096 = Movie Pairs and Moving Flares

Hello and welcome to A Problem Square, the podcast where we try to solve listeners' problems and you could say that this podcast is a bit like

a repetitive joke.

It gets funnier the longer you listen to it.

I'm joined by my perpetual co-host Beck Hill, who is a lot like

a repetitive joke,

where

there's just more and more of the things she does.

Writing live comedy shows, TV shows, books, you name it, she's doing it.

It's Beck Hill.

And I'm Matt Parker, a mathematician who is a bit like, oh, a bit like

a repetitive joke.

Where I have been accused of going on and on.

But

thankfully, here i have beck to keep me reined in yeah that was a great intro

your your voice is saying one thing and your words are saying a different thing i don't

do you want to do the and on this episode

yes i do

and on this episode i'll be looking at cinema rivalries i've worked out should we be surprised at aurora borealis at this latitude at this time of year?

I think that's right.

Confined entirely in the sky,

yeah,

entirely in your kitchen.

And I'll answer, can I see it?

And we'll have some any other

banter?

I'm trying to go for the any other business, but like link it to the repetitive joke.

Repetitive joke.

Ah, that's a repetitive joke.

Joke recurring.

So, Beck, have you been?

I've been good.

I got to guest

on Tom Scott's lateral.

Oh, there you go.

Now, I know that you were on episode number one.

Correct.

I beat you because I was a guest on the first ever live podcast recording at the Clapham Group.

Live Lateral.

In London.

Wow.

This is the podcast where they will say something enigmatic, like, why do hats have a brim?

And then you've got to think laterally about the thing to explain it in a way that you wouldn't expect.

I would say it's more like

you've got to work out how something is related.

So

it's more like a cryptic crossword, I find, in the way that they ask the questions.

So it might be something like, whenever someone closes their curtains, another person

in China loses their hat

to loses their hat, hat exactly got it yeah yeah they have a book that's either out now or out soon they sent me a copy for me to say nice things about which I'm officially doing now nice book yep excellent and who was there obviously you were there Tom Scott was there anyone else I find listeners would know yes Stu Goldsmith and Lizzie Skipiak which I've most likely mispronounced her surname but that would be very on brand for this show so

we can call it deliberate great it was nice being able to mention your name and know that most of the people in the audience knew who I was talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

I have to admit, if there's ever an audience who may be familiar with my work, it's probably people at a Tom Scott show.

Yeah, yeah.

And they were lovely.

It was absolutely delightful.

It was interesting because Tom backstage was mentioning that it was the first live show that they had done.

The last one had been in 2017 for Technical Difficulties, which is the other podcast.

Tom was like, oh, I was a bit nervous.

Absolutely, could not tell what at all.

Not in the slightest.

Like

a real pro.

But because I've not been not performing that much recently on stage and trying to shake off all of the rustiness, it made me feel better going, oh, okay, it's not just me.

Everyone feels a little bit rusty and yet it doesn't come across.

It doesn't come across in the slightest.

Yeah, you'll notice, but that's just because you are more critical of yourself and you've got a better reference frame because you know what you've done previously.

And I think that's it.

Well, that's it.

We're always comparing ourselves to our best moments.

Yeah, to our highlights reel, yeah.

Yeah, which is interesting.

And we know our best moments, whereas our audiences don't.

How about you, Matt?

How have you been?

Well, we are recording remotely, so we are not both in the office for this record.

I'm in the southern hemisphere.

Yeah.

I requested that.

You did?

I was like, get away from you, you smell.

Go to the other side of the world.

Hey.

It just makes being back in the office more special when we have at great distance.

Are you doing a whole like absence makes the heart grow fonder thing?

Pretty much.

Are you liking this?

Absence makes the bang.

And couples are like, oh, we just need some time apart so that we can enjoy each other's company more.

I don't think you're meant to deliberately have the absence anyway.

So I'm in Perth, Perth, Western Australia.

And the population of Perth are like the opposite of people at a Tom Scott live podcast recording.

They have no idea who I am, which is part of the charm.

And I've had one person say hi, but it was the most perf saying hi ever.

I went out with my brother Steve for a drink

and we're enjoying our beverage and someone very politely just pops over and says, oh, hi, are you Matt Parker?

I'm a science teacher.

Love your videos.

I use them in my lessons.

I'm, you know, always happy to say hello to a teacher or anyone who enjoys the videos.

And then they turn around to look at the person I'm having a drink with, and they're like, oh, hi, Steve.

Turns out they know Steve's wife's brother.

Okay,

which

and which is as bad as Perth is like, Perth is just a small country town inflated to the size of a city.

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very much like Adelaide.

So, I love the idea that this guy was actually a couple of degrees separation from you all along, and yep, had no idea to see you in person to find that out.

He's like, Oh, wait, you're my friend's sister's husband's brother.

We're basically BFFs already.

Come on, mate.

But then, now,

you also know that I've been wondering, because my current record, my personal best, has been recognized twice in the same day, which has happened three times on three occasions going about my life.

Two different people on the same day have said, hey, like your videos.

I've never had three people in the same day.

Like, obviously, I can't count when I do a show because

everyone's going to say hi.

I discount if I'm at, like, a university campus.

Yeah.

Here's a gray area.

I think this doesn't count because that's not the only time I've been recognized this time in Perth.

My brother said, oh, hey, I've got tickets to a They Might Be Giants concert.

Do you want to come and see the band They Might Be Giants?

And I said, that sounds great.

And so last night we went to see They Might Be Giants at the Astor Theatre.

Yeah, because you are white men of a certain age.

Exactly, 100%.

We were there.

We were standing down near the front.

I was like, hey, wait here.

I'll go get us some drinks.

So I walked to the bar at the back, buy beverages, walk back down to where my brother Steve was waiting.

On that one lap, three separate people stopped me to say, hi.

I like your videos.

I don't think that counts.

I feel like being at a They Might Be Giants concert.

No, it absolutely does not.

I'm sorry, but being at a concert for a band who does the intro track for Big Bang Theory, they used They Might Be Giants song for their theme tune, there's going to be crossover in that video.

100%.

And there were wildly different people who recognized me.

They weren't all the same demographic, but it was, I think all the people of a nerdy persuasion in Perth had shown up for the show.

So hello to everyone who said hi.

I have discounted that.

Doesn't count.

I was really hoping that that story was going going to go.

And as I came back with my drinks, the lead singer from They Might Be Giants stopped and said, excuse me, are you Steve Parker's brother?

All right.

I suppose we should answer some problems.

Let's do an episode.

Let's do a repetitive joke.

See, it's fun.

Our first problem was sent in by someone named Sainden.

I think I'm pronouncing that one of the possible ways.

And they say that they have a problem for Beck.

Well, Sainton, you don't really get to choose who's going to solve your problems on this podcast, but you were right.

It was a problem for Beck.

They would like to know that given the time that Beck has spent in LA and their time in the TV and film industry, does Beck have any extra insight into this question?

Sanden wants to know.

Why does it always seem like two different studios will release movies in the same year that both have effectively the same concept or plot.

They get the sense this happens every couple years.

They've got a few examples, both from the same year, might I add.

And I guess these are the famous ones.

That A Bug's Life came out in the same year as Ants, spelt with a Z.

I don't know if I pronounced that correctly.

And Armageddon came out in the same year as Deep Impact.

Same film, as far as I'm aware.

Those were both in 1998.

I imagine there have been other examples in the last quarter century, but they want to know, is that some kind of studio espionage going on where they're copying each other?

Is it a conspiracy?

Is there a common point of origin that these ideas are coming from?

And I guess they're splitting into two different films, or is it just convergent evolution where the studios are iterating in on the same film ideas?

So, oh, then they've got some blah blah blah, love the show, keep doing it, etc., etc.

Beck, can you solve this problem for us?

Yes.

And to answer those last bunch of questions, yes

excellent all of the above yeah so there is actually a term for this phenomenon it's called twin films twin films yeah so it's when films with the same or similar plot is produced and released at the same time by two different film studios and most of the time it's because

production companies and film studios are working on a number of scripts and film ideas at any one one time.

Oh yeah, they've optioned a lot.

And there's so many

that statistically there will be some similar ideas.

So it's actually

more the fact that it's so hard to get a film made.

Like the amount of TV shows and films and things that get made or are starting to be made and then don't make it past that point.

Oh yeah.

It's phenomenal.

The number of projects I've been involved with that never happen is definitely worse than one in 10 in my experience.

And that's just because I'm like the kiss of death to a production.

That's a reasonably standard thing where just because you've made it into a pilot does not mean it's likely this show will get made.

I think a lot of people feel like they're the kiss of death for something.

But actually, I think that's just indicative of the industry.

I mean, you send in a script and they option it and they want to develop it.

It does get a budget and you start production, but then the industry changes.

I've had so many shows not happen.

But that's normal.

That's just the way it works.

Yeah.

So this happens all the time.

So the chances of there being similar ideas being explored in these things, very, like, actually quite high.

It's like if you put a bunch of balls into a sack,

if you keep drawing balls out of the sack, at some point, you might end up drawing out two of the balls of the same color.

Right.

But the chance is increased when certain elements are at play.

So, biopics,

huge.

You'll notice that quite often you'll end up with like two documentaries about Steve Jobs that just came out

or that kind of thing.

And it's like, oh, around the time that he passed.

Like, yeah, of course, because people are scrambling for it.

The documentaries are a really big one.

But also, you might get them leaking into just fiction.

So, for instance, if a film department's got a a bunch of volcano-based scripts that they've been sitting on, and then a volcano happens, and they go, ooh, if we turn this around fast enough, we will get the zeitgeist.

Like, we'll hit this zeitgeist.

And so you might end up with several production companies jumping in to try and make those things that have been on shelved for a while to get them made.

I'm more inclined to go and see a film if...

the topic is something that has recently interested me.

And in fact, I've had this whole thing myself.

I wrote a pilot for a sci-fi comedy series that was about the Mars mission.

It got optioned.

It got touted around to various channels in the States.

They said no.

And I, about

three months later,

Space Force came out.

Avenue 5 came out.

There was a drama series called Mars that came out.

They all looked at this script and went, no, no, no, no.

We're about to release something that covers this.

Yeah.

And that makes sense.

I think a lot of people started to think more about space and everything because SpaceX was starting to break world records.

And I mean, that's what led me to think of it.

I was starting to think more about where we're going as a spacefaring species.

So that's quite common.

And in fact, what's more common than not is that movie studios will find out that other movie studios are developing something and will then do something with the one that they are working on.

So there's some examples.

What do they know that we don't?

Let's do ours.

Or the opposite.

And they'll be like, let's drop the thing we're working on.

So an example is a film in 2008 called Who Do You Love?

It was about the American record label Chess Records, but it had its release delayed until 2010 because Cadillac Records, which is also about a recording company,

had a higher budget and was being slated to release in 2008 as well.

So they took a step back and released it two years later.

I sure remember reading that Breaking Bad was already far enough in production that, despite weeds seeming like a very similar promise, I think Vince's last name,

I think in an interview, they said if weeds had come out much sooner, they wouldn't have made Breaking Bad, which is, I think, phenomenal given that now everyone's forgotten weeds, but Breaking Bad is...

I hadn't even heard of weeds.

Yeah, but it was like the mom starts selling weed.

right on paper if you reduce them both down to one sentence very similar suburban parent sells drugs right is kind of the one liner for both of them yeah and i think that's the other thing is like when does the content end up being different enough um interestingly there's a really nice example of two production companies realizing they were working on a very similar film so uh In 1974, there were two films that were set in a burning skyscraper that were in production.

So the ones producing it went, oh, why don't we join forces?

And so they turned it into one film called The Towering Inferno.

So it had an all-star cast.

That's hilarious.

Yeah.

So

science space where you'll have an idea on your list and then a different channel will do that idea.

And you're like, ugh.

And it's mildly annoying if it's like...

an idea you've been meaning to do for ages but never got around to.

Because you're like, oh, that was a good idea.

I just never did it.

But if you're a long way into production and then someone else does it, you're like, ah, I got Derek again.

But it's just, you know, there's only a,

you know, there's only a finite number of interesting things.

And maybe an article or something came out and it bumped a lot of us to go, oh, that's an interesting topic.

I wonder if there's a video in that.

So, you know, it happens.

Yeah.

Funnily.

We did briefly have a shared Google Doc between a bunch of maths YouTubers where we were meant to put in things we were working on, but we were none of us were organized enough for that.

Bored with not wanting to duplicate effort.

Accidentally, James Grime did a video on a thing called super permutations right when I was working on a super permutation video.

I just shelved it for a couple years.

There were advancements in the field because of James's video.

And then I did a video a couple years later about all the stuff that had happened since his video.

And by then I was like, oh, there's now enough new things that it's worth someone else doing a video on it with, you know,

since done two videos on it because then more things happen after the first video and so on.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Now, I've been talking a lot about the chance stuff, but sometimes it is a conspiracy.

Sometimes there is a bit more to it.

So Ants, which was made by DreamWorks, was released a month before Disney slash Pixar's Bugs Life.

Because apparently, Pixar had been working on Bugs Life for ages, as, you know, that sort of animation does, and especially did back then.

Ants was put into production by Jeffrey Katzenberg, who then teamed up with Spielberg and David Geffen because he'd left Disney on terrible terms.

So they sped up the production and deliberately to battle Disney.

Now,

I actually saw Ants in the cinema instead of A Bug's Life.

What?

I know.

I think it was like,

I think you chose Paulie.

Yeah, I don't think it was my choice.

I think I was taken by a grandparent.

Oh, right.

But I did feel.

I saw Bugs Life in the cinema.

So well, yeah.

And I felt like a real

just because I'd gone to see ants, I felt really angry at like, not angry, but like territorial.

I found myself being like, yeah, oh, yeah, you have to pick aside.

Yeah.

But I just hadn't seen Bugs Life.

And I saw it later and was like, do you know what?

They're both fine.

They are both fine films.

Incorrect.

Bugs Life was better.

There you go.

Yeah.

Obviously, the opposite of twin films now has its own phrase, which is much more recent.

Can you guess what it is?

Frenemy films.

Oh, so close.

Second cousin, twice removed films.

It's actually when they're so opposite in every way

that they end up...

Oh, this is like the Barbie Oppenheimer.

Barbenheimer.

So Barbenheimer is now the official term for when

people decide to see two completely different films on the same day because they want to see something that is completely contrasting.

There have been some other

instances.

Universal deployed counter-programming, which is, I mean,

essentially what Barbenheimer was.

Universal did that in 2002.

It released About a Boy opposite Star Wars Episode 2, Tack of the Clones.

So people who will watch one might not watch the other.

They're hedging.

Yeah, exactly.

It happens in video games as well.

Animal Crossing New Horizons was released the same time as Doom Eternal.

Now, what's interesting about the Barbenheimer thing is that it was somewhat concocted.

Oh, really?

I thought it was like accidental.

Yeah, so I say somewhat.

So basically, as we know, Nolan is famously known for wanting his films to be theatre releases.

He doesn't like the idea of people watching them on smaller screens.

And he'd been distributing his films with Warner Media for years.

But in December 2020, Warner Media stated that they were going to be releasing all of its upcoming 2021 films on HBO Max.

Right.

Now, Chris Vernolan, not very happy with that, so then decided to release Oppenheimer with Universal Pictures instead of Warner.

The following month, Universal announced that Oppenheimer would be released on the 21st of July, 2023.

So this was in 21 that they announced that it was going to come out in 23.

All right, two years out.

Warner Brothers had already scheduled to release a Looney Tunes related comedy, Coyote vs.

Acme, on that day.

But in 2022,

they went, actually, no, let's release Barbie that day instead, so it would directly compete against Oppenheimer.

And they never released that Looney Tunes film.

To my knowledge, no.

To come back to Sanden's question, is it some wild studio espionage conspiracy that two films with similar subjects can come out at the same time?

Sometimes, yes.

Sometimes.

Yeah.

Like with the Bugs Life and Ants, there is a little bit of studio conspiracy going on there.

Sometimes it is a common point of origin.

Sometimes scripts will end up taking on a different path as it gets developed and passed to new script writers and rewritten and blah blah blah.

And sometimes it is a case of convergent evolution in the predictive models.

So, for instance, Dante's Peak and Volcano, both centered around volcanoes, both around the time that volcanoes were...

They were hot right then.

So the answer is yes.

Yes.

The answer is to all those things.

Well, Beck,

I feel like this time, given you've just confirmed all of the different aspects of the problem.

Ding ding,

that you have solved that problem very nicely.

Thank you.

I would quite like to do a podcast covering twin films now where you watch the two Twin Films.

That's your solution to everything.

Do another one.

And compare them.

I know.

It's almost like a repetitive joke.

This next problem comes from Martin, who says, it seems like the Northern Lights are more visible in the UK than they ever have been before.

Is this the case, or is it just advancements in personal photography/slash self-publishing, making it seem like everyone is seeing awesome auroras or better notifications to let people know when to go looking.

Matt.

This is the second one.

All right, great.

Yep.

Done.

Done.

Well, actually, you know what?

There is one mild nuance.

So

just to backtrack, quite recently and then earlier this year,

there have been very good Aurora seen from the UK.

People may have seen this on social media.

I have missed both of them.

I have been the wrong place,

not in the UK on both occasions and not been somewhere else where I can see the Aurora, which is very upsetting.

But I can see why, because it does feel like we're seeing more Auroras at the moment than we have previously.

And you know what?

That is slightly, because there are more happening at the moment on quite a short time scale.

But on a longer time scale, it is technology both to be able to take photos and to be able to share those photos.

So

the northern lights or southern lights are caused

when

the sun produces magnetic field, be it a coronal mass ejection, be it stuff swept up in the solar wind.

Is that radio?

So when it creates magnetic field, is that like radiation linked or?

Because the only way I know...

I don't actually know how magnetic fields work.

It's complicated.

Okay, I'll accept that.

That feels like a different problem to answer.

But

what you need to know to understand to a medium depth what's going on here is the Sun has a magnetic field, same as the Earth, but it's far more complicated.

So the Earth's one is often drawn like you would the field lines around a bar magnet.

Lines come out of the top, they go in the bottom.

The sun is, you know, a plasma or a fluid.

It's moving around.

Plasma, moving charged particles moves the magnetic field around.

So it's a very complicated field.

And the reason I can talk about it slightly well is my wife is a solar physicist who studies the magnetic field in the sun.

Yeah, so none of us should feel stupid for not being able to understand more than you.

No, I have a surface level understanding because that's fundamental to the success of my marriage.

Most people are going to ignore the Sun.

What Lucy studies are moments when instabilities in the field cause bits of it to fly off towards the Earth.

Specifically, what are called coronal mass ejections, which are different to flares.

Flares are when you get a lot of photons and light and that kind of radiation.

Coronal mass ejections are actual mass, it's particles, it's the plasma.

And the magnetic field, they're kind of linked together, being launched at the sun at once.

And while light...

Is it like if you were to shake around a can of soft drink and eventually it would go tss tss in different places

yes and

the sound would be like a flare and then being hit by the spray would be the coronal mass ejection yeah don't hold me to that in any way no you're not saying that the pressure is built up within the sun because invisible forces are shaking it around

shaking it no no but flares are basically light and photons and they get here in eight minutes minutes, whereas coronal mass ejections and the solar wind, which is different but not wildly dissimilar, take days to arrive.

Because it's actual matter moving.

Yeah.

So the magnetic field, when it gets here, interacts with the Earth's magnetic field.

We call this space weather.

And that has all sorts of impacts.

One of which is it can cause

particles

like matter, gases that are already up in the Earth's magnetic field, to be accelerated down the field lines towards the poles because of all this disturbance in the field.

It basically shakes out all these gases, and as they accelerate down the field lines, they glow, and that's the northern lights.

Okay.

So we see the northern lights

ultimately because of activity on the Sun messed around with the magnetic field on the Earth.

Now,

there's not a direct one-to-one because, I mean, you have to have something coming from the Sun to get the northern lights and the southern lights.

But there can be coronal mass ejections, there can be activity on the Sun that goes, that doesn't hit the Earth, goes in a different direction, misses us.

So, just because the Sun's active doesn't mean we're going to get northern lights necessarily.

And the very recent ones, Lucy saw the part of the Sun where the activity had launched from and she said, oh.

Knowing that part of the Sun at the moment, the magnetic field that will have been released is probably probably orientated in the opposite direction to the Earth's field.

So, when it impacts the Earth, it'll have a bigger influence than normal.

And so, things like even the orientation of what hits the Earth, depending on which way it's facing, you'll get more dramatic northern lights, or you might get less impressive ones.

Now, could these

could the magnetic fields ever be so strong that it

Earth suddenly goes fling and goes towards the Sun or is instantly repelled away.

No.

Good.

All right, thanks.

They can get severe enough that they would induce currents into power lines and train lines and any kind of big long metal things.

Like we can, there's a lot of impacts we can get on the Earth, but it won't move the Earth.

So it's like how if you have fridge magnets near each other, generally they're not strong enough to like start sticking to each other or anything.

But they might affect whether whether they can hold on to bits of paper I'm gonna say yes

I don't know I don't know you shouldn't be thinking of the magnetic fields in the earth and the sun as like magnets attracting or repelling you should think of them more as one big joint magnetic field along which current and material can flow as well as things like the solar wind moving between

it's complicated.

However,

the headline stat is that if there's more activity on the Sun, that's when we're likely to probably get more northern lights on Earth.

And if the Sun is not doing much, then the Northern lights won't be doing much, broadly speaking, within all these other factors.

And the Sun waxes and wanes over an 11-year cycle.

So the activity on the Sun wraps up roughly every 11 years and then it goes quiet again.

So we tend to get big bursts of interesting northern lights roughly every 11 years.

So everyone's saying, oh, are there more happening at the moment?

Over the last 11 years, yes, because we've now gone through another solar cycle and we're at the peak.

That said, there can be big eruptions during the quiet parts of the solar cycle.

So none of this is hard and fast.

But to answer Martin's question, we are seeing more at the moment because we've reached the peak of this solar cycle and then we'll see the same thing again roughly 11 years from now.

The one 11 years ago was actually a particularly quiet solar cycle, relatively speaking.

So actually,

over recent smartphone history, this is the first particularly big solar cycle we've had where there's been a lot of activity, which is not to say we haven't had lots of northern lights, but anyway.

So in the short term, yes, like we're at a bit of a peak and it's a bigger peak than the previous one.

If you you go back historically though, there have been way bigger peaks.

This constant 11-year cycle has been going for a long time.

There will have been all sorts of crazy northern lights, way more spectacular than we have at the moment going back.

I've actually got a website that Lucy sent to me.

It's a bunch of sunspot number graphics.

And the number of sunspots doesn't exactly represent the level of solar activity, but it's a pretty good proxy for it to get a sense of it.

And you you can see these plots have this up and down wave pattern over different time periods and i mean one of these plots goes back to the year 1700 and shows you all these solar cycles we've been counting sunspots for a long time and the kind of size of the peaks is how big that cycle was and so historically we're

nothing to speak of in terms of there've been way bigger solar cycles in the past Now, that said, the impact of us having phones that can take photos is phenomenal because human eyes are not very good at seeing faint lights in the sky.

So a lot of the time there probably were northern lights and we often didn't notice or we wouldn't bother keeping an eye out.

So recently Lucy was flying.

Or we did but we couldn't get a good photo of it.

Well, because like I've seen very faint northern lights when I've been in Scotland.

But

it didn't look that much different from like say if there was something happening in the nearby town town and the lights were reflecting off the and a lot of the time

you wouldn't know if the northern lights were happening so back in May Lucy was flying home from Poland was looking out the window she's on the correct side of the aircraft to see the northern lights and she saw a haze and like you were saying you're like oh is that northern lights or is that something else but she got her phone out did a quick long exposure nothing fancy wasn't trying to get a good photo but when she looked at the long exposure there was a green tint to it and she's like, Oh, well, that's I think it's oxygen.

She's like, Oh, well, that is the northern lights because a long exposure shows color, which you wouldn't get for other possible atmospheric explanations for the lighting you were seeing.

And she did this at home.

Like, one night, she's like, Oh, I wonder if that's the northern lights.

Did a quick 10-second exposure on a phone, saw green and red.

She's like, Oh, there's other northern lights, therefore, it's worth staying up to keep an eye on it because it might get more impressive.

So, the fact that that we can do long exposure photos means now we can be a lot more certain if something is the Northern Lights and if it's worth watching, which I think is very interesting.

It's become a tool to determine if something's a northern lights or it's just some haze or lighting for some other reason.

Yeah, well, I think also it's just like, I'm imagining it's a bit like you can't quite capture it until recently.

Sometimes you'll take a photo and it just won't, as you say, because of the exposure can't do it.

But you might see them, but you can't share a photo, and so people aren't aware.

But this is the other factor.

That's the fact that now, not only can people take photos, which look better than if you were looking at it with your naked eyes, but often people don't realize that.

You can take these spectacular photos, you can share them online, and people are suddenly aware, oh, northern lights are happening.

And they'll go out and try and see them, or they'll see them the next night.

And so the awareness from seeing these spectacular photos, the awareness is up and we can just communicate now in advance and this is before we get to the fact that I mean a lot of Lucy's work is how would you predict space weather

now I mean Lucy could say oh there's been an eruption from this part of the sun it's coming our way the magnetic fields probably the right way around we have some ability to predict in advance when this is happening which we wouldn't have had until quite recent in terms of you know human time scales

so the fact that we can now immediately communicate on social media this is happening and share phenomenal photos of it in the moment because like

even

when we had cameras that could do long exposure on film you've got to get them developed like it takes forever whereas now you can immediately take a photo look at it share it like long exposure photos anyone can do that on their phone now which is phenomenal and and share them so does this mean that we can predict when would be good times to go to somewhere like iceland to to see the sadly probably not on the scale of flying to somewhere like Iceland but on shorter time scales yes

so there's something called the KP index for like Kilo Papa I forget what it stands for German words from memory but the KP index is how much solar activity is there and you can also look up for your latitude what KP index would be required to see the northern or southern lights where you are because the further you are from the pole the harder it is to see them.

we're a bit annoyed because if they'd happened two weeks later we're about to do a trip down to the south coast of australia where it would have been perfect we'd be like

super dark skies facing south out over the ocean like there wouldn't have been slightly higher latitude than you want australia's closer to the equator than i often remember but it would have been like near optimal viewing conditions but we were off by two weeks from when the sun decided to throw some extra magnetic field at the earth That's annoying.

Classic sun.

Yeah, so we'll provide some links in the show notes.

Find out what KP index you're looking for, and then keep an eye out for when it comes up.

So that's why you might see Aurora Borealis at this time of year, at this time of day,

in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen.

Thanks, Matt.

I mean, for me, I feel that

you've answered the question, so I'm going to give that a

ping.

KP,

yeah, that was a good thing.

I was trying, I was trying to ping a dingus borealis.

Let's go have some steamed hams.

Is that a regional dialect?

It is now time for any other business where we go through things that our fantastic listeners have sent in.

They go to the problem posing page, they often choose solutions, sometimes they just pick it as a problem and put it in there.

I got a personal favorite here from someone who has put in almost exactly the same comment twice.

Yes.

So on the 25th of September, we heard from random problem poser who said, I've only just started listening to the podcast.

If I listen to one episode a day and you release one episode a month from episode one, how long would it take me to catch up?

And then on the 8th of October, random person with problem

also wrote in, I've only just started listening to the podcast.

If you release episodes at the rate you do and I listen to one episode a day, when will I catch up?

I'm guessing because they realized we released more than one episode a month.

That must be when they got to the point where we switched because we were one a month and then we changed to one every two weeks.

That's right.

Is it the

specific number of episodes that equals the difference between the days that they wrote in?

I was wondering that.

We release episodes, well, this is episode 96, 096.

And we release episodes once every two weeks, so once every 14 days.

And if you listen to one a day, it means you can squeeze in 13 old episodes between the new ones.

Which means you can listen to the back catalog at the rate of 13 episodes per 14-day window.

And let's say

someone started now, so they've missed 96, they've got 96 to catch up on.

So

if you started now, it would take you 104 days

to catch back up to then have to wait two weeks between episodes.

That's a lot of episodes to listen to.

A lot of episodes.

Wow, we've almost done 100.

I checked, and our first ever episode, Beck, was on the 30th of November 2019.

Wow.

So long ago.

We had no idea what was ahead of us.

So we will celebrate our five-year anniversary on the 30th of November 2024, which is coming up.

And coincidentally, because we haven't released episodes at a standard rate because we switched from monthly to fortnightly, But just by accident, by pure serendipity, we will release the 100th episode on the 23rd of December 2024.

So we'll hit five years and 100 episodes within a month of each other just by luck, which is pretty exciting.

Yeah, it is.

Oh, thanks to everybody who listens.

That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

You're all great.

So it'll take 104 days for a random problem poser or random person with problem to

assuming that they were to start today.

Yes.

And they've been going from at least September sometime because that's when they sent in the first version of the problem.

That's true.

Yeah.

So

it'll take them about at least two, maybe around the time that our 100th episode comes out.

They might

be up to date and know that we have answered their question.

You know what?

It's going to be real close because if they ask that problem on the exact first day

that they started listening to the podcast, they'll catch up to the new ones as of the 7th of January next year, 2025.

So they'll be listening to this one a couple of days before that.

But they may have started earlier than that.

That's like the latest.

I suspect they were listening to it for a bit before they decided to chip that in.

So it's well within likelihood that they will catch up perfectly on the 100th episode, which is pretty special.

And until then, I look forward to getting this question next month.

Yes.

Every other month until they realize we've actually answered it.

Yep, yep.

We also heard from William, who said, hello, Becca Matt.

This isn't a solution to a posted problem, but an extra AOB for Patreon membership to a problem squared.

Oh.

After becoming a supporter, I printed out and laminated my APS Wizard Supporter membership card from Patreon.

Did we do that?

No, I think they made their own.

And they probably just printed out this page with the perks on it.

It's great.

We should have made a card.

This is great.

I found that whenever I show this card in any gas station or convenience store in the country of Sweden, I get a cup of coffee at regular price.

And at no extra charge, the personnel will most often mispronounce my name as written at the bottom of the card.

Who knew?

I wonder if this works in other countries as as well.

It's a hidden benefit of being a Patreon supporter.

I mean, and thanks to all our Patreon supporters.

And who knew that printing out, I guess, the page with the perks gets you a cup of coffee at regular price from any gas station or convenience store.

At least in the country of Sweden.

Other countries

may apply.

Matt, that gives me an idea.

Yeah.

Okay, so you know how normally at Christmas every year

we send an e-card to all of our standard Patreon supporters and anyone who is a wizard-level supporter gets a Christmas card from us.

Yeah, yeah, and we sign them all.

Yes, yeah.

What if this year, instead of a Christmas card,

we come up with a Patreon supporter card

that is easy?

Right.

Personalized one, which is in an E-format.

If people want to print them out at home,

or we send out a little business card.

We'll sign it to authorize it for wizard supporters.

The way it works is Beck designs the card traditionally, and then I use my terrible Python code to automatically put everyone's names in the ones that we email.

And then we actually write out everything for the wizard supporters.

But we could do the same thing with membership cards.

But you'd have to print out your own if you're not a wizard and laminate it.

But if you're a wizard level, we will, yeah, properly initial it sign it each send it out to you in the post okay and given this will be our 100 episode two days before christmas if anyone wanted to buy us a christmas present or a 100th episode anniversary gift you could just support us on patreon for a couple months you'll get the card you give us some extra support maybe two months if you do wizard like just we don't want to because it costs a bit to post everyone the card.

We don't want to lose money

signing up for a week and then leaving.

Give us a month or two just to say thanks.

You don't have to do it long term.

We don't mind the big drop-off after Christmas.

That's fine.

And it's valid.

There's no expiry date.

Yeah.

No.

It might be superseded by Fatale.

The Bread Bath and Beyond coupons that people talk about.

Oh, yeah.

The perpetual ones.

There you go.

The other benefit we offer our fantastic Patreon supporters, other than the bonus episode, that is once a month.

I didn't factor that into listening time.

I'm not going back and doing it again.

Is we thank a random combination of three supporters that I pick using a spreadsheet, which this episode includes

gory

fog

that sounded like you gave up halfway through, but I can see in front of me, yeah, fog

jumpy.

So, just so you know, that this day is spelt Y-O-M-P-I.

Yeah.

And I love that you've decided to pronounce the Y as a J.

I'm guessing is a reverse version of how J's are usually pronounced as Ys.

As a Y, yeah.

I figure these things are symmetric.

Mm-hmm.

It's got pie on the end.

I was tempted by yom pie.

Don't get me wrong.

Yeah.

Jompy.

Rube

and

chakarakadoo.

I didn't think you better resist

a rub at the opening of that one, but you did.

So, good on you.

Oh, yeah.

Rub

and chilada.

That's exactly as written.

So, thank you so much to all our Patreon supporters.

And I know we've been talking a lot about Patreon because it pays the bills, but we love everyone who listens to this podcast.

New time listeners, old-time listeners, everyone.

everyone, thank you for listening.

It's an absolute honor to be able to ramble into a microphone and then people actually listen to it.

It's great.

So that is it.

That's the end of the episode.

Thank you so much for listening.

Listening to myself, Matt Parker, and Beck Hill, and our producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter, who's a bit like, oh, she's a bit like.

She's a bit like, oh, like a repetitive joke in that she's always still there for us.

Bye.

Bye.

Now, Bec, we're recording

separately at the moment.

And I didn't bring my battleship game with me.

No, me either.

But now I'm trying to find.

I did take a photo of it before I left, yes.

Okay, I got my photo up.

I too.

I too.

Am also part of the battleship.

Heck yeah.

Unbelievable.

Oh, I'm going to have to switch that to a red

symbol in my

edit.

Oh, nuts.

I can't believe you got the first hit.

Yes.

Well, that's one of the

things for

chaos theory.

Well, let's go back to the team regular.

E5.

Miss.

Now you're way out in front.