Speaker 1: Jorgey, would you say that you have good taste in movies?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have good taste in movies,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I like what I like. But
Speaker 1: does that mean that you think those movies like taste good?
Speaker 1: I mean doesn't mean to have good taste in movies?
Speaker 1: You mean like if I ate a movie? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Like are certain movies like delicious or like, you know,
Speaker 1: hard to swallow? I think some plotlines are definitely hard
Speaker 1: to swallow. Yeah, But it's kind of an interesting question
Speaker 1: that you ask me. Were you still of asking me, like,
Speaker 1: how can a movie taste? Or how can somebody have
Speaker 1: good taste in music? Yeah? Exactly? Like why do we
Speaker 1: use the word taste to describe how we choose art
Speaker 1: or clothing or you know, living room furniture. It's not
Speaker 1: like you're gonna eat that stuff. Well, it's probably just
Speaker 1: kind of a poetic analogy, you know, Right, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of poetry. Right, We're saying, here's something we
Speaker 1: can't really describe, and we're gonna related to something we
Speaker 1: can describe. Hi am r hammade cartoonists and the creator
Speaker 1: of PhD Comics. Hi I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist.
Speaker 1: I smash stuff together at their large hay drawn collider
Speaker 1: to try to figure out what the world is made
Speaker 1: out of. And you are a listener with really good
Speaker 1: taste because you are listening to our podcast, Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: the most delicious podcast in the whole universe. But seriously,
Speaker 1: our goal on this podcast really is to take the
Speaker 1: universe and slice it into bite sized pieces so you
Speaker 1: can chew them one at a time and really digest
Speaker 1: each one, bite size installments of knowledge for your ears
Speaker 1: taste buds. Yeah, exactly. We want you to really be
Speaker 1: able to incorporate these ideas into your brain. Right, this
Speaker 1: is something you don't just swallow it like a pill.
Speaker 1: We want you to really, you know, take some time,
Speaker 1: chew it, enjoy it, gave understand like the top notes
Speaker 1: and the back notes and the I don't even know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here when it comes to names
Speaker 1: of their various tastes. Take your your phone or whatever
Speaker 1: you're using to listen to this and kind of swirl
Speaker 1: it around a little bit, you know, let this podcast
Speaker 1: arrate a little bit. Hey, I think this podcast has
Speaker 1: legs for tasting. That's what they say about wine. You
Speaker 1: swirl it around and you look to see if it
Speaker 1: has legs. I don't drink that much wine. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: also complimenting your legs, Orge, it did shape them this morning.
Speaker 1: What I didn't want to hear that nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: hear that nobody wants to be Well, maybe some people
Speaker 1: out there do want a mental image of Jorge shaving
Speaker 1: his legs. But I think the point is that there
Speaker 1: are words that physicists use sometimes describe physical phenomenon that
Speaker 1: is kind of weird to use, right, It's kind of um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like they they're used for other things
Speaker 1: in the English language. Yeah, And we've talked about that
Speaker 1: a few times on this podcast. Recently, we did a
Speaker 1: whole podcast about Spin, in which you rightly insisted that
Speaker 1: we should have called it like spin, because it's not spin.
Speaker 1: It's like spin. But there's an important point there that
Speaker 1: we're sort of extrapolating. We're saying, here's something weird and unknown,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of similar in interesting ways to this
Speaker 1: thing we do know, and so let's give it that
Speaker 1: name so we can associate these two ideas in our head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am a grumpy person when it comes to nomenclature,
Speaker 1: to naming things. I'll take that mantle. I've heard you
Speaker 1: do this yourself about your own work. What do you
Speaker 1: mean Sometimes you introduce your comic and if somebody, if
Speaker 1: you don't get that flash of recognition, you say, oh,
Speaker 1: PhD comics. It's like Dilbert but for academia. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I think analogies are useful in the English language, and
Speaker 1: that's why I use the word like, you know, but
Speaker 1: we relean on these heavily in physics. I mean, when
Speaker 1: we talk about things being particles, metaphors are analogies metaphors, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would admit that we often use metaphors when
Speaker 1: we should be using analogies. But that's basically all we do.
Speaker 1: You know, in physics, we try to describe the unknown.
Speaker 1: And what can you do when you describe the unknown
Speaker 1: accept related to the known? Right, So you're like, what
Speaker 1: is a particle? Like, it's kind of like a little
Speaker 1: spinning ball. Oh, it's kind of like a wave. You know,
Speaker 1: how does this thing work? It's kind of like this
Speaker 1: other thing and uh, And that's the job of physics
Speaker 1: is to say here's all these weird, disparate phenomena. Can
Speaker 1: we describe them using similar ideas? So this this, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a good intention there. It's not like physics is
Speaker 1: trying to deceive people by saying this has spin and
Speaker 1: this is a particle and this as this flavor. We're
Speaker 1: doing our best to try to connect these things to
Speaker 1: ideas that are already in your head to make them
Speaker 1: easier to understand. And so today on the podcast, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about what do quarks taste like? That's right,
Speaker 1: what do quarks taste like? And what do they look like?
Speaker 1: Because in particle physics, we describe corks as having flavor,
Speaker 1: and we also describe them as having color, and so
Speaker 1: you might be wondering, like, what how does a tiny
Speaker 1: little particle have like a color or a flavor? Like
Speaker 1: can you taste one particle at a time? What does
Speaker 1: that really mean? These guys being literal, are they being metaphorical?
Speaker 1: Are they being analogical? What's the word there? Yeah, poetic?
Speaker 1: You know, wrong? Perhaps there you go, and we will
Speaker 1: be open to the possibility that physics has taken too
Speaker 1: many liberties in bending the English language to describe what
Speaker 1: we've learned. Yeah. So, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: examples like this in physics, right, especially particle physics, because
Speaker 1: you're dealing with some pretty weird and unknown things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we basically always have to do that when we're describing
Speaker 1: these tiny, little weird things we call particles. Um, we're
Speaker 1: always relying on things that we understand, even the whole
Speaker 1: idea of a field, you know, like that we talked
Speaker 1: about quantum fields and electromagnetic fields. You know, you're relying
Speaker 1: on your your understanding of of of how these things work. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, a field in general, it's like I imagine,
Speaker 1: like a field of weed or field of asked, you know,
Speaker 1: like thinking about how things change over a plane. Um.
Speaker 1: So everything we do basically is some sort of poetic
Speaker 1: or non poetic extension of the English language. They were
Speaker 1: in particular talking about corks, right, because corks have both color, flavor,
Speaker 1: and spin, But they actually don't have neither color, flavor
Speaker 1: nor spin. They have like flavor, like color and like spin.
Speaker 1: There you go, Yeah, there you go, podcast done, podcast over. No,
Speaker 1: we're gonna dig into exactly what that means. But I
Speaker 1: was curious what people thought, um, So I went around
Speaker 1: the camp as a uc irvine, and I asked people first.
Speaker 1: I asked them, hey, have you heard of a cork?
Speaker 1: And most people you'll you'll hear their responses. But if
Speaker 1: they hadn't, I asked them, what would you believe me
Speaker 1: if I told you that these tiny particles had flavor
Speaker 1: or color? But if they had heard of them? You
Speaker 1: would ask them if they knew that they have flavors?
Speaker 1: That's right, if they if they had heard of them.
Speaker 1: I asked them if they knew about cork flavor and color,
Speaker 1: And if they hadn't, I said, would you believe me
Speaker 1: if I told you that they had flavors and colors?
Speaker 1: This is like a multipart question here, all right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Otherwise it was just too too short of conversation. Have
Speaker 1: you heard of corks? No? All right, well there you go.
Speaker 1: Those of you listening, maybe take a second to think
Speaker 1: about if somebody approach you on the street and ask
Speaker 1: you what a corks taste like or what's their flavor
Speaker 1: or color? What would you answer? Here's what people had
Speaker 1: to say, Um, have you heard of quarks? Do you
Speaker 1: know what corks are? I've heard of them. Um, they're
Speaker 1: supposed to have colors and flavors. Do you know what
Speaker 1: cork colors and flavors mean? U? Cork is a delightful
Speaker 1: like yogurty kind of a thing. So that's the first
Speaker 1: thing that I thought of. What the question is, do
Speaker 1: you know what cork flavors are? Wow? You're not talking
Speaker 1: strawberry blueberry for the yogurt um. I have heard of
Speaker 1: cork flavors. Yes, I have heard of corks. Another thing,
Speaker 1: don't know what they are. Did you know that quarks
Speaker 1: come in different colors and flavors? No? I wish I
Speaker 1: could say yes, but I don't have heard of them.
Speaker 1: But no, quirky people. Did you know that quirks, the
Speaker 1: fundamental particles, come in different flavors and colors? I had
Speaker 1: also heard out, but I can't believe I did not.
Speaker 1: All right, great, Yeah, they're one of the parts of
Speaker 1: protons and neutrons. Right. Do you know that they come
Speaker 1: in different colors and flavors? Can you explain that? Do
Speaker 1: they really taste and look different? No, it's just the
Speaker 1: way that it's described. There's up and down, and I
Speaker 1: don't really understand too much how that works. I would
Speaker 1: have a hard time believing that because as far as
Speaker 1: I know, we don't really see the quantum quantum mechanical
Speaker 1: side of the world, so I don't know how that
Speaker 1: would work exactly. All right, A pretty delicious set of
Speaker 1: answers there, that's right. Yeah. Um. I was amazed to
Speaker 1: learn that there actually is a European yogurt product called
Speaker 1: cork that does come in various flavors. Is that true?
Speaker 1: That is true? I verified that via Google. Well, technically
Speaker 1: that yogurt probably does have a lot of quarks in it.
Speaker 1: That's true. We should relabel everything in the grocery store
Speaker 1: as mostly quarks, quirks and electrons. Is that going to
Speaker 1: be a part of the physics food company? Quirks and electrons? Yum, yum, yum.
Speaker 1: That's right. You can put out you can have a
Speaker 1: pattern for pretty much anything, and you would dominate the
Speaker 1: entire global economy. That's true. And that's something I think
Speaker 1: most people haven't really gotten their minds around the fact
Speaker 1: that everything they eat is just made out of the
Speaker 1: same particles, and it's made out of the same particles
Speaker 1: in basically the same numbers. You know, you have a
Speaker 1: spoonful of yogurt, and you have a spoonful of I
Speaker 1: don't know. What's something healthy um ice cream or lentils
Speaker 1: or whatever. Then it has the same particles in it,
Speaker 1: they're just arranged differently. So the thingness that you're eating,
Speaker 1: the the yumminess or the grossness, comes entirely from how
Speaker 1: those particles are put together, not what they're actually made
Speaker 1: out of, which endlessly fascinates me. A bit of a digression, sorry,
Speaker 1: but onto the topic of quarks being tasty, Maybe we
Speaker 1: should um first remind people what a quirk is and
Speaker 1: where it sits in the sort of hierarchy of particles,
Speaker 1: and then dig into their flavors and colors. All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's bring it down for people, or remind them
Speaker 1: what is a quirk, Daniel. It's a delicious European yogurt apparently,
Speaker 1: all right, And what flavors does it come in? And
Speaker 1: what color is this? It comes in strawberry and blueberry. Now,
Speaker 1: a quirk is, as far as we know, a fundamental particle, right,
Speaker 1: So if you look at the stuff around you, then
Speaker 1: you know stuff is made out of atoms, elements of
Speaker 1: the periodic table. You dig into those atoms of course,
Speaker 1: as a nucleus surrounded by electrons and inside the nucleus
Speaker 1: are protons and neutrons, right, protons being positively charged and
Speaker 1: neutrons being neutral. But inside the protons and neutrons are
Speaker 1: these particles we call quarks, and there's either two up
Speaker 1: quarks and a down or two down quirks and and up,
Speaker 1: and that gives you protons and neutrons. So even the
Speaker 1: smallest level, everything is made out of these little pieces
Speaker 1: that are arranged differently. The same basic building blocks can
Speaker 1: give you protons or neutrons. It's just sort of different
Speaker 1: numbers of the stuff and arranged differently. Because I think
Speaker 1: most of us learned about the atom in high school, right,
Speaker 1: and we learned that there's a little nucleus with protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons and then electrons flying around them. Um. But
Speaker 1: the thing you're saying is that those things inside the
Speaker 1: nucleus are not actually things. We're just kind of configurations
Speaker 1: of smaller things. Yeah, well, there are things in the
Speaker 1: same level that you're a thing, right, You're a thing,
Speaker 1: and you're configurations of smaller things, and those smaller things
Speaker 1: a configuration of smaller things, and on and on and
Speaker 1: on until we don't know when in the end everything
Speaker 1: is made out of these particles, and there really are
Speaker 1: the fundamental building blocks of like all the matter you
Speaker 1: you've seen, all the matter you've tasted, all the things
Speaker 1: you see in the night sky. You know those stars
Speaker 1: out there, and they're made mostly out of quirks. Um.
Speaker 1: The planet under your feet is made mostly out of quarks.
Speaker 1: Your hand that you're looking at right now is made
Speaker 1: mostly out of corks. The brain you're using to hear
Speaker 1: this podcast is made mostly out of quirks, but two
Speaker 1: quirks in particular, up corks and down corks. And they are,
Speaker 1: as far as you know, the fundamental in the sense
Speaker 1: that you as far as you know, you can't split
Speaker 1: them any further, or they're not made out of even
Speaker 1: smaller things themselves. That's right, as far as we know.
Speaker 1: But that's mostly because we don't have enough power to
Speaker 1: break them for there. And you know, there's an interesting
Speaker 1: bit of history here that for a long time people
Speaker 1: thought protons and neutrons were fundamental particles. They were the
Speaker 1: smallest things we had found yet. And then people came
Speaker 1: up with an idea that there might be particles inside
Speaker 1: the protons and neutrons, and you know, they call them quirks.
Speaker 1: But inside the field there was a debate for a
Speaker 1: long time about whether corks were real, like, you know,
Speaker 1: are they really there or is it just something we
Speaker 1: use in our calculations that helps us figure out how
Speaker 1: the math works. And there's sort of a lively debate
Speaker 1: for a while until you know, we actually saw quirks
Speaker 1: by breaking over the proton and interacting with them directly. Right,
Speaker 1: But you you don't actually see the courts, right like,
Speaker 1: you don't detect the corks. You detect what they turn
Speaker 1: into or what they break into. That's right. Quirks by themselves, um,
Speaker 1: don't hang out very long. They have such powerful forces,
Speaker 1: the strong nuclear force, that they gather other stuff around
Speaker 1: them very very quickly. So you almost never see In fact,
Speaker 1: you never see a free cork, a naked cork just
Speaker 1: by itself. It very quickly just grabs energy out of
Speaker 1: the vacuum and dresses itself up. They're very shy. Who
Speaker 1: wants a bunch of physics to see them naked? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people can really I won't
Speaker 1: answer that question. I'm not qualified to speak to that question.
Speaker 1: But so you've never seen a cord by itself you
Speaker 1: mostly see the bits of it, but from your theory
Speaker 1: you can piece together that at some point in that
Speaker 1: shower of stuff there a cork existed. Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: also on the other side, remember we're colliding protons, so
Speaker 1: when we start out, we collide protons, but protons are
Speaker 1: basically just bags of quarks, and we speed them up
Speaker 1: so much. That's actually interacting are the corks inside the
Speaker 1: proton Because the energy of the cork, the energy the
Speaker 1: corks have when they're moving in the beams, is much
Speaker 1: much bigger than the energy that's holding the proton together.
Speaker 1: So you can basically just disregard that. So on one hand,
Speaker 1: you can think of the large Hadron collider as a
Speaker 1: proton collider, but really we think of it as a
Speaker 1: cork collider because it's colliding these bags of corks against
Speaker 1: each other. So while we've never like individually seen a
Speaker 1: cork by itself, we have a lot of pretty direct
Speaker 1: evidence that they do this. You're telling me you even
Speaker 1: name your own machines wrong, like your your machine should
Speaker 1: have been called the large Cork. We need you, man,
Speaker 1: I keep telling you we need you on these committees
Speaker 1: for the naming because somebody services are available for for
Speaker 1: a feed ten. I'll put you in the budget next time.
Speaker 1: Namer that's my name, or scientist what you just named
Speaker 1: yourself the namer? If you're that good, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: be I mean, it's direct. I like it. It's simple.
Speaker 1: But if you're gonna go for like I'm in charge
Speaker 1: of naming stuff for physics, you've got to be a
Speaker 1: little more creative than that, right, his grand namingus. It's
Speaker 1: simple and direct, that's what I keep But I keep
Speaker 1: telling you guys, you need to be not poetic the
Speaker 1: namer of particles. No poetic flourishes allowed here. Huh. Well,
Speaker 1: so let's get into what a court taste like or
Speaker 1: what a court looks like. But first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Alright, So we're digging into courts today, and
Speaker 1: in particular this idea that a cork has flavor. That's okay,
Speaker 1: flavor flavor where's blinging and wraps. It gets even funnier
Speaker 1: than that because there are other corks out there, right,
Speaker 1: And those corks are heavier, so they're just like the
Speaker 1: up cork and the down cork, but they have more mass,
Speaker 1: and so we often refer to those other corks as
Speaker 1: heavy flavor. And I remember in grad school telling my
Speaker 1: friends who are like biologists or you know, political science
Speaker 1: grad students, when I was working on I said, I'm
Speaker 1: working on a heavy flavor and to them that totally
Speaker 1: sounded like a rap group heavy flavor. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: drop some heavy flavor on you today. Man. There is
Speaker 1: a well known YouTuber who wraps and things about physics.
Speaker 1: You've heard of him? Met him? I've met him. But
Speaker 1: have you heard of him? Yeah? Isn't it a woman? No? No,
Speaker 1: it's like there's a lot of acapella songs about physics.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, um, I have heard of him. Acapella science.
Speaker 1: He's fantastic. There's another there's a famous rap about the
Speaker 1: LHC that was done by a a young graduate student.
Speaker 1: She's also pretty good. So this turns out there's a
Speaker 1: whole community of physics rappers out there. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: exactly what the world needs. But back to the topic
Speaker 1: of quirks. The idea of flavors is that there's more
Speaker 1: than just the up cork and the down cork. Those exist,
Speaker 1: those make the proton of the neutron, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: can also make these other corks. They're called charm and strange,
Speaker 1: top and bottom. And the thing that's interesting about the
Speaker 1: other corks is that they're very similar to the up
Speaker 1: cork and the down cork. They're like copies of those corks.
Speaker 1: They're just heavier. So is that kind of what happened
Speaker 1: that at first you only had two quarks up and down,
Speaker 1: and then you discovered more corks, so you have to
Speaker 1: come up with other names. Yes, exactly. The first thing
Speaker 1: up in the down and then they found the strange cork,
Speaker 1: and after that they found the charm cork, and then
Speaker 1: the bottom and then top cork. Because I wonder if
Speaker 1: physicists thought that there were only two, so they went
Speaker 1: with up and down, and then they're like, wait, there's
Speaker 1: another one. What do we call this one? Side? Left, right, front, back? No,
Speaker 1: it it actually did happen that way. Um, there were
Speaker 1: these particles that were kind of weird, so they called
Speaker 1: them strange particles very creatively. And then when they discovered
Speaker 1: that the reason they were strange was that they included
Speaker 1: a new kind of cork, they called that the strange cork.
Speaker 1: And then there was one that was just particularly charming,
Speaker 1: and you're like, let's call this one the charm cork.
Speaker 1: So we were saying that every particle, every cork has
Speaker 1: like two cousins or two versions of it. The down
Speaker 1: cork aligns with the strange cork. So then when they thought, well,
Speaker 1: there must be a fourth cork to balance it out,
Speaker 1: they needed to make it somehow like above the strange
Speaker 1: cork the way like the way up is above the down.
Speaker 1: So they were like, well, what's you know, sort of
Speaker 1: in that category, but you know higher. So they went
Speaker 1: for charm. And you know, this is where the poetry.
Speaker 1: They were like grasping for some sort of relationship to
Speaker 1: try to describe these weird particles using you know, English,
Speaker 1: and so they did their best, and they came up
Speaker 1: with charm. They thought, charm is too strange. The way
Speaker 1: up is to down. I can see that in like
Speaker 1: an S A T question, you know, up to down
Speaker 1: strangest to obviously charm. That's exactly what we did. Yes,
Speaker 1: somebody was doing the S A T. And that's how
Speaker 1: we needed particles. And then when they found another one
Speaker 1: and it aligned again with the down cork, they called
Speaker 1: it the bottom, which is not a great moment of creativity, right,
Speaker 1: But once they called it the bottom. Then they had
Speaker 1: to call the other one the top, and if you
Speaker 1: find another one will be the lower and the under exactly.
Speaker 1: I know. Interestingly, we've actually proven that there are only
Speaker 1: three different flavors of corks. So when we say flavor,
Speaker 1: of course that's what we mean. We mean either this
Speaker 1: first group up and down, or the second group charming, strange,
Speaker 1: or the third group top and bottom. So there are
Speaker 1: three flavors of cork, and they're not strawberry, blueberry and
Speaker 1: vanilla there you know, that first group, the second group,
Speaker 1: in the third group. Okay, So the idea is that
Speaker 1: first you only had to up and down, and you
Speaker 1: discovered more and so suddenly you needed you needed a
Speaker 1: name that tells you that separates all of these different
Speaker 1: versions of the courts. Yeah, and probably somebody was like,
Speaker 1: what can we do? How can we name it? Maybe
Speaker 1: they like went down for ice cream and they were
Speaker 1: looking at all the different flavors and they were thinking,
Speaker 1: all these things are all similar, but each is a
Speaker 1: little different, you know, And so I think they were
Speaker 1: grasping for something poetic there. They were trying to describe
Speaker 1: how these particles have relationships, but they're each a little
Speaker 1: tweaked version of the other one. And so you know, flavor.
Speaker 1: It's not a perfect description, but it's not terrible either.
Speaker 1: Well it's weird because it's not really a quality. It's
Speaker 1: not really a measurable quality, right, or quantity. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just like a category. It's like it's it's basically
Speaker 1: another word for category or another word for um types. Type. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's trying to describe basically the type of type or
Speaker 1: the relationships between these three types, right, saying we have
Speaker 1: these three types of things, what's the relationship between them?
Speaker 1: And you know, to make it even more complicated, there's
Speaker 1: actually sort of like dueling ways to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Some people say, oh, there's three flavors of corks. Other
Speaker 1: people say there's three families of corks or three generations
Speaker 1: of corks, because they think that, you know, the cousin
Speaker 1: analogy works better than like the ice cream flavor analogy.
Speaker 1: So there's there's debate even within the physics community about
Speaker 1: how good you got to name things. I think the
Speaker 1: fact that nobody can agree on how to call them
Speaker 1: pretty much settles the fact that we didn't do a
Speaker 1: great job naming them. But I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is it's not a property that's like on a spectrum,
Speaker 1: you know, like a you know, like a real flavor sweet.
Speaker 1: You can have something really really sweet or less sweet
Speaker 1: and everything in between. But a flavor for quarks it's
Speaker 1: not really it's really more like strawberry or blueberry. It's quantized. Right,
Speaker 1: You're right. You can't be halfway between one type or
Speaker 1: the other. You can't be half up down and half
Speaker 1: top bottom, right, that's not possible. You're either one or
Speaker 1: the other. Well, I guess. But then the question is
Speaker 1: do they have flavor? Like is there something about corks
Speaker 1: and they're different flavors that is maybe analogous to real flavor.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a stretch. I mean, corks do have flavor in the
Speaker 1: sense that they taste like stuff, Like the last thing
Speaker 1: you ate was made of quarks, and I hope it
Speaker 1: tasted good. But corks themselves, you know, they have no
Speaker 1: inherent flavor in that sense, and this quality that we
Speaker 1: call flavor has, you know, only the most tenuous relationship
Speaker 1: with the quality that you and I think of its flavor. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it's something about the way they
Speaker 1: react to other things, or it's not something related to
Speaker 1: how how other particles feel them. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: a name they use for like when you go to
Speaker 1: the ice cream store and there are different types of
Speaker 1: things to choose from. Yeah, exactly. And again I think
Speaker 1: it's trying to show that they're part of a larger category,
Speaker 1: but there are different elements in that category that they're
Speaker 1: all sold under the same freezer. Yes, exactly. Basically great.
Speaker 1: I think they're all sort of here altogether, and you
Speaker 1: can order one of them. Yeah, that's about sums it up.
Speaker 1: Quarks are all different varieties of frozen treats, all right,
Speaker 1: So that's flavors. And so let's get into what color
Speaker 1: quarks are, because apparently quarks also have color in addition
Speaker 1: to spin, which they have neither of. But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Quarks also have colors. You guys
Speaker 1: give colors to quirks, And so this one you're telling
Speaker 1: me is a little bit more more than just poetic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this one really does convey something about how
Speaker 1: the property works. The relationships that hasn't really makes the
Speaker 1: more sense if you think about in terms of color,
Speaker 1: and this relates to how the quirks interact with each other.
Speaker 1: I remember that these corks are bound together inside a
Speaker 1: proton or inside a neutron, And you might ask, like
Speaker 1: what holds them together? And you're probably familiar with thinking
Speaker 1: about electromagnetism, Like electrons are negative and protons are positive,
Speaker 1: and so they feel these forces. That's will hold the
Speaker 1: atoms together. Well, what holds a proton and neutron together
Speaker 1: is a totally different force. It's the strong nuclear force, right,
Speaker 1: and so, and the strong nuclear force is one of
Speaker 1: the four frontamental forces. Right, there's other big forces that
Speaker 1: make particles push and pull on each other. That's right.
Speaker 1: We have gravity, we have electromagnetism, we have the strong
Speaker 1: nuclear force, and we have the weak nuclear force. And
Speaker 1: actually we've already combined the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism.
Speaker 1: So you can think of it as three sometimes. But
Speaker 1: strong is is its own? Yeah, um, strong is it?
Speaker 1: All this time? I've been saying for you're like decades
Speaker 1: behind the time, man, you should like talk to a
Speaker 1: particle in I think I read that in a book
Speaker 1: that we wrote, Daniel. I think I added a footnote
Speaker 1: with that caveat somewhere in that book. Um, yes, it's
Speaker 1: called the electroc Week because it turns out that the
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force and electromagnetism are really just two sides
Speaker 1: of the same coin. That's fascinating. It actually has connected
Speaker 1: to the Higgs boson, which is also really interesting, but
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that on another podcast. But the strong
Speaker 1: nuclear force stands apart because first of all, it's really strong,
Speaker 1: but also has this really weird property, unlike electromagnetism, which
Speaker 1: can be like positive or negative. So there's two different
Speaker 1: charges there. Um, the strong nuclear force has three different charges, right,
Speaker 1: And I just want to add a footnote here that
Speaker 1: I actually agree with the naming criteria you have here
Speaker 1: and that you called it the strong nuclear force because
Speaker 1: it's strong. Like that's a that's simplicity I can stand behind.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'll let people know that this one has
Speaker 1: your seal of approval, The NAMERA has approved it. Not
Speaker 1: official yet, you're still the unofficial namer. Right, let's not
Speaker 1: jump the gun. But yeah, I'm working on it. I'm
Speaker 1: getting the paperwork through. Um. Yes, this wrong nuclear force
Speaker 1: has these three different kinds of charges, and you might
Speaker 1: be thinking three that's weird, like this positive and negative?
Speaker 1: What else could there be? Not zero? Right? But there's
Speaker 1: three different non zero charges, and so instead of having
Speaker 1: just sort of one axis with positive and negative, you
Speaker 1: have to have sort of a weirder image in your
Speaker 1: mind because there's three different directions you can go from
Speaker 1: zero instead of two. And by charges you mean like
Speaker 1: you know, if it's if it's the electromagnetic force, you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm minus in your minus, we're going to repel
Speaker 1: each other. Right, So it's kind of like what the
Speaker 1: terms would never happened? Man, that would never happen? Which
Speaker 1: part that you were both negative when we're repelling each other,
Speaker 1: because I'm pretty sure we're pretty negative. Suppose well, as
Speaker 1: long as one of us is positive, it will all
Speaker 1: work out. Um, But yes, exactly, two negatives repel each
Speaker 1: other and too positives repel each other. But if so,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like a label, you know, like
Speaker 1: it determines what this force is going to do to
Speaker 1: the two of us. Yes, exactly, it's just like a
Speaker 1: label and an electromagnetism. There's two possible labels, positive or negative,
Speaker 1: and as you said, um, the same labels repel and
Speaker 1: opposite labels attract, but in Quinn, in the strong nuclear force,
Speaker 1: there are three different labels, and the math is kind
Speaker 1: of weird. Like if you have um particles that have
Speaker 1: all three labels and you bring them together, they cancel out,
Speaker 1: just like if you have an electromagnetism, you have a
Speaker 1: positive and negative, you bring them together, they cancel out
Speaker 1: to zero. In in the strong nuclear force, you need
Speaker 1: one of each of these three different charges to bring
Speaker 1: them together to get zero. So quarks. When it comes
Speaker 1: to the strong nuclear force, then you can be one
Speaker 1: of three things. And these three things are called color.
Speaker 1: That's right, we call them color. We call them red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue. And the idea is that that not having
Speaker 1: a color is called white, right, or colorless. The idea
Speaker 1: is that if you add red, green, and blue together,
Speaker 1: you get white. And so it's try to describe the
Speaker 1: mathematics of that, right, this weird business where you need
Speaker 1: one of each of the three things together to cancel
Speaker 1: it all out to get back to zero. The other
Speaker 1: thing that's like that in our world is color. But wait,
Speaker 1: let's like a step back and maybe let me understand
Speaker 1: this a little bit. So if I'm, for example, if
Speaker 1: I'm one kind of strong charge. Like if I'm red
Speaker 1: and you're blue, what does that mean between the two
Speaker 1: of us, are were going to repel each other or
Speaker 1: attract each other? We're definitely gonna attract each other. Okay,
Speaker 1: what if I'm like blue and you're green, then we'll
Speaker 1: attract each other? Like what are the rules there between
Speaker 1: the three? Right? And I see where you're going that
Speaker 1: you want to make this comparison with electrons and protons
Speaker 1: and understand this, Like in terms of attraction and repulsion,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But the strong force is just a
Speaker 1: different kind of beast. It's so powerful that anytime two
Speaker 1: corks get near each other, any two colored objects, the
Speaker 1: energy between them generates more quarks and gluons and other
Speaker 1: colored stuff until they can combine to get something color neutral.
Speaker 1: And it's different from electromagnetism in another important way. See
Speaker 1: the particle that carries the electromagnetic force, the photon. It's neutral, right,
Speaker 1: It doesn't carry a charge itself, So the electron it
Speaker 1: can emit a photon and still be negatively charged. It
Speaker 1: doesn't change the charge of the electron to emit that
Speaker 1: photon because the photon is neutral. But the particle that
Speaker 1: carries a strong force, the gluon. It's not neutral. It
Speaker 1: carries two different colors. So what does that mean. It
Speaker 1: means that if a red cork emits a gluon, it
Speaker 1: changes the color of the cork. So it's like if
Speaker 1: an electron emits a photon and then becomes an anti
Speaker 1: electron or something else with a different charge anyway, So
Speaker 1: for for the color force, it's not as simple as
Speaker 1: saying two red corks can attract or repel. What happens
Speaker 1: is that is that they interact like crazy, changing colors
Speaker 1: and shooting gluons everywhere until there's the right combination like
Speaker 1: red plus green plus blue to become color neutral or white.
Speaker 1: That's the only way the strong force is happy, the
Speaker 1: only way you can chill out. But you're saying something
Speaker 1: weird happens when you when there's a you know, there's
Speaker 1: three of us, and I think this is a safer
Speaker 1: work podcast here, So let's get into what happens the
Speaker 1: analogies for three. We're not advocating any of these arrangements
Speaker 1: in your personal life, right, what are you doing there?
Speaker 1: Or hey, you're using an analogy to get people to
Speaker 1: understand it. Right, you're like making trying to avoid this
Speaker 1: is children listen to this podcast. You're trying to avoid
Speaker 1: a very obvious and useful analogy. So let's say there's
Speaker 1: three kids who want to play together, and they're all
Speaker 1: different charges. You're saying something weird happens, like all the
Speaker 1: kids will want to attract each other because they're all
Speaker 1: different and together together, they have no charge, just like
Speaker 1: if a proton and electron attract each other and they
Speaker 1: form a bound state, then from the outside they have
Speaker 1: no charge, Like that's hydrogen. Hydrogen has no net electric charge.
Speaker 1: If you bring together a red cork, a blue cork,
Speaker 1: and a green cork, that together they have no charge,
Speaker 1: no color charge. And that's what a proton and a
Speaker 1: neutron are. Their color lists, but they have colored things
Speaker 1: inside them. But those things cancel out, so a pleasant
Speaker 1: a minded you saying cancels out to like if I
Speaker 1: get a proton and an electron together, they they add
Speaker 1: up to zero. Basically they become nobody wants to be
Speaker 1: attracted or repelled by the Exactly, they're like a married couple.
Speaker 1: They're invisible in the dating scene. And in the same
Speaker 1: way if for color, if you bring together one of
Speaker 1: each of the charges, except now there's three red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue. Then you get something which has no colored charge. Right,
Speaker 1: it's colorless. It doesn't. It's neutral from the point of
Speaker 1: view of the strong nuclear force. Okay, but what if
Speaker 1: I just get a red and a blue together. What
Speaker 1: happens then? Then it still has a charge which charge
Speaker 1: red and blue. Yeah, it's a combination of red and blue,
Speaker 1: and it will will be a glue on Those things
Speaker 1: will emit a gluon, and gluons carry two different colors.
Speaker 1: The map gets pretty hairy, but they will attract a
Speaker 1: green cork, and if they can successfully attract a green cork,
Speaker 1: then it will be neutral. So they like being in threes. Yes,
Speaker 1: because the strong nuclear force is so powerful that nature
Speaker 1: tries to make everything have no net color because things,
Speaker 1: because it's so powerful than anything that has color automatically
Speaker 1: just like creates particles out of the vacuum to balance
Speaker 1: that color out. Because there's so much energy in the
Speaker 1: strong nuclear force. And that's why we can't see quirks
Speaker 1: on their own, because they have a cork color and
Speaker 1: there's so much energy in that color, in that that
Speaker 1: colored field that it pulls um new corks out of
Speaker 1: the vacuum to balance it out. So that's what happens.
Speaker 1: If I get a red and a blue together, like
Speaker 1: a green will magically appear, not magically scientifically, poetically, a
Speaker 1: green will disappear. Yeah, the energy of their interaction will
Speaker 1: get converted into the mass of another cork, and then
Speaker 1: it will be complete. And then it will be complete. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it'll stop generating new particles out of the
Speaker 1: vacuum because that it will be colorless. But there's another way.
Speaker 1: There's another way you can be colorless. Like if you're
Speaker 1: a red cork, then if you meet up with an
Speaker 1: anti red cork, Like you know, corks have anti particles,
Speaker 1: right quarks and antiquarks, well, antiquarks have anti color. So
Speaker 1: red and anti red together make white, and then what
Speaker 1: happens to them They disappear or what you know? They
Speaker 1: can form bound states. And we have particles that have
Speaker 1: just two corks in them. They're called like pions. Pions
Speaker 1: are examples of like an up cork and an anti
Speaker 1: up cork bound together. That only works if that cork
Speaker 1: is like green and the other one is anti green
Speaker 1: or blue and anti blue or red and anti red.
Speaker 1: I thought antimatter when you touch it would matter if
Speaker 1: they annihilate and explode. It can yeah, but it can
Speaker 1: also form bound states. This book we read is totally wrong.
Speaker 1: Daniel turns out there's a whole field behind that, right,
Speaker 1: just scratch the surface um in the same way that
Speaker 1: you know, like positive negative charges can annihilate, but they
Speaker 1: can also form bound states like hydrogen right, just the
Speaker 1: same way. Like two things that feel gravity, like the
Speaker 1: Earth and the Moon feel gravity towards each other, but
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily automatically crash because there's so much energy
Speaker 1: in the Moon's orbit that it's stable. Right, So even
Speaker 1: even though there are there are forces between them that
Speaker 1: want to pull the Earth and the Moon together, the
Speaker 1: Moon is in a stable orbit. In the same way
Speaker 1: electrons can be in a stable orbit around a proton
Speaker 1: even though there's a force pulling them together. And up
Speaker 1: corks and anti upcorks can form stable particles together. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the point is that you're that you're trying
Speaker 1: to make is that because when you have three cores
Speaker 1: of the different flavors and you bring them together, they
Speaker 1: sort of cancel each other out. That's sort of like
Speaker 1: different colors. You're saying, that's sort of like when you
Speaker 1: get color, like real like a like a red light
Speaker 1: and a blue light and a green light, you're going
Speaker 1: to see that as a white light exactly exactly it's
Speaker 1: it should work the same. I mean, I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert on color. I defer to you as the artist. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's the idea that the math of cork color,
Speaker 1: the way they add up, is very similar to the
Speaker 1: math of these real color, the colors of light. And
Speaker 1: so that's why they named it color. Not because these
Speaker 1: corks actually look like anything. Red corks are not redder
Speaker 1: than than green corks, but that the math of how
Speaker 1: color works when you put them together is very similar
Speaker 1: to the math of or how we think about how
Speaker 1: light adds up the color of light. Okay, so that
Speaker 1: does seem um more appropriately poetic maybe is the word
Speaker 1: for it, but I mean it is still it is
Speaker 1: still I would say a little suspicious to name a
Speaker 1: phenomenon in physics using an analogy from another phenomenon in physics,
Speaker 1: which is how light of different frequencies mixed together and
Speaker 1: get processed by our eyeballs. You know what I mean,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Yeah, absolutely, But I think
Speaker 1: this one there was some poetry there I really do
Speaker 1: appreciate because when I was learning about this for the
Speaker 1: first time as a graduate student, the analogy of color
Speaker 1: really did help me understand it. I thought, oh, it
Speaker 1: really is light color. That's pretty cool, and so it
Speaker 1: helped me understand it. And then I went further and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe there is a deeper connection, because
Speaker 1: sometimes when being are similar in the mathematical structure mimics
Speaker 1: each other, then there really is a deeper connection. Like
Speaker 1: with spin, right, we talked about how intrinsic spin is
Speaker 1: really another kind of orbital angular momentum um. There really
Speaker 1: is a connection there, But in this case, I don't
Speaker 1: think there is. I don't think there's really anything any
Speaker 1: connection between quirk color and photon frequency that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: It's just a helpful guide for building the construct in
Speaker 1: your mind, because I think that the combination of red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue to make white is really just a human
Speaker 1: perception thing, right, Like, like if you actually take a
Speaker 1: photon that's red and a photon that's green and a
Speaker 1: photon that's blue, they're not gonna suddenly become another photon
Speaker 1: that's white. Color because there is no white frequency. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's a product of like of how your
Speaker 1: eyes sees color, right, all right, So then that means
Speaker 1: quarks do sort of have a color. They don't really
Speaker 1: have a flavor flavor, but they do sort of have
Speaker 1: some something that is sort of like color. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And it's so weird and so odd that it really
Speaker 1: is helpful to draw on something familiar, to say, this
Speaker 1: new property of of particles we've never seen before is
Speaker 1: weird and bizarre and strange, but we have something familiar,
Speaker 1: um that you can use to base your understanding on.
Speaker 1: And I think that's pretty helpful. So those are quarks
Speaker 1: and flavors. Now here's a question though, Can you have
Speaker 1: a red raspberry? Like technically you could have a like
Speaker 1: a red cork. Can be different flavors, Yes, that's true.
Speaker 1: You can have red top corks or red upcorks or
Speaker 1: red charmp corks. For sure. You can have red raspberry
Speaker 1: or red blueberry. I mean I were totally mixing enough
Speaker 1: a red strawberry, I don't know a red blueberry cord. Well,
Speaker 1: they have blue raspberry, right, That's a thing I never
Speaker 1: understood that I mean, there are red blackberries and black
Speaker 1: raspberries and black and red blackberries, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean we should get on the biologists because they
Speaker 1: can name those berries pretty confusingly. Also, well, I think
Speaker 1: the the overall conclusion is that scientists maybe should have
Speaker 1: been charged with namean things not without adult supervision at least. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope that there's that question for the people who
Speaker 1: wrote in with that UM asking for that explanation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think people were reading about corks and seeing this
Speaker 1: thing with flower flavors and colors and wondering what does
Speaker 1: that really mean? And I think on the whole it's
Speaker 1: confusing if you don't understand the technical aspect of it,
Speaker 1: because it makes people think of the familiar flavor and
Speaker 1: color that that they have in their mind already. But
Speaker 1: once you dig into a little bit, you start to
Speaker 1: appreciate UM. If you if you think of it as
Speaker 1: just sort of a placeholder or a guide for how
Speaker 1: to think about this, you can appreciate what the physicists
Speaker 1: we're trying to do. But on the whole, I think
Speaker 1: these physics words borrowed from other concepts are more confusing
Speaker 1: than they are helpful for the for the beginning student
Speaker 1: or the person just reading about a topic. So that's
Speaker 1: the lesson. If physics confuses you, take a class um.
Speaker 1: Maybe pop won't confuse you as much. All right, everyone,
Speaker 1: And if you have a question about particles or the
Speaker 1: universe or something else really weird and strange and you'd
Speaker 1: like us to explain it to you and show you
Speaker 1: how maybe physicists are not totally insane and crazy, write
Speaker 1: us and ask us to explain your question to feedback
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com and promise we'll answer
Speaker 1: with charm and strange. Some days our conversation goes up
Speaker 1: and sometimes it goes down. All right, Thanks for tuning in,
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