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Speaker 2: Hi everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've

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Speaker 2: been following me on social media, you know I love

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Speaker 2: my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen,

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Speaker 2: kitchen mustafs. Just sign up at Katiecurrek dot com slash

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Speaker 2: good Taste. That's k A T I E c O

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Speaker 2: U r Ic dot com slash Taste. I promise your

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Speaker 2: taste buds will be happy you did.

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Speaker 3: Hi.

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Speaker 4: I'm David Eagleman.

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Speaker 5: From the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number

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Speaker 5: one science podcast in America.

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Speaker 4: I mean neuroscientists at.

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Speaker 5: Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three pound

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Speaker 5: universe in our heads.

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Speaker 4: Join me weekly to explore the relationship.

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Speaker 5: Between your brain and your life, because the more we

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Speaker 5: know about what's running under the hood, better we can

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Speaker 5: steer our lives. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

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Speaker 5: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get

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Speaker 5: your podcasts.

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Speaker 3: Guess what Will?

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Speaker 4: What's that Mango?

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Speaker 6: I've been trying to write a promo for our podcast,

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Speaker 6: Part Time Genius, but.

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Speaker 3: Even though we've done over two hundred and fifty episodes,

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Speaker 3: we don't really talk about murders or cults.

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Speaker 7: I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese,

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Speaker 7: so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy. We

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Speaker 7: also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food?

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Speaker 7: And how do dollar stores make money? And then of

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Speaker 7: course can you game a dog show?

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Speaker 3: So what you're saying is everyone be listening.

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Speaker 7: Listen to Part Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or

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Speaker 7: wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 6: Hey, Daniel is particle physics actually useful for anything.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's good for like understanding the universe for sure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but what can I use particles for?

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Speaker 6: Can I use a charm quark charm my way into

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Speaker 6: a better life?

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Speaker 1: I think you're plenty charming already without any charm quarks.

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Speaker 1: But we might be able to, like use muons to

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Speaker 1: help us get to the moon.

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Speaker 6: What just because they start with an M? Is there

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Speaker 6: one letter off from moon and muon?

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Speaker 1: I'm just reaching here, man.

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Speaker 3: Can you use a muans to feed cows? You know?

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Speaker 3: Or grow more corn?

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Speaker 8: More?

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Speaker 1: Muse less corn? I mean, nothing is certain in science,

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Speaker 1: but that's probably a no.

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Speaker 6: Why not don't cows eat muans? Don't they eat muons?

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Speaker 1: I think muons actually cause cows to mutate and make

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Speaker 1: new kinds of cows.

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Speaker 6: Oh well, maybe we'll get a taste of cow out

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Speaker 6: of it, In which case particles would.

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Speaker 1: Be useful better steaks through physics, that's.

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Speaker 3: Right, better particle burgers.

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Speaker 6: Him MC cartoon, I and the author of Oliver's Great

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Speaker 6: Big Universe.

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

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Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I like believing that physics raises

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Speaker 1: the steaks.

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Speaker 3: The steaks like the cow steaks.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got to raise some steaks or the burgers maybe.

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Speaker 1: I mean you're always talking about setting the steaks and.

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Speaker 6: Stories, right, Yeah, that's always important, but usually makes the

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Speaker 6: emotional steaks, not the raw or well done.

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Speaker 8: Kime.

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Speaker 1: Well, I like to get my steaks at the restaurant

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Speaker 1: called mcguffin's.

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Speaker 3: So do you like them rare or well done?

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Speaker 1: I rarely eat steaks. Actually, it's the truth.

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Speaker 3: He eats steaks rarely or rarely eat steaks.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, almost never eat steaks. My son is a big

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Speaker 1: fan of protein, but he prefers chicken and turkey. He's

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Speaker 1: a poultry man.

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Speaker 3: Oh I see, he likes it lean.

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Speaker 1: He likes it with wings.

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Speaker 8: Nice.

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Speaker 3: Nice to stay lean and flighty as well.

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Speaker 6: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain

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Speaker 6: the Universe, a production of our Heart Radio in.

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Speaker 1: Which we help your brain to take flight and trim

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Speaker 1: all the fat from your understanding of the universe. We

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Speaker 1: think it's possible to zoom out there with our minds

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Speaker 1: and understand everything that happens in the universe, from the

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Speaker 1: tiniest little particles to the biggest, most massive black holes,

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Speaker 1: and our goal is to break it all down and

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Speaker 1: explain it to you.

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Speaker 3: That's right.

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Speaker 6: We try to prevent your brain from having a cow

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Speaker 6: thinking about the amazing and vast universe we live in,

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Speaker 6: with all the complete physics and mechanics that are happening.

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Speaker 6: We try to boil it all down to make it

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Speaker 6: digestible and lean. We trim all the fat out of

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Speaker 6: science communication while trying to keep it still plenty juice.

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Speaker 6: And it's all one hundred percent organic, right, These no

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Speaker 6: chemicals in this podcast.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess everything's a chemical, So yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean I do use growth horribones to inflate my intelligence

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Speaker 1: a little bit. But one of the reasons we're talking

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Speaker 1: about such practical matters is because one of the criticisms

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Speaker 1: of particle physics is that it can be kind of abstract, Like,

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Speaker 1: are the questions of particle physics really useful to you

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Speaker 1: on an everyday basis or is it more of a

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Speaker 1: philosophical search for understanding of the nature of the universe.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, you got to kind of wonder what is smashing

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Speaker 6: all those particles together, spending billions of dollars? What it

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Speaker 6: is that all useful for how is that helping humanity

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Speaker 6: move forward and maybe eat better as well?

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Speaker 1: And of course there are lots of indirect benefits. Just

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Speaker 1: understanding the nature of the universe is its own prize

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Speaker 1: and is priceless. But every dollar we invest in basic

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Speaker 1: research comes back to us in terms of technological advancements

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Speaker 1: and economic output and education and employment. So it's definitely

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Speaker 1: a worthy way to spend money, I say, with absolutely

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Speaker 1: no conflict of interest whatsoever.

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Speaker 6: I was gonna say it definitely means employment for certain

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Speaker 6: people like physicists.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps it certainly does, but it benefits everybody because investment

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Speaker 1: in basic research always leads to revolutions and our understanding

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Speaker 1: and in technology and all sorts of stuff.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 6: I guess without physics there wouldn't be this podcast, which

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Speaker 6: sort of employs us right.

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Speaker 1: And improves the lives of everybody on Earth.

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Speaker 6: I guess if physics wasn't around, we'd have to talk

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Speaker 6: about something else, or toxplaining the universe using other things.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, but sometimes particle physics can be more directly useful.

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Speaker 1: Things we learn about weird particles exotic can actually be

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Speaker 1: put to use to help us solve everyday earthly.

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Speaker 6: Mysteries, and they might actually also help us have X

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Speaker 6: ray vision in a way. So today on the podcast,

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Speaker 6: we'll be taxing the question can we use muons to

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Speaker 6: see inside of things? What kinds of things are we

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Speaker 6: talking about? Daniel m All kinds?

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Speaker 3: Boxes?

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Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, escape rooms, people's pockets, safes and banks. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: oh boy?

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Speaker 3: What's inside the burgers at McDonald's.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps nobody wants to know that for real, that's not

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Speaker 1: why you go to McDonald's.

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Speaker 3: I don't think we'll get grand funding for that question.

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Speaker 1: Now that's a situation where knowledge can ruin something.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, but it is an interesting question whether we

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Speaker 6: can use meons to see inside of things?

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Speaker 3: You mean, is this sort of like using muons as

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Speaker 3: X rays?

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Speaker 1: Kind of Yeah, it's a similar idea. Can we use

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Speaker 1: penetrating radiation to reveal something that is hidden from us?

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Speaker 1: Can we look inside something without opening it up?

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Speaker 3: Can we just use X rays that was already invented?

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Speaker 1: We can use X rays, but X rays also have

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Speaker 1: their limits, and some muons might open up the possibility

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Speaker 1: to see inside things that are otherwise still close to

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Speaker 1: us even with X rays.

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Speaker 3: Mmm.

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Speaker 6: Interesting, All right, won't dig into it, but first, as usual,

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Speaker 6: we were wondering how many people out there had thought

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Speaker 6: about using muons to see inside of things and how

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Speaker 6: we might be able to do that.

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Speaker 1: Thanks very much to everybody who plays the game for

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Speaker 1: this section of the podcast. We love hearing your voice,

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Speaker 1: and if you would like to participate, it's very easy.

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Speaker 1: It all happens over email. Just write to me too

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Speaker 1: questions at Danielandjorgey dot com.

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Speaker 6: So think about it for a second. Do you think

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Speaker 6: we can use muons to see inside of things? Here's

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Speaker 6: what people had to say.

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Speaker 9: No, idea, absolutely, But I know that there's some talk

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Speaker 9: of making a muon's collider or something like that. I

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Speaker 9: read about that in some news reports. So I'm going

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Speaker 9: to say, yeah, uh, why not. You know, if you

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Speaker 9: can accelerate them enough and they don't dissipate energy like electrons,

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Speaker 9: there should be a way to create collisions.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to say, yes.

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Speaker 8: I listened to your whole podcast about muons, but I've

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Speaker 8: completely forgotten what they are. So I am going to

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Speaker 8: take a kiss and say, yes, you can use muons

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Speaker 8: to say inside something.

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Speaker 10: I would imagine using muons to look inside things would

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Speaker 10: be what the same principle is using an electron microscope.

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Speaker 10: I suspect muons are smaller than electrons, so for them

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Speaker 10: to bounce off something and give an image, they have

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Speaker 10: to be bouncing off very small subatomic particles.

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Speaker 3: I don't know what a mion is, so I don't know,

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Speaker 3: all right.

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Speaker 6: I imagine a lot of people are like that person

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Speaker 6: who said they don't know what a muon is. They

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Speaker 6: don't know, but it sounds like a reasonable question. A

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Speaker 6: lot of people seem pretty optimistic about this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if a mune is some new kind of particle,

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Speaker 1: maybe it's got some kind of powers or abilities or

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Speaker 1: properties that lets you do new kinds of stuff. I

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Speaker 1: guess that's the optimism.

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Speaker 11: All right.

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Speaker 6: Well, let's put a stake through this question, and they

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Speaker 6: start at the basics, Daniel, what is exactly a muon?

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Speaker 6: A lot of people seem to have heard us talk

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Speaker 6: about it, but maybe forgotten.

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Speaker 3: What it is.

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Speaker 1: A muon can best be understood is like a heavier version,

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Speaker 1: a more massive version of the electron. It's very very

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Speaker 1: similar to the electron, has a lot of the same properties,

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Speaker 1: same kinds of relationships as the electron, but it's more massive.

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Speaker 10: See.

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Speaker 6: So it's a particle and I guess maybe we should

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Speaker 6: mention that the universe has particles, or at least the

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Speaker 6: potential to create particles or further to exist particles, and

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Speaker 6: a muon is one of these particles.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there are lots of particles that make up me

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Speaker 1: and you and all the normal matter that's out there.

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Speaker 1: If you drill inside of us, you find molecules and atoms,

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Speaker 1: and those atoms are made of protons and neutrons and electrons.

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Speaker 1: The protons and neutrons are made out of quarks. So

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Speaker 1: at the most fundamental level, everything that you and I

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Speaker 1: are made out of, and everything that you and I eat,

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Speaker 1: including steaks and cows, are made up of upquarks and

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Speaker 1: down quarks and electrons. So those are the three basic

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Speaker 1: building blocks of normal matter. But there are other kinds

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Speaker 1: of particles out there that the universe can make. They're

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Speaker 1: sort of on the menu, but they're not stable and

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Speaker 1: they're not involved in building normal, everyday atomic matter. So

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Speaker 1: there's sort of various categories of particles out there. Ones

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Speaker 1: that can be made and exist all over the universe,

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Speaker 1: and ones it can be made but only.

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Speaker 6: Exist briefly, or at least in the current universe that

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Speaker 6: we have, right. I think we talked about maybe before,

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Speaker 6: like maybe in the early universe, the particles like nuons

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Speaker 6: were common and they would hang out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the frequency of which you find these particles definitely

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Speaker 1: depends on the temperature of the universe because the unstable

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Speaker 1: particles muons, charm quarks top quarks are a lot more

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Speaker 1: massive than the other particles that take more energy. These days,

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Speaker 1: it's rareer to create that kind of energy because the

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Speaker 1: universe is more spread out and colder. Back in the

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Speaker 1: early days of the universe, it wasn't as hard to

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Speaker 1: get enough energy together to make a muon or a

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Speaker 1: top quark. They always have a short lifetime, though they

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Speaker 1: still don't last very long, but they're made much more

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Speaker 1: often in the early universe. These days, it takes more

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Speaker 1: specialized conditions like humans smashing particles together or cosmic rays

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Speaker 1: hitting the atmosphere to create the conditions to make these

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Speaker 1: weird particles. They still don't last for very long.

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Speaker 6: So like the meon you said only lives for a

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Speaker 6: few microseconds, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the muon lives for two point two microseconds before

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Speaker 1: it decays into an electron and a couple of neutrinos

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Speaker 1: and we call the muon like a cousin of the electron,

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Speaker 1: because it has a lot of the similar properties. It's

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Speaker 1: negatively charged like the electron is. It's paired with the

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Speaker 1: neutrino the way an electron is. So in our sort

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Speaker 1: of table of particles, we put the quarks in one

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Speaker 1: category and these other particles we call leptons in another

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Speaker 1: category because the muon, and like the electron, also doesn't

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Speaker 1: feel the strong nuclear force that the quarks do.

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Speaker 3: I see.

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Speaker 6: So it's basically an electron, but somehow it just has

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Speaker 6: a more mass to it, like the label that says

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Speaker 6: this is how much an electron. Way, it just happens

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Speaker 6: to be more for the muon, but other than that,

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Speaker 6: it's almost exactly the same, Like it has the same

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Speaker 6: electrical charge and all the other quantum values.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's about two hundred times more massive than

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Speaker 1: the electron, and nobody knows why that is, Like why

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Speaker 1: does the electron have this mass and the muon have

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Speaker 1: that mass? These are just numbers that we've discovered in

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Speaker 1: the universe without any explanation. You might think that the

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Speaker 1: Higgs gives an explanation for why some particles have more

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Speaker 1: mass than some have less. And it's true that the

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Speaker 1: muon has more mass than the electron because the Higgs

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Speaker 1: interacts with it more, giving it more mass, But that

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Speaker 1: doesn't explain why there's a difference. It just kicks the

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Speaker 1: can down the road. Instead of asking why does the

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Speaker 1: muon have more mass than the electron, we now ask

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Speaker 1: why does the muon interact with the Higgs more than

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Speaker 1: the electron does. The Higgs explains what mass is, but

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Speaker 1: not why some particles have more or less of it.

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Speaker 1: It's still just two numbers without an explanation. Now those

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Speaker 1: two numbers are interaction strength instead of mass. And there's

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Speaker 1: a third version of the electron called the tao, which

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Speaker 1: is even more massive. And this is the general pattern

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Speaker 1: of the particles. Each of the particles we talked about,

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Speaker 1: the electron, the upcork, the down cork has two copies

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Speaker 1: of it which are more massive. So this is some

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Speaker 1: deep symmetry, some structure to the universe that we've observed.

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Speaker 1: We've organized, we've seen the pattern, we've laid it out

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Speaker 1: on the table, but we've not understood it. And the

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Speaker 1: mew one was like one of the first clues we

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Speaker 1: had that there was more out there to the universe

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Speaker 1: than just the particles that made up our matter.

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Speaker 6: But I guess you know, what does it mean that

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Speaker 6: it only lists or two point two microseconds? Like does

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Speaker 6: that even count as existing?

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Speaker 3: You know?

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Speaker 6: Like why I didn't call it a thing if it's

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Speaker 6: only around for two point two micro seconds? You know,

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Speaker 6: like can it move around that much? Or or is

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Speaker 6: this one of these like gorillativistic things where to us

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Speaker 6: it lists or two point two microseconds, but maybe it's

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Speaker 6: going really fast it lives for a really really long time.

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Speaker 1: I think yes to all of that, although you know,

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Speaker 1: the timescale is always relative, like we only live for

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Speaker 1: one hundred years on the timescale of the universe, that's

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Speaker 1: basically nothing. Do we even count as existing? I would

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Speaker 1: say yes, right, because time scales are relative relative to

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Speaker 1: some other particles, like the top quark lives for ten

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Speaker 1: to the month twenty three seconds, but we still think

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Speaker 1: that it's a thing. Like the neutron lasts for I

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Speaker 1: think eleven minutes before it decays, So these timescales are

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Speaker 1: all relative. What we actually mean by two point two

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Speaker 1: microseconds is in the muon's rest frame, Like if you

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Speaker 1: had a muon in front of you at rest, and

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Speaker 1: you started a clock when it was created, and you

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Speaker 1: waited until a decayed, that would be two point two microseconds.

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Speaker 1: But you're right, relativity plays a big role. Muons are

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Speaker 1: often moving really really fast, especially when they're created in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere, So if they're moving near the speed of light,

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Speaker 1: then a clock that's moving with them is slowed down.

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Speaker 1: And so the reason muons can actually survive from the

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Speaker 1: top of the atmosphere where they're made to hit us

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Speaker 1: on the ground is because their time is slowed. So

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Speaker 1: from our perspective, they can last for much much longer

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Speaker 1: than two point two microseconds, long enough to make it

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Speaker 1: to the surface of the Earth.

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Speaker 6: And what does it mean that it decays or does

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Speaker 6: it disintegrade? Does it like the energy just diffuses or

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Speaker 6: transforms it to something else?

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Speaker 3: What does that actually mean?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes we think about decay as like something breaks

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Speaker 1: up and you get the component bits. It's like cracking

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Speaker 1: something open, breaking it into its basic legos. Not an

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Speaker 1: atom broken up into its protons and neutrons. That's not

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Speaker 1: what's happening here, because when a muon decays, it turns

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Speaker 1: into an electron and two neutrinos. But It's not like

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Speaker 1: the electron and those neutrinos were inside the muon. It's

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Speaker 1: not like the muon is made of the electron and

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Speaker 1: the two neutrinos. Instead, think of that energy is passing

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Speaker 1: from the muon field to the electron field and the

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Speaker 1: neutrino fields. Remember that all these particles are really just

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Speaker 1: ripples in universe spanning fields that feel all of space.

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Speaker 1: Every part of space has a muon field, an electron field,

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Speaker 1: and the three different neutrino fields. So it's happening here

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Speaker 1: is that those fields are coming into contact. They're interacting

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Speaker 1: in the muon field. Oscillations in that field are not stable.

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Speaker 1: They like to decay down into the electron field and

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Speaker 1: the neutrino fields. So that's what's happening here.

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Speaker 6: But maybe a question is like why is it so unstable,

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Speaker 6: Like what makes the muon field, which makes muons prone

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Speaker 6: to be to basically dissipating or disappearing, and not, for example,

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Speaker 6: the electron field, which seems super duper stable.

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Speaker 1: The electron would like to decay, but there's nothing for

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Speaker 1: it to decay into because it's the lowest mass particle

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Speaker 1: in this chain. It's the lightest charged particle, and so

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Speaker 1: the muon can decay to an electron, which is a

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Speaker 1: lower mass particle, and so it does because in doing so,

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Speaker 1: it spreads out the energy. The universe doesn't like to

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Speaker 1: have a lot of energy concentrated in one place, likes

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Speaker 1: to spread it out. It's like entropy at a most

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Speaker 1: basic level. And so a high mass particle will tend

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Speaker 1: to decay into lower mass particles if it can, because

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Speaker 1: that provides more arrangements of that energy. Instead of having

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Speaker 1: all of it just in mass, now you have it

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Speaker 1: in a lower mass particle, plus lots of different possible

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Speaker 1: momentum states. So the quantum mechanical probabilities are just much

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Speaker 1: more for lower mass particles, and so they're more likely

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Speaker 1: to happen.

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Speaker 6: But I guess maybe why doesn't Why can't the electron

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Speaker 6: break into something smaller? Is it just like we just

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Speaker 6: haven't seen it do that, or maybe it's impossible.

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Speaker 1: Well, we haven't seen an electron decay. We think electrons

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Speaker 1: are stable. Though it's possible that electrons live for like

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Speaker 1: a trillion years, we just never seen one decay because

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Speaker 1: they just last for a long long time. Right, It's

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Speaker 1: the same with the proton We think the proton is stable,

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Speaker 1: but we don't know. We've never seen one decay, so

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Speaker 1: we think it might be stable or very very very

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Speaker 1: long lived. But for the electron to decay, there would

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Speaker 1: have to be something for it to decay into that

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Speaker 1: also has electric charge. Because electric charge is conserved, it

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Speaker 1: can't just go away. We don't know if any lower

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Speaker 1: mass charged particle than the electron, So it's sort of

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Speaker 1: like the bottom rung of the ladder, which is why

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Speaker 1: energy sort of gets stuck there.

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Speaker 6: I see, okay, so well, then the mewon decays because

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Speaker 6: it can decay in to other particles. Does it get

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Speaker 6: triggered by something, or if you just leave a meon there,

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Speaker 6: it'll be like okay, I'm done, and then it breaks apart.

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Speaker 1: If you just leave a muon in the vacuum, it

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Speaker 1: will decay. Some muons flying through space will decay on

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Speaker 1: their own. They can also interact with stuff because they

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Speaker 1: have charge. They can interact with electrons, and they can

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Speaker 1: interact with protons and all sorts of stuff. So if

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Speaker 1: you slam them into a block of lead, for example,

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Speaker 1: they will interact and that can also trigger the decay.

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Speaker 1: But muons on their own will also just decay.

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Speaker 6: Can they appear out of nowhere? Like, what does it

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Speaker 6: take to make a muon? Or how are they made

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Speaker 6: if they're a thing in the universe. Is it just

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Speaker 6: whenever you have enough energy concentrated into one spot or

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Speaker 6: what's the origin story of a muon?

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Speaker 1: So the origin stories that you get enough energy into

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Speaker 1: sort of a higher mass field to feel that can

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Speaker 1: decay into muons. Energy likes to flow down the lower

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Speaker 1: mass fields like rungs down the ladder, So you got

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Speaker 1: to get enough energy into a higher mass field and

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Speaker 1: then it can decay into muons. So the typical way

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Speaker 1: that muons are made naturally in our environment is that

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Speaker 1: you have a cosmic ray, which is like a proton

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Speaker 1: slamming into some particle in the atmosphere, which creates a

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Speaker 1: lot of energy density in one space, and then you

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Speaker 1: create some very massive, unstable particle, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: particles decay into muons, So you might create like a

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Speaker 1: pion or a chaon. These are more massive particles that

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Speaker 1: like to decay into muons, and then those decay in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere, giving you a muon which flies down to

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Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth.

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Speaker 3: But then you need Where does the charge come from?

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Speaker 1: Protons are charged, right, so the charge comes from the

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Speaker 1: cosmic ray, and also there's loss of charge in the

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Speaker 1: upper atmosphere. Even a neutron slamming into a particle in

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Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere, and like disintegrating an oxygen molecule can

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Speaker 1: create showers of charged particles.

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Speaker 6: M Where does the negative charge come from? Isn't a

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Speaker 6: photon neutral?

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Speaker 1: Well, first of all, we have two flavors of muons.

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Speaker 1: We have negative muons or to the normal ones, and

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Speaker 1: then anti muons, which are positively charged. In particle physics

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Speaker 1: we don't really care so much about it, and both

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Speaker 1: of them are created in the upper atmosphere. So we

443
00:20:52,960 --> 00:20:56,480
Speaker 1: have anti muons and muons created in the upper atmosphere.

444
00:20:56,520 --> 00:20:57,960
Speaker 1: But your question is a good one. If you start

445
00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:00,679
Speaker 1: from a positively charged proton, how you end up making

446
00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:03,680
Speaker 1: like a negatively charged muon. The answer is that there's

447
00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:06,760
Speaker 1: just a lot more stuff involved in this interaction than

448
00:21:06,760 --> 00:21:09,800
Speaker 1: we're describing, because a proton is a big complicated bag

449
00:21:09,840 --> 00:21:12,600
Speaker 1: of quarks and it slams into something else in the atmosphere,

450
00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 1: which is a big complicated bag of other protons and neutrons.

451
00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:18,720
Speaker 1: So there's plenty of charges around to create something which

452
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:21,960
Speaker 1: decays into a negatively charged particle and balance it out

453
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:24,040
Speaker 1: with all the rest of the stuff. So a proton

454
00:21:24,160 --> 00:21:27,240
Speaker 1: can turn into a huge shower of negative and positive

455
00:21:27,240 --> 00:21:30,520
Speaker 1: particles with a total charge of plus one. So you

456
00:21:30,520 --> 00:21:33,520
Speaker 1: can have lots of muons and anti muons created in

457
00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:34,240
Speaker 1: these showers.

458
00:21:34,960 --> 00:21:38,760
Speaker 6: All right, Well, whether you're pro or anti muon maybe

459
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:40,720
Speaker 6: is the question of the episodes. Can we use a

460
00:21:40,800 --> 00:21:43,800
Speaker 6: muon to see inside of things and maybe put these

461
00:21:44,040 --> 00:21:48,240
Speaker 6: giant particles to use. That's the question. Let's dig into that.

462
00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:50,520
Speaker 6: But first let's take a quick break.

463
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:57,600
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Speaker 3: Hi.

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Speaker 5: I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos. Which recently

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528
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Speaker 6: All right, We're talking about the electrons, cousin, more massive cousin,

529
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 6: the muon, and whether it can be used to see

530
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 6: inside of things like steaks and cows perhaps and.

531
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,320
Speaker 1: Also maybe solving mysteries of archaeology.

532
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 3: Ooh, you mean like ancient buried cows.

533
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:53,360
Speaker 1: Yes, maybe ancient buried cows.

534
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,840
Speaker 3: Literally did early man eat steak or not?

535
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: Or were they van Can you ages take for thousands

536
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: of years and still have it be tasty?

537
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 6: Paleoman actually follow the paleodiet We might use meons for that,

538
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 6: all right, So we talked about what the meon is.

539
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 6: It's the more massive cousin of the electron, and that

540
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:16,159
Speaker 6: it rarely lasts more than two point two microseconds in

541
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:19,960
Speaker 6: nature in the universe. So if it's so elusive and unstable,

542
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 6: how did we discover this heavy particle.

543
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out that muons are everywhere because cosmic

544
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 1: grays are constantly slamming into the upper atmosphere, creating showers

545
00:26:30,359 --> 00:26:32,919
Speaker 1: of particles, a lot of which turned into muons. So

546
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: there are ten thousand muons per square meter per minute

547
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:38,080
Speaker 1: at the surface of the Earth.

548
00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 6: By cosmic rays, you mean, like just other particles going

549
00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 6: really really fast somehow hitting the Earth exactly.

550
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: Sometimes people think that space is a vacuum. It's emptiness,

551
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 1: there's nothing out there, but the Sun is pumping out

552
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:52,679
Speaker 1: protons and electrons and all sorts of stuff, and the

553
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:55,840
Speaker 1: galaxy has lots of sources of high energy particles, So

554
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:59,399
Speaker 1: we're really flying through a wind of particles, meaning that

555
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:01,680
Speaker 1: you can think of the is like tiny little meteors

556
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:04,679
Speaker 1: hitting the upper atmosphere, one proton at a time, or

557
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:07,960
Speaker 1: maybe an iron and nucleus at a time, in creating

558
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: a little shower of energy. Just the same way that

559
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 1: a meteor hitting the atmosphere will interact with the atmosphere

560
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,359
Speaker 1: and get friction and break up and slow down. A

561
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: tiny particle like a proton, with enough energy will create

562
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: a shower of particles which eventually reaches the surface of

563
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: the Earth, and a lot of those are muons. There

564
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: are also photons and electrons and other stuff in there,

565
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,119
Speaker 1: but muons are the most penetrating. They tend to pass

566
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: through matter without interacting, so a lot of them make

567
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: it to the surface of the Earth.

568
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 6: And sort of a good thing, right, Like we didn't

569
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 6: have the atmosphere and we were getting hit directly by

570
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,200
Speaker 6: cosmic grays, we might not be around today, right. These

571
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 6: costomic grays are very harmful, so it's a good thing

572
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 6: they're being kind of broken up into muons.

573
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, the atmosphere is like a big blanket that protects

574
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: you from the radiation of outer space. When astronauts go

575
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,520
Speaker 1: up into space, they have to take special precautions to

576
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: avoid being slammed into by all of this radiation. When

577
00:27:57,840 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 1: there's like a solar storm, the astronauts have like a

578
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: panic room they can go into with extra shielding to

579
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 1: protect themselves from all that radiation. But the higher up

580
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:07,960
Speaker 1: you go in the atmosphere, the more radiation you're exposed to,

581
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: because more these particles survive. So every time you take

582
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 1: a flight, for example, you're exposing yourself to more radiation.

583
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: This is one reason why like flight attendants and pilots

584
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:19,120
Speaker 1: are limited to how many days a month they can work.

585
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 6: All right, So then the atmosphere breaks up the cosmic

586
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:24,679
Speaker 6: grays and you said, turns them mostly into mulons or

587
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 6: rarely into meons. How often are muons created by these

588
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 6: cosmic rays.

589
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a chain. The proton creates a

590
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: bunch of particles which then decaynes is something, which then

591
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 1: decayned is something. And the muon is like an end

592
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: product and it tends to last the longest. So saw

593
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 1: like the muon dominates the production of particles. You also

594
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 1: make electrons, and you make neutrinos, and you make photons,

595
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 1: the neutrinos, and the muons are the ones that make

596
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: it through the rest of the atmosphere. They tend to

597
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 1: interact a little bit less than electrons and photons, so

598
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 1: you see them on the surface of the Earth more often.

599
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 6: Oh, I see, you're also making a lot of electrons

600
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 6: and other particles. Put maybe like the electrons get stopped

601
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 6: by all the remaining air in the atmosphere exactly.

602
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: Electrons like to interact with stuff. The electrons passing through

603
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: air will interact with those molecules much more often than

604
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: muons do. Muons are more penetrating.

605
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 3: And why is that? Are they just more antisocial?

606
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 1: It actually has a really fascinating explanation that has to

607
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 1: do with special relativity, and this is the power that

608
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: muons have to let us see through things. Muons are

609
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: more penetrating because they have more mass, so they're two

610
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 1: hundred times more massive than the electron. Otherwise, from a

611
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: particle physics perspective, they're very similar. They feel the weak force,

612
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: they feel electromagnetism, they don't feel the strong force. But

613
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 1: if you shoot a beam of muons into like a

614
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: block of lead, you'll get a lot more out on

615
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: the other side than if you did with electrons. And

616
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:47,240
Speaker 1: the reason is their mass.

617
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 3: Is it like they have more inertia?

618
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 6: Is that kind of what you're getting at, Just like

619
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 6: you know, if I shoot a small pebble into a

620
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 6: pool or something, or if I throw shoot a bowling

621
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 6: ball through it, like the bowling bull will get through

622
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 6: the pool further or is it other kind of mechanism.

623
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: It's another mechanism. It's actually because they are interacting less

624
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 1: because they see less of the material. It's a special

625
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:10,280
Speaker 1: relativity effect. If you have an electron and a muon

626
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: at the same energy, the muon is actually going slower

627
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 1: because it's more massive, like more of the energy is

628
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: taken up creating the mass of the muon. So if

629
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 1: you give them the same energy, the muon is moving

630
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 1: slower as a lower velocity than the electron at the

631
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:26,960
Speaker 1: same energy because it has more mass.

632
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 6: So then you're sort of constraining things to be all

633
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 6: the same energy.

634
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because it's the typical energy that these particles

635
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: are produced at in these showers. So if you have

636
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 1: an electron and a muon at the same energy, the muon

637
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: is going slower and that affects how it interacts because

638
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 1: it sees less of the material. To an electron moving

639
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: at nearly the speed of light, everything in front of

640
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: it is squeezed by special relativity. Remember we talked about

641
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: how things moving near the speed of light look shorter.

642
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: That's also true from their perspective. An electron whizzing through

643
00:30:57,120 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 1: the atmosphere sees the distance to the surface of the

644
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: Earth as close then we see it because it's moving

645
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: fast relative to the surface sphere, so things are squeezed.

646
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 1: As a result, it can interact with more the atmosphere.

647
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: Or another way to think about it is like the

648
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 1: atmosphere is denser because all that gas is like the

649
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: Lorentz contracted in front of it into something a little

650
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 1: more dense. So it can interact with more of the

651
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 1: atmosphere because it's moving at a higher speed and it

652
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 1: has more of this special relativity enhancement. Wait, that doesn't

653
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 1: make a whole lot of sense to me. Like you're saying,

654
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: like the rest of the atmosphere to an electron, because

655
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:33,080
Speaker 1: it's moving fast, the atmosphere looks thinner and more dense,

656
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 1: and so it's harder to get through it. But it's

657
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: still the same length to us. Isn't it like it's squeezed,

658
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:42,960
Speaker 1: but it's still the same It's going through the same

659
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: amount of stuff as the slower nuon.

660
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 3: No.

661
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it sees more of the material at once.

662
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: It's like it has more atoms to interact with. So

663
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: this is a quantum mechanical process and it has like

664
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: a probability to interact with an atom. An electron flies

665
00:31:57,880 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: by an atom, there's a chance it's going to interact

666
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 1: in a chain. Is that it's not. The more atoms

667
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:04,240
Speaker 1: that flies by, the more likely it's going to interact

668
00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: and lose some of its energy. So if you squeeze

669
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: more atoms into the same space, then it's got a

670
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: higher chance of interacting. And what special relativity does is

671
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: because the electron is moving faster, it Lorentz contracts the

672
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 1: stuff in front of it basically squeezes in more atoms

673
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: at once.

674
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 6: I see, you sort of have to change the way

675
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 6: you're thinking about how these particles interact. Like you're saying,

676
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 6: like you know, an electron when it hits a wall,

677
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 6: it's not actually touching the wall, It just gets close

678
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 6: enough to it that there's some sort of quantum mechanical

679
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 6: transmission between the two that makes them technically interact, right.

680
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And that's why, for example, neutrinos can pass

681
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: through a light year of lead. They're passing through the

682
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: same material, and they're not like dodging around those particles.

683
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 1: It's not a mechanical physical interaction of things touching. It's

684
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: a quantum mechanical interaction of forces. The neutrino just doesn't

685
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: interact with those particles at all, like phases right through

686
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,840
Speaker 1: that stuff, because it doesn't feel electromagnetism. It only has

687
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:05,440
Speaker 1: a smaller chance to interact with every single particle. So

688
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: that's why neutrinos pass through almost everything, and that's why

689
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 1: there's a difference between the penetrating power of muons and electrons. Muons,

690
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 1: being more massive at the same energy, are effectively moving slower,

691
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 1: so they have less of this special relativity boost where

692
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 1: they can interact with otherwise further away atoms. Then now

693
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 1: look closer to them, and so they can feel their fields.

694
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:29,960
Speaker 6: So as the electron is a showering down coming down

695
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 6: the atmosphere, you're saying, it sees the bottom of the

696
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 6: atmosphere as closer, which might make it more likely do

697
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 6: it right, But I guess the weird thing is that,

698
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 6: you know, if it does interact with the bottom of

699
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 6: the atmosphere, wouldn't it mean it made it through the atmosphere?

700
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 6: And so it's really isn't it sort of the same thing? Probability.

701
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 1: It's a cool way to look at it. But it

702
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: can interact with the bottom of the atmosphere while still

703
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: not being that far through the atmosphere because to it,

704
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: the bottom of the atmosphere is not that far away,

705
00:33:56,760 --> 00:33:58,880
Speaker 1: so it can still feel those fields.

706
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 3: Right right, it feels it closer.

707
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 6: But if it interacts with the bottom of the atmosphere,

708
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 6: isn't it the same as making it through the atmosphere?

709
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 6: Like it skipped everything above and it made it to

710
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 6: the bottom of the atmosphere, that means it made it

711
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:10,239
Speaker 6: through the atmosphere.

712
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to make it to the bottom of

713
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 1: the atmosphere in order to interact with things at the

714
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 1: bottom of the atmosphere. Remember, all of these things are

715
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: action at a distance. You're feeling the fields of things.

716
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 1: Two electrons don't have to touch each other in order

717
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: to interact. They just have to feel their.

718
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 6: Field or I guess maybe, But I mean It's like,

719
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 6: what's the difference between an electron that makes it through

720
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 6: the atmosphere and interacts with the bottom of the atmosphere

721
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 6: and an electron that sees the bottom of the atmosphere

722
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 6: is closer and interacts with it. Aren't they both the

723
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 6: same result? And that don't both mean that they made

724
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 6: it through the atmosphere.

725
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:44,359
Speaker 1: So higher speed electron is more likely to interact because

726
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: it sees more of the atmosphere, and it's going to

727
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:51,000
Speaker 1: interact at a higher altitude than a lower velocity electron,

728
00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: which doesn't see as much of the atmosphere because a

729
00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:56,840
Speaker 1: special relativity boost. And so even if you're interacting with

730
00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: things that are lower down, your actual location is still high.

731
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 6: Oh, I see you were talking about it might decay

732
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 6: before it reaches the bottom of the atmosphere. It's kind

733
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:08,560
Speaker 6: of not necessarily interacting with the bottom of the atmosphere. Like,

734
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 6: if it touches the bottom of the atmosphere, it means

735
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 6: it made it through the atmosphere, doesn't it.

736
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 1: Well, electrons don't decay, right, All they can do is interact.

737
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:17,280
Speaker 1: But again, you can interact with something at the bottom

738
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere without being there, right. The same way,

739
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: like the Earth is interacting with the Sun without touching

740
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:25,400
Speaker 1: the Sun, because if you can feel its gravity at

741
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: a distance.

742
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 6: All right, well, let's assume that then that that's the case.

743
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 6: And so you're saying neuons can make it through more

744
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 6: of the atmosphere or anything in particular, just because they're moving,

745
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 6: they tend to be moving slower, although if you had

746
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 6: a fast moving meon that wouldn't be the case.

747
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: Exactly, And we actually see those at the Large Hadron Collider.

748
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 1: We can make muons with enough energy that they're moving

749
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 1: at very relativistic speeds and they interact with matter like

750
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: electrons do, so we can see like muon created showers

751
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:54,800
Speaker 1: when we happen to make a really really high velocity muon.

752
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:56,840
Speaker 1: It's just a feature of muons and electrons at the

753
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: energies that they tend to be produced at in our

754
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 1: co mcrays here on Earth because of the ratio of

755
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:03,400
Speaker 1: their masses.

756
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 6: I guess, couldn't you just use a slower moving electron.

757
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 6: Wouldn't that be the equivalent of a slow moving muon?

758
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:13,799
Speaker 6: Then then the electron could penetrate things more.

759
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. You can slow down electrons,

760
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:18,719
Speaker 1: but then there are other effects that are going to

761
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 1: come into play that are going to make it interact

762
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 1: more so, there isn't a window there for electrons to

763
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: do the same trick that muons can do.

764
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:28,399
Speaker 6: I think what you're really saying is like you're trying

765
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 6: to use muons, not as a general concept, but meons

766
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 6: that are particularly created in the cosmic rays when they interact,

767
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:38,279
Speaker 6: when they slam into the atmosphere. You're trying to put

768
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 6: forward the idea of using these mions that are showering

769
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 6: us as maybe like an X ray machine.

770
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Muons have this window of energy in which

771
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: they can penetrate really really deeply. If they move more slowly,

772
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 1: then they run into the same atomic physics that electrons have.

773
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 1: They can get captured. They move faster, then they get

774
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: the relativistic effects and they interact just like electrons. But

775
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 1: muons have this special window, this energy range in which

776
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: they can pass through a lot of matter, much more

777
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: than X rays can. X rays can pass through some

778
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: kinds of matter, which is why you can use them

779
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: to see your bones and inside your body, but muons

780
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:13,399
Speaker 1: can pass through a lot more matter than X rays can.

781
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: X rays, for example, cannot pass through huge blocks of granite,

782
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: But do you.

783
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 3: Sort of skipped through something?

784
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:23,720
Speaker 6: Which is you said, electrons, even if you slow them down,

785
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:27,800
Speaker 6: are not as good as muons for X rays applications,

786
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 6: And why is that?

787
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 1: Well, they'll get captured by atoms. Like electrons moving slowly,

788
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:32,240
Speaker 1: we'll just get.

789
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 3: Captured, but not a muon.

790
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: A muon moving really slowly also will get captured. Yeah,

791
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 1: so a muon has a window, it's got a minimum

792
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: energies do this and a maximum energy in order to

793
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:42,719
Speaker 1: do this penetrating trick.

794
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:46,200
Speaker 3: So then you were saying, how were these muons discovered?

795
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:49,319
Speaker 1: So these muons were discovered in cosmic rays. People were

796
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 1: studying electrons and somebody had even discovered the anti electron,

797
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:56,279
Speaker 1: and they're studying these particles by watching them move in

798
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 1: magnetic fields and seeing how they curve. And they saw

799
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,040
Speaker 1: some thing which looked kind of like an electron and

800
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,799
Speaker 1: had a charge like an electron. They incurred in a

801
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: magnetic field the same direction as an electron, but it

802
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 1: didn't curve as much, and it penetrated much more deeply.

803
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:12,440
Speaker 1: Like you could put slabs of lead in front of

804
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: your detector and you would still see it. So nineteen

805
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,560
Speaker 1: thirty six, Physicistic Caltech first discovered these.

806
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:21,880
Speaker 6: Things and they bend less in a magnetic field because

807
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 6: of their mass, right, basically their innership. Or is it

808
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 6: also some weird quantum interaction. No, no, it's a very

809
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 6: classical thing. It's just because of their mass. Yeah, mmmmm,

810
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 6: I see. All right, Well, let's get into how you

811
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 6: might use muons to penetrate things, see inside of things,

812
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 6: maybe discover ancient artifacts inside of pyramids.

813
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:45,959
Speaker 3: So let's dig into that. But first let's take another

814
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 3: quick break. Hi.

815
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:55,440
Speaker 5: I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently

816
00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 5: hit the number one science podcast in America. I mean

817
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 5: neuroscientists that stand for and I've spent my career exploring

818
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:04,480
Speaker 5: the three pound universe in our heads.

819
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:05,920
Speaker 4: We're looking at a whole new.

820
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:09,760
Speaker 5: Series of episodes this season to understand why and how

821
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 5: our lives look the way they do. Why does your

822
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 5: memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to

823
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824
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Speaker 5: Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And

825
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Speaker 5: why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions

826
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,919
Speaker 5: and hundreds more, because the more we know about what's

827
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 5: running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.

828
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:39,320
Speaker 4: Join me weekly to explore the relationship.

829
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:43,360
Speaker 5: Between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions.

830
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:47,239
Speaker 5: Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app,

831
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

832
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 13: Parents, are you looking for a screen free, engaging way

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Speaker 11: Hey everyone, Jake's story Elli hear from John Boy Media.

847
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848
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:54,359
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849
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850
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852
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00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:30,080
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860
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Speaker 11: Jake on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

861
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Speaker 11: get your podcasts.

862
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 14: We think of Franklin as the doddling dude flying a

863
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:41,960
Speaker 14: kite and no rain, but those trierments are the most

864
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:45,879
Speaker 14: important scientific discoveries of the time.

865
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:46,839
Speaker 3: I'm Evan right left.

866
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,360
Speaker 15: Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with

867
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 15: biographer Walter Isaacson. This time we're diving into the story

868
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 15: of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted

869
00:41:57,200 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 15: off from history.

870
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 14: His media empire make some of the most successful self

871
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 14: made business person in America. I mean, he was never

872
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,480
Speaker 14: early to bed, an early to rise type person. He's

873
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 14: enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair and what was

874
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 14: called the coiffor a la Franklin.

875
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: And who's more relevant now than ever.

876
00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 14: The only other person who could have possibly been the

877
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 14: first president would have been Benjamin Franklin, but he's too

878
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:27,319
Speaker 14: old and once Washington to do it.

879
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:29,880
Speaker 15: Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the

880
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:33,759
Speaker 15: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

881
00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 6: Or We're talking about neons and how you can use

882
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:47,920
Speaker 6: them to see inside of things. And we talked about

883
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:51,719
Speaker 6: how neons sort of have an extra penetrating effects more

884
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:56,839
Speaker 6: than its cousin, the electron, because it's heavier, and so

885
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 6: the ideas than to use this like an X ray,

886
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,880
Speaker 6: basically shoot it at something, and if it gets through,

887
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,359
Speaker 6: then that tells you what's inside of the thing.

888
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can sort of use it as a way

889
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 1: to measure the density of something. If you have an

890
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,399
Speaker 1: object and you don't know if inside of it is

891
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 1: nothing like a vacuum or a huge block of super

892
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 1: dense uranium, you can try to shoot it with a

893
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: bunch of muons and count how many come out. By

894
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: figuring out how many make it through, you can tell

895
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 1: what the density of something is. This only works if

896
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 1: you have something which has a chance to make it through. Right.

897
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:30,759
Speaker 1: If you just shoot photons at a block, then none

898
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 1: of them are going to make it through. They're all

899
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 1: going to get absorbed. Doesn't tell you anything about what's inside.

900
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:37,320
Speaker 1: But if you have a particle which has a chance

901
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: to make it through for some densities, then you can

902
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: measure the rate at which does make it through and

903
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:44,879
Speaker 1: figure out what the density of that stuff.

904
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 3: Was, Right, Right, I guess it's sort of like X rays.

905
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 6: Like X rays, if I just shine of flashlight onto

906
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 6: my body, it's going to bounce off the skin or

907
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:55,680
Speaker 6: at least most of the photons because the light is

908
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:57,920
Speaker 6: at a certain wavelength. But if I change the wavelength

909
00:43:57,960 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 6: to that of an X ray, it'll go through my

910
00:43:59,760 --> 00:44:00,799
Speaker 6: body sort of.

911
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:03,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Some of the X rays will make it through,

912
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 1: and if you have an X ray detector on the

913
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,600
Speaker 1: other side, you can pick that up and by looking

914
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:09,440
Speaker 1: at the pattern of where the X rays made it

915
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:11,360
Speaker 1: through and didn't make it through, you can tell what

916
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 1: the density of stuff is. And that's how you can

917
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: tell the difference between like bone or metal and soft tissues,

918
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: which have different densities and therefore different absorption for the

919
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:23,240
Speaker 1: X rays. So it's exactly the same principle for muons,

920
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: except that muons will make it through things that X

921
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:29,279
Speaker 1: rays will not survive, which allows you to effectively X

922
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:32,840
Speaker 1: ray or muon ray other kinds of things that you

923
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: couldn't otherwise see inside.

924
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 6: So in the case of an X ray, an X

925
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 6: ray can go through my body because it's a different wavelength,

926
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:41,399
Speaker 6: which what makes it go through my body more than

927
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 6: say the life from a flashlight.

928
00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:46,319
Speaker 1: So X rays have more energy their higher frequency, right,

929
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:48,680
Speaker 1: and the interaction with a photon with the materials in

930
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 1: your body depends on the energy. But a whole episode

931
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 1: about transparency why photons can go through some things and

932
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: can't go through other things, and it's all about whether

933
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:00,319
Speaker 1: they will interact. Photons can interact with matter depend on

934
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 1: their energy. They can get absorbed if there are atoms

935
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 1: out there that can.

936
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,560
Speaker 6: Eat them, because atoms only like to eat photons that

937
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:10,319
Speaker 6: are a particular frequency, right, Yeah, exactly, like they don't

938
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 6: just like any photon, They have to be a special

939
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 6: frequency because of quantum mechanics.

940
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have various energy levels. They have these ladders

941
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:21,120
Speaker 1: of energies, so they can absorb photons of like just

942
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:24,080
Speaker 1: the right energy, and that affects what photons can pass

943
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: through your body or through glass, or through metal or

944
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:28,240
Speaker 1: any kind of stuff.

945
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:30,480
Speaker 6: So that's why X rays can go through things more

946
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 6: than regular light. And we talked about how muons can

947
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 6: do that too. Why is that because they don't they

948
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,720
Speaker 6: have a specific energy range that makes them go through

949
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:44,440
Speaker 6: but not interact with the atoms, say inside my body.

950
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. At certain energy range, they won't be captured

951
00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 1: by atoms, and they're not quite going fast enough to

952
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:53,919
Speaker 1: have a special relativistic boost where they interact with lots

953
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:56,759
Speaker 1: more atoms than otherwise, and so they can make it

954
00:45:56,800 --> 00:45:58,920
Speaker 1: through a lot of this material. And so you can

955
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: see muons. If you're like deep underground, you put a

956
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:05,359
Speaker 1: muon detector like meters and meters underground, those muons will

957
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 1: pass right through that solid rock and hit your muon detector.

958
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 6: Now, is the idea that you're shooting these muons like

959
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 6: you're creating them and shooting them with like an X

960
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 6: ray gun or a mewray gun and then catching them

961
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:19,680
Speaker 6: on the other side, Or is the idea that you're

962
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 6: using the ones that are showering down on us from

963
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 6: the atmosphere.

964
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 1: In principle, you could do both, right, If you have

965
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:28,279
Speaker 1: a muon beam, then you could put stuff in the

966
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:30,320
Speaker 1: muon beam in order to do these kind of tests.

967
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 1: There is a muon beam. It'scern and we've put cell

968
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:35,279
Speaker 1: phones in it and stuff like that. It's a lot

969
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 1: of fun. But it's hard to build a muon beam.

970
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 1: It's hard to point a muon beam. It's hard to

971
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:40,560
Speaker 1: bring stuff to a muon beam.

972
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 3: Why why is that?

973
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:43,799
Speaker 1: Why is it hard to bring stuff to the muon beam?

974
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 8: Now?

975
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 3: Like, why is it hard to make a muon shoot

976
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 3: a gun?

977
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: Yeah? Great question. Muons are created from the decays of

978
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:51,439
Speaker 1: other particles. So the way you make a muon beam

979
00:46:51,520 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: is actually you smash protons into like a block of

980
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:58,240
Speaker 1: material like graphite, which creates a shower of other stuff.

981
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:01,759
Speaker 1: It's basically stimulating what's happened in the upper atmosphere. Then

982
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:04,360
Speaker 1: a lot of those things decay into muons. So you

983
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:07,359
Speaker 1: need a proton accelerator of sufficient energy, and there just

984
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:09,880
Speaker 1: aren't that many of those. They're not that portable. You

985
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: need like a linear accelerator. You need magnets to filter

986
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:13,720
Speaker 1: some of this stuff out.

987
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 3: How big would it have to be, Like can you

988
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 3: make it a handheld version, or do you need like

989
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:21,200
Speaker 3: a building size anything to shoot muons?

990
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. What's the smallest muon gun

991
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 1: in the world. Definitely the size of a large physics laboratory,

992
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:29,759
Speaker 1: not something you could pick up and carry, though you

993
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: might be able to put it in the back of

994
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 1: a flatbed truck. But mostly it's unnecessary because the world

995
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,840
Speaker 1: is filled with muons from cosmic rays. Like there's a

996
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: constant stream of these things just naturally produced in the

997
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 1: atmosphere and you can just use those.

998
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 6: M What do you mean, like there's we're surrounded or

999
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:51,280
Speaker 6: being penetrated by muons from all directions all the time.

1000
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:53,759
Speaker 1: Not from all directions from above, right, these things are

1001
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: made in the upper atmosphere and are streaming down to us. Again,

1002
00:47:57,520 --> 00:48:01,399
Speaker 1: there's ten thousand muons per square meter per minute, so

1003
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 1: there's not a small number of muons passing through us.

1004
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: And so if you want to measure the density of something,

1005
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: you just put like a muon detector underneath it and

1006
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:13,360
Speaker 1: count how many muons are making it, and then you

1007
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:16,239
Speaker 1: can tell how many were absorbed by the material, and

1008
00:48:16,280 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 1: that tells you what the density.

1009
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 8: Of it was.

1010
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 9: Mmm.

1011
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 6: But are muons coming at us from the sides as well? Like,

1012
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 6: aren't their cosmic rays hitting us from all directions?

1013
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:27,799
Speaker 1: There's definitely an angler dependence, but most of them come

1014
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:29,520
Speaker 1: straight down. That's the most likely.

1015
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 3: Direction, all right.

1016
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:31,720
Speaker 6: So then the idea is that if I want to

1017
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:35,080
Speaker 6: see through something, I just put a meon detector under it.

1018
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:37,360
Speaker 6: And so what are these meon detectors made out of?

1019
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:39,960
Speaker 6: How do you make a muon detector If muons go

1020
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:41,440
Speaker 6: through things so easily.

1021
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: The original sort of old school ones are these films. Now,

1022
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: muons are hard to stop, but they're not that hard

1023
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: to see, Like, they will leave a little trail of

1024
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: evidence as they go. For example, you can build a

1025
00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: cloud chamber in your garage, which is just like a

1026
00:48:56,040 --> 00:49:00,319
Speaker 1: transparent box filled with water vapor super saturated in the air,

1027
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 1: and as muons fly through it, they won't be stopped,

1028
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:05,359
Speaker 1: they won't lose a lot of energy, but they will

1029
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:08,400
Speaker 1: interact with those things and create little a stream of droplets.

1030
00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:10,839
Speaker 1: So you can actually build a muon detector like at

1031
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:14,520
Speaker 1: home with simple materials. There's all sorts of fun instructions

1032
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:16,719
Speaker 1: on YouTube that you can follow, so they'll leave like

1033
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: breadcrumbs for where they were. The original ones were like

1034
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 1: film and moulsion blocks. These days we use like charged

1035
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: gases or scintillating plastics in order to see these muons.

1036
00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 6: I see, you don't stop the muons, You just kind

1037
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 6: of see the evidence of them going through.

1038
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's hard to stop the muon for them

1039
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:36,760
Speaker 1: to interact in a significant enough way to get slowed

1040
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 1: down to deposit all of their energy, but they will

1041
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:41,879
Speaker 1: leave a little trace of energy as they go by

1042
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:44,440
Speaker 1: if you have the right setup, So it's not that

1043
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 1: hard to detect muons.

1044
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:48,319
Speaker 6: Interesting, all right, So then what kinds of things have

1045
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 6: we seen with a meon ray? Have we seen a

1046
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:55,920
Speaker 6: instead of a cow are McDonald's hamburger.

1047
00:49:57,440 --> 00:49:59,319
Speaker 1: I don't know that anybody's tried that, you know, put

1048
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:02,280
Speaker 1: a cloud chamber under a cow to see what it's eaten.

1049
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:04,600
Speaker 1: I do not know if that experiment has been done,

1050
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:06,919
Speaker 1: so I don't know if we have muon rayed cow.

1051
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:08,799
Speaker 3: Hey, there's an instruction on YouTube to do that.

1052
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:13,280
Speaker 1: One of the first applications of this was to measure

1053
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:15,799
Speaker 1: like how much rock and the density of rock over

1054
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 1: a tunnel. Like you're building a tunnel through a mountain.

1055
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:20,719
Speaker 1: You can put a muon detector in the tunnel and

1056
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: you can use it to measure the total mass of

1057
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:26,000
Speaker 1: the rock or effectively the density of the rock that's

1058
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:29,760
Speaker 1: above you, to measure your overburden because you're basically shooting

1059
00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:32,399
Speaker 1: through the rock with the muons and you can tell

1060
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 1: by counting how many muons make it to your tunnel

1061
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 1: the density of the rock.

1062
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 3: So for like construction projects.

1063
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:41,440
Speaker 1: That was the first application. But then in the sixties

1064
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 1: a physicist thought, ooh, let's use this to basically X

1065
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 1: ray the pyramids, because you know, a lot of people

1066
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 1: wonder like if there's something in the pyramids, or are

1067
00:50:50,080 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: there hidden chambers in the pyramids. Nobody wants to take

1068
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:57,160
Speaker 1: the pyramids apart because they're obviously treasures of humanity. But

1069
00:50:57,239 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: we would like to see inside the pyramids in a

1070
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:03,880
Speaker 1: non invasive way. So in the sixties, Louis Alvarez thought, oh,

1071
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:07,319
Speaker 1: let's use muons to see inside the pyramids, to see

1072
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:09,719
Speaker 1: if there's like an opening or a gap, or like

1073
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:11,960
Speaker 1: a big void somewhere that nobody's discovered.

1074
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 6: Ooh, wouldn't that require you to put the meon detector

1075
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:16,600
Speaker 6: under the pyramid?

1076
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:20,320
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. So you do need some access to the pyramids,

1077
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: and there are some openings, but this is limiting factor.

1078
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:25,120
Speaker 1: You can't just like drill under the pyramid and put

1079
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:28,239
Speaker 1: up muon detectors everywhere. There are some shafts and some

1080
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: chambers we know about. What you can do is put

1081
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: the muon detector there in the bottom of the as

1082
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: far below the pyramid as you can, and then measure

1083
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 1: the rate of the muons and compare it to calculations

1084
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:41,440
Speaker 1: you do, like how many muons should I see if

1085
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 1: there are no additional chambers, or how many muons going

1086
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:47,040
Speaker 1: in this direction versus that direction, if there's a chamber

1087
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:48,200
Speaker 1: here or a chamber there.

1088
00:51:48,560 --> 00:51:51,120
Speaker 6: Wait, if I put a detector under a pyramid. Let's

1089
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:53,840
Speaker 6: say it's like a tile the size of like a

1090
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:56,480
Speaker 6: one by one foot square. It can only detect the

1091
00:51:56,560 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 6: muons that are coming from right above that one square

1092
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:02,560
Speaker 6: foot area, or can it detect muons from all directions?

1093
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: If you have like a one foot tile, it'll detect

1094
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 1: any muon that passes through that tile, you know, coming

1095
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 1: from any direction. And so if you have a few

1096
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:12,280
Speaker 1: of those, then you can start to get directional information.

1097
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:14,279
Speaker 1: If there's like a difference in how many muons you

1098
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:17,120
Speaker 1: see in one place versus another, what do you mean, Well,

1099
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 1: the way you can tell, like the difference between parts

1100
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 1: of your body is that you have an X ray detector.

1101
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 1: That's not just a point, it's like a whole array,

1102
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,120
Speaker 1: or it takes an image. You can tell how many

1103
00:52:25,160 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: X rays came through this part of your body versus

1104
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:29,320
Speaker 1: that other part of your body. So imagine if you

1105
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,280
Speaker 1: could put X rays all over the bottom of the pyramid,

1106
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 1: then you could like muon X ray the whole pyramid.

1107
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:37,239
Speaker 1: You can't do that, but you can put a few

1108
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 1: here and a few there based on what access points

1109
00:52:39,520 --> 00:52:41,279
Speaker 1: you do have, and you can get like a very

1110
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 1: rough image of what's going on inside the pyramid from

1111
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:45,759
Speaker 1: your various detectors.

1112
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:48,239
Speaker 6: But wouldn't I just give you like a couple of

1113
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:50,240
Speaker 6: pixels basically of an image.

1114
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:52,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very rough, but it's better than nothing. Right

1115
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:55,799
Speaker 1: right now, we have basically no image, and so this

1116
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:57,720
Speaker 1: is like a way to crack it open a little

1117
00:52:57,719 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 1: bit and give you some very rough idea of what

1118
00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:00,719
Speaker 1: might be there.

1119
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:04,920
Speaker 6: M I guess alternately you could create a Mion ray

1120
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:08,040
Speaker 6: gun and shoot it from the side, right, wouldn't that

1121
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 6: be more convenient?

1122
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:11,080
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, you had a big Meon detector on one

1123
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 1: side and a big Meuon gun on the other side,

1124
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:17,280
Speaker 1: then you could really muanograph the pyramids. That would be awesome.

1125
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:19,839
Speaker 6: Were you about to take Ameo on the heck out

1126
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 6: of it? Are these muons dangerous? Like if I create

1127
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 6: a muon gun and I aim it at somebody, is

1128
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 6: it going to harm them? Just like X rays are

1129
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 6: sort of harmful if you take an X ray gun

1130
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 6: and shoot it as a person for too long.

1131
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 1: Absolutely, these are radiation and muons are responsible for mutations

1132
00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 1: in our DNA. They're part of the natural radiation of

1133
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 1: our environment and they do cause mutations. So yes, in

1134
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 1: principle they can cause cancer, right, So an intense dose

1135
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:49,040
Speaker 1: of muons from a beam could definitely give you cancer.

1136
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:50,759
Speaker 1: It's not something to play around.

1137
00:53:50,480 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 6: With and does sound like a great idea to make

1138
00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:56,560
Speaker 6: ameon gun or a good idea is for certain applications perhaps.

1139
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and the difficult to shield. Right, once you

1140
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:01,239
Speaker 1: start that muon beam, it's going to pass right through

1141
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: your pyramid and then through your detector and then it's

1142
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:06,440
Speaker 1: just going to keep going for kilometers and kilometers. So

1143
00:54:06,480 --> 00:54:08,080
Speaker 1: it's not like you can have a beam dump or

1144
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 1: something to protect people from the other side.

1145
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:12,520
Speaker 6: Well, I guess they would just shoot off into space, right,

1146
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:15,359
Speaker 6: because the Earth is curved or with gravity pull them

1147
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:15,919
Speaker 6: back down.

1148
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:17,560
Speaker 1: No, you're right there, showed off into space. So maybe

1149
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:19,359
Speaker 1: you just don't need to angle it up a little bit.

1150
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 6: Oh interesting, But then you might be like shooting it

1151
00:54:22,120 --> 00:54:23,840
Speaker 6: maybe an alien silization out there.

1152
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 3: They might take offense.

1153
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you could accidentally be sending them a mewantograph

1154
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: of our pyramids. I don't know how they would.

1155
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 6: Interpret that, that's right, or a picture of cows. They'd

1156
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:34,640
Speaker 6: be like, oh, that looks tasty, let's go invade them.

1157
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:36,839
Speaker 1: But people have actually done this for the pyramids without

1158
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,640
Speaker 1: building you on gun. They've just used cosmic rays and

1159
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 1: measured the rate at which the constant rays make it

1160
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:45,839
Speaker 1: through the pyramids to see are there new cavities inside.

1161
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:47,280
Speaker 3: The pyramids and what have they found.

1162
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:49,280
Speaker 1: So the first time they looked, they looked in one pyramid,

1163
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:51,840
Speaker 1: they didn't find anything unusual. But then later on, actually

1164
00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:54,880
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, they did this for the Great Pyramid,

1165
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: and they found what they called the Big Void, and

1166
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: then another opening they labeled maybe a corridor. What they're

1167
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:02,719
Speaker 1: seeing is a region of the pyramid that seems to

1168
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:05,400
Speaker 1: have lower density than the rest of the pyramid. So

1169
00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:08,080
Speaker 1: this could be like a big opening, maybe a treasure

1170
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: chamber filled with all sorts of jewels and fascinating information

1171
00:55:11,719 --> 00:55:13,799
Speaker 1: about ancient Egypt. Or maybe it's just like a gap

1172
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 1: they left in the pyramid to reduce the pressure on

1173
00:55:16,239 --> 00:55:17,840
Speaker 1: the rest of it. You know, it could just be

1174
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:20,399
Speaker 1: like a construction trick. We don't exactly know, but there's

1175
00:55:20,480 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 1: some sort of large cavity within the Great Pyramid.

1176
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:24,120
Speaker 3: Interesting.

1177
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 6: I guess what you're saying is making me feel a

1178
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:29,360
Speaker 6: little skeptical, just because you needed like a lot of

1179
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:33,439
Speaker 6: space underneath the pyramid to create these to be certain

1180
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 6: that there's something there, right, you need to basically put

1181
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,440
Speaker 6: a lot of these neon detectors under a pyramid. Like

1182
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:41,400
Speaker 6: just putting like a couple doesn't seem like you'd be

1183
00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:45,400
Speaker 6: able to find or resolve any kind of real details,

1184
00:55:45,560 --> 00:55:45,880
Speaker 6: can you.

1185
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, your resolving power definitely improves as you have more detectors.

1186
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:51,719
Speaker 3: Or just more space to put these detectors.

1187
00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: But you'd be surprised what you can accomplish with a

1188
00:55:53,600 --> 00:55:56,480
Speaker 1: few detectors, the same way that like a radio array

1189
00:55:56,680 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 1: is just a few detectors scattered over kilometers and kilometers.

1190
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:03,240
Speaker 1: By measuring the difference between signals received by one antenna

1191
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:05,840
Speaker 1: and another, you can get a lot of directional information

1192
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:09,320
Speaker 1: and resolving power almost as if you had the detector

1193
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 1: of the same size as a full array. Not quite,

1194
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:14,560
Speaker 1: but almost as if. So you do some complex data

1195
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:16,920
Speaker 1: analysis and you can recover a lot of information with

1196
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:18,040
Speaker 1: just a few measurements.

1197
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:21,000
Speaker 6: Right, right, But there's a raise. There're antennas right which

1198
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 6: you can focus and point in the certain directions to

1199
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:27,000
Speaker 6: kind of get the equivalent of a giant lens. This

1200
00:56:27,040 --> 00:56:29,920
Speaker 6: feels like, you know, laying out a bunch of photographic negatives,

1201
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,719
Speaker 6: a film out on the ground and trying to get

1202
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:34,400
Speaker 6: an image from that.

1203
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:36,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's difficult. And if you look at the reconstruction

1204
00:56:36,960 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 1: of the void, you see it's very fuzzy. They're very

1205
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:41,680
Speaker 1: uncertain but exactly where it is, how big it is.

1206
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:43,560
Speaker 1: They have no idea what shape it is. This is

1207
00:56:43,600 --> 00:56:45,680
Speaker 1: not like a crystal clear image the way an X

1208
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:48,320
Speaker 1: ray is at all. This is just like a hint

1209
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 1: that there's an under density somewhere inside this pyramid.

1210
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 6: All right, well, it seems like a pretty cool application

1211
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 6: that maybe let's us see through mountains, internments and potential

1212
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:00,040
Speaker 6: of bovine animals.

1213
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 1: Especially if they're the size of pyramids or mountains.

1214
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:07,880
Speaker 3: What else can you use these mion rays for to detect.

1215
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: People have used it actually to see inside mountains like Vesuvius,

1216
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:14,040
Speaker 1: for example, the famous volcano. They've used muons to try

1217
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:17,440
Speaker 1: to understand what's going on inside Vesuvius to maybe do

1218
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: a better job predicting of when it's going to blow.

1219
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 3: But don't you need to get under Vesuvius to do this?

1220
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 1: The best case scenario is to have a bunch of

1221
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:26,320
Speaker 1: mean detectors under Vesuvius. But if you put a bunch

1222
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 1: around it. Then you can get muons which shoot through

1223
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:31,280
Speaker 1: sort of at an angle. Especially if you can measure

1224
00:57:31,320 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 1: the angle of the muons, so you can tell whether

1225
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 1: they came through the mountain or whether they came from

1226
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:38,480
Speaker 1: the other side, then you can get some good information.

1227
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 3: Wait, you can angle these detectors.

1228
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 8: Yeah.

1229
00:57:40,760 --> 00:57:43,120
Speaker 1: Absolutely. The detectors are not just like a flat sheet.

1230
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 1: They can be fick and so you can see a

1231
00:57:44,720 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 1: whole track of a muon. You can tell which direction

1232
00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: it was going, not just that a muon was there,

1233
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 1: but the direction of its motion.

1234
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:51,720
Speaker 6: Hmm.

1235
00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:55,200
Speaker 3: Interesting. So you can angle these then kind of like

1236
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 3: an antenna.

1237
00:57:55,920 --> 00:57:57,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like an antenna exactly.

1238
00:57:57,600 --> 00:57:59,720
Speaker 3: Okay, it seemed like maybe you're saying you can't.

1239
00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 1: Can the thicker they are, the better angle measurement you

1240
00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:04,560
Speaker 1: can make like a cloud chamber that you can build

1241
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: in your garage. You can see the whole track of

1242
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: the muon flying through. It's really pretty.

1243
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 6: Cool, all right, So geology and archeology those are pretty

1244
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 6: cool uses for particle physics.

1245
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So maybe particles will not just teach us

1246
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:19,439
Speaker 1: about the nature of the universe. They might teach us

1247
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: about what's going on inside mountains and what humans have

1248
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: hidden away inside pyramids.

1249
00:58:24,440 --> 00:58:28,760
Speaker 6: All right, well, another great justification for Daniel's job at

1250
00:58:28,760 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 6: the university.

1251
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: I'm not mu anything, but I'm definitely a favorite of it.

1252
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:35,640
Speaker 6: I feel like half of these episodes are just a

1253
00:58:35,680 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 6: commercial for your job in particle physics.

1254
00:58:40,040 --> 00:58:42,760
Speaker 1: They're a commercial for particle physics and for physics in

1255
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:45,120
Speaker 1: general and trying to understand the nature of the universe,

1256
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 1: and yeah, why it matters?

1257
00:58:46,520 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 3: Should we have a disclaimer here at the bottom?

1258
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:54,240
Speaker 1: Every episode is indirectly Daniel's self promotion. Yes, there you go. Yeah, absolutely,

1259
00:58:54,320 --> 00:58:55,720
Speaker 1: I'm totally transparent about that.

1260
00:58:55,840 --> 00:58:58,440
Speaker 6: All right, Well, engineers, please clip that and put it

1261
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:00,240
Speaker 6: at the bottom of every episode.

1262
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 3: It'll be like the fine print and.

1263
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 1: Every conversation I have basically with.

1264
00:59:04,600 --> 00:59:09,040
Speaker 3: Everybody unless you're talking about something else.

1265
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:11,880
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's all particles, man, everything is made of particles.

1266
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:18,200
Speaker 6: Oh interesting, even non particles. All right, Well, we hope

1267
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:21,600
Speaker 6: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.

1268
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:29,000
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity. Come find us on social media,

1269
00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 1: where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Instant,

1270
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:37,480
Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

1271
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:40,960
Speaker 1: and Jorge explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1272
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:46,400
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1273
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1275
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1276
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1277
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Speaker 1: sustainability to learn more.

1283
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Speaker 2: Hi, everybody, it's Katie Couric. Have you heard about my

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Speaker 3: Hi.

1294
01:00:58,440 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 5: I'm David Eagleman from the pod cast Inner Cosmos, which

1295
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 5: recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I

1296
01:01:04,760 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 5: mean neuroscientists at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring

1297
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 5: the three pound universe in our heads.

1298
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:14,160
Speaker 4: Join me weekly to explore the relationship.

1299
01:01:13,480 --> 01:01:16,440
Speaker 5: Between your brain and your life. Because the more we

1300
01:01:16,520 --> 01:01:19,400
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1301
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1302
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1303
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