hey Vsauce Michael here earlier this
month I traveled to kuru in French
Guiana with euronews
to watch the launch of a Vega rocket if
it happened while I was there waiting at
the observation point with only minutes
to go the launch was postponed because
of weather even though the rocket
scientists were using Comic Sans the
rocket didn't take off until the day
after I had to be back in one but made
me think we can send satellites into
orbit and people to the moon and predict
solar eclipses thousands of years into
the future but yet we cannot reliably
predict which way the wind will be
blowing in the next hour or so how can
such monumental cosmic movements light
minutes or light-years away from us be
understood whereas the weather which
happens in the very same layer of the
atmosphere we live in every day remains
such a mystery well it has to do with
the limits of what we know and what we
can no planetary positions and
terrestrial weather in the future are
determined by their initial conditions
but over a short timescale predicting
the future position of a planet involves
fewer variables than the weather in
order to accurately predict the weather
you need to know the complete and exact
conditions of every molecule of air on
Earth how those molecules will interact
with each other and the earth and how
they will feedback and influence
themselves by changing other molecules
this makes it incredibly difficult to
predict the weather more than a week in
advance and this problem isn't going to
go away it is fundamental to our
relationship with the universe given
enough time small unnoticeable
unmeasurable unknowable factors get
magnified
again and again slowly until eventually
their impact is vastly significant and
our predictions today are hopeless Neil
deGrasse Tyson mentions this in his
brilliant death by black hole where he
points out that the recoil from the
launch of a single space probe can
influence our future in such a way that
in about 200 million years the position
of Earth in its orbit around the Sun
will be shifted by nearly 60 degrees
Edward Lorenz gave this phenomenon its
popular name predictability does the
flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil
set off a tornado in Texas the butterfly
effect a small change like a butterfly
deciding to flap its wings can lead to a
whole chain of events where bigger and
bigger processes change just enough to
lead to even more significant changes
until finally an entire storm occurs
somewhere different or not at all the
discipline that such thinking
kick-started is known as chaos theory
when the present determines the future
but the approximant present does not
approximately determine the future to us
the universe is full of
if but all things considered we are
pretty good at predicting the future and
preparing for it but some things are or
were prepared for a future that hasn't
occurred yet or never did and knowing
more about those things sheds amazing
perspective on the limits of our
knowledge
speaking of limits let's begin with your
life
carpe diem an online tool that when
given your birth date uses the latest
life expectancy data to give you back a
grid of squares one square represents
one week seven days the lighter ones are
the weeks that you have already been
alive the darker ones are what you have
left
check sleep to see how many of your
previous and future weeks will be spent
sleeping of course it's just an
approximation it's difficult to know if
you will have more or fewer weeks to
come it's hard to know when it will all
end it's even more difficult to document
unless you are Reinaldo
Doug saw a councilman from the
Philippines who took this photo of his
family on New Year's Day
at the very same second that he was
assassinated the photo was later used to
catch the killer we can't predict
everything but in the event of an
anticipated catastrophic event severe
weather an incoming nuclear attack or
asteroid how would we all know what was
going on
well many countries have systems in
place to allow them to speak to as many
people as quickly as possible the United
States has the emergency alert system
when triggered the system interrupts all
programming on radio and television with
messages generated using text-to-speech
automated voices the warning tones are
known so what's kind of scary is that
today we can take a peek and see what it
would look like and what it would
sound like if a catastrophic event
occurred in this example a nuclear
attack that threatened life across the
entire country first of all you would
likely hear sirens and then as you went
to tune in to say TV this is what you
would hear and see we interrupt our
programming this is a national emergency
the following message is transmitted at
the request of the United States
government this is not a test a nuclear
attack is occurring against the United
States for nuclear missiles have been
launched from a known locations and are
expected to strike the United States
within the next 15 minutes due to the
uncertain tracks of these missiles all
residents of the United States should
seek out and prepare to take shelter
immediately stand by for a message from
the President of the United States if a
catastrophic event occurred of global
proportions
what would humanity do next well there
might be survivors people hidden away in
fortresses that we have built like the
North American Aerospace Defense Command
NORAD built into solid granite shielded
by steel plating to protect computer
systems from electromagnetic pulses and
supported on Springs so as to safely
sway in the event of an earthquake NORAD
can protect humans and equipment from a
30 Megaton nuclear blast just a mile
away
after the event it's places like this
that would literally be humanity's last
best chance of continuing life the
Svalbard global Seed Vault
is on the Norwegian island of
Spitsbergen buried 390 feet inside a
mountain it safely stores and protects
250 million individual seeds for growing
plants and crops if they're vulnerable
living relatives on the surface are all
destroyed Soviet technology existed to
put people on the moon of course they
never did if Russia had sent men to the
moon they would have walked around on it
looking like this the Kree ship 94 was
designed in 1967 but never used for
Soviet man lunar excursion Russia did
however send the first man into space
and the first woman into outer space
they also sent the first dog into orbit
around Earth unfortunately the dog died
soon after launch due to overheating but
later they sent Belka and Strelka dogs
on a rocket full of living organisms
that became the very first to orbit the
earth and returned to earth alive you
can still see them today the Moscow
cosmonautics Memorial Museum has the two
dogs preserved stuffed and on display as
physical relics of Earthlings growing up
and leaving their planet I was also
lucky enough to visit a restaurant in
Moscow with menus yep
that used Comic Sans oh and I ate a star
dog which in the Cyrillic alphabet looks
like it's called crap dosis the United
States of course did send people to the
moon but recently we have learned that
NASA at the time didn't know with the
same certainty as other variables
whether the first men on the moon would
be able to leave just two days before
humanity's historic moon landing William
Safire was asked to prepare a speech for
president
Nixon to read on television to the world
if Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became
stranded on the moon 30 years later
William Safire explained that Aldrin and
Armstrong were supposed to reunite with
the command module orbiting the moon but
if they couldn't and it was a good risk
that they couldn't then they would have
to be abandoned on the moon left to die
there
Mission Control would then have to do
their euphemism close down communication
and the men would have to either starve
to death or commit suicide and so we
prepared for that with a with a speech
but I wrote and the president was ready
to to give that
luckily Nixon never had to deliver the
moon disaster speech but to read it
today thinking of those two guys still
alive on the surface of the Moon knowing
that they will never get back to earth
is chilling included in that speech were
these lines fate has ordained that the
men who went to the moon to explore in
peace will stay on the moon to rest in
peace these brave men Neil Armstrong and
Edwin Aldrin know that there is no hope
for their recovery but they also know
that there is hope for mankind and their
sacrifice
in ancient days men looked at the Stars
and saw their heroes in the
constellations in modern times we do
much the same but our heroes are epic
men of flesh and blood for every human
being who looks up at the moon in the
nights to come will know that there is
some corner of another world that is
forever
mankind and that's what I took away most
from my trip to Koo
space isn't just a place for zero-g
tricks or imagining sci-fi technology
space is ever-expanding and full of
corners of other worlds that could one
day become mankind's if we choose to and
that doesn't minimize Earth the Vega
rocket I went to see send up satellites
designed to test electric solar wind
sails for interplanetary travel as well
as satellites built to analyze the
health of Earth's vegetation or to
predict natural disasters just as our
bodies benefit from having doctors and
instruments beyond them that can probe
investigate and diagnose so does the
earth launch pads like the one in Kourou
I got to visit are really just hospital
waiting rooms for Earth a place where
our planet can wait for researchers and
scientists to put their tools their
instruments into use into orbit we may
never know if something will or will not
happen but by pursuing space corners of
other worlds we gain a perspective that
can help us shrink the size of that
mysterious and often frightening if and
as always thanks for watching
you