The Transcontinental Burrito Hypertunnel Der transkontinentale Burrito-Hypertunnel El Hipertúnel Transcontinental del Burrito L'Hypertunnel Transcontinental de Burrito L'ipertunnel transcontinentale del burrito 大陸横断ブリトーハイパートンネル 대륙 횡단 부리토 하이퍼터널 Transkontinentinis buritų hipertunelis De transcontinentale burritohypertunnel Transkontynentalny hipertunel burrito O Hipertúnel Transcontinental de Burritos Трансконтинентальный гипертуннель для буррито Kıtalararası Burrito Hipertüneli 横贯大陆的墨西哥卷饼超级隧道 橫貫大陸的墨西哥捲餅超級隧道

Hey!Cool?WOW is a special  presentation of It's Okay To Be Smart!

It used to be that if you wanted  to get one of these from here Раніше, якщо ви хотіли отримати одну з них звідси

to here, you had to use one of these щоб дістатися сюди, вам потрібно було використовувати один з цих

But soon that will all be a thing  of the past, when this opens.

It's the Transcontinental Burrito HyperTunnel. Het is de Transcontinentale Burrito HyperTunnel.

A tunnel. Dug through the Earth. Zooming  burritos from coast to coast in just minutes. Un túnel. Excavado a través de la Tierra. Llevando burritos de costa a costa en cuestión de minutos. อุโมงค์ ขุดผ่านโลก ซูมเบอริโต้จากชายฝั่งหนึ่งไปอีกชายฝั่งในเวลาเพียงไม่กี่นาที

Powered by nothing but gravity?

Almost sounds like something made up Klingt fast wie etwas Erfundenes Casi suena como algo inventado

for the purpose of making an elaborate  and overly theatrical scientific point! um eine aufwendige und übermäßig theatralische wissenschaftliche Aussage zu machen! ¡con el fin de hacer un punto científico elaborado y demasiado teatral!

For centuries, subterranean gravity  transport like this was the stuff of dreams. Durante siglos, un transporte subterráneo por gravedad como éste fue material de ensueño.

But great minds of physics… made it possible. แต่ผู้ที่มีจิตใจดีด้านฟิสิกส์… ทำให้มันเป็นไปได้

How does it work? And what does its future hold? ¿Cómo funciona? ¿Y qué le depara el futuro?

We'll explore. One of the most monumental undertakings humankind

has ever attempted, the fall and the rise of  the burrito tunnel is a story for the ages. la caída y el ascenso del túnel del burrito es una historia para la historia. เคยพยายามมาแล้ว การล่มสลายและการเพิ่มขึ้นของอุโมงค์เบอร์ริโตเป็นเรื่องราวสำหรับทุกยุคทุกสมัย

[musical transition]

As civilization has advanced,  we've searched for quicker

and quicker ways to transport people, information,  and everything else, from there to here.

And not just faster ways of traveling,

but also faster routes between where  we are and where we want to go.

Columbus was just looking for a shortcut,  too. But what he found was the Americas,

a land full of rich and vibrant cultures. Like  the Aztecs, a people who had invented quite a

few things of their own. Including an ingenious  way of making a meal easy to carry: the tortilla. algunas cosas propias. Entre ellas, una ingeniosa forma de hacer que una comida sea fácil de llevar: la tortilla.

Fast forward four centuries or so, and  that wrapped up meal has evolved into this.

The burrito. A self-contained meal in a  flawless geometric shape. And the most perfect

of these perfect foods are made in the “Bordeaux  of Burritos”: San Francisco's Mission District. de estos alimentos perfectos se elaboran en el "Burdeos de los Burritos": el Mission District de San Francisco.

Problem is, if you're in, say, New York…  how do you get one of these in just minutes?

Forgetaboudit

Science changed all of that…

Not too long ago, you could  get a hot fresh burrito from

3,000 miles away delivered to you in around  40 minutes. You may have heard of it...

In 1956, Duane Roberts had found success  selling frozen burger patties to McDonalds. En 1956, Duane Roberts había tenido éxito vendiendo hamburguesas congeladas a McDonalds.

So he turned his attention south of  the border for his next invention:

The frozen burrito. You may have heard of  it. He realized there was money to be made

if burrito makers on the west coast  could flash freeze their creations si los fabricantes de burritos de la costa oeste pudieran congelar sus creaciones

and get them to hungry mouths on the east coast  by using refrigerated trucks, trains, or planes…

Or, say, using a burrito-sized  tunnel through the Earth.

Wouldn't that be something? ¿No sería genial?

Roberts' idea was to use gravity to propel  burritos through a deep transcontinental tunnel,

in a nearly perfect vacuum, wrapped in special  foil to enable frictionless magnetic levitation,

allowing coast-to-coast burrito travel at  speeds once imagined only for space vehicles.

Sounds too good to be true. And it was,  until Mr. Roberts eventually built it,

at a cost of $420 thousand billion dollars.

And to figure out how it worked, we  have to go back to 17th century England.

A guy named Robert Hooke wrote a  letter to a guy named Isaac Newton.

Maybe you've heard of him?

They were trying to figure out what  would happen if you dropped a ball

down a hole that reached through the Earth.

But they might as well have  dropped some rice, beans,

meat, cheese, and avocado wrapped in a  tortilla. Because what Newton realized carne, queso y aguacate envueltos en una tortilla. Porque lo que Newton se dio cuenta

about gravity inside the Earth is the reason  Duane Roberts' burrito tunnel ever worked. sobre la gravedad dentro de la Tierra es la razón por la que el túnel de burritos de Duane Roberts funcionó.

There's a gravitational force  acting on you, right now,

from the Earth. And the same force is  acting on all the things around you.

We call it gravitational potential, because  it means something has the potential to move.

How much potential? That depends on how  far you are from the center of the planet.

So if you dig a tunnel down through the center  of the Earth, like Newton and Hooke imagined,

all the way to the other side, and  drop a burrito in, what happens?

Whew,

that would be one hot trip!

For a moment, let's imagine that Earth is  a perfect sphere, and the same density the

whole way through. In reality neither of  those things are true, but let's pretend.

The pull of gravity from the whole Earth sphere  is the same as if all its mass was concentrated

at a point right in the center. Because the  stronger pull from whatever side is closest to you en un punto justo en el centro. Debido a que el tirón más fuerte de cualquier lado está más cerca de usted

and the weaker pull from the side farthest  away, they just cancel each other out. y la atracción más débil del lado más alejado, se anulan mutuamente. en de zwakkere trekkracht van de kant die het verst weg is, heffen ze elkaar gewoon op.

But what about INSIDE the  Earth? As the burrito falls,

and the distance between it  and that center mass shrinks, y la distancia entre él y esa masa central se reduce,

it feels the same gravitational potential  as it would on a smaller, lighter Earth. siente el mismo potencial gravitatorio que sentiría en una Tierra más pequeña y ligera.

As if we were just peeling layers off of Earth:

As the burrito falls, and the closer it gets  to the center of all that gravity, it'll keep

speeding up, but it's being pulled less and less,  because there's less of Earth's mass under it. acelerando, pero cada vez es arrastrado menos, porque hay menos masa terrestre bajo él.

Once it's past the center and  hurtling toward the other side? ¿Una vez que ha pasado el centro y se precipita hacia el otro lado?

Now it's being slowed down by the  gravity of a rapidly enlarging Earth.

Now what about this path? It works an awful lot  like a pendulum. Only instead of gravity staying ¿Qué pasa con este camino? Funciona muy parecido a un péndulo. Sólo que en lugar de la gravedad permanecer

the same and the path changing, it's gravity  that changes, and the path stays straight.

The burrito goes downhill and  uphill on a straight line.

WHOOOA that's weird

Newton and Hooke also realized something  pretty weird. It turns out it takes the same

amount of time to make the trip no matter  what two points on Earth you connect.

How long?

Exactly 42 minutes, for an  Earth with uniform density.

The closer your tunnel is to  Earth's center you get going faster,

but you've got a longer distance to travel.

But because the Earth's density  isn't the same all the way through,

the time could range anywhere from 42 to 38  minutes, depending on how deep your tunnel is,

the density of the Earth at different depths,  and complicated physics things like that.

For a few glorious years, at a maximum  depth of 315 km below the Earth,

Duane Roberts' Original Transcontinental Burrito  Tunnel delivered hot fresh Mission burritos,

coast to coast, in the same  time it takes to get a pizza. від узбережжя до узбережжя, за той самий час, за який можна доставити піцу.

But after the excitement of the  Apollo moon landing had worn off, Aber nachdem die Aufregung über die Apollo-Mondlandung abgeklungen war, Pero después de la emoción del alunizaje del Apolo, Але після того, як хвилювання від висадки "Аполлона" на Місяць вщухло,

and thanks to an influx of convenience  dining options ranging from gas station und dank des Zustroms von Convenience-Restaurants, die von der Tankstelle y gracias a la afluencia de opciones gastronómicas de conveniencia que van desde la gasolinera

sushi to whatever Arby's is, the  transcontinental burrito market crashed. sushi tot wat Arby's ook is, de transcontinentale burritomarkt stortte in.

42 minutes was too slow for  the modern food consumer.

The original tunnel is closed, and the remains  of its burrito processing plant are that's left. El túnel original está cerrado, y lo que queda son los restos de su planta de elaboración de burritos.

Duane Roberts was better at making  cold hard burritos than cold hard cash. Duane Roberts era mejor haciendo burritos que dinero.

There was one obstacle he could never overcome: In  a tunnel through the Earth, there's a speed limit.

That is, unless, you dig a  different sort of tunnel.

A few years ago, a young inventor  named Egon Shmusk had an idea. Een paar jaar geleden had een jonge uitvinder genaamd Egon Shmusk een idee.

He loved California burritos too, and he knew

he could ship them coast to coast faster than  Roberts' straight line tunnel ever could.

Remember how this all got started in  the 17th century with Newton and Hooke

thinking about holes through the  Earth? A couple decades after them,

a fella named publicly challenged the  world's mathematicians to solve this problem: un tipo llamado públicamente desafió a los matemáticos del mundo a resolver este problema:

Powered only by gravity,

what's the path that connects two  points in the shortest amount of time?

Bernoulli thought he was hot stuff. It'd taken  him about two weeks to come up with the answer, Bernoulli se creía un genio. Había tardado unas dos semanas en dar con la respuesta,

so he was pretty surprised when he got  an anonymous letter from someone who

claimed to have solved it in one night.

Turns out that letter came from… you guessed  it: Isaac Newton, who was very smart.

Newton and Bernoulli figured out the shortest  path, a straight line, isn't the shortest time.

Inside our circle, let's trace a path  using the edge of another circle. Zeichnen wir innerhalb unseres Kreises einen Pfad, indem wir den Rand eines anderen Kreises verwenden.

There. That's called a hypocycloid.

Travel down that path, and you'll beat  any other path between those two points, Recorre ese camino y vencerás a cualquier otro camino entre esos dos puntos,

every time–whether you're talking burritos,  or a subterranean passenger train.

They called it The Brachistochrone  curve. It's Greek for “shortest time”. Ze noemden het de brachistochrone curve. Het is Grieks voor "kortste tijd".

It's the perfect balance between picking up speed  early, and keeping the total path length short.

And when Egon Shmusk learned about that,

he took the fortune he made selling  electric scooters and started digging.

And his spicy innovation? A  brachistochrone hypertunnel! ¿Y su picante innovación? ¡Un hipertúnel de braquistócrona!

In two years time, the Transcontinental Burrito  HyperTunnel is scheduled to begin operation. Dentro de dos años está previsto que empiece a funcionar el Hipertúnel Transcontinental del Burrito.

When it opens, customers in New York City will be  able to get burritos from San Francisco in just

over 25 minutes, hot and fresh, warmed in their  wrappers by the geothermal convection currents über 25 Minuten, heiß und frisch, durch die geothermischen Konvektionsströme in den Hüllen erwärmt meer dan 25 minuten, warm en fris, opgewarmd in hun wikkels door de geothermische convectiestromen

of our planet's mantle, 17 minutes faster  than Duane Roberts burrito tunnel ever could,

and fast enough for a lunch break in  today's fast-paced virtual reality

internet web connected algorithm computer  semiconductor quantum social media society.

But it's not without its challenges.

The brachistochrone tunnel's greater depth  than its predecessor, running nearly 1300 Der Brachistochronentunnel ist tiefer als sein Vorgänger und erstreckt sich über fast 1300

km below Nebraska at its lowest point, means  enormous pressures and extreme temperatures

nearing 2000˚ Celsius. It required Shmusk's  engineers to build their tunnel walls,

their magnetic rails, and even their robotic  mining drill out of a newly-discovered, sus raíles magnéticos, e incluso su perforadora minera robotizada de un recién descubierto,

nearly indestructible metal  alloy called Unobtanium. bijna onverwoestbare metaallegering genaamd Unobtanium.

Invest in Unobtanium! You'll be a hundredaire ¡Invierte en Unobtanium! Serás centenario Investeer in Unobtanium! Je wordt honderdjarige

So what's next? Are brachistochrone  burritos just another pipe dream? ¿Y ahora qué? ¿Son los burritos de brachistochrone otra quimera?

Or are taco tunnels on Titan next? Maybe sushi on  Europa? That's the funny thing about technology.

Often the right path isn't the easiest one.  But with enough creativity and innovation,

there's always light at the end  of the tunnel. And also burritos.

And besides… hot, fresh deliciousness like En bovendien ... warme, verse verrukkingen zoals

this, there's just no other way to  do it… except tomorrow's science.

Stay curious.