WEBVTT - Fan Favorite: Will we ever Travel Faster than Light Speed? 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:05.120 Hey, their podcast listeners. So we are re airing an 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.080 episode today, but it's for a great reason, I promise 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:10.119 you know. Will and I are working on this brand 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:12.680 new podcast that debuts next week. It's called Daniel and 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.000 Jorge Explained the Universe. It is super fun, and we 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:18.600 commissioned it with the hopes that not only would get 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.560 people excited about space and all these big questions out there, 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:24.840 but also for all the budding scientists and and the 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:27.560 kids who listen with their parents, because you know, we 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.040 wanted to feed all those hungry minds. Anyway, Daniel and 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:34.000 Jorge is a twice weekly chat show between a particle 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:37.040 physicist and a super smart cartoonist, and we hope you'll 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.240 tune in. But since that show isn't launching for another week, 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:42.440 we thought you might want to hear our conversation with 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.720 the Daniel of Daniel and Jorge Daniel Whites and I 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:50.839 hope you dig it. Guess what Mango? What's that? Will? So, 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:53.680 have you seen the last Jedi yet? I have. I 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:55.200 was going to ask you a question about it, but 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:57.960 we have to keep this spoiler free here, so I'm 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.800 honestly kind of scared to say anything. Uh, do you 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:03.560 want to say it in pick ladin? No, No, I'm 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:05.720 just I'm too nervous. But I will say this, so 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:08.920 it seems fair to say that light speed plays a 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.959 pretty big role in the Star Wars films. That's what 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:14.800 you wanted to say. I mean, it's true. But well, 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:16.560 you know, as I sat there in the theater, my 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.080 mind started wandering again. You know, not because it isn't 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.000 a great movie. I really liked it, but I started 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.000 thinking again about the idea of traveling at or beyond 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:28.160 light speed. And it's one of the age old questions, 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:32.119 you know, will anything ever travel beyond light speed? Well 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:34.040 it's a good thing. We have a brilliant author here 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:35.920 today is to answer some of the biggest questions about 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.560 the universe, and only one of them is about Star Wars. Yeah, 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:41.160 but the book that he's written is called We Have 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:43.840 No Idea. But you're right, we should give him a 0:01:43.880 --> 0:02:07.680 shot anyway, So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:09.920 welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.080 always I'm joined by my good friend Man gues Ticketer 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:14.440 and the man on the other side of the soundproof glass. 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.640 Sporting an impressive coral saken hair part. That's our friend 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:21.040 and producer Tristan McNeil, who knew his hair could even 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:23.640 part like that. So that's not what we're here to 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.799 talk about, or is it maybe another episode? I don't 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.520 think it's anyway. So I know you and I have 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:31.400 recently been talking about the fact that over the past 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.000 few years there have been all these big science events 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.320 that have just gotten so much attention and people have 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:38.880 gotten really excited about. We had the discovery of the 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:42.000 Higgs boson a few years ago. We had that big 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:44.400 eclipse that you and I and our families all traveled 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.200 out to see. There was um quantum teleportation and all 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:52.079 this excitement and confusion surrounding it, and so much more. 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.440 It's fun when events like these capture the world's attention. 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.079 But but sometimes these events and the science around them 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.560 can be very difficult to commune. Okay, but today we've 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:03.600 got to truly give the communicator and one of the 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:06.040 co authors of a book called We Have No Idea, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.519 Daniel Whites, and welcome to Part Time Genius. Hello, thank 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:11.760 you very much for having me on now. Daniel, this 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.640 is a really interesting partnership for this book. You know, 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.640 you're a particle physicist that you see Irvine doing a 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:20.240 lot of your research over at CERN and and you've 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.079 partnered with a terrific cartoonist and Jorge cham And It's 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:26.040 been a lot of fun getting to know you guys 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:28.880 over the past couple of months now. Jorge also has 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.000 a PhD and robotics. So I have to ask, how 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.320 did you guys meet and then decide to take on 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.280 a project like we have no idea? Well, we met 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:39.760 on Tinder first. Oh good, it's a great way to 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.960 get going, you know, like most modern couples that we 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:47.880 did meet on the internet. It was maybe ten years 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.480 ago now, and I was thinking about other ways we 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.920 could communicate physics to the general public because I felt 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.240 like there's a lot of exciting questions we're asking with physics, 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.320 but we're not always doing a great job of expressing 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.200 that excitement and the basic ideas to the general public. 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.160 And I thought there was an opening there to communicate 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:10.880 some of the stuff using cartoons. Actually, I saw a 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.920 really awesome technical comic put out by Google when they 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.279 put out their latest browser, the Chrome browser, and Scott 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.120 McCloud made a technical comic about the Chrome browser, and like, 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:24.840 if you're not into writing browsers, you might not be 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.719 into reading comics about browsers. But they had a great 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.000 job of making this seem interesting, and I thought, wow, 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.440 if they can make browser development sound fun, and maybe 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.360 cartoons are a good way to show other things like physics. 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.080 But I don't have any artistic skills myself, and so 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.640 I couldn't draw these cartoons myself. Um, but of course 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:48.120 I was aware of Jorge and his amazing work PhD comics. 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.080 You know, he's something of an internet celebrity in academia. 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:55.280 Everybody knows him, and his comics are really captured the 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:59.680 restoration of research and academic life. Anyway, my wife suggested 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.120 she's also an academic and she's a big fan of his. 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:04.599 She said, why don't you email or him and asked 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.039 him to do it. And I thought, yeah, right, that's 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.479 just like emailing Brad Pitt and ask him about the movie. 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.680 That's that's pretty awesome. And the project that resulted from 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.159 that a few years later, obviously is is we have 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:17.880 no idea, so can you tell us a little bit 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:21.159 about the the idea behind this book? Yeah, I thought 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:23.800 that there's a lot of great science communication that's happening, 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.680 but most of it was focused on what we do 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:29.320 know about the universe, all the amazing things that science 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.160 has learned, and it's important to show people what we 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.240 figured out. But I thought something was missing that. I 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.440 felt like people had a misunderstanding of how much we 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:42.560 knew about the universe. So we thought, let's instead write 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:46.279 a book showing people all the huge, the very basic 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:50.000 open questions of the universe, really simple stuff that we 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.320 haven't yet figured out, stuff like how big is the universe? 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:55.680 And how did it start? And how will it end. 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.680 I thought there must be an appetite for people who 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.760 are really interested in this basic stuff and excited to 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.599 learn that we haven't yet figured it out. Because to me, 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.880 ignorance is an opportunity. It's a possibility of things you 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:11.560 could discover in the future. And when I was a kid, 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.400 I was always excited about that possibility of exploring the 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:19.240 unknown and figuring out something new, discovering that the world 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:21.440 was different from the way we thought it might be 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:26.000 and turned out to be completely counterintuitive, like the discoveries 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:29.400 of quantum mechanics and relativity. I wanted to give people 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:32.760 the sense that such discoveries, discoveries that that basic scale 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:34.800 might still be ahead of us, that there are still 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.719 really big basic questions that we haven't answered. So that 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.640 was the idea behind running this book. And can you 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.120 tell us just a little bit about you know, I 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:46.440 know you're a particle physicist, that's certain, but what does 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:48.400 that mean exactly and what are you doing in the lab? 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.320 So it's certain we collide protons together. We take the 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:54.720 protons and speed them up to nearly the speed of light, 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:59.200 and then the particles inside the protons collide and turn 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:03.680 into balls of energy. Temporarily, they lose their form of 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.080 matter and turn into pure energy. And then that energy 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.200 has this amazing feature which it can turn into any 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.480 kind of particle in the universe as long as there's 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:16.960 enough energy budget there. So if you've poured enough energy 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:19.720 into your collisions, you can make any kind of particle 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.880 there is, which means you can discover new kinds of 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.960 matter even if you didn't know it existed. So that's 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:27.880 sort of awesome. It's a it's a way to explore 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.000 the universe. And that's the thing that got me excited 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:34.120 about particle physics is exploring what the universe has made 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:36.360 out of how is it work at its smallest levels? 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:40.640 What is the organizational principle for this whole ridiculous, beautiful 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:43.880 universe we find ourselves in. And the fascinating thing about 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.120 that is that it used to be the particle physics, 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:49.560 which looks at the very very small it's totally disconnected 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:53.239 from cosmology, which looks at like the very big history 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.559 of the universe the future of the universe. These days, 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.440 these two fields have kind of converged because we're asking 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.000 a lot of similar questions, Like one of the big 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:05.960 questions and cosmology is what is all the dark matter? Right? 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:09.840 Where is all this missing invisible matter in the universe. Well, 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:12.440 it's certain what we're trying to do is make dark matter. 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:15.320 We're trying to collide those particles together to make a 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.080 new kind of matter, and we might produce dark matter 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:21.200 in the laboratory, giving this insight into what's happening at 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:23.760 the very very big scale. I love that there's so 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:27.000 many fascinating things in that statement, and also so many 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:29.360 questions I have coming out of it. And I also 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.640 just love that like it starts with such a simple idea, 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.720 like the joy of crashing things together. And creating all 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:41.160 these new things that it's stunning. But um, I know general, 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:43.240 crushing things together is a good way to start the 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:48.080 scientific experiment. Well Will was asking at the beginning of 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.280 the episode about the Last Jedi. You don't want to 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:53.839 have said anyone with spoilers, but he talked about how 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:55.600 the speed of light does come up in it, and 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.400 is it possible or will it be possible for anything 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.400 to travel faster than light speed? So I just saw 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:04.560 that movie and I was thinking about the same stuff 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:06.480 when I was watching it. I thought they did it 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.200 without spoilers. I thought they did a pretty good job 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:13.440 of bringing some real physics into that situation. But your 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.439 question was will we ever travel faster than the speed 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.160 of light? Um? Of all the things we don't know 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.760 about the universe, this is one we're pretty sure. We 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:25.920 know that nothing can move through space faster than the 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.800 speed of light. Now I didn't answer your question directly. 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:30.520 I changed it a little bit so I could be 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.560 more more definitive. That is, nothing can move through space 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.640 faster than the speed of light, So an object flying 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:41.960 through space can't ever go faster than lighthood. However, that's 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:46.000 a really important copy moving through space because recently we 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:48.720 discovered in the last few decades that space is a 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.079 weird thing. Space can do things that we didn't understand. 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:55.160 If you think space is just like the emptiness in 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:58.520 the universe, the backdrop on which everything happens, and then 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:00.040 you need to get caught up with some modern of 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.600 physics because space does really weird things like bend and 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:08.479 expand and ripple. So if your goal is not necessarily 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:11.800 to move faster than light through space, but just to 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:15.360 get somewhere fast, like you want to go from you know, 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.560 your rebel base to wherever you need to go, and 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:21.120 you want to not spend a million years getting there, 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.160 then instead of moving through space fast in the speed 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:28.960 of light, you might want to just compress space itself. Right, 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.880 so you can bring these two locations, which ostensibly are 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.480 very very far apart, if you can bring them closer 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:40.040 together by by shrinking space, by compressing space, then you 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.439 can get there rapidly without going faster than the speed 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.600 of light. And that's the actual idea behind developing actual 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:51.760 work drives. So while you can't move through space fast 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.680 than the speed of light, we might actually technically be 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.679 able to eventually construct work drives that can get us 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:02.400 to distant places faster than traveling through normal space. It's 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:05.920 just it's as simple as that manger. It really, that's 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.280 all there is to it. So I assume that we're 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.120 pretty close to this whole space compression thing, like with 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:13.960 the next five to ten years, we should be able 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:16.240 to do this. Is that right, Daniel? I would not 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:20.040 invest in those companies, but you know there's a fascinating 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:23.720 transition there, right. Anytime, if something is just totally impossible, 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:27.880 it's totally impossible. But now we've moved warp drives from 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:33.280 totally impossible to completely impractical and very very very difficult, 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:35.720 which means, yeah, in ten years it will probably just 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:38.360 be an half on your iPhone, right because now we 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:43.720 just handed it from physicists to engineers, and in current calculations, 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:47.400 you know, the energy to run a warp drive, even 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.560 go to like Alpha Centauri would require more energy than 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:53.280 is contained in like the planet jup, all the massive 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:58.280 planet Jupiter. Okay, so fast, incredible quantities of energy we 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:02.200 can't even imagine. However, you know, it's it's it's just 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.640 become an efficiency problem. Now somebody can build a better one, 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:07.840 and you can build a more effective one, right, And 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.920 of course, for your listeners, nobody's actually constructed any sort 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:16.080 of functioning warp drive. But theoretically it's not impossible to 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:20.880 compress space to travel places faster than light could. Um. 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.439 And that's what I liked about in that movie. You know, 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.920 they don't just go places instantly in the last They 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.440 don't just disappear from one place and appear somewhere else. 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:30.560 They have to get there. And even though they're moving 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:34.480 through hyperspace, right, there's still a speed they're moving through 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.719 hyperspace and a maximum this limitation there. And so that's 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:41.040 where the physics comes in, right, is in providing plot 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:45.560 points and the limitations. Well, I have a follow up 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:48.880 question to that in terms of headlines from earlier this 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.920 year that dealt with traveling through space, and I want 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:53.520 to ask you about that. But before we do that, 0:12:53.640 --> 0:13:09.320 let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:11.400 We're talking to Daniel Whites and one of the co 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.840 authors of We Have No Idea, this awesome book that 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:17.320 talks about all of the things in the universe, not 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.360 necessarily that we do know, but the many big questions 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:22.720 that we don't know. And we're putting Daniel on the 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:26.000 spot today and asking him to answer every single big 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.080 question about the universe that seems reasonable to me. Think, 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.640 So what do you think? So? Yeah, so, so before 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:34.800 the break, I mentioned that I had another question that 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:38.840 related to headlines that we saw everywhere earlier this year. 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:43.200 There was a headline that said, first object teleported from Earth, 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.400 and I have to be honest, Daniel, I struggled with 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:50.960 the way the media was covering this event that happened, 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.160 this quantum teleportation, and I wanted to see if you 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:56.560 could talk to us a little bit about that and 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.280 does it relate to what we were talking about earlier, 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.480 this idea of you know, being able to travel through 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.520 space at faster than the speed of Like, can you 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:07.480 just talk to us a little bit about this event 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.000 and and how the media may have struggled a little 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:14.920 bit to communicate what actually happened in that experiment. Yeah. 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.000 I read those headlines that I was pretty excited object 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:20.560 teleported into space. I thought, Wow, we're going to be 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.000 beaming up to space stations in the next few years, right, 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.360 But you're right, the media totally failed to convaye that 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:32.560 accurately because no object was teleported into space. Um. Instead, 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:37.240 information was sent into space, and that's much less exciting 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:41.320 because it's essentially just beaming a message. Right. So you can, 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.160 we know already how to send information from one place 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:46.960 to another. We have lots of techniques for that. Radio 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:49.080 laser or some of these things move at the speed 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.760 of light. Right. Um. This was more interesting because it's 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:57.520 quantum teleportation. Right. It's a process by which quantum information, 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:00.360 like the state of an atom or a photon, can 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:04.600 be transmitted exactly from one location to another. Right. And 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:09.440 it involves like entangling particles and using their quantum relationships 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.240 to send that information. So it's a new way to 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:16.880 send information. But it's not telebrotation, right. It's not like 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:20.920 your concept where something disappears and it's reappeared somewhere else, 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.520 reassembled there. Um. And it's also does not move faster 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:26.920 than the speed of light. A lot of people think 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:32.120 quantum entanglement is a way around uh sending information is 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.960 a way around the maximum speed limit for information. Unfortunately 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:40.200 it's not. So this headline describes them, which would have 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:43.120 been exciting if it was accurate, but instead it was 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:47.200 a cool technical achievement. They had transmitted information using this 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:51.680 new quantum technique further than anybody ever had, and they 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:53.880 sent it out into space, which nobody had done before. 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.280 But it doesn't break the speed limit of the universe. 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:00.320 It's still limited to the speed of light and doesn't 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:04.720 actually send anything anywhere than information. So it's sort of deflating, 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:06.960 and I think it gets to a larger point of 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:09.400 how this stuff happens, Like how do you do an 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.880 interesting experiment and then some journalist writes it up as 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.920 if it's something different, as if it's something much more dramatic. 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:19.400 You know. There's another example of that just a couple 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:22.760 of days ago, when the Pentagon released all of its 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:28.120 footage from this UFO program, and of course they saw 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.960 nothing there to indicates the presence of aliens on Earth. 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:33.960 But I've been watching the news and it's been everywhere. 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:36.680 All this stuff has been covered as if we're now 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:39.480 just discovered that the that the Pentagon has been talking 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:43.920 to aliens, and the headlines headlines or things like summary 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:48.600 of human encounters with um, you know, summary of human 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:52.560 encounters of the third kind, and it's all total misleading 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:54.440 click base. But I think that's one of the problems 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.960 with science journalism these days is that in the crowded 0:16:57.000 --> 0:17:00.600 media community to have to sort of scream for attention, uh, 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:05.840 touting even modest research achievements as incredible events in human history. 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.080 So unfortunately nothing was teleported into space. Otherwise I would 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:11.800 be in line because I'd like to get up there. 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:14.040 I do wish we had talked to you about the 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:16.840 whole alien thing, because we're we're actually recording this from 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:21.280 a bunker right now, so it would have been useful information. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.800 I wish you had quantum teleported that information to us 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.919 before a bunker. I would expect you guys to be 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.159 on a mountain top with flags and come talk to 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:34.120 us actually on the quantum teleportation before we move on 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:36.640 to another topic. I mean, it is one of those things, 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:39.680 like you said, should have been a celebrated achievement because 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:41.840 it is something that had been done in a way 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.400 that had never been done before and at that distance. 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:46.320 Can you talk to us a little bit about what 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:49.480 the implications are if we are speaking about it accurately, 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.480 of what this could mean for us. Well, it's an 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.359 improved way to send information. So quantum teleportation is just 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:59.920 a copying of quantum information. Like electron spin or photon 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:04.000 state um that can be transmitted in principle exactly from 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.240 one location to another. And the cool thing about that 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:12.720 is just sending information without noise over that information loss, right, 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:17.320 And of course in a an actual practically built system, 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.200 there is always information loss because you can't isolate these 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.399 particles from their environment. But the hope is if we 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:26.439 perfect this kind of technology, you could send information with 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:30.280 less noise, with less information loss over longer distances. So 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.600 it's always good to have several technologies being developed in 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:36.680 order to send information. So this is another one that 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:41.040 could could in principle in the future give us information 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:45.400 transmission with less power and less less noise and less 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:48.320 data loss. So, Daniel, I know we've chat a little 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:50.239 bit about dark matter in the in the past, and 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.960 I just thought that conversation was so fascinating. But I 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:55.880 want you to share some of that with our listeners. 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:58.840 And it's not just something that's out there, but it's 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:00.719 actually something that's all around, is right. Can you talk 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:03.119 a little bit about that. Yeah, this is one of 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.439 my favorite things about physics is when it reveals to 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:07.879 us that the world we thought we lived in is 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:10.639 actually totally different if you look at it using a 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:14.000 new tool or a new perspective. And that's what we've 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.199 discovered with dark matter. We've discovered that most of the 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.040 universe is not the kind of matter that you're familiar 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:21.800 with the kind of matter that makes up the chair 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:24.000 you're sitting on, or either air you're breathing, or the 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:28.040 coffee you're sipping, or stars or gases or planets or dust. 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:30.919 That most of the universe, the matter in the universe 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:34.320 is something else, something invisible, this thing called dark matter. 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.520 And most people, if they hear about dark matter, they think, oh, 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:40.360 maybe that's some weird kind of matter out there in space. 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:43.719 But the thing about dark matter is that it's it 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.560 has gravity, It attracts everything with mass to it, and 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:51.480 it clusters a coalescence together indeed, into these big blobs. 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:55.159 And those big blobs line up perfectly with where normal 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.040 matter is, like galaxies and stars and gas and dust. 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.760 Most of the dark matter and universe is distributed where 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:05.440 the normal matter is because they attract each other gravitationally. 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.679 And so what that means is that very likely we 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:11.840 are sitting in a soup of dark matter. Like can 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:14.680 you imagine all the air in the room around you. Right, 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:17.639 that's the matter that we understand, but it's invisible, and 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.280 you're cool with being surrounded by invisible matter most of 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.359 the time. But you didn't realize is that there's also 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:27.240 five times as much matter in the form of dark 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:29.480 matter that you weren't even aware of, and it's here 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:31.960 with us. You hold out your hands and you close 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:35.520 them together. You're enclosing some dark matter. You're holding dark 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.920 matter in your hands. Now, you can't interact with dark 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.280 matter and call it dark, but really it should be 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:45.439 called invisible or in transible, intransible what's the word for 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:51.000 something you can't touch. It should be called an untouchable matter, right, 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.920 untouchable matter because you pass right through it. Right, you 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:59.440 can't feel it and it can't feel you. So it's 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:02.240 everywhere all around us, and I think most people don't 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:04.560 realize that. Every day when they go to school or 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:06.520 go to work, or get in their car, whatever, they're 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:09.640 moving through this invisible ocean of dark matter. Yeah, that's 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.640 unbelievable to think about. So how do we know that 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:16.879 it's there? Or how did astrophysicists figure out that dark 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.960 matter was was out there? It's a great story how 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:23.040 dark matter was discovered. It's sort of a classic science 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:26.800 story where somebody was just dotting the eyes and crossing 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:29.159 the teas and saying, well, I think we understand how 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:31.720 this works. Let's just make sure and do some double checks. 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.480 And then those double checks revealed that something was very, 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.800 very wrong with our understanding of the universe. So the 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.679 double check was looking at how galaxies rotate. Um. You know, 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:46.440 galaxies are these big swarms of stars, and galaxies are spinning. Now, 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:48.720 if you imagine the galaxy spinning, you think of it 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:51.159 like a merry go round, Right, you might wonder, like, 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:55.399