Speaker 1: Good morning, or hey, have you left the house yet today?
Speaker 1: I have? Yeah, I record in my garage. I have
Speaker 1: a set up there, so thankfully I'm out of the house.
Speaker 1: But if you mean like leaving the premises of my house, no,
Speaker 1: I haven't done that yet. I mean it's not even noon.
Speaker 1: Who leaves the house before noon? M I guess most
Speaker 1: of humanity have that experience. Are you saying I'm not
Speaker 1: part of humanity? I'm just saying maybe you have more
Speaker 1: inertia than the rest of us. Yes, Hey, cartoonists, address
Speaker 1: tends to stay in rest less than external deadline is
Speaker 1: applied to it. Yeah, I think that's Newton's forgotten fourth
Speaker 1: law of cartooning physics forgotten or he never got to
Speaker 1: it because he had too much inertia he never managed
Speaker 1: to change out of his pajamas. Yeah, Hi am for
Speaker 1: handy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine,
Speaker 1: and I have my own kind of inertia. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: is it mostly around your waist or you have a
Speaker 1: very inertial head. It's sort of more conceptual inertia. Once
Speaker 1: I have an idea, I don't like to let go
Speaker 1: of it, so the idea has inertia though, Is that
Speaker 1: what you mean? Is it a heavy idea or a
Speaker 1: light idea? It's sort of stubbornly sticks around in my brain.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll get curious about something and it just will
Speaker 1: not leave me for months or years, until eventually I
Speaker 1: find an answer. Aren't you describing all physicists though? Is
Speaker 1: a nurse a certain sense amount of compulsion that you
Speaker 1: need to be a you know, a researcher, a scientist.
Speaker 1: I think there is in fact a minimum quantum level
Speaker 1: of obsession you have to have in order to dedicate
Speaker 1: your life to these crazy ideas. Well. Welcome to our
Speaker 1: podcast Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe, hopefully your new obsession,
Speaker 1: which is a production of our heart, in which we
Speaker 1: explore the entire universe without leaving our houses or changing
Speaker 1: out of our pajamas. We help you perform the incredible
Speaker 1: feat of trying to import the entire universe, all of
Speaker 1: the stars and galaxies and tiny particles and alien landscapes
Speaker 1: that might be out there, into your brain without ever
Speaker 1: leaving your home. If you're lying in bed or sitting
Speaker 1: on your couch or otherwise chilling out. We hope to
Speaker 1: bring the entire universe to you. That's right, because it
Speaker 1: is a pretty heavy universe, full of massive and amazing
Speaker 1: revelations and things to discover. Did we try to fit
Speaker 1: all inside of your head. It's a big project to
Speaker 1: understand how the universe works, and something we've been working
Speaker 1: on for a long time, decades, centuries, even millennia. If
Speaker 1: you take seriously early Greek physics, which you don't write,
Speaker 1: I've seen you talk about Greek physicists, or as you
Speaker 1: like to call them, Greek guess you know, they had
Speaker 1: a different approach. They began by thinking internally just what
Speaker 1: made sense to them. The concept of empiricism came a
Speaker 1: little bit later, actually going out and testing these ideas
Speaker 1: to see if they do describe our universe is a
Speaker 1: little bit more modern than the ancient Greeks. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a little bit unfair though, because like, you
Speaker 1: know a lot more than them, but only because there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who did signs and research
Speaker 1: before you did. Like if you were born in Greek times,
Speaker 1: who knows what you might be thinking. Oh, that's definitely true,
Speaker 1: and I don't claim to be smarter than Aristotle or Galileo.
Speaker 1: I think the lesson to take away from it is
Speaker 1: that progress is slow, and the things that seem obvious
Speaker 1: to us were actually big intellectual steps forward, and we
Speaker 1: can't really recognize that anymore because we are so marinated
Speaker 1: in our current way of thinking. We forget how big
Speaker 1: an intellectual leap it was to try to describe the
Speaker 1: universe in terms of mathematics and make predictions and go
Speaker 1: out and test those things. All of that was a
Speaker 1: big idea that took thousands of years to bubble up
Speaker 1: from inside human brains. Yeah, although it all seems like
Speaker 1: Greek to me, there is a lot of scientists have
Speaker 1: discovered and theorize about the universe, and we've made a
Speaker 1: huge amount of progress. We have a pretty solid theory
Speaker 1: about what things are made out of and also how
Speaker 1: the stars and the galaxies and the black holes out
Speaker 1: there moved. It is kind of incredible how much progress
Speaker 1: we have made. Our mastery of technology is evidence that
Speaker 1: we understand how the universe works at a very microscopic
Speaker 1: scale all the way up to a macroscopic scale. We
Speaker 1: can use computers which are based on the motions of
Speaker 1: tiny little particles to guide enormous things like a seven
Speaker 1: forty seven across the ocean. It's this harmony between the
Speaker 1: very very small and the very very big. We have
Speaker 1: explored the universe at all of these scales and many
Speaker 1: scales in between, and at each step we can find
Speaker 1: some story to tell about what's going on, how things work,
Speaker 1: what laws they seem to be following. It never ceases
Speaker 1: to amaze me that the universe is understandable. It is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Although even though we have theories that can
Speaker 1: predict things like the motion of particles and the motion
Speaker 1: of galaxies in stars out there in space, that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that we understand these theories or what they
Speaker 1: mean or where they come from. Yeah, we tell a
Speaker 1: little mathematical stories about the universe, but sometimes it's useful
Speaker 1: to stop and say, like, what is this thing we
Speaker 1: are talking about anyway? Like we have the Shorteninger equation
Speaker 1: that tells us the wave function of a particle and
Speaker 1: how it moves through space, but it leaves unanswered important
Speaker 1: questions like well, what is a particle anyway? And it
Speaker 1: turns out that physicists and philosophers have riotously different opinions
Speaker 1: about what this thing is we're talking about. But we
Speaker 1: can still tell stories about these objects even if we
Speaker 1: don't quite understand what they are. But it's very fun
Speaker 1: and very fruitful to dig into these questions and try
Speaker 1: to understand exactly what it is we are talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are still very basic things about the universe we
Speaker 1: don't understand. And they don't just relate to tiny, little
Speaker 1: miniscule particles that you can't see. It also applies to
Speaker 1: you and me and what you do every day, which
Speaker 1: is to move or to not move, and to just
Speaker 1: sitting your chair all day long. They described physicists or
Speaker 1: cartoonists or both. I was just being general. I don't
Speaker 1: know why you're particular responding. You know, well, why are
Speaker 1: you mentioning in it? Well, it's this sort of mysterious process. Right.
Speaker 1: You sit in your chair, and you stay sitting in
Speaker 1: your chair. You expect that, unless you're getting up to
Speaker 1: move across the room or go fetch another banana, you're
Speaker 1: going to be in your chair all day long. And
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing that seems obvious to you,
Speaker 1: And it seems obvious to Aristotle, and it seems obvious
Speaker 1: to everybody but understanding the mechanics have feel like why
Speaker 1: things at rest stay at rest, why things in motion
Speaker 1: stay in motion? Raisism really fascinating issues about like what
Speaker 1: is momentum? What is inertia? What is mass? Anyway, so
Speaker 1: today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question what
Speaker 1: is quantized inertia? Guessing this means quantum mechanics of inertia.
Speaker 1: It's too buzzwords stuck together to make a buzzword, Sam,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure inertia is a buzzword. The people use
Speaker 1: it to denote, you know, exciting things, not usually Yeah,
Speaker 1: inertia is never a good thing. Is it like Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley disruptors. They're usually looking to disrupt industries that have
Speaker 1: too much inertia? Yes, it's something you want to break,
Speaker 1: I guess unless you're a controonism, which case you enjoy
Speaker 1: a little bit of inertia sometimes. But it is a
Speaker 1: fascinating question because I feel like inertia is a word
Speaker 1: that you know, even as a little kid, you learned
Speaker 1: pretty early on that it's just like what heavy things
Speaker 1: have that makes them hard to move. And so to
Speaker 1: think about the idea that we don't know what it
Speaker 1: is is kind of crazy. M. It's interesting word also
Speaker 1: because I'm not sure if it comes from physics and
Speaker 1: then we use it in our lives to describe, like
Speaker 1: our emotional states or our motivation levels as a metaphor
Speaker 1: for a concept from physics, or if when the other
Speaker 1: direction and physics stole it from English because it's similar
Speaker 1: to the concept that already existed. M. There's no history
Speaker 1: of words and physics. Oh, I'm sure there is, but
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in linguistics. Somebody out there who
Speaker 1: knows the history of the word inertia right in and
Speaker 1: let us know. Well, Also, it depends what you call scientists,
Speaker 1: right maybe like early caveman saw big rock and they
Speaker 1: found it hard to move, and they said, you know,
Speaker 1: came up with a word for it. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of like being a scientist, right. That's certainly being descriptive.
Speaker 1: I think philosophers of science might quibble about whether you're
Speaker 1: doing science just by describing your experience in the world.
Speaker 1: I think maybe science also requires developing a model to
Speaker 1: explain what you've seen, what you've experienced that also predicts
Speaker 1: what would happen in the future. I'm sure they predicted
Speaker 1: that the rock wouldn't move. Rock was heavy yesterday, Rock
Speaker 1: heavy today, rock heavy tomorrow. Me scientists me published first
Speaker 1: paper or first rock. Yeah, first don't tablet. First case
Speaker 1: painting got a publication range of one impact factor one.
Speaker 1: But it is a pretty amazing question to ask, because
Speaker 1: I imagine it's not a question people ask every day,
Speaker 1: like what is inertia? We just kind of take it
Speaker 1: for granted that inertia exists. We do take it for granted,
Speaker 1: especially because we have fairly solid theories of physics which
Speaker 1: use it, you know, Newtonian physics, Einsteinian relativity. They all
Speaker 1: rely in this concept of mass and on inertia, so
Speaker 1: they play a role in the mathematical stories these theories tell,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that they necessarily explain what it
Speaker 1: is or where it comes from. You know, Einstein's relativity
Speaker 1: can tell us that things with energy in them have mass,
Speaker 1: and that mass has inertia, but doesn't answer the question
Speaker 1: why why do things with energy in them tend to
Speaker 1: need a force to accelerate them? For example. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty fascinated question, and so, as usual, we were
Speaker 1: wondering how many people out there had thought about this
Speaker 1: question or had heard of the term quantized inertia. So
Speaker 1: the things very much to everybody who volunteers for these
Speaker 1: to be on the mic for the podcast, We really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. If you'd like to hear your voice speculating
Speaker 1: about future topics for the podcast, please don't be shy
Speaker 1: right to us to instants at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Speaker 1: So think about it for a second. What do you
Speaker 1: think is quantized inertia? Here's WHATULD be glad to say. First,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a wild guess that quantized inertia
Speaker 1: is essentially as the quantized view of inertia. And secondly
Speaker 1: that you're using the same definition of inertia as I
Speaker 1: learned in school way back when I guess you would
Speaker 1: just build the quantum of inertia with the quantum of
Speaker 1: mass times the quantum of distance over the quantum of time,
Speaker 1: and quantized inertia would be inertia momentum whatever you wanna
Speaker 1: call it, measured in that unit. Quantized inertia sounds to
Speaker 1: me like it's going to be small packets of movement
Speaker 1: that can be discreetly segmented into you know, little little
Speaker 1: individual quantized bits of movement. So it's not this continuous
Speaker 1: everything stays in motion as long as it's in motion
Speaker 1: that we would expect from Newtonian physics inertia, but quantized
Speaker 1: quantized inertia. So m hmm, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know what contest inertia means, but I'm guessing it's something
Speaker 1: to do with inertia that originates from something that doesn't
Speaker 1: have mass. So if you were to take a box um,
Speaker 1: an empty box, like completely empty, I mean, apart from
Speaker 1: virtual particles, I guess. But if you had an empty
Speaker 1: box um and waited, it would real less than if
Speaker 1: you took a box with photons in it, even though
Speaker 1: photons are massless according to the currently prevailing theory, um
Speaker 1: just because of the emotion, because of the momentum, that
Speaker 1: box would have inertia. So I don't know. Because photons
Speaker 1: are the quanta of the lecture magnetic fields, so maybe
Speaker 1: that's what quantized inertia means, but I'm not sure. All Right,
Speaker 1: not a lot of solid gases here. I like the
Speaker 1: person who said it's inertia but quantized. Isn't that what
Speaker 1: quantum physics is. It's physics, but quantized, that's a quantum
Speaker 1: everything is right quantum dessert dipping dots? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think quantizing your dessert would probably help with your own
Speaker 1: inertia around your waist. I don't know. I think the
Speaker 1: smaller the pieces are, the more of them you can have.
Speaker 1: So you just end up consuming an infinite number of
Speaker 1: dipping dots. They're so small. How can they possibly add
Speaker 1: up to anything that seems physically impossible to you? You're
Speaker 1: a physicist, I can bend logic when it comes to dessert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does make it harder to bend your body. But I
Speaker 1: did really like the answer that suggested that quantized inertia
Speaker 1: could come out of quantized distance and quantized time. Essentially,
Speaker 1: if all of reality is quantized, then everything is quantized,
Speaker 1: including inertia and dessert. Yeah. Yeah, I guess if space
Speaker 1: is quantized, and technically moving through space or not moving
Speaker 1: through space is also quantized. That's right. Either you're eating
Speaker 1: dessert or you're not, unless it's quantum mechanics, in which
Speaker 1: case maybe you're doing both at the same time. The
Speaker 1: dessert on certainty for stable. So this is a really
Speaker 1: funny topic, quantized inertia. I like it because it touches
Speaker 1: on a really core question of physics, like what is
Speaker 1: inertia and mass? Anyway? But also, let's this explore a
Speaker 1: recent hypothesis suggestion that might answer those questions. Right, And
Speaker 1: I guess, just to be clear, quantized inertia is a
Speaker 1: concept that comes from a theory that tries to explain
Speaker 1: what inertia is. Yeah, that's exactly right. It suggests that
Speaker 1: inertia comes from tiny, little quantum effects in the universe.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's jump into it. And I guess
Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning. What physicists call inertia? How
Speaker 1: do they define it? So inertia first appears in Newton's theory, right,
Speaker 1: it tells us that things in motion will stay in
Speaker 1: motion and that things at rest will stay at rest.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, it's another way to state the
Speaker 1: conservation of momentum. You know, things that have no momentum
Speaker 1: their mass times their velocity will continue to have no
Speaker 1: momentum unless you apply a force to them, unless you
Speaker 1: accelerate them by applying a force. Things who have constant
Speaker 1: velocity constant momentum will continue to have that momentum unless again,
Speaker 1: you apply a force to change that momentum. So that's
Speaker 1: the principle of inertia. Right. It's kind of the idea
Speaker 1: that if something has velocity, it's hard to change that
Speaker 1: things velocity. Right, So that's kind of the concept. And
Speaker 1: maybe the more of it that you have, the more
Speaker 1: inertia that you have, the harder it is to change
Speaker 1: that velocity. Yeah, and that's where Newton's laws of physics
Speaker 1: come in. Right, you have a certain velocity, you need
Speaker 1: to apply a force to change that velocity. And because
Speaker 1: force is mass times acceleration, then to get a larger acceleration,
Speaker 1: you need a larger force. Because force is mass times acceleration.
Speaker 1: The more mass you have, the larger the force you
Speaker 1: need to get the same acceleration. So things that have
Speaker 1: more mass therefore need bigger forces in order to accelerate them.
Speaker 1: Like if you push on a tiny rock, you're going
Speaker 1: to accelerate it more than if you push on the
Speaker 1: entire Earth with the same force. Right, So then I
Speaker 1: guess is inertia related to mass? Does it include mass
Speaker 1: or is it just the general concept that you need
Speaker 1: to force to move a mass? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: The mass that we're talking about there we often call
Speaker 1: inertial mass because we think it's the mass that gives
Speaker 1: things inertia the property of having mass. If you didn't
Speaker 1: have mass, then you wouldn't have inertia. So if the
Speaker 1: inertia comes from having mass, because you also need that
Speaker 1: mass to have momentum. Right, Although could you also say
Speaker 1: that you can't have mass if you don't have inertia,
Speaker 1: or that what we call mass is actually the property
Speaker 1: of inertia. I think it's the second that what we
Speaker 1: call mass is actually the property of inertia. That's why
Speaker 1: we get more specific and we call it inertial mass, right,
Speaker 1: because there are other kinds of masses. There are other
Speaker 1: kinds of masses exactly. It's also a subtle distinction between
Speaker 1: momentum and inertia because it is possible to have momentum
Speaker 1: without mass, Like photons have momentum even though they don't
Speaker 1: have any mass. Does that mean photons have inertia or not?
Speaker 1: Or is it all very light? Well, photons do carry momentum, right,
Speaker 1: And so a photon, for example, can bounce off of
Speaker 1: something and push it, you know, like a solar sale
Speaker 1: is a photon pushing on something and transferring its momentum
Speaker 1: to that object. So messence to have momentum, but inertia
Speaker 1: is like the resistance of an object of changing its velocity,
Speaker 1: and photons can't change their velocity, right, they always travel
Speaker 1: at the speed of light. So inertia when it comes
Speaker 1: to photons is very confusing. Does that mean photons have
Speaker 1: infinite inertia? That's an interesting question. You can change the
Speaker 1: direction of a photon even though you can change its velocity,
Speaker 1: and that does actually count as a change in its
Speaker 1: velocity vector because you're changing its components. Something with infinite
Speaker 1: inertia you wouldn't be able to change its direction either.
Speaker 1: So light is a sort of special category there. M
Speaker 1: I think you're saying that like does have inertia, or
Speaker 1: maybe that it doesn't apply to things without inertial mass.
Speaker 1: I think there's a few different concepts here. There's momentum,
Speaker 1: which light definitely carries, but inertia here we're talking about
Speaker 1: inertial mass, and photons definitely don't have any inertial mass.
Speaker 1: All right, So some particles in the universe seemed to
Speaker 1: have inertial mass, and it's sort of related to ecelind
Speaker 1: theories about gravity too, right, that's right, And there's another
Speaker 1: interesting wrinkle about inertial mass there, which is it doesn't
Speaker 1: just come from the mass of your particles, right. So
Speaker 1: for example, particles have their own little mass which they
Speaker 1: get from the Higgs boson. But then you can put
Speaker 1: them together and use energy to build those bonds, and
Speaker 1: that energy also contributes to the mass of the object. So,
Speaker 1: for example, a proton is made of little quirks. Those
Speaker 1: corks have really really tiny inertial masses. The proton has
Speaker 1: a lot of inertial mass because of the energy in it.
Speaker 1: So the proton, this bound state of all the corks,
Speaker 1: has a lot more mass than the things it's made
Speaker 1: out of. And that's because energy inside an object is
Speaker 1: sort of what gives it mass, it gives it inertia.
Speaker 1: So there's all these different ideas here. What is mass?
Speaker 1: What is inertia for an object? It reflects how much
Speaker 1: energy is sort of stored inside the object, not just
Speaker 1: the mass of the objects inside of it. Right, And
Speaker 1: in our book frequently ask questions about the unerse We
Speaker 1: tackled this in a whole chat there where we basically
Speaker 1: conclude that there's no such thing as mass, right, like
Speaker 1: everything is just energy because most of what we call
Speaker 1: mass in our bodies is actually the energy stored in
Speaker 1: the between the particles. And also like even the mass
Speaker 1: of a particle is really just the energy it has
Speaker 1: with the Higgs field, right, and so it's all just energy,
Speaker 1: which means there is such a thing mass. It is
Speaker 1: all just energy, but it does seem to have inertia,
Speaker 1: and that's too. Also in other counterintuitive examples, like with photons.
Speaker 1: Photons have no mass, but if you put a bunch
Speaker 1: of photons in a box with mirrors inside, for example,
Speaker 1: so they're bouncing around, then that will have more mass
Speaker 1: than an empty box. So you can like make a
Speaker 1: box more massive by shooting a laser into it and
Speaker 1: capturing those photons because you put energy into it. So
Speaker 1: it is all just energy, but that energy has this
Speaker 1: property of inertia. Right. It's kind of seems like, um,
Speaker 1: maybe the right order of these concepts is that you know,
Speaker 1: whenever you have energy localized or put together in a
Speaker 1: particular object or spa or even a box, it's somehow
Speaker 1: difficult to move that box or object, like you need
Speaker 1: to apply some kind of energy to change its velocity.
Speaker 1: And then that's the concept of inertia. And then what
Speaker 1: we call mass is kind of a measure of its inertia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mass is like a dial that tells you how much
Speaker 1: stored energy there is inside of it, And there's this
Speaker 1: relationship between the stored energy inside of it and how
Speaker 1: hard it is to move that thing. And mass is
Speaker 1: that multiplicative factor between those two things, exactly right, which
Speaker 1: means inertia? Is it kind of like predates mass or
Speaker 1: is more important or you know, it comes before the
Speaker 1: concept of mass, So it's pretty pretty important, right before
Speaker 1: in what sense, like chronologically or conceptually, I mean like conceptually,
Speaker 1: like in terms of the way that we think about
Speaker 1: these ideas, the order of concepts, it comes first, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can definitely think about it that way. What we
Speaker 1: observe is that there are things in the universe and
Speaker 1: those things seem to have inertia. We explain that by
Speaker 1: coming up with this concept of mass for these things.
Speaker 1: That is sort of the origin of their inertia. But
Speaker 1: it's really just more of a description than an actual explanation.
Speaker 1: We don't really understand the mechanism by which energy resists
Speaker 1: changes in its inertia. I think that's what you mean. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I mean, like in your light box. Example,
Speaker 1: if I put light inside of a box with mirrors
Speaker 1: inside of it, it's going to have inertia, But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the light it put into it has mass.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like inerish is kind of a more
Speaker 1: important or overarching, kind of fundamental concept than mass. I
Speaker 1: think big inertia will be happy to hear you say that.
Speaker 1: Oh good, wait for the check. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: get into this idea of anerition, why we don't understand
Speaker 1: what it is, and also a new theory that might
Speaker 1: have an answer for it. First, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about nourish and um. Ironically, it's
Speaker 1: taken as a well to get to this topic. You
Speaker 1: might say, we have a lot of inertia, and there's
Speaker 1: also some sort of inertia in the field about answering
Speaker 1: these questions at the foundations. Once we have a theory
Speaker 1: that works that we can use to describe the universe,
Speaker 1: a lot of people like to just run with it
Speaker 1: and go off and predict things and build ideas on
Speaker 1: top of it. There isn't always an appetite for like
Speaker 1: digging into the details of like what does this mean?
Speaker 1: It feels to people a little bit like doing philosophy,
Speaker 1: which is why for a long time people ignore questions
Speaker 1: at the heart of like quantum mechanics, you know, what
Speaker 1: our particles and is the way of function actually collapsing?
Speaker 1: Because we had the theory that worked. But I think
Speaker 1: it's really interesting and really important to dig into these
Speaker 1: details and try to understand what is this foundation on
Speaker 1: which we're building all of our theories. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: we define inertia as kind of the basically the observation
Speaker 1: that whenever you have an object which is mostly energy,
Speaker 1: or whenever you have a lot of energy in one spot,
Speaker 1: in one kind of thing, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: make that thing move or to slow it down, or
Speaker 1: basically to change its velocity. And so that observation, that's
Speaker 1: what we call inertia. Yeah, that's what we call inertia. Okay,
Speaker 1: But I guess the big question is like why is that?
Speaker 1: Why is the universe like that? Well, like why is
Speaker 1: it hard to change the velocity of things that have
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. That's a great question, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important when we ask big questions like that
Speaker 1: to think about what kind of answer are we looking for?
Speaker 1: Are we looking for an answer that's like this is
Speaker 1: the only way the universe can be because it's the
Speaker 1: only way the mathematics hangs together in a consistent way,
Speaker 1: Like there is no way to build another theory of
Speaker 1: physics that doesn't have this property. It's like a necessary
Speaker 1: consequence of something fundamental to our universe. Or another kind
Speaker 1: of answer would be like, oh, here's the mechanism, here's
Speaker 1: microscopically what's happening when you try to push on that
Speaker 1: box of photons, like to understand the little details of
Speaker 1: exactly what's happening and why. This concept of inertia sort
Speaker 1: of emerges from that, Right, I think you're talking about
Speaker 1: the difference between giving up and throwing your hands up
Speaker 1: in the air. Think just the way, that's the way
Speaker 1: the universe is, and the other option, which is to
Speaker 1: dig in deeper and see if there's maybe a simpler
Speaker 1: explanation for things like innernship. Right, Like, at some point
Speaker 1: you could just say, hey, that's just the way the
Speaker 1: universe is, because there's no other way that the universe
Speaker 1: could have been. Differently, the innersha is just there because
Speaker 1: it's there, Or you can might dig in deeper and say,
Speaker 1: oh no, look actually it's because of this other thing
Speaker 1: that we know about the universe, right. I think it's
Speaker 1: just a question of which rabbit hole you want to
Speaker 1: go down. If you want to go down the path
Speaker 1: of like finding fundamental principles that force the universe to
Speaker 1: be this way, then you can make arguments like the
Speaker 1: ones we make about conservation a momentum. Why does momentum
Speaker 1: seem to be conserved in our universe? We think because
Speaker 1: of not H's theorem and various symmetries. That is, because
Speaker 1: space is the same everywhere, And so then you can ask, all,
Speaker 1: why it's space the same everywhere. It's a fun rabbit
Speaker 1: hole to go down, but it's sort of a different
Speaker 1: structure of the argument to say that it's constrained by
Speaker 1: certain physical principles, and then you can of course ask like, well,
Speaker 1: why those physical principles, So you never really get to
Speaker 1: an answer, I think, but it's just sort of like
Speaker 1: a different direction to try to explore. I don't think
Speaker 1: either one should be called giving up. Giving up is
Speaker 1: like staying at home in your pajamas all day, unless
Speaker 1: you're doing physics in your pajamas at home. Isn't that
Speaker 1: what you do? A lot of the time too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I stay home, I said, in my pajamas, I eat
Speaker 1: dipping dots and I think about the universe. There you go. See,
Speaker 1: inertia can be a good thing. I feel like it
Speaker 1: gets a bad rap it does. Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: inertia is a negative thing, whereas momentum, Now that's a
Speaker 1: good thing usually. See, I think you're just a shill
Speaker 1: for big inertia. I think you're being paid on the
Speaker 1: side by big inertia to rehab its image in the community,
Speaker 1: in the physics community. You're here telling us that it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a negative thing. You're here telling us that
Speaker 1: it's more fundamental than mass. I mean, these are basically
Speaker 1: big inertias talking points. Well, I think we're all on
Speaker 1: the thumb of inertia. So really I kind of want
Speaker 1: to make it happy, right, You don't want to inertia
Speaker 1: to turn against you. I see now you're resorting to threats.
Speaker 1: Fall in line everyone, or big inertia will get you.
Speaker 1: I didn't say that you did to any But in
Speaker 1: terms of the question of what is inertia, I guess then,
Speaker 1: so which answer are we looking for? Are we looking
Speaker 1: for a way to say that inertia is because the
Speaker 1: universe couldn't have been any other way without inertia, or
Speaker 1: are we trying to find mechanism for inertia. People are
Speaker 1: going in both directions. There are some folks on the
Speaker 1: sort of philosophical side trying to understand whether we can
Speaker 1: connect it to symmetries of the universe, etcetera. But today
Speaker 1: we're gonna dig into this theory of quantized inertia, which
Speaker 1: is trying to describe it from the bottom up, explaining
Speaker 1: the mechanism of it, from the quantum scale, from the
Speaker 1: microscopic picture of the universe, what is actually out there
Speaker 1: pushing back against you when you try to move that
Speaker 1: heavy rock? I see. So maybe like you're trying to
Speaker 1: find a way to say that not that inertia is
Speaker 1: just is it's like the result of this other simpler
Speaker 1: theory that we have about the universe, exactly the way that,
Speaker 1: for example, we can explain the mass of little particles
Speaker 1: by saying, oh, it's the interaction with this field. There's
Speaker 1: a physical mechanism, the Higgs field that's changing the way
Speaker 1: particles move as if they have mass. Right, that's a
Speaker 1: nice mechanistic explanation or why these particles seem to move
Speaker 1: in this way. Can we find a more general, similar
Speaker 1: sort of description, an explanation for something that's happening out
Speaker 1: there in space that's pushing back on things, that's changing
Speaker 1: how they move in a way that we describe as innersia, right,
Speaker 1: And I guess this gets us to this kind of
Speaker 1: very subtle distinction between the inertia of fundamental particles and
Speaker 1: the inertia of objects like you and me. Like, we
Speaker 1: know that for small fundamental particles, their inertia comes from
Speaker 1: the interaction with the Higgs field, Right, But we don't
Speaker 1: understand is why collections of particles, or when you have
Speaker 1: energy like stored in a spot between particles, why that
Speaker 1: has inertia because that's not interacting with the Higgs field.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying, it's a good question. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can describe what happens when an electron is moving
Speaker 1: through the universe and interacting with the Higgs field as
Speaker 1: certain mathematical properties of that interaction. We think the electro
Speaker 1: on by itself without the Higgs field would have no mass.
Speaker 1: We travel always at the speed of life, for example,
Speaker 1: and we can describe exactly how the interaction of the
Speaker 1: electron with the Higgs field changes this motion just the
Speaker 1: same way as if you sort of like created mass
Speaker 1: for this particle, if you just gave it inherently this inertia.
Speaker 1: We don't have a mechanism for the Higgs boson to
Speaker 1: do that to like a collection of electrons. Differently than
Speaker 1: it's just its interaction with the individual electrons. Like we
Speaker 1: can describe how the Higgs talks to one electron, but
Speaker 1: now put a thousand electrons together in a box and
Speaker 1: give them energy, it has more inertia. We can't explain
Speaker 1: that using the Higgs field. The Higgs field just interacts
Speaker 1: with the individual electrons. So then the inertia of a
Speaker 1: box field of electrons is due to something else Entirely,
Speaker 1: you're saying, we don't understand the source of that inertia,
Speaker 1: but it sort of acts exactly like the Higgs field
Speaker 1: acts on fundamental particles in the sense that they both
Speaker 1: have inertia. Yes, they both have inertia, which we can
Speaker 1: describe as mass. They resist changes in their motion, right,
Speaker 1: But isn't it this vicious that it's exactly the same,
Speaker 1: like you know, an electronics just a little bit of
Speaker 1: energy and it interacts with the Higgs field, and that's
Speaker 1: how it gets its inertia. But then, when you have
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of energy together from multiple particles, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you think that also interacts with the Higgs field. You might,
Speaker 1: but we don't think the Higgs boson has a monopoly
Speaker 1: on inertia or on mass. We think that there are
Speaker 1: other ways even fundamental particles might get mass. For example,
Speaker 1: dark matter we suspect is a particle. We're also fairly
Speaker 1: certain it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs boson,
Speaker 1: because the Higgs boson only interacts with particles that feel
Speaker 1: the weak force, and we're pretty sure dark matter doesn't
Speaker 1: feel the weak force. Neutrinos even might get their mass
Speaker 1: not from the Higgs boson, through some other mechanism if
Speaker 1: they are Myrona particles. Check out our whole episode about
Speaker 1: neutrino masses. So we think that there might be multiple
Speaker 1: ways for even fundamental particles to get mass. The Higgs
Speaker 1: boson is not the only way, and so more broadly,
Speaker 1: we think it might be possible for collections of these
Speaker 1: objects to get mass via other mechanisms. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what quantized inertia is is another way to give mass
Speaker 1: to objects. All right, let's get into this theory of
Speaker 1: quantized inertia. It's a recent theory right by one person.
Speaker 1: It is a fairly recent idea and it's championed by
Speaker 1: one particular physicist in the UK, Mike McCullough, and has
Speaker 1: a sort of nice collection of ideas inspired by black
Speaker 1: holes and event horizons and quantum mechanics all mixed together
Speaker 1: and sort of clever package. He's like, let's throw everything
Speaker 1: that we can into this to give it a more
Speaker 1: inertia or momentum, whichever sounds better. It is a bit
Speaker 1: of a grab bag, and recently he's used this theory
Speaker 1: quantized inertia to try to explain mysteries like dark matter
Speaker 1: and also things like sono luminescence and the Pioneer anomaly
Speaker 1: and free energy and also dark energy in the expansion
Speaker 1: of the universe. So it's sort of a very useful
Speaker 1: toolbox for him. Can I come up with cartoon ideas
Speaker 1: also that would be more helpful for being I'm thinking
Speaker 1: maybe you can also explain who sha j K. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's just solve all the mysteries while we're at it. Well,
Speaker 1: technically inertia did kill you kids. But I guess the
Speaker 1: main question here that we're the physicist are trying to
Speaker 1: solve is why do collections of energy, like when you
Speaker 1: pull energy together, why is it hard to move it
Speaker 1: from one place to another? And this theory says that
Speaker 1: maybe it's due to quantum effects. That's what it's called
Speaker 1: quantized inertion, right exactly. He takes the picture of the
Speaker 1: universe as filled with quantum particles. Right, All space has fields,
Speaker 1: and these fields can't have zero energy, so they're always
Speaker 1: sort of oscillating out there in the universe, and in
Speaker 1: certain situations these fields do weird things, like, for example,
Speaker 1: if you have a black hole, you have an event
Speaker 1: horizon beyond which you can't see anything. Stephen Hawking predicted
Speaker 1: that if you have these fields near an event horizon,
Speaker 1: it generates radiation, so it's called Hawking radiation. It's the
Speaker 1: particular combination of having these quantum fields and an event horizon.
Speaker 1: Nor for those fields to be sort of self consistent,
Speaker 1: you need the black hole to be generating some radiation.
Speaker 1: You need to propagation of waves through that field outward
Speaker 1: from the event horizon in order for sort of mathematically
Speaker 1: things to add up. So the lesson there is that
Speaker 1: event horizons tend to cause radiation. Right, That's why they
Speaker 1: say that a black hole will eventually evaporate, right, or
Speaker 1: black holes are always evaporating. Although has this been actually
Speaker 1: observed or is this just a theory that black holes
Speaker 1: have radiation just a theory, definitely never observed. Talking radiation,
Speaker 1: if it exists, would be extremely faint. For small black holes,
Speaker 1: it's quite bright, but for the black holes we expect
Speaker 1: are out there in the universe, it would be very
Speaker 1: very low intensity, so very difficult to observe, especially this
Speaker 1: far from black holes. So we don't know for sure
Speaker 1: that it exists. But in the theory, these quantum waves
Speaker 1: which fill the universe, if they encounter an event horizon,
Speaker 1: it generates radiation in the other direction. And it's this
Speaker 1: kind of radiation that mccaullus suspects causes inertia. Wait, what
Speaker 1: do you mean, So if I have a black hole,
Speaker 1: it has an event horizon, which is like the edge
Speaker 1: of the black hole where stuff can fall in and
Speaker 1: will never it out. You see a quantum wave hits it,
Speaker 1: or a quantum field interacts with it, what's the difference.
Speaker 1: Quantum fields exists all through space. If you're going to
Speaker 1: solve the equations for that field, to get a consistent solution,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out what happens to those fields
Speaker 1: at the event horizon. So Hockeings derivation shows that in
Speaker 1: order to satisfy the wave equations of quantum fields, there
Speaker 1: has to be outward radiation. And so you're saying this
Speaker 1: is kind of an example of what's also happening with inertia.
Speaker 1: It's an example of an important principle at the heart
Speaker 1: of quantized inertia, which is event horizons cause radiation. It's
Speaker 1: not suggesting that black holes cause inertia. Is just an
Speaker 1: example of how event horizons cause radiation. These argument needs
Speaker 1: one more piece, which is how every time we move,
Speaker 1: we're basically creating event horizons. What what do you mean
Speaker 1: every time we move where I'm creating like lack a
Speaker 1: black hole, sort of like a black hole. We did
Speaker 1: an episode once about whether or not it's possible to
Speaker 1: outrun a beam of light. Right, you might imagine that
Speaker 1: if somebody shoots a beam of light at you, that
Speaker 1: there's no way you can run fast and to avoid it, Right,
Speaker 1: if you run away from me and then I turn
Speaker 1: on my flashlight, that eventually that light will catch up
Speaker 1: to you because it's traveling at the speed of lighting.
Speaker 1: You can't travel at the speed of light, so eventually,
Speaker 1: given infinite time, it will catch you. That's not actually
Speaker 1: true if you run away with constant acceleration. So if
Speaker 1: you move with constant acceleration, it actually creates an event
Speaker 1: horizon behind you, a part of the universe which no
Speaker 1: longer can reach you. We did a whole episode about
Speaker 1: this counterintuitive principle where acceleration itself causes event horizons. Right,
Speaker 1: although it seems impossible to have constant acceleration forever, wouldn't
Speaker 1: that take an infinite amount of energy? It definitely would
Speaker 1: take an infinite amount of energy. Practically, it's not something
Speaker 1: I know how you could achieve or I would recommend.
Speaker 1: But in principle, mathematically, if you are undergoing constant acceleration,
Speaker 1: then you are cutting yourself off from part of the universe,
Speaker 1: as part of the universe whose messages will never reach you,
Speaker 1: and those light beams will get closer and closer to
Speaker 1: you every year, but never actually touched your back. Basically,
Speaker 1: you're leaving the rest of the universe that's behind you
Speaker 1: in the dust kind of what you're saying, right Like,
Speaker 1: if I move with coustant acceleration in one direction, I'll
Speaker 1: never kind of see the stuff behind me, maybe forever.
Speaker 1: But then, how does this related to inertia. Now, take
Speaker 1: these two ideas. One is event horizons caused radiation. Its
Speaker 1: second is acceleration causes event horizons. Put them together and
Speaker 1: you get acceleration causes event horizons, which cause radiation. So
Speaker 1: now every time you accelerate, you're creating an event horizon
Speaker 1: behind you that's sort of similar to the end of
Speaker 1: a black hole, which is going to create radiation for
Speaker 1: the same reason you get hawking radiation. So every time
Speaker 1: you accelerate, you're creating this event horizon behind you, which
Speaker 1: is going to generate a kind of radiation behind you
Speaker 1: and basically bathe you in radiation from the universe. Because
Speaker 1: this radiation is not the same in all directions, because
Speaker 1: the event horizon is behind you and not ahead of you,
Speaker 1: it can change the way you move. And that's the
Speaker 1: core principle of quantized inertia, that the way you move
Speaker 1: is changed by this quantum radiation caused by the event
Speaker 1: horizons created as you accelerate. That's a long sentence there.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm still stuck in this idea that every
Speaker 1: time I move. You're saying, every time I move or
Speaker 1: accelerate even my hand, I'm creating an event horizon. But
Speaker 1: earlier you said I need an infinite amount of acceleration
Speaker 1: to generate that event horizon. What are you trying to
Speaker 1: say that even a little bit of acceleration causes an
Speaker 1: event horizon right behind it a really far away or
Speaker 1: how does it work? In order to outrun the beam
Speaker 1: of light? You would need to accelerate forever. You need
Speaker 1: to create that event horizon and never let it dissipate.
Speaker 1: So you need to accelerate forever, and that would require
Speaker 1: infinite energy, not necessarily infinite acceleration, but you'd have to
Speaker 1: be accelerating till the end of time to avoid that
Speaker 1: beam of light. But every time you accelerate, you do
Speaker 1: create an event horizon. That event horizon collapses when you
Speaker 1: stop accelerating, because now those parts of the universe can
Speaker 1: reach you. So you create an event horizon temporarily when
Speaker 1: you accelerate, it collapses when you stop accelerating. If you
Speaker 1: want to maintain it. You need to keep going forever.
Speaker 1: Where does that if horizon get formed? Not right behind me? Right?
Speaker 1: Probably super far away, isn't It depends on how fast
Speaker 1: you're going and how much you accelerate. The faster you're going,
Speaker 1: the closer that event horizon is to you. Okay, So
Speaker 1: then if I move my hand. Let' say I'm waving
Speaker 1: my hands here in front of me, where is the
Speaker 1: event horizon for me? Well, you're moving at fairly slow velocity,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming, and so that event horizon would be like
Speaker 1: light years away. Okay. So you're saying, like, if I
Speaker 1: move my hand forward, it's someone during that brief time
Speaker 1: that I'm moving my hand, someone in Alpha Centauri shooting
Speaker 1: a laser on me. Technically that in theory, like, if
Speaker 1: you do the math, that laser won't reach my hand,
Speaker 1: and if you kept accelerating your hand, that laser would
Speaker 1: never hit your hand. Since you probably stopped accelerating your hand,
Speaker 1: that event horizon collapses and it will eventually fry you. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now I created a little event horizon with respect
Speaker 1: to my hand. Is event horizon is light years away
Speaker 1: in Alpha cent Tori? How is this related to internship
Speaker 1: because event horizons create radiation. So when you did that,
Speaker 1: you generated a kind of radiation from the quantum fields
Speaker 1: of the universe. This is called Unrue radiation, named after
Speaker 1: a physicist whose last name is unru U n r
Speaker 1: u h. And so this radiation generated by this event horizon,
Speaker 1: Mike McCullough thinks is the source of inertia because it
Speaker 1: basically is pushing against you. I feel like you're saying
Speaker 1: that me moving my hand is creating particles in Alpha Centaur.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying. It's creating radiation from the
Speaker 1: event horizon that may be very very far away. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: and it's instantly community Like the movement of my hand
Speaker 1: is instantly communicating to Alpha Centauri to make particles out
Speaker 1: of nothing. It's not making particles out of nothing. The
Speaker 1: event horizon that you created in Alpha Centauri triggers radiation
Speaker 1: in the rest of the universe is quantum fields. So
Speaker 1: Unrue radiation, which is a whole interesting thing that people
Speaker 1: actually believe exists, suggests that anybody who's accelerating will feel
Speaker 1: this quantum radiation from the universe. And Mike McCullough suggests
Speaker 1: that quantum radiation is responsible for inertia, right. I guess
Speaker 1: it's a little hard to I guess process this because
Speaker 1: if like you're saying that the rest of the universe
Speaker 1: somehow cares if I move my hand forward, we're all
Speaker 1: tied together by these quantum fields. But it's light years away.
Speaker 1: But I'm feeling the inertiative of my hand right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely doesn't take millions of years for you to
Speaker 1: feel that inertia. I think that's because the event horizon
Speaker 1: that's created as you accelerate isn't immediately formed really far
Speaker 1: away from you, sort of like sweeping away from you
Speaker 1: as you accelerate, because even in Alpha Centauri, they don't
Speaker 1: know that you've moved your hand. So that event horizon
Speaker 1: is sort of like being created as the information propagates
Speaker 1: out to Alpha Centauri, and as it's doing so, it
Speaker 1: can also generate this quantum radiation that's pushing back at you.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm feeling a lot of inertia in my
Speaker 1: head right now. I'm sure a lot of people are.
Speaker 1: So let's dig into this a little bit more and
Speaker 1: figure out how this crazy quantum radiation gives us inertia.
Speaker 1: And also how true this theory is. But first, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break or I we're talking about quantized inertia,
Speaker 1: which is not like inertia chopped up with the little bits.
Speaker 1: It's more like the idea that inertia is caused by
Speaker 1: quantum effects. Yeah, I think that the picture of quantized
Speaker 1: inertia is that accelerating things in the universe generate this
Speaker 1: radiation from the background quantum fields that change the way
Speaker 1: they move. It's sort of similar to the way electron
Speaker 1: gets mass from the Higgs field. Right as electron moves
Speaker 1: to the Higgs field, it's interacting with that field and
Speaker 1: that interaction changes the way it moves. So here the
Speaker 1: picture is you're moving through the universe and your acceleration
Speaker 1: is now creating these virtual particles, which you can think
Speaker 1: of as interacting with the background quantum fields of the
Speaker 1: universe in such a way to change your motion and
Speaker 1: effectively give you inertia. Right, And you said, it's because
Speaker 1: when I move my hand, I'm creating an event horizon
Speaker 1: of a point that things that move at the speed
Speaker 1: of like can't each my hand. And somebody that creates
Speaker 1: particles out of thin air, which in creating these particles,
Speaker 1: I guess takes energy, which then means that I need
Speaker 1: energy to move my hand. Yes, somehow they all work
Speaker 1: together so that when you're trying to accelerate, you basically
Speaker 1: running into this quantum wind of virtual particles pushing you back. So,
Speaker 1: according to this theory, the reason it's hard to get
Speaker 1: a blob of energy going is that when you push
Speaker 1: on it, the universe sort of pushes back with all
Speaker 1: these virtual particles. But it pushes you back, or it
Speaker 1: pulls you back. I feel like it's pulls you back
Speaker 1: because you're creating an event horizon behind you. Right. Remember
Speaker 1: that quantum interaction, especially with the virtual particles, can also
Speaker 1: pass negative momentum, so it's a little bit counterintuitive whether
Speaker 1: to think about that as a push or a pull.
Speaker 1: Like with quantum particles. I can throw you a ball
Speaker 1: that has a negative momentum, which is sort of like
Speaker 1: pulling on you even though I've thrown something to you, right,
Speaker 1: it pushes your back, which I think most people would
Speaker 1: say is pulls you back, all right. Cool. So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting combination of ideas. This idea of unrue radiation
Speaker 1: is a real idea that's taken very seriously quantized inertia
Speaker 1: sort of co opted it to try to use it
Speaker 1: to explain inertia. One big problem with it, though, is
Speaker 1: that people don't expect unrue radiation sort of way that
Speaker 1: virtual particles will hit you when you accelerate, to be
Speaker 1: something we could ever actually measure. It's predicted to be
Speaker 1: like super duper duper tiny. What does that mean? Isn't
Speaker 1: inertia pretty significant? Like if you have a big block
Speaker 1: of lead or iron, it feels a lot inertia, So
Speaker 1: it's unrue radiation should be pretty significant. You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: And that's a big problem for quantized inertia because if
Speaker 1: you calculate the unrue radiation you get for reasonable accelerations,
Speaker 1: it just isn't enough to explain the effects we see
Speaker 1: from inertia. So, for example, if you accelerate an object
Speaker 1: that one ms per second squared, and you calculate how
Speaker 1: much is unru radiation heating that object up or pushing
Speaker 1: back on, how much energy is bathing that object from
Speaker 1: unrue radiation, it's usually measured is how much you would
Speaker 1: heat that object up. You get like tend them in
Speaker 1: this twenty one degrees kelvin so one meter per second
Speaker 1: squared acceleration, which is pretty typical normal kind of thing
Speaker 1: to feel on Earth, is basically imperceptible amounts of radiation
Speaker 1: you would get from the quantum fields. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like enough to explain actual inertia. You mean, like
Speaker 1: if you apply the theory of under radiation, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be enough to count for innerttion. Also, like if you're
Speaker 1: creating a bunch of particles in your wake every time
Speaker 1: you move, wouldn't you like see these particles. People have
Speaker 1: looked for unreradiation, but nobody's ever seen it because it's
Speaker 1: so tiny. It's sort of like looking for Hawking radiation.
Speaker 1: We think maybe it's there, but nobody's ever seen it
Speaker 1: because it's so faint it's so difficult to detect. Also,
Speaker 1: it would technically be really far away, right like when
Speaker 1: I moved my arm, you said that my the event
Speaker 1: horizon that forms is like light years away. Wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be there were the particles form. It's difficult to pin
Speaker 1: these things down because we're talking about quantum waves, which
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily always very well localized. Right, as we said before,
Speaker 1: the eventure rice is probably created as an outgoing wave
Speaker 1: in these quantum fields. So I think it's tricky to
Speaker 1: think about the sort of special relativity of the motion
Speaker 1: of these quantum fields. But I guess where is this
Speaker 1: theory now, Like does it work out mathematically or is
Speaker 1: it still kind of a stretch. It's not taken very
Speaker 1: seriously in mainstream physics. People don't think that mechanistically it works.
Speaker 1: I've read a paper analyzing and carefully they found a
Speaker 1: bunch of flaws in the derivation of quantized inertia. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that just kill it? If there are flaws mathematically. I
Speaker 1: think that's one reason why it's not taken very seriously
Speaker 1: in mainstream physics. But it has gotten a lot of press,
Speaker 1: and one reason is that it's been used to try
Speaker 1: to explain some other big mysteries in the universe. So like,
Speaker 1: maybe it explains inertia, maybe not. But the proponent of
Speaker 1: quantized inertia has also suggested that maybe it can explain
Speaker 1: dark matter, and maybe it can explain how to build
Speaker 1: warp drives, and maybe you can explain the pioneer anomally,
Speaker 1: and maybe you can explain dark energy. Sort of sort
Speaker 1: of taking this tool and trying to apply to all
Speaker 1: the big mysteries of the day, which makes it easier
Speaker 1: to get like click bait articles. Wait to how would
Speaker 1: it explain things like dark matter just because it would
Speaker 1: give dark matter inertia or mass with that can't be
Speaker 1: explained any other way. So we can explain dark matter
Speaker 1: by changing how much inertial mass we think stars might have.
Speaker 1: Remember that one of the origins of the whole idea
Speaker 1: of dark matter was that galaxies are spinning, and they're
Speaker 1: spinning way too fast for the gravity of those galaxies
Speaker 1: to hold them together. And in order to do that calculation,
Speaker 1: you have to assume you understand how stars move. Do
Speaker 1: you understand their inertia and the force of gravity on
Speaker 1: those stars quantized inertia? Says, well, maybe we've been miscalculating
Speaker 1: the inertia of these stars, or that maybe for things
Speaker 1: that are not accelerated very much, they have less inertia.
Speaker 1: So he poses a different relationship between inertia and acceleration.
Speaker 1: He says that really small accelerations, maybe things have less inertia.
Speaker 1: And so the picture then is that maybe these stars
Speaker 1: at the edge of the galaxy you don't need as
Speaker 1: much gravity to hold onto them. Because they actually have
Speaker 1: less inertia than we thought they did. So you solve
Speaker 1: the problem not by saying, oh, there's more matter, which
Speaker 1: provides more gravity, but by saying you don't need as
Speaker 1: much gravity because those stars can be held in without
Speaker 1: a stronger force because they have less inertia than you thought.
Speaker 1: So this quantitized inertia isn't explaining dark matter. It's just
Speaker 1: it's actually saying it doesn't exist. It's saying that there
Speaker 1: is no dark matter. What we're seeing is really just
Speaker 1: that inertia doesn't scale the way we think it does exactly.
Speaker 1: It's more similar to Mond the idea that gravity changes
Speaker 1: over very very large distances. You're right, it doesn't explain
Speaker 1: dark matter. It explains the mysteries that originated the ideas
Speaker 1: of dark matter, but without dark matter. So it's an
Speaker 1: alternative to dark matter, and some people actually like it
Speaker 1: better than Mond. Mond members the theory that gravity works
Speaker 1: differently at different distances. But Mind has a sort of
Speaker 1: arbitrary parameter, and it says like below some acceleration, and
Speaker 1: gravity works differently than above some acceleration. People don't like
Speaker 1: when it's like an arbitrary number in a theory like
Speaker 1: why that number? Why not something else? And so people
Speaker 1: have argued that quantized inertia is a more elegant explanation
Speaker 1: for this because it doesn't have this arbitrary parameter in it.
Speaker 1: But then again, also it doesn't really work, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so um and and is it well known that this
Speaker 1: theory doesn't work mathematically or is it just like a setback, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have this error, but you know, eventually they might
Speaker 1: be able to fix that error, Like why are we
Speaker 1: still talking about this if the math doesn't work? We're
Speaker 1: talking about ever? Two reasons. One is that a bunch
Speaker 1: of listeners wrote in and saying, hey, what is this
Speaker 1: theory of quantized innertia? I keep hearing about it because
Speaker 1: the main proponent of it has been successful in like
Speaker 1: giving ted talks and writing public articles and getting attention
Speaker 1: for it. So it's an idea that's out there in
Speaker 1: the community about like explaining this deep mystery of inertia.
Speaker 1: I don't think that it works. I think most mainstream
Speaker 1: physicists think it has big problems with it. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's raw long, it doesn't mean that those problems
Speaker 1: might not be solvable at some point in the future.
Speaker 1: But as it stands today, it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: vague idea that doesn't really hang together to actually explain
Speaker 1: anything I see. So like the specific ideation or instance
Speaker 1: of it right now doesn't seem to quite work. But
Speaker 1: it's still an interesting idea to think that maybe what
Speaker 1: we think is stuff like dark matter, or maybe the
Speaker 1: way we can explain things like inertia is you know,
Speaker 1: matter and energies interaction with the quantized fields and the
Speaker 1: creation of these event horizons. That's the idea that maybe
Speaker 1: is still sticking around. Yeah, and it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that we can't solve these problems all at once. He's
Speaker 1: taking out a really big problem like what is inertia,
Speaker 1: and you don't expect somebody to come up with the
Speaker 1: complete explanation in their basement all by themselves. And the
Speaker 1: way the process works is somebody has an idea which
Speaker 1: sort of takes you in a certain direction and maybe
Speaker 1: doesn't work, and five years later somebody comes up with
Speaker 1: another idea and maybe solve the problem and makes it
Speaker 1: work or brings you closer. So it's sort of this
Speaker 1: iterative search. It's not like evolution, where theory has to
Speaker 1: work at every stage to survive. We can keep a
Speaker 1: theory around even if it's not quite working yet because
Speaker 1: it might potentially come together later. Al Right, Well, it
Speaker 1: sounds like an interesting idea that might solve a pretty
Speaker 1: fundamental question about our universe. Why do things have inertia?
Speaker 1: Because without inertia, the universe would be totally different, right,
Speaker 1: Without inertia, things would be pretty chaotic. Yeah, our entire
Speaker 1: experience of the universe would be very different without inertia.
Speaker 1: Inertia is a basic property of matter and motion, and
Speaker 1: yet it's something we still don't really understand. So I
Speaker 1: love when people take on these deep questions and think
Speaker 1: out of the box and try to combine ideas they've
Speaker 1: heard in the ways that might explain them. Doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that their first idea will be right, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that's worth pursuing, right right. I
Speaker 1: think what you just said is that inertia is a
Speaker 1: good thing. Right, Am I getting some of that sweet
Speaker 1: big inertia money. I'm getting the money to turn you alright,
Speaker 1: you don't get a cut, alright, put me on your
Speaker 1: list of converts. I' pro inertia. Al right. Well, hopefully
Speaker 1: these ideas fit inside your head and maybe nudged them
Speaker 1: with a little bit of inertia, a little bit of
Speaker 1: momentum to think differently about the world around you and
Speaker 1: about how interesting things that we maybe never thought about
Speaker 1: could explain why things are the way they are. And too,
Speaker 1: those young scientists out there being encouraged because there are
Speaker 1: still deep and basic questions about the universe. We do
Speaker 1: not know the institute. Somebody out there and will figure
Speaker 1: these things out. It might be even those of you
Speaker 1: sitting in your pajamas at home. Well, we hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained
Speaker 1: the universe. Is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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