Sean Carroll

But when I read about it, there's a number of issues that come up, and I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, that's actually really kind of tricky.

Well, that was what I wanted to get to.

The idea would be you're allowed to do maintenance on it.

There are spare parts.

That's not part of the rule book, but you don't have to.

You're trying to make it as reliable as you can.

And we just have to worry that future generations don't go in there and break it for fun or cannibalize it for spare parts.

Do you know of any other projects for machines or artifacts or things that are supposed to hopefully keep moving for that length of time?

All right.

That's good.

Maybe we'll figure out how to do maintenance on human beings to make them last that long eventually.

I'm not sure.

It's a tough area to have discussions about because there are respectable scientists who are thinking about longevity and things like that, but there's also a lot of somewhat flaky people out there who will sell you a line of goods if you're not too careful.

So let me just ask you, maybe as one of the final topics here, what are we ignoring in terms of maintenance?

Like you say, we have this idea of infrastructure.

We have all sorts of these technological systems that we're now pretty dependent on, whether it's the power grid or the internet or whatever.

Having thought about maintenance now for an extended period of time, is there something you're just shaking your head in disbelief that we're not doing maintenance-wise?

You know, I always like to wind up the podcast on an optimistic note.

And I think that you've just given us a wonderfully optimistic note.

So I'm not going to press my luck and ask any more questions.