A Problem Squared - 087 = Climbing Cliffses and Cloning Eclipses

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

🧗 Is it possible to climb every mountain?  🌞 Can you simulate an eclipse if you miss the real thing?  📜 And some loose ends (and change), in AOB!  If you’d like to enter the very same gravel race as Matt Parker, you can find out more details here: https://sevengravelrace.com/the-race/ You can listen to ‘Climb Any Mountain’ from the Sound of Music soundtrack here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKuqySkqhHw&ab_channel=COSMOTOPPER777 And to watch the 1991 The Shamen hit ‘Move Any Mountain’ referenced by Matt (which we later discovered was made by our very own Producer Lauren’s dad!) Follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpjnzxtZ6Qg&ab_channel=Vesanorabonah You can find details for Matt’s Peak data here: https://peakvisor.com/ https://peakvisor.com/en/news/how_many_mountains_on_earth.html https://peakvisor.com/en/news/unnamed-mountains.html In our Dinglett this week Matt referenced JHelioviewer, where you can access real time solar image data. Do that here: https://www.jhelioviewer.org/ And Bec’s very sensible suggestion for Problem Poser Aaron, to watch the Oculus’ broadcast of the 2024 total eclipse: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/event/1074832456934803/ SFX for Bec’s victory can be found at Fresound.org, ‘VICTORY CRY Reverb 1’ was made by chripei and ‘Music: Orchestral Victory Fanfare’ was made by Sheyvan.  As always, send your problems and solutions to our website: www.aproblemsquared.com. And, if you want more from A Problem Squared, you can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, Discord and on Patreon.

Hello and welcome to a problem squared the problem solving podcast which is a bit like Paris and that it's cultured smells a bit like cheese and has a point Do it the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Well done. Thank you. You're saying our podcast smells like cheese. Honestly, I couldn't think of a third thing that would go in between.

We're famous for cheese. Famous is a stretch. Famous is a stretch. Wow, yes. We enjoy cheese. We enjoy cheese. We are cheesy. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, just we have Beck Mac Parker. Oh, we? Yeah. A comedian, mathematician and author Who looks great in a beret That is also true I imagine

I don't know I'm just picturing it No did we wear one? We wore one Yes you've worn a beret I've worn a beret In New York For this podcast

Yeah when we were recreating Scenes from a New York Minute Et je m'appelle Beck A comedian, writer and presenter who looks great on a bidet. I was rhyming beret with bidet. Bidet, yeah, no, good work. There was a bit of lag between those two things due to us. Too much chat. You're a pain, a chocolate in my butt. I should flag up, we're both having a sugar crash right now. Yeah. I don't know if that's relevant. That was maybe a mistake. It's going to be a ride, folks. On this episode, I embark on climbing every mountain. I look at some solar eclipse

substitutes. And we have any other baguette-ness. I would use baguette as a pun, didn't I? Boulangerie. Boulangerie. hey matt back bonjour any other bonjourness that's it uh too late we can't go back no how are you i'm good i'm good i um survived my trip to aust. Yes. Which included doing my first ever actual bike race. Oh, yes. I saw a photo. You did one with your brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you put it on Instagram, I think?

I think I did put it on Instagram. Because you don't use Instagram much. I do not use Instagram much at all. I was like, oh, look. But I did put up a photo of us. I forget if it was the before or after. We both entered a gravel bike race, but we entered in subcategories

so it's the seven gravel race in a small town called nanup which is in the southwest of australia and it's gravel so it means it's not mountain biking but it is off-road so you're on gravel roads basically okay and it goes up and down a lot of hills so it's hard work yeah and i have never even done because we've talked on the podcast previously about how i'm a bike guy now yes and at the moment i'm in the middle of my riding everyday challenge this morning was ride number 165 wow consecutive days going for a bike ride yeah but i've never gone for a group ride i've not entered any kind of formal bike event i've just been a lone cycling cycling wolf so when my brother and i were signing up you can do like the race is split into seven segments and you can do all seven like the

proper race is all seven but that's 125 kilometers of cycling 78 miles yeah and over the course of that the elevation you'd cycle up 3200 meters of elevation that's over 10 000 feet of up that's a lot it's a lot and i'm like there's no way I can do that. But we could then choose to do fewer segments. You can, instead of doing all seven, you can opt to just do five. You can choose to just do three or you can just do one. Okay. I looked at them and I was like, I'm pretty sure I could do the five probably, but I know

I can definitely do the three. So I signed up for the three because I didn't want to do the five and then i know i can definitely do the three so i signed up for the three because i didn't want to do the five and then become a hindrance yeah where it turns out i can't yeah so i rounded down likewise my brother rounded down he was there for moral support for me who i hugely appreciate him coming along and he does do a bit of cycling but not much and he's like i'm doing the one he just did the one segment, which is still 27K. Yeah, that's a lot. Like, it's not up and down hills.

Like, it's still hard work. Yeah. He wasn't phoning it in. So, I embark off on the three segments. Mm-hmm. And I discovered pretty quickly what you were just mentioning. I'm motivated by other people. Yeah.

And so, when I see someone else i either want to maintain the speed with them or i want to like overtake them yep and i was trying to kind of i was aware i couldn't just go flat out the start where i had to pace myself yeah so i'm trying to avoid that urge to just go flat out as we go along. But then it rapidly transpires that people who cycle in Perth, because a lot of people doing the smaller legs were locals. Like the big race, people would fly in to do it. No one's flying in to do the three. Yeah.

So, it was mainly me and locals who were like, oh, we'll just give it a go. In Perth, people are not used to cycling up hills. No, it's pretty flat. Pretty flat. You've seen it? Yeah. Flat for days. Whereas here, where we are right now in the south downs of Surrey, hilly as all get out. Yeah, pretty hilly. It's non-stop hills. Yeah. The moment I go for a bike ride here, I'm up and down hills. Yeah. Turns out I'm accidentally pretty good at cycling up a hill. Huh. Because that's the only way I can cycle. You've been

hiding those calves. Yeah. Well, I got on the first hill and I'm like, I couldn't go as slow. And also a lot of other people were mountain bikes with lower gears than me. I was on a gravel bike. So I was in my bottom gear going what I thought was slow and pacing myself and just overtaking everyone. And so I ended up having a great time.

I was just tearing up those hills. But then everyone would overtake me on the way back down again, so then I'd descend real timid like, and all the people I just overtook on the hill are zipping past me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you get a medal or anything? No, I did. I came 22nd out of 120-something people in that category.

Yeah. So I was pretty chuffed with that. Yeah. So I think, oh, my brother came 17 out of the people doing the one. Amazing. We both rounded down. We should have both been a section up. Yeah.

But I'm glad we decided to not overshoot what we were confident we could do. Yes. That feels foolish. We made the right decision. Yeah. But now we're working out if we go back next year. And if anyone does like cycling on gravel, it's such an amazing, amazing ride. Huge amount of fun.

What have you been up to? What have I been up to? I did a hot tub tour of Canary Wharf. Okay. I understand Canary Wharf. It's a place in London. Yes. I understand the concept of a hot tub.

It's a stationary body of warmed water. Yeah, it sounds like what we've done is gone to different hot tubs and toured, you know, like a pub tour. It sounds like you've got in one hot tub that's on wheels. You're so close. And then toured on a boat? Yeah. It's basically a floating hot tub. So ridiculous.

So you got into a hot tub that's floating in the Thames. Yeah. And did a tour of Canary Wharf. Yep. I've got photos. It's like the most middle-class duck tour. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. I was in the hot tub with two other lovely ladies.

Did you know everyone else on the tour or you just assigned a hot tub? Just assigned. Hey, there you are. Yeah, so it's just two other ladies who had also booked that time slot in the hot tub you all go yeah one of them uh she can talk about your love of modern office architecture yeah well we were laughing because we're like we were like the people in these offices clearly hate us everyone would hate us you get waved at a lot which is nice and. And we had one person yelling, what is this? What's this called? And we told them.

Hot tub tours? Yeah, we were like, oh, it's this company. And they were like, thank you. Is it like the Mario Kart-esque tours in Tokyo that everyone or the locals hate? Probably. Yeah. If I worked in an office in Canary Wharf and every two hours saw someone float past in a hot tub to at least two of those people in the hot tub wearing little captain hats then I would be yeah

um but it was very fun it was you do it because it was a bit or just you want just you were bored one day and went hot tub tour a friend of a friend on Instagram posted about doing it. And I was trying to find interesting things to do in London because I've been playing host to various visitors in London. And I was like, oh, that sounds like a fun novelty thing. Wow. And it was actually really nice. Well, there you go.

Yeah. So I ended up making friends with the two other ladies that were in the hot tub. There was no bubbles that was the only thing what yeah and i get it because they're trying to it was hot and they had like a little uh boiler like a little steam boiler thing that was keeping the water warm but no bubbles it is we you're essentially having a bath with some strangers yes yeah yeah yeah with an audience of people trying to get office work done. Yeah, exactly. But it was the one day that we had nice weather in London last week

before it started bucketing down the rain. That's such a weird, like what I don't, what I don't understand is why a hot tub tour of Canary Wharf? It's like someone saying, oh, have you done the hammock tour of Stonehenge? Yeah. Why? I would do that. Why that thing? Now I think about that. You could hang a hammock from Stonehenge? Yeah. Why? I would do that. Why that thing?

Now I think about that. You could hang a hammock from Stonehenge. Okay. Imagine a more hilarious example of an unnecessary stationary thing you can do and a tour of an unrelated location. Why a hot tub tour of Canary Wharf? I feel like someone was just throwing random words. Yeah.

And then those two got... That's what they pulled out of the hat. Hot tub boat. Yeah feel like someone was just throwing random words. Yeah. And then those two got. That's what they pulled out of the hat. Hot tub boat. Yeah, hot tub, got it, tour. Okay. Yeah. Canaries. Canary Island.

Oh, wharf. Hot tub tour of Canary Island. I'm on board. You would have appreciated this as well. There was a very low pedestrian bridge. Very, very low. At which point the. You know I love pedestrian bridges.

The staff member who's like, what do you call it? I'm captaining. Like a gondola thing. Were they there at the back with the- No, they've got like the- Wait, was the hot tub just floating in the river? Okay. So it's an electric motor.

So it's basically a little motorboat, but it's electric. So it's actually really quiet. Surprisingly quiet. But it works in the same way as like you steer the rudder at the back. How big is the surrounding boat compared to the size of the hot tub? surprisingly quiet but it works in the same way as like you steer the rudder at the back how big is the surrounding boat compared to the size of the hot tub it's it's almost just hot tub it's just a hot it's basically a floating pretty much just hot tub and um i was imagining it like in the middle of a yacht like no no no it's just hot tub yeah yeah it's amazing it's floating at all to be fair good so uh emily was the name of our captain

and uh so she was so she's at the back and at the front they've got like a little little funnel because there's like a little boiler there that's keeping the water hot yeah and as we come up she goes there's a handle there if you push this over it'll fold down the the the chimney will fall down obviously there's a safe way to do it and so it basically disconnects and then folds down and she had to duck basically a pedestrian bridge was built after the hot tub tours became a thing and the little chimney was too tall for it to go under so they had to do they've got a guy called steve i asked a guy called steve who made the hot tub boats.

And they've also got barbecue boats as well. Of course. Which is like a little floating like ring dinghy with a barbecue in the middle. And so he. Steve had to retrofit. A folding. Steve had to fold the. Yeah.

Stove pipe or whatever it is. That's it. And so. And then Emily had to duck as we went under. But I love the fact they've got a fella called Steve and he makes them somewhere in a workshop in Hackney, but they have to test them. I believe that.

And she was like, oh, when they test them, they do it at this place in Isle of Wight. And I was like- But they ship them to the Isle of Wight. I was like, that's so far to go. They sail them over there? To test the, I don't know. I don't know why you have to go over there

to test the waterworthiness. Maybe there's someone who gives them a license there or something. I don't know. I don't know why you have to go over there to test the water worthiness. Maybe there's someone who gives them a license there or something. Maybe they're going to be like signed off, like the equivalent of a boat MOT. Yeah. To prove that they are, I was going to use the word seaworthy, but I feel like I'm over a floating hot tub. Man, I'd love to see one of those in the sea.

Crossing the channel. Yes. Well, Tim Fitzheim, who's a comic, who I know he crossed the channel in a bathtub. Oh, there you go. He's got a whole show about it. There you go. If anyone's been on the hot tub tour or a more ridiculous tour. Yeah.

Let us know. Our first problem comes from Anthony or Anthony, depending on how you pronounce, choose to pronounce your name. Or Ant. Or Ant. I think they use Ant in their email address. I don't want to give away too much. That's true.

Don't email them. Someone might email Ant at my name is Anthony. Ant at email dot Ant. Yeah. Anyway, Ant says, is climb every mountain an achievable task they put climbing a mountain in in quota i'm assuming they're quoting the song climb every mountain from sounding music yes well i am confused it with move every mountain by the shaman anyway it's not that song.

No. I'm glad we covered that. We should not eat this much cake before we do a podcast. No, we shouldn't. So, the question was from our mate Ant. Can you climb every mountain? So, what do we need to know? How many mountains?

Yep. How big are they? How many people have climbed them? How many people have climbed them? How long does it take? How long does it take? Can we climb every mountain? Yeah. There's a lot lot of mountains there's a lot of mountains out there so i decided to look up to see if there was a database of every mountain okay i could then work out to if you could climb them all and i found a app slash database called peak visor oh and i guess uh should, we'll link to their app.

You can pay for like a pro version and it kind of gives you 3D views over the terrain and like hiking maps and stuff for every mountain. Yeah. Which is great. And I found an article they wrote, which was titled, How Many Mountains Are There on Earth? Ooh. And then they say there are 1, 187,049 mountains oh my gosh in the world that are named oh gosh there's a bunch of unnamed ones so i found an article a couple years later called unnamed mountains and they found 108,706 additional mountain peaks with no names oh but now we need to just briefly discuss

what is a mountain and what we care about yeah so here's the thing about climbing every mountain it actually doesn't matter what the absolute altitude is of a mountain compared to sea level because you don't start at the ocean and climb to the top of a mountain compared to sea level because you don't start at the ocean and climb to the top of a mountain you start at the base of the mountain yeah then climb to the top of the mountain in fact if there's a chain of mountains and most mountains if you exclude volcanoes are in chains yeah and so if you've climbed one mountain you don't have to go all the way back down again to climb the one next to it. You've just got to go down enough to where it meets the other one and then go up. Yeah, like going up the back of a dinosaur.

Like going up the back of a dinosaur. I think that's exactly the example that's used in the industry. Yeah. And famously, you slide down saying yabba-dabba-doo and then you got the other one. That's right. You can just go up the bottom of the dinosaur. And then you've got the other one. That's right. You can just go to the next. So. Plate look. It's called the topographic prominence.

The very mountain. Because that's the highest you can possibly start. Yeah. And if you're doing them in change, you'll come down one, then do the next topographic prominence, then come down, then do the next topographic prominence. And you'd take them all off. So I spoke to the fine people at Peak Visor and dennis there was very helpful that's awesome so dennis i got in touch and said look this is what i'm trying to work out i think i'm going to use the topographic prominence can you share your database with me to save me doing something ridiculous to try and

scrape it off a website or whatever yeah i just emailed and said can i have a csv they were super helpful they're like what do you want we'll sort and said can i have a csv they were super helpful they're like what do you want we'll sort it out they sent me a csv great so a huge thanks to everyone at peak visor who made this possible and dennis pointed out actually of those 1 million plus mountains some of them probably shouldn't count because they're barely a sub-peak. And he said anything under a 300-metre prominence doesn't really count as a whole separate mountain. It's just a hill. It's just a hill, as you well know.

Or it's just like a peak on the way up to a mountain. Exactly, yeah. And he even said some things that are counted as a mountain, if they're under 300 metres, from the base where you'd start climbing from he's like pointless so dennis gave me a collection of every mountain named or unnamed with a topographic prominence of over 300 meters okay which gets us down to a much more manageable, much more reasonable 77,698. I'm like, oh, that's way easier.

Yeah, because I did do a very quick look. Oh, yeah? Just, you know, you mentioned something million. Yep. One million, 187,049. And I only needed a million to go back I was like quick I had a quick look

Yep Let's say it took a Let's This is being kind Oh yeah Let's say it only took you a day A day per mountain Per mountain

I was like oh okay That's already 2,740 years Oh yeah Yes is yes So already I was like Well the answer's no You can't Yeah

The moment I saw that one million I'm like One human Can't do over a million days. Yeah. And that's assuming that all these mountains that only take a day to climb are next to each other. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. So you're right. As a ballpark figure, instantly, it's not possible by one human. I think I said, this is in my first email to Dennis, in reality, for one person on their own, it would require about 50 mountains climbed per day for their whole life. So it would definitely take a team. So the question now is, well, I mean, climb every mountain doesn't specify one person doing it. No, exactly. Can humans climb every mountain? So now-

Have they? We have not. We have not climbed every mountain. I didn't know that. So first of all, to work out if it's possible by a team of people, Dennis said a standard kind of mountain climbing person can do about 1,500 metres of ascent in a day. Hmm.

A pro, a real top-of-the-game mountaineer can do about 3,000 metres of ascent in a day. Okay. It's a long way up. If you add together all the prominences, it comes out to 41,940,284 metres of ascent. Okay. Which means it would take a regular human 27,960 days, which is 76 and a bit years.

Yep. It would take a pro 13,980 days, which is just over 38 years. Yeah. But if you had 38 pros, it would take one year. Yeah. pros, it would take one year. Yeah. If you had like twice that, say you had 100 pros, doing one every two days, you'd do it in a year.

Well, there's a lot of people on Earth. And by one every two days, I mean doing the 3,000 meters in a day. And then have a rest day. Yeah. So, you could get enough climbers together to climb every mountain in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah. Now, I've ignored traveling time between mountains. I've ignored the extra time it takes to get up to, like, two and up to the topographic prominence of the first mountain and all that jazz.

Well, I think that's assumed that there's people that live near each of these mountains. That's true. They're local mountains. Yes. mountains that's true we'll hire local mountains yes so on on in that regard i'm like oh okay now i would say just from running the numbers yes if we got a dedicated big enough distributed team we could climb every mountain but what is that team if not the human race matthew exactly but you're saying metaphor for humanity not every mountain has been climbed no that surprises me because humans like to do

stuff. We like to do stuff. So why hasn't every mountain been climbed yet? Dennis did raise some other concerns. Not all mountains can be climbed. Yeah. Now some are for religious reasons. Oh. So there's one in Tibet. I'm going to probably mispronounce this. Kailash isn't accessible for religious reasons. Oh. So there's one in Tibet. I'm going to probably mispronounce this. Kailash isn't accessible for religious reasons. Uluru. Is that a mountain?

I don't think it's over 300 metres. Well, I mean, like it's a big rock. I guess mountains are rocks, aren't they? Yeah. I mean, who are you to gatekeep a mountain? Yeah, that's true. 348 metres. I'd never thought of Illory as a mountain.

It's a mountain. So, yeah. And then it also said that a lot of them getting a permit to even get to climb them in the country is difficult. Like mountains are in some difficult to get to places and maybe getting permission to be like maybe you could solve this by hiring locally but it'd be a real challenge to get to some of the mountains yeah that are in all sorts of uh difficult to access parts of the world i just feel like humans by nature haven't always adhered to things like that anyway correct Correct. Correct. So, I mean, so now it comes down to, you know, if you're prepared to ignore. Legal stuff. Legal stuff.

Yeah. And cultural stuff. Yeah, be religiously. And everything stuff. Yeah. If you don't care about anything but the mountain with your couple hundred other buddies. Yes. You can climb every mountain in a big enough team with a sufficient lack of

sensitivity but generally no but generally no there are too many things and you couldn't do it individually well then what happened was oh robots i was no not robots although dennis did say there are some mountains you can drive to the summit and i'm like well that that's gonna but then the problem is climb every mountain like, well, that's going to... But then the problem is climb every mountain. Does that count? I think you need to invent a climbing robot. The good climbing robot?

Yeah. They don't have soles. They can go up. Yeah. Yeah. So, I happened to mention this to Lucy when she was asking what I was working on. And I said, oh, we've got this problem about climb every mountain. And I'm trying to calculate if it's...

This is back when I was still kind of looking at the database. I was like, I'm trying to calculate if I can put an back when i was still kind of looking at the database i was like i'm trying to calculate if if i can because i can put an upper or lower bound on kind of what it would take and she said that doesn't just mean earth ones correct yeah what about olympus mons and i'm like oh come on so yeah she made the very valid point there are mountains on other planets yeah and you know what we've done there robots robots so maybe you're onto it yeah does a robot count can we have a little wally do we have to include other planets i mean you can't argue so olympus mons is like a huge mountain on mars you can't argue it's not a mountain no by every definition other than being on earth it not a mountain. No. By every definition, other than being on earth, it's a mountain.

I'm going to see if the song gives us any boundaries. Is the title of the song Climb Every Mountain? Maybe Ant's not asking, can you climb every mountain? Ant's asking, is the entire song an achievable task? Well, I can tell you what the lyrics say. Can you break down what the lyrics say? I should, this should be part of my research. Climb every mountain.

Yep. Search high and low. Oh, okay. I did that. Follow every and low. Oh, okay. I did that. Follow every byway. Oh, what? You're going to have to do a lot more scraping. Any apps that are...

It's do all roads lead to Rome again. Yeah. Every path you know. Then it's climb every mountain, forward every stream. Oh, come on. Follow every rainbow. Oh, come on. Follow every rainbow. That's not possible. Till you find your dreams.

Oh, what? Now everyone's going to find their dreams. A dream that will need all the love you can give every day of your life for as long as you live. And then it repeats itself. I think I can say with some confidence that song is not an achievable task no they need to lower your standards rogers and hammerstein goodness well that's a late break and bombshell the answer is no follow every byway does dennis have a csv for that uh well hang on let Does Dennis have a CSV for that?

Hang on, let's just have a quick think. If you could somehow communicate with every human, like for a byway to exist, there must be a use case for it. Like there's people who will use it. Can you define a byway for me? It's, at least in the UK, it's a track or some kind of path too minor to be called a road.

That's the upper bound. It can't be as good enough to be a road. You know what I'm going to say? What's the lower bound? If someone has made it, they've walked it. They followed it. Yeah. Can it be a byway if it's never been walked? No. No. It's not a byway if it's never been walked? No.

No. It's not a byway. That's just a natural path. So we're taking care of that. Yes, that's done. Streams. Forward every stream. Forward every stream.

And that's... Streams feel... Like a stream's not a permanent feature. They're not all of them. But what is it if you're forwarding F-O-R-D? You just got to walk across it. Forward every stream. So it's crossing. You got to cross every stream, yeah. You You just got to walk across it. Forward every stream. So it's crossing.

You got to cross every stream. Yeah. You're not supposed to cross the streams. That's one thing I've learned. That's, yeah. Important rule from that documentary. Yes. I think the answer's no.

The answer's no. You know what? I think on technicality, follow every rainbow. You can't follow a rainbow. No. A rainbow follows you. Yeah. By definition.

That's right. So. If you move, it might not be visible anymore. It goes with, yeah, yeah. So, no. Okay. The wiki for this song says, as Hammerstein was writing the lyrics, it developed its own inspirational overtones along the lines of an earlier Hammerstein song. There's a hill beyond a hill.

Is that what you call your mum? Yeah, the hill behind the hill. That's right, yeah. I'll tell you what, though. Tell me what, though. Ding. You answered it. You can't climb every mountain.

Sorry. You can't chase every rainbow. Ant. Sorry, Ant. Good question. I liked it. It was a good problem. Yeah, great problem.

It was fun. And it has a proper answer. Okay. No. No, you can't. good problem yeah it was great problem it was fun and it's it has a proper answer okay no no you can't it's it's not an achievable task oh well we gave it a go next next week we'll be looking at um do you really want to hurt me can you actually cry a river yeah yeah there we go that's much better. Next problem was sent in by Aaron, who says they have a young family and cannot currently travel to experience any of the solar eclipses. This is referring to a couple of episodes ago.

This is referring to a couple of episodes ago, I gave advice for seeing the 2026 solar eclipse in Spain. That involves traveling, like eclipses are rarely convenient, which is kind of part of the attraction. But if you just want to see an eclipse, there's a real pain to get to. And so Aaron is wondering what is the best way to simulate the experience without leaving the country specifies uk and having to travel too far you've had a look at this book i have now they gave you some suggestions aaron says should they sit in a field on a sunny day and hope a sufficient number of starlings will blot out the sun temporarily they actually say a murmuration of starlings i feel like i the sun temporarily. They actually say a murmuration of starlings. I feel like I should give them the credit for using the correct name.

Should I hire a load of archers like that scene in the film 300? They will continue to view the eclipse in the shade. Yeah. What suggestions do you have? Well, at first I thought this was a tough a tough one and then i saw that they said that they live in the uk yep i mean because aaron said should i sit in a field on a sunny day good luck mate finding a sunny day i mean it's a sunny day today but it's been like the first in a week one of the two weeks of summer i feel like if you want to truly experience what

it's like to have the solar eclipse, two things, wait until night. Okay. That's one thing. Yeah. When the sun's blocked out by the earth. Got it. Yes. That's the technical term for it.

Yeah. You're in the middle of the eclipse. Yeah. The other one is just wait for clouds. I mean, and also you've experienced some cloudy eclipses. Yes. Now, here's the thing. You've experienced some cloudy eclipses.

Yes. Now, here's the thing. You're correctly describing what it's like to experience an eclipse when it's cloudy. And you see this a lot when there's an eclipse in a country that gets a lot of media saturation. So the one that was in the US recently came up as a topic of conversation on a a lot of you know news and tv shows and the like and the sentiment of of i want to see darkness i can do that at home or indoors or at night etc and that's true if you go to an eclipse it's cloudy so famously we traveled all the way to antarctica to see an eclipse yes it was cloudy and all that happens is the sky, everything goes dark unexpectedly in the middle of the day. And then you wait a bit in the dark and then it goes light again.

Mm-hmm. To be fair, we also- A long blink. A very long blink. I mean, it's also still kind of weird. Of all the astronomical things to go and see, if it gets cloudy, you still get something. You still get the going dark. Mm-hmm.

You don't get nothing. Whereas other things like a comet or something at night, if it's cloudy, you still get something. You still get the going dark. You don't get nothing. Whereas other things like a comet or something at night, if it's cloudy, nothing. Yeah. So in that regard, it's better. But it is pretty underwhelming. Now, we knew it was going to be cloudy because it was like over 90% chance of clouds. But we also got to see Antarctica, so it's not all bad. Antarctica so it's not all bad an actual eclipse if you see it clearly is more than just the darkness because what's particularly amazing about it is you're not blocking all of the sun

you're just blocking yeah you're blocking the really bright middle bit and suddenly you can see the sun's atmosphere that's not normally visible because it's swamped by the brightness from the main chunky bit of the sun yeah i can understand how that would be pretty it's pretty spectacular it's difficult to describe yeah and to be fair i'm laughing at this as someone who's not witnessed an eclipse yes which is i mean i think the closest i've been is you know when you're like when it is a sunny day and you're like just out in a park or something chatting to people. And then like a low flying plane briefly blocks the sun. And for a moment you go, oh, it's hot.

Like, like it just throws you for a second because you feel that there's something. Something, yes. Like you're suddenly blank. I feel like the darkness aspect, while cool and part of it, is like the least impressive part of an eclipse. Imagine if rainbows were super rare and you had to travel somewhere in the world to see a rainbow. And everyone's like, why would you go all the way there? It's like an aurora borealis. Which is a nighttime rain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. At this time of year a nighttime range yeah yeah yeah in your kitchen but imagine it's like you imagine in a world where you don't get rain much and you have to travel a great distance to see rain and then the rainbow at the end and everyone's like why would you go all the way to see a rainbow i can splash water around at home and you're like no the water's not the point you know i have to follow everyone it's it no. The point is, the rainbow, exactly, I'm trying to fulfill a song. The rainbow is like this fantastic visual experience. Yeah.

And everyone gets fixated on the rain. And you're like, it's not the rain, it's the rainbow. And it's like that with an eclipse. Everyone gets fixated on the darkness. It's not the darkness. gets fixated on the darkness. It's not the darkness. It's the light display show you get from blocking out the center of the sun and leaving the rest of it.

And it's a sky-wide, horizon-to-horizon, weird, very weird light experience you don't get any other way. And on top of that, you get this incredible corona stretching out across the sky. So what is your, what would you say is a decent simulation? So there's no easy way to do it. Without a Mr. Burns style block out the sun? Without a Mr., literally that. So now there's a lot of cool physics you can do during an eclipse

because you're blocking the sun out and you can see the sun's atmosphere. And you think scientists would find a way to artificially fake an eclipse to be able to do that. Yeah. And they kind of do. So, you put a spacecraft up. And I can speak about this pretending I'm an expert because my wife is a solar physicist. And so, I have secondhand space science knowledge. You get what's called an occulting disc which is like a big metal

disc and you put it a little bit in front of your space telescope to block out the middle part of the sun as if it was an eclipse but not block out the sun's atmosphere around it but it doesn't work particularly well because the light kind of refracts around the edge of the disc you can't block it as far in as an actual eclipse does you got to make it a bit bigger than you'd really like to be able to get it to work. So at the moment, Lucy, this is my wife, has a space mission proposal in the works and proposing a space mission.

I love that your wife has a space mission proposal. Yeah. Yeah, that's very cool. I'm very proud. You basically, a lot of people apply for a little bit of funding to develop their concept. And so if you're, you know, the European Space Agency or NASA, or in this case, Lucy's going to the UK Space Agency, they will get in, let's say a hundred proposals. They will then weed out some terrible ones,

whittle it down slightly, and then give all those people a little bit more money to develop the idea some more. And then they all go away. That's how TV shows work. And the funding is, yeah, it's like a pilot. They go, go away and make a pilot. But then they iterate so many times. So they'll all come back and they've all developed the proposal a bit more and they'll whittle it down some more and say, here's a slightly bigger amount of money, go away and keep developing the mission. Because it's so expensive and so long to develop these things and lucy's mission is currently two rounds through that yeah process and she's at the point now where for the next one they're kind of they're partly working on the engineering slightly but the

main focus is developing the science case okay and the project they're working on is a better way to do a fake eclipse. Huh. And to do a fake eclipse, it's actually not a fake eclipse, it's to do a real eclipse. Is it where they fly behind the moon? They fly behind the moon, yeah. And the orbit is complicated. They've come up with an orbit that you can put a spacecraft going in orbit

around the Earth such that you get an eclipse for about 20 minutes once a month. That's pretty decent. It was way better. On Earth, you get like a couple of minutes less than once a year. Yeah. So 20 minutes once a month is incredible. And because it's the actual moon and they're a long way back from it, it fixes a bunch of the occulting disk issues.

And you can do the science that you need to wait for an eclipse for in space. So part of what the research is at the moment is the engineering behind taking these ground-based telescopes that like Lucian people have used to view an eclipse from Earth and space harden them and work out how you're going to put them on a spacecraft. Yeah. So they function in space and can send back the useful data. so it's early days like that's still impressive it's still amazing if it's successful it'll be like a decade or two from now before it launches yeah um yeah i think it's amazing so aaron if you're if your young family is still young a decade it's gonna take a couple decades you need to apply for funding from a space agency to put your children in orbit. I feel like maybe the recommendation of launch your young family into space is technically more travel than going to Spain.

I would, yes. Yes. Yes. I would agree with that. Oh. What if they were to sit in a, like in a shed with a hole? Yep, yep, like a pinhole camera. Yeah.

Okay, you know what? That would do something different but awesome because you can pinhole camera the sun and look at sunspots and stuff. It's very cool. Like a shed or similar. shed or similar what you actually can do if you want to experience an eclipse from the comfort of your own home is there's a bunch of websites that get the data from spacecraft that have occulting disks and there's a if you want to go right in i don't know how tech savvy aaron is but i imagine them and their young family given they're emailing us are probably up for a little bit of a mild challenge there's some software software called J-Helio Viewer,

which gets the as-live-as-it-can-be data from various spacecraft and displays it. So you can see the sun's atmosphere and the like using that. And it is pretty... The visuals sent back from these spacecraft are amazing. Speaking of which, as soon as you said that, it gave me an idea. In the Oculus Metastore, you can view the 2024 total solar eclipse through the eyes of NASA. were amazing speaking of which as soon as you said that gave me an idea in the oculus meta store

you can view the 2024 total solar eclipse through the eyes of nasa in vr if you can get your hands i mean i imagine it's probably cheaper to get a an oculus quest than it is to fly as a young family yeah yeah or to take them to a different country yes Yes, probably, yeah. So yeah, maybe invest in a VR headset. Maybe that, yep. That's not a bad suggestion. I think that would get closer than sitting in a shed.

Yeah. I'm going to try, I'm going to see if I can do that. That's a good idea. You can report back. We'll do our own AOB next time. Yeah. You download the J Helio software.

Done. And I'll do some Googling on my VR headset. We'll compare notes. Yeah. And I'll do some googling on my VR headset. We'll compare notes. Yeah. Hope that helps, Aaron. Now we're up to adieu oeuf. Oeuf. Bonsoir. Wow.

Which means goodbye egg. Goodnight. That's, yes, that's the best way to describe any other business. That's actually good evening. Good night, I think, is Bonnui. Any other business? We heard from Natan, or Natan, who wrote in to ourproblemsquared.com, selected solution.

Yep. And said, ding. Just wrote the word ding. That's what we should mark. Regarding the dreaming animal problem. Thank you. All right. So, yeah, there were quite a few people who came back

and had their own thoughts about whether animals can dream or not. You know, that felt more conversational than it, you know, felt like we'd be, it felt like we'd end up back in Arctic krill. Oh, we don't want to do another krill. So. A lot of people had thoughts, but they were all in the same vein as our discussion about animals dreaming. Yes.

And we enjoyed reading every single one of them. Yes. But we didn't want to open up. We're not opening it back up again. No. Like Pringles, we didn't want to. We've popped. And we had to stop.

We had stopped. Yes. And now. And now we have a ding. Has dinged us. So. Case closed. Exactly.

Michael jumped on the problem posing page, pick solution, and brought up. Now, okay, now we mentioned this in a previous episode about a Muppets phonetic alphabet. Yes, because I was doing. Episode 085. I think I said. Two ago. Any other Big Bird for any other business. Oh, that's what it was.

I knew. I forgot how we got onto it. Yeah. They have made. Animal Oscar Big Bird it was. I knew it. I forgot how we got onto it. Yeah. They have made. Animal Oscar Big Bird, actually. That was it. Yeah. They have made the full Muppets phonetic alphabet.

They had to also dip into the Sesame Street pool of characters to fill it out. And it is very impressive. We will share it on socials. They did maintain the integrity of Animal Oscar Bert. Oh, Animal Oscar Bert. Big Bert is out. Well, I guess Bert comes first alphabetically. That's good work.

I give them a Dr. Teeth, Irvin, Natasha, Gonzo. Well done. Thank you. We heard from Nerdy Girl, who says, Dear Beck and Matt, thank you very much for your wonderful podcast. I'm a big fan of you both outside of the podcast too. Enemy in Paris is a super fun listen and I love stand-up maths. Oh, nice.

In reference to episode 085, I would like to suggest a method for displaying the enamel pins. Oh, okay. I use my enamel pins as pushpins in the corkboard I have hanging in my office. Oh. A similar method to the fridge magnet solution. Cheers and thanks again. That's a great idea, actually. If you have a corkboard you're using for notes and things, just use your

enamel pins instead of the pushpins. And you solve two problems. Yeah. Because if you're also collecting, like, business cards or other things. Yeah. You can hold them in place. Or if you're solving. With a separate collection. If you're solving a murder and you need something to tie the red string around. The red string, there you go. Several people wrote in about the two euro coin problem.

This was someone who asked how long would it take to collect all of the commemorative two euro coins. Yes. Which I compared to a mass problem called the coupon collector problem. And I did some simulations. And one of the big points I brought up was the rarest coin of which there are only 500 produced. Yes. It was a coin from Finland because every country can do up to two a year. And they were commemorating something about the EU flag.

So, I said, just buy that one. And several people then looked up how much they would cost. And I want to shout out Jamie V, who gave us a link to an eBay auction for that specific coin, which was under $5. And other people pointed out it's very cheap for a coin of that rarity. I was like, that's odd. And a few people raised the point. And Chris and Crispy both brought this up. I want to specifically call out Jimim who did a good job mentioning this

saying that they were cheaper than expected and their theory was that the database i used well the wikipedia article i scraped to get the number of coins issued of each type actually was meant to have 500 000 coins but they used the european dot instead of a comma to separate the 500 from the three zeros of a thousand yes because in europe they use a comma in place of a dot and yes they swap them over i did a thing years ago there was a pokemon game that had an issue with the translation thing where it was breaking because it was switching to a dot for like the german language version but then it was breaking the maths because it was being interpreted as a decimal point yes and actually ages ago i did i worked out we were traveling somewhere oh you

know you're going to stop there but you're staying in an intermediate country in transit flying to a different destination yeah and so you weren't expected to be in that country. It's not like you've got currency for it. You didn't do any research. You're just in this country for like an hour in the airport before you fly on. And we were in a country such that the exchange rate was pretty much 1,000 to 1. And they used a decimal point instead of a comma. Right.

So, actually, all the prices were still, to my eye, in pounds. Oh. Because the exchange rate and the change of symbols cancelled out, which I thought was hilarious. I then went to the Wikipedia page and had a look. And it has 500,000, as we suspected, but with a comma in it. It's not a full stop. Do you think someone's fixed it?

Someone has. I then checked the recent changes and brought up. And someone has. Someone's listened to the podcast. It's none of the names of people who wrote in. Someone else, a listener, I assume, on Wikipedia, their Gerd Seifert. I've mispronounced that. I'm very sorry, Gerd.

They've gone on, realized this was the issue issue and fixed it. They've swapped out. It used to be a decimal point and they've changed it to be a comma. So when my code imbibed this massive messy table to convert it into a spreadsheet, I say code, me messing around with a bunch of documents and and ridiculous like tiny bits of code uh it just took that as to be um a point and so it switched it to 500 wow everyone's absolutely correct it's a fantastic example of that problem i'll add it to my collection and i did it which is quite pleasing yeah it's nice to have one of my own examples and i will say i stand by my previous answer because i then said ignoring this one coin that there's only 500 of and then i continued to solve the problem ignoring that coin i'm like buy that coin and then we dealt with the rest of it

technically i would have to have included that coin with 500 000 but there were so many coins and everything it wouldn't change the answers or numbers i gave thankfully my answer stands if you ignore that one finished coin so what's the what's the rarest after that one you make me find my other spreadsheet yeah let me see if it's still my recent spreadsheets the second rarest coin was from monaco in 2015 to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the construction of the first fortress on the rock. Oh, yes. Which we did mention last time. Yep. 10,000 coins. I should have realized because it was an outlier, maybe it's an error. I just went those crazy fins and then moved on with my life. I probably should have realized that I should have dug a bit deeper and to see if that was a mistake or a true outlier.

So thank you everyone who both pointed out my mistake and reverse engineered it and then fixed the issue on Wikipedia so no one else would have the same problem. That's what we like from our listeners. And much like the French thanked the US with the Statue of Liberty. Oh, that's good. This is good. We like to thank our Patreon supporters.

Excellent work. By choosing three at random and reading them aloud on each episode, mispronouncing their names. On this episode, we would like to thank. Okay. Eli, ass, Adonis. Will Scarold. No, hang on.

That probably is right. No, I think that's just as written. Yeah. I was so thrown by- Poor Will's like, oh, that's just my name. I was so thrown by Eli Ass. Will's Car Rolled. That's a sentence.

I hope you're safe, Wills. I'm never happier than when it becomes a sentence. B-C-K-R-I-N-O-L-D-S. So, thanks to those people. But also, we would like to thank, I mean, the rest of our Patreon supporters. Thank you very much for making this podcast possible. It is the only reason we can financially justify doing this. So thank you very much.

We also want to thank everyone who listens and everyone who tells other people to listen. Word by mouth is so important. I can't stress that enough. Big special thanks to my co-host, Matt Parker. Merci. Merci beaucoup. And grand merci beaucoup to our substitute,

well, sound engineer and producer, Laura Grimshaw. I was going to try and Frenchify that, but there'll be no winners. No. And thank you, me. Yeah, I agree. Thank you, me.

This has been a Problem Squared. Bye. I mean, adieu. Au revoir. Bon voyage. Bon voyage. Beck. News.

You've been trying to guess how many dice are in that jar for a good number of episodes. Yes. And we happen to be in the same room as the jar, which is very exciting. Yes. You previously established there are more than 457 dice in the jar. Mm-hmm. And as of last episode, there are fewer than 459 yeah would you like to have a guess how many dice are in that jar i so wanted to say the wrong number i know i know i can tell for the bit yep i get it i get it but for all of our sakes everyone would appreciate

is it 458 dice that is correct what happens now you win the dice can i leave them here you can leave them here i'd appreciate that because i use them so i want everyone everyone who watches stand-up maths to know that whenever you see that jar of dice in the background of one of Matt's videos or anytime he uses those dice, they're mine. They're your dice. That's mine. Your 458 dice. Matt, I want you to credit me in the description of every video.

Oh, my goodness. I will if and only if the dice appear in the video. Yeah, exactly. I can do that. Yeah, I can do that. I want to thank Beck for lending me her dice. You're on. I'm going to have Yeah, I can do that. I want to thank Beck for lending me her dice. You're on. I'm going to have to remember now.

Can people remind me? If I put a video up and I haven't done that, someone comment and tell me. You know what we should do now? We're going to go out for a celebratory drink. Have a nap. Yeah, we're going to have a drink. Let's find a quiet corner of the pub and celebrate the end of the dice guessing game. Yay.

Vomit up all this cake. No, no, it's good cake. It's good cake. That sounds horrible. Such good cake. Too good. The cake has long worn off. Yes.

Yeah. We need to stop having so much sugar.