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Speaker 1: Hey, their podcast listeners. So we are re airing an

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Speaker 1: episode today, but it's for a great reason, I promise

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Speaker 1: you know. Will and I are working on this brand

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Speaker 1: new podcast that debuts next week. It's called Daniel and

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Speaker 1: Jorge Explained the Universe. It is super fun, and we

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Speaker 1: commissioned it with the hopes that not only would get

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Speaker 1: people excited about space and all these big questions out there,

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Speaker 1: but also for all the budding scientists and and the

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Speaker 1: kids who listen with their parents, because you know, we

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Speaker 1: wanted to feed all those hungry minds. Anyway, Daniel and

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Speaker 1: Jorge is a twice weekly chat show between a particle

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Speaker 1: physicist and a super smart cartoonist, and we hope you'll

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Speaker 1: tune in. But since that show isn't launching for another week,

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Speaker 1: we thought you might want to hear our conversation with

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Speaker 1: the Daniel of Daniel and Jorge Daniel Whites and I

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Speaker 1: hope you dig it. Guess what Mango? What's that? Will? So,

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Speaker 1: have you seen the last Jedi yet? I have. I

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Speaker 1: was going to ask you a question about it, but

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Speaker 1: we have to keep this spoiler free here, so I'm

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Speaker 1: honestly kind of scared to say anything. Uh, do you

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Speaker 1: want to say it in pick ladin? No, No, I'm

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Speaker 1: just I'm too nervous. But I will say this, so

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Speaker 1: it seems fair to say that light speed plays a

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Speaker 1: pretty big role in the Star Wars films. That's what

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Speaker 1: you wanted to say. I mean, it's true. But well,

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Speaker 1: you know, as I sat there in the theater, my

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Speaker 1: mind started wandering again. You know, not because it isn't

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Speaker 1: a great movie. I really liked it, but I started

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Speaker 1: thinking again about the idea of traveling at or beyond

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Speaker 1: light speed. And it's one of the age old questions,

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Speaker 1: you know, will anything ever travel beyond light speed? Well

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Speaker 1: it's a good thing. We have a brilliant author here

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Speaker 1: today is to answer some of the biggest questions about

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Speaker 1: the universe, and only one of them is about Star Wars. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but the book that he's written is called We Have

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Speaker 1: No Idea. But you're right, we should give him a

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Speaker 1: shot anyway, So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as

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Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend Man gues Ticketer

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Speaker 1: and the man on the other side of the soundproof glass.

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Speaker 1: Sporting an impressive coral saken hair part. That's our friend

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Speaker 1: and producer Tristan McNeil, who knew his hair could even

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Speaker 1: part like that. So that's not what we're here to

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Speaker 1: talk about, or is it maybe another episode? I don't

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Speaker 1: think it's anyway. So I know you and I have

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Speaker 1: recently been talking about the fact that over the past

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Speaker 1: few years there have been all these big science events

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Speaker 1: that have just gotten so much attention and people have

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Speaker 1: gotten really excited about. We had the discovery of the

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson a few years ago. We had that big

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Speaker 1: eclipse that you and I and our families all traveled

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Speaker 1: out to see. There was um quantum teleportation and all

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Speaker 1: this excitement and confusion surrounding it, and so much more.

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Speaker 1: It's fun when events like these capture the world's attention.

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Speaker 1: But but sometimes these events and the science around them

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Speaker 1: can be very difficult to commune. Okay, but today we've

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Speaker 1: got to truly give the communicator and one of the

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Speaker 1: co authors of a book called We Have No Idea,

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Speaker 1: Daniel Whites, and welcome to Part Time Genius. Hello, thank

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Speaker 1: you very much for having me on now. Daniel, this

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Speaker 1: is a really interesting partnership for this book. You know,

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Speaker 1: you're a particle physicist that you see Irvine doing a

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Speaker 1: lot of your research over at CERN and and you've

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Speaker 1: partnered with a terrific cartoonist and Jorge cham And It's

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Speaker 1: been a lot of fun getting to know you guys

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Speaker 1: over the past couple of months now. Jorge also has

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Speaker 1: a PhD and robotics. So I have to ask, how

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Speaker 1: did you guys meet and then decide to take on

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Speaker 1: a project like we have no idea? Well, we met

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Speaker 1: on Tinder first. Oh good, it's a great way to

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Speaker 1: get going, you know, like most modern couples that we

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Speaker 1: did meet on the internet. It was maybe ten years

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Speaker 1: ago now, and I was thinking about other ways we

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Speaker 1: could communicate physics to the general public because I felt

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Speaker 1: like there's a lot of exciting questions we're asking with physics,

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Speaker 1: but we're not always doing a great job of expressing

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Speaker 1: that excitement and the basic ideas to the general public.

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Speaker 1: And I thought there was an opening there to communicate

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Speaker 1: some of the stuff using cartoons. Actually, I saw a

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Speaker 1: really awesome technical comic put out by Google when they

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Speaker 1: put out their latest browser, the Chrome browser, and Scott

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Speaker 1: McCloud made a technical comic about the Chrome browser, and like,

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Speaker 1: if you're not into writing browsers, you might not be

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Speaker 1: into reading comics about browsers. But they had a great

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Speaker 1: job of making this seem interesting, and I thought, wow,

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Speaker 1: if they can make browser development sound fun, and maybe

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Speaker 1: cartoons are a good way to show other things like physics.

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Speaker 1: But I don't have any artistic skills myself, and so

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Speaker 1: I couldn't draw these cartoons myself. Um, but of course

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Speaker 1: I was aware of Jorge and his amazing work PhD comics.

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Speaker 1: You know, he's something of an internet celebrity in academia.

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Speaker 1: Everybody knows him, and his comics are really captured the

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Speaker 1: restoration of research and academic life. Anyway, my wife suggested

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Speaker 1: she's also an academic and she's a big fan of his.

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Speaker 1: She said, why don't you email or him and asked

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Speaker 1: him to do it. And I thought, yeah, right, that's

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Speaker 1: just like emailing Brad Pitt and ask him about the movie.

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Speaker 1: That's that's pretty awesome. And the project that resulted from

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Speaker 1: that a few years later, obviously is is we have

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Speaker 1: no idea, so can you tell us a little bit

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Speaker 1: about the the idea behind this book? Yeah, I thought

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Speaker 1: that there's a lot of great science communication that's happening,

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Speaker 1: but most of it was focused on what we do

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Speaker 1: know about the universe, all the amazing things that science

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Speaker 1: has learned, and it's important to show people what we

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Speaker 1: figured out. But I thought something was missing that. I

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Speaker 1: felt like people had a misunderstanding of how much we

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Speaker 1: knew about the universe. So we thought, let's instead write

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Speaker 1: a book showing people all the huge, the very basic

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Speaker 1: open questions of the universe, really simple stuff that we

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Speaker 1: haven't yet figured out, stuff like how big is the universe?

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Speaker 1: And how did it start? And how will it end.

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Speaker 1: I thought there must be an appetite for people who

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Speaker 1: are really interested in this basic stuff and excited to

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Speaker 1: learn that we haven't yet figured it out. Because to me,

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Speaker 1: ignorance is an opportunity. It's a possibility of things you

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Speaker 1: could discover in the future. And when I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: I was always excited about that possibility of exploring the

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Speaker 1: unknown and figuring out something new, discovering that the world

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Speaker 1: was different from the way we thought it might be

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Speaker 1: and turned out to be completely counterintuitive, like the discoveries

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Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics and relativity. I wanted to give people

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Speaker 1: the sense that such discoveries, discoveries that that basic scale

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Speaker 1: might still be ahead of us, that there are still

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Speaker 1: really big basic questions that we haven't answered. So that

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Speaker 1: was the idea behind running this book. And can you

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Speaker 1: tell us just a little bit about you know, I

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Speaker 1: know you're a particle physicist, that's certain, but what does

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Speaker 1: that mean exactly and what are you doing in the lab?

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Speaker 1: So it's certain we collide protons together. We take the

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Speaker 1: protons and speed them up to nearly the speed of light,

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Speaker 1: and then the particles inside the protons collide and turn

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Speaker 1: into balls of energy. Temporarily, they lose their form of

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Speaker 1: matter and turn into pure energy. And then that energy

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Speaker 1: has this amazing feature which it can turn into any

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Speaker 1: kind of particle in the universe as long as there's

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Speaker 1: enough energy budget there. So if you've poured enough energy

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Speaker 1: into your collisions, you can make any kind of particle

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Speaker 1: there is, which means you can discover new kinds of

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Speaker 1: matter even if you didn't know it existed. So that's

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Speaker 1: sort of awesome. It's a it's a way to explore

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Speaker 1: the universe. And that's the thing that got me excited

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Speaker 1: about particle physics is exploring what the universe has made

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Speaker 1: out of how is it work at its smallest levels?

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Speaker 1: What is the organizational principle for this whole ridiculous, beautiful

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Speaker 1: universe we find ourselves in. And the fascinating thing about

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Speaker 1: that is that it used to be the particle physics,

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Speaker 1: which looks at the very very small it's totally disconnected

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Speaker 1: from cosmology, which looks at like the very big history

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Speaker 1: of the universe the future of the universe. These days,

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Speaker 1: these two fields have kind of converged because we're asking

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Speaker 1: a lot of similar questions, Like one of the big

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Speaker 1: questions and cosmology is what is all the dark matter? Right?

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Speaker 1: Where is all this missing invisible matter in the universe. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's certain what we're trying to do is make dark matter.

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Speaker 1: We're trying to collide those particles together to make a

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Speaker 1: new kind of matter, and we might produce dark matter

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Speaker 1: in the laboratory, giving this insight into what's happening at

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Speaker 1: the very very big scale. I love that there's so

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Speaker 1: many fascinating things in that statement, and also so many

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Speaker 1: questions I have coming out of it. And I also

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Speaker 1: just love that like it starts with such a simple idea,

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Speaker 1: like the joy of crashing things together. And creating all

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Speaker 1: these new things that it's stunning. But um, I know general,

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Speaker 1: crushing things together is a good way to start the

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Speaker 1: scientific experiment. Well Will was asking at the beginning of

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Speaker 1: the episode about the Last Jedi. You don't want to

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Speaker 1: have said anyone with spoilers, but he talked about how

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Speaker 1: the speed of light does come up in it, and

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Speaker 1: is it possible or will it be possible for anything

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Speaker 1: to travel faster than light speed? So I just saw

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Speaker 1: that movie and I was thinking about the same stuff

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Speaker 1: when I was watching it. I thought they did it

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Speaker 1: without spoilers. I thought they did a pretty good job

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Speaker 1: of bringing some real physics into that situation. But your

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Speaker 1: question was will we ever travel faster than the speed

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Speaker 1: of light? Um? Of all the things we don't know

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Speaker 1: about the universe, this is one we're pretty sure. We

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Speaker 1: know that nothing can move through space faster than the

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Speaker 1: speed of light. Now I didn't answer your question directly.

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Speaker 1: I changed it a little bit so I could be

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Speaker 1: more more definitive. That is, nothing can move through space

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Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light, So an object flying

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Speaker 1: through space can't ever go faster than lighthood. However, that's

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Speaker 1: a really important copy moving through space because recently we

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Speaker 1: discovered in the last few decades that space is a

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Speaker 1: weird thing. Space can do things that we didn't understand.

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Speaker 1: If you think space is just like the emptiness in

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Speaker 1: the universe, the backdrop on which everything happens, and then

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Speaker 1: you need to get caught up with some modern of

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Speaker 1: physics because space does really weird things like bend and

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Speaker 1: expand and ripple. So if your goal is not necessarily

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Speaker 1: to move faster than light through space, but just to

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Speaker 1: get somewhere fast, like you want to go from you know,

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Speaker 1: your rebel base to wherever you need to go, and

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Speaker 1: you want to not spend a million years getting there,

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Speaker 1: then instead of moving through space fast in the speed

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Speaker 1: of light, you might want to just compress space itself. Right,

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Speaker 1: so you can bring these two locations, which ostensibly are

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Speaker 1: very very far apart, if you can bring them closer

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Speaker 1: together by by shrinking space, by compressing space, then you

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Speaker 1: can get there rapidly without going faster than the speed

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Speaker 1: of light. And that's the actual idea behind developing actual

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Speaker 1: work drives. So while you can't move through space fast

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Speaker 1: than the speed of light, we might actually technically be

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Speaker 1: able to eventually construct work drives that can get us

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Speaker 1: to distant places faster than traveling through normal space. It's

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Speaker 1: just it's as simple as that manger. It really, that's

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Speaker 1: all there is to it. So I assume that we're

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Speaker 1: pretty close to this whole space compression thing, like with

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Speaker 1: the next five to ten years, we should be able

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Speaker 1: to do this. Is that right, Daniel? I would not

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Speaker 1: invest in those companies, but you know there's a fascinating

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Speaker 1: transition there, right. Anytime, if something is just totally impossible,

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Speaker 1: it's totally impossible. But now we've moved warp drives from

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Speaker 1: totally impossible to completely impractical and very very very difficult,

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Speaker 1: which means, yeah, in ten years it will probably just

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Speaker 1: be an half on your iPhone, right because now we

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Speaker 1: just handed it from physicists to engineers, and in current calculations,

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Speaker 1: you know, the energy to run a warp drive, even

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Speaker 1: go to like Alpha Centauri would require more energy than

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Speaker 1: is contained in like the planet jup, all the massive

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Speaker 1: planet Jupiter. Okay, so fast, incredible quantities of energy we

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Speaker 1: can't even imagine. However, you know, it's it's it's just

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Speaker 1: become an efficiency problem. Now somebody can build a better one,

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Speaker 1: and you can build a more effective one, right, And

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Speaker 1: of course, for your listeners, nobody's actually constructed any sort

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Speaker 1: of functioning warp drive. But theoretically it's not impossible to

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Speaker 1: compress space to travel places faster than light could. Um.

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Speaker 1: And that's what I liked about in that movie. You know,

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Speaker 1: they don't just go places instantly in the last They

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Speaker 1: don't just disappear from one place and appear somewhere else.

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Speaker 1: They have to get there. And even though they're moving

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Speaker 1: through hyperspace, right, there's still a speed they're moving through

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Speaker 1: hyperspace and a maximum this limitation there. And so that's

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Speaker 1: where the physics comes in, right, is in providing plot

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Speaker 1: points and the limitations. Well, I have a follow up

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Speaker 1: question to that in terms of headlines from earlier this

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Speaker 1: year that dealt with traveling through space, and I want

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Speaker 1: to ask you about that. But before we do that,

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Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius.

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Speaker 1: We're talking to Daniel Whites and one of the co

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Speaker 1: authors of We Have No Idea, this awesome book that

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Speaker 1: talks about all of the things in the universe, not

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Speaker 1: necessarily that we do know, but the many big questions

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Speaker 1: that we don't know. And we're putting Daniel on the

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Speaker 1: spot today and asking him to answer every single big

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Speaker 1: question about the universe that seems reasonable to me. Think,

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Speaker 1: So what do you think? So? Yeah, so, so before

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Speaker 1: the break, I mentioned that I had another question that

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Speaker 1: related to headlines that we saw everywhere earlier this year.

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Speaker 1: There was a headline that said, first object teleported from Earth,

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Speaker 1: and I have to be honest, Daniel, I struggled with

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Speaker 1: the way the media was covering this event that happened,

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Speaker 1: this quantum teleportation, and I wanted to see if you

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Speaker 1: could talk to us a little bit about that and

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Speaker 1: does it relate to what we were talking about earlier,

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Speaker 1: this idea of you know, being able to travel through

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Speaker 1: space at faster than the speed of Like, can you

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Speaker 1: just talk to us a little bit about this event

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Speaker 1: and and how the media may have struggled a little

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Speaker 1: bit to communicate what actually happened in that experiment. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I read those headlines that I was pretty excited object

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Speaker 1: teleported into space. I thought, Wow, we're going to be

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Speaker 1: beaming up to space stations in the next few years, right,

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Speaker 1: But you're right, the media totally failed to convaye that

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Speaker 1: accurately because no object was teleported into space. Um. Instead,

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Speaker 1: information was sent into space, and that's much less exciting

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Speaker 1: because it's essentially just beaming a message. Right. So you can,

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Speaker 1: we know already how to send information from one place

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Speaker 1: to another. We have lots of techniques for that. Radio

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Speaker 1: laser or some of these things move at the speed

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Speaker 1: of light. Right. Um. This was more interesting because it's

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Speaker 1: quantum teleportation. Right. It's a process by which quantum information,

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Speaker 1: like the state of an atom or a photon, can

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Speaker 1: be transmitted exactly from one location to another. Right. And

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Speaker 1: it involves like entangling particles and using their quantum relationships

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Speaker 1: to send that information. So it's a new way to

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Speaker 1: send information. But it's not telebrotation, right. It's not like

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Speaker 1: your concept where something disappears and it's reappeared somewhere else,

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Speaker 1: reassembled there. Um. And it's also does not move faster

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Speaker 1: than the speed of light. A lot of people think

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Speaker 1: quantum entanglement is a way around uh sending information is

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Speaker 1: a way around the maximum speed limit for information. Unfortunately

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Speaker 1: it's not. So this headline describes them, which would have

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Speaker 1: been exciting if it was accurate, but instead it was

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Speaker 1: a cool technical achievement. They had transmitted information using this

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Speaker 1: new quantum technique further than anybody ever had, and they

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Speaker 1: sent it out into space, which nobody had done before.

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Speaker 1: But it doesn't break the speed limit of the universe.

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Speaker 1: It's still limited to the speed of light and doesn't

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Speaker 1: actually send anything anywhere than information. So it's sort of deflating,

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Speaker 1: and I think it gets to a larger point of

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Speaker 1: how this stuff happens, Like how do you do an

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Speaker 1: interesting experiment and then some journalist writes it up as

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Speaker 1: if it's something different, as if it's something much more dramatic.

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Speaker 1: You know. There's another example of that just a couple

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Speaker 1: of days ago, when the Pentagon released all of its

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Speaker 1: footage from this UFO program, and of course they saw

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Speaker 1: nothing there to indicates the presence of aliens on Earth.

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Speaker 1: But I've been watching the news and it's been everywhere.

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Speaker 1: All this stuff has been covered as if we're now

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Speaker 1: just discovered that the that the Pentagon has been talking

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Speaker 1: to aliens, and the headlines headlines or things like summary

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Speaker 1: of human encounters with um, you know, summary of human

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Speaker 1: encounters of the third kind, and it's all total misleading

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Speaker 1: click base. But I think that's one of the problems

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Speaker 1: with science journalism these days is that in the crowded

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Speaker 1: media community to have to sort of scream for attention, uh,

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Speaker 1: touting even modest research achievements as incredible events in human history.

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Speaker 1: So unfortunately nothing was teleported into space. Otherwise I would

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Speaker 1: be in line because I'd like to get up there.

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Speaker 1: I do wish we had talked to you about the

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Speaker 1: whole alien thing, because we're we're actually recording this from

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Speaker 1: a bunker right now, so it would have been useful information. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I wish you had quantum teleported that information to us

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Speaker 1: before a bunker. I would expect you guys to be

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Speaker 1: on a mountain top with flags and come talk to

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Speaker 1: us actually on the quantum teleportation before we move on

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Speaker 1: to another topic. I mean, it is one of those things,

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Speaker 1: like you said, should have been a celebrated achievement because

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Speaker 1: it is something that had been done in a way

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Speaker 1: that had never been done before and at that distance.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk to us a little bit about what

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Speaker 1: the implications are if we are speaking about it accurately,

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Speaker 1: of what this could mean for us. Well, it's an

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Speaker 1: improved way to send information. So quantum teleportation is just

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Speaker 1: a copying of quantum information. Like electron spin or photon

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Speaker 1: state um that can be transmitted in principle exactly from

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Speaker 1: one location to another. And the cool thing about that

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Speaker 1: is just sending information without noise over that information loss, right,

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Speaker 1: And of course in a an actual practically built system,

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Speaker 1: there is always information loss because you can't isolate these

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Speaker 1: particles from their environment. But the hope is if we

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Speaker 1: perfect this kind of technology, you could send information with

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Speaker 1: less noise, with less information loss over longer distances. So

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Speaker 1: it's always good to have several technologies being developed in

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Speaker 1: order to send information. So this is another one that

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Speaker 1: could could in principle in the future give us information

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Speaker 1: transmission with less power and less less noise and less

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Speaker 1: data loss. So, Daniel, I know we've chat a little

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Speaker 1: bit about dark matter in the in the past, and

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Speaker 1: I just thought that conversation was so fascinating. But I

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Speaker 1: want you to share some of that with our listeners.

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Speaker 1: And it's not just something that's out there, but it's

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Speaker 1: actually something that's all around, is right. Can you talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about that. Yeah, this is one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite things about physics is when it reveals to

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Speaker 1: us that the world we thought we lived in is

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Speaker 1: actually totally different if you look at it using a

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Speaker 1: new tool or a new perspective. And that's what we've

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Speaker 1: discovered with dark matter. We've discovered that most of the

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Speaker 1: universe is not the kind of matter that you're familiar

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Speaker 1: with the kind of matter that makes up the chair

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Speaker 1: you're sitting on, or either air you're breathing, or the

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Speaker 1: coffee you're sipping, or stars or gases or planets or dust.

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Speaker 1: That most of the universe, the matter in the universe

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Speaker 1: is something else, something invisible, this thing called dark matter.

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Speaker 1: And most people, if they hear about dark matter, they think, oh,

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Speaker 1: maybe that's some weird kind of matter out there in space.

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Speaker 1: But the thing about dark matter is that it's it

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Speaker 1: has gravity, It attracts everything with mass to it, and

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Speaker 1: it clusters a coalescence together indeed, into these big blobs.

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Speaker 1: And those big blobs line up perfectly with where normal

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Speaker 1: matter is, like galaxies and stars and gas and dust.

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Speaker 1: Most of the dark matter and universe is distributed where

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Speaker 1: the normal matter is because they attract each other gravitationally.

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Speaker 1: And so what that means is that very likely we

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Speaker 1: are sitting in a soup of dark matter. Like can

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Speaker 1: you imagine all the air in the room around you. Right,

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Speaker 1: that's the matter that we understand, but it's invisible, and

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Speaker 1: you're cool with being surrounded by invisible matter most of

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Speaker 1: the time. But you didn't realize is that there's also

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Speaker 1: five times as much matter in the form of dark

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Speaker 1: matter that you weren't even aware of, and it's here

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Speaker 1: with us. You hold out your hands and you close

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Speaker 1: them together. You're enclosing some dark matter. You're holding dark

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Speaker 1: matter in your hands. Now, you can't interact with dark

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Speaker 1: matter and call it dark, but really it should be

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Speaker 1: called invisible or in transible, intransible what's the word for

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Speaker 1: something you can't touch. It should be called an untouchable matter, right,

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Speaker 1: untouchable matter because you pass right through it. Right, you

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Speaker 1: can't feel it and it can't feel you. So it's

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Speaker 1: everywhere all around us, and I think most people don't

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Speaker 1: realize that. Every day when they go to school or

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Speaker 1: go to work, or get in their car, whatever, they're

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Speaker 1: moving through this invisible ocean of dark matter. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: unbelievable to think about. So how do we know that

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Speaker 1: it's there? Or how did astrophysicists figure out that dark

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Speaker 1: matter was was out there? It's a great story how

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Speaker 1: dark matter was discovered. It's sort of a classic science

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Speaker 1: story where somebody was just dotting the eyes and crossing

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Speaker 1: the teas and saying, well, I think we understand how

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Speaker 1: this works. Let's just make sure and do some double checks.

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Speaker 1: And then those double checks revealed that something was very,

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Speaker 1: very wrong with our understanding of the universe. So the

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Speaker 1: double check was looking at how galaxies rotate. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: galaxies are these big swarms of stars, and galaxies are spinning. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you imagine the galaxy spinning, you think of it

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Speaker 1: like a merry go round, Right, you might wonder, like,

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Speaker 1: why are the stars not getting thrown out into intergalactic space?

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Speaker 1: If you spin a merry go round and you put

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Speaker 1: ping pong balls on it, these ping pong balls will

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Speaker 1: fly out into space. So why are the stars not

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Speaker 1: flying out into space? The answer is is gravity in

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Speaker 1: the galaxy that's holding those stars, that's keeping them from

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Speaker 1: getting thrown out into the universe. So then you can

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Speaker 1: do something cool, which is cross check your numbers. You

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Speaker 1: can say, if I know how fast the galaxy is spinning,

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Speaker 1: then I can calculate how much gravity I need to

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Speaker 1: hold the stars in place. But then I can add

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Speaker 1: up all the stars and ask is there enough gravity

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Speaker 1: to hold those stars in place? So you add up

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Speaker 1: all the mass of the galaxy you can see, calculate

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Speaker 1: the gravity from that, compare it to how fast things

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Speaker 1: are spinning. So they went they sent some grad student

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Speaker 1: to double check these numbers and said, we think we

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Speaker 1: understand this, just go double check and the grad students

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Speaker 1: when made this measurements decades ago, and it turns out

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Speaker 1: it didn't work like at all. I mean, the galaxies

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Speaker 1: were spinning way way too fast. There wasn't nearly enough

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Speaker 1: gravity in these galaxies to hold the stars in So

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Speaker 1: we didn't understand was there some gravity coming from an

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Speaker 1: invisible sort of stuff that we couldn't see. Why weren't

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Speaker 1: the stars getting thrown out into space? Was there some

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Speaker 1: other force to gravity work differently than we imagined. So

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Speaker 1: there's something basically didn't understand, and people had to think

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Speaker 1: big about the kind of ideas that could explain it.

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Speaker 1: Because this is not a small discrepancy. And one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite things about dark matter is we still know

431
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:25,200
Speaker 1: very little about it. And the name of the theory

432
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:29,119
Speaker 1: itself is sort of a description of the question, right like,

433
00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:31,640
Speaker 1: we don't know why galaxies are spinning. We don't know

434
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:34,920
Speaker 1: what's what's giving this extra gravity, so we just come

435
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:38,080
Speaker 1: up with a theory dark meaning we can't see it,

436
00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:42,280
Speaker 1: matter meaning it gives gravity. So it's like dark matter

437
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:46,159
Speaker 1: is the theory of some invisible gravity giving thing, right.

438
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 1: It's just like, take the question what's the new invisible

439
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:53,960
Speaker 1: source of gravity that explains this rotation and answer it with, well,

440
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:57,679
Speaker 1: maybe some invisible gravity giving thing, right, But instead, in

441
00:23:57,720 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: physics you just tend to give it a fancy name,

442
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:02,600
Speaker 1: call it dark matter, because then it sounds more like

443
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,040
Speaker 1: an answer. But the truth is, we don't really know

444
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:07,600
Speaker 1: very much about dark matter. We know that it's there.

445
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: You seen it because it constans these galaxies to verta

446
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: But we don't know what it is made out of. Particles,

447
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:15,240
Speaker 1: Is it made out of something else? What kind of

448
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:17,880
Speaker 1: particles is it made out of? But we know very

449
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: little about dark runner, And I love hearing the way

450
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,280
Speaker 1: you guys talk about these sorts of discoveries or at

451
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:27,680
Speaker 1: least an understanding that this must be in existence, that

452
00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 1: you know, twenty thirty years ago, we had no idea

453
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: to even question this kind of thing or even think

454
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:36,560
Speaker 1: about this kind of thing. We thought we had a

455
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 1: general understanding of how the universe was structured in some way,

456
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:44,880
Speaker 1: and then as we learn more and more, the main

457
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:47,640
Speaker 1: thing that we're doing is exposing all of the many

458
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:50,160
Speaker 1: things that we have no idea about. And I love

459
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: the way you guys talk about that exactly, And to me,

460
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: that's the excitement. You know, is that scientific come up?

461
00:24:55,760 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: It's right, the universe says you thought you understood something.

462
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: You guys are such idiots like and you know, we're

463
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:05,920
Speaker 1: doing the best we can. But we continue as humans

464
00:25:05,960 --> 00:25:09,840
Speaker 1: to make this mistake of over generalizing. We have a

465
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: bunch of examples from our experience and we say, maybe

466
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: everything works this way, right, we say, oh, life on

467
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: Earth works this way. Maybe everything in the universe operates

468
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 1: under the same rules. But we continue to discover that

469
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: our experience is parochial, that it's just one slice of

470
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 1: the kind of physics you could have. You know, the

471
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:32,439
Speaker 1: life that we leave is sort of large on the

472
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:35,440
Speaker 1: scale of like tiny particles, and it's sort of slow

473
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:39,240
Speaker 1: on the scale of astronomical objects. So you know, before

474
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 1: Newton and before Einstein, you might have thought, oh, we

475
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,320
Speaker 1: have most of physics figured out, but then quantum mechanics

476
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 1: and relativity show us that actually we didn't understand anything

477
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:51,920
Speaker 1: about the way the universe works at its lowest level.

478
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:55,680
Speaker 1: And this is a continuous process, right, And so another

479
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: point we want to make in this book is a

480
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: huge fraction in the universe is not understood, which means

481
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 1: not only that there are questions we've identified that we

482
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:07,639
Speaker 1: need the answers to, like how did the universe begin?

483
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: And what is the universe made out of? But there

484
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:13,000
Speaker 1: might be basic things that we think we understand that

485
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 1: will be revealed to be wrong in two hundred years.

486
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: People might look back at our understanding of physics and

487
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 1: laugh at us, right and say, those guys understood nothing.

488
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: That's the case. I mean that means that that you know,

489
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,640
Speaker 1: crazy revelations and new ways of looking at the universe

490
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:30,199
Speaker 1: are ahead of us, and I hope they happen in

491
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: my lifetime. Well, I I think one of the things

492
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:36,120
Speaker 1: that was also encouraging to me to hear was how

493
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,560
Speaker 1: you said there's so much room for philosophy in this

494
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 1: not understanding the world, right, like that there's there's stuff

495
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,719
Speaker 1: you know, and then space to speculate and think and

496
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: think big I found that really poetic. Yeah. Well, one

497
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:50,639
Speaker 1: of the fun things about science is that it's so

498
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: philosophically important, right Um. I love when people talk about,

499
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: you know, is philosophy important? There is science the only

500
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 1: useful thing when you know, you need philosophy even to

501
00:27:01,600 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: understand why science is important. And there's this counterplay between

502
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: science and philosophy. There are things that you can test, right,

503
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,080
Speaker 1: experiments we can do to measure things and understand things,

504
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: and there are things we can't yet test. You know,

505
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:20,120
Speaker 1: we can't understand what's beyond the edge of our observable universe,

506
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 1: right Um, there's the universe is a certain age, it's

507
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 1: almost fourteen billion years old, and we can't see anything

508
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 1: that's beyond a certain horizon because life just hasn't had

509
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: time to get to us yet. So what's beyond their

510
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 1: purely the realm of philosophy, because no science experiment can

511
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: tell you. It's just an invisible, impierceable veil beyond which

512
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:45,719
Speaker 1: we cannot see, which means there's lots of room for

513
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 1: people to speculate, right, and speculation and wild ideas totally fun. Um.

514
00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of room for that. But

515
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 1: I also think it's important to draw a bright line

516
00:27:56,680 --> 00:27:59,399
Speaker 1: between the science and the philosophy because there are some

517
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 1: things that we can hand test. So one of my

518
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:05,360
Speaker 1: favorite examples is the multiverse. You hear this idea a lot,

519
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: maybe our universe, it's part of a set of other

520
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:12,199
Speaker 1: universes which are all weird and different, and that's a

521
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,480
Speaker 1: fun idea, But in my view it falls squarely in

522
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: the philosophy camp because we can never test it right.

523
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:23,960
Speaker 1: These other universes by construction, being another universe means it's

524
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 1: the place we can't interact with. You can't send a

525
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:30,400
Speaker 1: probe there to discover it, you can't see its effects

526
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:33,639
Speaker 1: on electrons, you can't do any sort of experiment to

527
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: interact with that universe, which means you could never prove

528
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: those other universes exist, which means it will forever be philosophy.

529
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 1: I don't say that in any sort of negative sense. Right,

530
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 1: forever being philosophy means forever the speculation by theorists and philosophers,

531
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: which is wonderful, you know, smoke banan appeals and have

532
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. But it's important, I think, to

533
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: draw that line. Say, here are ideas we have, but

534
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:04,200
Speaker 1: that certainly not scientific proven. Yeah, I like some science

535
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: communicators sometimes fuzz that line a little bit more than

536
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable with. M I like that. We recently did

537
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: an episode on trash talking, and you just describe philosophers

538
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: as smoking banana peals and having a lot of fun.

539
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: I kind of like that. Maybe maybe we'll have them

540
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: on to be like, hey, so what do you think

541
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:25,600
Speaker 1: about particle physicists? Now, I'm just kidding that that's terrific. Well,

542
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: I have a couple of other big questions for you

543
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 1: that you must answer before we let you go. But

544
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: before we do that, why don't we take a quick break.

545
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part Time Genius. Now we are talking

546
00:29:48,320 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: to Daniel Whites and co author of We Have No

547
00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 1: Idea This terrific, terrific book, and we have a couple

548
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 1: of other big questions before we let him go. So, Daniel,

549
00:29:56,920 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 1: I did want to talk a little bit more about

550
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: some of your work at CERN, and specifically about the

551
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: big discovery a few years ago of the Higgs boson,

552
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 1: something that we all knew we were looking for, and

553
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 1: until we found it, you know, obviously we couldn't get

554
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: too too excited about it. But can you talk a

555
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 1: little bit about that process, one helping us understand the

556
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 1: significance of the Higgs boson, but two also just what

557
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: it's like to be somewhere, you know, like where you're working,

558
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 1: and when a discovery that you know you've been looking

559
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 1: for for so long is finally there. What that must

560
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:32,440
Speaker 1: feel like. I think the discovery the Higgs boson is

561
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 1: really an amazing feat in human intellectual history because it

562
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 1: proves the power of math and patterns. You know. The

563
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: origin of it is the fifty years ago a bunch

564
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: of theorists, including a guy named Higgs. We're looking at

565
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: what we knew about particles, and it just couldn't really

566
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: make sense of it. You know, the mathematics were just

567
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: sort of ugly. They didn't understand how can all these

568
00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: particles fit together? And what why do some of these

569
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,120
Speaker 1: particles have ass and some of these particles don't have mass.

570
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: It just didn't really make sense to them. It wasn't beautiful.

571
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 1: And there's this interesting push in theoretical physics to say

572
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 1: that the universe should be simple and our theory of

573
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 1: it should be beautiful. There should be some elegance, some

574
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: symmetry to it, which is sort of fascinating, and I

575
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,239
Speaker 1: think a whole other topics we could explore. But this

576
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: desire for simplicity and elegance and beauty pushed them to think,

577
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:24,960
Speaker 1: is there another way we could look at these particles?

578
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 1: And so this guy, Peter Higgs and several other people

579
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 1: came up with this theory. They said, you know what,

580
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 1: if you add one more particle to this mix, and

581
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: that particle has this special property I'll tell you about

582
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 1: in the moment, then everything just clicks together and it's

583
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 1: so much simpler and more beautiful. And so maybe this

584
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: is the way the universe works. So this is an

585
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: idea of something I had fifty years ago. And the

586
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 1: incredible thing is that he was right. You know, this

587
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: particle does exist, and it does do the things that

588
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: he suspected that it did. And it suggests that, you know,

589
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:01,479
Speaker 1: this desire for simplicity, this desire to see the universe

590
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: and in an aesthetically simple and beautiful and elegant way,

591
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: might be a good way to look at things. Right

592
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 1: that we the universe at its core is not a

593
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: messy jumble of rules, but a simple set of lessons

594
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 1: out of which emerge complex, fascinating phenomenon, right, like particles

595
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: and ice cream and hamsters and podcasts and all that

596
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. You know, the idea that the universe

597
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: can be explained from a few small set of rules

598
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: is very to me attractive philosophically, right, and the game

599
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 1: we're back into philosophy. And so the question is why

600
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 1: did this particle make things simpler? What about this particle

601
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: made our understanding of how the universe worked at its

602
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,760
Speaker 1: smaller scale more simple, or more beautiful or more elegant. Well,

603
00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:48,240
Speaker 1: the question they were trying to understand is why are

604
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: some particles have this pass and other particles don't. For example,

605
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: the photon photon flies through space that has no mass,

606
00:32:55,920 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: it's just energy moving at the speed of light. Other

607
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: particles like the z boson with the w boson, these

608
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 1: other particles are very similar to the photon, very similar

609
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,479
Speaker 1: properties and play similar rules, but they're really heavy. They

610
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: have a lot of mass. So people who aren't trying

611
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: to understand why is that um what controls what has

612
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: mass and what doesn't have mass? And before we answer that,

613
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: you have to think about what is mass. If you

614
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 1: think about a particle, you're probably thinking about a tiny,

615
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:28,479
Speaker 1: little spinning ball of stuff. Right. And if we think

616
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: about a particle that has mass, probably envisioning it has

617
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: like a little serving of some stuff to it and

618
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 1: that's what gives it mass, right, But in our theory

619
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 1: that's not the case. In our theory, these particles are

620
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:44,880
Speaker 1: all point particles. They're all tiny dots in space with

621
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 1: zero volume. So when we think about mass, actually we

622
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:51,280
Speaker 1: don't think about stuff or it's no room in the

623
00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: particle for any stuff. It's not like something that has

624
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 1: mass has a bigger serving of universe stuff or or

625
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: more of its squeezed into a little space. They all

626
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: have the zero volume. So instead of thinking about mass

627
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:07,480
Speaker 1: as an amount of stuff, you need to think of

628
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:09,680
Speaker 1: It's sort of the way you think about electric charge.

629
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: It's just like a label we put on points in space,

630
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: all right. You don't think about when you think about

631
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:17,919
Speaker 1: the electron. You don't think where is the negative charge

632
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: of the electron? Is there room for the negative charge?

633
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: Does it fit in there? Right? You just think, oh,

634
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:26,919
Speaker 1: electron has the negative charge. So you should think about

635
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: particles the same way. Some of them have this mass property,

636
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 1: other ones don't. And that's the question that we're trying

637
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: to answer, and that's where the Higgs does. The Higgs

638
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: is this crazy idea. It says that maybe there's this

639
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:44,280
Speaker 1: field that fills the entire universe, literally, the whole universe

640
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:47,440
Speaker 1: filled with this new kind of field called the Higgs field,

641
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,320
Speaker 1: a field like an electric field or a magnetic field,

642
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,800
Speaker 1: but now a new kind of field, a Higgs field.

643
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:58,319
Speaker 1: And this field interacts with particles. In some particles it

644
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:00,719
Speaker 1: makes it harder for them to speed up and slowed down,

645
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:04,320
Speaker 1: and other particles it ignores. So if the Higgs field

646
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:07,280
Speaker 1: interacts with your particle like the W the z boson

647
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:09,760
Speaker 1: that it makes it hard for that particle to speed

648
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: up and hard for it to slow down. That means

649
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 1: it has inertia, which is another way of saying it

650
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:19,040
Speaker 1: has mass. So the idea is the mass of these

651
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: particles comes from the way they interact with this new

652
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:25,880
Speaker 1: crazy field. And photons just don't interact with that field.

653
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: They fly right through without even noticing. That was the idea.

654
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:33,440
Speaker 1: And if this field existed, it explained why some particles

655
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: got mass and some particles didn't get mass. And then

656
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:40,360
Speaker 1: the prediction of that field, it says, if that field exists,

657
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: then sometimes it would get excited, and in certain spots

658
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:46,360
Speaker 1: it would get excited enough to create out of the

659
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 1: vacuum this particle called the Higgs boson. So the Higgs

660
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:52,840
Speaker 1: boson and the Higgs field are two different things, but

661
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:55,479
Speaker 1: one sort of proof of the existence of the other.

662
00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:58,720
Speaker 1: So that's what we looked for at the Hadron collider.

663
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:02,400
Speaker 1: We try to create enough localized energy using our collider

664
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 1: to create Higgs boson so we could spot it, which

665
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: would be proof of the existence of the Higgs field,

666
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: which would explain why particles have mass. So what was

667
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 1: that experience like as it was discovered. I'm sure that

668
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:17,279
Speaker 1: was just a huge celebration, huh. It was sort of

669
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:21,719
Speaker 1: like running a marathon. Honestly, it's such a long process.

670
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 1: We've been looking for the Higgs for decades. When I

671
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 1: started in particle physics in about it was the top

672
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:32,319
Speaker 1: priority for particle physics, and then we discovered it, you know,

673
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: in two thousand and twelve. And along the way there

674
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:37,480
Speaker 1: were times we thought we might have hints of it,

675
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 1: and times we thought we'll never see it, or you know,

676
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 1: will we even have the power to discover it um

677
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,319
Speaker 1: But it sort of happened gradually. We started to see

678
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,799
Speaker 1: the hints, little bits of evidence here, a little bits

679
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: of evidence there, started build up slowly, slowly, slowly, until

680
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: eventually we crossed the official threshold for having enough data

681
00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 1: to convince ourselves and decide say, yes, we say that

682
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:03,160
Speaker 1: we've discovered it. But it's sort of like when you

683
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: get to mile twenty two of your marathon. At that

684
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 1: point you're pretty sure you're gonna finish, you just sort

685
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: of got to stumble across the finish line. There's no

686
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:15,319
Speaker 1: like real moment there where we said, okay, we've discovered it.

687
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a public announcement, but by that

688
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 1: point everybody inside the community had already been convinced that

689
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 1: it was real. It was there, so it wasn't really

690
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,919
Speaker 1: like a It's not like some late night moment where

691
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 1: the experiment concluded and we saw the results pop up

692
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 1: on the screen and nature tells us the answer. More

693
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,600
Speaker 1: of a low accumulation of results. And the other thing

694
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't recognize is this

695
00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 1: was done by massive teams of people, or maybe ten

696
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:48,239
Speaker 1: people were involved intimately in this process. So again, it's

697
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:53,319
Speaker 1: not like you're maybe your romantic view of a physicist

698
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: or you know, grad student late at night alone in

699
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 1: the lab seeing the answer for the first time and

700
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: having that experience of knowing something about the universe that

701
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 1: nobody else knows. Right, That's that's an exciting idea. It

702
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:10,319
Speaker 1: was like meetings and discussions and long conversations and more

703
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: meetings and millions of power points slides and you know,

704
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: I don't mean to undermine the glamorous nature or particle

705
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: physics or anything, but you asked what was it like?

706
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:22,239
Speaker 1: And you know it was a long slog. Yeah, it is.

707
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 1: It is funny because I think we do all imagine

708
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 1: It's like, everybody, get in here. Jerry saw it. Jerry

709
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:33,359
Speaker 1: pushed the big red button. Who discovered the Higgs boson? Yeah,

710
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 1: you know, the thing is that the Higgs is pretty rare.

711
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: Even if you focus your particle beams and give them

712
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 1: a lot of energy, you're producing one every few seconds,

713
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:45,280
Speaker 1: whereas you have you know, billions of collisions and seconds.

714
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: So you have to sift through a lot of collisions,

715
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 1: and then you have to do it for a long

716
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: time to accumulate enough examples that you statistically can say

717
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:57,239
Speaker 1: we're pretty sure it exists. So it's uh, it's a

718
00:38:57,280 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: long game. It's like, you know, you're putting a puzz

719
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: of pieces together, and before you get the last piece in,

720
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 1: you're pretty sure you knew what the puzzle looks like,

721
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: but you know you still have to go through the

722
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:09,360
Speaker 1: work of putting all the finding those little ledge pieces

723
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:11,719
Speaker 1: and filling in the sky and all those pieces. You know,

724
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,840
Speaker 1: I've heard you talk about those numbers of collisions and

725
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:18,279
Speaker 1: numbers of experiments that you have to do. When you

726
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: say a lot, it's actually it's pretty mind blowing. Can

727
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:23,399
Speaker 1: you talk about what that is when you're doing these

728
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: experiments to find something that you know is pretty rare.

729
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:31,959
Speaker 1: What frequency of experiments are you doing? And then and

730
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,800
Speaker 1: and then how many of them? Right? So we're looking

731
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:38,320
Speaker 1: for rare stuff. Most of the time when you collide

732
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: to protons together, not much happens to protons come out. Occasionally,

733
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:44,840
Speaker 1: you know, one in a million or one in a

734
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: billion times something different will happen. So if you want

735
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 1: to see a lot of examples of the rare stuff,

736
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:53,280
Speaker 1: you've got to sift through a huge number of examples

737
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:54,839
Speaker 1: of the boring stuff. So that's why we do as

738
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,400
Speaker 1: many collisions as we can. So we do it every

739
00:39:57,440 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: twenty five nanoseconds. So we have these huge detectors at

740
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 1: certain which are focused around this collision points, and then

741
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: the accelerator runs through the heart of the detector and

742
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:11,839
Speaker 1: it delivers two beams which cross right at that collision point.

743
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: And the beams are not like let's shoot one particle

744
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:18,880
Speaker 1: at one other particle. You shoot like a bunch of

745
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 1: particles like ten to the thirteen protons at another bunch

746
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:25,879
Speaker 1: tended of tending the thirteen protons and hope to get

747
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 1: some collisions. And then you have these bunches staggered through

748
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:34,040
Speaker 1: your accelerator. Accelerators a big circle, so you imagine all

749
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:38,480
Speaker 1: these little bunches zooming through the accelerator in perfect coincidence.

750
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: They overlap right at these collision points, and you get

751
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 1: these collisions every five nanoseconds, and every time there's a collision,

752
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 1: we take this massive digital picture, and then we have

753
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 1: this enormous fire hose the data that pours out of

754
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:57,160
Speaker 1: the detector, and we have to somehow try to capture

755
00:40:57,200 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 1: that and analyze it and simplify and reduce it so

756
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:01,839
Speaker 1: that we can oil it all down to answer an

757
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 1: actual physics question, like does this particle exist. To me,

758
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:07,719
Speaker 1: that's one of the fun parts. I'm sort of a

759
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:12,360
Speaker 1: statistics and data processing, machine learning kind of guy, data science,

760
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:14,640
Speaker 1: and so for me, it's a really fun puzzles how

761
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 1: to drink from this massive fire hose of information and

762
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: answer very high level questions about the universe. It's pretty amazing.

763
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: So so Mega, we've gotten a chance to talk about

764
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 1: traveling at light speed, quantum teleportation, the Higgs boson. I

765
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:31,760
Speaker 1: don't know if achieve it. I still have a thousand

766
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:37,160
Speaker 1: more questions I could ask. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're

767
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,239
Speaker 1: gonna have to have you back on Daniel sometime, but

768
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:41,759
Speaker 1: I do hope that all of our listeners will check

769
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:44,600
Speaker 1: out your awesome book that you and Jorge have worked

770
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 1: on together. We have no idea, but Daniel, thanks so

771
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 1: much for joining us on Part Time Genius. Thank you

772
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: very much. A lot of fun guys, and I'd love

773
00:41:51,800 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 1: to be back anytime. Remember thanks again for listening. Part

774
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and

775
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 1: wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the

776
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 1: important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil

777
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 1: does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song

778
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 1: and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Roland does

779
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 1: the exact producer thing. Gave. Loesier is our lead researcher,

780
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan

781
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:29,279
Speaker 1: Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the

782
00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like

783
00:42:31,640 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, and if you

784
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave

785
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: a good review for us. Did you forget James Jason

786
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:38,759
Speaker 1: who