Starman

Sailors used the position of the stars in the sky in relation to the horizon to keep their ships on course. And even though we have some of the most advanced technology in the world to perform these calculations for us today, scientists and engineers still consult the night sky or unbelievable results. Many people don't know that the Earth wobbles. I'm not

talking about earthquakes, though. This is something different. As the planet turns on one axis, it moves more slowly along another, completing one rotation along this secondary axis every twenty six thousand years. It's called the axial procession. A long time ago, architects built a monument to honor the men who had died building a massive structure, Two bronze statues sat elevated with thirty foot wings pointed straight at the sky. Some considered them to be angels, while others saw them as

the best versions of ourselves watching over us. And below their massive feet was a celestial map which had been etched into the surface using the position of the stars in relation to the Earth's axial procession. It was as much a work of arts as it was a feat of engineering, and only an expert astronomer would have been able to create such a piece. Along the bottom of the map, two stars were highlighted, Fuban, the north star used by the ancient Egyptians, and Polaris, what we consider

to be the north star today. These stars were encapsulated within a circle, the kind that might be drawn by the Earth as it turned on its axis over twenty six thousand years, and just outside that circle was another star, Vega, which will be our north star in roughly twelve thousand years. But what made this map truly special was not its

level of detail or artistry. It was that the architect who designed it was able to line up the selexial axis with polaris on the exact day of the monument's commemoration. And look, I know that's a lot of visualization for you to attempt. I'm asking you to imagine something incredibly complex, and I get that. But if you ever have the chance, you can visit it, because the map is still in place, and it probably will be for another thousand years or more.

After all, it's only eighty five years old. The sea, it's you just need to visit the Nevada side of the Hoover Dam. The monument was erected to honor the one twelve lives lost during the dam's construction. The celestial map was the creation of Norwegian sculptor Oscar J. W. Hanson, who designed it as a way for astronomers to deduce the exact date of the dam's dedication by President Franklin

Delano Roosevelt. That way, if all records were destroyed, there would still be this map to use as a means of calculation. The map also provides a way to calculate the procession of the Pole Star for the next fourteen thousand years. And as if that weren't enough, the techniques used by Hansen to create his map, are currently being used in another modern marvel, the Clock of the Long now also known as the ten thousand year Clock. This five hundred foot tall clock was the brainchild of inventor

Danny Hills in nine six. The full size version will be built within a mountain in Texas and run for ten thousand years. It will be powered by manual winding, like a simple watch, but will store energy from temperature changes in order to keep running between windings. Aside from the standard time and date, the ten year clock will also track the phases of the moon, the position of the stars and planets, and calculate the procession of the

Earth's axis, just like hansen celestial map. And if you want to see it, there's a working prototype of the clock on display at the Science Museum in London. It's a lot smaller than the real clock will be, but even at such a tiny scale it works exactly as advertised. It came to life on New Year's Eve in just in time to ring in the new millennium. And I know what you're thinking, will the full size clock live up to its name and actually run for another ten

thousand years? And the answer, as you might imagine is fairly simple. Only time will tell. When we think of cursed objects, we think of items that have been stolen from sacred places, such as King Tut's golden sarcophagus or the Hope diamond. These objects have been long rumored to bring deadly misfortune to all who came in contact with them. For example, Egyptologist Howard Carter, the man responsible for opening tuts to him, died of blood poisoning five months later

after an unfortunate mosquito bites. But twenty years after Carter's demise, another curse arose thousands of miles away from the Egyptian Pyramids. It was caused by a sphere about three and a half inches in diameter. It was comprised of two halves of plutonium gallium held together in the middle by a ring. It was the fourteen pound core of a devastating nuclear device. The plan was to drop this new bomb on Japan on August nineteen, but the country surrendered four days earlier

and brought World War Two to an end. The core, however, it was still ready to go. On August. The physicist named Harry Dalyan was performing tests on the core at a facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Harry had worked on the Manhattan Project and with stacking reflective bricks made of tungsten carbide around the spear. With each brick he placed, neutrons would bounce off of them and then back at

the core. Henry would then use the neutron reflections to gauge how close the core was to going super critical. Harry was by himself while he was performing these tests, save for the loan security guards sitting several feet away. As he stacked the bricks, one slipped and fell onto the core, releasing a lethal dose of radiation into the air. He pulled out the brick, but it was too late. He'd taken the brunt of the blast and died of

radiation poisoning less than a month later. One year after that accident, physicist Louis Laughton was showing a few other Los Alamos scientists how to properly handle the core. He'd done it several times before and had become known as an expert around the facility. Instead of using bricks, like Harry, though, Louis placed two halves of a beryllium shell around the core to act as a neutron reflector. The only catch was that the shell could not be allowed to seal completely.

If it did, the core would go super critical and unleash a wave of radiation. Louis was supposed to use shims to keep the house separate, but he liked to live on the edge. His preferred method was a screwdriver wedged in between the hemispheres. One day, while shadowed by a pupil named Alvin C. Graves, Louis placed his screwdriver on the bottom half and then lowered the top half down over the core. But the screwdriver slipped and the shell closed around the core, completely sealing it in, and

within a heartbeat it went super critical. A blast of blue light washed over Louis as he wedged the screwdriver back in to separate them, but by then it was too late. Louis had absorbed almost all of radiation given off by the core. He died a week and a half later. After this second incident, no one else ever handled the sphere directly again. Any tests that had been planned for it were postponed until it was less radioactive.

In the end, they had to invent new equipment to handle it, including machines that could be operated from a quarter mile away. TV cameras would broadcast everything to the scientists operating those machines so that they could see what they were doing. It was a lot of work to keep up the studies, though, and soon enough the project was cut. The Demon Core, as it had come to be known, was eventually melted down and incorporated into other

nuclear devices. Most people see these tragic deaths as the unfortunate consequences of breaking the rules, the rules of the lab and the rules of physics, but some see the Demon Core as a warning. After all, they claim that much power was simply never meant to be possessed. Stripped of its modern decorations, it's easy to think that Howard Carter would have had a different word for it, a curse. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of lore dot com, and until next time, stay curious, ye