WEBVTT - How quarks were discovered? 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:11.080 Hey, Daniel, tell me a good physics story. Oh you 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.000 came to the right place. Okay, but don't tell me 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:15.680 you said a story about amazing physics. I want something 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:19.799 with drama, because like the universe isn't dramatic enough for you. 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:22.119 I mean I want a story with like intrigue and 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:27.040 sabotage and conflict and you know, people fighting and you know, revolutions. Oh, 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:30.080 I see you want like Jason Bourne in a lab coat. Yeah, 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.159 you know, don't you look like Matt Damon or Tom Cruise. 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.800 You can make a movie called Thesis Impossible. All right, 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:39.720 you asked for it. I have got a juicy story 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:58.640 for you. Hi, I am more handmad cartoonist and the 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.080 creator of PhD comment. Hi, I'm Daniel Whitson. I'm a 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.800 particle physicist, and I like to imagine that my dramatic 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.760 life would be well adapted to a telenovelt with a 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:11.280 lot of twists and turns and evil twins. Twin particles. 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:13.480 I guess there are twin particles and physics, there are 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:15.920 twin that we don't know which ones are good and 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.800 which ones we could be the evil twins, that's right, 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:22.280 And lots of dramatic revelations that your advisor has other 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:28.000 grad students you didn't even know about. Well, Welcome to 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:31.399 our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe, a production 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:33.319 of I Heart Radio, in which we take you on 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.959 a tour of all the drama in the universe, the 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:40.039 black holes, the neutron stars, that tiny particles, the discovery 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.399 of those particles, and try to make you understand what 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.480 scientists are thinking about, what people on the very forefront 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:50.600 of human understanding are puzzling over today. Yeah, because we 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.080 like to talk about all the amazing things out there 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.360 to discover and all the things that we have discovered, 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:58.320 and sometimes we like to talk about how we discovered 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.320 these things, because you know, sometimes the store is pretty 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.280 dramatic or you know, interesting, or tells us a little 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:06.360 bit about how signs were. That's right, because you can 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:08.360 look back at history and say, oh, if I had 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:11.079 been around, I would have discovered the electron. Or it's 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:13.840 pretty simple actually to figure out what the photon is, 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:17.080 and it's a quantum mechanical object. But when you're standing there, 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.160 I think you might be alone there, then yeah, I 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:22.160 would sit around thinking, you know, I could have discovered 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.600 the electronic Hey, Einstein when the Nobel Prize for interpreting 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.920 other people's experiments that were already published. It's like, you know, 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.360 sit around for an afternoon, read some papers, boom, Nobel Prize, 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.079 Noel change the course of history. So if you know 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:36.640 how to do it, if you know where to go, 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.359 it's pretty straightforward. But when you're standing at the forefront 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:42.880 of human ignorance and you don't know what the solution is, 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.400 it's much more complicated. So I think it's really worthwhile 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:48.680 rewinding our understanding and remembering, like what were people thinking 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:50.919 at the moment, What were the questions they were asking, 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.079 what was confusing, what was simple? What were the ideas 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.240 of the time. I think what you're saying, Daniel, is 0:02:56.280 --> 0:03:00.080 that there's a fine line between a thought experiment and 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.080 just making stuff that's right. And that's why I prefer 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.239 to do real experiments in the collider and actually ask 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.320 nature questions. All right, Well, today on the program will 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:14.280 be continuing our series about how particles weren't discovered? You know, 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:16.880 particles and things that matter and all the things in 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.360 the universe are made out of How did we actually 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:21.800 discover these things and know that they existed and know 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.239 what they look like, and know how much they weigh 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:26.359 and what they would like to wear in the morning. 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:29.480 I don't even know how to respond to did that. 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:32.400 I'm imagining a photon getting dressed or something. But but 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.960 I think this is really fascinating because currently we have 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.760 fantastic theoretical understanding of all the particles, how they fit together, 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:42.520 what they are, and of course lots of outstanding questions. 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:45.400 But there's a wonderful history there. Each particle is like 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.320 a hard fought victory. Each one was like, how do 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.480 we figure out that this particle is also there? And 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.559 you know, in the end, our theory has to describe experiments. 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.520 We've developed a theory in order to describe all the 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.720 crazy experiments that we've seen that review of the existence 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:03.040 of those partners. So it's a lot of fun to 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.480 to sort of reimagine and understand how each one was discovered, 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.080 because you know, I think that looking at history now 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:10.640 and looking at it science now, it's kind of hard 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:13.080 to believe sometimes that there was a time where we 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:15.640 didn't know anything. We didn't know any of these things. 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.640 We didn't know that electronic existed, or protons existent, or 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.800 protons existed, or what they wore in the morning, and 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:23.599 so it's it's kind of interesting to kind of put 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:26.480 yourself in the mindset of the people who didn't know anything, 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:30.640 but they discovered what actually reality is like absolutely, And 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.600 it gives you another fun exercise, which is to imagine 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.200 somebody in a hundred years, how would they look back 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.000 at what we know now. They will have hopefully a 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:41.359 grasp of, you know, the shape, the size of the 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.279 universe and why it's accelerating, and maybe what the smallest 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:46.120 particles are, and they'll look back at us and they'll 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:48.640 be like, oh my gosh, those guys knew nothing about 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:50.720 the universe. How did they even go to work? They 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:55.120 were making stuff off on podcasts? And I like to 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.080 think of, you know, human knowledge is one of these 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.760 exponentially growing graphs, and at every point it seems like, 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:02.320 why we know a hundred times what we knew fifty 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.080 years ago, and then in fifty years we will again 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:08.040 dwarf human knowledge. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:11.560 I'm looking forward to being dwarfed. There are positive exponential graphs, 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:15.719 not just negative ones. So we've done this podcast episode 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.960 on electrons and positrons and photons and muons, and so 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:22.040 did they. On the program, we'll be asking the question 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.680 our quarks discovered. Is this a quirky story, Daniel? You know, 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.080 this is one of the most dramatic stories in all 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.760 of particle physics. There really are crazy things in these stories. 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:41.960 You know. There is sabotage, There are competing public announcements, 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.240 There are arguments about how to name particles. There are 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.960 stories about leaked information being slipped from one experiment to 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:54.760 the other. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. No, there is real drama. 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:58.600 I mean, I'm waiting for the six episode mini series 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:02.920 on Netflix about this. Said of the murder explosions, Now 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:07.480 we didn't get that far. That's right, Tiger Kings becomes 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:12.760 particle kings. Oh, I see, like the true crime. That 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:16.240 could be the new genre of Netflix true physics. But 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:18.640 as usually, we were wondering how many people out there 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:23.039 know the story of how courts were invented because you know, 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:26.760 quarks and just a quick recap, there are the mini particles, Dad, 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:29.279 everything else is kind of made out of most of 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.320 everything else, protons and neutrons are made out of quarks, 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.520 and so these are pretty fundamental particles, right, Daniel. They're 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:37.920 not just like you know some novelty butts, right, They're 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:39.599 not just some random thing you pick up in the 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.920 store on the way home and then throw away unused. 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.039 There are the things that make up me and you. 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:47.680 I am made out of atoms, and those atoms have 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.680 neutrons and protons at the center, and all those neutrons 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:53.760 and protons are made of quarks. And all the matter 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:57.240 that you've ever tasted and touched and tripped over or 0:06:57.320 --> 0:06:59.839 thrown at each other is made of quarks and electrons. 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:02.400 So they're pretty important. So, as Daniel does, he went 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:04.440 out into the streets and ask people if they knew 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.080 how corks were discovered. Now, as usually, we'll think about 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.640 it for a second, then put yourself a hundred years ago, 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.280 and as yourself if you know how corks were discovered. 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.680 Here's what people had to say. Some scientists in the 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:21.520 colder found it. Uh. I don't actually don't know how 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.440 they were discovered. You know, I've been learned about that. 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:29.120 Was it m colectron cloud chamber or something. No, that's 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:31.960 not the quirks. That's for something else, that's like positrons 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:36.960 or something using a particle accelerator. I don't know all right, 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.679 that's cool. I don't even know what they are, so 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:45.120 I just discovered by the inclusion of items. I mean much, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:48.239 I don't I don't remember the name of the machine, 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.560 but this clusion of particles, all right. Not a lot 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:54.680 of deep knowledge of history of physics in the public, No, 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.640 not so much. There's some pretty good answers here, like 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.120 the guy who knows how positive arms were discus were 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:04.000 in cloud chambers. And you know, people giving credit to 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:06.680 the Hadron collider, which is, you know, not too far 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.400 off the certainly we're discovered in collisions. Interesting, so you know, 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.000 some knowledges. It seems like some people thought of courts 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.920 were discovered recently, like the LHC. You know, this thing 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:19.040 is twenty years old, tops and the quarks we've known 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.640 about since the sixties and seventies, so it definitely was 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.000 not the large Hadron Collider responsible for discovering corks. And 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.040 I'm just curious here, how did you get these questions? 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:29.680 Did you go out into the street before the pandemic 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:31.640 or or during the pandemic? Do you have now like 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:35.800 a six foot selfie stick with a microphone? I, shockingly, 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:38.080 I actually work on these things kind of far in 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.120 advance so that I'm prepared for a PANDAMA. I have 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.600 a stockpile of questions. I have asked people on the street. 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:48.520 I see you have a federal stockpile, the National Strategic Reserve, 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.200 A random questions. All right, good, So people were still 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:54.480 feeling optimistic about signs. All right, it seems like not 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:56.760 a lot of people know the stories, and you're saying 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.080 that it's full of drama and interesting twist and turns. 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.680 So tell us story, Daniel said the scene. What was 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:03.920 it like back then? And what year are we talking about? 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:08.040 So let me take you back to seven, A dramatic world, 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:13.000 A cold winter blew into Chicago. Now you have to 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.560 sort of rewind back to before the clues were found 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.680 for quarks, and back in seven, we actually had a 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.160 pretty clear picture we thought of how the universe looked. 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.400 We felt like we knew things were mandat of Adams 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.160 and Adams were manat of some bits inside. Yeah, we 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.360 knew there were atoms, and we knew those atoms had 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:35.240 protons and neutrons and electrons. We also knew they were photons. 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:37.640 And we felt like, hey, that's a pretty good picture 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:39.320 of the universe. And I think a lot of people 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:41.840 in physics felt like that might be it, Like maybe 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:44.440 you know, we're coming up to the last end of 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:46.920 the road and we're gonna answer all the questions, and 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.439 that's going to give us a sort of last sense 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:51.840 for what the universe has meant. There can't be anything 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:54.400 smaller than these particles. These are it. These are the 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.719 basic building blocks of life, the universe and everything in it. 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.920 That's right, But of course there were a few lo threads, right, 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.360 There are a few things which didn't quite fit into 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.920 that picture. And that's a lesson. Right, every time there's 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.680 a little loose thread, one thing that doesn't quite fit 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:12.360 into the hole you wanted to, you should pull on 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.360 that thread, you should mix that. Metaphor, until you figure 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:17.520 out the secret of the universe, you should just ignore it, 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:22.280 repress it. And some of those those threads were things 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:25.720 like muans. Like remember we talked about how muans were discovered, 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.000 and when they were first found, people were like, what, who, 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:30.360 what are that? We don't need those muans. They're not 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:32.840 part of the atoms. They're just particles that seemed to 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.839 have been there, but they weren't part of regular matter exactly. 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:39.320 That was the kind of clue we're talking about. And 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.320 there were other particles like pions that were found in 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:44.800 cosmic rays and people are like, hum, what are these 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:48.000 particles about? We don't need them to build matter. Interesting, 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.880 but they can't exist. Why do they even exist? What's 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.840 the idea? And so you see them, but they're they're 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.240 not part of most of things. So I guess that's 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:58.200 a weird thing, right, It's a pretty weird thing, but 0:10:58.280 --> 0:10:59.960 it also gives you a clue. It gives you a 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.640 clue for like what kind of particles can be out there? 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.240 And in the end, remember, what you're looking for is 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.200 an answer to the deepest question right to understand, like 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:11.880 the nature of reality. So you want the full menu. 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.800 And those few little threads then turned into I don't 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.559 know what's the metaphor here, a whole rug, I suppose, 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.160 or a whole pile of yarm, giant haystack, the giant 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:25.800 haystack because originally we had these weird, unstable particles muans 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.079 and pions just from looking them come down from the 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.560 sky and cosmic rays. But then people built particle accelerators. 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:34.880 They weren't satisfied just to sort of look at high 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.320 energy particles that we already found in nature. They wanted 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:39.920 to create their own collisions to explore these things with 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.920 more control. So people build particle accept smash things in 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.160 front of them, not just wait wait till they come 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:49.280 reigining down. Yeah, you want to do it on your terms. 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:50.840 You know, you want to have control. I want to say, 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:52.240 I want to turn up the energy, I want to 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:54.320 turn down the energy. I want to call this kind 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:56.040 of particle that kind of particle, right, I want to 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:57.520 see what it feels like when I stick my hand 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:01.680 into it. I mean, that's a basic reiosity, right. Um. 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.960 And so what they found when they built these accelerators 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.040 was a whole lot of new particles. They found kaons 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:11.960 and strange particles and all sorts of stuff. We talked 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.439 a little bit about strange matter on the program recently. 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:17.960 And this is an era we call the particle zoo 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.480 because basically, every time they turned on the accelerator they 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:23.600 found some new party. Did you guys have a theme 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:30.640 song jingle like particles particle zoo ra Welcome to our 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.280 particles Zoo. Yeah, so I guess you didn't have particle accelerators. 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.679 But he thought, hey, let's see what else happened when 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:38.920 things smashed together, because that's I guess that's what you 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:41.520 knew was happening in the atmosphere. Yeah, we had a 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.160 sense that these things needed more energy. Right, These unstable 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.600 particles were heavier, meaning that they contained more energy, and 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.719 then they decayed down to lighter particles. To to try 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.400 to create new heavy particles, you want to create localized 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.079 energy density. You want to smash two particles together, so 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:00.560 you've got a little like blob of energy right there, 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:03.600 maybe enough to create something new. And so that's what 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.400 these first particle accelerators did was create these high energy 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.559 density situations where you could create these new particles. And 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.200 we found zillions and zillions of these because at this 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.600 point you sort of new about equals mc square and 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.360 then you knew that you know, things can matter can 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:20.920 come from pure energy. That's right, you can create new matter. 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:22.880 It's I mean, it's alchemy, right. People have been trying 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.800 to do this for thousands of years, and we actually 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.480 were able to do it. By smashing particles together at 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:31.240 high energy. You can create new kinds of matter and 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.000 that's exciting, right, like wow, Look, every time you turn 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:35.800 it on, you create a new particle and then you 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:37.840 get to name it after your puppy or whatever. But 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.760 it's also continge name it after their puppy. I don't 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:43.839 have a record of that. No, Back in that day, 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.280 they were mostly naming them after Greek letters, so you 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.400 got lots of you know, sigmas and theatas and upsilons 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:51.960 and this kind of stuff. But it was also confusing. 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:55.520 Maybe they named their puppies after it's probably lots of 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.920 puppies named upsilon and data. But you know, once you're 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.679 once you sort of your even satisfied you've created all 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:03.880 these new particles, then you're looking at it and you're 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:06.720 looking for patterns. You're like, Okay, why are there these 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.880 particles and not other particles? What does this mean about 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.000 the nature of the universe? Like how are they related? Yeah, 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.800 because we don't want an answer that says, oh, there's 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:19.520 ninety two different kind of fundamental particles, right, we suspect 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.280 that the answer is a small number of particles. We 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.480 want to explain the whole universe using a small set 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:28.200 of pieces, right, like the legos. We want to build 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:32.680 everything out of a small number of basic blocks seventy 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:34.840 four And we often talk about how we had the 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:37.520 periodic table of elements, and how that was kind of 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:39.280 something that told us that when you have a lot 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:41.480 of these things out there in the universe, there's probably 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.640 some kind of pattern or some kind of underlying building 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:47.760 block to them. Yeah, every time you see unexplained phenomena, 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:52.240 weird patterns, trends you don't understand, it's probably an emergent 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:55.480 phenomenon from the arrangement of smaller bits. Just like in 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:58.080 the periodic table. You see all these patterns, and that 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:00.400 tells you that there's something else go going on, And 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.680 you're absolutely right. Every feature of the periodic table comes 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:08.280 from how the electrons sit in their orbitals around the nucleus, 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:11.400 and so people suspected They're like, well, maybe all these 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:15.320 new crazy particles we found are reflective of something smaller, 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.520 something tinier, and all these patterns that masters these particles 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.120 in the way they interact come from how those little 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:24.720 bits are fit together. That was sort of the nugget 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:27.200 of the idea. And so they found a pattern, right, 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:30.120 and all of these particles in the particle zoo, They're like, 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:32.440 wait a minute, the lions are sort of like smaller 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.360 versions of the elephants, and the zeros are sort of 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:37.800 have four legs, just like the lines kind of thing. Yeah, 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.280 so we had a decade of discovering new particles and 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:43.840 then in nineteen sixty one, a theorist came up with 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.840 an idea. He said, well, I noticed that if I 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:51.040 categorize the particles in two ways, one by their electric 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:55.120 charge and the other way by their strangeness. And remember, 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.000 some of these particles are strange in the sense that 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:00.680 they last a lot longer than you would expect. And 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.320 you can listen to our whole podcast episode about strangeness. 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:07.120 And so people postulated this new property of particles strangeness, 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:09.960 and they give particles strangeness zero like the proton and 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:13.280 the neutron, or strangeness one, or strangeness too, And then 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:15.760 they just made a table and meaning like, it's strange 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.400 because given how massive it is, how munched ways, it 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:22.200 shouldn't be around this lng like kNs last a lot 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:24.880 longer than you would expect, and the reason is that 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.400 they have strangeness. Then the universe likes to preserve strangeness, 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:30.680 so it tries to find a way for the kon 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:34.200 to dec to keep the strangeness into the products, and 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:37.760 that takes longer. It's a weaker interaction. But protons are 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:39.880 pretty stable, and they're supposed to be stable, so they 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.360 have zero strange protons have no Now we know that 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.280 strangeness actually reflects the strange quarks inside of it, but 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:46.920 at the time they didn't know. They were just like, 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.680 this is a property, these particles, and a lot of 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:53.000 particle physics, it's just like writing down properties we observe 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:56.240 and wondering where they come from, and wondering if we 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.040 can see patterns and then explain those patterns in terms 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:01.800 of something deeper. And so at the time, you know, 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:04.239 they knew the charge of these particles, they could measure that, 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:07.120 and they had sort of invented this idea of strangeness 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:10.080 just by observing how the particles decayed and labeling them 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.199 strangeness one, strangeness zero. And then they noticed this pattern. 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.040 They called it the eightfold way because they noticed that 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.639 if you arrange the particles according to strangeness versus charge, 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.840 that they formed these octagons, right, and they formed these 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:28.240 triangles and all these really interesting geometric patterns. All right, 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:31.280 So they found a bunch of particles and they found 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:36.080 a pattern maybe a clue to what all these particles. Yeah, 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.399 and they found these geometric patterns and that suggested to 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.320 them that, like, you know, maybe there's something going on here, 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:44.280 maybe there's a reason for all these patterns. And the 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:46.879 theorist that came up with this eightfold way found a 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.720 hole in those patterns, like there was one triangle that 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:52.760 was missing a corner and said, okay, well, maybe there's 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.439 a particle there. You would have to have this strangeness 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.679 and this charge to be in that corner, and he 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:00.480 predicted its existence and then they found it, like, oh, 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.399 you were right, this new particle does exist. So that 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.760 was the first clue that maybe this pattern really reflected 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.960 something because it wasn't just imaginary, like they weren't just 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:15.120 imagining things. You could actually find particles using these patterns. Yeah, 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:17.159 just like with the periodic table. We started putting it 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:19.639 together and we noticed some holes and we're like, where's 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:23.000 this element number or whatever that we don't see in nature. 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.080 It turns out, you know, it does exist. You can 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:28.159 create it. It's just very unstable. In the same way, 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:30.760 they were able to fill out these triangles and these 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.800 octagons of the eightfold way. All right, Well, let's get 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.920 into what this pattern actually meant or means and how 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.639 it helped them make sense of the particle zoo as 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:56.040 far as let's take a quick break, all right. You know, 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.000 so they found a bunch of particles and they saw 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:00.720 that there was some kind of pattern to the meaning 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:03.040 that there is something going on here. Yeah. Yeah. Every 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.920 time you see a pattern, that's your first clue because 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:08.400 it lets you sort of play games with what's going 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:11.679 on underneath. Right, you want to find some way to 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.600 explain a very complicated set of things. You've observed ninety 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:19.280 two different particles with all weird masses and behaviors in 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:22.600 terms of a smaller set of objects, And so finding 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:24.840 that pattern gave them a clue as to how to 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:26.879 put that together. And so they came up with the 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:30.320 idea that maybe there are even smaller particles that kind 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.040 of put together to make these bigger parties. Yes, exactly, 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:35.600 And that's sort of the idea that particle physicists are 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.320 always looking to write, like everything is made of smaller bits. 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.320 That's like the oldest idea in particle physics. And so 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:43.760 they thought, well, we have all these particles, can we 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:46.000 explain them in terms of smaller bits, right, They're like, 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:50.360 we're particle physics. You only have particles, right, that's right, 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:52.679 that's our hands. Like when you have a particle, everything 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:55.440 looks like a particle. T that's our hammers. So everything's 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:59.200 the nail exactly. And this idea actually came up independently 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:02.760 by two different theorists, and they came up with the 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:06.879 same idea that there could be these three little particles that, 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.760 if you put them together in different combinations, explain all 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.000 the particles that we see, but not all of them, right, 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.720 Like some of them like the muan. Isn't the muon 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:17.080 kind of like an electron, it can't be split. Yeah, 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:19.960 they don't explain all those particles, like the muan is 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:24.520 not made of quarks. But all those particles discovered, the 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:28.160 particle zoo, the pions, the chons, the sigma particles, all 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:30.840 those kind of particles. They could explain all these new 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:34.880 ones in terms of these little basic particles. And so 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.920 Murray Gelman came up with this idea and he called 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:40.679 them quarks based on a word that he saw in 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:44.680 a James Joyce novel. And at the same time another 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:48.240 theorist named Zwag came up with exactly the same idea 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.760