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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, have you been keeping up with the science

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Speaker 1: news headlines? Oh? What does that mean? What do you mean? Oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm guessing there was some new clickbait article about how

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Speaker 1: scientists mate bananas go faster than light or something crazy.

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Speaker 1: They have you eat them faster than light. But that's

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Speaker 1: not news. Well they are kind of slippery. But are

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Speaker 1: you saying that we shouldn't trust science headlines? You think

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Speaker 1: it's fake news? Well, you know, sometimes the headlines don't

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Speaker 1: reflect within the article, and sometimes the news article doesn't

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Speaker 1: reflect the actual research that's been done, and sometimes the

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Speaker 1: research itself it's questionable. We Oh, you're saying even peer

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Speaker 1: reviewed papers can be wrong. What can we trust? Then

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Speaker 1: you can trust podcasters, I guess I hope all podcasters,

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Speaker 1: even the ones that make tales of sasquatch. All right,

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Speaker 1: you can trust us, Just trust us, well you us,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a cartoonist. Padn't trust me with physics verification?

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Speaker 1: Then you got to listen to the podcast Learn Physics

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Speaker 1: so you can figure it out for yourself. Trust yourself. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I see this is now a self improvement podcast. Hi.

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Speaker 1: Am Jorheme, a cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor you

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Speaker 1: see Irvine, and I do believe that learning physics is

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Speaker 1: a form of self improvement. Well, it depends on what

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Speaker 1: kind of physics, doesn't it. How about the physics of

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Speaker 1: eating fatty foods? And Yeah, the more you understand it,

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Speaker 1: the better you are informed, and the more educated choices

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Speaker 1: you can make. Yeah, but educated choices in this stally

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Speaker 1: meaning it's the right. I know potato chips aren't good

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Speaker 1: for you, but I still eat him. And you'd rather

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Speaker 1: eat them and not know that they're not good for you? Huh? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe maybe that might help my self improvement. It might

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Speaker 1: help yourself enlargement. Yeah, my happiness. Oh wait, did you

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Speaker 1: mean something else to each of their own chip? But anyways,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

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Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio in which we try to help

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Speaker 1: you on your journey of self improvement by teaching you

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Speaker 1: everything we do and do not know about the universe.

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Speaker 1: We also help you on your journey of mental self

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Speaker 1: enlargement as we try to grow your brain in your

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Speaker 1: mind and fit more understanding of the universe into it.

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Speaker 1: Because the universe is big and filled with mysteries and

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Speaker 1: all sorts of things that we have and have not

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Speaker 1: figured out, things that future physicists, maybe one of you

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Speaker 1: out there will figure out one day. Yeah, because it

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Speaker 1: is an amazing universe, one that is always expanding, it seems,

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Speaker 1: with all kinds of interesting knowledge and interesting phenomena to study,

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Speaker 1: to wonder about, to ask questions about, and also to

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Speaker 1: crime into your brain. And it seems like every single

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Speaker 1: day we're learning something that science has figured out. They've

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Speaker 1: done a new study on banana slugs, or they've done

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Speaker 1: a new study on bananas. There's a huge population and

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Speaker 1: scientists out there doing studies, learning things about the universe

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Speaker 1: and putting them out there in papers. Well, that's kind

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Speaker 1: of what you would expect, right, I mean, scientists aren't

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Speaker 1: working all the time and they should becoming up Whitney results, right,

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Speaker 1: Otherwise what are they doing exactly? And it's a wonderful,

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Speaker 1: delicious fountain of knowledge that science is creating. And that

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Speaker 1: knowledge is not just for other scientists, it's for everybody.

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Speaker 1: We all want to know. What are the answers to

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Speaker 1: the deep mysteries of the universe? How fast is it expanding?

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Speaker 1: What's inside black holes? How did our solar system get

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Speaker 1: to be the way that it is. So it's not

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Speaker 1: just other physics professors who read the writings of physics professors.

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Speaker 1: It's everybody out there who wants to know the answers

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Speaker 1: to these big questions. Yeah, sometimes what scientists discover gets

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Speaker 1: into the news media and out there into the general population.

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Speaker 1: But I feel like it's it's kind of a filter though,

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Speaker 1: Like only the juicy headlines make it out there into

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Speaker 1: the big newspapers. It is a bit of a mystery

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Speaker 1: to me what gets covered. I mean, I read a

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Speaker 1: lot of physics papers, and then sometimes I'll read a

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Speaker 1: popular article about one, and I'll think, like, why did

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Speaker 1: this one get chosen to make a big deal about

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Speaker 1: It's not really that big a deal, but you know,

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Speaker 1: you can take some little aspect of it and make

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Speaker 1: it sound like it's a really big deal, because most

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Speaker 1: people out there don't understand a bigger picture of the field.

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Speaker 1: Is this really a big step forward or is it

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Speaker 1: a tiny little increment? And we're just hearing about the

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Speaker 1: overall motivation for this entire line of research. So it's

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Speaker 1: hard when you're not an expert to really understand what

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Speaker 1: was a breakthrough and what wasn't. Well, I don't think

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Speaker 1: it's a big mystery. There's probably a science reporter out

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Speaker 1: there that needs to also work to write something on

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Speaker 1: a deadline. Probably, Yeah, I guess you got to pick

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Speaker 1: something to trumpet about. That's the job. The really good articles, though,

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Speaker 1: do put things in context. They talk to experts, or

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Speaker 1: they are written by experts, so the reader can really

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Speaker 1: get a sense of is this a huge, huge leap

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Speaker 1: forward or is this just promising potential breakthroughs or what's

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Speaker 1: really going on? Well, it seems like there's a interesting

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Speaker 1: science headlines every other week, But I guess sometimes people

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Speaker 1: need a little bit of help figuring out which ones

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Speaker 1: are a big deal and which ones are maybe a

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Speaker 1: little bit, you know, over enthusiastically reported on by the reporter.

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Speaker 1: If you just believe all the headlines that you read,

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Speaker 1: you would think that every couple of weeks there's a

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Speaker 1: result that's going to change fundamentally the way science works.

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Speaker 1: That like, science is going to pivot on this result

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Speaker 1: that that we'll look back on history and say, wow,

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Speaker 1: there was a time before and after we knew this

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Speaker 1: one fact in reality, though, a lot of times you'll

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Speaker 1: read about something which sounds like a big deal, and

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Speaker 1: then you'll never hear about it again, which tells you like,

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Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't really that big a deal. So it's

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Speaker 1: hard to sift through and figure out like which ones

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Speaker 1: historically are actually going to seem like pivot moments in

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Speaker 1: history and which ones are just going to have sort

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Speaker 1: of filled the news cycle for that week. But I

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Speaker 1: feel like that's kind of maybe one of the exciting

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Speaker 1: things about science. You know, this idea that establish ideas

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Speaker 1: can be overturned at any moment, and you know, everyone's

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Speaker 1: working on a big idea of their own, you know,

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Speaker 1: because we haven't figured things out, and so everyone has

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Speaker 1: a different angle on it, and any focus that anyone

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Speaker 1: makes could potentially, in reality, overturn what we know. Right,

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Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, And it's tempting to look back on

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Speaker 1: history and say, oh, there was an obvious line, a

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Speaker 1: step from A to B to C to D, and

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Speaker 1: that's how we got to where we are. But when

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Speaker 1: you're in the moment, you don't know which direction is

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Speaker 1: going to bear fruit and which one isn't. The true

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Speaker 1: history of science is sort of like a big branching

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Speaker 1: tree where lots of those branches were later abandoned or

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Speaker 1: died off, and when you're at the tip of the

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Speaker 1: latest branch, you don't necessarily know which direction to go.

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Speaker 1: So that's why people are exploring in lots of different

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Speaker 1: directions and exclaiming excitedly when they figure out something cool.

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Speaker 1: That might mean that this is the future path of

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Speaker 1: all of science. But maybe it's not. Maybe it just

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Speaker 1: dies off after the next branch. You're right, we never

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Speaker 1: do know in the moment. Yeah, you don't want to

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Speaker 1: be that reporter who finds out about something amazing Indensis man,

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Speaker 1: this was an okay result. Yeah, that's true. But it

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Speaker 1: also means that you do need to read all these

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Speaker 1: articles with a grain of salt, and sometimes a spoonful

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Speaker 1: of salt. It seems like, for example, a recent headline

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Speaker 1: that's made the rounds that everyone seems to be very

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Speaker 1: excited about, you've got a lot of questions about it. Yes,

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Speaker 1: there was an article last week that lots of people

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Speaker 1: read and thought, oh my gosh, this seems like a

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Speaker 1: really big deal. I wonder if it's true, And they

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Speaker 1: sent it to me, so I got dozens of emails

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Speaker 1: from listeners and tweets from people asking me, is this

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Speaker 1: for real? What do you think? It seems like it

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Speaker 1: would be more efficient if all reporters just ask you

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Speaker 1: every time they write a science article, and then you

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Speaker 1: could just, you know, impart your judgment. Well you know

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Speaker 1: that happened. Sometimes they do reach out to me to

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Speaker 1: ask me for comment, and reporters out there email me.

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Speaker 1: I actually write back. I'd be happy to comment on

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Speaker 1: research articles. I don't know do they want, Maybe they

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Speaker 1: don't want. Maybe they don't if you're trying to get

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Speaker 1: readers to read their headlines and click through. And now

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Speaker 1: for a splash of cold water. Daniel Whites, Well, the

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Speaker 1: article that came out, it does sound pretty interesting. That

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Speaker 1: has to do with black holes and the expansion of

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Speaker 1: the universe. So today on the podcast, we'll be asking

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Speaker 1: the question, good black holes be making the universe expand faster?

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Speaker 1: Black holes and dark energy too great taste? That tastes

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Speaker 1: great together? Do they? Man? I feel like it's like

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Speaker 1: black holes versus dark energy. It's like Emperor Popatine fighting

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Speaker 1: Darth the It sounds to me like the last round

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Speaker 1: of the Battle of the Bands. Yeah, there you go.

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Speaker 1: We can just sit back with some popcorn and watch

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Speaker 1: what happens. I think black holes and dark energy they've

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Speaker 1: gotta be like metal bands or sort of like goth

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Speaker 1: rock or something. Yeah, I'm sure there are grows up

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Speaker 1: there with those names. But this is an interesting question

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Speaker 1: because at first hearing it kind of sounds kind of intuitive, right,

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Speaker 1: like black holes suck stuff in, they make things more compact,

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Speaker 1: and ye, how can they be making the universe expand faster? Exactly?

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Speaker 1: So it's got all the elements of a huge scientific

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Speaker 1: revolution and big splash in the news. Right, it's counterintuitive,

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Speaker 1: and it solves more than one mystery, like what's going

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Speaker 1: on with black holes and what's going on with dark energy?

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, maybe one explains the other. So it's

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Speaker 1: very tantalizing. Yeah, it's always exciting when there's like a

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Speaker 1: crossover event, right, like Marvel and DC, like Superman and

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Speaker 1: Spiderman working together or against each other making the universe faster.

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Speaker 1: It's like combining two tasty sandwiches. You know, peanut butter

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Speaker 1: sandwich is good, a ruben is good. Would a Ruben

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Speaker 1: with peanut butter be even better? Well, until you do

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Speaker 1: the experiment, you can't know for sure, right, Daniel, you're

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Speaker 1: going to do that experiment? You know, if I was

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Speaker 1: a lunch eating kind of person, I might, but I'll

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Speaker 1: have to leave it to you. I'll pass. I don't.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I need to know that the result

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Speaker 1: listeners let us know. But it's interesting. So this paper

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Speaker 1: came out last week right as of this recording. It did,

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Speaker 1: and it's set the physics world of buzz all sorts

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Speaker 1: of cosmologists and experts in black holes and in dark energy.

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Speaker 1: We're arguing about whether this paper made any sense and

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Speaker 1: what it meant and whether we could believe it. Oh right,

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Speaker 1: because there are experts in both areas and this one

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Speaker 1: try to put them together. Did they ask for a

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Speaker 1: permission or you don't need to ask for permission to

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Speaker 1: write a paper. You can just write it and send

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Speaker 1: it out there and see if people will read it.

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Speaker 1: Why can it They need permission to publish a paper,

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Speaker 1: thoughn't you? It requires the whole committee to approve your paper.

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Speaker 1: To be approved, you definitely need reviewers and all that

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Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But you can just write a paper

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Speaker 1: and put it on the archive and you know people

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Speaker 1: will read it. These days, journal review is sort of

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Speaker 1: a secondary process. People read papers well before they're ever

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Speaker 1: reviewed by journals. Wait wait, wait, wait what you can

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Speaker 1: just post things on the internet without permission. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is a site called archive dot org where all physicists

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Speaker 1: post their papers before they go to the journals, because

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Speaker 1: the journals take forever to review stuff, and you want

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Speaker 1: people to read your results basically as soon as they're ready.

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Speaker 1: So these days most of the actual science happens on

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Speaker 1: what we call preprints, where people post their papers before

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Speaker 1: they go to the journals. Wow, that sounds like having

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Speaker 1: a policy debate over Twitter comments. You wait until you

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Speaker 1: checked it out first, or maybe that is sort of

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Speaker 1: a now part of the process of experts checking it out,

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Speaker 1: you put it out to the whole community. Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: actually a vigorous debate about whether we even need journals

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Speaker 1: anymore now that we have the Internet. Journals aren't necessary

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Speaker 1: for actually publishing and distributing papers. You just have them online,

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Speaker 1: so they're really just there to provide peer review. But

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Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of question about whether peer

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Speaker 1: review actually adds anything to papers, or if it just

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Speaker 1: delays them and burdens a bunch of people with extra work.

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Speaker 1: I guess that feels a little risky. I mean that's

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Speaker 1: sort of like calling Twitter comments peer review or like

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Speaker 1: the like bunds, like, oh, this paper got two thousand likes,

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Speaker 1: it must be true. Well, I never read and believe

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Speaker 1: a paper just as it's been peer reviewed. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to read it myself and see if it makes sense anyway.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, fortunately people out there have us, or

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Speaker 1: at least they have you, to go through papers like

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Speaker 1: this one to see if it makes sense, and they,

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Speaker 1: I guess they have me to ask you about it.

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Speaker 1: That's my role exactly. And so this paper was a

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Speaker 1: lot of fun to read and to talk to my

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Speaker 1: colleagues about. And I also went out there to gather

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Speaker 1: opinions from random people I ran into on the UC

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Speaker 1: Irvine campus. Yeah, because as usual, we're wondering how many

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Speaker 1: people out there I had heard about this paper or

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Speaker 1: had an opinion about whether black holes can make the

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Speaker 1: universe grow faster. Usually people had to say that's not

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Speaker 1: my area of expertise. My understanding was like they're an

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Speaker 1: energy sync though, like the energy goes like it's like

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Speaker 1: the one place where matter could possibly no one like

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Speaker 1: actually be destroyed. So I'm not sure how to answer

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Speaker 1: that question, but my guests would be the negative or

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Speaker 1: it would do the opposite. But again I'm not I

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Speaker 1: guess that would be an astrophysicist would be their expertise.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't really know much about black holes,

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Speaker 1: and so I'm assuming maybe I wouldn't think so, because

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Speaker 1: like black holes are meant to like go inwards right

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Speaker 1: like almost like a funnel, and it's they seem to

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Speaker 1: be pulling things in, So I would almost expect the opposite,

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Speaker 1: where it would like help fast forward the I don't

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Speaker 1: know when everything condenses. That's my opinion, at least. I'm

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Speaker 1: not a physics I don't know. So I was actually

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Speaker 1: just reading this paper last week. I think it's a

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Speaker 1: really interesting result, you know. I think the media has

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Speaker 1: maybe blown it a little bit out of proportion and

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Speaker 1: portrayed it in a way that I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: one hundred percent accurate. However, I do think there is

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Speaker 1: always interesting. I think what they're doing in the paper,

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Speaker 1: looking at sort of black holes as a different type

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Speaker 1: of energy source to drive the expansion, is a really

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Speaker 1: cool idea. So yes, I think it's possible, but maybe

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Speaker 1: not in the way that's been portrayed by the media. Wow. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, but since the universe is expanding and

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Speaker 1: black holes are part of it, I'm gonna go with yes. No,

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Speaker 1: I don't think black holes is gonna mat of his

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Speaker 1: expand because they sucked things towards them with some gravity,

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Speaker 1: so they wouldn't be pushing things away and expand. They

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Speaker 1: would if anything decreases as the universe. I didn't read

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Speaker 1: science or would probably referred to, so I'm not really sure.

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Speaker 1: In my black hole compressed as a matter, So I

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure how it would expand any universe. Oh.

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Speaker 1: I don't really know much about black holes, so I

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Speaker 1: don't really know it sounds plausible to you at all? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess all right. Most people had not

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Speaker 1: heard of the article, although I was surprised that one

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Speaker 1: person had just read that paper. Were you like what

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Speaker 1: or did you ask your office mate or one of

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Speaker 1: your grad students. I didn't have a whole lot of time,

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Speaker 1: so I was wandering around the physics portion of the campus,

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Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure I did hit an astrophysics grad

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Speaker 1: student who had actually read the paper. Oh, I see

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Speaker 1: this is a little bit loaded of a sample. My

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Speaker 1: favorite response was a person who suggests that I go

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Speaker 1: and ask a physicist for an answer. That sounds like

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Speaker 1: a very sensible thing to do. Why didn't you just

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Speaker 1: ask a physicist, Daniel, Yeah, good question exactly. Maybe I should.

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Speaker 1: I should go get a PhD in physics and I

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Speaker 1: should go figure this out myself. You should be like

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Speaker 1: a professor or something, and then you can answerr questions

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Speaker 1: for a living. Yeah. I think that person misunderstood what

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Speaker 1: I was trying to do with my question. I think

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Speaker 1: she thought I was wandering around campus looking for somebody

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Speaker 1: to explain this paper to me. Oh, I see, I see. Well,

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Speaker 1: I guess there aren't that many people walking around asking

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Speaker 1: physics questions. Did you think maybe you were like somebody

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Speaker 1: lost on campus. Yeah, you know, it's famously hard to

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Speaker 1: tell physicists apart from homeless people, and so I think

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Speaker 1: maybe she would just being polite and patronizing me. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's an interesting paper, and so let's dig into it.

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Speaker 1: What does the paper say? So, in a nutshell, the

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Speaker 1: paper says that black holes out there in the universe

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Speaker 1: are the source of dark energy, that they are the

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Speaker 1: reason that the universe's expansion is accelerating. That the expansion

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Speaker 1: of the universe is getting faster and faster every year.

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Speaker 1: That's the basic idea of the paper. That sounds pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: All Right, we're done. I'm off to have a peanut

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Speaker 1: butter ribbon sandwich. Yeah, I'm kind of hungry. I prefer

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Speaker 1: almond butter. All right, good to know. We might have

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Speaker 1: to do a side experiment on that. But let's maybe

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Speaker 1: break it down for people, and let's start with just

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Speaker 1: the idea that the universe is expanding. Some people might

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Speaker 1: not know that the universe is getting bigger and bigger,

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Speaker 1: and it's getting bigger at a faster and faster rate. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This phenomenon goes by the name of dark energy, which

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Speaker 1: is a very mysterious sounding name for something we don't

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Speaker 1: really understand very well. But we do know some things,

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Speaker 1: Like we look out there into the universe and we

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Speaker 1: watch galaxies. We measure their velocity relative to us by

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Speaker 1: looking at how the light from them is red shifted,

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Speaker 1: because things that are moving away from us faster will

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Speaker 1: have the wavelengths of their light stretched out longer and longer.

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Speaker 1: We call that red shifting. And we look out into

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Speaker 1: the universe, and as we look out further and further,

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Speaker 1: we're looking further back in time because it takes time

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Speaker 1: to get here. So we can see how fast things

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Speaker 1: are moving away from us now the close up stuff,

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Speaker 1: and how fast things were moving away from us earlier.

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Speaker 1: So we can see sort of how much this is

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Speaker 1: changing our things moving away from us faster and faster

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Speaker 1: every year, or is it slowing down? And about twenty

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Speaker 1: years ago we went out and did this measurement using

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Speaker 1: very precise techniques involving supernovas and exactly how they blow

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Speaker 1: up and all that stuff, and we found something very surprising.

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Speaker 1: We discovered that the universe is expanding, and that expansion

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Speaker 1: is speeding up, meaning that every year galaxies out there

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Speaker 1: are moving away from us faster and faster. And so

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Speaker 1: that's what we call dark energy. We don't know what's

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Speaker 1: doing it, we don't understand the mechanism for it, but

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Speaker 1: we see that this is happening, and we want to

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Speaker 1: understand it. Yeah, and you call it dark energy because

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like an energy, right, Like it requires

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Speaker 1: work and energy to make the universe bigger, because you're

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Speaker 1: sort of creating more and more space. That's right, and

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Speaker 1: we are making more space between galaxies actually everywhere in

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Speaker 1: the universe. We think that space itself is expanding. So

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Speaker 1: if you have your picture in your mind of the

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Speaker 1: universe's expansion is sort of like a bomb with a

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Speaker 1: tiny little dot at the center that blows up and

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Speaker 1: everything flies through space, you should try instead to think

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Speaker 1: about it as like a universe already filled with stuff,

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Speaker 1: which then expands, creating new space between everything in the

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Speaker 1: universe all over the place. So it's sort of like

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Speaker 1: this stretching of space or this expansion of space itself.

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Speaker 1: And you're right, that makes more energy because we think

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Speaker 1: that every chunk of space comes with energy, and that

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Speaker 1: energy then drives the expansion, which makes more space, which

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Speaker 1: drives the expansion even more. And so that's why it's accelerating,

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Speaker 1: sort of like taken off. And then it's called dark

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Speaker 1: because there's no visible evidence of it in a way,

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Speaker 1: right like this, like everything's glowing or something, or there's

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Speaker 1: some kind of explosion that you can see. It's like

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Speaker 1: an invisible force that's growing the universe. It is invisible.

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Speaker 1: But I think probably it's called dark because it's mysterious,

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Speaker 1: because we don't understand it. It's like unexplained. It's an

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Speaker 1: area we have yet to illuminate. So I think it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like mentally dark more than physically dark, though

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Speaker 1: also invisible. You know. We call it dark energy, which

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Speaker 1: suggests that it's like a thing we understand is something

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Speaker 1: in physics. It's happening, but really we don't understand where

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Speaker 1: this comes from. It's something we see happening in the

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Speaker 1: universe and we can describe in some ways using our theories,

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Speaker 1: but we don't know really where it comes from at all. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a big mystery, maybe even the biggest mystery in

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Speaker 1: the universe, right is it's a mystery that kind of

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Speaker 1: permeates the entire universe, and the universe is pretty big.

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Speaker 1: It definitely dominates the universe. Like, if you add up

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Speaker 1: how much energy it takes to make this happen, it's

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Speaker 1: like seventy percent of the energy in the universe. So

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Speaker 1: you take a cubic light year of space, for example,

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Speaker 1: and you say how much energy is stored in like

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Speaker 1: all the gas and the stars and the planets. That's

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Speaker 1: like five percent of the energy in that cube. Another

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Speaker 1: twenty five ish percent is dark batter that also has

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Speaker 1: energy in it and the rest of its seventy percent

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Speaker 1: of the energy budget of the universe. Is this weird stuff,

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Speaker 1: dark energy that's causing the universe to expand faster and

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Speaker 1: faster every year. But again we don't really know why

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Speaker 1: it's happening or where it comes from. We can describe

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Speaker 1: it in our theories, like we have general relativity that

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Speaker 1: tells us how the universe works and how space works

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Speaker 1: and how it can expand, and there is an option

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Speaker 1: in general relativity to make this kind of thing happen. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you have some theories that it maybe is like a

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Speaker 1: property of space itself, like space itself is potential energy

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Speaker 1: and it can't help itself but to get bigger. That's right.

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Speaker 1: And remember that while general relativity is a theory of gravity,

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Speaker 1: and we tend to usually think of gravity is like

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Speaker 1: something that attracts stuff. Are you're attracted to the Earth,

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Speaker 1: the Earth is attracted to the Sun, And we think

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Speaker 1: of general relativities like explaining that kind of stuff, that

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Speaker 1: gravity is purely attractive. General relativity is more complex than that.

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Speaker 1: It's not just like how much mass and energy is

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Speaker 1: there in a certain place. It also depends on the

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Speaker 1: distribution of that mass and energy, and also on the

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Speaker 1: kind of energy. So example, if you have a lot

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Speaker 1: of potential energy in a part of space, it can

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Speaker 1: generate a negative pressure, it can cause the expansion of

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Speaker 1: that space. So Einstein's equations of all these different kind

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Speaker 1: of knobs that can make space do different kinds of things.

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Speaker 1: So if you say, well, space might have a lot

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Speaker 1: of potential energy into it, you add this thing we

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Speaker 1: call the cosmological constant, where all of space just has

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Speaker 1: this potential energy in it that can actually cause this

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Speaker 1: kind of expansion. Then of course you can ask like, well,

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Speaker 1: why would it have this cosmological constant? Where is this

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Speaker 1: potential energy coming from? And that's sort of where we are.

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Speaker 1: That would be sort of a very deep question about

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Speaker 1: the very nature of space, right. That's right, as you

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Speaker 1: say space we think has energy in it, Like we

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Speaker 1: know that space has quantum fields inside of it. Right,

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Speaker 1: There's a field for the electron on, a field for

429
00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:54,359
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, and a field for the photon. It

430
00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:56,639
Speaker 1: has all these fields in it, and those fields have

431
00:21:56,840 --> 00:21:59,840
Speaker 1: some potential energy. We know that because they're quantum fields

432
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:02,800
Speaker 1: can't relax all the way down to zero energy, and

433
00:22:02,840 --> 00:22:04,760
Speaker 1: so for a while, people thought, oh, maybe that's it.

434
00:22:05,040 --> 00:22:07,199
Speaker 1: Maybe all the fields that are out there in space

435
00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 1: they have this potential energy, and that potential energy was

436
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:12,800
Speaker 1: causing the expansion of the universe. So people sat down

437
00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:15,080
Speaker 1: to try to calculate it and say, well, how much

438
00:22:15,119 --> 00:22:17,399
Speaker 1: potential energy is there in all of those fields, and

439
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:20,840
Speaker 1: how much potential energy would you need to explain this

440
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:23,919
Speaker 1: expansion of the universe to provide the potential energy that

441
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:27,720
Speaker 1: will allow general relativity to drive the universe expanding this way.

442
00:22:28,080 --> 00:22:30,879
Speaker 1: So you sit down and calculate those two numbers, and

443
00:22:30,920 --> 00:22:33,080
Speaker 1: you hope they agree, because that would mean that it's

444
00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:36,280
Speaker 1: an explanation. But instead they disagree, and they disagree not

445
00:22:36,359 --> 00:22:38,879
Speaker 1: by a little bit, but by a number like ten

446
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:42,639
Speaker 1: to the hundred and twenty. So like, we really just

447
00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:45,600
Speaker 1: don't understand this at all. Yeah, it's a big mystery.

448
00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:47,960
Speaker 1: And so the universe is expanding faster and faster and

449
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:50,119
Speaker 1: we don't know why. And then now this paper is

450
00:22:50,200 --> 00:22:53,200
Speaker 1: kind of saying that maybe black holes are the source

451
00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:56,400
Speaker 1: of that expansion, and so let's get into what exactly

452
00:22:56,440 --> 00:23:00,879
Speaker 1: black holes are and how they might be fueling dark energy.

453
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:15,639
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break, all right, we

454
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:21,760
Speaker 1: are playing MythBusters today kind of news headlines with papers

455
00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:24,000
Speaker 1: that have been published. There's been a paper recently that

456
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:27,000
Speaker 1: has a pretty juicy headline that says that or that

457
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:29,119
Speaker 1: asks the question whether black holes can be making the

458
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,560
Speaker 1: universe expand faster? Now, Daniel, is this a paper that

459
00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:33,440
Speaker 1: just dropped on the internet or is this a paper

460
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:36,119
Speaker 1: that has already been peer reviewed. This is a paper

461
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:39,240
Speaker 1: that has been peer reviewed. These guys did not drop

462
00:23:39,240 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 1: it on the Internet before they sent it to reviewers,

463
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:44,639
Speaker 1: so they kept a little bit tight to their chest.

464
00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:47,000
Speaker 1: I think also they linked it with a bunch of

465
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: publicity and stuff. So sometimes people don't put their papers

466
00:23:50,800 --> 00:23:52,840
Speaker 1: up in the Internet before they get peer reviewed. And

467
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 1: I think that's actually more common in astronomy than it is,

468
00:23:56,080 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 1: like in particle physics. Interesting, why do you think that is?

469
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 1: Astronomers know how to play the press game a little

470
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:04,359
Speaker 1: better than particle physicists, or particle physicists just like to

471
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:06,639
Speaker 1: post them to the Internet. Well, particle physicists are the

472
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:09,119
Speaker 1: ones who invented this whole idea of putting things on

473
00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:11,320
Speaker 1: the Internet. I mean, we invented the Worldwide Web. We

474
00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: have these big international collaborations and Also, I think for

475
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: particle physics, by the time you have a paper ready,

476
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:20,159
Speaker 1: usually it's been reviewed by like five thousand of your

477
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:22,439
Speaker 1: other colleagues whose names are also on the paper, and

478
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: so the peer review process feels a little bit more

479
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: like a rubber stamp in particle physics than in other fields.

480
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:30,160
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this paper that came out recently says

481
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:32,800
Speaker 1: that black holes could be what's making the universe expand

482
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:35,160
Speaker 1: faster and faster. And so we talked about what dark

483
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:37,879
Speaker 1: energy is, what the expansion of the universe is. Now

484
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about black holes, Like how

485
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:42,480
Speaker 1: do you explain what a black hole is? And what

486
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:44,840
Speaker 1: don't we know about them? Right? And so the takeaway

487
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:48,600
Speaker 1: from dark energy is the universe is expanding, it's expanding

488
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: faster and faster. We don't know why that's happening because

489
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:55,280
Speaker 1: we can't explain where this potential energy is coming from,

490
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,840
Speaker 1: this sort of vacuum energy of the universe. All right,

491
00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 1: So that's a huge mystery, as you said, right, big

492
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 1: not understood thing in the universe. Now, one of the

493
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: other really fascinatings, big misunderstood things in the universe r

494
00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:09,399
Speaker 1: of course black holes that we've talked about on the

495
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: podcast lots of times, because they're so fascinating and amazing

496
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:16,719
Speaker 1: and might contain within them like secrets of the nature

497
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 1: of space and time and all sorts of crazy stuff

498
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: because they are very extreme situations. They are a spot

499
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:25,680
Speaker 1: in space that is so dense with energy and matter

500
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:30,000
Speaker 1: that space is curved so intensely that nothing can escape

501
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: past this event horizon. That even photons which travel at

502
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:36,320
Speaker 1: the speed of light are trapped inside because space is

503
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: curved essentially so that it's one dimensional. Every direction forward

504
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:43,359
Speaker 1: once you're inside a black hole leads towards the center

505
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 1: of the black hole, and in general relativity, it says

506
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: that this force is so powerful that everything inside the

507
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:52,640
Speaker 1: black hole eventually collapses to the very very center, forming

508
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:56,919
Speaker 1: a singularity, a dot of infinite density because there's a

509
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: lot of mass with zero volume. Yeah, chatted about this

510
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,719
Speaker 1: a lot. It's interesting that for black holes it's all

511
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: about the density of mass, right of matter, because gravity

512
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:10,239
Speaker 1: gets stronger the closer you get to it, and so

513
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: if you put a lot of mass in a small spot,

514
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: that means you can get really close to it, and

515
00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:16,960
Speaker 1: so at some point that gravity gets so crazy, so

516
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:19,920
Speaker 1: big that it actually creates a hole in space. You're

517
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:22,720
Speaker 1: exactly right. It's all about the density. Like the same

518
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: mass that could create a black hole if you squeezed

519
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: it down, could also not create a black hole. If

520
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,640
Speaker 1: it was more spread out, like the mass of our

521
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: sun could create a black hole, if something squeezed it down,

522
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:37,400
Speaker 1: or if the Sun stopped exploding, which is what's preventing

523
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 1: it from collapsing into something more dense. So it's not

524
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: just about the amount of mass, it's about the density.

525
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: And that means that you can have black holes of

526
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: all sorts of masses. You can have black holes like

527
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: the mass of our sun. You can have black holes

528
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 1: like ten times the mass of the sun, a billion

529
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:54,439
Speaker 1: times the mass of the sun. Black holes coming in

530
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 1: a huge variety of sizes and masses. And that's one

531
00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: of the big puzzles about black holes. Yeah, well, it's

532
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 1: maybe even stepping back a little bit. We don't actually

533
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:06,160
Speaker 1: know if black holes are real, real, like we talked

534
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: about them like they are, but actually they are Kenneth theoretical,

535
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:12,120
Speaker 1: and we have pictures of them, but we're not quite

536
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 1: sure what's in the picture. Right, that's exactly right. We

537
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: have a model from general relativity that predicts that this

538
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,920
Speaker 1: would happen, and it says, if you get matter dense enough,

539
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:23,359
Speaker 1: then you should create this event horizon and have a

540
00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:25,879
Speaker 1: singularity on the inside. And for a long time that

541
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 1: was just theoretical, and people thought, that's weird. I bet

542
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 1: something prevents that from happening. That seems too strange. But

543
00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: then we saw these things out in the universe, and specifically,

544
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:38,439
Speaker 1: what we saw were very dark portions of space that

545
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,440
Speaker 1: had a lot of curvature to them, very strong gravity.

546
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:44,720
Speaker 1: For example, we saw stars whizzing by very close and

547
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:47,640
Speaker 1: getting turned around by strong gravity, but we didn't see

548
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: anything at that location. So we crossed off a bunch

549
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: of candidates. Oh maybe it's a neutron star. Nope, Oh

550
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: maybe it's this, maybe it's that, maybe it's the other thing,

551
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:58,280
Speaker 1: And eventually the only thing left was a general relativity

552
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: black hole. That's the only sort of explanation we had

553
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: for this kind of phenomena. But it's not a direct observation, right,

554
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:09,119
Speaker 1: it's not like we've seen the event horizon literally or

555
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: we verify that it really is a black hole. We

556
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:14,159
Speaker 1: just sort of like observe things closer and closer and

557
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: closer to the black hole that haven't yet fallen in

558
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,879
Speaker 1: that tell us it must be something very dense and

559
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 1: very dark, right, something super dense, super dark that doesn't shine.

560
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,239
Speaker 1: But it could be just a dark hole, not just

561
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 1: a black hole, for example, could just be a lot

562
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: of mass compacted really tightly, but not necessarily a singularity,

563
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:35,360
Speaker 1: which is what the name originally was given in General

564
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:37,920
Speaker 1: relativity exactly. Early on, it was sort of the only

565
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: candidate to explain these kind of things, and that's one

566
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: reason why people started believing they exist. But recently there's

567
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 1: been sort of a flourishing of other ideas, other possibilities

568
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:50,480
Speaker 1: that might explain the same observations, Other things that would

569
00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 1: look just like these black holes but would not be

570
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:55,360
Speaker 1: black holes. We talked about a few of them on

571
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 1: the podcast, things like dark stars. These are stars that

572
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 1: are collapsing due to gravity, but they're collapsing super duper

573
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: slowly because the gravity slows down time, so it's not

574
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 1: actually a singularity. It's just sort of like a collapsing

575
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: star frozen in time, which eventually will bounce back and

576
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: maybe turn into like a white hole. Or we've talked

577
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 1: about fuzzballs which are these weird phenomena from string theory

578
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other various ideas, And the thing

579
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: that all these ideas have in common is that they

580
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 1: are quantum mechanical. One of the big problems with the

581
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: idea of a black hole from general relativity is the

582
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 1: singularity is the idea of having all this mass in

583
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: a tiny little dot that breaks quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics

584
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: says you can't do that. It violates the uncertainty principle

585
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,479
Speaker 1: and all sorts of basic principles of quantum mechanics. And

586
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: general relativity is not compatible with quantum mechanics, which is

587
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: one reason why See inside a black hole would be

588
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: so awesome, because because they see finally a battle between

589
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: general relativity and quantum mechanics and see who won. So

590
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:56,400
Speaker 1: we think almost certainly general relativity is wrong and needs

591
00:29:56,440 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 1: to be modified by some theory of quantum gravity that

592
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,240
Speaker 1: tells us what else is going on inside a black hole.

593
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 1: Maybe it's basically like a general relativity black hole, but

594
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: with a quantum blob of a singularity instead of an

595
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 1: actual dot. Maybe it's something totally different, like a fuzzball

596
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: or a dark star or something even weirder. Yeah, it

597
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 1: could be some kind of strange crossover event in their

598
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 1: like Captain America versus Batman exactly. And it's also important

599
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: to understand that the black holes that we've sort of

600
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: figured out how to calculate, these predictions we've made for

601
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: like you should see a black hole under these conditions,

602
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 1: those only really describe very simplified situations. Nobody actually has

603
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 1: been able to calculate a black hole like the ones

604
00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: that we see out there, that the ones we suspect

605
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: exist in our universe. The kind of black holes we

606
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: can calculate are the ones where you have like a

607
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: dot of mass and otherwise empty universe. We know how

608
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: to do that calculation in Einstein's theory. The Einstein's theory

609
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: is very very messy, it's very complicated. It's almost impossible

610
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 1: to do anything realistic like in Einstein's theory. You can't

611
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 1: even do two dots of mass. We can't even of

612
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: the Earth going around the Sun. In Einstein's theory, even

613
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: basic stuff like that is too hard. And so, for example,

614
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: what we haven't done in Einstein's theory is figure out

615
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: how a black hole can survive in an expanding universe

616
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: like we always do our calculations in a flat universe

617
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 1: where space isn't expanding, so nobody even really knows, like

618
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: what happens to a black hole when the universe is expanding,

619
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: especially if that black hole is spinning. So it's not

620
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: like we, even in general relativity, have a great description

621
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 1: of what we've seen out there in the universe. You

622
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 1: mean at least the general relativity version of them, right,

623
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:36,840
Speaker 1: But there could be other versions of a black hole,

624
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: or like a dark hole or a black divid maybe

625
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:43,480
Speaker 1: that do I explain what's out there. We're not quite

626
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: sure what that is right exactly, And we also don't

627
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:48,479
Speaker 1: know how they get so big sometimes exactly. That's one

628
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 1: of the other really deep mysteries about black holes, especially

629
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: the kind of black holes talked about in this paper.

630
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:56,320
Speaker 1: These are the black holes at the centers of galaxies.

631
00:31:56,840 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: You can have a black hole just from a star

632
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: at the end of its life, it goes to Brenova

633
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: and collapses and you get a black hole. It's like

634
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 1: five or ten times the mass of our sun. That's

635
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 1: cool we see in those when we think we understand them.

636
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: But also there tend to be black holes at the

637
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 1: hearts of galaxies, Like at the center of our galaxy

638
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 1: there's a very big black hole with lots and lots

639
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:16,520
Speaker 1: of mass, And at the center of many galaxies there

640
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 1: are black holes with millions or billions of times the

641
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: mass of our Sun. And we see these even very

642
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 1: far back in the early universe. If you look at

643
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:27,200
Speaker 1: light that's been traveling for a very very long time

644
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 1: from very distant galaxies, you can see galaxies in the

645
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: first billion years of the universe that already have black

646
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: holes at their centers that are like a billion times

647
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: the mass of the Sun. And this is a big mystery.

648
00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 1: Nobody understands how those black holes got so big so fast. Well,

649
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: it's kind of an amazing thing that we can tell

650
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: that there are black holes in these galaxies so far away. Yeah,

651
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. It's fascinating, and we can tell them

652
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: often because they are quasars. Quasars are black holes that

653
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 1: have very strong magnetic fields that are spinning really really fast,

654
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: and so they emit these jets of light that are

655
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: super duper bright, so we can see them from very

656
00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: very far away, so they're not always like super direct

657
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 1: observations of the black holes it's not like we've imaged

658
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: them the way we've imaged a couple of black holes

659
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:13,760
Speaker 1: using the event horizon telescope. Again, black holes are almost

660
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: always indirect, but we're pretty confident that there's something very

661
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:20,080
Speaker 1: dark and very massive and very dense at the hearts

662
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 1: of these galaxies. And we don't understand how you make

663
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: a gravitational object whatever it is, that massive, Like there

664
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: just isn't enough time for it to eat enough gas

665
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 1: and dust and stars to get that big that fast.

666
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: So there's all sorts of theories about how those black

667
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: holes might have gotten so big so fast it was

668
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: super mass. Now we have two big mysteries, two big

669
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: things out there in space. One is the expansion of

670
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:47,320
Speaker 1: the universe. It's getting bigger and bigger, faster and faster.

671
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: We don't know that that's dark energy. And then there's

672
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,040
Speaker 1: black holes, which we know some about but we're not

673
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 1: quite sure on the details or what's actually going on

674
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: inside of them. And now this new paper says and

675
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,959
Speaker 1: maybe these two things are related, like maybe black holes

676
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 1: are the reason the universe is expanding. So what does

677
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:08,720
Speaker 1: this paper actually say. Yeah, it's super fun and fascinating. Actually,

678
00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: the couple of papers. The first paper makes a really

679
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: interesting just sort of observation about the masses of black holes. Wait,

680
00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: it's several papers. Yeah, they wrote a couple of papers.

681
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,799
Speaker 1: The first paper is like details of about the black

682
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 1: hole masses, and the second paper is this crazy theoretical

683
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:27,880
Speaker 1: interpretation about it. Like they dropped the movie and the

684
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:31,240
Speaker 1: sequel of the exactly. Yeah, two seasons of your favorite

685
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 1: show all the same time. The Netflix model of physics

686
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 1: or the event I guess, the Avengers endgame model. There

687
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 1: you go, film both movies at the same time. We

688
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:41,839
Speaker 1: often do this. We work on several papers all at

689
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:43,919
Speaker 1: once and then publish them all at the same time

690
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: because they're all sort of connected to each other. Or

691
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:47,839
Speaker 1: you want to be the first person to write an

692
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: interpretation of your crazy new observation, so you write your

693
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:53,279
Speaker 1: interpretation paper at the same time as you write your

694
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 1: observation paper, and you publish them separately. All right, So

695
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 1: this paper is talking about the masses of these black holes.

696
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: They went out and they measured the masses of a

697
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,840
Speaker 1: bunch of black holes. Over time, they looked at closer

698
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:07,399
Speaker 1: by galaxies that are newer, and they look deep into

699
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:10,279
Speaker 1: the ancient past at very old galaxies, and they were

700
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:14,319
Speaker 1: interested in how fast black holes are getting bigger. Like,

701
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: you have a galaxy and it's spinning, it's got a

702
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: black hole at its center. Black hole is going to

703
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: be eating gas and dust and stars, and the galaxies

704
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:24,880
Speaker 1: also grow. Galaxies grow by gobling up gas from the

705
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 1: intergalactic medium and also by merging with each other. So

706
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: essentially what they did is they compared these two things.

707
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 1: They said, well, how fast are black holes growing and

708
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 1: how fast are galaxies growing? And what they noticed is

709
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 1: that the galaxies are not growing as fast as the

710
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,279
Speaker 1: black holes are growing. So one question is like, well,

711
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: how did black holes get big in the early universe.

712
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,920
Speaker 1: The other question is how do they keep getting bigger

713
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:50,920
Speaker 1: all the time. So this is a really interesting result

714
00:35:50,920 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: because they're showing that black holes are growing unexplainedly quickly.

715
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 1: I see. Okay, So this first paper that's sort of

716
00:35:57,200 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: like a survey, right, Like they just looked at into

717
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 1: space and they looked at the younger galaxies and older

718
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:06,120
Speaker 1: galaxies that have black holes in them, super massive black holes,

719
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: and they compared the young galaxies with the older galaxies,

720
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 1: and they said, between the two, in general, our galaxies

721
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 1: getting bigger and at what rate? And for those black holes?

722
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 1: Are those black holes getting bigger and at what rate?

723
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:21,560
Speaker 1: And you're saying that the first paper just says black

724
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 1: holes seem to be getting bigger faster than galaxies are

725
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 1: getting bigger. Yeah, black holes are getting bigger, like eat

726
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:30,360
Speaker 1: to twenty times faster than the galaxies they are in.

727
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: They are growing much more quickly than the rest of

728
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:36,600
Speaker 1: their neighborhoods. But wouldn't that be explained by the idea

729
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:39,760
Speaker 1: that the black holes are basically eating the galaxies because

730
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 1: like galaxies don't have a lot of things around them,

731
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: so they can't really grow that fast. But black holes

732
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,040
Speaker 1: have a galaxy around them, and so maybe it could

733
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 1: just be that the black holes are eating up their

734
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:51,799
Speaker 1: own galaxies and getting bigger. That way, we actually do

735
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,719
Speaker 1: expect galaxies to grow. Remember that something like forty to

736
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:57,319
Speaker 1: fifty percent of all the protons in the universe are

737
00:36:57,360 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: not eating galaxies yet they're between galaxies. There are these

738
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: filaments of gas between the galaxies that are still flowing

739
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: into the galaxies. Right now, every galaxy sits at the

740
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 1: bottom of a gravitational well created by its dark matter,

741
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: and there are these like rivers of gas flowing into

742
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:16,920
Speaker 1: galaxies making them bigger, and then also galaxies merge, and

743
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 1: so galaxies we do expect them to grow, and you're right,

744
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 1: black holes we also expect them to grow. And you

745
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 1: can do studies of these things, and you can predict

746
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 1: how fast galaxies and black holes should grow, and it

747
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: should be about the same rate. You know, there's some

748
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 1: limit to how fast a black holes should be able

749
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 1: to grow because as it gets more powerful, it's acretion

750
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 1: disk gets very intense the stuff that's swirling around it,

751
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:40,399
Speaker 1: and it is very hot and agitated and hasn't yet

752
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: fallen back into the black hole, and it generates a

753
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:45,760
Speaker 1: lot of radiation which actually pushes away gas. So black

754
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 1: holes can't just grow like infinitely quickly, and galaxies should

755
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:51,320
Speaker 1: be able to grow about the same rate. But what

756
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:54,440
Speaker 1: we see is a big discrepancy that we don't understand.

757
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: So black holes are growing much faster than their galaxies,

758
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 1: which is not what our models predict. M Okay, that's

759
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: a mystery. That's a weird thing. So that's the first

760
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: paper and the second paper says, well, you know, black

761
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,040
Speaker 1: holes are growing faster than we think, but it's actually

762
00:38:10,160 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: connected to something else. They notice that black holes are

763
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 1: growing at the same rate as the universe itself. That

764
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 1: the expansion of the universe we talked about, this unexplained

765
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: accelerated expansion matches very nicely the rate at which black

766
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 1: holes are gaining mass. So these two unexplained things seem

767
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: to be happening about the same pace. Like let's say

768
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 1: the universe is expanding how fast, like a thousand percent

769
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: per year or something like that. The expansion rand of

770
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: universe is a little bit more tricky to measure. It's

771
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 1: in terms of like kilometers per parsee per second, so

772
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: it's a little bit complicated. But you know, in a

773
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 1: cartoon version, it's like if the volume of the universe

774
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 1: doubles soared the mass of these black holes. So as

775
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:55,759
Speaker 1: the universe gets bigger, black holes get bigger at the

776
00:38:55,840 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: same rate, which could just be a huge coincidence perhaps,

777
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:02,680
Speaker 1: But these maybe these authors are saying that it's not

778
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 1: a coincidence exactly. These authors are saying it's not a coincidence,

779
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 1: and they have a theory which predicts this, which explains

780
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: the connection between the black holes mask getting bigger unexplainedly,

781
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: and the universe getting bigger unexplainedly. They want to explain

782
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: both of these things at the same time. All right, well,

783
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: I'm hooked. I want to know what this theory is,

784
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:25,920
Speaker 1: and so let's dig into it. And also let's see

785
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 1: what our critic Daniel has to say about this theory.

786
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:44,439
Speaker 1: But first, let's take another quick break or I we're

787
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 1: talking about the expansion of the universe, and a new

788
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: paper or a new set of papers it says that

789
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 1: maybe black holes are the ones that are somehow connected

790
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 1: to this expansion of the universe. So we talked about

791
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 1: how the universe seems to be expanding at a high rate.

792
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: That also seems to Madge how fast black holes out

793
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 1: there in the middle of galaxies are expanding, which could

794
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:07,400
Speaker 1: be a coincidence. But these authors are saying that it's not,

795
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:10,720
Speaker 1: and they have a theory that links the two of them. So, Daniel,

796
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:14,319
Speaker 1: what's the theory. So the theory is pretty crazy but

797
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: also a lot of fun. The idea is that black

798
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 1: holes are not black holes as we imagined in general relativity.

799
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: They're not point masses at the centers of these event horizons. Instead,

800
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 1: there's something very very different that inside the event horizon

801
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,280
Speaker 1: is not a point mass, but instead it's a ball

802
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: of vacuum energy. So what does vacuum energy? What does

803
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 1: that mean? Remember, vacuum energy is the thing we thought

804
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: might explain the expansion of the universe. We know in

805
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 1: general relativity, if the universe if empty space, what we

806
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 1: call the vacuum space, particles in it that has some

807
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:53,280
Speaker 1: kind of energy, and that energy can drive the expansion

808
00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:55,440
Speaker 1: of the universe. In this theory, instead of having that

809
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: energy everywhere in the universe, you have like localized blobs

810
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:03,760
Speaker 1: of that energy. It can form black holes that regions

811
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:06,759
Speaker 1: of very very high vacuum energy and form something that

812
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 1: looks like a black hole. What okay, okay, let's maybe

813
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 1: take a step back here. Are they saying that when

814
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: you make a black hole, you're creating a bubble of

815
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: vacuum energy, or are you saying that when you have

816
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 1: a lot of vacuum energy that is what you call

817
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: a black hole. It's the second we're saying that the

818
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:28,440
Speaker 1: things we're calling black holes are actually bubbles of vacuum energy.

819
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: They're not compressed masses. Here, we're talking about the things

820
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 1: that the centers of galaxies, stellar black holes from collapsed stars,

821
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:37,760
Speaker 1: probably black holes that's not what these guys are talking about.

822
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 1: They're talking about the huge blobs of the centers of galaxies.

823
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 1: They're suggesting they're not black holes like we imagined. Instead,

824
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:47,240
Speaker 1: that are these weird blobs of vacuum energy that somehow

825
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:50,680
Speaker 1: mysteriously form, or that are that started somehow, or that

826
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 1: the universe started with. What are they saying, are these bubbles?

827
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 1: How can they have the gravity of black holes if

828
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:00,480
Speaker 1: they have negative energy? So they don't explain what this

829
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: vacuum energy is or where it comes from. That's just

830
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: sort of left a big question mark. But there is

831
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,319
Speaker 1: a history of people developing these kinds of ideas. I mean,

832
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 1: go back to what we were talking about earlier, people

833
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:15,280
Speaker 1: trying to understand how you could have a spinning black

834
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 1: hole in an expanding universe. Nobody's solved those equations in

835
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 1: Einstein's theory. Nobody really knows if it's even possible in

836
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: Einstein's theory. So that leads people to explore other kind

837
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: of things, like instead of having a singularity the heart

838
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:30,320
Speaker 1: of it, what if you put like a little expanding

839
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:34,080
Speaker 1: universe inside the black hole, right, it might help you

840
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 1: match the expanding universe outside the black hole. So they

841
00:42:37,719 --> 00:42:40,799
Speaker 1: put this sort of like expanding vacuum energy inside the

842
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,920
Speaker 1: black hole, and what they see is an incredible distortion

843
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: of space. There's no singularity, there's no event horizon, but

844
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: there is an intense curvature of space, which would look

845
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 1: a lot like a black hole, in the same way

846
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 1: that like a fuzzball doesn't actually have an event horizon,

847
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: but it's still really curves space, and so it looks

848
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 1: a lot like a black hole, or the way a

849
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 1: dark star is not technically an event horizon because eventually

850
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 1: everything comes out of it. These things don't have event horizons.

851
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 1: They were invented in the sixties original by some Souviet physicists,

852
00:43:11,160 --> 00:43:12,920
Speaker 1: and people have been playing around with them. They're just

853
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:15,840
Speaker 1: like another weird prediction of something that would look black

854
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: hole em but you would still get sucked into it

855
00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: because I thought a vacuum energy, you know, had like

856
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 1: negative gravity or something like that. That's a cosmological connection

857
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:27,840
Speaker 1: we'll get to in a minute. They think this vacuum

858
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 1: energy might be driving the expansion of the universe globally

859
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: but locally. Weirdly, it also looks like a black hole,

860
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 1: like if you're near by it then it bends space

861
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 1: intensely because instead of having vacuum energy everywhere, you have

862
00:43:42,040 --> 00:43:45,160
Speaker 1: it localized. It's only this one spot at the heart

863
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:48,279
Speaker 1: of the galaxy, So that discrepancy having it there but

864
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 1: not over here creates curvature in the region between it

865
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 1: and that looks a lot like a black hole. It

866
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 1: looks like a black hole. But wouldn't it be like

867
00:43:56,440 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 1: reverse gravity, Like wouldn't it push things away like in

868
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: the pulling ball analogy in the rubber sheet. Wouldn't something

869
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,440
Speaker 1: like this be like lifting up the rubber sheet, like

870
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: pinching it and pulling it up? Or am I getting

871
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:12,359
Speaker 1: vacuum energy confused with negative energy? This is not negative energy, right?

872
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:16,319
Speaker 1: Vacuum energy is just potential energy, not negative energy. And

873
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: Einstein's equations are not very intuitive, right, Like, it's not

874
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 1: very intuitive to understand why in some cases potential energy

875
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:26,520
Speaker 1: causes expansion of space. Here, this vacuum energy seems to

876
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 1: be doing two things. It creates this almost kind of

877
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 1: like event horizon locally and also drives the expansion of

878
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 1: the universe globally. Whether this makes any sense at all

879
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:39,919
Speaker 1: is a topic of intense debate among cosmologists. I talked

880
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:41,879
Speaker 1: to a bunch of them over this last week. Half

881
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:44,359
Speaker 1: of them were like, this is nonsense. The other half

882
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:47,840
Speaker 1: was like, well, maybe under certain conditions that might happen.

883
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:50,839
Speaker 1: But this is definitely a very, very fringe theory that

884
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: a lot of cosmologists don't accept. Even just this part

885
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: of it, This idea of a Gravis star something with

886
00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 1: vacuum energy inside it, which looks like a black hole

887
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:02,279
Speaker 1: from the outside. A lot of people don't believe that's

888
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: even possible. Well, what's their excuse for it, Like, how

889
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: do they explain it? Why is there so much vacuum

890
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 1: energy concentrated in one spot? What keeps it together? They

891
00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: don't have an explanation in this paper. What they do

892
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:15,719
Speaker 1: is they say, look, there's an apparent connection between the

893
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: mass of the black holes and the expansion of the universe.

894
00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 1: And if you accept this theory that there are vacuum

895
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:25,279
Speaker 1: energy interior or objects at the hearts of these galaxies

896
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:28,400
Speaker 1: that would explain it, it doesn't argue for that theory.

897
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:31,160
Speaker 1: It doesn't justify that theory, doesn't explain where this vacuum

898
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 1: energy comes from or what it is at all. It

899
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 1: just says that there is a theory that allows you

900
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 1: to connect these two observations. It feels kind of like

901
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 1: a made up theory, a little bit like it feels

902
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 1: like the issues came up with a theory just to

903
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 1: say that they have a theory. It's a little bit

904
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:48,400
Speaker 1: at hoc, right, It's not something that's been thoroughly worked out. Again, remember,

905
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:51,359
Speaker 1: nobody knows how to solve Einstein's equations under all these

906
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: weird conditions expanding universes, spinning stuff, vacuum interiors, or singularities.

907
00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 1: Nobody knows what the solutions are like, so nobody can

908
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 1: even really say if this is consistent or inconsistent with

909
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: general relativity. Some of the cosmologists I talk to you said,

910
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:09,359
Speaker 1: there's no way this is consistent with gr Other people thought, hey,

911
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 1: maybe it might be. There are people working on these

912
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 1: kinds of solutions. But the really interesting part of the

913
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 1: paper is that they argue that having this vacuum energy

914
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:21,840
Speaker 1: inside the black holes somehow contributes to the expansion of

915
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: the universe as a whole. I mean, we're used to

916
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:28,239
Speaker 1: thinking black holes like acting locally, they suck stuff in nearby.

917
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 1: This is suggesting that because they have vacuum energy in them,

918
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 1: instead of like dense mass. They're also contributing to the

919
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:38,240
Speaker 1: cosmological equation of state, the thing that affects the entire

920
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: expansion or contraction of the universe. And that's even harder

921
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:45,760
Speaker 1: for most cosmologists I talk to to swallow. Yeah, because

922
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:48,440
Speaker 1: it's not like these black holes are everywhere and spread

923
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: evenly across the universe. They're just at the very center

924
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:54,879
Speaker 1: of some galaxies, and those galaxies are pretty far apart

925
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:56,719
Speaker 1: from each other. Right, If they are the source of

926
00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: expansion in the universe, wouldn't you then see like hot

927
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:02,120
Speaker 1: spots of exp in some places, and in places where

928
00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 1: there are in delities or black holes, you would see

929
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: no expansion. Yeah, that's exactly right, and that would be

930
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: very very weird and also not explained in this paper.

931
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:13,319
Speaker 1: They don't even really talk about this aspect of it,

932
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:15,800
Speaker 1: and it would be something very very strange in physics.

933
00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: We have in physics this sort of like hierarchy of scales,

934
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: where really tiny stuff doesn't usually affect really really big stuff,

935
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: like things that happen inside the Sun don't affect the

936
00:47:26,239 --> 00:47:28,800
Speaker 1: galaxy as a whole, or things that you do don't

937
00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:32,120
Speaker 1: usually affect the motion of the entire Earth. Where the

938
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: sort of hierarchy of scales, really really high energy stuff

939
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 1: at very very small distances doesn't usually affect low energy

940
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:42,960
Speaker 1: stuff over larger distances, and this would break that. This

941
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:45,400
Speaker 1: would say the things that are happening like inside black

942
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:49,359
Speaker 1: holes can affect the universe as a whole. That's very

943
00:47:49,600 --> 00:47:52,719
Speaker 1: very weird. It's weird, not just because black holes are

944
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: weird and dark energy is weird. It would require like

945
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:57,640
Speaker 1: a very different sort of paradigm of physics. It would

946
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: tell something very very new is going going on, something

947
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:04,720
Speaker 1: hard to swallow. Yeah, like, yeah, these sources of vacuum

948
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: energy and somehow their effect is evenly spread out to

949
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:09,880
Speaker 1: the universe somehow. That's kind of what you're saying, right,

950
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 1: That would be weird. That would be very strange. And

951
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,400
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it's not happening. We should be ready

952
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:18,959
Speaker 1: for strange stuff. History of physics is filled with times

953
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: when people are like, well, the only way to explain

954
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:24,400
Speaker 1: this would be this totally crazy idea that can't possibly

955
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:26,240
Speaker 1: be true, And then it turns out it is true.

956
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: It just it requires us to accept something new. This

957
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: could be one of those moments, right, or maybe not.

958
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:34,319
Speaker 1: So It's not always easy to tell, but there's a

959
00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:36,920
Speaker 1: lot of skepticism. One reason is that this is like

960
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: an explanation for what's happening. It's not at all a

961
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 1: conclusive explanation. It's not the unique explanation. It might be

962
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: that you could explain black holes growing at the same

963
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 1: rate of the universe in some other way. Instead of

964
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 1: black holes driving the expansion of the universe, maybe there

965
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:57,800
Speaker 1: is something else that's driving both. Right, So it feels

966
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 1: sort of like this describes it, but it doesn't clinch

967
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:03,720
Speaker 1: it necessarily. We're not sure that this is what's happening

968
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:06,960
Speaker 1: just because it describes it. Science has to be predictive,

969
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:10,160
Speaker 1: not just descriptive. It could just be a coincidence, is

970
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:12,359
Speaker 1: what you're saying. It could be a coincidence, or could

971
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: just be that we have the causality backwards. Instead of

972
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:17,919
Speaker 1: black holes driving the expansion of the universe, something else

973
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 1: could be driving both of them, so they could be connected.

974
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:23,280
Speaker 1: It just might not be this theory of vacuum interior

975
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:27,839
Speaker 1: black holes driving somehow magically the expansion of the universe. Well,

976
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 1: that would be a juicy headline too. Couldn't the expansion

977
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:33,520
Speaker 1: of the universe be making black holes bigger. I mean

978
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 1: that's the idea, right, Like, maybe the universe is expanding

979
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:39,080
Speaker 1: for some reason, for because of dark energy, and somehow

980
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:42,760
Speaker 1: that a fact causes black holes to get bigger too. Yeah, exactly,

981
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 1: And if you understood where this vacuum energy came from,

982
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 1: maybe that would be the source of it. And this paper, again,

983
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:51,200
Speaker 1: it doesn't address that. Either doesn't say where this vacum

984
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:52,840
Speaker 1: energy is coming from or what it's made out of.

985
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:55,400
Speaker 1: Is it made out of quantum fields like we suspect,

986
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:57,960
Speaker 1: or is it something totally different. We just don't know.

987
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: But this paper got peer reviewed, and if you had

988
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: been one of the peer reviewers, what would you have

989
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 1: set If I had been one of the peer reviewers,

990
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: I would have asked for a lot more details about

991
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:10,000
Speaker 1: this theory and some comments about these obvious questions, you know,

992
00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:13,760
Speaker 1: like how is it possible for localized objects to contribute

993
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 1: globally to the expansion of the universe, and also how

994
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 1: is it possible for black holes whose mass is a

995
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:23,280
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of the mass of the universe? Right, black

996
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:25,920
Speaker 1: holes are a little fraction of the five percent of

997
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:29,120
Speaker 1: the universe that's our kind of stuff. Dark energy is

998
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 1: seventy percent how is it possible for this tiny mass

999
00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 1: fraction to drive this huge energy in the universe. So

1000
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:38,360
Speaker 1: I want to ask those questions, and I imagine that

1001
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: the authors of this paper are getting those questions from

1002
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:43,080
Speaker 1: their colleagues, and I'm looking forward to hearing some answers

1003
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 1: and some follow up papers. Well, it sort of sounds like,

1004
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:48,800
Speaker 1: you know, they discovered something that is significant and is

1005
00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: interesting and it is noteworthy. Right, they discovered that black

1006
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 1: holes are increasing at a rate that's higher than the

1007
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:58,279
Speaker 1: galaxies around them, and they're also increasing at a rate

1008
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 1: that seems to match the expansion of the universe. Like,

1009
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:02,719
Speaker 1: that's an interesting result. The right that it hadn't been

1010
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 1: published before that is definitely a very interesting result. So

1011
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:08,160
Speaker 1: that's probably, you know, publish worthy. It's just that the

1012
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:11,120
Speaker 1: ideas are putting forth to maybe explain this are a

1013
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:13,600
Speaker 1: little bit on the fringe side, and that's probably also

1014
00:51:13,719 --> 00:51:15,839
Speaker 1: why they put it out in two different papers. The

1015
00:51:15,880 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 1: first one, he's here the black holes we found. The

1016
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 1: second one is here's our crazy idea to explain it.

1017
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:23,200
Speaker 1: And so the second one is definitely a bit more speculative.

1018
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: There are also questions being raised about the first paper,

1019
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:28,399
Speaker 1: you know, people are looking at this paper and saying, well,

1020
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: you've looked at a bunch of black holes snapshots in time.

1021
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 1: You never watched an individual black hole grow at the

1022
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 1: rate of the universe. We can't possibly do that. You

1023
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 1: have to observe it for billions of years. Instead, you

1024
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:42,399
Speaker 1: look at different black holes through history, and you try

1025
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:44,879
Speaker 1: to tell a story about how, in general black holes

1026
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 1: are growing. There are some assumptions there that you're making, right,

1027
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:49,960
Speaker 1: that black holes in different regions of the universe who

1028
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:52,160
Speaker 1: are growing at the same rates, etc. And so people

1029
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 1: are also asking questions about that paper. But I think

1030
00:51:54,680 --> 00:51:57,760
Speaker 1: that one's probably pretty solid. It's really this connection between

1031
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:01,520
Speaker 1: black holes and the dark energies theoretical interpretation that's a

1032
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:04,279
Speaker 1: lot more speculative and a lot of fun also, right,

1033
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 1: And I want to be too negative about it. I

1034
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:10,279
Speaker 1: love new ideas, I love breakthroughs, I love speculation. But

1035
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:11,920
Speaker 1: you know, we got to put it in context and

1036
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:14,640
Speaker 1: think about all the question marks that come with it. Right.

1037
00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: But that's kind of the norm in physics, right, Like,

1038
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:19,240
Speaker 1: if you have a wild idea, you're allowed to publish

1039
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: a paper with a wild idea, right, Like, as long

1040
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:26,080
Speaker 1: it has some sort of basis in reality, or at

1041
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:28,880
Speaker 1: least some indication some hints that are based in reality,

1042
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 1: which this one did. You're sort of allowed in physics, right,

1043
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 1: the polish crazy ideas. Sure, And it's also totally reasonable

1044
00:52:34,960 --> 00:52:37,600
Speaker 1: to start off with a half formed idea to say, look,

1045
00:52:37,600 --> 00:52:39,960
Speaker 1: here's something crazy and fascinating. We don't have all the

1046
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:42,360
Speaker 1: details worked out, but maybe it's something in this direction.

1047
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: And somebody else will read the paper and be like, huh,

1048
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 1: here's an obvious hole that needs to be filled. I

1049
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 1: wonder if And then I'll have an idea and they'll

1050
00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: explain it. And so it's totally fine to not have

1051
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: solved everything in one paper, right, to say, maybe this

1052
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 1: direction works, and here's some indications that it might be

1053
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,279
Speaker 1: a fruitful path. Let's keep going this way, and then

1054
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:03,360
Speaker 1: everybody jumps on it. I need to proves them wrong

1055
00:53:03,640 --> 00:53:06,280
Speaker 1: or supports it. We'll see. Yeah, like the Higgs boson.

1056
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: I mean, Peter Higgs got the Nobel Prijec because he

1057
00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:11,320
Speaker 1: polished the crazy idea without a lot of paces in

1058
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 1: an actual experiments. Right, He's like, hey, maybe there's a

1059
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:17,400
Speaker 1: field called the Higgs field and the Higgs boson, and

1060
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 1: and that was an explanation, right, It was an explanation

1061
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:24,759
Speaker 1: and not the only explanation exactly. And one nice thing

1062
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:27,480
Speaker 1: about this paper is that they suggest some ways to

1063
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 1: check these results. As a bunch of details that people

1064
00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 1: can do studying the causer of microwave background and how

1065
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:35,319
Speaker 1: stars are whizzing around, they make a bunch of predictions

1066
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:37,919
Speaker 1: if this theory is right, things we might be able

1067
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:39,799
Speaker 1: to test. And so there's a lot of really fun

1068
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:41,279
Speaker 1: work we can do in the next few years to

1069
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:44,440
Speaker 1: see if indeed black holes aren't driving the expansion of

1070
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 1: the universe or not. Do you think I can get

1071
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:50,240
Speaker 1: my theory polish through peer review about Superman and Spider

1072
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:54,239
Speaker 1: Man causing the growth of black hole? I think you

1073
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:56,360
Speaker 1: have to choose very carefully the journal you're going to

1074
00:53:56,400 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 1: send that to, Yeah, the Journal of or hit cham

1075
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:03,279
Speaker 1: on Twitter. There you go. Or I'll put it on

1076
00:54:03,400 --> 00:54:07,839
Speaker 1: archive at archive dot org. There you go, Archive dot

1077
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: org ya, And then I can be a polished physics theorist.

1078
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:13,680
Speaker 1: Join the club. All right, Well, lots to think about here,

1079
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:16,399
Speaker 1: I guess again. The main lesson is stay tuned. I mean,

1080
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:19,400
Speaker 1: people have crazy ideas about things, and they observe the

1081
00:54:19,480 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 1: universe and they find interesting coincidences and that may or

1082
00:54:22,520 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 1: may not be coincidences. And that's how science moves forward,

1083
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:29,160
Speaker 1: is noticing these weird things and putting out their potentially

1084
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: crazy ideas that sometimes turn out to be true, and

1085
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:34,120
Speaker 1: we can't always tell them the moment, which paper is

1086
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:37,200
Speaker 1: going to be something that resonates through history and is

1087
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:39,840
Speaker 1: read by generations to come, and which is just going

1088
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 1: to be another in an exciting press release that nobody

1089
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:44,560
Speaker 1: ever talked about Again. All right, well, we hope you

1090
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:48,120
Speaker 1: enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.

1091
00:54:55,960 --> 00:54:58,760
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explain

1092
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:02,040
Speaker 1: the Universe is a product shit of iHeartRadio. For more

1093
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:06,759
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1094
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:09,240
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.