In a tribute to the late founder of HowStuffWorks Marshall Brain, we chose one of his great articles. Learn all about how your phone knows how to get you around without bumping into stuff or running people over in this episode. Thank you, Marshall.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: How did Marshall Brain contribute to HowStuffWorks?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Too much kale, like a salad with only kale or like, God forbid, you eat a bag of kale chips. You would die.
You wouldn't be able to breathe any longer.
It's too much at once. Yes. Oh, boy. All right. So now we get to trilateration. Take it away, friend.
Oh, no. You're the trilateration expert between us. Let's tell everybody what happened.
Well, first of all. Let me explain that trilateration is not the same as triangulation because we're not talking about ankles. We're talking about distance. And somewhere in there is the key of where I was screwing up because you had sent me this in a very elegant, sort of simple to explain way.
Hey, this is Marshall.
Okay, a la Marshall Brain.
Mm-hmm.
It was explained about, you know, like a Venn diagram, three circles overlapping and then the point where they overlap is where you are. We'll explain that more thoroughly. But I was just drawing three random circles. And I'm like, three random circles don't always intersect at a point. Right. Like they might overlap in an area. And so the center of that area maybe is what we're talking about.
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Chapter 2: What is GPS and how does it function?
I don't know if it's vital that I know that Skibbity Toilet exists.
Maybe not that, but Skibbity Toilet has its own Wikipedia entry.
Oh, I believe it. Have you seen the videos, though, that it's based on?
No, but I see a screenshot now.
They're mesmerizing. It doesn't pull me in. You should watch a second or two of it. You don't need to watch much. You get the gist of it really quick, but it's like you'll find that your mouth is open. Not in awe, but just because you're glazed over. Right, right. So, like you said, the United States is not unaware of the vulnerability. That was what I was saying. It was in a delicate position.
It's vulnerable. It's a very vulnerable system. And, you know, like globally and also locally. So they are taking steps to update it. And that is going to come in the form of adding more and more L5 satellites, right? That's right.
But for now, if you want to be a little shocked taking into consideration how dependent we are on GPS, the average age of a GPS, specifically the United States' global positioning system satellites, is 13 years. Yeah. That is really old for a satellite. But Chuck, tell them how old the oldest satellite in the constellation of GPS satellites is.
Uh, that would be 27 years old? Is that right? Yeah. Yes. That thing has sarcopenia.
I guess that's it for GPS, huh?
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