I got our you, Bloody Champions. Welcome to another installment of the project. That is Ukraig Athey Harper, Patrick James Bonillo. We are sans Tiffany and Cook. That is, we are without Tiffany and Cook because she's selfishly trapsing around the world International Bloody Explorer that she is currently. I think he's still in India. She's coming back very soon, in the next day or two. But you know, where you and I are is not quite as exotic, Patrick, But nonetheless, you know, we do what we can.
I'm in little old ba Land and our western Melbourne. But I was just excited this morning that I bucketed down last night and then I got my weather radar map and I worked out that there was going to be a break in the weather while I was walking Fritz. So life is good when you can take the Fritzmeister out for a walk. He's got a new buddy. We got a friend, Heather. She's got a new puppy. And I know we were talking about dogs in the last episode,
but puppy's a maniacs, aren't they. I know. I don't mean to alienate our audience who don't have dogs, but gee, man, when you got a like a three or four month old puppy, poor Fritz is just being jumped on and rolled over and he's so good. So yeah, puppy's a whole new experience.
Did he love his little sojourn this morning? You take him out every day? Right?
Yeah? Yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah.
Hey, I'm just sending you something now, which is terribly bad. I'm going to say it's bad radio, but fuck you and I it's like we I think I just sent you to Did you just get two pictures? Yeah?
Waiting, I'm scared. Oh here we go.
No, no, no, So here's what I want to so p this somewhere. I was thinking of redesigning the dashound, right or the ductionund? Right? Yeah, So I said to chat GPT, can you create a cartoon image of a ductionund with six legs? And so then it sent me that image. Now I've already put this up on funt, which is just a comic. It's got four legs, so I go, it doesn't and then it's like, is there anything else you need to help with? And I said, well,
it doesn't have six legs. So it did me an image everyone, but it just was a regular dash und with four legs. And then I.
Saw, what what have you created? It looks like a millipede, That's what I'm saying.
That's when I said, Okay, so it sent me an image. I feel like people are going, what the fuck is he talking about? All right, so I typed into chat GPT, can you create a cartoon image of a dash und with six legs? Because I thought that would be funny, because I think having two extra legs in the middle is helpful in terms of engineering and design. Not that God doesn't know what he's doing or she's doing, but anyway. And then so it did me an image, but just
a regular dashund. And then I said, it doesn't have six legs, and then it did one with about twenty legs.
It's got I just counted, it's got thirteen legs. It's got five on the ground and other appendages are just floating in mid air. One's coming out of its back, so yeah, underneath the tail, it's pooping out one leg. Wow. If that came towards you, man, would you run in the other direction? But you've got no chance with that.
Well, I still think the idea of chat GBT being a thousand times smarter than you and me. I think it's still got some work to do before it gets there.
Yeah, look, I agree with that. It's funny. I've got a story that I was going to talk about at some point during the show, so I might as well just jump into it, because I know we've got other stuff to talk about too. But do you remember about two years ago there was a guy who entered a piece of artwork into the Colorado State Fair that was
actually AI generated. All this controversy came out. Artists said, wait a minute, that style is similar to my style, and the AI had been trained on existing artworks, and so this guy tried to pass it off and then admitted that he had used a program called mid Journey. And now though he then tried to have the image copyrighted on the basis this guy by the name of Jason Allen, he basically said, look, I did get mid Journey to create the original, but that I had to
keep prompting it. And he claims it took him one hundred and ten hours of work to end up with the final piece, and he was just using this AI prompt and refining and refining and refining and that's how long it took. It sounds like he's pretty average at doing AI generation. But anyway, so now, but the copyright authority said, no, it's not going to happen. We are definitely not going to be fooled. This is not really a human generated piece of artwork. So the copyright office
basically refused to register. It's called Theater de Opera Spatial and it looks pretty good if you want to look it up, Theatre de Opera spatial, and it's quite an interesting looking piece of artwork. It's these people in flowing gowns and a portal looking through this mystical window. It's actually it's stunning and it looks like it's been painted,
but obviously it's all been generated using AI. But what this guy's kind of arguing is this is AI is just a tool like any tool that's out there, and it takes a lot of human input to come up with this. In fact, one hundred and ten hours to come up with this particular piece of what he created he claims is a unique artwork.
Now, well, I'm just looking at it right now. Did you say Theater de Opera spatial.
Yes, that's right. So it's just pow.
Yeah, So that is what I'm looking at. Sorry, is that an actual painting that he ripped off or is that what he created?
He created with AI?
So this is all It's amazing.
It is amazing. I know, I think it's super cool, But that's amazing. It's all been created using AI. And the argument is that elements of that painting have been borrowed from other artists. Because so what you've got to realize is that these AI models are chain on real
world experience. So if I wanted to create the voice of a middle aged, handsome man sipping coffee, wearing glasses with an Everlast T shirt, then potentially, you know, enough samples of a new project could generate a voice like yours. But in the case of artworks, if you're training a particularly say Van Goch, I mean early in the piece, I was doing lots of Schnauzers in Van goth style. Because of course I.
Can I just say that sentence that just came out of your mouth. In the history of humankind, nobody has ever fucking said, you know, my early days, I was doing a lot of schnauzers in Van Goff style. That is those ridiculous fucking sentence, let alone on this podcast.
You know, the funny thing is people say that to me a lot, that they never thought that the words that come out of my mouth have ever been uttered by anybody else.
It's true, not in that particular, not in that sequence. But what I want to say is this, I want to challenge you, right, No, not you, just the idea that you know, this was done by AI, built on perhaps other kinds of styles, used original styles, and then he he allegedly over one hundred and ten hours, back and forth, back and forth. It could be argued that just like a paintbrush is a tool, just like a keyboard is a tool for writing, just like a knife is a tool for carving or whatever, that AI is
also a tool for creating things. Now, if you say, yeah, but this was kind of ripping off different styles of existing original art and artist, which I agree. I agree, But then like I think about this, So if that's true and he's a fraud, then I'm a fraud. And I tell you why, because when it comes to sharing things with the world, almost none of the stuff that I share is It's not like I invented these ideas
or these strategies or the or psychology. Like everything is built on everyone else's work, you know, and I think that. You know, show me a self help book that has got no unoriginal ideas. It doesn't exist. You know, all the psychology books, all the human behavior books, they're taking on stuff that was done by other people.
Well, it could be argued that Elon Musk's Tesla has been a direct ripoff of ug the caveman who chiseled out the very first wheel.
Yeah, and I mean that's well, that's ridiculous, but not really. I mean, you know, I think that, by the way, that is a fucking amazing looking image. It's called Theater de Opera spatial everyone. I would love a print of that. That is an amazing thing.
That's cool.
Yeah, Like what I think is good is this dude created this, Yes, with Ai, but he conceptualized what he wanted it to look like. Well, I would buy that.
I would buy that because if you want to buy that, I will sell you my schnauzer flying past Saturn in a medieval costume on Sputnik.
See, but I'm not interested in that, see me, and no one in the world is interested in your fucking schnauzer in orbit right, And by the way, that sounds like some sexual faux pa your Schnauzer in orbit.
But the thing is, those terms that I have used are totally unique in humanity. Well I can guarantee you almost that no one ever in the history of humanity has ever visualized that. And then consequently Aid generated a picture of motion now as a on spot Nick flying past Satin in a medieval costume, a medieval space suit.
A good reason. A good reason.
It insight the way my mind works.
Hey, I want to tell you something which has got nothing to do with tech, but so this morning, and I just think this is interesting for our audience. And by the way, we're probably going to do a longer chat today. Everyone just leaning back and turning off my heater. I met up with Jan and Ee and Fraser. Do you remember Jan and Ene from gym?
Really? Yeah for sure?
And it's like, what is what is amazing? Let me give you the quick backstory. So Jan, for our listeners, Jan was a client at my gym, which Patrick also was. That's where we met hundred We met there, didn't we? I mean, or did I meet you before that? No? I met you through the gym, through the gym here, and so anyway, Jan was a client. She was around fifty at the time, and I remember having a conversation with her. It went kind of like this, and she
said to me she was an actor. She was on television, she was in TV shows. She was like a voiceover artist, very creative and very well spoken. And I remember her saying to me one day, if I was younger, I would do this. It's such a great it's such a great job being a trainer, right, and helping people and talking to people, and she's a great communicator and great
people person. And at that stage, maybe she was fifty two or three, which to me seemed like one hundred and sixty, right, And I said to her, well, if you go and get qualified, I'll give you a job, because I knew she'd be a good trainer, even though she was in her fifties and had never worked in the fitness industry, just because she was a good communicator and also very very great awareness, great social skills, and
also in very good shape. So she went and did that and subsequently became a trainer working for me, and still exercises and still very fit and trained, was training people up until a few years ago. So now she's eighty four and her husband, Ian is eighty six, and I had coffee with him this morning, and it's hard to explain. I cannot do justice to how amazing they are. You know, when you see people who are eighty four and eighty six and they're still somewhat independent, you think, oh,
that's amazing. I said to phrase Ian, the husband. I said, so he's still he's still training. What are you doing like he looks amazing? He goes, yeah, I go how often he goes? Every day? I go coursier. I go, so, so what are you doing? He goes, oh, well, I do bike, I do stand up paddle board, and I do waits, you know, most days, and he does so his cardio is stand up paddle boarding. I said, so, so how far? Now? Remember have you ever stood on a stand up paddle board?
Mate? No, no, I've seen it being done. It looks bloody hard.
It's hard. It's hard. So just for a you know, you and me are young compared to him, just standing on a paddle board and not falling off. I said, how far do you paddle? When he goes, oh, I have a set thing. I do up and back it's five and a half kilometers. So this eighty six year old paddles couple of times a week five and a half k's. He does half an hour or so on the rower. He gets out and rides about twenty k's
on his bike. Now we're not talking about an indoor we're talking about out, you know, twenty or thirty k's on a mountain bike on the road, and he does I said, what do your weights look like? He goes, I just alternate upper body one day, lower body the next seven days a week, and Jam does the same. Jam trains with the trainer one day. She trains herself twice a week with weights. She trains with remember Silvio
from my joint, She does boxing with him. And it's just like, it's such good evidence that when you just keep doing, you know, it's not about being obsessed, but just all the things that most people don't do, which is exercise consistently, lift weights, eat great, have purpose, be excited. You know. I know not everybody can do that for medical reasons, but a lot more can do it than are doing it. Fucking amazing, amazing.
My favorite story about Jad and I don't know if you were there, but I would have it to her place for a barbecue and she'd barbecued sweet potato or roasted sweet potato in the jackets. But they were really thin sweet potato, and I've never managed to get them since every sweet potato I've had has always been the big, chunky ones. But she had these little, tiny sweet potatoes. They were really good.
Anyway, I love a good sweet potato, and if we're getting old, geeky sweet potato, pretty good because you've got a lower GI than normal potato, so less sugar and less impact on blood sugar, which may is less insulin floating around your body, which is good. So if you want a potato, have a sweet potato. Everyone, I think their GI is around thirty or forty instead of eighty, which is a lot of other variables around that.
But it's good.
You were just telling me without going too deep before we started that a few challenges on planet you with the family. Isn't it interesting when people get you know, I know, obviously, but your dad's not a spring chicken anymore like my dad, and so just that things often happen all at once. You've had some issues with your brother. Both your brothers to be honest and just trying to navigate, you know, out of the relative calm and easiness of life. Then all of a sudden you get hit with about
three or four things. How's that been for you?
You know, it's funny, and I reckon that of our listeners there would be a high percentage that have gone through similar stuff, but are going through this sort of thing where you know, it's the old straw that breaks the camel's back. And so look the short without going into all the gory details, Dad started experiencing depression and things like that and was saying things that were really concerning about his health and his state of mental health.
I guess, but my younger disabled brother lives with him at a retirement village, and of course, with Dad then not able to look after him, Dad being then taken into care, it meant that my disabled brother had to move in with my twin brother during the week and then coming up to me at the weekends, very different weekends, not every weekend, but every second weekend or every other weekend. And so we've been juggling that around while we try
to apply for NDIS funding. We've been knocked back before because Dad being one of those proud European baby boomers didn't want to admit that his son wasn't able to look after himself. So when the ot came out, passion or therapist came out, he said, yes, of course Chason can make his breakfast. Of course he can shower. Of course he knows which shoe to put on which foot, you know, all that sort of stuff. And of course he doesn't. And that's the shame of it, because you know,
a lot of baby boomers had to rough it. You know, they went through a really tough upbringing. They didn't you know, they scrimped and they saved to buy, they worked hard, but they have a level of pride. And I know your parents are exactly the same. And so our generation is kind of coping with the older generation of people who are now going into I guess health decline and how they cope with that varies from person to person. It's the human condition. But everyone wants to maintain their pride,
and that's what we're going through. So, you know, we're hoping that it's three strikes not out when we've put in our third application to try to get some sort of support, because at the same time and I'm sure you know, it's a difficult one to kind of talk about family and stuff. But my brother, who's primary care primarily the care for my disabled brother, has now got
sick as well. Totally unrelated, but he's got a really severe procedure to come up, medical procedure coming up next month next month, and so we're kind of working out what the heck we're going to be doing with all of that. So, yeah, there's lots going on in the world of me at the moment. But the more people I seem to speak to, and I guess it's because people are in the same age demographic as us. A lot of people have been doing it hard at the moment,
whether it's financial. There's pressures. You know, you go to the supermarket, you fill up with petrol, and everything's more expensive, and I think the cost of living's going up, and that creates additional pressures for people. So it is cumulative. And I guess let's send out a big hug to everyone. I don't really you know, like a you project hug. It's one of those things that you know, look for joy in your day, and for me, that's how I
get through it. I look for elements of joy. Seeing my dog running down the park with a puppy jumping all over him, falling over, rolling around. That was an hour of joy. Walking with a friend of mine. I'm going out with friends for dinner tonight. They've been away on holiday, so I get to hang out with them for a while. So I think for me, the real yeah, the real key to getting through is just looking for those little moments. One of the real joys I had yesterday.
I'm just indulging at the moment, harps. But one of the really lovely things that happened to me yesterday is a really good friend of mine who's an artist. She is part of our tai Chi group and we do a couple of different tai chief forms using sticks. But what she's done is she's a beautiful artist. She has decorated hand painted sticks for all the tai chiese students in different themes. So one lady likes frogs and has this garden out in the bush and there's lakes and
you know, lots of native wildlife. Another lady came from Africa, from Zimbabwe or anyway one of those z's in and hers has got meer kats On it. My tai chi teacher has a green drag and that wraps all the way around the stick. To paint on a three D object is really hard. But then she sits down at the person and she comes up with a theme and so she wants to submit this artwork and put on a unique exhibit at the Ballarat Gallery. And you've got
to go through this really rigorous process. Obviously they have maintained a very high standard and to get community artists to be on display. So we helped her do that. We recorded it in my new studio setting, which was really fun, and we videoed and of course that's a challenge in itself, having the sticks move and rotate so you can really take best advantage and see all the artwork.
So that was a real moment of joy for me because we've got to spend some time with a friend and help her out along with my colleague Robert, and we just had the absolute best time just hanging out and really enjoying helping somebody who couldn't have done it by themselves. And hopefully we'll be able to work with her to exhibit. This would be really awesome.
That's really nice, man, it's really nice. It's like when you you know, there's this framework that I talk about that I didn't invent. I just kind of put a few different people's ideas together and added in my own stuff. But it's like this trying to understand yourself and trying to figure out who you are and what your life is about, and what is my purpose? What do I think the way I am? What is success for me? What the fuck is my existence for?
Right?
And it starts with self reflection, and then it goes to self awareness, and it goes through all these different self stages. And the second last one is self actualization, which is you kind of starting to be whatever is the best version of you. What that means, you know, reaching your goals, building resilient, like becoming the person that you really want to be. But the last one, which is what you're talking about really, which is self transcendence,
which is having a purpose bigger than you. You know. Yeah, so that's that's like, well, you know, like want it or not. My life now a fair bit is about my mum and dad, and it's going to continue to be that way. And I mean I always loved my mum and dad, but it now requires you know, a fair bit of time, energy, attention, travel, you know, putting
other things to the side, which is absolutely fine. And then but inside of me, I'm a little bit a bit of me is like, oh fucking hell, this is a fuck But a bit of a bigger bit of me is like, how lucky are you that your mum and dad are here? How lucky are you that you get to spend time with them? Talk to them?
You know.
Every time mum rings with like another catastrophe about her phone, it's like, no, Mum, your batteries Like this week or yesterday was she had a new battery put in her phone, which anyway, that's another conversation. But she's like, and now screen's dark, the battery doesn't work. The screen's dark. He ripped me off. I'm like, it isn't the battery. You've you've probably accidentally touched the settings the you know, No, I didn't, it's not it's it. I'm going to go up.
I'm going to you know. And then so my surrogate sister who lives up there near mum, I went, can you go over and fix her fucking phone? So she
goes over. It's literally a sixty second fix and it's all better, right, but you can't like the funny thing is and God bless her, like you can't even say to Mum, Okay, what I want you to do is go into settings because and if you've ever seen a really I don't mean like you and I well I'm older than you, but i mean really old people with smartphones tend to tap the screen like a fucking woodpecker. I'm like, Mum, stop assaulting your phone with your index finger.
You know, the idea of trying to swipe and you know, just gently tap something and just foreign to her. But at the same time, I go, yeah, I'm going to miss all this shit one day. One day, I'm going to wish that she would ring me with a catastrophe that isn't really a catastrophe.
You know, I completely understand where you're coming from, but I've got to come to her defense as well. Okay, when I talk to foodpeckering phones, there's a thing called zombie fingers, and it's a real thing. It's where people who, for whatever reason, they don't have the tactile connectivity to activate a screen on a phone, they have to press harder because their feelings work as well. As other people. You know Taur who I do a podcast with, we
were doing podcasts. She has zombie fingers. So yeah, so some people don't whatever it is with their hands. Maybe it's a circulation thing, but their fingers don't work on their phones as well as other people. So maybe mum has zombie things.
So who would have thought that having big, moist, chunky, clammy fingers would be advantage?
He used another appendage on your phone, just wondering, you know, an elbow and those in appropriate.
Patrick, Usually it's me that opens the door and we're keeping it closed today. We're trying to keep it family friendly. Can we talk about help.
Clean the screen on your phone because we should clean the screens every day, you know what? Yeah?
Yeah, I only the only thing I clean, well, I do wipe the screen. Can you see this? Little have a little yellow rag?
That's what the hell? Do you clean the rag?
Though?
If it's the same rag you use every day, you're not cleaning your phone. You're making it up more dirty.
Yeah, I'm just smearing the existing grease up to the corner, the finger grease. No, I wash it. I have like little terry toweling towel. Everyone that's it's like one of those polishing rags that you get from I don't know where, but I got a packet of them, like twelve yellow ones, and I just every couple of weeks, I just stop picking on me.
You know what, if I opened your cupboard and there was like twenty boxes of twelve, I wouldn't be surprised.
I do get once I do find something, I tend to overbuy. I don't know. This is what I'm like. So I'm very boring, but I have most nights I have a version of the same thing. I have some kind of meat and rice and instead of cooking, you know, proper cooking rice from scratch, I just microwave the two minute stuff in about the ninety second stuff in a bag. And so it's if I find it on special, I'll buy fifty.
I'll buy fifty. You I know that about you.
I'm like, well, what why not? Like I'm going to use them anyway. What's the point of going back every five days to get five more when I can buy, you know, two months worth in one hit. And by the way, they're on special winning.
I feel like I don't know that. I want to tell you the first story today, because I'm worried that you, with your OCD are going to start to panic and look up at the night sky with a worried look on your face.
Do you know, I reckon, I do have a little bit of OCD. That might be a I don't but I don't know. With some things, I don't give a fuck, But with other things, Yeah, there's a little there's a little acronym in there that probably needs to be explored, all right, tell.
Me, well, okay, a few days ago, like well, a few days ago, about a month ago, an asteroid was spotted curved towards the Earth. Astronomers established that it was going to hit the planet within ten hours. Right, It ended up near the Philippines, an island in the Philippines, and it bursted into flames and it came through. Now, as it happened, the Earth didn't end. We're here now, right, It was not that big. However, the estimate that there's a lot of stuff out there that we just can't
see from Earth, and that's the problem. So what we don't know is in the background, and now we will know, is that there's an organization called Planetary Defense, or a group called planetary Defense and they're working so it's part of NASA, and they're working to try to find better ways to discover all of those objects that we have
near missus with. And not that long ago, there was a very first project that was done by NASA, and what they did was they fired a small probe into an asteroid to try to deflect it off course, and it did. They worked out that the impact on this particular asteroid was enough to nudge it a little bit. And so what they're saying is, we know, if we have enough warning, we could nudge them out of the way. So they're now looking at different ways to track what's
going on in space. But the interesting thing is this, if an asteroid just twenty meters long exploded in the sky above us, it would smash windows, knock people on their feet. So that's a twenty meter long a fifty space rock could decimate a whole town, widespread infrastructure damage, etc.
All that sort of stuff. Now, an asteroid one hundred and forty meters in length, if it made its way to the ground, would basically slice a hole on the face of the planet, probably dinosaur like extinction level events. So there's still a lot of this stuff flying around. So this new applied science called planetary defense, which is exactly I guess what it sounds like, is now being employed to try to look for what these asteroids that are floating around potentially could get close to the Earth
and what they would do. So there was this Dart mission that I was saying before, and the dart managed to detour one of these asteroids, and so the thought is there could be fourteen thousand of these that we haven't found yet float no happen.
How about how about you shut the fuck up right because now you've just made one hundred people have a sleepless night.
But our say here is this NASA has what they're about to launch a new mission within the next ten years, the NASA the Near Earth Object Surveyor or the Neo Surveyor mission. So it's basically a sniper in space. It's going to be hidden and out of space, and within they reckon about ten years of being launched, it'll find ninety percent of all those city killing asteroids that are
out there. So relief is on the way. And what they've done this is what's really cool about this this object is they're going to cover it in a material that will make it really cold, really really really cold, because it has thermal senses as well as visual sensors, and every object that's still floating around does have some
sort of heat pattern. So the problem is all these asteroids are made at different things, and if you use optics or different ways to try to detect how large they are, if they're made of metal, they will look different than if they're made of other materials. So that's the problem and the challenge of trying to work out how big they are and then find out what their trajectory is. So do you feel a little bit better that they're now?
No. I think you brought something to our attention that we didn't need to know, and that if an asteroid's going to fuck us up, it's going to fuck us up, you know, like I think about personally. It reminded me of Israel's iron Dome.
Oh yes, yea, I've been looking at it.
It's a little bit like that on steroids. But I'm thinking, could you imagine Patrick, the physics, the mathematics that like all the algorithms everything, So you've got a thing hurtling through space and time that's millions of miles away that you're trying to figure out how fast it's traveling, how big it is, its trajectory, and then you've got to build something on Earth or shoot something away from Earth to meet it at the right you know, so it
intersects it, it doesn't miss it, and then it hits it in the right spot to deflect enough so that it misses the Earth. I mean, what imagine the fucking people, the geniuses or genie I think the word is imagine the genie. I working on that to make that happen to me. That's just that's There's been a bunch of movies about this too, by the way, Yeah, I.
Think about nineties maybe the age now it was, it would have been the nineties. I reckon the Bruce Willis one. What was it the names?
Yeah, yeah, there've been a bunch of them. I just think, can I reckon.
Epoy you more? Can I can I help try to reassure you more? So. Mike, one of my closest friends, just got back from the UK. I'm catching up with him next week. He's a rocket scientist. He's so much smarter than me. It does fill me with a hope.
You say that, like you're surprised. It's like, well, of course you didn't even need to point that out to us. Oh fuck, he's smarter than me, which is incredible.
Hey, Ryan, if you're listening, I'll tell him that we gave him a plug in the show. He's really smart. Yeah. So it's so it makes me feel a lot better that those sorts of people are around, because they're the ones that is sitting at NASA saying, nah, that's no problem. It's only four million miles away. On a trajectory of you know, I don't know the asmuth is this and the whatever. You know what I mean. I'm just throwing words out now that mean nothing, but they know what
they mean. So we're fight.
Well, speaking of space, NASA has succeeded allegedly in teleporting. Yeah, if you don't know what teleporting is the headline, Yeah, I know. Actual teleporting. If you ever saw Star Trek, anyone is where basically a human is magically transported to another place instantly. So it might be from Melbourne to New York and they just appear in New York. That's called tallyportation. But I feel like that's it hasn't really happened. That's just a heading.
Is it is a heading just to try to catch your attention. And there's also a theory that what actually happens when you go on the transporter is you are destroyed and then rebuilt at the other end, so it's actually not you there at the other end. It's a fact similar bit.
Anyway, I can't believe that there's a theory about something that isn't real in the first place. That's the dumbest shit ever.
Yeah, there's a lot of that online. So this is called hollow portation, not tallyportation. So it was a bit of a tricksy little heading to try to get your attention. What NASA is doing is using augmented reality. So they're using a thing called hollow lens and micro I've produced this and I think they're about the stop production of them anyway, So they're using hollow lens.
And would you say stop or start?
Stop there's because other stuff's coming out. I'll tell you about that later. But what they effectively can do then is the you know, the astronauts and cosmonauts that are floating above and China hat what are the Chinese astronauts called. I don't know. I'll have to look that one up. If Russians are cosmonauts and the Americans are astronauts anyway, that's something for another time.
But there's fifty things I could say. I'd get in trouble for all of them.
Okay, So multiple cameras pointing at a person here and you're talking to so not just similar to what we're doing, but in three D. And then the person wears a
virtual reality headset which uses augmented reality. So the difference between VR and AAR is when you put on a virtual reality headset, it blocks out everything and you create a new world in your virtual headset that you can engage with augmented reality is you put on a device and you can still see everything around you, but an object is projected in front of you in three D. And that's what they're doing with NASA at the moment.
So they're using this to help the astronauts who are effectively flying around in this tin can, and it means that they can have real world conversations. But the person they're interacting with, it's not just a zoom call or a teams meeting. It's a person hovering in front of them.
And this is pretty full on because you know, the ISS, the International Space Station is flying around like seventeen thousand kilometers an hour, so to be able to link up to them and have that window where they can have this full on conversation and interaction, and this could be a way to help astronauts as they travel to you know, if you take three or four years to get to Mars,
they're able to interact with family and friends. That would really help a lot when it comes to being lonely or feeling isolated, or being stuck in a tin can. So it's kind of interesting that they're developing this because a lot of the developments that get done for space
research end up in real world examples for us. So when we think, well, that's never going to happen, it's too far away, it's on the ISS, the reality of it is a lot of the experiments that are going on board the International Space Station will have real world benefits for us. It's that such that R and D that you know, it's the long game where we don't
specifically think about it. I mean, even the work that you're doing could have real world practical applications when it comes to understanding about cognitive sense and how we think about ourselves and the world around us. You know, that could really have far reaching benefits for people, because what I love about what you're doing is that no one else has done that before in the way that you're doing it. Yeah, and that's about research, just.
Yeah, exactly. I was thinking about you know more about this, but I just want to talk about the human side of So those two astronauts that flew up, was it with Boeing and then they were going to meant to be up and back in a week or time and something happened. You can tell us there's something I forget. But so all of a sudden they went from basically, we're doing a quick holiday to space to know, now
you're fucking stuck here till next year. And of course they would have been preparing for I think it was meant to be like about ten days in space, and now it's going to be the best part of a year. And I was thinking, man, that's to be able to adjust to that emotionally and mentally, is that is a big, big challenge, right, That's not a small thing. That's a life changing, foreverthing. And I don't know whether or not they're great actors, but I saw them being interviewed, or
at least saw them, you know when. So they've gone to stay at the ISS, haven't they International Space Toction. That's where they are, and they hooked up with some other whatever, the other astronauts up there, and they looked so like they have their shit together. I would not have my shit together. I don't think if I was, or maybe if I was as qualified and as trained as them, but yeah, to be able to adapt to something as big as that were was like, you'll be
back on Earth soon, and then no, you're not. You're trapped up here. Better than the alternative though, I guess, which is blowing up on the way back, because they were wouldn't They worried that the that the space capsule or whatever would not make it back to Earth, and so they hedged their bets and said, look, we're just going to plunk you on the space station.
Yeah, it was not worth the risk. Yeah, they went up to the Space station for this mission. But they had a fault. I think it was a cool leak or something. I can't remember exactly what it was. But they repaired it, but they still weren't one hundred percent sure the thing with a lot of I mean, space is so amazing, and space travel so much work goes into it. And I guess, thinking of your you know, you were kind of projecting how you would feel being
up there. My thought is that if you're training to do a mission like this and it's only ten days, part of the contingency would be what if you are stuck there for more than ten days? And I think that would have to be part of the training. I couldn't imagine sending people up there with that that that
thought process process being in place. But wow, I couldn't possibly imagine what it would be like when you're saying, yeah, look, I'll just see you next week, mate, We'll have that coffee, won't we down the road, and then all of a sudden that coffee is a year later or six months later.
Also, when you think about how much we regular humans we love certainty and predictability and familiarity. We love to know that we kind of want to know what's going to happen tomorrow and we hope it's going to be kind of like today, unless today with shit. But you know that we are very much hardwired for safety and predictability and consistency and certainty. So it must take a special sure kind of either person or personality or mindset
to be able to go. I mean, by the way, if you get on a rocket going into space, there's a fair chance you're going to die.
I mean it's not it's not remote chads, Well.
It's it's you know, it's not like you're getting on a bus going to Southland to get some fucking chicken. I mean it's it's there's a fair few people who have died.
Can I just say? I don't have the figures in front of me, but I would suggest that you driving to Southland and me flying to the ISS I would be safer than you.
I don't think so.
I think I would.
I reckon if we go. How many people have been in space? Well, we know, was it Challenger twelve that blew up?
It was a Challenger Yeah, that's right.
In challenges So that that was eight people?
Right, yep?
How many people?
Five? Not only five? It was from memory?
How many people? Let's go, I'm going to go right now.
Siven astronauts don't go chat GEP. Seven astronauts were on the challenge. I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, no, no, no, how many How many people have died in space?
More? Good? Well I want to know, okay.
As eighteen astronauts?
Okay, so that's it. But how many people are in space?
Yeah? Well okay, all right, good? How many people have many.
Apologies to the listeners in space?
How many people have been in space? Six hundred and twenty So six hundred and twenty eighteen, let's round it up to twenty. That's a fucking lot of people. That's six hundred and twenty people going to Southland, and eighteen of them are dying. I reckon, I reckon. I'm on a better, better course than you can.
I just say I would still go.
Well would you? Would you get if you've got a chance to go to space for a year?
So?
Actually do we? Sait? So the Columbia disintegrated when it re entered the years No, yeah, I'm kind of was mixing. No, it's right. Did we say Challenger or Columbia?
I think we said Challenger.
It's Columbia. Columbia. It re entered the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board. So actually so there were two the Columbia. I'm getting confused anyway, But.
Anyway, the bottom line is kids stay on Terra Firma.
Yeah. So it was the Challenger that blew up when it launched, and that must have been in nine and eighty six when it because I was I was actually camping and didn't know about it till about three or four days later.
Yeah. Most fatalities have occurred either during launch or re entry rather than in space itself, with the Sawyers eleven being the exception. So Sawyers eleven nineteen seventy one, three cosmonauts, Space Shuttle Challenger nineteen eighty six, and Space Shuttle Columbia two thousand and three. Seven. Yeah, all right, let's talk about something more uplifting, Patrick Man.
Okay, let's see if I can find something. Well, can I just can I do one more story about being in space? Is that getting import not for you? Clearly, no, one little thing. They've been doing studies with cells from human hearts and running experiments to see what actually happens to the human heart while it's on the ISS. So these people who are there now, their hearts are actually going to be affected by being in space for a prolonged period. So what they did was they took heart cells.
They took them into the International Space Station and then they observed how they behaved compared to another similar crop of cells here on Earth, and low gravity actually impacts the cell's strength and contraction, so it's called the twitch force, and it means that it can also result in irregular beating patterns. N astronauts come back, not only they have jelly legs, but they also have hearts that don't beat
as strongly, and it's really concerning. So the longer you're there, they don't fare well at all when they're in space.
So the exercise scientist is interested in this because when you think about like here we obviously we deal with gravity just walking, you know, where we're using muscle and strength and so so there's a lot of atrophy in space, like a lot of muscle wasting in space. And the heart is a muscle, so that's no surprise.
And because the heart I mean beats constantly for our whole lives, we'd like to think it does. We hope it does continue, yeah, sporadically for some, but if there's no gravity acting on it, it looks like the heart tissue starts to kind of just atrophy.
Well, I think, because when you're in you know, anti gravity or is that what it is like when you're in fucking whatever where you've got.
There's no gravity or no gravity.
Yeah, so there's no I mean, there's no resistance as in you're not you're not. You don't have to work against anything really, and so like there's no need in space to be strong, you know, because you don't have to lift anything or move anything because everything's weightless. Yeah, so it's it's cool, but it takes a physiological toll.
That's why I think I would be I don't know what it is these days, but I would be really interested to know what kind of resources they have at the ISS two to help the crew maintain strength and function because one obviously one of the challenges in a weightless environment is that dumbbells and kettle bells don't weigh anything.
I don't know if i'd want a dumbbell or a kettle bell floating around in the space station, of course, not bands and stuff like that. Yes, you know, elliptical type machines that they can use.
With h yeah. Yeah, And I mean I think like in the old days, in the eighties and nineties in Melbourne, there was even hydraulic machines, But I don't know if hydraulics going to work. Maybe it changes the viscosity of the hydraulics liquids in space. I'm not sure, but yeah, things like resistance bands and you know where you're creating a type of resistance. But you'd have to do that. I mean, getting out of a chair and walking to get a glass of water takes strength and fitness, albeit
not a lot. But you know, we are constantly, we are constantly working against gravity. But when you remove that, it's a different thing.
It is interesting, isn't it. It's a fascinating a thought argument, particularly when we project forward and think, well, if people are going to go and explore further into the into our solar system and maybe potentially go to Mars, they still talk of a Mars. And then you've got radiation as well, because thankfully we have an atmosphere that protects us from the nasty radiation as well, and that doesn't happen when you're up there. You need to have materials
around you. It's a flat and tin can, all.
Right, team, We're going to pull the pin on the conversation momentarily there, Patrick and I ended up being somewhat verbose over about an hour and a half or so, so we'll divide this into bits one and two. We'll call that the end of Bit one. Hope you're having a great day. We'll be back tomorrow with more