A Problem Squared - 048 = Satellite Applications and Website Calculations

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

In this episode... How do we repurpose a satellite dish? How does Matt do his calculations so quickly? And some any other bugness! IF you want an A Problem Squared Christmas card, do become a Patreon! If you're ALREADY a Patreon, make sure you've given us your postal address.  As always, if you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on our website aproblemsquared.com. AND if you've got a Perth related problem for our 050th episode send them in!  You can buy A Problem Squared merch here https://a-problem-squared.teemill.com.  And, if you want want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.

Intro Music There is a problem dimension beyond that which is known to humans. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of humankind's fears and the summit of their knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination in an area which we call a problem squared. Summer. The present.

Woman on a microphone named Beck Hill. Age 60-ish. I didn't change that from the script. Occupation. Comedian. Author. TV presenter. I changed that bit.

Beck Hill. A fixture of the summer. A rather minor component to a hot July. A nondescript, commonplace little woman whose life is a treadmill built out of microphones. And in just a moment, Beck here will have to concern herself with survival because as of three o'clock this hot July afternoon, she'll be stalked by

problems. Portrait of a town mathematician named Matt Parker. This is a man who's begun his dying early, a long, agonizing route through a maze of numbers. Matt Parker, who would probably give an arm or a log or part of his soul to have another That's it. That's when I stopped writing Twilight Zone introduction.

Yeah. Welcome to a problem squared, everybody. Well done. As I was reading it, it just dawned on me that we've definitely gotten more involved the intros are more involved but less functional yeah i think yeah anyone who's new to listening to this has absolutely no idea what yeah to expect that feels counter to some of our founding principles here so hello to all new listeners i'm mathematician matt parker this is Beck Hale. We have a podcast where we solve problems, but due to ambition creep, we've started doing more and more ridiculous introductions. Speaking of ambition creep, on this episode...

I'll be dishing out some satellite dish advice. I've calculated how many seconds that is. And I've got some any other bugness. I can't wait. Whoa! Beck, I asked you this knowing in full well we were hanging out roughly 36 hours ago, but how are you and have you been up to anything interesting recently? Just popped in to do a little gig on Wednesday night. A small intimate

gig you say? A small intimate gig. So first of all, Matt and I, we should have mentioned this earlier, but any of our wizard level Patreon supporters get a Christmas card in the post if they have provided their address. And you and I needed to meet up, sign them and write in them. And you said to me, I'm going to be in London on Wednesday because I'm doing a show that night. And I was like, cool, what show? And you were like, oh, Brian Cox and Robin Ince's Compendium of Rezervate at Royal Albert Hall. And I was like, oh, that little thing.

Yeah. Sure. Me and 5,000 of my closest nerdy friends. Yeah. And then you were like, oh, yeah, I'm doing a bit with Hannah Fry. And I'm like, cool, not jealous, whatever. I'll just hang out with Adam Rutherford one day. No big deal.

Yeah. And then it's like you read my mind because I was going to ask if you had any comps. And then you just messaged me saying, I don't have any comps. Yeah, I knew exactly where this conversation was going. And I have no issue being frank with you, Beck. So I was like, look, my official comp I'd given to Lucy. Yes. But then I managed to wangle two more comps for some other mates of mine.

That was above and beyond the allotment I should have had. But Trent, who organizes it, was able to claw back some other unused comps. And then I was like, there is no way I can go back again with my comp hat in my hand and say, can I get back in? But Trent knows you. So I didn't just say no comps for you. I said, you're going to have to talk to Trent. Which I was already way ahead of you.

By the time you said I have no comps, I was already forming my text to Trent. And Trent being a fellow Aussie, we're just direct with each other. So I was like, hey, check out this guy sliding into your DMs two days before a massive show that you're producing. Don't suppose there's any comps. No worries if not. And Trent essentially wrote back and said, there's no comps left, but one of the comedians has just backed out. Do you want to take their spot?

Like as if it's just a gig at a pub. Oh, can you come in and help us out? Yeah, we got a spot like as if it's just a gig at a pub oh can you come in and help us out and yeah we got a spot to fill on the bill yeah that was how i ended up on the bill and i didn't have to share my spot with anyone yeah you got your own spot i had to share mine with hannah fry yeah and beck just saunters out onto the stage just wanders all by herself check it out royal albert. It's peck time. And because Seb was doing all the lasers there, who we've both worked with,

and who did lasers for both of our shows in 2019, right before I went on, I got them to message Seb and ask if he could just casually add some lasers during my set. So that's what happened. More lasers. Yeah.

Incredible. That was a fun gig. It was very fun. So that's what happened. More lasers. Yeah. Incredible. That was a fun gig. It was a good fun. It was very fun. So you did your bit. I did my bit. Did not realize this in advance. Hannah and I, we not accidentally, but effectively ended up as the warm up act for the darkness. Yes. Who were the closing music act. Also, I realized that when you are Hannah's assistant watching you guys, I was like, oh,

we're Matt's with Hannah. He's the back. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. In the Hannah Fry, Matt Parker dynamic, Hannah is the Matt and Matt is the back. And then the darkness were on after and they were amazing. And then I was taking photos of Brian Cox and Sophie Ellis Baxter and Andy McCluskey

from Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. They were clapping along just on the side of the stage to the darkness and then Brian Cox turned around and saw me taking photos and like beckoned me over like, come on. And so then I ran out on stage and clapped hands with them and it was the best moment of my life, the end. Yeah, so you went out on stage, just so we're clear on this. You went out on stage while the darkness were on.

I did the exact opposite. Yeah. Because I know, because a lot of the time we hang out in the wing to watch the music act at the end, if you're careful, because it can get crowded. And I know there's a risk of being swept out on stage and being made to clap and dance along. So I made myself scarce.

Oh, you don't like doing that? In the corridor. I've done it a couple of times. I went out when the Eric Idol was doing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Wow. And this was at the Hammersmith. And I was like, this is a moment I should get involved with.

I'll regret not doing this. It wasn't even my only showbiz moment, Matt. Oh, no, yes. You went to a party. I went to Jonathan Russ's Halloween party. This is just name dropping the intro. This is. It's been an You went to a party. I went to Jonathan Ross's Halloween party. This is just name-dropping the intro. This is. It's been an exciting month and a bit.

You've been living the life of a TV celebrity. I know. Don't tell anyone I'm not. Because Gav was my plus one, we decided to go as Tucker and Dale from the film Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which is a brilliant horror film, but weirdly niche. Yeah.

It's great. If you like comedy horror, it's really cause it subverts the whole thing. Yeah. No one got our costume. Absolutely. No one like people we rocked up. And first of all,

no one's dressed as like horror movie theme. Jonathan Ross was, he was the Babadook, which is awesome. No one celebrities and famous people just phoned it in it was like that scene from mean girls where they're talking about how halloween is just an excuse to dress sexily and that's what it was it's just like a bunch of people dressed really sexily and then me in a fake beard you know what it reminds me of beck maybe you like when you do like some of these red carpet things

and you've gone in like an outfit you made yourself or a dress you found in a charity shop and there's just photos of people doing like celebrity red carpet things and then beck being beck yeah so i'm just yeah imagining. Take it with me, everyone. Your screen accurate beard. I was so proud of it. Oh, well. And then also no one recognized me when I was talking to people. I had to keep pulling the beard down and going, it's me, Beck.

Because they were like, why are you talking to me? And just lots of people just thought I was dressed as like a redneck with lots of fake blood. Whatever. That's great. That's great. The true test would be if you're invited back next year. So let's wait and see. Well, now back.

We've been talking about how we were both doing the Royal Albert Hall in front of 5,000 people. Smashing it, obviously, hanging out with celebs. You've got your celeb parties but you wouldn't believe what i got i got access to a very exclusive okay yeah i got to go into the new london sewers oh i did it i got into the pipe because you were talking about that in a previous episode how much you want to do that did you see the the turn was there a tornado a poop poonado i didn't get to see the didn't get to you see the, was there a turd-nado? A poop-poo-nado? I didn't get to see the,

didn't get to see the poop-nado. Turd-nado was a better name, actually. Thank you. I think we called it, did we call it poop-nado last? Poo-nado? Oh man,

we are going to up our game. Turd-nado. No, so, what Becca's referring to is, if you weren't listening last time, the way that they get a lot of the effluent down a long way

without it getting too much kinetic energy is they basically send it down a massive vortex, which is very funny. Now, I was not at the same site I went to last time because I did an above-ground tour of the Blackfriars site last time. This time I was at Kirkling Street, which is near kind of Vauxhall Station way on the Thames.

And this was the access point. It's pretty much the middle of this new Tideway pipe they're putting in. And this was the access point where they lowered in the tunnelling machines that then dug out the main sewer pipeway. So it's got a very big void that lowers you about

70, 100 metres below the surface. And then the pipe goes off in two directions from there. And the only way to get in is to be lowered in by a crane okay so i got lowered in by a crane no yeah that's so cool and terrifying they put you in a massive metal box and then a crane picks up the box that's terrifying lowers it 100 meters down wow the bottom The bottom of this shaft. Wow. We almost couldn't do it because the wind picked up and it was too gusty to lower humans into a hole.

Did you? And then. Too gusty to lower humans into a hole. Into a hole. Disappointing. Did you film it? Yes, I did. Okay.

Yes. So then the gust died down and they're like, oh, would you want to film somewhere else on site? And I was like, no, look, folks, it's the hole or nothing. And so we just waited. I was like, i would use the entire time i've been allotted with site access to wait and see if we can get lowered into the hole yeah and sure enough we got lowered into the hole and i got to walk just wander around in the sewers so i got to walk down. Now, I say the sewers. It hasn't been turned on yet and won't be turned on for a little while. But this section, the pipe is all in and all the lining is done.

And it's roughly a seven meter diameter pipe. Okay. It's quite big. So I'm standing in it and I'm under two meters. Then the actual top of the pipe is like seven meters above. It's just phenomenally a massive, massive, huge sewer pipe. I love it. I hope you're wearing overalls and a fake mustache.

I did not go full Mario, sadly. Now, these are obviously in use. And there were some that they had to block off and join onto the new ones. But not many and not in places I could get access to. So I've now gotten into the new sewer. So I've achieved that goal, but it's now a dead end in terms of trying to then use that as a way to see the old sewer where it interfaces with the new one. There's no way I'm able to do that.

So if anyone listening has any contacts that can get me into the London sewers, specifically to see one of the egg-shaped cross-sectioned basil jet lines, then that would be amazing. And I'm aware it would be disgusting, but I've done ridiculous things for videos before. If anyone has sewer contacts, let me know. Nice. We want to see if Beck can get back into Jonathan Ross's Halloween party and I can get into the London sewers.

The old ones. Our first problem comes from someone named Darren. And they say, and this is Darren speaking in the first person. I took down a satellite dish that the previous owners of my house put up. And they say, and this is Darren speaking in the first person, I took down a satellite dish that the previous owners of my house put up. What do you think I should do with it? So that's Darren's problem. Let's find out what is Beck's solution.

Well, my first initial thought was hat. Hat. Yeah. Now, Darren doesn't say how big this satellite dish is it could be it could be hat size yeah i love this problem because it means that there's a lot of scope to talk about it but also there's just zero other context i don't know like does darren have a garden if so perhaps uh the satellite dish could be fashioned into some sort of bird bath or something. When you think satellite dish, you're like, what can I make with a large bowl shape? So I'm thinking in the UK, you can put up a satellite dish to get like sky or something.

And those dishes are on the order of 30, 40 centimetres across. They're not massive. They're quite small. But then other places, like often in Australia, if you want to put up a big old... We're talking like over a metre. Yeah. Giant dishes.

Actually, last time I was back in Australia, I was cycling in Perth. It was cycling through a suburb that had the bulk rubbish collection, which is where you can put anything you want out on the kerb and the council will come and collect them on a prearranged date. Someone was throwing out a full-sized, massive satellite dish. What? Like a meter and a half, like one of the big ones.

Whoa. Now, I was on a bike, so I wasn't picking it up there and then. Also, I'm only in Australia for a short amount of time. I'm heading back to the UK. There's no way I can take this dish with me in fact i'm sure i could if i really needed a dish secondhand dish i could acquire one somehow but my honestly my instinct i just went oh my goodness what can i do with that i absolutely i understand darren's problem here yeah oh that's it i thought you were going to say like because what i wanted to do with it was this. And then you would answer the problem for me.

You know what? I know what the first thing that popped into my mind was. What would you do with it? That I would do with the dish. Do you want to guess? What do you think was, if you could put yourself in my cycling shoes, what do you think my first instinct was? And it's not very exciting. Bike helmet. Incorrect. I'm guessing you would try and turn it into a metal tire?

Oh, wait, like a tiny velodrome. Not a tiny velodrome. It's not bike-related what I wanted to do with it. Oh, I thought you said cycling. I wasn't going to do a jump or something. Our producer Lauren has guessed gazebo. Yeah, Lauren also guessed fire pit which is solid

Fire pit might be my favourite one That's a good one You'd want to double check it hasn't got like a coating that's toxic when it's burnt and make sure the metals are safe to heat up If we ignore the health and safety concerns that's amazing, I like fire pit.

Yeah, fire pit's a good one. This might be Lauren's first ding. I thought radio astronomy. I was like, I bet you could repurpose that as a home radio astronomy telescope. Sure. And we've performed at Blue Dot. I am actually wearing a Blue Dot jumper right now as we- You're wearing the Blue Dot hoodie that we're on as we speak.

And I remember someone saying it's a telescope, which I sort of half ignored because I was like, no, it's a satellite dish. It's a massive satellite dish. So is this what... So it's taking stuff from a telescope that is out of our atmosphere. Is that what it's doing? No.

Actually, yes. I said no, and then I'm wrong. There's two ways to do this. Okay. These massive dishes can be used to receive data from space. Yeah. That's what I think of when I think of a satellite dish. Exactly.

And I, this is Jodrell Bank. I think it might do some of that. But like the Parkes telescope. In Australia. Dish, Parkes dish in Australia. But like the Parkes telescope. In Australia. Dish, Parkes Dish in Australia. As in from the film The Dish. The one and the same.

And in that film, it's receiving data from the Apollo missions. Yes. It's still part of the Deep Space Network, which is, I think, at least three massive radio dishes that are used to receive data from spacecraft that's a very long way from earth and so in that case you want a big area because the signals are so faint you want a massive area to collect as many of the radio waves as possible you focus them all in on the one receiver and then you pull there's your signal you're getting the data from that and that's what a traditional satellite dish is doing on your roof but it's getting the data from like a satellite that's beaming down television yeah it's focusing in on a receiver and then that's your tv signal and the fainter the signal the bigger the dish is the rule of thumb

because then you're collecting more ways now what you can do once you've got one of these dishes is instead of pointing it at a spacecraft or a satellite or something, you can be like, what if I just point it at space? Just at the sky where there should be no signal. And you'll pick up a very faint radio signal. And I think it was discovered by accident. From like aliens channels. From like aliens channels. Tune in next time.

We'll give away a ice cold candy coat. I love that would be because I always say like any civilization will use prime numbers or have basic maths. But no, they'll have a commercial radio station giving away an ice cold candy coat. Yeah. Playing classic hits from the Andromeda galaxy and beyond. If your space vehicle has a bumper sticker on it and we see you anywhere in the habitable zone. So that's what you can pick up. That's what you can pick up.

But then if you move it and you point it in a slightly different direction, you're still going to get radio signal, but it's slightly different. And you're like, huh. So what you can do is scan an area of the sky and each pixel in your image is just the signal you're getting from a different location. So it's a bit like a normal telescope, like an optical telescope, different frequencies. You get all the light in at once and you focus it onto a sensor

and you get the whole image at the same time. Yeah. But imagine you get a really, really skinny telescope and you can just see a little bit at a time. You'd have to basically scan across the thing to get the whole image. But is it an actual image? But it would actually form a picture. It would form a picture.

As if you're looking at a drawing. As if you're looking at a drawing. As if you're looking at a drawing. In fact, one of Lucy's necklaces is a radio image of a galaxy. But because the radio image is just kind of intensity of the radio source, the necklace is laser cut bits of acrylic to represent the different intensities of the radio waves coming from a galaxy. I forget which one. Is this how television works? This is not how television works. Why am I really, I'm really struggling to wrap my head, my brain around this. So, it's a bit like if someone is talking. Yes. Because if someone's talking, they're making a lot of noise. And you've got two options. If you can hear them making that noise, you've got two options.

On one hand, it's giving you information about what they're actually saying. So if someone's yelling from across the field at you, you could listen to what they're saying and get the actual content. You're decoding what they're saying. Okay. And that's like a TV signal going into a satellite dish. We're actually decoding the information in that noise, like in the signal.

Got it. And so they could be yelling a story at you or something and you can enjoy that story. But the other information it's giving you is if you ignore what they're saying and just pay attention to the fact that there's loud noise coming from over there, it's actually just telling you there's a person over there making noise. Yeah. And so what you could do is if you're in a field and you're like, I wonder where all the people are in this if you're in a field and you're like i wonder where

all the people are in this field like at a festival or something and so you can ignore what they're saying and you could just gently like you could start listening in this direction like pay attention this way and actually you can use a dish to focus in sound to try and like a spy microphone you can listen in you like if you gradually move that across the field and you pay attention to just how loud or quiet it is it'll tell you how roughly how many people or how loud they are in different parts of the field as you move around. So on one hand, you're using the signal to like try and decode what's encoded in the signal. And the other time you're just using the existence of the signal as a kind of a measurement of where things are and how loud they are. But I wouldn't necessarily be able to work out what that person looks like oh no it's a person no but i wouldn't

know just know that they're over there yep and so that's the level of picture we're talking about yeah so radio way radio astronomy super low resolution got it because all you're getting is like a measurement of how loud the radio waves are in that direction and then how loud they are in that direction and in that direction. So it is a bit like sonar, but it's one half of it. We're not bouncing anything out there. We're just waiting to hear the part. We're just hearing the return. It's not telling us how far away things are in the same way that sonar does.

It's just telling us that there's a lot of stuff there making radio waves. And some things in space do and some things don't, and bits of galaxies do. And some things in space do and some things don't. And bits of galaxies do. And so if you scan your listening dish across a galaxy, it'll suddenly be loud in certain areas because there's lots of things there producing radio waves. And it'd be quiet in other regions

because there's nothing there producing a radio wave. Just pause for one second. I'm going to see if Lucy can grab it. I'll show it to you. And then you can explain it and then'll show it to you. Yeah. And then you can explain it and then listeners can look at it online. Good stuff. So Lucy's now got her necklace.

Yeah. And so do you want to hold her up there so they can see it? Oh. Do you remember which galaxy this is? This is the Starburst galaxy. So it's a good radio emitter. And it looks like a galaxy. It's sort of flat. So you can almost imagine you're looking at it side on. I actually don't know if we are looking at it side on I don't remember

much detail about this galaxy I think it's m81 in the catalogue but you can see that it's blobby big blob of blue smaller of green and then smaller again of yellow and red and that's what radio astronomy can look like because the level of detail you can see depends on the wavelength of light that you use. So for big, long radio waves, you need a massive telescope to be able to see smaller and smaller details. It looks a little bit like a heat map. Yeah.

It's super low res, but it just kind of shows you if you point your dish at different bits of the sky, you get these different measurements. Lucy's now modelling it as a necklace. I love this necklace. It's from George Will Bank. It's from George Will Bank. Yeah, so go to the gift shop at George Will Bank and you can get that. Ah, that's awesome.

Yeah, there we go. Can I have a lunch now? You can have your lunch now. Yay! Thanks, Lucy. So that's what you could do. You could, Darren, could take their satellite dish, rig up a way to measure the intensity of radio waves, slowly move it across the sky and produce a radio heat map of another galaxy. Very impressive. And if Darren isn't a technical genius.

Oh. Or, you know, might I also suggest Captain America cosplay? There you go. Make yourself a big old shield. Yeah. A small boat. A very large Frisbee. Lauren Armstrong Carter also suggested a very large comfortable swing,

depending on the size of the dish. That would be quite nice. It would make a good swing. Depending on the size of the dish, you want to take the receiver out first. Yes. Maybe keep the receiver in. want to take the receiver out first. Yes. Maybe keep the receiver in. Very heavy umbrella. There you go.

So actually I own two effectively satellite dishes because the shape of a satellite dish is something called a paraboloid. It's a parabola that's been rotated around. And the reason a satellite dish is a paraboloid is because it focuses any incoming light into the focal point right in the center. And I've got two of them. But instead of being like the sort of metal that will deflect radio waves to a central point, it's shiny like a mirror to reflect light. And I use them in a stage show because I put a bit of flash cotton at the focal point of one of them. Oh yeah. And I'd put a hot heat source at the focal point of the other one

and I'd beam the heat radiation across the stage to set fire to the flash cotton. That's very cool. Which it was really good fun. But I could also just do it if I went outside and held these dishes up the central focal point would get super hot because it's focusing all the light and heat from the sun onto a single point. And you can do a good enough version of that. If Darren was to get a bunch of aluminum foil or something shiny and coat the inside of the dish, they could probably cook up to one sausage by maybe melt a marshmallow in direct sunlight by suspending it at the focal point of their satellite dish well i think now you and i next time we meet up need to find one of your parabola blah blahs but we we are we'll get them out and we'll take them out into the backyard and we'll set fire to some stuff i look forward to that all right well i hope that helps for now

darren solar powered barbecue is my official answer. Yeah. And then I gave all those other answers, so, you know. Or a hat. Or a hat. Ding. Just dinged myself. You just went and dinged yourself. This next problem is from Beck. And Beck says...

Wow. Oh. Do the voice. Oh, your thing which converts... This problem was sent in by Beck via WhatsApp message to Matt. It was, yep. I said, your thing which converts millions and billions to seconds, is that a website you built or just a spreadsheet you use? And either way, could I quote how you explain the difference between the two so what becca's referring to is in my stand-up show humble pie which is very

presentation based in my presentation file there's a slide that comes up and it gives the exact time and date a million a billion and a trillion seconds in the future as a way to illustrate the size differences between those three. And when I came up with this idea, I was like, every time I could work it out from scratch. Instead, I wrote a spreadsheet that's embedded in my keynote presentation. And every time you open the file, it automatically fills in those exact times and dates

based on when the file was opened. And so it'll automatically bring it up, which I was very proud of. Yeah, it's very cool. As I mentioned on a previous episode, I was doing a podcast for BBC Sounds called Elon Musk versus Twitter, which was all about Elon Musk taking over Twitter. Of course, since the last episode came out, a lot of other stuff's happened. So hopefully if enough people listen to that one, they'll give us some more episodes and we can cover everything that's happened since then but I was guesting on another podcast talking about that one yeesh podcast-ception and so what I did

is I looked up what the average house price is in the UK converted it to US dollars obviously you're not worrying about inflation or anything, and then worked out if you bought a house a day, how long that would be. So basically I could buy a house for the average price in the UK, which is about £200,000. I could buy one every day until the year 2372. Wow. 2003. Yeah.

Okay. So that's like two and a half centuries. Yeah. I could buy a house every day house a day you don't like to live in the same house twice no three times the average life expectancy of a human you could change house every eight hours yeah the rest of your life buying a new one every time and still not quite spend 44 billion i still wouldn't have bought twitter oh it's crazy amount of money So my spreadsheet is not super helpful for that

because it's not a separate spreadsheet. It's baked into the keynote file. It's actually using numbers. And it's a real pain to mess if you want other values. But I was like, Bec, have I got a website for you? And I sent back a link to Wolfram Alpha, which is a fantastic website that will do all sorts of calculations

like this for you. Also, I have to ask Matt, are you affiliated with them? This isn't an ad, right? You're not getting paid for this. I'm in no way affiliated with Wolfram Alpha. In fact, I use their free level and they've never given me like a free, because you've got to pay for the upgraded version. And I have not done that. I use the free version. It's a bit slower. And sometimes you hit the computational limit. But for a free, I'm amazed the free version does a lot. I'm in no way affiliated with these people. And Mathematica is an adequate programming language for physicists.

But it prides itself on being able to do all this for you. So I just typed in $44 billion divided by average house price days in years so i've just typed in the whole thing you wanted to do 44 billion divided by average house price that how many days like if that's number of days how many years would that be and all in one it's come back with 268 and a half years. Wow. Because obviously it's using an average house price in the States, I'm guessing. Yeah, it's taken the United States. So it tells you if it's got to interpret anything.

It says, okay, we're assuming you mean 44 billion divided by the United States median home listing price convert one day to years. so it's taken that as a number of days and converted it to years wow and it's given me the number wow that is impressive this is why do we have this podcast i just i'm just reading it i just walk from alpha everything and then read it out oh and now it said it can convert into different currencies and stuff oh my gosh but it will do like the hitchhiker's do pretty much any stupid calculation you throw at it. Shall we do a million seconds from when this podcast

comes out? Okay. I've just been told it's roughly 1am in the morning. So I'm going to write interval from alpha. I'm literally going to type

1 1 million seconds from 1am 5th of December 2022. Okay. And a million seconds from 1 a.m 5th of december 2022 okay and a million seconds after that will be 2 46 in the morning on saturday the 17th of december 2022 so a couple weeks within two weeks later if i switch that to 1 billion seconds so 1 billion seconds after the podcast comes out

will be in the year 2054 on the 13th of august thursday and you know what let's do 1 trillion seconds just for fun just for fun so 1 trillion seconds from right now when you're listening to this podcast will be at the soonest tuesday the the 1st of September in the year 33,711. Yeah, so it's a big old difference. It's a big old difference. And shall we do 44 billion seconds? Yeah. For a second, you would have spent the amount of money Musk spent on Twitter by the 26th of March in the year 3417.

Oh, we should have got busted to let us know. I know. It'll be a Wednesday. It'll be 13 minutes past seven in the afternoon, GMT. Wow. The point here is that we, as humans, we forget that a billion is a thousand times bigger than a million yeah and a trillion is a thousand times bigger again so that's why a billion is like 30 ish years which is why a trillion is 30 000 ish years but yet it catches people because people off guard yeah yeah so my actual reply to you was

to try and keep it in the realm of a billion i said that if someone spent forty four thousand dollars every single day you wouldn't run out of money until the year 4760 two and a half thousand years from now it's just crazy to think about that's so imagine spending forty four thousand dollars a day when i guessed it on the podcast as well, I think I also put it as looking at the average house price in the UK, which I think is around 200 grand pounds. That's obviously average UK, not London. And then I worked out if you were converting from US to pounds,

it's like you could buy a standard house in the UK every day for like 100 years. It's like it went way after you'd probably die. Musk could have bought 100,000 houses. That's a lot of houses. Yeah. 100,000 houses. Or one social media platform. So if anyone's not sure whether they made the right choice.

How about, and I've not tried any of these in advance, mass of Earth in potatoes. Here we go. It's thinking. It's still thinking. Maybe I shouldn't use the free version. I better not have crashed again. Okay, so here we go.

It's come back with assuming earth is a planet okay okay good assumption assuming prepared potato ah assuming any type of prepared potato and you can then switch if you want to use canned potato drain solids or other options. But then it has not given me the mass of an earth. I think it's done it the other way around. But you can do things like if I do a classic like Olympic swimming pool in shot glasses. Let's see if it... It's having a think.

It got confused by the sport and it's taken it as a 16 pound shot as you can shop ah let me it's just given me a picture of a shot but next to an olympic swimming fantastic okay so i'd like to roll back some of my previous praise about wolfram alpha well look what you're saying is there's something there if you're willing to be flexible yeah you there's an art into phrasing your question such that the algorithm that is wolf from alpha can understand it and sometimes you've got to build up the bits yourself separately and put them together but it is an incredibly powerful tool if you want to do some of these more unusual calculations and it's very good at number of seconds in the future well it was very good at that and i will be using this from now on for all

of my uh queries about whether i should buy a social media site there you go also means you can do the podcast without me now because i'm just i'm a glorified text to voice oh yeah add on to wolfram alpha that's basically all I bring to this. I laugh and say yes, but we both know that's not true. That's why our podcast is worth $44. Just $44. Just $44.

Anyone want to buy it? Anyone want to buy it? Would you sell the podcast for $44 billion? $44 billion? Heck yeah. There you go. Say mean things about Elon. I think that's how you start that negotiation. In conclusion, listen to Beck's other podcast. Oh heck yeah. There you go. Say mean things about Elon. I think that's how you start that negotiation.

In conclusion, listen to Beck's other podcast. Oh, yeah. Elon Musk versus Twitter on BBC Sounds. That's very good. Aw, thanks. Matt, I'm going to give you a ding for that because it was very useful. Hey. And now it's time for any other bugness, apparently, because, Bec, you got some follow-on to my beetle calculations.

Yeah. So as you may remember from the last episode, you said that three horned dung beetles could carry me. Yes, I did. And four would be able to lift your weight. And I thought something doesn't seem right about this i like to think i also expressed some concerns about that but those were that's what the number said yeah and so i contacted the two researchers yes you did yeah from the university of western

australia and queen mary university of University of London and check the facts because I thought this doesn't sound right and that's when I found out that the horned dung beetle that they mentioned in the paper and that gets mentioned in all the media stuff is the onthophagous taurus yeah and horned dung beetles there's like loads of different versions of them. But I just thought the horned dung, I think we both had this. We both thought the horned dung beetle was a particular type. Yeah. And I foolishly found a Reddit post where someone had pulled up the mass of a horned dung beetle. There was no further citations. And I was like, wow, that matches what I saw somewhere else. So that'll do.

You found it to be about 21 grams, which is about the weight of a rhinoceros beetle, which is technically a type of horned dung beetle. And so you did it based on that. Yeah. Whereas I wanted to find out what that actual weight is. So contact us. It's bigger. Oh, yeah, it's huge. Just one.

One of them will just pick you right up. Yeah, so Rob Nell from Queen Mary University of London wrote back, said, hi, Beck, otaurus. I like that Rob's just shunned it to otaurus. I should do that. Otaurus is substantially smaller than whatever species weighs 21 grams. These animals are amazingly diverse, and some of the big horned beetles are really big. For beetles, look up Hercules beetles.

Just giving you extra beetle facts. Can't help themselves. The animals I was working with had a mean weight of 70 milligrams. Oh. So that's all of them, and that's milligrams. 70 milligrams. 70 milligrams. 70 milligrams. The one we calculated the figure from lost its grip at a weight of 105.07 grams and itself weighed 0.00921 grams.

Hence the figure of 1,141, which we calculated for the media rather than putting it in the paper Rob says they do have the original data if we'd like a copy To let them know. That's nice of them. But unfortunately they don't have any photos Which is a shame. I wish I'd taken some. That would have been great So yeah, quite the difference between 21 grams and 0.00921 grams. Correct. And if that tiny beetle can lift 105.07 grams, I think you said.

Yep. Then that's about 571 beetles to lift you back, give or take. 571. What about you, Matt? I'd need over 850 beetles. That's a lot of beetles. That's a lot of beetles. That's a lot of beetles. But you know what's fewer than?

The number of bees you'll need. So, in a way, you know, they're still winning. They're still over a thousand times better, is what I'm saying. Yeah, fair. They need to be lifted by small insects. Are they both insects? Small creatures. Beetles over bees every day.

Rebecca, I think we should acknowledge your excellent work. Now, even without the context of my haphazard research, I think your contacting the original scientist, getting additional beetle facts, offers of original data, is above and beyond the call of the duty here. So I wish to hand back my ding from this problem. I think you have now earned that ding. You got a ding for answering the bee question. I did do the bees. That was the main one.

So I just get a bonus ding for bonus research. Dings aplenty. Yay. Ding. So we got an email back from the mesh mask guy. Ooh, mesh mask. That was like, hi, Beck, can't wait to hear this month's episode now. And then they've sent the pictures of their mesh mask.

But they responded earlier this week, and that episode came out in January. So I don't know how they didn't get the email until now. Oops. But I've replied to them saying, well, just so you know, the episode is already coming. So we'll see how they respond. So let's leave that. I was excited to do some data extrapolation because we've been viewing unique downloads. And we're coming up on a million.

Yes. And I may have just crunched the number. I logged in to see our average views per 30 days, our current views and I then used WolframAlpha to give me the time from now and if we carry on at our current rate we will hit 1 million

downloads on Sunday January 8th 2023 which is exciting if we stay at our current rate because on the 2nd of January, our 50th episode is due to be released. So we might

hit a million downloads with our 50th episode, which is very exciting. It's feeling very likely. This is the thing, Matt and I are going to both be in Perth in a matter of weeks. Correct. In like less than two weeks we're both going to be in Perth at the same time. So we could record our 50th episode there and do something fun.

So first of all, does anyone have any Perth-based problems they'd like us to tackle? Oh, yes. Make sure you put the word Perth in your problem when you go up to the Perth Problem Posing page. Go through the Problem Posing page, which is aproblemsquared.com, and we will look for any Perth-based problems that you have. I would really like it if we could announce that we've had a million downloads with our 50th episode. If we could up our rate, we need 400 more downloads a week

Than we're currently getting To hit it by 50 Okay Yeah Plausible That's plausible If everyone listening manages to get one person Get them on board

Get on to it What better gift? None And finally we have some unfinished business with Beck's Adventure at Comic-Con. Yes, I was out in Brussels for Brussels Comic-Con. And unfortunately, I did not have time to get to your stairs. That's okay. We had a few other people offer.

So I will enlist the next person down in the list to go and measure some steps. Okay, good. I don't feel as bad now. However, I did get to meet Christopher Lloyd. Oh, Doc. Yeah. And he has no idea what the busted song is. Oh, good.

You've gone right to the... Now, if people think we don't put enough effort into solving these problems and we half-ass our research into beetles you've uh not only fixed the beetle problem but you went right to the top on this flux thing investigation yeah i think what we've worked out is that it's not a flux the flux thing it doesn't exist they've just made it up i don't think they even went to the future what yeah all my calculations are in for naught for not for nothing i'm so sorry but i did get my cap signed that's pretty cool yeah finally thank you so much to all our fantastic patreon supporters who financed this whole operation so the rest of you can listen to it for free to thank them, we pick three of their names completely at random

every time to say thanks which this time includes Michael Dono Magnus Torset George Corris Thank you so much to those three Patreons and the many others

that they represent. Thank you. And to those three Patreons and the many others that they represent. Thank you. And if you would like a personalized Christmas card from Matt and I this year, then you have pretty much 24 hours. One day. Yeah. So you'll have to sign up as a wizard level Patreon supporter. If you want to get the digital copy that goes to all

patreons we email it to you if you want the physical signed card with a wonderful message from myself and beck you need to be wizard level yes and if that happens like before the 7th of december then you should in theory get a card from us. You have to do it within the 86,400 seconds after 1am on the 5th of December 2022. You know what? How'd you work that out, Matt? On our theme of I don't know musicals very well. Not all from Alpha.

I was going to say, on our theme of powers of magnitude, let's do 0.1 million seconds after 1am on the 5th of December 2022, which gets you until 4.46 in the morning, GMT, Tuesday, 6th of December to sign up. That's when we're going to stop taking new Patreons to get Christmas cards.

You can still become a Patreon. You just don't get the Christmas card. Until next year. Until next year. Yeah, of course. You have been listening to A Problem Squared with Beck Hill and myself, of course. You have been listening to A Problem Squared with Beck Hill and myself, Matt Parker, and picture of a woman looking at a picture. Podcast producer, great of another time,

once brilliant star in a ferment, no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Lauren Armstrong Carter, whose world is an editing room whose dreams are made out of waveforms. And finally, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as problems. They sit there in the stars,

waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting for solutions from a problem squared beck yes you know how last time we tried cheetos Crunchy to see if they tasted like Twisties, our favorite Aussie snack? Yeah. And we thought, but not cheesy enough. Right. I also got the cheesiest version of Cheetos I could find while I was in America. Cheddar Jalapeno.

Ooh. So for context, here I've got our pack of Cheetos Crunchy we had last time. And I've also now got Cheetos Crunchy cheddar jalapeno style. So in theory, it's the same, but with more cheddar, also jalapeno. So when we did the Christmas card signing, I also handed over two mystery bags. Mystery bag labeled A is the cheddar jalapeno cheetos and just for context b is the original ones we had last time in case you need to recalibrate why did you label them a and b a mystery if you're going to immediately tell me what they are oh i didn't want you to

know in advance i wanted to be able to tell you now in the recording sure okay so what am i trying trying a first so try a so a i'm gonna try them as well they smell they smell tasty it's not easy oh i like these that's not bad they're not quite they're not twisties but i'll tell you what that jalapeno flavor is delightful yeah that's the closest I think we've had in a while to twisties. I'm just going to try some of the original crunch ones from last time. Right, me too. This is good because I haven't had breakfast. Oh, yeah, these are just very pale now in comparison.

Yeah. The lack of jalapeno does make them feel a bit more twisty-like. But the other ones are more salty. There's a depth to them. Yeah. If I had to pick a substitute, if I couldn't get twisties, I would go the cheddar jalapeno. Yeah, I get that.

Yeah. I would say current winner. Cheetos crunchy. They don't necessarily taste like twisties, but we would happily eat them. Twisties in our distant memory. These are great. Yum-yum-yum-yum-yum.