Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, if you could throw anything into a black hole,
Speaker 1: what would it be?
Speaker 2: I guess it'd be something I don't ever want to
Speaker 2: see again, Like a bunch of white chocolate.
Speaker 1: You know that doesn't get rid of the concept of
Speaker 1: white chocolate. People can still make more.
Speaker 2: And I'll keep throwing it in the black hole until
Speaker 2: they learn.
Speaker 1: But if you throw a white chocolate into a black hole,
Speaker 1: does it make it a white hole?
Speaker 2: If it eats matter, it's a black hole. A white
Speaker 2: hole would be making matter.
Speaker 1: So if you ever see a white hole out there
Speaker 1: in space, it's it's basically a white chocolate fountain.
Speaker 2: If there's somebody on the other side throwing all their
Speaker 2: white chocolate into a black hole, then yeah.
Speaker 1: Or does a dark chocolate get turned into white chocolate
Speaker 1: on the other side?
Speaker 2: What a cosmic tragedy that would be.
Speaker 1: What if you're in like the five percent of the
Speaker 1: universe that doesn't like white chocolate, What if it's cosmically
Speaker 1: loved except for a certain household in Irvine, California.
Speaker 2: I don't want to meet those aliens.
Speaker 1: Hi, I am morehy Man cartoonas and the author of
Speaker 1: Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist and a professor
Speaker 2: at UC Irvine, And yes, I'll meet the white chocolate aliens.
Speaker 1: Aliens are made out of white chocolate, or they like
Speaker 1: white chocolate.
Speaker 2: If they're made out of white chocolate, I'll feel so
Speaker 2: sorry for them that I'll definitely meet them just out
Speaker 2: of pain.
Speaker 1: Well, they probably feel really safe around you because they
Speaker 1: know you won't eat them.
Speaker 2: That's true exactly, But they might melt in the sun.
Speaker 2: You know, that stuff is just not really very substantial.
Speaker 1: They need like sunshields or something. But anyways, welcome to
Speaker 1: our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: In which we take a deep look at both sides
Speaker 2: of the universe, the light matter, the dark matter, the
Speaker 2: white chocolate, the dark chocolate, the stuff that we're curious
Speaker 2: about and the stuff that you are curious about. We
Speaker 2: think that everything out there in the universe is a
Speaker 2: delicious mystery, and it deserves to have a bite taken
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 1: That's right. We try to delve into the deep, dark
Speaker 1: mysteries of the universe as well as its shiny bright facts,
Speaker 1: the things that scientists and work hard over many years
Speaker 1: to discover and figure out how it all works.
Speaker 2: And one of the goals of the podcast is to
Speaker 2: take you along on that journey. Puzzling out the nature
Speaker 2: of the universe is not just something professional scientists should do.
Speaker 2: It's something everybody should be thinking about. We should all
Speaker 2: be thinking like a physicist, even if we're not thinking
Speaker 2: about physics problems. But those physics problems are fascinating and
Speaker 2: are deep and are consequential. Where do the universe come from?
Speaker 2: How does it all work? How will it all end?
Speaker 2: Where is our place in it? All? These things are
Speaker 2: questions that everybody has, and we hope to work together
Speaker 2: to find the answer. And that means you should also
Speaker 2: be asking questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because about the universe are all around us. They
Speaker 1: affect us on an everyday basis, and they make us
Speaker 1: all curious about what our place in it is? And
Speaker 1: where does this all heading?
Speaker 2: Some sort of white chocolate apocalypse that's where we're heading.
Speaker 1: Wait, is that a dark vision of the future or
Speaker 1: a bright vision of the future.
Speaker 2: I think people's reactions that will tell us a lot
Speaker 2: about who they are deep down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if they like white chocolate, they're optimists and
Speaker 1: happy people.
Speaker 2: Some of us will run screaming from that kind of person.
Speaker 2: But I'm not the kind of person who runs screaming
Speaker 2: when I get emails from listeners. I love those emails.
Speaker 2: I love hearing your questions about the universe. I love
Speaker 2: thinking with you about the edge of your knowledge or
Speaker 2: the edge of human knowledge, which listeners often creep right
Speaker 2: up into. So please don't be shy send me your
Speaker 2: questions to questions at Danielandjorge dot com. We write back
Speaker 2: to everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes we take those questions and we try
Speaker 1: to answer them here on the podcast, or at least
Speaker 1: we talk about them, which sometimes involves an answer.
Speaker 2: That's right. Some of the questions I get over email.
Speaker 2: I think lots of people might have this question, and
Speaker 2: so I'd like to share the question and the answer
Speaker 2: with the whole podcast community. Other questions I have no
Speaker 2: answer to, and so I just hope that we can
Speaker 2: fill some time with jokes and speculation in lieu of
Speaker 2: an answer.
Speaker 1: So TODA podcast we'll be tackling listener questions number sixty three,
Speaker 1: and today we have three pretty awesome questions. One of
Speaker 1: them is about hawking radiation. The only one is about
Speaker 1: making new matter in the universe. And then we have
Speaker 1: a question about the ultimate.
Speaker 2: Particle and the ultimate anti particle.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, is the ultimate antiparticle just the first particle?
Speaker 2: That's basically Brett's question.
Speaker 1: You all right, let's dig into it. Our first question
Speaker 1: comes from Andrew.
Speaker 3: Hi, Daniel, and Jorge. This is Andrea, and I have
Speaker 3: a question about Hawking radiation. I was interested in something
Speaker 3: you said another episode about it being impossible to detect,
Speaker 3: and I was wondering if you could talk a bit
Speaker 3: more about that, and especially in terms of analysis and
Speaker 3: detection and instruments and experiments. For example, have any lab
Speaker 3: experiments or simulations already been done to look for Hawking radiation?
Speaker 3: If we could develop an instrument, because I imagine this
Speaker 3: is just very theoretical at this point, but if we
Speaker 3: could develop an instrument to use on a real black
Speaker 3: hole in space to analyze the Hawking radiation, what would
Speaker 3: that require and what would that look like? Also, would
Speaker 3: only some kinds of black holes be feasible for this
Speaker 3: kind of analysis, like maybe the one at the center
Speaker 3: of our galaxy is too massive? So thank you very
Speaker 3: much for taking my question. I love the show.
Speaker 1: Awesome question. It's all about Hawking radiation. You know, can
Speaker 1: you have we detected it? Is it just an idea
Speaker 1: that we have or is it a proven concept? And
Speaker 1: if we haven't detected it, how would you measure it?
Speaker 1: And what's at the source of Stephen Hawkins is superpowers?
Speaker 2: I think that was just his sheer sex appeal.
Speaker 1: He admitted rhiz waves.
Speaker 2: That's right, rhiz particles. Actually it's quantum. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a great question because I love the sort of forward thinking,
Speaker 2: like how can we actually figure this out? What technology
Speaker 2: would we need? How can we make this practical? Like
Speaker 2: me Andrea really really wants to see a black hole
Speaker 2: and study it, and this is like one of the
Speaker 2: only ways we can really do that.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe you start with the basics, like what is
Speaker 1: exactly Hawking radiation and have we seen it?
Speaker 2: Hawking radiation is a super fascinating concept because it's like
Speaker 2: a first step between our current understanding of black holes,
Speaker 2: which is basically just what general relativity says that matter
Speaker 2: falls in it creates an event horizon inside is a singularity,
Speaker 2: nothing can escape. Black holes are truly black according to
Speaker 2: general relativity. But we know that general relativity can't be
Speaker 2: an ultimate description of the universe because it's ignoring quantum effects.
Speaker 2: And we know that quantum effects have to be important
Speaker 2: when you get really really dense and really really small
Speaker 2: things like a singularity. But we don't have a theory
Speaker 2: of quantum gravity something that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: It gives us like a description of a quantum black hole.
Speaker 2: But Stephen Hawking did something like take a first step
Speaker 2: in that direction, and he figured out that if you
Speaker 2: have a black hole in our universe, it follows the
Speaker 2: rules of general relativity, but also has to follow the
Speaker 2: rules of quantum mechanics. And he was able to bring
Speaker 2: the math together to make it play nicely. And it
Speaker 2: predicts that these quantum black holes are not truly black.
Speaker 2: They actually faintly glow with radiation, and that's the Hawking radiation.
Speaker 1: M Wait, so he was actually able to make quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics play nicely with special or general relativity. I thought
Speaker 1: that was sort of impossible.
Speaker 2: It's hopefully not impossible, because that would mean the universe
Speaker 2: can to be understood. It's so far not been achieved
Speaker 2: in a comprehensive and coherent way, but there are places
Speaker 2: where people have made a few inroads. And so we
Speaker 2: call this semi classical because he didn't make a complete
Speaker 2: theory of quantum gravity. He just pulls some really clever
Speaker 2: tricks in order to do this one calculation without actually
Speaker 2: knowing the theory of quantum gravity. So it's a really
Speaker 2: slick sort of mathematical maneuver that he did.
Speaker 1: Well, what is it exactly?
Speaker 2: So what he did is he thought about what happens
Speaker 2: to quantum fields near a black hole. Now you often
Speaker 2: hear in popular science this sort of handwavy description of
Speaker 2: Hawking radiation, and the description goes something like a particle
Speaker 2: and an anti particle and made near the event horizon.
Speaker 2: One falls in the other one is Hawking radiation. That's
Speaker 2: not what's going on as far as we know. In fact,
Speaker 2: we don't have any understanding of the particle picture of
Speaker 2: how this works, because again we don't have that theory
Speaker 2: of quantum gravity. We don't know how gravity affects these
Speaker 2: tiny particles. What Hawking did instead was think about fields
Speaker 2: near the event horizon. A lot of fields have this
Speaker 2: property that they can do two things. They can make
Speaker 2: particles and they can make anti particles. Or for example,
Speaker 2: electroagnetic fields can make fields of all sorts of different frequencies.
Speaker 2: And what he did was he said, well, how do
Speaker 2: we think about those fields near and event horizon? Because
Speaker 2: when you solve field equations, you're thinking about how waves
Speaker 2: move through those fields. And the math that he did
Speaker 2: showed us that near an event horizon, there's something weird
Speaker 2: that happens to those fields. And basically there always has
Speaker 2: to be an outgoing wave in order to make the
Speaker 2: mathematics work.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you mean like an outgoing wave? What
Speaker 1: does that mean? Outgoing in which directing like away from
Speaker 1: the black hole.
Speaker 2: Like awave from the black hole exactly. And so that's
Speaker 2: what's interpreted as outgoing Hawking radiation, the generation of particles
Speaker 2: from the energy of the black hole. That's what this
Speaker 2: radiation comes from.
Speaker 1: Now, where does this idea that there has to be
Speaker 1: a radiation come from? Is there no explanation to it?
Speaker 2: You can try to make some intuitive sense of it,
Speaker 2: but we don't have any microphysics explanation of it. Like
Speaker 2: we want one. I can hear that you want it.
Speaker 2: I'm sure listeners want it. I desperately want it, Like
Speaker 2: what's actually happening? We don't have that understanding because we
Speaker 2: don't understand particles and gravity. There's another way to gain
Speaker 2: some intuition about it, which is thermodynamically. Think about black
Speaker 2: holes as having a temperature. Right, everything in the universe
Speaker 2: that has a temperature glows, so black holes also have
Speaker 2: a temperature. Then they must also glow. And black holes
Speaker 2: because the information that falls in them have to have
Speaker 2: an entropy and therefore to have a temperature. And so
Speaker 2: that's another way to think about what hawking radiation is.
Speaker 2: It's like the black body radiation of a black hole.
Speaker 1: But wait, it sounds like you have to treat the
Speaker 1: black hole as a whole if you're talking about entropy
Speaker 1: and things like that, So then how is it quantum
Speaker 1: as well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the quantum aspect has to do with these waves,
Speaker 2: these quantized fields that surround the black hole, and Hawking
Speaker 2: radiation comes from when you have quantum fields and an
Speaker 2: event horizon together, you get this generation of waves that
Speaker 2: come away from the event horizon. That's what hawking radiation is.
Speaker 1: So it's just I mean black body radiation that happens
Speaker 1: when like something you have a hot rock in space.
Speaker 1: It's just the molecules and atoms in it are very
Speaker 1: excited and so they generate photons that you know shoot out.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what's happening, Like the black hole
Speaker 1: is just randomly shooting photons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's our microphysics understanding of normal black body radiation.
Speaker 2: You're totally right. There's like motion within a rock, for example,
Speaker 2: it has some temperature to it, and so photons will escape,
Speaker 2: and that's well described by black body radiation. In terms
Speaker 2: of a black hole, we don't know what's going on
Speaker 2: from the microphysics point of view. We don't understand the
Speaker 2: event horizon and can't think about that in terms of particles,
Speaker 2: so we have no picture to provide for like what's
Speaker 2: generating this radiation other than these mathematical solutions to the
Speaker 2: wave equation near an event horizon. You can think about
Speaker 2: it thermodynamically also to interpret the black holes having a temperature,
Speaker 2: but you don't really know what that temperature means. It
Speaker 2: doesn't reflect necessarily the kinetic energy of particles within the
Speaker 2: black hole. We don't know how to interpret that because
Speaker 2: again we don't have that theory, So we're kind of
Speaker 2: black theoretically there.
Speaker 1: Well, what about this idea that you do see in
Speaker 1: popular culture and popular science a lot that you know,
Speaker 1: at the edge of a black hole, there's two particles
Speaker 1: being created. One of them falls in, the other one
Speaker 1: spews out, and that's kind of what is hawking radiation?
Speaker 1: Does that not happen or we don't know if it happens.
Speaker 2: That could be what happens, but we don't know how
Speaker 2: particles operate near an event horizon. We don't know if
Speaker 2: gravity is a classical force which would require these particles
Speaker 2: to collapse their probabilities, or if gravity is quantum, which
Speaker 2: means that it can interact with the various possibilities of
Speaker 2: the particles. And so we don't know how to do
Speaker 2: those calculations. So we don't know what happens to particle
Speaker 2: anti particle pairs near to vent horizon. So yeah, the
Speaker 2: answer is we don't know.
Speaker 1: That could be correct, so they could maybe explain what
Speaker 1: is hawking radiation.
Speaker 2: There is definitely an explanation for hawking radiation if it
Speaker 2: is a real thing in the universe. We just don't
Speaker 2: have it. And yes, it could be that one, but
Speaker 2: there's no theory behind that. That's just like a handwavy cartoon.
Speaker 1: And what's throwing with handwavy cartoons? Daniel, you can't my
Speaker 1: career you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're wonderful, but they're not necessarily accurate and you
Speaker 2: can't use them to do calculations or anything. That's all
Speaker 2: they are is just a handwavy cartoon.
Speaker 1: Are there other possible handwavy cartoony explanations or is that
Speaker 1: the only one that we have?
Speaker 2: I mean, in popular science you'll see all sorts of
Speaker 2: descriptions of Hawking radiation, most of which are wrong. The
Speaker 2: ones that are most accurate either rely on this thermodynamic
Speaker 2: description or Hawking's actual calculation using boundary conditions for waves
Speaker 2: near an event horizon.
Speaker 1: But you're saying they're not wrong. We just don't know
Speaker 1: what the real answer is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. It's like the universe has a number
Speaker 2: in its head between one and a million, and you
Speaker 2: might say, well, Daniel, is it seventy four? And we're like, well,
Speaker 2: I could be seventy four, but yeah, I mean, who knows.
Speaker 1: But so far, Hawking radiation is a concept, right, Like,
Speaker 1: do have we actually ever measured this at all or
Speaker 1: seen it? Or is it just sort of an idea
Speaker 1: that physicists think is happening at black holes?
Speaker 2: It's currently still just an idea. We've never seen hawking
Speaker 2: radiation and it would be really challenging to ever see
Speaker 2: it because hawking radiation is extraordinarily faint for large black holes.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that we haven't seen it, so we
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, So it's basically a handwavy cartoon.
Speaker 2: We have lots of theories we have not proven, like
Speaker 2: string theory, which is much more than a handwavy cartoon.
Speaker 2: Because our physical principles and calculations, you can make predictions,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. So not everything that hasn't been
Speaker 2: observed is a handwavy cartoon. But yet we have never
Speaker 2: seen hawking radiation, and the challenge is that it's super
Speaker 2: duper faint. Like larger black holes are colder, which means
Speaker 2: they glow more faintly. So the smaller black hole is
Speaker 2: the hotter it is, the brighter it glows. So, for example,
Speaker 2: a black hole that has the mass of our sun,
Speaker 2: which is already a pretty small black hole, but have
Speaker 2: a temperature of sixty nanokelvins, which makes it very dark
Speaker 2: and very cold, and any glow it has would be
Speaker 2: very very faint.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, what does it even mean to for
Speaker 1: a black hole to temperature. Like if a rock is
Speaker 1: a temperature, that means it captures you know, the movement
Speaker 1: of the molecules inside the rock somehow, right, Like a
Speaker 1: hot something hot means that all of its molecules are
Speaker 1: moving a lot. They have a lot of kinetic energy.
Speaker 1: What would it mean for a black hole?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't know. I mean, Thummer dynamics is often
Speaker 2: not about the microscopic picture. You don't have to understand
Speaker 2: what's going on inside to have these macroscopic descriptions of
Speaker 2: entropy and temperature, etc. Really justus sort of like high
Speaker 2: level summaries for what's going on inside. Sometimes you can
Speaker 2: make these connections, like for the ideal gas law between
Speaker 2: the microphysics and the macrophysics. But no, we don't know
Speaker 2: what temperature really means for a black hole. There are
Speaker 2: some arguments about information and entropy and connecting it to temperature,
Speaker 2: but that's a whole rabbit hole that Andrea didn't ask
Speaker 2: us about. In this case, you should just think about
Speaker 2: the temperature as determining the glow of the black hole.
Speaker 2: Higher temperature glows in higher frequencies.
Speaker 1: It glows via the hawking radiation, yeah, exactly, which we
Speaker 1: don't know is real or not.
Speaker 2: We don't know if it's real or not, but it
Speaker 2: makes predictions. You have this temperature, you can use the
Speaker 2: black body radiation curve. You can say, okay, a sixty
Speaker 2: nanokelvin black hole would emit this number of photons at
Speaker 2: this frequency, and you can look for that. But the
Speaker 2: thing is it's very very faint, and so it's very
Speaker 2: hard to see. For a couple of reasons. One, black
Speaker 2: holes are really far away. That's a good thing if
Speaker 2: you want to survive, but a bad thing if you
Speaker 2: want to study them. And number two is black holes
Speaker 2: are usually surrounded by other really hot stuff that's glowing
Speaker 2: very very brightly. So you're looking for a very faint
Speaker 2: glow from something otherwise very bright and very far away.
Speaker 1: How faint are we talking about, like basically the equivalent
Speaker 1: of how much a rock that is sixteen nanokelving how
Speaker 1: much it would glow in the infrared, which is probably
Speaker 1: like almost nothing at all, Almost.
Speaker 2: Nothing at all, Yeah, exactly. Now, Andrew asks like, how
Speaker 2: could you possibly ever see it? Well, you know, you'd
Speaker 2: need super duper sensitive deep infrared sensors and you need
Speaker 2: to be near enough the black hole you could which
Speaker 2: are some of these rare photons, then you might be
Speaker 2: able to pick it out because it would have a
Speaker 2: different spectrum than the rest of the stuff, like the
Speaker 2: stuff around the black hole, the accretion disk of hot gas.
Speaker 2: It's going to glow mostly like in the X ray
Speaker 2: because it's very hot, and so if you look at
Speaker 2: the very red end of the spectrum and you have
Speaker 2: very sensitive devices, then you might be able to pick
Speaker 2: this out.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it would get washed in the cosmic
Speaker 1: background the noise of light, right, like, aren't we bathed
Speaker 1: in infrared light just from the universe sort of glowing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, we are. That's a great point. The temperature
Speaker 2: of that light is around two point seven degreas calvin,
Speaker 2: so that's very hot compared to black holes, which tells
Speaker 2: you that this would be much fainter and much much
Speaker 2: much redder. Now black holes get small, then they do
Speaker 2: get brighter. The temperature goes like inverse mass, and so
Speaker 2: if a black hole was left on its own, it
Speaker 2: would very faintly glow. It would lose mass and then
Speaker 2: get brighter. And because it's getting brighter, it's losing mass faster,
Speaker 2: so you have this runaway effect where eventually a black
Speaker 2: hole evaporates, and near the very end, when it's very
Speaker 2: very small, it gets quite hot, and then the hawking
Speaker 2: radiation would be visible. So seeing a big black hole
Speaker 2: would be difficult. Seeing a disappearing black hole would be
Speaker 2: much more possible.
Speaker 1: Well, as it gets smaller, it becomes hotter. So you're
Speaker 1: saying it would be admit more photons, but would it
Speaker 1: actually be brighter because it's also smaller. I wonder if
Speaker 1: if maybe those things would balance out and it would
Speaker 1: just be as faint like a tiny black hole a
Speaker 1: million kilometers aways. It's about as fant as a giant
Speaker 1: black hole that's colder, isn't it.
Speaker 2: The event horizon does shrink, which reduces the intensity, but
Speaker 2: the temperature increasing overwhelms that, and so we expect a
Speaker 2: smaller black hole to actually be brighter. It's not just
Speaker 2: that the frequency of the radiation goes up, but the
Speaker 2: intensity of it also will even though the event horizon
Speaker 2: is getting smaller, So smaller black holes might evaporate in
Speaker 2: a way we could actually see, And people have looked
Speaker 2: for this in the night sky because if there were
Speaker 2: small black hole holes made during the Big Bang, their
Speaker 2: lifetime might be a few billion years. And if they're
Speaker 2: just sort of like scattered out in space, not near
Speaker 2: some huge source of mass, they could be isolated and
Speaker 2: they could be evaporating, and they could glow with these
Speaker 2: brilliant pinpricks of light. People have looked for them, nobody's
Speaker 2: ever seen one. But that doesn't mean that we won't.
Speaker 1: Like what size are we talking about, Like I imagine
Speaker 1: maybe there's like an optimal size for us to see them,
Speaker 1: because if they're too small, they're too small to see.
Speaker 1: But if they're too big, they're too cold to see.
Speaker 1: Is there are wonder if there's an optimal Hawking black
Speaker 1: hole size to see.
Speaker 2: The lifetime of a black hole is very very long,
Speaker 2: if it's any size at all. Like if you took
Speaker 2: a black hole that had the mass of our Sun
Speaker 2: and you put it in empty space, it would take
Speaker 2: ten to the sixty three years to evaporate. Most of
Speaker 2: that time it would be glowing so faintly its mass
Speaker 2: would hardly be dropping. A lot of the progress is
Speaker 2: made near the end because of the runaway effect. A
Speaker 2: much much smaller black hole, of course, could only take
Speaker 2: a few billion years so smaller black holes are better
Speaker 2: for observing hawking res and that's why people are thinking
Speaker 2: about primordial black holes, because stellar collapse or galactic centers,
Speaker 2: these produce huge black holes. If you want to see
Speaker 2: hawking radiation, you need little ones. That's why people are
Speaker 2: looking for black holes that come from the Big Bang,
Speaker 2: where it might have made a whole spectrum of black holes,
Speaker 2: from super massive ones to super duper tiny ones.
Speaker 1: But don't they also say that at the Large had
Speaker 1: drink collider years you're sort of making black holes.
Speaker 2: We are looking for black holes at the Large had
Speaker 2: drunk Collider. One idea might be that gravity doesn't behave
Speaker 2: the way we expect. If you get things really really
Speaker 2: close together, gravity actually gets very very strong. We've never
Speaker 2: really tested gravity over extraordinarily short distance scales, so it
Speaker 2: might be that if you smash two protons together, when
Speaker 2: they get really close together, gravity gets really strong and
Speaker 2: it forms a tiny black hole, which would then almost
Speaker 2: instantly evaporate but leave a spectrum of hawking radiation which
Speaker 2: we could see in our detectors. So we looked for
Speaker 2: hawking radiation at the Large hair Drunk Colider but never
Speaker 2: seen it. So there's lots of ways you might see
Speaker 2: hawks radiation, but yeah, and so far nothing.
Speaker 1: But do you expect there to be black holes? And
Speaker 1: in these collisions you're creating? Or I mean, is it
Speaker 1: surprising you haven't seen a hawking radiation at the large
Speaker 1: Hadron collide?
Speaker 2: Whether you expect to see them depends on a bunch
Speaker 2: of theoretical questions we don't have answers too, like are
Speaker 2: there additional spatial dimensions? What are the parameters of those dimensions?
Speaker 2: You need those spatial dimensions to explain why gravity gets
Speaker 2: stronger as things gets closer. And so if for some
Speaker 2: scenarios we would have expected to see the black holes already,
Speaker 2: in other scenarios we wouldn't have expected to see them,
Speaker 2: and so the answer is a bit muddy. Also, those
Speaker 2: calculations are even more handwaving than the Hawking radiation calculations themselves,
Speaker 2: Like some listeners might think, hold on, you just told
Speaker 2: us we don't understand gravity for particles, So how can
Speaker 2: you talk about the gravitational force between two protons when
Speaker 2: they're really close to each other? And the answer is
Speaker 2: we can't. People have done a bunch of back of
Speaker 2: the envelopes, sketchy hand wavy cartoon calculations. We don't really
Speaker 2: know whether those are right. So it's just sort of
Speaker 2: like a, oh, we should look for this in case
Speaker 2: it's there. It's not so much that if we didn't
Speaker 2: see it, we're sure it's not there. There's lots of
Speaker 2: reasons why it might not happen, all right.
Speaker 1: So then the answer for Andra is a tall a
Speaker 1: handwavy cartoon Andre. It's like asking for an explanation of
Speaker 1: something that we're not sure exists or know how it works.
Speaker 2: Kind of, but we hope one day to see this.
Speaker 2: If we do see hawking radiation, that confirms something important.
Speaker 2: It tells us that black holes are quantum objects, that
Speaker 2: they are following the quantum rules of the universe. They
Speaker 2: are not pure general relativistic black holes, that black holes
Speaker 2: are not completely black. That would be a huge breakthrough.
Speaker 1: How bright with these black holes getting snuffed out in
Speaker 1: the cosmos beat? Would they be visible to the naked
Speaker 1: eye or only if you're wearing special glasses or do
Speaker 1: you need like special telescopes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the kind of thing we use telescopes
Speaker 2: to look for, because you need to see these photons
Speaker 2: a very specific frequency range which is usually not in
Speaker 2: a visible range. Usually they're in the infrared.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I guess we need to keep looking
Speaker 1: at the sky right then, to see if we ever
Speaker 1: see these flashes.
Speaker 2: That's right, more particle colliders, more telescopes, more technological eyeballs
Speaker 2: to understand the universe.
Speaker 1: Wait, did you just try to hawk more particle colliders?
Speaker 2: Hey, you're hawking your book on every episode, so I
Speaker 2: can talk particle colliders.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you Andrew for that great question.
Speaker 1: Now let's get to our next question, and it's about
Speaker 1: making new matter in the universe, So let's get to that.
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: We're answering listener questions here today, and our next question
Speaker 1: comes from Asif.
Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel, and Jorge. This is answer from Tom Finland.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan of the pod and I've been
Speaker 4: wondering how difficult is it to generate new matter from energy.
Speaker 4: You have previously talked about out how unstabled particles are
Speaker 4: able to summon or pull their counterparts out of thin
Speaker 4: air to reach a stable configuration again after a collision
Speaker 4: in the Large Hadron collider. Doesn't this mean that new
Speaker 4: matter is generated from the collision energy. Would it be
Speaker 4: possible to scale up this process to keep multiplying the
Speaker 4: number of stable particles to produce macroscopic amounts of new matter.
Speaker 4: Can we only go in the direction of lower mass
Speaker 4: particles this way, or would we be able to somehow
Speaker 4: generate all different elements of the periodic table. I'm imagining
Speaker 4: a space station orbiting the Sun, generating building materials and
Speaker 4: resources to become self sustained, and starting expanding just by
Speaker 4: using the available unlimited free energy. I think it's about
Speaker 4: time to get this project started, don't you agree.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, I'm blessing a theme here, Daniel. These are
Speaker 1: all particle questions.
Speaker 2: I'm not organizing them anymore. I'm just answering them in
Speaker 2: the order they come in. This is just a particle
Speaker 2: week over here the podcast.
Speaker 1: But this is an interesting question. I guess the question is, like,
Speaker 1: what's actually happening when you collide particles? Because I know
Speaker 1: we've talked about it being sort of this magical act
Speaker 1: where you know, two things kind of become pure energy
Speaker 1: and then matter pops out. And I guess the question
Speaker 1: is is the matter that pops out like new matter
Speaker 1: or is it possible to create new matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really fun question and a great question,
Speaker 2: and it goes to the heart of like what is
Speaker 2: matter anyway? And if you think about the universe the
Speaker 2: way particle physicists do, you know, we have all these fields,
Speaker 2: and you can take energy from one field to another field,
Speaker 2: and when a field ripples in a certain way, that's
Speaker 2: what we call a particle. Then you could just think
Speaker 2: about energy sliding around from one kind of field to another.
Speaker 2: So you collide one kind of particle with its antiparticle
Speaker 2: and that turns into a photon for example. That's energy
Speaker 2: moving from like the electron field into the photon field.
Speaker 2: Now that photon can turn into something else even heavier
Speaker 2: than the original electrons, like a muon and an anti muon.
Speaker 2: That's the energy sliding from the photon field to the
Speaker 2: muon field. And those different states can have different amounts
Speaker 2: of mass, right, So the electron has low mass, the
Speaker 2: photon has no mass, the muon has high mass. Mass
Speaker 2: is just stored internal energy of some of these states.
Speaker 2: So mass is not like a special thing or hard
Speaker 2: to make in the universe. It's just a kind of
Speaker 2: energy that these fields can have.
Speaker 1: How would you define what matter is or does it
Speaker 1: not even make sense to use the word, like maybe
Speaker 1: we should just get rid of the word.
Speaker 2: No, it's a good question. I think there's a couple
Speaker 2: of concepts of what matter is, which is separate from
Speaker 2: the idea of mass. Right, And when we talk about matter,
Speaker 2: one sense in which it makes sense is like the
Speaker 2: stuff we're made out of, stable stuff which hangs out
Speaker 2: in the universe building blocks for our existence. Right, we
Speaker 2: are made of matter. We eat things made of matter,
Speaker 2: and you know, quarks and electrons come together to make
Speaker 2: all this amazing complexity that's matter. Sometimes also extend that
Speaker 2: though to other related particles that are not stable, Like
Speaker 2: we think of a muon as a matter particle, but
Speaker 2: muons last four microseconds before they decay into other stuff.
Speaker 2: You can't build anything out of muons. You can't have
Speaker 2: life made out of muons or a meal made out
Speaker 2: of muons. So I think the concept of matter comes
Speaker 2: from the stuff of our experience, and then we extend
Speaker 2: it to also similar particles. So since everything we're made
Speaker 2: out of is fermions spin one half particles, we tend
Speaker 2: to call all spin one half particles matter and other
Speaker 2: kinds of particles like photons. We call them force particles.
Speaker 2: But that distinction is a little bit arbitrary.
Speaker 1: Like basically, it's all particles in quantum field. But is
Speaker 1: there a distinction between the ones we call matter and
Speaker 1: the ones that we don't call matter? Is mass is
Speaker 1: the thing that makes something be matter.
Speaker 2: The distinction is the spin of the particles. Like all
Speaker 2: the particles we call matter, those are fermions. There's spin
Speaker 2: one half particles, and all the particles we call force
Speaker 2: particles those are spin one or spin zero particles.
Speaker 1: Like are there particles that we don't call matter but
Speaker 1: that still have mass?
Speaker 2: Yes? Absolutely there are, like the w and the z bosons.
Speaker 2: These are spin one particles. They're not fermions. We don't
Speaker 2: call them matter, but they do have mass, in fact
Speaker 2: that they're quite massive. They have the mass of like
Speaker 2: eighty or ninety times the mass of a proton. Extraordinarily
Speaker 2: massive particles, but we don't call them matter. They are
Speaker 2: the particles that communicate the weak force. But yeah, we
Speaker 2: don't call those matter particles, but they do have mass.
Speaker 2: So you can have mass and not be matter.
Speaker 1: And can you be madder without mass? Are there things
Speaker 1: that we call matter that don't have mass.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a great question. Until recently, we didn't know
Speaker 2: if neutrinos had mass. Neutrinos are in the matter category
Speaker 2: because they're fermions. Now we know they do have mass,
Speaker 2: but have an extraordinarily small, tiny, tiny, tiny amount of mass.
Speaker 2: But no, there are no particles we call matter particles
Speaker 2: which are massless.
Speaker 1: And why do we pick the spin of these particles
Speaker 1: to be the thing that distinguishes it as matter? Is
Speaker 1: that significant to like our existence?
Speaker 2: I don't think it's fundamentally significant. I think we just
Speaker 2: noticed that the stuff we're made out of is comprised
Speaker 2: of spin one half particles, and that forces tend to
Speaker 2: use spin one particles to communicate. But again, matter and forces,
Speaker 2: you know, these are sort of colloquial terms. I think
Speaker 2: the way you put it is pretty good. Like everything
Speaker 2: is just particles in a quantum field, and there's lots
Speaker 2: of different kinds of quantum fields that can do all
Speaker 2: sorts of weird things. Some of them are spin one,
Speaker 2: some of them are spin half, some of them are massless,
Speaker 2: some of them are not. There's all sorts of weird
Speaker 2: different kinds of fields out there.
Speaker 1: So then I wonder if the ass for us if
Speaker 1: is that there's just thing is matter, you know, like
Speaker 1: there's only energy that slashes around between these quantum fields,
Speaker 1: and sometimes this energy ends up in a quantum field
Speaker 1: that we just happen to call matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And so he's totally right that new matter
Speaker 2: can be generated from collisions. Like you pour a bunch
Speaker 2: of energy into a collision, you can make something heavy.
Speaker 2: You can turn that energy into mass, right, and that
Speaker 2: can make new matter. So yeah, and principle, you could
Speaker 2: like take two protons and smash them together and make
Speaker 2: like a gold nucleus if you had enough energy. It's
Speaker 2: pretty unlikely. And most of the time when you make
Speaker 2: something that's massive from something that's low mass, it's unstable.
Speaker 2: Like if you make a w boson or a z
Speaker 2: boson these massive particles, then it don't last very long.
Speaker 2: Because the universe doesn't typically like to have a lot
Speaker 2: of mass or a lot of energy in one place.
Speaker 2: It tends to prefer configurations with lots of possibilities, which
Speaker 2: tend to prefer configurations with lots of options, lots of
Speaker 2: quantum possibilities, and those are the ones with low mass particles.
Speaker 2: That's why things decay. That's why muans DeKay down to
Speaker 2: electrons or w particles don't last very long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't like to have all of my mass
Speaker 1: in one spot.
Speaker 2: Either, exactly, diversified, diversified, diversify.
Speaker 1: Right, No, it just cuts a slimmer figure.
Speaker 2: And that's why most of the stuff we're made out
Speaker 2: of it are the lightest particles out there, because they
Speaker 2: can't decay down any further. Electrons and upquarks and down
Speaker 2: quarks are stable because there's nothing below them on the ladder.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it's possible to take the light particles,
Speaker 2: give them energy, smash them together, make heavy particles, but
Speaker 2: typically they will not last for very long and less lucky,
Speaker 2: and you happen to form something which is stable, like
Speaker 2: an iron nucleus.
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if it's if it's more of a
Speaker 1: philosophical question, you know, does the term new matter even
Speaker 1: make sense? What does the word new here mean? Like
Speaker 1: it didn't exist before, but you know, the energy that
Speaker 1: making that matter, it sort of existed before it just
Speaker 1: it came from a different field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's sort of like the particle of thesus question,
Speaker 2: you know, like is this particle new or is this
Speaker 2: particle not new?
Speaker 1: Or what does it mean to have an old particle?
Speaker 1: Like is there such a thing? Right?
Speaker 2: Particles never retire, man, they work forever, so their age
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. I think he's asking about new matter in
Speaker 2: the concept of like new elements of the periodic table,
Speaker 2: Like could we create elements of the periodic table we've
Speaker 2: never seen before by smashing particles together?
Speaker 1: Oh? Like, uh, you think as if it's asking about
Speaker 1: creating an element we had never seen before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he says, generate all different elements of the periodic table.
Speaker 2: And to me, the question is, like, well, what are
Speaker 2: all the different elements? Even know? There might be some
Speaker 2: really heavy new ones that are very stable, that are
Speaker 2: very massive we've never made before. And so yeah, and
Speaker 2: so if one way to do that is to smash
Speaker 2: stuff together and see if we can make those heavy elements,
Speaker 2: we haven't been able to do that yet.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess maybe the question then is what's the
Speaker 1: biggest or heaviest element we have made out of scratch
Speaker 1: in in a particle collision? And I think it means
Speaker 1: like spontaneously making something right, not just like you know,
Speaker 1: like building up a matter like by adding one proton
Speaker 1: at a time.
Speaker 2: I think the heaviest thing we've ever made is element
Speaker 2: one eighteen, But that's not really what he's asking about
Speaker 2: to do that. You take lighter elements and you like
Speaker 2: gently toss protons into them, hoping not to smash them apart.
Speaker 2: So that's one technique. But if you just like start
Speaker 2: from two protons and smash them together and hope to
Speaker 2: make something like element one forty seven, that's not something
Speaker 2: we've ever done. When we smash protons together, we don't
Speaker 2: ever get helium, for example. It's possible, yeah, absolutely, but
Speaker 2: it's very delicate because you put too much energy and
Speaker 2: you just destroy the protons and you get the quarks interacting,
Speaker 2: you get fragments of the protons flying out.
Speaker 1: No, but I wonder if he means, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you take two protons, you accelerate them, you smash him,
Speaker 1: you create pure energy, like the old protons are gone,
Speaker 1: even the old quarks are gone, and then somehow all
Speaker 1: that energy somehow reforms into a complex atom.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's possible, right, and be careful again with pure energy.
Speaker 2: That's something we say sometimes, but really what's happening is
Speaker 2: that energy is going into another field. Typically it's photons
Speaker 2: or z bosons or something. But yeah, then that field
Speaker 2: can dump the energy back into quark fields, which could
Speaker 2: form protons and make a crazy heavy element. That it's
Speaker 2: totally possible. It's not something we've ever done. It's very unlikely.
Speaker 2: It requires a lot of things to go right, all
Speaker 2: at the same time. But there's nothing saying it's not possible.
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if you've done it, you just haven't
Speaker 1: noticed or measured it or look for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's absolutely possible too, because in these collisions we
Speaker 2: get huge sprays of particles, more than we can ever
Speaker 2: track or count, and we're not like sift through them
Speaker 2: usually to look for new, weird heavy nuclei.
Speaker 1: That the collider is not suddenly covered in gold you
Speaker 1: haven't noticed that, or white chocolate? Perhaps, would that be
Speaker 1: a tragedy if you like went to work one day
Speaker 1: and everything's covered in white chocolate, You're like, no.
Speaker 2: It's an exciting day every day at the particle collider.
Speaker 2: Are we going to make a black hole? Are we
Speaker 2: going to cover the Earth in white chocolate? Who knows?
Speaker 1: Let's turn it, who knows, Let's find out exactly.
Speaker 2: Let's go as the kids say.
Speaker 1: So then what's the answer for ounce of here? Is
Speaker 1: that it is possible to make a matter is just
Speaker 1: kind of unlikely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the answer is that it's totally possible. And I
Speaker 2: love your vision of a space station orbiting the Sun
Speaker 2: building all sorts of crazy building blocks, but I'm not
Speaker 2: ready to invest.
Speaker 1: I see you need to see. The proof is in
Speaker 1: the white chocolate pudding.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If this was physics Shark Tank, I would not
Speaker 2: be in.
Speaker 1: Ooh, physics shark that.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: Let's make that show.
Speaker 2: All right, listen, bite, let's and designed the pictures a
Speaker 2: start the projects.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think they have that already. I think it's
Speaker 1: called the National Science Fundation. All right, well, great question. Answer.
Speaker 1: Now let's get to our last question of the day,
Speaker 1: and this one is about the ultimate particle and possibly
Speaker 1: it's anti particle. Let's dig into that, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right, we're answering listener questions
Speaker 1: and our last question comes from Brett.
Speaker 5: Hey, my name is Brett. I'm full Ty from the
Speaker 5: United Kingdom. I'm currently studying an integrated masters and bachelor's
Speaker 5: degree in my spare time, and I have a question
Speaker 5: for the podcast. I've been thinking about ultimate particles, God
Speaker 5: particles and fundamental particles, and I was wondering if there
Speaker 5: is a true ultimate fundamental particle that everything else comes from,
Speaker 5: would also have an anti version of itself? And also,
Speaker 5: if we can't see them now, is it possible that
Speaker 5: they're all used up in the Big Bang? And if so,
Speaker 5: would we be able to see any evidence in the CMB.
Speaker 5: And finally, third part of the question, would it be
Speaker 5: the case that different configurations of the particle make up
Speaker 5: the ones that we see in the standard model? I
Speaker 5: realized this is a bit more than one question, but
Speaker 5: thank you for your time and thank you for your responses.
Speaker 2: Hey Bretat, congrats on studying for your master's degree in
Speaker 2: physics in your spare time. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a pretty cool a master's and bachelor's degree
Speaker 1: at the same time. Well, the question is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, because in popular science you hear
Speaker 1: talk of the god particle, the ultimate particle, or maybe
Speaker 1: finding out that the whole universe is just made out
Speaker 1: of one particle. And I think Brett's question is if
Speaker 1: we ever find such a particle, would it have an
Speaker 1: antipe article version of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, super awesome question, Brett. The short answer to your
Speaker 2: question is, we have no idea because we don't know
Speaker 2: the inside these particles, but we can talk about what
Speaker 2: the current theories do predict. You know, we suspect strongly
Speaker 2: that what we're looking at now, the electrons and the quarks,
Speaker 2: are not the fundamental description of the universe. We think
Speaker 2: that probably there's some deeper explanation that accounts for all
Speaker 2: the weird patterns and like baroque details of all of
Speaker 2: these particles.
Speaker 1: Sort of like you know, when we discovered the elements,
Speaker 1: we found out there was some sort of order to
Speaker 1: them that explain why gold behaved differently than carbon, for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, there are these patterns, these features to the
Speaker 2: particles that we see. We don't understand them. There are
Speaker 2: strong hints that they might be made out of something smaller,
Speaker 2: something simpler that explains all of these weird details. Also,
Speaker 2: we know that our theory breaks down at a certain
Speaker 2: point we have really high temperatures or like we had
Speaker 2: in the very early universe, that our current theory just
Speaker 2: doesn't work anymore. You need to fold in gravity. We
Speaker 2: don't know how to do that, so at some point
Speaker 2: our theory breaks down and that very high temperature also
Speaker 2: corresponds to very short distances. So the point of the
Speaker 2: story is we think our current theory is not complete.
Speaker 2: We hope to figure out one day what's there. And
Speaker 2: your question is basically, when we do, will that be
Speaker 2: some sort of particle antiparticle or is it possible for
Speaker 2: everything that made out of something that doesn't have an
Speaker 2: anti particle?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess maybe take a step back and let's
Speaker 1: think about whether it's possible, Like, is it possible that
Speaker 1: everything that we know about electrons, quarks they're all actually
Speaker 1: made out of one particle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, that's possible.
Speaker 1: What wouldn't mean for the fields right right? Like don't
Speaker 1: we talk about the electron having its own quantum fields
Speaker 1: and quarks having their own quantum quark fields. That mean
Speaker 1: those fields don't really exist, they're just sort of like
Speaker 1: made up of other fields.
Speaker 2: It would mean that those fields are effective instead of fundamental.
Speaker 1: Wait, what was that word you said? If they're effective?
Speaker 2: Yeah, an effective field is one that's not fundamental. For example,
Speaker 2: if you want to think about like pressure waves in
Speaker 2: a material, you can write that down in terms of
Speaker 2: a field theory. Wave equations for how oceans work. But
Speaker 2: we know that oceans are not a fundamental field in
Speaker 2: the universe. Right, we can still think about waves in
Speaker 2: the ocean as if the oceans are a field. But
Speaker 2: that's just like useful mathematics that describes a lot of
Speaker 2: complex stuff, sweeping it under the rug without really understanding
Speaker 2: the details. So we don't know whether the fields we
Speaker 2: have now are fundamental fields or they're just effective fields.
Speaker 2: It could be that there is no electron field, that
Speaker 2: there's something deeper the squiggly on field or several squiggly
Speaker 2: on fields, and when you zoom out a little bit
Speaker 2: and so you can't see the squigglions anymore, they act
Speaker 2: like an electron field. So you can use the electron
Speaker 2: field as an effective theory. It works, it's helpful and
Speaker 2: lets you do calculations, but it might not be a
Speaker 2: true description of the deepest nature of the universe.
Speaker 1: Whoa so like all this time we thought the electron
Speaker 1: field was a fundamental and like basic feature of the universe.
Speaker 1: But no, it could just be an illusion kind of.
Speaker 2: It might be an emergent phenomena. Right, this is something
Speaker 2: we see all over the universe that you can describe things,
Speaker 2: lots of different scales. You can talk about galaxies without
Speaker 2: understanding the particles inside every planet and inside every rock. Right,
Speaker 2: you can zoom out and find simple mathematical laws. Kepler
Speaker 2: discovered those without even understanding gravity. Right, you can find
Speaker 2: simple mathematics that lots of different length scales, distance scales,
Speaker 2: energy scales in the universe. That's sort of a mystery,
Speaker 2: like why that's even possible, But yeah, you can zoom
Speaker 2: in or out in the universe and find mathematical laws.
Speaker 2: We don't know if we found the deepest layer yet,
Speaker 2: or if there even is a deepest layer, or what
Speaker 2: that looks like.
Speaker 1: Well, what would make more sense? I guess would it
Speaker 1: make more sense for there to be like all these
Speaker 1: multiple fields electron field, quark fields, muan fields, or would
Speaker 1: it make sense to just have one field to rule
Speaker 1: them all.
Speaker 2: It's a great philosophical question. We don't have a scientific
Speaker 2: answer for it, right.
Speaker 1: What do we have a song? Though?
Speaker 2: We don't have a song or a scientific answer for it.
Speaker 2: Maybe there is a song for all the particles. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but you know, if this is the fundamental theory,
Speaker 2: there is nothing below it that means that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of unanswered questions, you know, like why are there
Speaker 2: three copies of every particle electrons, muons, and towels, all
Speaker 2: sorts of questions that are out there that would be unanswered,
Speaker 2: and you might just be like, h, I don't know,
Speaker 2: that's just kind of the way it is. You'd be
Speaker 2: much more satisfying if we found a simpler explanation, because
Speaker 2: simplicity is always more satisfying because there are a few
Speaker 2: work follow up questions, but we don't know. The universe
Speaker 2: is not required to be satisfying to our minds.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could maybe like start with one
Speaker 1: field and then try to invent or figure out how
Speaker 1: that one field could give rise to all the other fields.
Speaker 1: Is that something that people have done and discount it
Speaker 1: or is that basically what string theory is or what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's basically string theory. String theory says the whole
Speaker 2: universe it's man out of one kind of thing, a string,
Speaker 2: and that string can do lots of different things. They
Speaker 2: can vibrate in different ways, so it's sort of like
Speaker 2: a meta field theory. Instead of having ten different quantum
Speaker 2: fields or eighteen quantum fields, you have a string which
Speaker 2: can oscillate in different ways, and different modes of those
Speaker 2: strings correspond to the different fields that we see. So
Speaker 2: string theory can describe everything we see out there. It
Speaker 2: can even unify gravity and quantum mechanics and describe everything.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if you need to get that complicated,
Speaker 1: because I know string theory is super complex, right, it
Speaker 1: has like a bazillion dimensions to it. Couldn't you just
Speaker 1: start with like the danelon or something and then try
Speaker 1: to create one particle that's not a string, like a brierrating,
Speaker 1: just a particle, and then try to come over with
Speaker 1: the rules that would make electrons and quarks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you definitely want the simplest explanation, right. The reason
Speaker 2: that people do string theory is that it is kind
Speaker 2: of the simplest way people have made all these pieces
Speaker 2: work together because there's a lot to describe. You know,
Speaker 2: we have all these different particles or the daniel On field,
Speaker 2: whichever has to be able to do lots of different
Speaker 2: kinds of things. That has to be able to wiggle,
Speaker 2: like an electron and a muon and a towel, and
Speaker 2: the neutrinos and the quarks and all the force particles,
Speaker 2: and it has to be able to explain quantum gravity,
Speaker 2: so you need gravitons in there as well. And string
Speaker 2: theory is sort of the simplest way people have ever
Speaker 2: made that work. A simpler theory can't explain everything that
Speaker 2: we see so far, and it's pretty simple. You just
Speaker 2: got one string.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess. Then the question is, can a string
Speaker 1: in a string theory have an anti version of itself?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really cool question. And you know, somebody
Speaker 2: might one day come up with a theory of some
Speaker 2: fundamental thing that explains everything and has an anti fundamental thing.
Speaker 2: But this current idea of string theory doesn't have anti strings.
Speaker 2: And the whole idea of anti particles I think is
Speaker 2: sometimes a little bit misleading. It tells people that, like,
Speaker 2: there's an opposite kind of matter, instead of thinking of
Speaker 2: antimatter as an opposite kind of matter, thinking of it
Speaker 2: as like a complementary kind of matter, or think about
Speaker 2: it as like fields can do two different kinds of things.
Speaker 2: Your favorite band can play rock, they can also play
Speaker 2: alternative the electron. Fields can wiggle in an electron like way,
Speaker 2: you can also wiggle in an anti electron like way.
Speaker 2: It's just another thing. The same field can do. They're
Speaker 2: just strings. They can wiggle to make the electron field,
Speaker 2: which then can make electrons or anti electrons. So the
Speaker 2: short answer is there are no anti strings in string theory.
Speaker 2: You don't need them because the strings can make the field,
Speaker 2: and the field can do either the particle or the
Speaker 2: anti particle.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, and we've talked about it before. How
Speaker 1: like an antiparticle, something is just the same thing except
Speaker 1: what the charge. Charge is flipped And so I guess
Speaker 1: maybe I wonder if the question is do strings have
Speaker 1: a charge? Is such a thing as charge in string
Speaker 1: theory or is charge something that comes from the different
Speaker 1: vibrations of the string.
Speaker 2: Yeah, charge is something that comes from the different vibration
Speaker 2: of the string, because the same string can make a
Speaker 2: charged field like the electron field, and a non charge
Speaker 2: field like the electromagnetic field. And so that tells us
Speaker 2: something about like what charge is in the universe. Currently
Speaker 2: we imagine charge is conserved in the universe. But if
Speaker 2: charge things are made up of the same stuff, is
Speaker 2: not charge things, And you could might imagine you might
Speaker 2: be able to convert one to the other. You might
Speaker 2: be able to destroy or create charge by getting the
Speaker 2: string to wiggle differently.
Speaker 1: It sounds like maybe you're saying, you know, if we
Speaker 1: ever discover the ultimate theory of everything, it wouldn't have charges,
Speaker 1: in which case it wouldn't have an anti version of itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'd pull back on that a tiny bit.
Speaker 2: I'd say it doesn't have to have charges. It might.
Speaker 2: There's no guarantee that string theory is the right description
Speaker 2: of the universe. There's lots and lots of problems with
Speaker 2: string theory and lining it up with reality and figuring
Speaker 2: out which string theory to use, et cetera. Somebody might
Speaker 2: come along with a much better, you know, rubber band
Speaker 2: theory of the universe, or the whohe On theory of
Speaker 2: the universe that might have Antijoheans in it. Who knows,
Speaker 2: So I'm not ruling it out. I'm just saying, we
Speaker 2: don't know, but our best current theory doesn't require anti strings, right,
Speaker 2: you can out.
Speaker 1: But I wonder like, if you do get to that theory,
Speaker 1: like the whorehe On theory of everything, and there's a
Speaker 1: plus Horray and a minus horhe, if them wouldn't just
Speaker 1: ask like, why is there a plus oriy and a
Speaker 1: minus hoorge. There must be something even deeper explain the
Speaker 1: plus and minus warges, right, in which case you couldn't
Speaker 1: call this the ultimate theory.
Speaker 2: Maybe, and you'll have a hard time ever proving that
Speaker 2: you have the ultimate theory because you can almost never
Speaker 2: distinguish between the two scenarios of we have the ultimate
Speaker 2: theory or we don't have the ultimate theory, but we
Speaker 2: don't have the power to see inside this one. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a question of resolution always, like can you zoom
Speaker 2: in far enough to tell what this is made out of?
Speaker 2: Can you tell whether it's made out of itself or
Speaker 2: something smaller? But you could also end up in a
Speaker 2: situation where you have a theory with a plus Jorge
Speaker 2: and a minus Orge, and you understand why that there's
Speaker 2: a symmetry to it, it's a balance to it, or there's
Speaker 2: some sort of structure to it that demands requires a
Speaker 2: plus and a minus. So it might be that the
Speaker 2: question is answered on its own without going to a
Speaker 2: deeper theory.
Speaker 1: But who knows, well, I guess for it to have
Speaker 1: an anti version of itself, you would have to kind
Speaker 1: of pick one as the dominant one, right, kind of
Speaker 1: like because we only call antimatter antimatter because it's not
Speaker 1: the same as the kind that we're made out of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's not something we understand in our universe.
Speaker 2: Like why we tend to be made out of one
Speaker 2: half of this symmetry and not the other half. That's
Speaker 2: a huge open question.
Speaker 1: Well, any theory of everything that has me at the
Speaker 1: center of it, For me, I think that's the ultimate theory.
Speaker 2: That's everything.
Speaker 1: Let's just stop right there. Yes, if I'm at the
Speaker 1: center of the universe, let's not look any further.
Speaker 2: Forget Aristotle, forget Copernicus. We have the whoreey theory, the
Speaker 2: whoregey centric theory of the universe.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yes, that's all you need.
Speaker 2: Nobody tell the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: And at the core of it is just to handwavy cartoon.
Speaker 2: It's a good way to live, man, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know, all right. Well, I think that's the answer
Speaker 1: for bread, which is that it is possible if we
Speaker 1: find the god part or the ultimate particle of matter
Speaker 1: in the universe and forces that it might have its
Speaker 1: own anti particle, it's anti god particle. Would it be
Speaker 1: the anti god particle or the godless particle?
Speaker 2: The devil particle. Yeah, who knows, But the dog particle
Speaker 2: I like that better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then are we made out of dog particles
Speaker 1: or God particles?
Speaker 2: I want to be a cat particle. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I love that Brett is thinking about this. I
Speaker 2: want everyone out there to think about the deep nature
Speaker 2: of the universe. You don't have to be a professional
Speaker 2: physicist or even on your way to becoming one. This
Speaker 2: is a mystery that belongs to everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we hope everyone has questions and also anti questions.
Speaker 2: Are our answers anti questions?
Speaker 1: To Zach Can, they're definitely anti answers most of the time.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope when we collide our anti answers with
Speaker 2: your anti questions, we're not annihilating your curiosity. That's right.
Speaker 1: We're just creating positive why.
Speaker 2: Is all over the place and hoping it matters.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I think that answers all of our questions.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who sent in their questions. We always
Speaker 1: enjoy talking about these adventures into people's curiosity. We hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
Speaker 2: For more science and curiosity. Come find us on social media,
Speaker 2: where we answer questions and post videos we're on Twitter,
Speaker 2: this Org, instant and now TikTok. Thanks for listening and
Speaker 2: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio. More podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.