WEBVTT - Can you send messages without particles? 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:10.680 Orgey, did you get the outline I sent you for 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.080 this episode? I did, well, I didn't hear back from 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:15.920 you about it. Oh well, I guess you should only 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.080 worry if you do hear bad from me. Oh, that's right, 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.639 I forgot. No reply also means something. Yeah, you know 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.040 what it means. It's all good, or it means I 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:26.760 didn't see your email. Or maybe it means I'll just 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:31.080 reply later. It sounds like a super position of quantum possibilities. 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:34.320 That's right. Yes, I believe in Q mail, not email. 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:38.440 I hope you don't get entangled with your inbox, and 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.080 I am A box is a pretty big quantum mess, 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:43.760 to be honest, maybe one day it will collapse. Well, 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:46.000 you know what they say. I like to wave at 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.360 my emails Estate fly By. I wonder if Schrodinger got email. 0:00:49.760 --> 0:01:07.160 He did and he didn't, right. Hi am worry On 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.160 my cartoonist and the co author of Frequently Asked Questions 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.479 about the Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.039 and a professor at U C Irvine, and I'm gonna 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.960 do my best not to spend most of this podcast chuckling. Yeah, 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.800 you should be explaining things Daniel not laughing. Well, we 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.520 got an email from a listener this morning complaining that 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.120 the chuckle time on the podcast has been going up. 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:30.320 Oh really, am I getting too funny? Is that what 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:32.399 you're saying? Or are you laughing at your own jokes? 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:36.080 I'm not sure. Just too much chuckling overall, more content 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:39.200 less chuckling, I see, more physics, less humor. Yeah, exactly, 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:44.200 stop these spontaneous expressions of fun. Please, boy, you can't 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:46.720 please everybody all the time. Well, we'll try to be 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.520 more serious about it. We'll try, but we'll probably fail. 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:52.279 But anyways, Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:54.960 the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:57.640 we try to be serious about questions of the universe 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.920 and have fun while doing it. We ask the biggest, 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.560 deepest questions about how everything out there works. What, in 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.760 the end are the fundamental rules of reality? Why is 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:11.360 it even possible for us to understand them? Or is it? 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:14.120 Can we import the rules of the universe into our 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:17.679 minds so that they actually make sense to us? On 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:20.440 this podcast we push against that frontier and trying to 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:24.200 make sure that you understand everything that humans do and 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:27.080 do not know about the universe. That's right, because what 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.360 could be more fun than exploring this humongous and complex 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.760 and complicated and amazing universe, And what could be more 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:37.720 chuckleworthy than thinking that us humans can one day understand 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:40.080 all of it. It does seem sometimes like the universe 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:42.480 is playing a big joke on us. It's like, oh, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:44.480 it seems to work this way. If equals m A 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.680 is totally right. No, actually, we were lying. It's a 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.760 completely different set of rules. Are you saying quantum mechanics. 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.600 It's just a big punchline. The whole thing is a 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:56.119 psi op. Man. The universe is trying to psych us out. 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:58.040 Let's see what we can get these humans to believe 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:01.160 crazy stuff like true random nous. Well, you know we 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.560 are part of the universe. Does that mean we're playing 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.720 a joke on ourselves? Mmm? I suppose so, Yes, we 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:11.280 are psyopping ourselves. I mean we're the joke. You have 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:13.040 to say, you're the only one who doesn't get the 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:14.880 joke that jokes on you. As long as I get 0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:16.760 to hear the secrets of the universe, I'm happy if 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:18.760 somebody laughs at me at the same time. But it 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:22.400 isn't interesting and sometimes funny universe because it is so weird. 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.880 Especially Quantum mechanics is this weird theory about the universe. 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.000 It says that things are truly random, and that sometimes 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.600 there are multiple things that are true at the same time. 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:34.200 It is really amazing that we can spend thousands of 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:37.720 years developing an intuition for how the universe works, and 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.040 then a few hundred years describing it mathematically, only to 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.400 discover that at its core, at a deeper level, the 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.120 rules of the universe are completely different, totally foreign to us, 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.400 maybe even alien, and yet those alien rules somehow weave 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.800 themselves together so that at our scale and our experience, 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:58.560 they act in the way that's intuitive to us. It's 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.720 incredible that a difference aales the universe seems to follow 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:05.280 these totally different sets of laws, incongruent ideas about the 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:08.720 very nature of space and time and information, and yet 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.080 they weave themselves together at the interface. It's incredible. Yeah, 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:14.480 are you saying quantum mechanics is just a tiny little joke. 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:18.280 It's only funny in small places. It's like ten to 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.640 the twenty six tiny jokes, which all add up to 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.359 one hilarious chuckle. To one average bland experience of the 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:27.240 universe exactly until the universe collapses on the weight of 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.960 its own puns. But quantum mechanics says the universe gets 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:32.880 really weird at the very smallest scales, which maybe you 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.240 don't think affects you on an everyday basis, but it 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:37.760 actually does. You know, most of our electronics and a 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:40.880 lot of our communications, and all of our devices, they 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:44.080 all sort of are depend on our knowledge of quantum mechanics, 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:46.240 and as we try to understand the way that the 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.760 universe works, we tend to revert to this microscopic picture. 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:52.240 When we say we want to understand the universe, some 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:54.000 of us feel like we want to tear it apart 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:56.760 into the tiniest little pieces, figure out what are the 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:59.640 rules of those little pieces, how do they interact? And 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:01.839 then how do you zoom back out to get the 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.480 picture of the universe that we're familiar with. And so 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.440 often in quantum mechanics, we are thinking about little particles, 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.080 tiny little quantum objects, and what are the rules for 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:13.440 those things? Do they fly through space the way baseball does, 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:16.040 or do they appear just in snapshots? How do they 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:19.239 communicate information back and forth? And how does that change 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:21.919 how we can communicate up here at the big, slow 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.000 human scale. That's right, because if quantum mechanics does lead 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:27.839 you do some weird things that we didn't think about before, 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:30.920 it might change the way that we can maybe make 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:35.240 devices or allow us to communicate between different points on Earth. Exactly. 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.479 If the rules of quantum mechanics really are strange, alien 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:41.600 to our intuition, then maybe we can make quantum mechanics 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.800 do things at our scale that are very weird that 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.880 we once thought might be impossible. Coming to the Apple 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:53.920 Store soon alien iPhones? Is that what you're saying? Excuse 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.840 my long chuckle there. That was pretty funny. Well, I'm sorry, man, 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.880 already going to get a lot of complaints. Stop laughing, Danny, 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.800 think that the chuckle time is just increasing. The first 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.200 rule of chuckle time is don't talk about chuckle time. 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.920 It just makes more chuckle time. That's right. Although usually 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:11.680 talking about the joke kills the joke. We've collapsed it again, 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:14.839 and so quantum mechanics may open some interesting possibilities for 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.080 future technologies and so. On the podcast today, we'll be 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:28.240 tackling the question can you send messages without particles? Is 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:32.279 that like sending emails without replies That happens all the time, actually, 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:35.080 but this has to do more with how information propagates 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:38.520 in a quantum universe. We like to think about everything 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:41.839 happening in terms of the microscopic particles, and usually that 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:46.839 picture involves local interactions, meaning like one particle pushes against 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.800 another particle, which pushes against another. I think about how 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:53.200 electricity flows. You can think about just flowing down the wire, 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:55.720 but if you zoom into the particles, it's one electron 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.520 jumping from spot to spot and pushing other electrons. You 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:00.919 can build up this idea of electory city from the 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.040 little microscopic particles and how they touch each other. Usually 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.440 there's this crucial bit where they need to be near 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:09.520 each other, where everything has to be local. Is that 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:11.520 kind of like how my wife communicates a lot to 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:13.760 me just by giving me certain looks. I think that's 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.000 actually telepathic, man, I think that might break the laws 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:20.880 of physics. Usually they're not good messages. I get the looks. 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:22.840 I don't know if we should be doing marriage therapy 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.680 on the podcast. We already have too many chuckles. Well, yeah, 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:29.200 because you know, no marriage needs more chuckles Every marriage 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.160 needs more chuckles. Man, humor is the best therapy the 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:35.800 tense and what they are chuckling at. You gotta take 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.520 your wife seriously, that's for sure. But yeah, usually communication 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:41.560 involves some sort of interaction between particles, right, Even if 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.120 you're just giving somebody look to communicate something to them, 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.560 you're exchanging photons, right, that's right. Our picture of how 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.880 we communicate involves sending particles or waves through fields, which 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.120 you can also think of as particles. But everything involves 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.880 somehow wiggling a field or sending a particle using that 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.880 to communicate in form asian. Yeah, because I guess you know, 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:04.760 in the universe we have a certain speed of light, right, 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:08.000 a speed of information like you can't somehow, it seems, 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.000 move things from one place to another without going faster 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:12.880 than the speed of light. That's right. It's pretty hard 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.920 coded into special relativity that no information can move faster 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:19.720 than the speed of light, and even quantum mechanics, which 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:24.160 does really weird things, doesn't violate that rule, although sometimes 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.320 it seems like it might. M And so I guess 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.760 the question here is, can you somehow communicate, send messages, 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:36.160 interact between two places in the universe without actually exchanging 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:40.360 a particle or wiggle in some kind of particle field. Exactly, 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.760 could you somehow send a message to your body on 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.920 Alpha Centauri without having to shoot him an electron or 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.600 a beam of photons or some other kind of particle 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.560 or wave based information. It sounds like we're asking does 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:57.760 magic exist? You know, quantum mechanics feels like magic sometimes, 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:00.760 you know, it does things that we think are impossible. 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:02.600 You know, an electron can be here and then it 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.360 can be there without going in between, even if sometimes 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.440 the spot in between is impossible for the electron to 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:11.680 be in. You can have an electron appear on one 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.720 side and then the other side of an infinite barrier. 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.040 It's crazy. That seems like magic, and yet we see 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:21.440 it happen in our universe. Would you describe it as 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:25.080 magic though, or is it maybe like scientific magic because 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.480 you can maybe you know, statistically predict what's going to happen. Yeah, 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.439 it's only magic until we explain it. Then it's science again, 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:34.040 then it's not magical. Science has been ruining the magic 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:36.360 of the universe for hundreds of years well, as usually, 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:38.440 we were wondering how many people had thought about this 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:42.240 question or think it's possible to maybe send messages without 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.600 using particle or particle fields. So thank you very much 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:48.600 to our cadre of volunteers who answer these questions without 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.400 any preparation to give us a sense for what people 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:53.800 are thinking about and to give you a sense what 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.520 everyone else out there is thinking. If you'd like to 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.880 participate for future episodes of the podcast, especially if you 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:02.520 you've never done so before and you're a long time listener, 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.240 please do reach out our email addresses questions at Daniel 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.600 and Jorge dot com. So think about it for a second. 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:11.240 Do you think it's possible in this universe to send 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.280 a message without using particles? Here's what people had to say. 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.679 I think, no, you can't. Well, oh no, no no, 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.719 because of like quantum computers and quantum entanglement. So theoretically, 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.240 if we have to quantum lee entangled particles, we could 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.760 send information and thus send a message between those two 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:34.960 particles without sending particles from one location to another. When 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:41.480 I'm thinking about these questions, actually I'm thinking about quantum entanglement. 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:46.320 How you can send you formation from one point to 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:50.080 another faster than the speed of light. Scientists hope this 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:54.880 will be it like quantum entanglement, but I don't know 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.760 too many information right now, I don't think No, I 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:04.200 don't think that's possible. I think maybe the closest thing 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:09.240 to sending information without particles that were currently looking at 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:15.200 is gravitational waves. But then how's that possible. I think 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:20.199 that that's just a shift in gravitons, So no, I 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.040 don't think so. I think the only way to send 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:26.000 a message without sending any particles might be through quantum entanglement, 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:28.920 but I'm not even sure if that counts, since I'm 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:33.320 pretty sure we can't affect the state of the entangled particles. 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.079 We can just observe them, So I'm not sure we 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:37.240 can actually pass a message through that. That depends on 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.520 what you mean by particles. If you mean pheromons, then yes, 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.840 you can send a message with argues and particles because 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:49.840 photons can carry information. But if you mean any particle 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.040 if you include photons, then you can't because I think 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:56.560 you need some entity lack of photon that carries energy 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.920 to transfer information. Well, everything in the universe of ib 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:02.600 made of particles, so I'm not really sure how you 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.680 would be able to send any message without them. But 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.200 I'm also thinking maybe you could send a message with 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.280 a lack of particles. So say someone's on the moon 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:13.640 and you make a really big shadow with your hand 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.240 in a really powerful light, and that person on the 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.120 moon knows that when the shadow passes over them that 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.120 means X or Y, and I guess technically that would 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:26.360 be sending a message with a lack of particles, if 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.679 that makes any sense, But otherwise I don't see any 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:33.280 other way. Al Right, not a lot of optimism. Most 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:37.080 people are like, well, a few mentions of quantum entanglement. Yeah, 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.640 we have a pretty educated and listener crowd. On physics, 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.360 a few people said quantum entanglement, yeah, and quantum entangling 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.120 the sort of the right direction to think about, because 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:51.319 that's the non local part of quantum mechanics, the fact 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.760 that things can happen in a correlated way across space 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:58.280 even if things are causally separated. So that's definitely the 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:01.040 right direction to be thinking about, right. And somebody try 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.520 to make a distinction between like different kinds of particles, right, 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:07.240 because there are some matter particles like the stuff we're 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.680 made out of, and then there are other particles, which 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:12.280 you know are more intangible exactly. In the end, we 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:14.680 can think about all of those as particles, or you 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.480 can think about all of them as fields. In theoretical 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.680 particle physics, this sort of this argument about whether fields 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:23.160 or particles are the most basic thing in the universe. 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:26.040 But fundamentally we're all talking about the same kind of stuff, 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:28.679 like can you send a message without a field at all? 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.040 Or disturbing any field? Well, you know, some people think 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.480 that fields don't even exist, the fields are just like 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.000 a mathematical construct in our minds, that particles are the 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:39.720 only real thing because you don't ever see fields, right, 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.439 You can't interact with the field except for seeing its 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.319 effect on a particle. So some people don't even think 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.120 fields are real, that everything is just particles. But then 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:50.840 those people are just imaginary too. So there's even a 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.880 guy who developed a version of physics without fields and 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:59.600 even without numbers. What ironically his last name was Fields, ironic, 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:01.800 I say, you're can say ironically his name was whit 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.520 sund no Archery. Fields is a philosopher of physics, and 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:08.520 you word a book called Science Without Numbers, in which 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:10.680 he argues that fields are just a made up thing 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:12.600 and you don't need them at all. Of course, he 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.079 thinks he's real, you know, he's a field, and he 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:17.360 just wanted to be the only field in the universe, 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.560 the field field. But yeah, this is an interesting question. 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.600 Can you communicate without particles? And so let's dig into Daniel. 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.360 Let's start with, first of all, messaging with particles. How 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:29.440 does that work? How do we usually send information? So 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.520 almost all the information that we transmit use either particles 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:35.360 or waves, and really those two are equivalent. You can 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.640 think of every particle as a wave in some quantum field, 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:41.120 or if you like, you can think of quantum fields. 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.280 It's just like an infinite sum of possible particles. It's 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.520 all really fundamentally equivalent. You know, when you send an email, 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.360 for example, what are you doing. You're sending a message 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.200 along some wires, and those messages are wiggles in those 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:56.600 little fields. You send a beam of light at somebody 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:59.480 right your friend across the street has an open window, 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.040 and you've turned your flashlight on and off. Then you 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:04.760 are sending beams of photons, which you can think of 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.720 either as ripples in the electromagnetic field of the universe 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.320 or little packets, little particles that are flying through space. 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:15.880 Either way, you're transmitting that information through particles and fields. Right. 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:17.720 Even when you talk on your cell phone out there, 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:21.040 you're using light as well, right, Like your cell phone 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.320 is transmitting light at the really high frequency that you 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:26.520 can't see, but it's it's light, right, And then the 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:29.920 cell phone antenna and towers out there are also communicating 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:32.200 with your cell phone through light exactly. And you even 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:36.000 have transformation of information there because the neural pulses go 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:39.680 through your mind and those are electrical pulses, and then 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:43.480 your mouth transforms them into sound waves, which is just 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.560 shaking of the air. Then the microphone in your cell 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:50.320 phone translates them back into a different kind of electrical pulses, 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:53.840 which then get emitted by your phone as electromagnetic pulses, 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:56.640 because that's just another kind of photon, one with very 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.280 long frequency. And in all of those steps we have 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:01.640 a micro pas to call picture of what's going on. 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.560 Atoms pushing against other atoms, or photons flying through the 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:09.800 electromagnetic fields that fill the whole universe. It's always local. 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:12.040 It's always like one thing pushing another thing. It's like 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.360 a Rube Goldberg machine. Right, Everything is coming into sort 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:18.800 of effective contact with something else. Right, And even your 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:22.720 voice uses the electromagnetic radiation and forces, right, Like when 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:25.360 the air particles are pushing against each other, they're pushing 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.880 against each other using the electromagnetic force, which means they're 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.240 also exchanging photons. Right, Yeah, that's exactly right. The reason 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.240 that air particles don't pass through each other, they can't 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.880 occupy the same space, is primarily because their electrons bump 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.600 against each other. They resist and repel. And you're right, 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:46.160 that's done either through electromagnetic fields or virtual photons, depending 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:48.680 on the picture that you prefer. But all that stuff 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:53.840 requires some sort of passage of wiggles in fields or particles. Yeah, 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.320 even your voice is light, pure like kind of right, 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.760 even when I'm talking about heavy topics or emanating topics 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.160 as well, or chuckling to the chuckles are made of 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.479 pure light as well, Daniel. And light is really one 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:08.000 of our primary ways to interact in the universe. When 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:12.320 stars send us light from across the vast distances of space, 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.240 those are also photons. It's created a particle which is 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:17.960 shot out from the surface of that sun and then 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.639 flown to many megaparsecs before it hits your eyeball. That 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.879 information that the star exists and what it's temperature is 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.240 and where it is comes along with the photon. Yeah, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.200 and that's not the only particle we get information from 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:33.680 and from the universe, right, And we also get lots 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.000 of other particles coming at us and telling us things 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:39.480 about the universe. Yeah. Now we have multi messenger astronomy, 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:41.480 which means that we can see things out there in 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.560 the universe, not just using photons. So, for example, we 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:48.000 can see other particles. Protons hit the atmosphere at very 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.760 high speed. Some of them are generated by the Sun, 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:53.440 some of them come from outside the Solar system. These 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:56.199 things we call cosmic rays can carry a lot of 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.240 information about what's going on out there in the galaxy. 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.399 So that's only not a photon, right. A proton is 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.080 a matter particle. It's made out of corks, which each 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:08.320 are ripples in the cork fields that fill the universe. 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:10.600 But just like a photon is a ripple in the 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.719 electromagnetic field, these corks are ripples in the cork fields 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.720 and they carry information exactly the same way that a 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:21.199 photon does. Right. But then there are gravitational waves though, right, 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:23.800 those are a sort of real information we're getting about 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.560 the universe, something communicating something to us. But do we 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:28.960 know if there are particles. Yeah, that's a great question. 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:33.719 And there's a lot of confusion about gravitational waves versus gravitons. 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:37.400 So gravitational waves happen to anytime anything in the universe 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:41.040 with mass accelerates, like if two black holes fall into 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.000 each other, the acceleration as they fall in their circling 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:48.320 around each other generates gravitational waves, really big gravitational waves 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:50.600 that we can detect. And this is a prediction of 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:53.800 general relativity, which is a non quantum theory. It's a 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.080 classical theory. It says that space and time are continuous 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:00.080 and everything has a smooth path, really in conflict with 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:02.520 our quantum view of the universe, but we see it. 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:04.879 We see these things happening. We see these ripples in 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:09.119 space and time. These are gravitational waves and their classical objects. 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:11.639 But you know, there are waves in a field and 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.160 they carry information and move at the speed of light, 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:16.760 which is kind of awesome. We don't know if they're 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:20.720 made of gravitons. It might be that gravity is in 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.800 the end a quantum field theory like the other forces, 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.360 and you can describe in terms of tiny little packets. 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:29.639 But those packets, if they exist, they're too small for 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.200 us to see. We're just barely able to even see 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.919 gravitational waves. And one gravitational wave might be made out 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.679 of an enormous number of tiny gravitons, so small that 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:41.960 we can't resolve them, the way like a wave in 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.040 the ocean is made of lots of droplets, but we 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:48.639 can't separate them necessarily. Wait, so then, if gravitational waves 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:51.280 are not made out of particles, and we've answered the 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.760 question of the episode, I could send the message using 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.359 gravitational waves without particles. Yeah, I suppose. So you can 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:01.320 send information without particles if gravity is not a quantum theory. 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.199 But you'd still be sending information via waves. And in 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:07.160 the end, particles and waves, really, what's the difference. They're 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.520 just two attempts by the human mind to describe something 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.719 about the universe, which, in the end is unfamiliar. You know. 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.800 Physics is the effort to describe the unfamiliar in terms 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:18.920 of the familiar. And the reason we have an argument 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.760 about whether to describe these things in terms of particles 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.600 or fields or waves is because none of those are 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:26.960 really the right description. They're just sort of like our 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:29.480 attempt to capture them in terms of something we know, 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.159 like when you drink a really tasty glass of wine 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:34.520 and you're like, hm, hmmm, it's like vanilla and notes 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:36.960 of oak or whatever. Now those aren't really there in 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:39.080 the wine. They're just your efforts to describe them in 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:41.800 terms of a language. You know, it sounds like you're 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.280 trying to get out of something there, But I think 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:47.040 what you're saying is that, you know, it's kind of 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:51.040 hard to imagine communicating something across a distance in this 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:54.479 universe without creating some sort of ripple that you know, 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:56.920 moves through spaces. I think that's what you're saying. And 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.800 gravitational waves are technically ripples through some sort of me 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:02.560 m or some sort of field in the universe. And 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.760 so the question then maybe is like can you actually 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:08.960 communicate without causing any ripples in the universe. Yeah, we 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.440 think about information is propagating through the universe. We think 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.040 of everything is local. Something passes a note to the 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:16.920 next thing, which passes a note to the next thing. 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.159