Waching daily Jun 6 2017

- Alright.

So, we've been filming some videos here today.

But like let's just cut loose now.

Let's just talk amongst ourselves.

So I'm Margarite.

- And I'm Keryn.

- And Keryn's my niece.

- Yes.

- And Keryn's been in real estate

for a little over two years now.

Right? - Yeah.

- And I just thought it might be fun to make a little video

for our peeps.

And just talk about like how's it going

and what have you learned

and what's different than what you thought

and how's real estate?

- Yeah.

How--

What do you mean by that question?

- I don't know.

Like what do you hear?

- How's real estate?

It depends on who I'm representing.

But it's crazy.

It's a full time gig.

For sure.

- So I remember we were having dinner

and you said that you were interested

in getting into real estate.

- I didn't even disclose it was me.

I said, "What if someone my age were thinking about

"getting into this?"

- And I was like, "Don't.

"Don't you want to have a life?

"Didn't you go to college?

"If you get into real estate,

"you're gonna spend all your time looking at houses

"and sellin' houses and you won't even be able to live."

Is that what I said?

- I remember it differently.

I remember you saying, "It's a great time."

Da da da.

"Wait.

(laughs)

"Do you want to get in the business?"

And then it became a very different conversation.

Yeah, it--

I mean, I feel like a lot of newer agents

kinda start out really excited and--

- Right, 'cause we all get into real estate

for the same reason.

It looks easy and we've heard you can make a lot of money.

Right? - That's not why I got it.

But yes, that's the common thing.

- Basically, you kinda do think like.

- I was like-- - I can do that.

- I was like--

- I like looking at houses.

- I want freedom.

That was my biggest thing.

- You know what I remember you saying to me?

I remember you saying,

"I've been watching lots of HDTV so I feel ready."

- Oh, I said I was trying to prep myself.

- And I was like, "Please turn off HDTV."

- 'Cause there's those realtors who--

The new realtors who say, "I just love houses."

Like, "I'm so passionate about houses."

And like, I like houses but I wasn't one of those people.

I didn't feel like I just want to be in houses all day.

For me it was, how can I help people?

And how can I have a flexible schedule and yeah.

- Do you have a flexible schedule?

- No.

(laughs)

- Everybody thinks realtors have flexible schedules.

So what's the reality of realtor life?

Your schedule's flexible and that like,

you could be having dinner with your boyfriend

at eight o'clock at night on a Sunday

and you get a text from your client

and you've gotta go write 'em up an offer

and submit it before nine p.m.

So your schedule's flexible

in that your life is no longer yours.

Right?

- Right and, I mean another thing I said is

I don't necessarily want a boss.

And it's true that it technically I don't have a boss

and a lot of the clients I work with are really great

and they're about teamwork.

That's how my clients and I operate.

But you kind of have a lot of people counting on you

other than just one, you know, in a traditional job

usually you just have one or a couple of bosses.

I have so many people counting on me.

I have lenders counting on me.

I have clients counting on me.

My managers count on me to do my job properly.

And it's a lot of pressure.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so.

The flexibility is there to disappear

at the end of the year for a while

and kind of recharge and recoup but

day to day life, I have to say, is flexible.

It's possible if I'm gonna be of most service to my clients.

- Right, we're in the middle of selling season right now.

It's spring.

- We can't wait two days to go see that house.

- No.

So there's basically no days off right now, right?

Like everyday when you're making your schedule,

you have to leave a couple of hours free

because that's when you're gonna go for the house

with the client you have that doesn't even know

that house is gonna be coming on in five days.

Like you're leaving space for them to see it

when it does come on and they text you

and they go, "Oh my god."

If you book yourself solid, you can't even do your job.

- And trying to assess how many people you can help

at any given time. - Right.

- It's so hard.

You know.

It's kind of a balancing act.

'Cause you don't know when people

are gonna find their house.

You don't know how many people you're gonna have

looking at any given time.

'Cause, you know, there's no schedule.

- Yeah.

- So if all of the sudden you have four buyers

all actively looking and they have to be on it

every single house pops up, you might say,

"Ooh, okay, I'm not taking any more clients for

"a week until some of these people get into houses."

'Cause it's a lot of work right now.

- It's a lot of work. - For sure.

- So going forward.

What are your goals for like building your business

and what do you want your real estate life to be like?

Are you gonna keep doing it?

- Yeah.

Yeah, I plan to keep doing it.

It's in my five to 10 year plan.

- Oh! - For sure.

- I didn't even knew you had a five to 10 year plan.

- Yeah. - I don't have one.

- My biggest is saying, believe it or not, is not

making, you know, millions of dollars

or getting as much clients as I can for me.

It's about quality of life.

So I know you relate to this but it's finding people

that I really click with who end up staying friends

after the transaction.

And just having really high quality clients who, you know,

appreciate you and there's like mutual love and respect.

I sound like a giant hippie right now but.

- I think that there's like this

unique opportunity in real estate

that not every real estate agent kinda taps into.

To sort of like along with your clients,

sort of build a community, right?

So if you're selling 25 or 30 houses a year

and maybe 10 of those are people you already know

and 20 or new friends.

Let's say 50% of those new people you meet become friends.

Like you're just slowly building out this village

of awesome people and you're in their lives

and they're in your life

and you're helping their friends buy and sell their houses

and there's a lot of trust.

And to me, that's when this work can be really beautiful.

Even in a market like ours where everything is just crazy

and it's so hard for buyers

and it's very stressful even for sellers.

- You really get to know your clients.

- You do! - That's for sure.

- You really do.

Yeah. - Yeah.

- Well congratulations on surviving.

80% of agents do not make it their first two years.

So you're the few of the proud.

- To tell you what, that second year went by really fast.

(laughs)

- I don't even remember my second year.

- Yeah, it was great.

(laughs)

- Well congratulations.

- Thank you.

For more infomation >> What is Being an Agent Like? Is Being an Agent Easy? - Duration: 5:45.

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Access to stem cell therapy is about to get safer - Duration: 2:28.

You'll never guess which state is on track to become the first to recognize

as a treatment for chronic illnesses.

I'll give you a hint:

it's former governor and our former president once banned federal funding for research on

embryonic stem cells.

You guessed it:

In the last week of its legislative session, Texas lawmakers approved a bill that legalizes

which basically means treatments that have been evaluated by an institutional review

board but have not yet been approved by the FDA.

Keep in mind though, this isn't about embryonic stem cells.

The cells will come from banked umbilical cords and the patients themselves,

who will be allowed to pursue the treatment as a last resort.

So people who suffer from debilitating chronic illnesses like Parkinson's, ALS and multiple

sclerosis could see relief.

For Texas Rep. Drew Springer

I pray to god every time I go to mass, every time I close my eyes, that one day my wife

-- and not for my sake, but for her sake -- would have the chance to have that opportunity again

to be able to walk.

The bill almost missed the deadline until he came to the podium.

After his plea, it unanimously passed the House and sailed through the Senate.

It now awaits Gov. Greg Abbott's signature, and he's already tweeted his support for it.

But not everyone is on board.

Two different stem-cell research organizations have vocalized their opposition,

arguing that the lack of quote

But the reality is, patients have already been taking this risk without the state's

explicit authorization.

There are hundreds of clinics across the country that have been operating under regulatory

loopholes

at least 71 in TX alone.

Without regulation, these clinics are completely unchecked.

And patients who seek help there have felt the consequences:

they've been blinded, developed tumors and even died after seeking unregulated stem cell

treatment.

But with this new bill, if something goes wrong, patients have the right to sue.

So there you go -- Texas, creating accountability for stem cell clinics for the first time in

the U.S.

An unprecedented act from a unpredicted state.

For more infomation >> Access to stem cell therapy is about to get safer - Duration: 2:28.

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How Do We Know the Universe is Flat? Discovering the Topology of the Universe - Duration: 8:18.

Whenever we talk about the expanding Universe, everyone wants to know how this is going to

end.

Sure, they say, the fact that most of the galaxies we can see are speeding away from

us in all directions is really interesting.

Sure, they say, the Big Bang makes sense, in that everything was closer together billions

of years ago.

But how does it end?

Does this go on forever?

Do galaxies eventually slow down, come to a stop, and then hurtle back together in a

Big Crunch?

Will we get a non-stop cycle of Big Bangs, forever and ever?

We've done a bunch of episodes on many different aspects of this question, and the current

conclusion astronomers have reached is that because the Universe is flat, it's never

going to collapse in on itself and start another Big Bang.

But wait, what does it mean to say that the Universe is "flat"?

Why is that important, and how do we even know?

Before we can get started talking about the flatness of the Universe, we need to talk

about flatness in general.

What does it mean to say that something is flat?

If you're in a square room and walk around the corners, you'll return to your starting

point having made 4 90-degree turns.

You can say that your room is flat.

This is Euclidian geometry.

But if you make the same journey on the surface of the Earth.

Start at the equator, make a 90-degree turn, walk up to the North Pole, make another 90-degree

turn, return to the equator, another 90-degree turn and return to your starting point.

In one situation, you made 4 turns to return to your starting point, in another situation

it only took 3.

That's because the topology of the surface you were walking on decided what happens when

you take a 90-degree turn.

You can imagine an even more extreme example, where you're walking around inside a crater,

and it takes more than 4 turns to return to your starting point.

Another analogy, of course, is the idea of parallel lines.

If you fire off two parallel lines at the North pole, they move away from each other,

following the topology of the Earth and then come back together.

Got that?

Great.

Now, what about the Universe itself?

You can imagine that same analogy.

Imaging flying out into space on a rocket for billions of light-years, performing 90-degree

maneuvers and returning to your starting point.

You can't do it in 3, or 5, you need 4, which means that the topology of the Universe

is flat.

Which is totally intuitive, right?

I mean, that would be your assumption.

But astronomers were skeptical and needed to know for certain, and so, they set out

to test this assumption.

In order to prove the flatness of the Universe, you would need to travel a long way.

And astronomers use the largest possible observation they can make.

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang, visible in

all directions as a red-shifted, fading moment when the Universe became transparent about

380,000 years after the Big Bang.

When this radiation was released, the entire Universe was approximately 2,700 C.

This was the moment when it was cool enough for photons were finally free to roam across

the Universe.

The expansion of the Universe stretched these photons out over their 13.8 billion year journey,

shifting them down into the microwave spectrum, just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.

With the most sensitive space-based telescopes they have available, astronomers are able

to detect tiny variations in the temperature of this background radiation.

And here's the part that blows my mind every time I think about it.

These tiny temperature variations correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable

Universe.

A region that was a fraction of a degree warmer become a vast galaxy cluster, hundreds of

millions of light-years across.

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation just gives and gives, and when it comes to

figuring out the topology of the Universe, it has the answer we need.

If the Universe was curved in any way, these temperature variations would appear distorted

compared to the actual size that we see these structures today.

But they're not.

To best of its ability, ESA's Planck space telescope, can't detect any distortion at

all.

The Universe is flat.

Well, that's not exactly true.

According to the best measurements astronomers have ever been able to make, the curvature

of the Universe falls within a range of error bars that indicates it's flat.

Future observations by some super Planck telescope could show a slight curvature, but for now,

the best measurements out there say... flat.

In a moment, I'm going to talk about what are the implications of a flat Universe, but

first I'd like to thank Marc Barry, Clint Kirkgard, Brian Cagle, and the rest of our

740 patrons for their generous support.

If you love what we're doing and want to help out, head over to patreon.com/universetoday

We say that the Universe is flat, and this means that parallel lines will always remain

parallel.

90-degree turns behave as true 90-degree turns, and everything makes sense.

But what are the implications for the entire Universe?

What does this tell us?

Unfortunately, the biggest thing is what it doesn't tell us.

We still don't know if the Universe is finite or infinite.

If we could measure its curvature, we could know that we're in a finite Universe, and

get a sense of what its actual true size is, out beyond the observable Universe we can

measure.

We know that the volume of the Universe is at least 100 times more than we can observe.

At least.

If the flatness error bars get brought down, the minimum size of the Universe goes up.

And remember, an infinite Universe is still on the table.

Another thing this does, is that it actually causes a problem for the original Big Bang

theory, requiring the development of a theory like inflation.

Since the Universe is flat now, it must have been flat in the past, when the Universe was

an incredibly dense singularity.

And for it to maintain this level of flatness over 13.8 billion years of expansion, in kind

of amazing.

In fact, astronomers estimate that the Universe must have been flat to 1 part within 1x10^57

parts.

Which seems like an insane coincidence.

The development of inflation, however, solves this, by expanding the Universe an incomprehensible

amount moments after the Big Bang.

Pre and post inflation Universes can have vastly different levels of curvature.

In the olden days, cosmologists used to say that the flatness of the Universe had implications

for its future.

If the Universe was curved where you could complete a full journey with less than 4 turns,

that meant it was closed and destined to collapse in on itself.

And it was more than 4 turns, it was open and destined to expand forever.

Well, that doesn't really matter any more.

In 1998, the astronomers discovered dark energy, which is this mysterious force accelerating

the expansion of the Universe.

Whether the Universe is open, closed or flat, it's going to keep on expanding.

In fact, that expansion is going to accelerate, forever.

I hope this gives you a little more understanding of what cosmologists mean when they say that

the Universe is flat.

And how do we know it's flat?

Very precise measurements in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

Is there anything that all pervasive relic of the early Universe can't do?

Another mind-bending, brain breaking episode.

Want more?

Let me know what you'd like me to cover next in the comments.

It's time for another epic collaboration with Isaac Arthur.

In our next episode, Isaac and I do another 2-parter titled: Construction Tips from a

Type 2 Civilization Engineer.

You'll learn exactly how a Type 2 civ extracts resources from the Solar System.

That's next week.

As before, I've really just scratched the surface of the topography of the Universe.

And I know you're going to want to learn more.

I've created a playlist with 5 helpful videos.

The first 2 come from my alien friend Zogg from Betelgeuse, who explains why the Universe

has no edge, and what a potential topology could be.

PBS Spacetime explains how Inflation flattened the Universe.

And if you're feeling really advanced, a couple of lectures on topology and geometry.