WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.420 --> 00:00:03.480 Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. Earlier this month 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:07.350 I travelled to Kourou in French Guiana with euronews 00:00:07.350 --> 00:00:10.610 to watch the launch of Vega Rocket, 00:00:11.660 --> 00:00:13.660 if it happened 00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:18.350 while I was there. Waiting at the observation point with only minutes to go, 00:00:18.350 --> 00:00:22.310 the launch was postponed because of weather. 00:00:22.310 --> 00:00:25.470 Even though the rocket scientists were 00:00:25.470 --> 00:00:28.970 using Comic Sans, the rocket it didn't take off 00:00:28.970 --> 00:00:32.949 until the day after I had to be back in London. 00:00:32.949 --> 00:00:36.410 But it made me think. We can send satellites into orbit 00:00:36.410 --> 00:00:39.969 and people to the moon and predicts solar eclipses 00:00:39.969 --> 00:00:43.409 thousands of years into the future but yet 00:00:43.409 --> 00:00:47.859 we cannot reliably predict which way the wind will be blowing 00:00:47.859 --> 00:00:53.559 in the next our or so. How can such monumental cosmic movements 00:00:53.559 --> 00:00:57.530 light minutes or light years away from us be understood, 00:00:57.530 --> 00:01:02.619 whereas the weather, which happens in the very same layer of the atmosphere we 00:01:02.619 --> 00:01:04.369 live in every day, 00:01:04.369 --> 00:01:07.610 remains such a mystery? Well, 00:01:07.610 --> 00:01:10.670 it has to do with the limits of what we know 00:01:10.670 --> 00:01:15.170 and what we can know. Planetary positions 00:01:15.170 --> 00:01:19.360 and terrestrial weather in the future are determined by their 00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:21.400 initial conditions. 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:25.360 But over a short time scale predicting the future position of a planet 00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:28.620 involves fewer variables than the weather. 00:01:28.620 --> 00:01:32.990 In order to accurately predict the weather, you need to know the complete 00:01:32.990 --> 00:01:34.230 and exact conditions 00:01:34.230 --> 00:01:38.460 of every molecule of air on Earth. How those molecules will interact with each 00:01:38.460 --> 00:01:39.020 other 00:01:39.020 --> 00:01:43.980 and the earth and how they will feedback and influence themselves by changing 00:01:43.980 --> 00:01:48.630 other molecules. This makes it incredibly difficult to predict the weather more 00:01:48.630 --> 00:01:49.310 than a week 00:01:49.310 --> 00:01:53.130 in advance. And this problem isn't going to go away. 00:01:53.130 --> 00:01:57.410 It is fundamental to our relationship with the universe. 00:01:57.410 --> 00:02:01.250 Given enough time small, unnoticeable, 00:02:01.250 --> 00:02:05.600 unmeasurable, unknowable factors get magnified 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:08.929 again and again slowly 00:02:08.929 --> 00:02:13.030 until eventually their impact is vastly significant 00:02:13.030 --> 00:02:16.959 and our predictions today are hopeless. 00:02:16.959 --> 00:02:21.520 Neil deGrasse Tyson mentions this in his brilliant "Death by Black Hole," 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:25.660 where he points out that the recoil from the launch of a single 00:02:25.660 --> 00:02:29.500 space probe can influence our future in such a way 00:02:29.500 --> 00:02:33.150 that in about 200 million years 00:02:33.150 --> 00:02:36.650 the position of Earth and its orbit around the Sun will be shifted 00:02:36.650 --> 00:02:39.660 by nearly sixty degrees. 00:02:39.660 --> 00:02:43.630 Edward Lorenz gave this phenomenon its popular name. 00:02:43.630 --> 00:02:47.940 "Predictability; Does the Flap of a Butterfly's wings 00:02:47.940 --> 00:02:52.140 in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" 00:02:52.140 --> 00:02:56.530 The butterfly effect. A small change, 00:02:56.530 --> 00:03:00.160 like a butterfly deciding to flap its wings, 00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:03.200 can lead to a whole chain of events were bigger 00:03:03.200 --> 00:03:07.380 and bigger processes change just enough to leave the even more significant 00:03:07.380 --> 00:03:09.810 changes until finally an entire storm 00:03:09.810 --> 00:03:13.310 occurs somewhere different or not 00:03:13.310 --> 00:03:16.720 at all. The discipline that such thinking 00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:20.000 kick-started is known as chaos theory. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.810 When the present determines the future, but the approximate 00:03:24.810 --> 00:03:28.820 present does not approximately determine the future. 00:03:28.820 --> 00:03:32.170 To us the universe is full 00:03:32.170 --> 00:03:38.799 of "if". But all things considered, we are pretty good at predicting the future 00:03:38.799 --> 00:03:42.290 and preparing for it, but some things 00:03:42.290 --> 00:03:47.230 are or were prepared for a future that hasn't occurred yet 00:03:47.230 --> 00:03:51.250 or never did. And knowing more about those things 00:03:51.250 --> 00:03:55.370 sheds amazing perspective on the limits of our knowledge. 00:03:55.370 --> 00:03:59.260 Speaking of limits, let's begin with your life, 00:03:59.260 --> 00:04:04.130 carpe diem. An online tool that when given your birth date 00:04:04.130 --> 00:04:07.769 uses the latest life expectancy data to give you back 00:04:07.769 --> 00:04:11.829 a grid of squares. One square represents 00:04:11.829 --> 00:04:16.970 one week - seven days. The lighter ones are the weeks that you have already 00:04:16.970 --> 00:04:20.989 been alive, the darker ones are what you have left. 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:25.500 Check "sleep" to see how many of your previous 00:04:25.500 --> 00:04:28.580 and future weeks will be spent 00:04:28.580 --> 00:04:32.200 sleeping. Of course, it's just an approximation, 00:04:32.200 --> 00:04:35.760 it's difficult to know if you will have more 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:40.010 or fewer weeks to come. It's hard to know when it will all end. 00:04:40.010 --> 00:04:43.710 It's even more difficult to document, unless you are 00:04:43.710 --> 00:04:47.070 Reynaldo Dagsa, a councilman from the Philippines, 00:04:47.070 --> 00:04:50.889 who took this photo of his family on New Year's Day 00:04:50.889 --> 00:04:54.810 at the very same second that he was 00:04:54.810 --> 00:04:58.389 assassinated. The photo was later used 00:04:58.389 --> 00:05:02.230 to catch the killer. We can't predict everything, 00:05:02.230 --> 00:05:05.460 but in the event of an anticipated catastrophic 00:05:05.460 --> 00:05:09.460 event - severe weather, an incoming nuclear attack or 00:05:09.460 --> 00:05:12.919 asteroid - how would we all know what was going on? 00:05:12.919 --> 00:05:17.669 Well, many countries have systems in place to allow them to speak to as many 00:05:17.669 --> 00:05:19.980 people as quickly as possible. 00:05:19.980 --> 00:05:23.380 The United States has the Emergency Alert 00:05:23.380 --> 00:05:26.470 System. When triggered, the system 00:05:26.470 --> 00:05:29.610 interrupts all programming on radio and television 00:05:29.610 --> 00:05:33.000 with messages generated using text-to-speech 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:36.780 automated voices. The warning tones are known, 00:05:36.780 --> 00:05:40.659 so what's kind of scary is that today 00:05:40.659 --> 00:05:43.669 we can take a peek 00:05:43.669 --> 00:05:48.099 and see what it would look like and what it would sound like 00:05:48.099 --> 00:05:52.000 if a catastrophic event occurred. In this example 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:56.150 a nuclear attack that threatened life across the entire country. 00:05:56.150 --> 00:06:00.530 First of all, you would likely here sirens 00:06:00.530 --> 00:06:03.830 and then, as you went tune into, say TV, 00:06:03.830 --> 00:06:08.500 this is what you would hear and see. 00:06:15.460 --> 00:06:17.020 We interrupt our programming. 00:06:17.030 --> 00:06:21.360 This is a national emergency. The following message is transmitted at the 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:23.980 request of the United States government. 00:06:23.980 --> 00:06:28.570 This is not a test. A nuclear attack is occurring against the United States. 00:06:28.570 --> 00:06:32.540 Four nuclear missiles have been launched from unknown locations 00:06:32.540 --> 00:06:36.750 and are expected to strike the United States within the next 15 minutes. 00:06:36.750 --> 00:06:41.050 Due to the uncertain facts of these missiles, all residents of the United 00:06:41.050 --> 00:06:42.560 States should seek out 00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:45.710 and prepare to take shelter immediately. 00:06:47.080 --> 00:06:52.760 Stand by for a message from the President of the United States. 00:06:54.340 --> 00:06:59.020 If a catastrophic event occurred of global proportions, 00:06:59.020 --> 00:07:02.980 what would humanity do next? Well, 00:07:02.980 --> 00:07:08.200 there might be survivors. People hidden away in fortresses that we have built, 00:07:08.200 --> 00:07:08.620 like 00:07:08.620 --> 00:07:11.690 the North American Aerospace Defense Command, 00:07:11.690 --> 00:07:15.000 NORAD. Built into solid 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:19.030 granite, shielded by steel plating to protect computer systems from 00:07:19.030 --> 00:07:20.510 electromagnetic pulses 00:07:20.510 --> 00:07:23.710 and supported on springs, so as to 00:07:23.710 --> 00:07:28.160 safely sway in the event of an earthquake, NORAD can protect 00:07:28.160 --> 00:07:31.520 humans and equipment from a 30 00:07:31.520 --> 00:07:35.310 megaton nuclear blast just a mile away. 00:07:35.310 --> 00:07:38.710 After the event, it's places like this 00:07:38.710 --> 00:07:43.670 that would literally be humanity's last, best chance of continuing life. 00:07:43.670 --> 00:07:47.310 The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is on the Norwegian island 00:07:47.310 --> 00:07:50.690 of Spitsbergen. Buried 390 feet 00:07:50.690 --> 00:07:54.570 inside a mountain, it safely stores and protects 00:07:54.570 --> 00:07:59.240 250 million individual seeds 00:07:59.240 --> 00:08:03.250 for growing plants and crops, if their vulnerable 00:08:03.250 --> 00:08:06.950 living relatives on the surface are all destroyed. 00:08:07.620 --> 00:08:11.580 Soviet technology existed to put people on the Moon, 00:08:11.580 --> 00:08:14.850 of course, they never did. If 00:08:14.850 --> 00:08:18.920 Russia had sent men to the Moon, they would have walked around on it 00:08:18.920 --> 00:08:24.720 looking like this. The Krechet-94 was designed in 1967 but 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:27.650 never used for Soviet manned lunar excursion. 00:08:27.650 --> 00:08:31.370 Russia did, however, sent the first man into space 00:08:31.370 --> 00:08:34.470 and the first woman into outer space. 00:08:34.470 --> 00:08:38.860 They also sent the first dog into orbit around the Earth. 00:08:38.860 --> 00:08:42.780 Unfortunately, the dog died too soon after launch due to overheating. 00:08:42.780 --> 00:08:46.280 But later they sent Belka and Strelka, 00:08:46.280 --> 00:08:49.410 dogs on a rocket full of living organisms that became 00:08:49.410 --> 00:08:52.700 the very first to orbit the Earth and return to 00:08:52.700 --> 00:08:56.050 Earth alive. You can still see them 00:08:56.050 --> 00:09:00.890 today. The Moscow Cosmonautics Memorial Museum has the two dogs 00:09:00.890 --> 00:09:04.330 preserved. Stuffed and on display as 00:09:04.330 --> 00:09:08.610 physical relics of earthlings growing up 00:09:08.610 --> 00:09:12.570 and leaving their planet. I was also lucky enough to visit a restaurant 00:09:12.570 --> 00:09:16.880 in Moscow with menus - yep - that used Comic Sans. 00:09:16.880 --> 00:09:20.420 Oh, and I ate a star dog, which in the cyrillic 00:09:20.420 --> 00:09:23.600 alphabet looks like it's called crap dosis. 00:09:24.280 --> 00:09:27.740 The United States of course did send people to the Moon, 00:09:27.740 --> 00:09:31.680 but recently we have learned that NASA at the time didn't know 00:09:31.680 --> 00:09:34.680 with the same certainty as other variables 00:09:34.680 --> 00:09:38.760 whether the first man on the Moon would be able 00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:43.910 to leave. Just two days before humanity's historic moon landing 00:09:43.910 --> 00:09:47.890 William Safire was asked to prepare a speech 00:09:47.890 --> 00:09:51.180 for President Nixon to read on television to the world 00:09:51.180 --> 00:09:55.610 if Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong 00:09:55.610 --> 00:10:00.230 became stranded on the Moon. Thirty years later 00:10:00.230 --> 00:10:05.000 William Safire explained that Aldrin and Armstrong were supposed to reunite with 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:06.110 the command module 00:10:06.110 --> 00:10:09.960 orbiting the moon, but if they couldn't and there was a 00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:14.060 good risk that they couldn't, then they would have to be 00:10:14.060 --> 00:10:17.730 abandoned on the Moon, left to die there 00:10:17.730 --> 00:10:19.190 and 00:10:19.190 --> 00:10:23.020 mission control would then have to use their euphemism 00:10:23.020 --> 00:10:26.790 "close down communication" and the men would have to either 00:10:26.790 --> 00:10:30.240 starve to death or commit suicide. 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:33.470 And, so, we prepared for that with the 00:10:33.470 --> 00:10:37.540 the speech that I wrote and 00:10:37.540 --> 00:10:40.990 the President was ready to to give that. Luckily, 00:10:40.990 --> 00:10:44.410 Nixon never had to deliver the Moon disaster speech, 00:10:44.410 --> 00:10:48.420 but to read it today, thinking of those two guys 00:10:48.420 --> 00:10:51.740 still alive on the surface of the Moon 00:10:51.740 --> 00:10:55.550 knowing that they will never get back to Earth 00:10:55.550 --> 00:11:00.020 is chiling. Included in that speech 00:11:00.020 --> 00:11:03.810 were these lines: "fate has ordained 00:11:03.810 --> 00:11:07.040 that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace 00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:10.560 will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. 00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:14.450 These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, 00:11:14.450 --> 00:11:18.310 know that there is no hope for their recovery but they also know that their 00:11:18.310 --> 00:11:21.640 is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. 00:11:21.640 --> 00:11:26.770 In ancient days men looked at the stars and saw their heroes 00:11:26.770 --> 00:11:30.910 in the constellations. In modern times we do much the same, 00:11:30.910 --> 00:11:34.459 but our heroes are epic men of flesh 00:11:34.459 --> 00:11:38.140 and blood. For every human being who looks up at the moon 00:11:38.140 --> 00:11:41.410 in the nights to come will know that there is some corner 00:11:41.410 --> 00:11:47.870 of another world that is forever mankind." And that's what I took away most from my 00:11:47.870 --> 00:11:49.510 trip to Kourou. 00:11:49.510 --> 00:11:55.180 Space isn't just a place for zero-g tricks or imagining sci-fi technology, 00:11:55.180 --> 00:11:58.220 space is ever-expanding 00:11:58.220 --> 00:12:02.450 and full of corners of other worlds that could one day become mankind's, 00:12:02.450 --> 00:12:06.910 if we choose to. And that doesn't minimize Earth. 00:12:06.910 --> 00:12:10.910 The Vega rocket I went to see sent up satellites designed to 00:12:10.910 --> 00:12:14.920 test electric solar wind sails for interplanetary travel, 00:12:14.920 --> 00:12:18.810 as well as satellites built to analyze the health of Earth's 00:12:18.810 --> 00:12:22.800 vegetation or to predict natural disasters. 00:12:22.800 --> 00:12:27.910 Just as our bodies benefit from having doctors and instruments beyond them that 00:12:27.910 --> 00:12:28.350 can 00:12:28.350 --> 00:12:32.340 probe, investigate and diagnose, so does the earth. 00:12:32.340 --> 00:12:35.540 Launch pads, like the one in Kourou I got to visit, 00:12:35.540 --> 00:12:39.470 are really just hospital waiting rooms for 00:12:39.470 --> 00:12:44.480 earth. A place where our planet can wait for researchers and scientists 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:47.910 to put their tools, their instruments into use, 00:12:47.910 --> 00:12:51.110 into orbit. We may never know 00:12:51.110 --> 00:12:54.590 if something will or will not happen, but by 00:12:54.590 --> 00:12:58.150 pursuing space, corners of other worlds, 00:12:58.150 --> 00:13:01.260 we gain a perspective that can help us shrink 00:13:01.260 --> 00:13:04.980 the size of that mysterious and often frightening 00:13:04.980 --> 00:13:06.900 if.and as always 00:13:08.100 --> 00:13:09.180 And as always, 00:13:09.190 --> 00:13:10.170 thanks for watching.