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Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, are you a fan of Italian food?

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Speaker 2: Well? I live in Italy, so here we just call

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Speaker 2: it food.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, all right, Well what about Italian American food?

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Speaker 1: You know, the version made by Italian immigrants to America.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I like it.

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Speaker 3: It's more meatballs and more garlic, but that's still really good.

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Speaker 1: Well what about the opposite, what about American Italian food?

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Speaker 3: So is that cuisine made by American immigrants who are

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Speaker 3: in Italy?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Basically you.

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean I mostly just have coffee and toast,

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Speaker 3: which would be a really short cookbook.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you should try innovating. Have you ever tried putting

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Speaker 1: a meatball in your coffee?

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Speaker 2: I know I have not tried to do that, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: Could be a cultural revolution.

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Speaker 3: Well, it would indeed be revolting.

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Speaker 2: Hi.

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

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Speaker 1: uc Ervine, and I don't like anything in my coffee,

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Speaker 1: definitely not meatballs.

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Speaker 2: Hi. I am Katie.

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Speaker 3: I host a podcast called Creature feature on evolutionary biology,

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Speaker 3: and I like a huge amount of sugar in my coffee.

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Speaker 3: So we could see how that is with meatballs as well. Well.

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Speaker 1: That makes me wonder since you're a biologist, tell me

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Speaker 1: who are the natural consumers of coffee? Like, who out

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Speaker 1: there in the animal world is eating coffee beans off

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Speaker 1: the tree.

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Speaker 3: That's the thing is that coffee caffeine in coffee plants

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Speaker 3: is meant to be slightly toxic to insects that want

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Speaker 3: to eat it. And it's the same story for spicy foods.

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Speaker 3: It's actually defense mechanism, and so the insects that will

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Speaker 3: try to eat these plants will not farewell. But when

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Speaker 3: we have it, it's actually delicious and good. Now, there

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Speaker 3: are palm civets who will eat types of coffee plants.

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Speaker 3: They eat the berries, and there's actually a coffee drink

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Speaker 3: made out of the beans collected from the palm civet hoop.

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Speaker 2: And it's very expensive.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what blows my mind more there the

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Speaker 1: fact that we are sipping insect poison, or the fact

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Speaker 1: that that whole strategy has backfired on the coffee tree

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Speaker 1: because it attracts us, or how quickly a biologist will

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Speaker 1: turn the conversation towards poop.

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Speaker 2: The latter is the least surprising.

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Speaker 1: That is, in the end, where we overlap the darkest

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Speaker 1: matters in the Universe and Welcome the podcast Daniel and

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Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe the production of iHeartRadio, in which

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Speaker 1: we try to do just that. Explore everything that's out

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Speaker 1: there in the universe, ask our deepest, darkest questions about

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Speaker 1: who is sipping which bits of the universe and why

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Speaker 1: they exist in that way? What are the tiniest particles

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Speaker 1: that everything is made out of, What are the rules

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Speaker 1: by which they play? How do they come together to

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Speaker 1: make civets and cats and poops and coffee and biologists

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Speaker 1: who wonder about all those things combined? Is it possible

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Speaker 1: to understand and explain the universe? We're going to try.

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Speaker 3: That is the first thing I think of when I

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Speaker 3: think about civt kat poop is the tiniest of particles

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Speaker 3: that make up that coffee. But yeah, I mean, I guess,

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Speaker 3: I guess when you can go down really really tiny,

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Speaker 3: and that makes things like poop less gross because now

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Speaker 3: you're just on the atomic level and these are just atoms.

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Speaker 2: They don't smell. Atoms don't smell bad.

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Speaker 1: I don't think, well, does it make poop less gross

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Speaker 1: to think that it's made of the same basic building

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Speaker 1: blocks as everything else, or does it make everything else

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Speaker 1: more gross to know that ice cream and lava and

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Speaker 1: kittens are made out of the same stuff as poop.

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Speaker 2: Interesting question, ice cream, lava.

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Speaker 1: Let's put a pin in that. But let's dive deep

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Speaker 1: into what the universe is made out of. One of

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Speaker 1: our deepest questions in physics, and a question that humans

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Speaker 1: have been asking basically since humans have been asking questions,

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Speaker 1: is how do things work at the smallest scale? Is

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Speaker 1: it possible to zoom down on what's around us and

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Speaker 1: explain things in simpler and simpler terms, Because you know,

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Speaker 1: you start out with a huge number of things out

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Speaker 1: there in the universe blueberries and cats and ice cream

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Speaker 1: and coffee and biologists and physicists and everything in between.

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Speaker 1: It's an incredible variety. But when you dig down a

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Speaker 1: little bit, you discover, oh, everything out there is made

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Speaker 1: out of about one hundred basic building blocks the elements

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Speaker 1: periodic table. Combined in different ways, you can make essentially everything.

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Speaker 1: And even that set of one hundred building blocks is

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Speaker 1: made out of an even smaller set of stuff. Right,

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Speaker 1: Protons and neutrons and electrons make up all of those atoms,

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Speaker 1: which means that the same stuff can be used to

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Speaker 1: make lava or kittens, or ice cream or poops, or

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Speaker 1: biologists or stars. All that stuff is made out of

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Speaker 1: the same thing.

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Speaker 3: It's interesting because I do know that one of the

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Speaker 3: things that unites kittens and lava and poop is that

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Speaker 3: it all obeys the laws of physics. If you throw

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Speaker 3: a kitten in some lava, you're going to have a

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Speaker 3: predictable result because of the laws of physics. Both the

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Speaker 3: kitten and the lava are constrained by the laws of physics.

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Speaker 3: But the thing that's interesting to me, and that hurts

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Speaker 3: my brain a little bit, is that when you look

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Speaker 3: at say like a very tiny quantum part of it

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Speaker 3: does not necessarily obey the same laws of physics as

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Speaker 3: say a marble. So you know, I think of like

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Speaker 3: a marble bonking into another marble. I can somewhat understand

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Speaker 3: how that works. But then you go down small enough

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Speaker 3: and it's not just tiny atomic marbles bonking into each other.

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Speaker 3: Weird stuff happens that blows my mind.

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Speaker 1: It is incredible that the laws of physics seem to

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Speaker 1: be different at different scales, like at different distances or

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Speaker 1: different energies. It seems like different rules apply, like to

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Speaker 1: baseballs and to electrons. The rules are fundamentally different. There

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Speaker 1: are different kinds of stuff and the rules that apply

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Speaker 1: to them are different, and that does feel weird, and

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Speaker 1: it's one of the most incredible things about the universe.

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Speaker 1: But a helpful way to think about it is in

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Speaker 1: terms of phases, Like think about water. Water has a

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Speaker 1: liquid phase and a solid phase and a gas phase.

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Speaker 1: Right in the end, we think it's all made out

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Speaker 1: of the same basic stuff water molecules, but they act

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Speaker 1: very differently under different circumstances. And you wouldn't expect the

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Speaker 1: laws of an ideal gas to describe what happens when

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Speaker 1: water crystallizes, or fluid dynamics to explain how a gas

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Speaker 1: would expand different rules apply in different scenarios, different phases,

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Speaker 1: And so we imagine that the universe is organized the

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Speaker 1: same way you can think of You can think of

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Speaker 1: it as sort of different phases where different rules apply.

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Speaker 1: What we don't know is if there is an underlying

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Speaker 1: theory behind all of it, the sort of physics version

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Speaker 1: of the water molecule, the tiniest little bits who's dancing

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Speaker 1: and tuing and froing and interacting is somehow making all

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Speaker 1: this other stuff emerge, even the quantum particles, even the baseballs,

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Speaker 1: even the galaxies. Is there something at the lowest level

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Speaker 1: which is determining everything from which all of our experience emerges.

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Speaker 3: So this is an interesting and confusing question to me,

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Speaker 3: because from my understanding, if we're all in the same universe,

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Speaker 3: we would all regardless of whether we're a human or

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Speaker 3: a quark or a kitten, we'd have to play by

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Speaker 3: the same rules.

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Speaker 2: But if the rules are.

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Speaker 3: Different somehow, right, like for a quark versus a kitten

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Speaker 3: in terms of physics, even though the kitten is also

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Speaker 3: made out of quarks or atoms molecules, it's hard for

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Speaker 3: me to wrap my head around there not being a

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Speaker 3: unifying set of rules that applies to everything, given that

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Speaker 3: not only do we live in the same universe, but

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Speaker 3: we're made out of all the same stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, and a basic assumption about

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Speaker 1: a lot of physics is that that's possible that if

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Speaker 1: you zoom down to the smallest scale, you can find

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Speaker 1: the most basic set of rules, and that then you

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Speaker 1: could somehow zoom back out with the fundamental theory of

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Speaker 1: the universe in hand, you could explain everything it might

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Speaker 1: require you to calculate, like how ten to the twenty

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Speaker 1: nine particles come together to make a baseball. But the

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Speaker 1: idea is, in principle, it's all determined by what's happening

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Speaker 1: at the smaller scale, and when you zoom out, that's

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Speaker 1: just what those laws look like. And it might be

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Speaker 1: the case, right It might be that even though we

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Speaker 1: have trouble explaining how a zillion water droplets interacting in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere make a hurricane, we can't even do it

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Speaker 1: with our fastest supercomputers. We think that probably it is

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Speaker 1: determined by that, but that's actually a philosophical assumption, and

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Speaker 1: some philosophers of science disagree with that. It's called strong

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Speaker 1: emergence at some point to lots of things that we

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Speaker 1: can't explain using underlying details. A great example is like

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Speaker 1: why you are here your consciousness. We have completely failed

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Speaker 1: so far to explain the experience of human consciousness in

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Speaker 1: terms of like the zapping of the little neurons inside

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Speaker 1: of our brains. It might be that somehow all that

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Speaker 1: stuff comes together to explain why you are experiencing this

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Speaker 1: podcast right now. But it might also be that there

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Speaker 1: are just different rules at different levels of the universe

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Speaker 1: that aren't actually determined by the lower levels, that somehow

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Speaker 1: there are independent layers of the universe and different rules

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Speaker 1: apply at each one. It's a weird philosophy of the universe,

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Speaker 1: but it might also be our universe.

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Speaker 3: That's very hard for my conscious brain to wrap itself around.

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Speaker 3: It is very interesting, this philosophical question of consciousness because

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Speaker 3: if we apply sort of the rules of like, well,

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Speaker 3: a brain works right because you have a communication between

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Speaker 3: many parts, you have neurons that are all communicating with

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Speaker 3: each other and forming these networks. Well, there's a lot

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Speaker 3: of things that do that, from computers to ant colonies,

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Speaker 3: and so the question is, well, are those things conscious

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Speaker 3: as well? And we can't really quantify that, and we

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Speaker 3: can't know whether even though it seems like there's this

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Speaker 3: underlying rule of you know, you require these sort of

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Speaker 3: individual units that are all communicating together and forming patterns,

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Speaker 3: and that's what you need for consciousness. If you see

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Speaker 3: that repeated in other systems, whether that actually applies to say,

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Speaker 3: can you recreate a consciousness with an electronic version of

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Speaker 3: neurons or or is something like a very complex ant

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Speaker 3: colony with thousands of ants?

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Speaker 2: Does that recreate consciousness. So I guess in a way.

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Speaker 3: I could see how there could be different rules applying

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Speaker 3: to different layers, but it's just so strange and so like. Currently,

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Speaker 3: when we look at like quantum mechanics, it does not

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Speaker 3: do a good job of explaining physics on a larger scale.

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Speaker 1: Mostly we cannot connect the layers that we have. Even

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Speaker 1: though that's basically the motivation for the project to understand

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Speaker 1: everything at the smallest scale and use that to explain

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Speaker 1: everything else that's bigger, we have very rarely succeeded in

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Speaker 1: using a zoomed in microscopic approach to explain anything bigger.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 1: One famous success story is ideal gases. Is say, okay,

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Speaker 1: we have this picture of atoms moving in a gas

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Speaker 1: as tiny little balls. Can we zoom out and think

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Speaker 1: about what happens to ten to the twenty nine balls,

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Speaker 1: and can we write equations that tell mathematical stories about

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Speaker 1: things that emerge from ten to the twenty nine tiny

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Speaker 1: little gas molecules like pressure and temperature and volume, and

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Speaker 1: we can you can actually derive, like the ideal gas

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Speaker 1: law from statistical mechanics explanations about the velocities of those

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Speaker 1: tiny little particles. That's a famous example because it's one

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Speaker 1: of the rare successes. Mostly we have failed because the

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Speaker 1: universe is kind of chaotic. It's really sensitive often to

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Speaker 1: these tiny little details. What happens to this quantum particle

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Speaker 1: affects another quantum particle, which affects another quantum particle. We

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Speaker 1: don't understand how to do that calculation. Most of the time,

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Speaker 1: we don't have the computing power, and we can't avoid

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Speaker 1: this chaos problem. So mostly we don't know how to

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Speaker 1: do that. It might be that it is determined and

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Speaker 1: it's possible to do those calculations, is just sort of

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Speaker 1: beyond our ability right now. Or it might be that

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Speaker 1: it's just not that different rules apply in different regimes,

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Speaker 1: as weird as that is.

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Speaker 3: So, I guess I'm not so familiar with quantum mechanics

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Speaker 3: and general relativity. Can we kind of just hammer down,

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Speaker 3: like what are those two things? How Like what do

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Speaker 3: they apply to and what don't they apply to?

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Speaker 1: So at the forefront of our understanding of the most

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Speaker 1: microscopic picture of how the universe works, we have two

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Speaker 1: basic theories. We have quantum mechanics, which tells us about

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Speaker 1: really tiny stuff, and general relativity, which tells us about

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Speaker 1: really big, heavy stuff, basically quantum mechanics for particles and

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Speaker 1: general relativity for gravity. One of the biggest frustrations in

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Speaker 1: physics in the last one hundred years has been our

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Speaker 1: inability to bring them together into a single story, to

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Speaker 1: weave them into a unified picture of how the universe works.

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Speaker 1: You know, this whole project of like, let's explain everything

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Speaker 1: from the tiniest particles and then zoom out. Well, we

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Speaker 1: haven't even succeeded in explaining the tinese particles yet, but

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Speaker 1: there's a vigorous program of people working on this stuff.

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Speaker 1: And in today's episode, we're going to dig into one

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Speaker 1: of the most recent and weirdest ideas about how to

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Speaker 1: bring quantum mechanics and relativity together. So on today's episode,

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Speaker 1: we're going to be answering the question, what is quantum relativity?

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Speaker 3: Hmmm, quantum relativity. So it's like quantum mechanics and general

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Speaker 3: relativity had a baby.

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Speaker 1: It also sounds like the buzzword name for a startup

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Speaker 1: where you're like, I don't even really know what it

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Speaker 1: they do, but it sounds pretty good. So before we

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Speaker 1: dig into the details of this, I checked in with

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Speaker 1: our listeners to see if they had any idea about

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Speaker 1: the theory of quantum relativity, if they had heard this before,

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Speaker 1: if they had thoughts about it. Thanks very much to

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Speaker 1: everybody who participates in this audience feedback segment of the podcast.

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Speaker 1: We really love hearing your voice and hearing your thoughts

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Speaker 1: on the question of the day. If you would like

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Speaker 1: to participate, please don't be shy. Just write to me

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Speaker 1: to Questions at Danielandjorge dot com and I'll hook you up.

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Speaker 1: So before you hear these answers, think to yourself, have

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Speaker 1: you heard of quantum relativity? What do you think that

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Speaker 1: might mean. Here's what some listeners have to say.

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Speaker 2: Quantum relativity.

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Speaker 4: I'm guessing that is the theory that brings quantum mechanics

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Speaker 4: and general relativity together. So something that the theory that

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Speaker 4: figures out how you work gravity and quantum mechanics together.

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Speaker 4: Since gravity, we're not quite sure how that works on

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Speaker 4: the smallest scales.

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Speaker 1: That is really really tiny relativity.

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Speaker 5: To me, that sounds like a parallel to general relativity.

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Speaker 5: So I bet that it has to do with how

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Speaker 5: particles interact with each other when in proximity to each

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Speaker 5: other on a quantum scale.

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Speaker 3: I love the answer really tiny relativity because it makes

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Speaker 3: me think of some ants or some mites or tartar

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Speaker 3: grades in the lab coats drawing on tiny chalkboards.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. Also, quantum just sometimes means like fancy or stinazzi,

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Speaker 1: or we're going to charge an extra ten bucks for it,

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Speaker 1: So like expensive relativity.

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Speaker 3: This is a quantum salad for twelve dollars, exactly.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to upgrade my salad, actually do a quantum salad.

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Speaker 1: Or I ordered quantum on my salad and I didn't

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Speaker 1: get enough.

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Speaker 2: Could mean anything thanks in.

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Speaker 1: A complaint anything. Well, we're going to see today. The

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Speaker 1: quantum relativity is the name of a new effort to

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Speaker 1: unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, and they really do

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Speaker 1: give it that name for a reason. But before that's

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Speaker 1: going to make any sense to us, we really have

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Speaker 1: to understand the basics of like what is quantum mechanics

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Speaker 1: in general relativity, why do we want to unify them,

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Speaker 1: and why is it so hard?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: Yes, because, like you were kind of saying earlier, general

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Speaker 3: relativity is for big stuff.

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Speaker 2: Quantum mechanics is for tiny stuff.

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Speaker 3: But it's got to be a little more detailed than

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Speaker 3: that I would imagine.

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Speaker 1: No, that's basically it take quantu mechanics, generativity. It's like

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Speaker 1: all done in fifteen minutes. But listeners of the podcast

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Speaker 1: will remember that general relativity based describes space and time.

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Speaker 1: Special relativity is a theory that tells us about how

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Speaker 1: light moves and how observers always see light moving at

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Speaker 1: the same speed, and general relativity is what explains gravity.

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Speaker 1: Remember Newton had the idea that gravity was a force

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Speaker 1: that things with mass pulled on each other and that's

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Speaker 1: why the Earth goes around the Sun and you feel

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Speaker 1: like you're falling towards the Earth because he described gravity

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Speaker 1: as this force. But Einstein tells us that gravity is

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Speaker 1: not a force. A gravity is not capable of accelerating anything,

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Speaker 1: and that things are actually moving according to the invisible

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Speaker 1: curvature of space and time.

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Speaker 3: This is the thing that is so hard for me

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Speaker 3: to really visualize or hold in my head because every

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Speaker 3: kind of analogy I try to make is based in physics,

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Speaker 3: like a ball rolling down a hill or something, or

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Speaker 3: you know, I think of the fabric of space being

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Speaker 3: sort of pulled in a certain direction, and it's like

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Speaker 3: that's still physics. In the sun and so of like

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Speaker 3: you know, a fabric being pulled and something falling into it.

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Speaker 3: Whereas like the idea of gravity being sort of the

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Speaker 3: shape of the universe in a way that like makes

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Speaker 3: sense in my head is very hard to grasp. I

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Speaker 3: understand it in a certain way, but to visualize it

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Speaker 3: is so difficult.

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Speaker 1: It is very tricky because it changes your entire concept

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Speaker 1: of what space is.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: We used to thinking of space as like nothingness and

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Speaker 1: stuff is there and it can move through space. But

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Speaker 1: it turns out that there is something to space, like

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Speaker 1: between two points, there's information information about how that space

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Speaker 1: is curved or bent, and that affects how stuff moves

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Speaker 1: through that space. And yeah, there's a lot of examples

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Speaker 1: out there in popular science literature. I think most of

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Speaker 1: which are very confusing. You know, the idea of like

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Speaker 1: a rubber sheet and you have a ball on the sheet,

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Speaker 1: and the rubber sheet is bent and that makes things curved.

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Speaker 1: That's very confusing because you still have to have gravity

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Speaker 1: in that example in the vertical direction. You have this

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Speaker 1: like external third dimension of gravity in your two D world.

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Speaker 1: I think that's very very misleading. I prefer to think

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Speaker 1: about it in three D. And remember that this curvature

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Speaker 1: is intrinsic. It's not external. It's not like there's somebody

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Speaker 1: else out there with a ruler in real space who's

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Speaker 1: telling us our space is bent relative to their space.

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Speaker 1: The curvature is intrinsic. There's no external ruler. It just

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Speaker 1: means that the relative distances between two points change, which

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Speaker 1: means like the shortest path from A to B might

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Speaker 1: not be a straight line that you would draw if

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Speaker 1: you ignore the curvature. Once you know what the curvature is,

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Speaker 1: there might be a shorter path between A and B,

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Speaker 1: and that's the path that light will take. Light always

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Speaker 1: takes the shortest path between two points.

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Speaker 3: So if I'm standing on my bed and I'm going

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Speaker 3: to jump off the bed, as I do every morning,

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Speaker 3: so I am subject to the gravity of Earth, and

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Speaker 3: it's not so much that it's pulling me down, but

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Speaker 3: just that I am traveling along the short this path

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Speaker 3: from point A, which is my bed, to point B,

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Speaker 3: which is the other point of space. But it's more

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Speaker 3: or less just interrupted by the floor.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great example. Let's think about it first

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Speaker 1: from the Newtonian point of view, and then let's reboot

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Speaker 1: and think about it from an Einsteinian point of view.

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Speaker 1: So Newton would say, you're standing on your bed. There's

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Speaker 1: the force of gravity pulling down on you from the Earth,

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Speaker 1: and there's the force of your bed pushing up, and

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Speaker 1: those two things are balanced, so you're not going anywhere.

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Speaker 1: Then you jump off your bed. No longer is the

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Speaker 1: bed pushing you up, and so now you're falling because

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Speaker 1: it's just the force of gravity, and that's accelerating you

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Speaker 1: down towards the center of the Earth. That's the way

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Speaker 1: people mostly learn about gravity. That's how Newton described it.

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Speaker 1: That's where we start. Einstein says something different. Einstein says, well,

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Speaker 1: when you're standing on your bed, you actually are being accelerated.

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Speaker 1: There's only one force there. There's the force of your bed.

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Speaker 1: What's it pushing you against. It's pushing you against your

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Speaker 1: natural motion, which is to fall towards the center of

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Speaker 1: the earth. So Newton says, you're accelerating when after you

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Speaker 1: jump off the bed and you're falling towards the center.

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Speaker 1: Einstein says, no, you were accelerating when you were on

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Speaker 1: your bed. It's when you jump off your bed that

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Speaker 1: you're now following the natural curvature of space. You're no

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Speaker 1: longer accelerating. The only force in this scenario is the

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Speaker 1: force of the bed on you, and that's keeping you

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Speaker 1: from naturally moving towards the center of the Earth. When

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Speaker 1: you're standing on the bed. Once you jump off, you're

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Speaker 1: the one in free fall. And you can actually measure

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Speaker 1: this because you can take an accelerometer, something which measures

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Speaker 1: your acceleration. I mean, the scale is basically a gravitometer,

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Speaker 1: and you can measure when are you feeling an acceleration.

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Speaker 1: If you jump off your bed and you're holding a scale,

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Speaker 1: you put it under your feet, what are you going

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Speaker 1: to weigh? You're going to weigh nothing because there's no

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Speaker 1: force between you and the scale. But if the scale's

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Speaker 1: on your bed and you're standing on it, then you're

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Speaker 1: going to see your weight. And that's because that's where

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Speaker 1: you're accelerating. It's when you're on your bed.

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Speaker 3: That's so interesting. Yeah, I can totally visualize that. Also,

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Speaker 3: I knew that when I sleep in, I wasn't lazy

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Speaker 3: because I've been accelerating the whole time.

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Speaker 1: So this is Einstein's picture of gravity, and it's massively successful.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: It describes the motion of everything in the universe, the

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Speaker 1: expansion of the universe, incredibly high precision black holes oscillating

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Speaker 1: around each other, neutron stars getting gobbled by black holes,

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Speaker 1: gravitational waves. It's been tested in and out and up

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Speaker 1: the wazoo for decades and decades, and it's this beautiful

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Speaker 1: geometric picture of the universe that tells us gravity is

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Speaker 1: not a force. It's just the way things are flowing

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Speaker 1: through the geometry of space and time. And the things

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Speaker 1: to take away from this discussion are that it's one

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Speaker 1: deterministic right. It says that things move in a certain

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Speaker 1: way because of geometry. It's no randomness, there's no probability.

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Speaker 1: It's not like when you jump off your bed you

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Speaker 1: have a chance of landing here or there. It's determined

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Speaker 1: by exactly where you are in the shape of space.

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Speaker 1: And the other is that it mostly affects really really

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Speaker 1: big stuff because gravity is super weak. Whether it's a

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Speaker 1: force or it's the curvature of space time, it takes

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Speaker 1: a lot of mass to have any effect. You can

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Speaker 1: overcome all the gravity of the Earth or the curvature

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Speaker 1: of space and time caused by the Earth using a

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Speaker 1: simple kitchen magnet right, or your legs can overcome it.

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Speaker 1: You can leap off the surface of the Earth, which

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Speaker 1: means it applies mostly to really massive objects. So it's

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Speaker 1: deterministic and it applies to really massive stuff. That's the

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Speaker 1: important things to remember when we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: trying to integrate it with quantum mechanics.

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Speaker 3: Because that's in the opposite direction where it is extremely

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Speaker 3: extremely tiny stuff like as a human being, gravity is

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Speaker 3: something where it's hard to you know, really visualize like

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Speaker 3: the scope of say like the size of the Sun

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Speaker 3: or this even the size of the planet. Sure you

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Speaker 3: can go on a plane and kind of see part

441
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:49,200
Speaker 3: of it, but it's it's still hard to visualize how

442
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:52,679
Speaker 3: big these things are, how massive it is, and then similarly,

443
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:57,479
Speaker 3: going into quantum mechanics visualizing how tiny these things can be.

444
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:00,480
Speaker 3: So there really as opposite as you can can get

445
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 3: in terms of size and scope.

446
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 1: They are like the ying and ying of physics. But

447
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 1: we hope they click together to make a holistic picture.

448
00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:14,400
Speaker 1: But let's dig into how quant mechanics explains the tiniest

449
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:17,439
Speaker 1: stuff in the universe. But first let's take a quick break.

450
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:20,040
Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to try to start thinking small

451
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 3: all right, I'm trying to think inside a very tiny box,

452
00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 3: and hopefully that will help me.

453
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 1: As you mentioned already, the rules seem to be different

454
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 1: for things like baseball and planets than things like electrons

455
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,679
Speaker 1: and photons and tiny little particles, which is really the

456
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:56,159
Speaker 1: source of one of the biggest mysteries in modern physics,

457
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:58,359
Speaker 1: how that all works and whether we can bring it.

458
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 3: Together right, Because I think I had some concept before

459
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:07,040
Speaker 3: ever coming on this show, which is that like with

460
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 3: the small stuff, the really tiny quantum level stuff, there

461
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 3: was some sort.

462
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 2: Of like average you could take.

463
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 3: Of its behavior, and then that would be well integrated into, say,

464
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 3: other types of physics like general relativity, where it's like, well,

465
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:26,560
Speaker 3: you know, you just scale up averages of the small

466
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:29,840
Speaker 3: stuff's activity and then that would fit in some perfect

467
00:25:29,840 --> 00:25:33,680
Speaker 3: formula and represent general relativity.

468
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:35,919
Speaker 2: But turns out it's not so simple.

469
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:37,119
Speaker 5: No.

470
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: It turns out the rules of these two concepts are

471
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 1: fundamentally different and tell really different stories about the nature

472
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: of the universe we live in. About one hundred years ago,

473
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:49,040
Speaker 1: people did experiments which showed us that when you zoom

474
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 1: into the tiniest level, the rules really do seem to

475
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:54,640
Speaker 1: be different. Amazingly, it was Einstein who played a role

476
00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:57,560
Speaker 1: in both of these revolutions. He of course came up

477
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 1: with relativity, but he also had the idea of how

478
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 1: to interpret the photoelectric effect, which kicked off the entire

479
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:07,159
Speaker 1: quantum revolution as well, So that dude was pretty central.

480
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:09,879
Speaker 2: What's the photo reflective effect?

481
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 1: This is the experiment where you shine bright light at

482
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 1: a piece of metal and you see a bunch of

483
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: electrons boil off. And the idea is, Okay, the electrons

484
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,359
Speaker 1: are absorbing the light, they're getting energy, they're boiling off.

485
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: The weird thing about the experiment was as you turn

486
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: up the brightness of the light, like the intensity of

487
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: the light, you expected to get electrons with more energy

488
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:31,720
Speaker 1: because you're shining brighter light at it. But instead what

489
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: you got were more electrons. And this really puzzled people.

490
00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:38,160
Speaker 1: They're like, why can't the electrons get more energy? And

491
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: the answer in the end is that light is made

492
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 1: of these tiny little packets. It's not a continuous beam.

493
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:46,160
Speaker 1: It's a bunch of little packets of energy, and each

494
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: electron can basically only absorb one. It's like one interaction

495
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:52,680
Speaker 1: between a photon and n electron. So when you turn

496
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 1: up the brightness of the beam, which you get are

497
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: more electrons absorbing photons, not one electron absorbing more photons.

498
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 1: And so that was the clue that told people, oh, look,

499
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,359
Speaker 1: maybe light is made of these little packets, and that

500
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: kicked off the whole quantum revolution that showed us that

501
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 1: everything out there is actually made of these little discrete

502
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:12,440
Speaker 1: bits that follow very different rules.

503
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,760
Speaker 3: It's like these electrons are flying ryanair and they can

504
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 3: only have one packet per electron.

505
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: That's right. Otherwise you get some quantum fees carry ons.

506
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 3: Is that a very small fee or a very big fee?

507
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,919
Speaker 1: Small fees that add up to a lot because of

508
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: interference with your pocketbook?

509
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 2: I think? Ain't that how it is?

510
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: Anybody out there who works for the airlines, do not

511
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 1: take this as a creative idea for how to add fees. Okay,

512
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: I don't want to see quantum fees on my quantum fees.

513
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:42,520
Speaker 2: That's going to be the next thing.

514
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 1: And what emerged from the next twenty or thirty years

515
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: of studying experiments and shining lights on things and looking

516
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: inside the atom, or a new set of rules for

517
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:56,439
Speaker 1: how tiny stuff worked. This tiny stuff didn't follow the

518
00:27:56,520 --> 00:27:59,679
Speaker 1: rules of planets and baseballs. You couldn't make a picture

519
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: of the atom that literally had electrons orbiting the center

520
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 1: of the atom. That just didn't work. The physics of

521
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: it didn't make sense. Those electrons in an orbit would

522
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 1: radiate away all their energy and collapse into the nucleus

523
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: because anything that's moving in a circle is accelerating, and

524
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:17,440
Speaker 1: things that accelerate have to give off radiation in order

525
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:20,880
Speaker 1: to keep bending. But we don't see electrons collapsing into

526
00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:22,639
Speaker 1: the center of the atom and tend to the negative

527
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 1: thirteen seconds. I told us that the rules were fundamentally different,

528
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: and we came up with a completely new kind of mathematics,

529
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, Schrodinger's equation that described the rules of the

530
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:36,399
Speaker 1: quantum realm, which were totally different from the rules of

531
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: baseballs and electrons. Base Balls move through space. They have

532
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: a path, like they're here and then they are there,

533
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 1: and so you know they went from here to there.

534
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: They have a location at every moment, and you can

535
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: string those locations together to make a smooth and continuous path.

536
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 1: Just sort of makes sense to you that everything has

537
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: to be somewhere at all times. But electrons don't follow

538
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: those rules. That's an intuition you developed from your experi

539
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 1: of baseballs and rocks and other kinds of stuff. Electrons

540
00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 1: can be here and then they can be there, and

541
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: they don't have to go from here to there. They

542
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: don't always have to have a determined location. They can

543
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:15,640
Speaker 1: exist in probabilistic form where they can say, well, I

544
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: might be here and I might be there. It's not

545
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 1: determined much more than just being not known. It's actually

546
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: not determined by the universe.

547
00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 3: Right, Because it's hard to understand this sometimes where you

548
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 3: think in these kinds of thought experiments of like an

549
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 3: electron not knowing sort of the location of electron or

550
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 3: the spin of something. It's like I think sometimes I

551
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 3: have this concept of like, well, this is just sort

552
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 3: of some kind of weird math. It's not actually describing

553
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 3: what's actually happening. But I would assume there's like evidence

554
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 3: that is what's actually happening, that this is not these

555
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 3: positions are not have experimentally been shown to not be

556
00:29:57,120 --> 00:29:59,240
Speaker 3: like determined by the universe.

557
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a whole really fascinating set of experiments that

558
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 1: explore this question, like is it just something we don't

559
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: know or is it really undetermined by the universe. Is

560
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: there some like extra information the electron is carrying that

561
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: we're just not aware of that actually tells where the

562
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 1: universe is, like keeping track of where it really is,

563
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,120
Speaker 1: and we just don't know. And it's a set of

564
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 1: experiments proposed by John Bell to probe a theory called

565
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: Bell's inequalities, and we have a whole set of podcasts

566
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: about those Whether quantum mechanics really is random or not.

567
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: And the upshot is that it seems like it really

568
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 1: is random. There are some loopholes there, how you might

569
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:37,520
Speaker 1: have like some sort of like non local pilot wave

570
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: that's controlling the whole universe. But the most mainstream interpretation

571
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: is that it really is random. There really is some

572
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: non determinism to the universe that you could do the

573
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: same experiment twice, exactly the same setup and get different answers.

574
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: Like you're shoot an electron into an experiment with exactly

575
00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 1: the same conditions twice and it'll end up going left

576
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: once and it'll end up going right on another time.

577
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: There's like a die being thrown by the universe to

578
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: determine where an electron goes. It's crazy, it's bonkers, but

579
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:08,239
Speaker 1: that's the universe we live in.

580
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 3: So it'd be like if you like, you know, there's

581
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 3: the classic thing that even babies. This is so interesting

582
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:18,400
Speaker 3: about human cognition is that babies have a sort of

583
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 3: baseline understanding of physics. It seems like if they see

584
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 3: a little marble hit a big marble, they don't expect

585
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 3: the big marble to go flying off.

586
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 2: And if you show them that, they.

587
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 3: Look they kind of stare at it because it's surprising

588
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 3: to them. But you know, because we kind of have

589
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 3: this this innate understanding that if a little thing hits

590
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 3: a big thing, the big thing isn't going to go

591
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 3: shooting off, whereas if the big thing hits the little thing,

592
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 3: it's going to go shooting off. And like, if we

593
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 3: hit things at a certain angle, it's gonna, you know,

594
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 3: go at a certain direction, just like I guess that's

595
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 3: how people can be good at pool, not me, but

596
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 3: other people. And so it would be shocking though, if

597
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,640
Speaker 3: you're if you're good at pool and you something at

598
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 3: a certain angle and it's just completely random about of

599
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 3: whether it goes left or right, or forward or backwards

600
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 3: or up or down.

601
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 1: It is a really weird way to think about the universe.

602
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 1: I was recently trying to explain this stuff to my

603
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: sixteen year old who's taking chemistry and was learning about

604
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 1: the atomic structure and all this stuff and photons and probabilities,

605
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: and it was pretty bewildering. But it was a fun

606
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: experience to try to download into his mind this new

607
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: way of thinking about the universe. But it really is

608
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:31,280
Speaker 1: counterintuitive because you don't ever experience it. And that's one

609
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 1: of the big mysteries of quantum mechanics, is why not.

610
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: Because when we interact with quantum stuff, it tends to collapse.

611
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 1: It says, Oh, I have a bunch of possibilities, but

612
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: I'm just going to pick one now. When a photon

613
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: hits your eyeball, it decides, Oh, I'm here or I'm there.

614
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: When a electron hits the screen, the universe decides. For

615
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: some reason, the universe has this distinction between tiny little

616
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: stuff that can exist with uncertainty and bigger stuff which can't.

617
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: People sometimes describe this as acting like a particle or

618
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: acting like a wave. Really is between classical physics like

619
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 1: general relativity that's talking about stuff having specific locations and

620
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: quantum physics, where stuff can still have.

621
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 3: Uncertainty, So quantum physics would be the particle, and general

622
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:15,400
Speaker 3: relativity would be the wave, or vice versa.

623
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: So quantu physics is about tiny little stuff, but it's

624
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: the wave like behavior of that stuff that's really weird

625
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: because the wave appears in the Shortener equation, and people

626
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:27,440
Speaker 1: tend to think about particles as having like a definite location,

627
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: like you've seen this particle on the screen. So general

628
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: relativity and classical physics more broadly thinks about stuff as

629
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: having definitive locations. It is here, it is there, it

630
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: was here, And quantum mechanics says that there can be uncertainty.

631
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: So quantum is the more wavy stuff, and in this case,

632
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: the classical theory is more like definitive locations, which people

633
00:33:47,280 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: sometimes describe as acting like a particle.

634
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 3: So quantum mechanics is kind of whibbly wobbly.

635
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. So these are two very different

636
00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: pictures of the world. Right, things moving along classical pass

637
00:34:01,040 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: where they always have a definitive location at every time,

638
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: or things being wibbly wobbling, being undetermined. And you might think, well,

639
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: it should be pretty easy to figure out which is right,

640
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: can't we do experiments to tell us which one is

641
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:16,360
Speaker 1: predicting things correctly. Right, Often you have two theories, you

642
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:18,399
Speaker 1: just do an experiment, you say, well, which one is right,

643
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 1: And the problem is that it's so hard to do

644
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,759
Speaker 1: an experiment where both of them have something to say.

645
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: Most of the universe is divided up into stuff where

646
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: general relativity is important and quantum mechanics can be ignored,

647
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:35,280
Speaker 1: like the motion of planets, or stuff where quantum mechanics

648
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:38,759
Speaker 1: is important and general relativity can be ignored, like two

649
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 1: electrons bouncing off of each other.

650
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 3: Right, Like you could do a physics experiment on a baseball,

651
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:49,240
Speaker 3: But then to do a physics experiment and a quantum

652
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 3: level experiment on the baseball's electrons at the same time

653
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 3: in a way that makes sense seems very difficult.

654
00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 1: Exactly when you do an experiment with baseballs, you can

655
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 1: pretty much ignore the fact that it's made from ten

656
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: to twenty nine tiny buzzing particles, and you can just

657
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:07,279
Speaker 1: use Newton's laws F equals MA to describe its path

658
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:10,239
Speaker 1: very very accurately. That's because the quantum effects tend to

659
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 1: average out for reasons. Again, we don't really know how

660
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: that works or why that works. But it does, so

661
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: quantum effects tend to disappear when you zoom out far enough.

662
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:21,000
Speaker 1: On the other hand, when you zoom in far enough,

663
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 1: gravity is so weak that it becomes irrelevant. Like we

664
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: do collisions between protons all the time at the Large

665
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider, but we always ignore their gravity, Like there

666
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: is a gravitational attraction we think between the protons, but

667
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: protons have such tiny masses that we can essentially ignore

668
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,280
Speaker 1: their gravity when we do those calculations.

669
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 3: I mean that makes sense because even though technically, even

670
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 3: as people, we have gravity, it's not like we can

671
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 3: suck things into ourselves. I know that's not how gravity works,

672
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 3: but still we're not. We are not generating enough of

673
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 3: a gravitational effect that things, you know, fall into our bodies.

674
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 2: And so what chance does a proton have?

675
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: Exactly, you can't blame gravity for the reason you ate

676
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: that pint of ice cream. It didn't just like fall

677
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 1: into your body.

678
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:09,000
Speaker 2: That was my alibi.

679
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 1: But that's exactly right. We could hardly even measure the

680
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:17,240
Speaker 1: gravity between things that are like a kilogram. The smallest

681
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: thing we've ever measured gravity for is just about a kilogram,

682
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:24,879
Speaker 1: and protons are a tiny, tiny fraction of that. We're

683
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: like thirty orders of magnitude away from being able to

684
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,480
Speaker 1: measure the gravity of a proton. And more than that,

685
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: we don't even understand what the gravity of a proton

686
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: would look like. You know, say you have a particle

687
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:38,720
Speaker 1: with uncertainty to it. Maybe it's here, maybe it's there,

688
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: maybe it's in this third location you don't know. The

689
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:44,359
Speaker 1: universe says, that's cool, the particle can be uncertain, all right,

690
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:48,280
Speaker 1: But then what is the gravity of an uncertain particle?

691
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:50,359
Speaker 1: Does it have a little bit of curvature over here

692
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 1: because it might be over there, and a little bit

693
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 1: of curvature over there because it might be over there.

694
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: Is the curvature of space itself uncertain? We don't know

695
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,440
Speaker 1: how to unify these two ideas of quantum mechanics and

696
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,800
Speaker 1: of gravity. Nobody really knows how that can be done.

697
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:10,359
Speaker 3: That's so interesting and uncomfortable from a sort of biology perspective,

698
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 3: because when you look at biology, big stuff is made

699
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 3: out of small stuff, and so that tracks. But when

700
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 3: you look at biological processes, like you look at a cell,

701
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 3: and it's interesting because, of course, on a certain level,

702
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 3: each cell's activity does not necessarily explain everything about a

703
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:36,600
Speaker 3: human being or a cat or a dog their behavior.

704
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 3: But you can generally track how the small stuff creates

705
00:37:42,200 --> 00:37:45,480
Speaker 3: the big stuff. And there's generally some like the rules

706
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:49,600
Speaker 3: that govern the small stuff, these biological processes that govern

707
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 3: the small stuff. You can track how that is impacting

708
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 3: the big stuff. Like you chug a bunch of soy sauce,

709
00:37:56,160 --> 00:37:59,919
Speaker 3: and those salt ions are you know, messing up your

710
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 3: or your ion channels in your brain, and then that's

711
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 3: why you're in a coma. So it's you know, it's

712
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:11,280
Speaker 3: very uncomfortable, this idea that you couldn't track, like, okay,

713
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 3: so this proton is acting in a certain way, and

714
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:18,040
Speaker 3: then we can scale up to you know, an item

715
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 3: like a watermelon, because it has a bunch of protons

716
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:22,400
Speaker 3: in it.

717
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:26,080
Speaker 2: We know how that the behavior.

718
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 3: Of those protons would somehow affect the behavior of the

719
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:30,400
Speaker 3: watermelon exactly.

720
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 1: And we'd love to do an experiment where we could

721
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: study that right, where we could take something where quantum

722
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 1: mechanics was relevant and also gravity was relevant, Like if

723
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: we could take enough protons and squeeze them together and

724
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 1: keep them in a small enough space so they're still

725
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:49,400
Speaker 1: being quantum mechanical, but we had enough protons where we

726
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: could also measure its gravity. That way we could understand,

727
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 1: like how the small stuff is affecting the big stuff.

728
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:58,320
Speaker 1: So in order to keep the quantum mechanical effects relevant,

729
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: you've got to keep it like really really small. And

730
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: so what happens when you try to do that, when

731
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,439
Speaker 1: you add enough stuff together so that it stays quantum

732
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:09,480
Speaker 1: mechanical and gravity starts to get relevant, you get a

733
00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:12,600
Speaker 1: black hole. That's what a black hole is is a

734
00:39:12,680 --> 00:39:16,520
Speaker 1: huge amount of mass in a tiny little space. And so,

735
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: on one hand, that's exciting, Wow, the answer is inside

736
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: a black hole. On the other hand, all that's really frustrating.

737
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: The answer is hidden inside a black hole. We can't

738
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 1: see it. We think that probably inside a black hole

739
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:31,600
Speaker 1: is evidence that would point us in the direction of

740
00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:34,240
Speaker 1: how to bring these two theories together, how to explain

741
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 1: what happens when you have a bunch of quantum stuff

742
00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: that has enough gravity that you can't ignore it anymore.

743
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 3: It feels like a sick joke, right to put all

744
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 3: the answers inside a thing that we can't see inside,

745
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 3: and if we tried to get someone in there, it

746
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:51,879
Speaker 3: would destroy them.

747
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: Exactly, and they might actually survive going inside the black

748
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 1: hole and seeing the answer, But then they could never

749
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:02,239
Speaker 1: tell us even come collect their Nobel prize. We'd have

750
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: to send in the Nobel Prize after them, assuming that

751
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 1: they'd figured it out.

752
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 3: Like I feel like, if someone dives into a black hole,

753
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 3: they just deserve a Nobel Prize, whether they discover.

754
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 2: Anything or not.

755
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 3: But we can study black holes, we just can't like

756
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:21,240
Speaker 3: see inside them. So is there any way to study

757
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:24,720
Speaker 3: a black hole such that it gives us any clues

758
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 3: about this?

759
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: Well, there is one possible crack in the veneer of

760
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:32,560
Speaker 1: black holes, which is their hawking radiation. Black holes are

761
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 1: not totally black. They do emit some radiation. It's even

762
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 1: talking to the calculation a few decades ago, and he

763
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:42,279
Speaker 1: didn't have a theory for what is the gravity of particles,

764
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:45,240
Speaker 1: but he did some sort of like clever handwavey approximations,

765
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 1: and he showed that if you have a quantum field

766
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 1: near something with an event horizon, then there has to

767
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:55,240
Speaker 1: be radiation leaving the event horizon. So now we interpret

768
00:40:55,239 --> 00:40:57,719
Speaker 1: this as like the black hole is evaporating, it's like

769
00:40:57,760 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: giving up some of its energy. The idea is that

770
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,880
Speaker 1: maybe in that radiation, maybe as particles are being generated

771
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 1: by the event horizon, there might be clues as to

772
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 1: what's inside the black hole. It's sort of very speculative,

773
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: cutting edge research, but it's possible that if we did

774
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: see hawking radiation, we could maybe infer from it something

775
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:20,759
Speaker 1: about what's inside the black hole. But hawking radiation would

776
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:23,759
Speaker 1: be very very faint, and black holes are very very

777
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 1: far away and hidden by all sorts of other, very

778
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 1: noisy stuff like hot gases emitting all sorts of radiation.

779
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 1: So we've never seen hawking radiation, and frankly, we don't

780
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 1: seem very likely to anytime in the near future. So

781
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 1: until then, the only frontier really is mental. Can we

782
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:42,839
Speaker 1: come up with a new theory that brings these two

783
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: things together that reconciles the uncertainty of quantum mechanics and

784
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 1: the determinism of relativity.

785
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 2: Well, give me like three minutes while ads play, and

786
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 2: I'll try to come up with something.

787
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:56,839
Speaker 1: All right, The Katie Golden tries to win the Nobel

788
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: Prize in three minutes challenge.

789
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 2: Go all right, I think I've got it, Daniel.

790
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:15,319
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm so desperate to hear what you came

791
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 1: up with.

792
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 3: Did you guys remember to carry the one.

793
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: Hold on a second? Did we miss a minus science?

794
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,720
Speaker 1: Is that the whole problem? Oh my gosh, Katie, pause

795
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 1: this recording right now to rush off to Sweden to

796
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: collecting about rice.

797
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:35,720
Speaker 3: Well you're very welcome, but yes, let's talk about how

798
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:41,400
Speaker 3: to go from like our observational science to bringing it

799
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:46,040
Speaker 3: into the brain. How could we possibly do science from

800
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 3: inside our own heads?

801
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 1: Well, sometimes it comes down to just being creative. You

802
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:55,239
Speaker 1: know a lot of big advances in human history have

803
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: come from just people sitting in their dank study thinking

804
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 1: about the nature of the universe and pulling ideas together.

805
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: You know, Einstein's revolution with a photoelectric effect. He didn't

806
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:07,440
Speaker 1: do that experiment. He didn't have a piece of metal

807
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 1: and a bright light in his laboratory. Guy didn't have

808
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: a laboratory. He read a paper or somebody else did

809
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 1: this experiment, and he just thought about it and had

810
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:18,800
Speaker 1: this idea for how to explain it and combined it

811
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: with something he heard from Max Plank about how to

812
00:43:21,560 --> 00:43:25,120
Speaker 1: explain how stuff glows and the temperature at which things glow.

813
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: And decades earlier, Maxwell brought together electricity and magnetism just

814
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 1: by writing them down nicely on a sheet of paper

815
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 1: and noticing that there were symmetries between them. So we

816
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:37,080
Speaker 1: can make a lot of progress in physics just by

817
00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: having new ideas.

818
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:44,439
Speaker 3: So are there people in dank rooms I imagine them

819
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 3: with like maybe one light bulb lighting the entire room,

820
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 3: hard at work trying to figure this out. Has there

821
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:52,960
Speaker 3: been any progress made on trying to come up with

822
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:55,919
Speaker 3: a philosophical or mathematical explanation.

823
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 1: So people have been working on this for a long time,

824
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: and it's very challenging. Mathematically. It's hard to see how

825
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:05,360
Speaker 1: you can get this sort of uncertainty of quantum mechanics

826
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:10,239
Speaker 1: and the rigor and determination of general relativity to play

827
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:13,040
Speaker 1: nicely together. There's been a lot of attempts, and a

828
00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:14,839
Speaker 1: lot of them have failed. But there is a new

829
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: idea out there, and that's quantum relativity what we're talking

830
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 1: about today, and the idea is instead of taking general

831
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,240
Speaker 1: relativity and trying to change it so that it's like uncertain,

832
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: rather than saying maybe the curvature or space time is

833
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 1: uncertain in the way we're talking about earlier, it's wondering

834
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:35,680
Speaker 1: can we actually see how quantum mechanics comes naturally from relativity,

835
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 1: Like maybe the weirdness of quantum mechanics just emerges from

836
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:44,319
Speaker 1: relativity itself, the way the ideal gas law emerges from

837
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: the motion of particles, or hurricanes emerge from the swirling

838
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:51,800
Speaker 1: of droplets in the atmosphere. Is it possible to find

839
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:55,839
Speaker 1: hints in relativity from which we could build the weirdness

840
00:44:55,880 --> 00:45:00,240
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics directly. That's why it's called quantum relativity.

841
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:03,240
Speaker 1: Take relativity and find a way to build quantum mechanics

842
00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 1: on top of it, rather than like jamming quantum uncertainty

843
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 1: directly into relativity.

844
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:11,719
Speaker 3: That's interesting because I think of when I think of

845
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 3: sort of the direction of causality, I think of, like

846
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:18,960
Speaker 3: the small things cause the big things to happen, right,

847
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:23,399
Speaker 3: the little particles there's some causality of like the small

848
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 3: particles that make up the big things, you know, cause

849
00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:29,320
Speaker 3: some effect, so that I would always kind of intuitively

850
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 3: think like, well, we have to figure out how the

851
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 3: small things behavior explains the big things. But it seems

852
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 3: like this is more like you're taking the kind of

853
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:43,080
Speaker 3: behavior of big things with general relativity and seeing how

854
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 3: that could either explain or how you could see quantum

855
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:50,799
Speaker 3: mechanics grow out of that.

856
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and so let's drill in on some of

857
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: the details to make this a little bit more concrete.

858
00:45:56,520 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 2: You know.

859
00:45:56,800 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 1: One of the crucial things we have in quantum mechanics

860
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 1: that we don't have in relativity is this uncertainty, this

861
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:07,240
Speaker 1: possibility for things to be in two locations. Right, a particle,

862
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:09,360
Speaker 1: for example, we say maybe it does this and maybe

863
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:11,799
Speaker 1: it does that, and we said, that's uncertain It has

864
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 1: both possibilities, whereas in relativity we have a lot of determination.

865
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:18,200
Speaker 1: Like you shoot a particle, even if it's near the

866
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: speed of light, it's going in some direction, you know

867
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 1: what it's going to do. You can calculate it. One

868
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,400
Speaker 1: of the core conflicts between these two theories is just that.

869
00:46:25,680 --> 00:46:28,959
Speaker 1: So the authors of this theory quantum relativity have found

870
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: a way to try to find multiple possibilities in relativity.

871
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 1: They say, hmm, maybe there's some overlooked mathematics that shows

872
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: us how relativity actually can have like multiple solutions simultaneously.

873
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:45,719
Speaker 1: One of the founding principles of relativity is that light

874
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: always moves at the speed of light. Right, all observers

875
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:50,879
Speaker 1: see light moving at the speed of light, no matter

876
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 1: how fast you're going. So you're moving in half the

877
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 1: speed of light relative to the Earth. You turn on

878
00:46:56,000 --> 00:46:58,320
Speaker 1: a flashlight, you're going to see that light being moving

879
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: at the speed of light relative you. Somebody on the

880
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 1: ground who sees you moving at half the speed of

881
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:06,600
Speaker 1: light and turning on your flashlight, they look at that

882
00:47:06,680 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: light beam, they also see it moving at the speed

883
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 1: of light. They don't see it moving at the speed

884
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: of light plus half the speed of light. It's one

885
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:16,279
Speaker 1: of the really weird things about special relativity.

886
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:20,879
Speaker 3: Right, so light there is a constant speed of light

887
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 3: that can't really be slowed down or sped up exactly.

888
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:27,239
Speaker 1: And this is the founding assumption of special relativity, at

889
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 1: least to a whole bunch of mathematics. It tells us

890
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 1: how to see things from different perspectives. Tells us like,

891
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 1: how is it possible to see light moving at this

892
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:37,560
Speaker 1: speed for this observer and seeing it move at the

893
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 1: same speed for that observer. It helps us tie it

894
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: all together, tells a different story for how the universe works,

895
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:46,319
Speaker 1: and time goes weird sometimes and things get short, and

896
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:48,880
Speaker 1: we have podcasts digging into all those details. But it

897
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:51,279
Speaker 1: gives us this picture of like how different people can

898
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:54,160
Speaker 1: see the universe from different velocities, and this is called

899
00:47:54,200 --> 00:47:57,280
Speaker 1: the Lorentz transforms. It tells you how to transform between

900
00:47:57,280 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 1: one observer and another observer. Because it turns out to

901
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 1: not as simple as we thought.

902
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm looking at this formula and doesn't look super

903
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:05,239
Speaker 3: simple to me.

904
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 1: No, it's not simple, and it's nonlinear, and it's got

905
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:10,279
Speaker 1: square roots in it, and it gets really wonky, which

906
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:13,320
Speaker 1: is why relativity is so weird and time flows strangely

907
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: and you have the twin paradox and all that stuff. Now,

908
00:48:15,560 --> 00:48:19,360
Speaker 1: that's fine, But it turns out there's actually a second solution.

909
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 1: There's another way you could describe the transformation how people

910
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:28,120
Speaker 1: see things in different velocities. That also satisfies this requirement

911
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:30,680
Speaker 1: that the speed of light is the same for everybody,

912
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:33,239
Speaker 1: sort of like a second solution to an equation. You know,

913
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:36,920
Speaker 1: if you have like X squared equals nine, one solution is, oh,

914
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:40,360
Speaker 1: X equals three. Another solution is what if X equals

915
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:42,480
Speaker 1: minus three. This is the kind of thing that crops

916
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 1: up all the time in mathematics and sometimes in physics,

917
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:48,279
Speaker 1: we like, well, minus three doesn't make sense. We'll just

918
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 1: ignore that. We'll just drop the unphysical solution.

919
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:55,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't have negative three apples, missus Birch.

920
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 1: You can actually go into debt for apples, and you

921
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,440
Speaker 1: can be an apple or prison. So yeah, thanks financial

922
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:03,240
Speaker 1: engineers for inventing negative money.

923
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 3: I forgot that our currency was based on the Apple standard.

924
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:12,719
Speaker 1: Exactly. So in this scenario, there's one solution to these

925
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:15,799
Speaker 1: transformations to tell you, like how different observers see the

926
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 1: universe different velocities, And that's the one that assumes that

927
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:21,759
Speaker 1: everything travels at the speed of light or less. It's

928
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: actually a second solution, a second way to transform between

929
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 1: these frames that holds for velocities greater than the speed

930
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:31,800
Speaker 1: of light. And that's like, what, hold on a second,

931
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 1: I thought the whole assumption of special relativity was that

932
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:38,439
Speaker 1: you can only move slower than the speed of light, right,

933
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:42,320
Speaker 1: That is one way to interpret these transformations. There's another

934
00:49:42,360 --> 00:49:45,840
Speaker 1: way to interpret them for velocities greater than the speed

935
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:49,719
Speaker 1: of light. So these would mean particles moving faster than

936
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: the speed of light.

937
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:53,239
Speaker 2: What kind of particles are these? Do we know?

938
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: So there's a theory about particles moving faster than the

939
00:49:56,160 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: speed of light. They're called tachyons, and they do satisfy

940
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: the mathematics of relativity, though nobody's ever seen one. One

941
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: problem with anything moving faster than the speed of light

942
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 1: is that you can end up with tricky paradoxes about

943
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,759
Speaker 1: the order of things and causality, because remember that observers

944
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:16,240
Speaker 1: moving at high speeds can see stuff happening at different times.

945
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 1: Like if I see event A happening before event B,

946
00:50:19,520 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 1: you might see the opposite order of stuff because you're

947
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:24,279
Speaker 1: flying by me at a high speed. That's one of

948
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: the consequences of special relativity that you're not guaranteed simultaneity

949
00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:31,560
Speaker 1: for all frames. That different observers can see the order

950
00:50:31,560 --> 00:50:34,120
Speaker 1: of events differently, and that's usually fine, it's not a

951
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:36,719
Speaker 1: big deal. But if you can move faster than the

952
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:38,880
Speaker 1: speed of light, then you start to see things that

953
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: are causally linked be reversed. Like, for example, if I

954
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 1: fire an arrow, then somebody moving past me is faster

955
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,160
Speaker 1: than the speed of light could see the arrow hit

956
00:50:48,200 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 1: the apple before I even fire it. That seems sort

957
00:50:51,120 --> 00:50:53,320
Speaker 1: of problematic, and people are like, yeah, let's just cross

958
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 1: that off and say that doesn't happen, but actually opens

959
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:58,759
Speaker 1: the door and exactly the way we might need to

960
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:02,960
Speaker 1: link relativity with quantum mechanics, because now we have like

961
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: two explanations for those events, like does Daniel fire the

962
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 1: arrow before it hits the apple or does it hit

963
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:11,880
Speaker 1: the apple before I fire the arrow? So the idea

964
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: of quantum relativity is to say, well, what if you

965
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:16,759
Speaker 1: look at these things both from the less than the

966
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 1: speed of light perspective and the greater than the speed

967
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: of life perspective, Like if you allow both views of it,

968
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 1: then you have sort of like two different ideas for

969
00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 1: what might be happening here, and there isn't a deterministic

970
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:32,120
Speaker 1: explanation for which is the right one.

971
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:34,839
Speaker 3: I mean, you had mentioned earlier that this was kind

972
00:51:34,880 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 3: of dismissed, right, because like the idea is that you

973
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 3: can't observe causally linked events in reverse. What is the

974
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 3: assumption behind that that says that you can't do that?

975
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:47,440
Speaker 2: Because like, I.

976
00:51:47,360 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 3: Know, it sounds obvious, right, like, of course you can't.

977
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 3: I would assume there's actually some kind of law in

978
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 3: physics that does link to that, because you know what

979
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 3: we know about like assumptions, like we have all sorts

980
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 3: of assumptions about the world works because that's how we

981
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:04,280
Speaker 3: observe it. We as humans never observe things in reverse.

982
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 3: But is there an actual law in either physics or

983
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 3: general relativity that would prohibit that observation from coming before

984
00:52:13,080 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 3: the event?

985
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:16,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. Why do we assume that

986
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,840
Speaker 1: there's causality in the universe, that things have to be linked?

987
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:21,520
Speaker 1: And it's just sort of like part of how we

988
00:52:21,600 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 1: think about physics. It's a core assumption we make. We

989
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:26,960
Speaker 1: don't know that it's true, but it sort of makes

990
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:29,120
Speaker 1: sense to us, and so we try to hold on

991
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:31,799
Speaker 1: to it as long as possible, build theories on that

992
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: assumption and see if they work. But it might be

993
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:36,839
Speaker 1: that we have to give it up. There are other

994
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:39,640
Speaker 1: hints in other theories of physics, sort of the cutting edge,

995
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: that maybe causality isn't the fundamental aspect of the universe.

996
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: It might be something we are trying to impose on it.

997
00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:48,840
Speaker 1: You know, think about the way that we explain the universe.

998
00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:53,000
Speaker 1: We tend to tell stories. Stories are like little causal links.

999
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:55,640
Speaker 1: I did this, and then she did that, and then

1000
00:52:55,680 --> 00:52:58,520
Speaker 1: this happened. It's like A, then B and C, then D.

1001
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:01,200
Speaker 1: It's sort of embedded deeply in how we think. It

1002
00:53:01,239 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it has to be embedded deeply into the universe.

1003
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: And so this is sort of like giving up that

1004
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 1: causal chain and saying, well, maybe A cause B, but

1005
00:53:10,200 --> 00:53:13,200
Speaker 1: maybe B caused A. And that's where you get your

1006
00:53:13,239 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: crack indeterminism In relativity, it says, maybe there are two

1007
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:22,360
Speaker 1: ways to view these events. One subliminal, sorry, one subluminal,

1008
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:25,320
Speaker 1: not subliminal as in slower than the speed.

1009
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 3: Of lfemptoms about the superliminal messaging, yeah.

1010
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:33,600
Speaker 1: And one super illuminal, like a view from an observer

1011
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: moving fast than the speed of light that sees an

1012
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,640
Speaker 1: opposite order of events. And this is basically the crack

1013
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:42,719
Speaker 1: that this whole theory of quantum relativity is built on.

1014
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: It says, within relativity, maybe you can have nondeterminism, because

1015
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:51,399
Speaker 1: maybe the superluminal view of the universe is different from

1016
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: the subluminal view, that the order of events can be different.

1017
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:58,680
Speaker 1: From within relativity, we now see a little bit of uncertainty,

1018
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: a loss of de herminism, and that's basically the starting

1019
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: place for quantum relativity.

1020
00:54:04,480 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 3: I think we have to remind ourselves that physicists are

1021
00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:13,919
Speaker 3: human beings and they have the same kind of mental fallacies,

1022
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:17,640
Speaker 3: or not necessarily fallacies, but just habits the routine that

1023
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:23,399
Speaker 3: all humans have, which is viewing things in terms of

1024
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 3: what we have adapted to as human beings or earlier

1025
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:32,440
Speaker 3: as primates, and it's such a strong thing. There have

1026
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:36,359
Speaker 3: been studies on people's behavior where when you look at

1027
00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:40,440
Speaker 3: like a screen that has like randomly moving dots on

1028
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:44,480
Speaker 3: a screen or something like, people will try to impose

1029
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:47,800
Speaker 3: some kind of like rules on this or like volition

1030
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:51,319
Speaker 3: to these things, like that these feel alive because they're

1031
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 3: moving randomly, and so you think, well, then there must

1032
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:57,880
Speaker 3: be some kind of autonomy of these things, like some

1033
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:01,200
Speaker 3: reason that it's doing is so like this causality link,

1034
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 3: like I mentioned earlier. It's even found in like babies,

1035
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:08,480
Speaker 3: where you'll see, like if they see something that defies

1036
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:11,480
Speaker 3: the laws of very simple physics of like a ball

1037
00:55:11,600 --> 00:55:14,680
Speaker 3: hitting a ball and that ball kind of moving, they

1038
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 3: stare at that because.

1039
00:55:16,360 --> 00:55:17,600
Speaker 2: That's not what they're expecting.

1040
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:22,120
Speaker 3: So it seems like a huge challenge to overcome our

1041
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 3: humanness when we're also trying to answer these questions about

1042
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:31,680
Speaker 3: the universe that do not necessarily play by the same

1043
00:55:31,760 --> 00:55:36,080
Speaker 3: rules as say, like a primate that has somehow gotten

1044
00:55:36,080 --> 00:55:38,320
Speaker 3: smart enough to start writing down numbers.

1045
00:55:39,480 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've often seen the appearance of autonomy and

1046
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: action in the universe, you know, explaining whether in terms

1047
00:55:47,040 --> 00:55:49,839
Speaker 1: of some big guy in the sky throwing thunderbolts, et cetera,

1048
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so we do have to be careful

1049
00:55:52,040 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 1: and question our assumptions. And sometimes when we are failing

1050
00:55:55,560 --> 00:55:58,360
Speaker 1: to describe the universe that we see, we need to

1051
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:00,960
Speaker 1: circle back and say, well, maybe there's something wrong in

1052
00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 1: the foundations of our science itself. Maybe we need to

1053
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: be asking questions about whether all of these assumptions really

1054
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:10,239
Speaker 1: hold and what breaks if we get rid of them,

1055
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 1: or what breakthroughs we might be able to make.

1056
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:16,799
Speaker 3: So, once we get rid of this assumption that there

1057
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:20,600
Speaker 3: has to be this causality, has there been any breakthroughs

1058
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:23,920
Speaker 3: in terms of then connecting this potential new model of

1059
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 3: general relativity to quantum mechanics, Like, have there been successful

1060
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 3: sort of developments in quantum relativity beyond? Just like maybe

1061
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:35,800
Speaker 3: we can issue the causality.

1062
00:56:36,280 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: Not yet. It's sort of like a promising direction for

1063
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:41,400
Speaker 1: people to build on. What it has generated is a

1064
00:56:41,400 --> 00:56:44,319
Speaker 1: whole series of papers arguing about it. So a bunch

1065
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:46,239
Speaker 1: of physicis are like, hey, you can't do that. This

1066
00:56:46,280 --> 00:56:49,440
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense, and other people be like, no, actually,

1067
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:52,520
Speaker 1: maybe it does. And so, you know, it's a healthy conversation.

1068
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: So far hasn't led anywhere concrete yet, but you know,

1069
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:58,319
Speaker 1: it might be that we look back in one hundred

1070
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:01,200
Speaker 1: years and tell stories about this moment where people are like,

1071
00:57:01,239 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 1: wait a second, what about this basic assumption, or this

1072
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:08,240
Speaker 1: could just end up on the very very deep trash

1073
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 1: can of the theories that have attempted to unify general

1074
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:13,520
Speaker 1: relativity and quantum mechanics and failed.

1075
00:57:14,080 --> 00:57:17,320
Speaker 3: I mean, you need to fill a few trash cans

1076
00:57:17,320 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 3: full of crumpled up sheets to make a physics aline,

1077
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 3: as I understand it.

1078
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:26,960
Speaker 1: Exactly. But it's fun to examine all these assumptions to

1079
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:29,720
Speaker 1: try to explain our universe in terms of the tiniest

1080
00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:32,640
Speaker 1: little particles, and to try to unify those theories, the

1081
00:57:32,640 --> 00:57:35,360
Speaker 1: ones that describe the really big, heavy stuff and the

1082
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:39,120
Speaker 1: ones that describe the tiniest little particles flitting around inside

1083
00:57:39,200 --> 00:57:42,480
Speaker 1: our atoms. Maybe one day we'll figure it out. Until then,

1084
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:45,160
Speaker 1: thanks very much Kinnie for joining me on this journey

1085
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: to our lack of understanding about the universe.

1086
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, and really do check on whether

1087
00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 3: you guys just forgot to carry the one, because you know,

1088
00:57:53,760 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 3: we all make mistakes.

1089
00:57:55,880 --> 00:57:57,640
Speaker 1: I'm on it, and if it turns out you were right,

1090
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:01,200
Speaker 1: we'll definitely cite you. Thanks everyone for listening, See you

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Speaker 1: next time. For more science and curiosity, come find us

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Speaker 1: on social media, where we answer questions and post videos.

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Speaker 1: We're on Twitter, disc Org, Insta, and now TikTok. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the

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Speaker 1: Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

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Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.