a helium-nitrogen-oxygen mix would be _less_ dense than regular compressed air.
You ever breathe any heavier-than-air gases? It's a lot harder to breathe argon than air, for instance. Because argon has so much more inertia. Higher-pressure light gases will have the same problem. I don't think it's a dealbreaker, probably just takes some getting used to. But it's something to consider.
this is 1 of the reasons they use light gases in deep-diveing mixtures, heavy gases under high pressures feels like breathing fluides. (He/H/O or He/O) apart from the fact that N2 gets poisonos fast at high partial-pressure, even O2 gets poisonos/narcotic at some parial pressure (think it was as little as 1,6 bars if i remember correct, its 0,2 at 1 atm so 8 times normal pressure ) (pls excuse bad spelling, grammar and typos)
Mid video I was just contemplating the idea of draining the oceans and bang 21:56 Isaac Arthur once again beat me to the punch. I truly love this channel.
I'm fairly new, nearly a year following & I'm still coming across gems. It's brilliant I'm able to watch content from 5yrs ago. I've commented before and I'll comment again, thank you Isaac for your hard work and dedication. Have a great Christmas and new year to you and your family.
I'm currently off work with severe mental health problems but videos like this restore my hopes for the future of mankind, against all odds.
Two words. Transparent aluminum. lol apparently it actually is a real thing. Algae on the "glass" wouldn't honestly be an issue just have some automated cleaner drone. We can garden beautiful coral gardens around the domes even at those depths. They of course wouldn't be photosynthetic coral unless we have the excess energy to light the area enough. Then oh my god the beautiful options that could be done with glowing coral using a higher spectrum of blue type light to light the area instead of white light. You'd see a wonderful glowing coral garden of all different shapes, colors sizes, textures, and movements. The light requirements could be drastically lowered by supplementing food for the corals to make up the extra energy lost. We can easily garden and feed them via drones from inside. It would make for a wonderful past time for some of the population. It could truly be dream like if one knows even the current options for coral one has in the at home reef community. Add in gene editing and we could just give the phosphorescent gene non photosynthetic coral to make it even easier.
Beautiful idea. I love coral tanks. But a glowing underwater coral garden... Take my money!
Hey folks all the Coral in the ocean is gonna be ded in a few decades:)
Malachi Muncy The study on the Australian coral reef was bullshit and flawed beyond belief. The coral is going nowhere. Also in the last 15 000 years alone the earth has had rapid changes in temperature in the magnitude for 15-17 degrees in a matter of around a decade which is extremely fast and people are screaming bloody murder 2 degrees is going to destroy the planet and the coral. It's ignorant bullshit peddled for the global warming agenda to pull in the cash for more carbon tax and more government control over the energy industry giving them a huge amount of power.
Lol
Exactly, the coral reefs survived when the oceans dropped 400 feet. I think they'll be fine =)
Thanks for improving thursday with your great material!
I was worried that I wouldn't have anything to watch today. At that minute, your video showed up in the feed and I was like "THANK YOU!"
Wow! 300,000 subscribers Isaac. Congratulations!
I come here for every new video! You express excitement that myself and many others are feeling.
Been looking forward to your video all week
Congratulations on 300k Isaac! Still going strong!
Love seeing your channel evolve, always been great but seeing you really putting the growing resources to good use is really rewarding, both as a patron and fan!
1:20 "Conn, Sonar: We are cavitating!" When your sub's propeller is leaving a trail of bubbles something has gone very awry!
Another fantastic episode, always opening minds to things that we would never believe to be achievable.
Damn, one of the best episodes ever
If you are running a train "upside down" why not build it to suit? The monorails that were suspended
downwards comes to mind.
Before tampering with the Earth's structure we should consult the white mice and the Magratheans or
at least Slartibartfast.
Thanks Isaac, that was a great one. And I must say, the aging game is one I'd love play on a professional level. I am ever thankful for the media you provide, and I am also greatful for the support given to you.
May the giants who's backs we stand on grow to be ever greater as we are lifted by them.
Many Thanks, Nick.
13:30 aren't there plane designs now that minimize sonic booms? I figure those will only get better
Yes, which is good for fuel efficiency and overland issues, but keyword is 'minimize', they'd need to be awful quiet before we could have thousands of them flying around over land during the night without it being a major issue.
Congratulations Isaac for 300k subscribers..
Nice video, but minor quibble about the vacuum trains. You mentioned that at 1g, you would reach Mach 1 at 35s, but that's technically not correct. The aerodynamics of an object changes drastically when it begins to move faster than surrounding sound waves. For this reason, Mach is not a static, unchanging speed, but refers specifically to the speed of sound in the fluid you are traveling through. So Mach changes depending on type of material and it's density, which is what makes it useful in describing aerodynamics. And since those trains are in a vacuum, and sound can't travel in a vacuum, Mach is undefined (or zero). I haven't done the math though, so maybe you knew this already, and did the calculations for the very, very low density air which would remain in the tunnel, in which case I salute your dedication to technical accuracy.
Disney taught me that everything's better under the sea!
disney shows mostly the shallow seas though
+Drew McTygue and The Finding Nemo taught me Anglerfish *are* terrifying and you can never trust sharks and dentists :(
Strange, Disney was a very good friend of Wernher von Braun. I'm sure that if he would have wanted to teach you something than that everything is better in space (looking at Treasure Planet) ;D.
Well it would have been a pretty boring movie if it were set in the aphotic zone. Easier on the animators, though.
@@ryanrosen740
Even though space is often associated with total darkness XD (wich on the second though is not the case, at least until space expands at such a high rate that essentially all the emitted light shifts into the non visible spectrum).
after watching the episode about floating islands i had an interesting idea. mostly for a video game world i'd like to work on that includes a floating island as part of a sky tower that stretches from the ocean floor to an orbital ring. one of the ideas i had for doing the active support was to have it use pyroclastic flow from drilling into the mantle. (i have no idea how feasible that actually is. but if you have an orbital ring you likely know how to build tubes that hold material in place with magnets. so you could likely contain a pyroclastic flow)
but yeah i want to build something with a floating island connected to active supports that go between the sea floor and an orbital ring with structures you can visit on the ocean surface, and some hanging structures bellow the surface as well. and of course some more industrial and research structures on the sea floor. and some hanging structures in the sky as well as some orbital ring structures. probably limiting the areas you can visit in each of these areas (or otherwise using procedural generation)
don't know if i'll ever make any progress on this idea.... but i really want to play video games based off the content of this channel. from the more in person exploration of some of the structures talked about here. to maybe a civ/management sim game about building and maintaining the different structures this channel talks about. like a colonize the solar system and send out generation ships sorta game. but i'm not really an artist... more of a code person.
Wow, good luck with the game.
Grats on 300k Isaac, been following since 20k and you've become the best part of my Thursday's, and you definitely deserve this growing audience!
Congrats on 300k Isaac. Great job, keep up the amazing work.
Happy Arthursday!
Outstanding addition Isaac.
I want to say how much I enjoy your videos. Best friend and I watch at least 3-4 episodes every night. Also wanted to say that after about the 6th episode I quit using the cc option. The way you speak is NOT a problem, it is just how you speak. I really dont notice it anymore. Others, if they criticize it, are the ones with the problem. Love you! Keep explaining the confusing stuff for us that stunk at all things math...LOL.
Thanks Jojo, will do, however some folks do genuinely have a problem understanding me, hence the speech therapy. I think most are just trolls exaggerating it to complain, but I'd rather no one needed to adjust at all. :)
@@isaacarthurSFIA That's cool you take time to respond! Although some stuff you talk about is beyond me I still always feel I learned something. We discuss your videos for weeks, I consider myself intelligent, even with my math handicap, and your topics are in my interest sphere. Wish my teachers had been like you, would have probably been better at math, lol😄 please keep making videos! Question though, have/could you do one about different types of stars, what they are and made of someday? Very curious.
No problem, 'twas a time I actually could respond in detail to every comment, nowadays I'm lucky to get 1 in 10 and they tend to be rushed. There is an episode on star types, sadly not one of our better known episodes, "The Stellar Compendium"
@@isaacarthurSFIA thanks! Going to watch right now! You are great keep doing what you do!
Also congrats on 300k subs man
the seascraper is like a floating island/chandelier city :D
Congratulations to 300 000 followers!
Thanks Mr. Arthur, I've been waiting for this video since you announced it. I've got so many questions.
● Could fiber optic cabling connect the light of the surface to the sea floor? How much luminosity is lost over the length of fiber optic cord?
● Most of the human body is made of non-compressible water. Aside from the collapsing of the lungs what else is likely to be damaged by deep sea pressure?
● You speak of genetically manipulating us to have gills. I think gills would have to be very large to provide us enough oxygen to operate our bodies which I don't think would be comfortable for us in anything like our current shape. What I think might work would be an artificial gill array that could be hooked into our bloodstream through a quick-connect coupler that would probably plug into our vena cavas our back.
● I've also thought about the use of subduction zones for trash disposal. They pull down about 2" a year but over the length of a trench that's a fair bit of real estate.
● You mentioned the problem of heat with compact living. How does sea water measure up against say Antarctic ice for heat dispersion?
● Last point and I'll stop. I wonder how many large animals live in these depths that avoid our deep-sea submersibles because of noise or light and therefore we have no clue of their existence. It doesn't seem like the ocean floor is littered with corpses so either the clean-up crews are efficient or there really is a dearth of megafauna. Apparently the sharks down there live a really long time though. Maybe if we looked by dropping a bright light at one location and observing from another what passes between the two…
09:29 "...aquaponics is a growing industry, no pun intended..." That one was pretty good.
Bravo on another outstanding episode!
You mentioned going deep to escape the waves during bad weather. An aircraft carrier doesn't really feel the waves - 100mph winds only give a slight sway - so I imagine a city that size (or larger) wouldn't either.
Another amazing episode Issac! I love aquaponics and would love to possibly see some of these ideas that you bring up.
Thanks for sharing and as always Keep Building👍🐟🌿🌾🌱🌻🌞
I love the way your mind works, Isaac. The way you pull all of this together in ways I'd never dream. It's absolutely fascinating. Thank you. This is great!
2nd Favorite Episode.
Great Job. 156 Episodes is a great accomplishment.
@10:08 Yes just like Atlantis In Stargate Atlantis. In the show the ancient submerged the city underwater, but they are also utilized force fields.
Congratz on 300k. One of my favorite channels.
The oceans are big af! It’s safe to say one who controls the oceans controls the world
Because of how incredibly, nearly unimaginably huge the oceans are, it's pretty much impossible for a single faction to control all of it.
*Controls the people who control the people who control the oil. 🇺🇸
I love how you explain the difficulties of ocean building and them compared the pressure to someone walking on heals.
I must say I never knew about looking for books by what the audiobook readers have narrated. I have one in mind Allyson Johnson and she has been fantastic for the Honorverse series I have been marathoning.
And a fantastic episode as always and congrats on 300K subscribers. You and your team have earned everyone of them.
I really don't think there has been a video that I haven't enjoyed that you've made. So much better than the stuff that they put on TV.
As a scuba diver, I loved this episode! I've often wondered about the whole "gills for humans" angle, and the bottleneck is actually how much oxygen we "gas guzzling" warm blooded creatures need compared to most fish. We'd have to pass an obscene amount of water over those gills to extract enough oxygen for out needs!
I know this comment is old but I'm really wondering if this will be possible in our life time.... It scares me but intrigues me at the same time lol I remember in school they talked about this and the idea of gills for humans and it all sounded so bizarre to me
More plausible would be for humans to live at or near the surface in air but to genetically engineer ourselves and our crops and livestock to be saltwater-tolerant. This will probably be easy by the end of the century considering how quickly the technology is progressing.
Damn this was awesome, Isaac. I bet you spend even more time daydreaming about the future than I do, which is impressive. Might I make a suggestion for a future series?
I expect that in your Earth 2.0 series you will, out of necessity, gloss over the ethics and environmental impacts of these megaprojects. Maybe one day you could do a series, or just an episode or two, looking at how things like light pollution from an aquatic civilization might impact the natural ecology. These cities may become meccas for wildlife, increasing the ocean's overall population capacity. The fish populations would explode as well as that of the predators that feed on them. The noises of industry would obscure the communications between whales just as cargo ships already do to disasterous effect. An episode here and there showing the merits of leaving room for nature in the world would be nice eventually. But I do love exploring these possibilities with you. Keep up the good work you brilliant future space colonist.
Hey I been watching some of your content Isaac and I am very impressed I will continue to watch your content because you seem to talk about real deal possible technologies that would revolutionize the world in miraculous ways one could percieve. Keep going man you got another supporter.
Excellent! This episode and the "Orbital Rings" are my favorite so far. This one really got me thinking about how we could improve the ecology of Earth, rather than degrading it. We need to really start concentrating on cleaning up our waste streams into the air, water, and land, so that they only contain substances beneficial to the environment and not toxins. Taking a holistic approach to the environment, rather than narrowly focussing on CO2 emissions (which are beneficial to plants and 1/4 to 1/2 below optimum historic levels).
The last 10,000 years of human agriculture has caused many great civilizations of the past to deplete their soils causing the collapse of their civilizations. There are a number of ways to do this to create food forests, and even more importantly, the 2/3 of the Earth's land that is arid grasslands, need to be managed using the methods that Allan Savory has developed in the last 50 years to regenerate those soils, bring back a thriving wildlife population, while using domestic livestock to do it!
At about 20:00 I noticed, you could build those around the magma straws, then you’d have a giant tree-looking thing going from near the planet’s core to space. I imagine one would be named after that giant Norse tree with worlds for branches. I’d also like to note that water is great fission fuel, and we’ve got a lot of water don’t we?
300K! Way to go Isaac and team!
As always, excellent video Isaac! You always leave me with something new to contemplate, and usually an idea or two for my PBEM Traveller game. Thank you!
Congratulations, currently as of february 2020, this video has a 5579/64 like to dislike ratio (which isn't a ratio you can simplify unfortunately, but it's roughly 87 likes for every dislike) which is a truly impressive ratio showing how good your videos are
"Rovelli said that it was his early experiences with LSD which sparked his scientific curiosity that eventually led to his theory on quantum gravity."
Arthur, your content sparks genuine curiosity that is unparalleled for the next generation. I cannot thank your efforts enough. LSD got me interested in the natural world, before I could articulate my scientific views, and then there's channels like this, full of free knowledge, that help us all to refine ourselves. Thank you so much.
Twenty thousand leagues is one of my most favourite books
Currently have been showering in lore ideas for an ancient civilization in my sci fi universe that has failed to colonize the galaxy and has stagnated, yet still is rather advanced.
I had run into issues of how to house a couple quadrillion people in an audience/reader friendly manner and this video not only gave me ideas but reminded me of points from other videos I've watched from you. Especially since I wrote them to be a marginally aquatic land species, evolved in a swampy island location, the fact that ocean habitation never crossed my mind baffles me in hindsight.
I can see it in my head now: The humans with their sparse, decentralized empire built without the need for megastructures because of fusion and FTL (that's rather cheap when you get past the immense danger involved in researching it) meet the Nlon. The Nlon try taking them in a generation ship about to launch back to home planet after first contact before the humans just FTL jump into a planet wide city covered in a few orbital ring arrays, each housing space colonies, factories, and farms, churning out million year old designs they don't dare change from a simple problem of macro-logistics and gargantuan amounts of standardization. They move down, thinking they'll see a mined-to-hell planet, but see an ocean-island world much like Earth but with massive towers extending from the ocean each housing around a billion of these mysterious aliens. They pass over a huge landing pad for transporting kilotons of raw materials up and down for the automatic factories dotted around haphazardly. They lower into a narrow kilometer long runway, beset on either side by pillars with huge magnets to brace their decent. It takes them back to the landing pad.
They get of the space ferry, which is trucked to a launch bay to ferry people up to an orbital ring later. The humans ask the aliens planet-side what those towers were for and their robots, having discussed with the humans' during this trip, respond "Farming, Manufacturing, specifically of-" Before an Nlon engineer shuts it up, stopping it from listing all 10,000 industries in just the towers they passed.
The human notices a huge tower spewing what looks to be steam and asks what it is. The alien, with their translator implant calibrated, (a trait it needs to do quickly in order to communicate with those fresh off of generational ships or any subnation far removed enough to have developed an original language from the last point of contact) responds, in the human tongue, "It is a power plant primarily run by diverting the heat of extensive habitation through pressure pipes into local steam engines. Each are little cogs that push the big guy right there. *Guy* is the word for something with a long, straight object, correct? This gender concept is kind of lost on me."
The humans correct them and move on to a city set into the ground by about half a kilometer. The Nlon engineer, their colleagues, and a few of their robots each answer the radically different questions of the humans. "What is that central rail? Why are their boxes under them?" The Nlon use them as public transport to city-wide jobs, most people here working in some capacity at the vehicle-tugging beasts' breeding facility. (They've been using them to skimp on metal and cybernetics materials for the 7 trillion translator bots the over-excited aristocracy ordered. - That and ever since the invention of the personalized transportation vehicle on subsystem Enlik'n a couple hundred thousand years ago, they've been stalling infrastructure reform and the addition of the necessary factory rings to the already cramped array.)
Another human asks "Do you have a caste system?" Fearing the servitude status of their robots. The Nlon loks at them person with confusion, as if they've suffered a malfunction. The human groans, defeatedly. (I forgot to mention, human-built "AI's" are considered to be "human" in human society.
Moving on, the humans rise above the pits to see a massive swathe of steaming water. One person asks what the purpose of this is in a rather derogatory nature, still somewhat peeved by the treatment of his friend. The Nlon, still not versed in human mannerism fully, responds happily: "This is a cooling pool! While the power plant works on ambient heat, this is to keep everyone from dying down there. The pool has a tunnel that extends all the way down to our geothermal plant powering the local beast factory.
Although fascinated, the humans say they want to bring their government to meet with the aliens. Fear no ill will, they take them up on a space ferry and send them off...
One last question: "How haven't you guys colinized the entire galaxy yet? You seem incredibly advanced, even if a little slow."
The Nlon engineer responds: "It took us 60,000 years of waiting for colony ships to realize stable materials radiate at slow paces in space... We'd been sending out colony ships that *entire time.* We thought it better to stay conservative after that blunder."
Isaac love your show and when you mentioned draining the sea my mind jumped to Warhammer 40k. I know this is a big ask but could you possibly do an episode with 40k in mind, like what does make sense or not, I don't know but I have this notion that you can enlighten us with your perspective and I'm sure all the 40k community would love it.
There will be a lot of demand for underwater window cleaners
seasong get started on a patent...
Awesome video! Your speech is getting better! :D Congratz on 300k! Keep it going!
That's the thing I love about this ocean talk on Earth. Even if you don't do it here, there are countless planets, many of which would for far better for this.
There was something a number of years ago, if I could find it again, which discussed moving from the coasts down into the oceans. It seemed to be a remedy of sorts for rising oceans on our coasts and moving populations and industries out. But this series has renewed my interests in the uses of the oceans before we expand further out into space. We do have to get off this rock eventually but terraforming our own world along with pushing outward would be a great way to extend the life of our world while preparing to expand humanity's reach out into the stars.
Why would anyone dislike this?
I assume broke screen like mine. Or someone qualified to build one saw a job no-no they needed to downvote on two accounts.
Someone 1282 I have no idea. It’s literally just amazing science with an awesome speaker.
Trolls
Makes one wonder, though I wonder this with all of his videos.
No one does. It fans with sticky fingers from eating snacks confusing their tablets touchscreens.
Had it happen to me once. Thankfully I noticed it and fixed the misclick.
I have been looking forward to this for months if not technically years.
Would you live in the ocean? Amazing Video ! Thanks for sharing!
I love CF !
In the future we will live in the oceans!
As long as I don't have to swim to work.
Cities of the Future I would
Boat yes, a hole no
Of course, that big dome a Km or two down could be made of opaque metal or concrete or whatever, but covered with cameras on the outside and 8K video screens on the inside. There would need to be some lights in the mix to make it worthwhile, but there's your "deep sea glass dome" right there.
I'm about to make a horrible drawing of a long, skinny island, about 2 by 6 Km, with lots of beach and some picturesque mountains running down the center, with a rocket coming out of the central "volcano" every few hours (with some fireworks added to give it the proper look). This island is the top of a dozen surface-to-seafloor towers, with that surface island the main city park.
What a cool setting for all sorts of stories! Everything from a rom-com to a detective story to a superhero comic would work there. The one thing to remember is that the setting is one of the stars of the show.
This video of yours was fun and informative, as I've come to expect. The next several eps have me excited as well.
Why would you want 8K screens? Your retina is less precise than 4K, even. (Less cones than pixels)
Ever moar of something isn't the way to go. You don't want the 0.5nm transistor, either...
Doesn't it make a difference how big the screen is? In a 96 in. screen even 4K is overkill, but what if it's a 960 in. screen?
Or maybe I don't know how this works and it's a case of so so many pixels per cm, whether the screen is 10 cm across or 10,000,000.
Why don't I want the 0.5 nm transistor? I mean, I'm not sure a 0.5 nm transistor would work, but if it did why wouldn't you want it? And yeah, I get that it would be hard to connect them to stuff, but... I think I'm missing something.
Love your videos havent watched tv for 3 years
Mark: A TV is an electronic sleeping pill. It is used by elderly people so they can sleep on the sofa.
Happy Arthursday Everyone! Gratz on 300k Issac!
I've read Jimi Hendrix, a huge fan of science fiction, felt the oceans were too neglected in the field. A lot of his music was science fiction inspired, and some of it was even about the ocean. If only he had lived longer, I could have seen him branching out from music to writing novels himself.
Ive been rewatching some of your older videos recently, and was thinking about the concept of a dyson swarm. Ive been wondering if a cloud of habitats orbiting a star is really the most efficient approach, if one has starlifting tech and efficient fusion reactors. Might it be better to disassemble the star entirely to use as fuel for artificial fusion reactors and even more matter for building cylinders? One could then arrange the habitat cloud into a more compact shape to allow for quicker travel across it, and have a lot more habitats. In a similar vein, for a society based on space habitats instead of planets, wouldnt young stars that still have a protoplanetary disk be the most attractive stars to colonize, on account of longer remaining lifespan, lower chances of native life, and access to the matter surrounding a star without needing to lift much of it out of a gravity well? Or even a nebula, as there you dont even need to worry about starlifting, you can just mine the space dust/gas for fuel and construction material.
Love your videos, thanks for the upload!
Great stuff as always, Isaac, and congrats on another subscriber milestone! You deserve a million more, minimum.
Excellent take on Verne's books.
You are a super smart guy , your thought experiments are amazing
+Issac Arthur
Great episode! Also I heard you were talking with August over at Mind & Machine. It would be great to see you on his show!
A home on the ocean? Yes please!
"I am Isaac Arthur, and I'm here to ask you a question. Are you not entitled to the sweat of your brow?"
I do not want to colonise the oceans, I want to colonise Vega!
Anyone remembers the AQUANOX games? This video reminds me of its setting.
For many years I have believed that (when the time comes for such voyages) we should recruit the astronauts for manned interplanetary missions from navy veterans who served aboard nuclear submarines. They have everything one needs for such astronauts: no claustrophobic tendencies, the ability to work and function cut off from the outside environment for months at a time, rigorous safety training, and they treat being sealed in an airtight container with a live nuclear reactor as all in a day's work.
Its all fun and games Isaac, but imagine we'd build something down the ocean's floor and discover that we're actually building on the head of Cthulhu!
I'm so stoked that you're going to be on Event Horizon with John next week! Great video as always, and next Thursday is pretty much going to be a DOUBLE Arthursday. Can't wait to see it! Cheers, Isaac!
I enjoy your quality issac
Very pleasing