WEBVTT - Listener Questions 67 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:10.320 Hey, or hey, when was the last time your family moved. 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.480 We moved to our house maybe eleven years ago. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.319 Wow, that's been a while. You know, the longer you 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.279 live somewhere, the harder it is to move. 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.760 What do you think that is, like inertia or potential energy? 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:24.640 Are we trapped in a potential energy? 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:28.640 Well sort of. I think you're trapped by your stuff. 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.480 You gradually accumulate stuff in every corner, makes it impossible 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:32.920 to ever. 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.120 Leave because of the gravity or the nostalgia. 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.120 The overwhelming task of packing it all up into boxes. 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:43.680 Sounds like you need Mariconda to do some consulting for you. 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:45.320 It's all right. I try to leave the house as 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:56.520 little as possible anyway. 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.680 Hi am jorgemmy cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:05.400 Big Universe. 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.120 Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:11.240 at UC Irvine, and I've moved a lot of times 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:13.720 in my life, and never was it fun. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.080 Well, there's a certain aspect of getting rid of your 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.480 old stuff that's kind of cathartic. Din'd you feel lighter 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.760 after you move or did you just bring everything with you? 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:23.840 No? 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.840 I always start out so optimistic and thinking, Oh, this 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:29.600 time it's going to be great. And then about halfway 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.080 through I realized I'm only five percent of the way through. 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.440 And then at the end of just throwing random stuff away. 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.840 Of throwing out your stuff, of packing. Oh, but you 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:40.840 know you can hire people to do that, right, or 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:42.760 ask your friends and buy them a peer. 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.600 I usually use moving as an opportunity to cleanse myself 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:49.440 of all the stuff I should have thrown away earlier. 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:51.560 When was the last time you moved? 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.680 Between two thousand and seven and twenty twelve, the family 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:59.080 moved across the Atlantic, I think eleven times. 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:01.240 I think that's just call it going on vacation. 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:06.240 It now when you're living there for nine months and 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.240 setting up schools and bank accounts. Soul man, But. 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:11.120 You've been in the same place now for twelve years. 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.120 Yes, since the kids got older. We've stayed in California 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:16.040 and haven't moved back to the Collider as often. 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.239 Wow, so it's your house now, just the giant pile 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:19.880 of stuff. 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:23.600 I can't even close the door, it's so jam full 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:24.000 of crap. 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.200 Well, fortunately it makes for a good soundproofing, I guess 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:29.360 for podcasts recording. 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:32.079 That's why I've been doing it. 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:35.000 Yes, one positive thing, but anyways, welcome to our podcast 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:39.320 Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:41.640 In which we help you soar through the ever increasing 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.880 piles of knowledge that humanity has accumulated along the way. 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:47.519 We learned this, we learned that, we learned the other thing, 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.120 and our goal is to organize it to marry condo 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.800 your mind and make it crisp and clean and understandable 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.440 because we think, we hope, we assume the universe is understandable, 0:02:57.440 --> 0:02:59.560 that we can make sense of it with our little minds, 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:01.919 and that we can explain all of it to you. 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:04.959 That's right. We try to relocate your brain out there 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.040 to the giant, vast cosmos that exists out there for 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.799 us to try to understand, and we try to move 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.360 you with the amazing things that scientists have discovered about 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:16.360 why we're here and how things work. 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:19.160 And one thing we'd love our listeners to do is 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.280 to participate in this goal directly by asking their own 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.520 questions about the universe. Don't just sit back and let 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:29.760 the answers from scientists rain down upon your brain. Go 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:31.960 out there and ask your own questions. About the universe. 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.600 What doesn't make sense to you, how do you think 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.800 it works, Why isn't your idea the right one about 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:40.800 the universe? And so On this podcast we talk to 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:42.839 you about the universe, but we also want to hear 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:47.200 from you. Send us your questions to questions at Danielanjorge 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:47.920 dot com. 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.560 That's right, because it's not just scientists that have questions, 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:53.400 it's everybody. We all look at the night sky, the 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:56.280 day sky, all of the skuis and we wonder about 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.119 what's out there and how to make sense of it all. 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.760 It's a part of being human, trying to make sense 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.440 of the universe, wanting to understand it, and it's something 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:07.520 that everybody can do. You don't have to be a 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:09.840 professional scientist to look up at the night sky and 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:13.240 wonder what it all means. Or if you've been listening 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:15.360 to the podcast and there's some ideas that don't quite 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:18.200 fit into your mind together they don't click the way 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:20.719 that you want them to, then write to me questions 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.919 at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Everybody gets an answer, 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:26.440 and sometimes I got a question that we answer right 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:27.720 here on the podcast. 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:30.840 Yeah, and sometimes we'd like to answer your questions, And 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:39.159 so today on the program, we'll be tackling listener questions 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.080 number sixty seven over five dozen. 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.599 These are questions for listeners that tickled me, or I 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.760 thought we would have fun talking about, or I needed 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.320 a little extra time to do some research before answering. 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.600 So we have three awesome questions here today. They are 0:04:55.720 --> 0:05:00.520 about habitable moons, about the Higgs field, and about Daniel's 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.279 favorite subject, particle colliders and moving it. Right? Are we 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:05.920 going to move the particle collider? 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:08.760 We're not going to move the particle collider, but we 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.880 might spend tens of billions of dollars on a new one. 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:14.359 Oh boy, isn't it easier just to move it. 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:19.600 You don't gain anything from moving it. You need a bigger, 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:23.120 fancier one or a different flavor of one, and those 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:23.880 are expensive. 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.039 Oh boy. Well we'll dig into that, but first we'll 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:31.200 tackle a question from Lydia, who is eleven years old. 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.359 Hi, Daniel Jorge. My name is Lydia and I'm eleven 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.120 years old. I have a question for you. Do you 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.680 think it will ever be possible to move planets or 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.080 moons into more habitable zones? And if you could, which 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.800 planet or moon in our Solar system? Would you move? 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:51.320 All right? Pretty interesting question about lots of things here, 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:56.440 about habitable zones and solar systems and about I guess 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.080 planet orbits. That's a lot going on in the mind 0:05:59.120 --> 0:05:59.920 of an eleven year old. 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:03.600 I love that Lydia is thinking about the future. She's 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:07.279 trying to make the Solar System a better place for humanity, 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.240 and she's wondering about all the details of it. So 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:12.360 good job, Lydia, thanks for your forward thinking. 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:19.240 Yeah, future president, hopefully seems like we could use some 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:23.240 some forward thinking in our leadership. But the question is interesting. 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.120 It sounds like she's asking whether there are planets out 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.320 there that we can't live in, like or moons, whether 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:32.880 we can somehow not terraform it or change it, but 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.799 actually just move it to a cozier spot. 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.680 Yeah. For example, some of the planets that are closer 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.560 to the Sun than Earth, Venus and Mercury, are very 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.200 very hot, and planets that are further from Earth, like Mars, 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.239 are very very cold. Neither of those seem very cozy 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.440 to live on. And so I think Lydia's ideas like, 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:54.360 could we bring Mars closer? Could we push Venus further out. 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:56.719 Or I love that she even mentions moons. You know, 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:00.760 Jupiter and Saturn have some huge moons. Snag one of 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:03.680 those and bring them closer and make it a place 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:05.000 that humanity could survive. 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:08.800 M you need a lot of friends and a lot 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.640 of beer to get your friends to move a whole moon. 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:17.000 Depends how much stuff it's accumulated in the years. Right, 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.760 if you've been keeping it clean and crisp, maybe it's 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:21.320 a little easier to pack everything up. 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:23.920 I think it just depends on how many friends you have. 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:26.880 Can you call a moving company and be like, hey, 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:29.560 do you have a box big enough to fit like Europa? 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:35.640 I'm sure you haul has something Forday, you haul the moon, 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.880 you haul a planet. I mean they just rent you 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:43.920 the va to the stuff. Then you have to do it. 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.160 Hey, if they have a device capable of moving the Moon, 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:48.720 I'll drive it. That sounds like fun. I can parallel 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:49.320 park that thing. 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:52.760 But you need a special license though, only if you 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:57.000 get pulled over by the Solar syste the police. But anyways, 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.600 it's a pretty interesting question, and so let's dig into it. Daniel. 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:03.760 Is it possible to move a planet to a different orbit. 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.440 So it definitely is possible, like the physics doesn't say no, 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.080 But in the case of some planets or moons, it's 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:13.800 not necessarily a good idea, Like even if you could 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:16.520 do it, it wouldn't really give you a place humans 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:20.840 could live. And in other cases, like Mars, it's possible 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:23.080 and it might solve some of the problems, but it 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:25.320 would cost an enormous amount of energy. 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:28.760 Hmm, Well, you mentioned Mars, so maybe let's start with that. 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.640 What's wrong with Mars now, isn't it sort of already 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:33.959 in the habitable zone. 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.160 So Mars is a lot smaller than Earth and a 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:38.640 little further out, so it gets a lot less sun 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:41.360 than Earth does, which makes it very very cold. It 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:43.560 also has a very dilute atmosphere, so it has trouble 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.040 hanging on to any of the heat that it does 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.280 get from the Sun. So bringing Mars close to Earth 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.479 would definitely help that. You also need to increase the atmosphere, 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:55.720 so you couldn't totally avoid doing terraforming. You need to 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:58.000 make an oxygen rich atmosphere unless you want to live 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:01.080 in bubbles your whole life. But bringing it closer to 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.920 Earth would be handy. Would also make it easier to 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.800 colonize Mars, like the round trip time would be shorter, 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:11.720 connections between the two civilizations could be crisper, so there'd 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.200 be a lot of advantages to having Mars closer in. 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:16.719 Oh, I see. It's sort of like that saying, right, 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:18.640 like if Muhammad can't go to the mountain, then you 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:19.600 bring the mountain to you. 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:23.679 Yeah, exactly. It's sort of like where you're going to 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.000 buy your vacation house. Is it just going to be 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.640 half an hour away or is it a nine hour 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:31.640 plane flight. It's a lot easier if it's just the 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:32.280 short drive. 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.120 But is he the biggest problem for Mars, it's I 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.240 know it's cold, but it's not like crazy cold. 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:43.160 I mean, Mars is definitely like less comfortable than Antarctica, 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:45.680 So it's not cold the way like the surface of 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:49.319 Pluto is. But it's definitely very cold, too cold for humans. 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.360 But that's all connected to the atmosphere, right. It has 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:55.360 a very dilute atmosphere, so it doesn't hold in that temperature. 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.440 That thin atmosphere also means that it doesn't protect you 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:02.000 from cosmic rays with the Earth's atmosphere does. It also 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.480 doesn't have a magnetic field to do a lot of shielding. 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:07.560 So yeah, there's big problems with Mars that you couldn't 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:08.920 solve even by moving it. 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:11.720 So then would it even help to move it, Like 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.719 if it got warmer, would it maybe just blow off 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:17.840 all the atmosphere or is this an actual working proposal. 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:20.160 No, that's definitely an issue. Now you bring it warmer, 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:22.560 you're going to melt some of the frozen CO two 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:24.439 for example that's at the poles, and that's going to 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:27.760 increase the atmosphere, but you might also blow it off. Right, 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:31.439 as you said, there's increasing radiation because Mars is smaller, 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:33.080 so it doesn't have the same gravity as Earth, so 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.439 it's harder for it to hang onto its atmosphere. That's 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.839 a bigger issue for the moons for example, like Europa 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.120 or Enceladus or Io, all these big moons of the 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:45.560 gas giants, a lot of them have frozen surfaces and 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.120 some of them even have like liquid oceans underneath them. 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:50.840 But if you brought them into the habitable zone, you 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.240 would melt those surfaces and boil off those oceans and 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:57.839 leave yourself with just a rocky core. So moving these 0:10:57.840 --> 0:10:59.839 things to the habitable zone wouldn't necessarily. 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:04.520 Well, let's say that we try with Mars and we 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.880 wanted to make it as warm as Earth. How much 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:07.959 would you have to move it in. 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:10.800 Well, given the current atmosphere, you'd have to have Mars 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.839 be closer to the Sun than Earth because Mars can't 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.360 hang on to the heat. But if you just wanted 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.400 to move Mars like near the Earth's orbit so that 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:21.280 it was in the same zone it was easier to 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.000 go back and forth, which might make terraforming and building 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:27.440 an atmosphere easier as well. Then you'd need to do 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:30.840 what's called a Homan transfer, which is a way to 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:33.920 like change orbits. This is what space ships do. For example, 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:35.600 if they're orbiting high and they want to go low. 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:37.400 Orf they're orbiting low and they want to go high. 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.760 It's a classic way to change your orbit by firing 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:42.000 your rocket thrusters. 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.080 How does it work? Do you have to like accelerate 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:49.200 or just move away from the Sun or towards the Sun? 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:50.040 How does that work? 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:52.320 So there's a zillion different ways you could do it, 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:54.240 but the Homan transfer is the one that requires the 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.160 least energy, and it definitely requires some force, some acceleration. 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:00.640 Imagine you're in a circular orbits, you have a particular 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:03.680 velocity and a particular radius, and that's all aligned and nice. 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:05.920 And now you want to be in a different circular orbit, 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:09.280 maybe larger, maybe smaller. What you need to do is 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:13.079 change to an elliptical orbit. So you fire your thrusters, 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:15.000 so you move out of your circular orbit into an 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:19.000 elliptical orbit. Elliptical orbit, because an ellipse doesn't have a 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:21.520 fixed radius, right, A circle is a fixed radius. You're 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.679 always the same distance from the Sun or whatever. An 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:28.200 ellipse you get closer sometimes and further other times. So 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:30.679 you go on this elliptical orbit temporarily, and then when 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:32.720 you get to the radius you want, you fire your 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.720 rockets again to put yourself back into a circular orbit 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.199 at that new radius. So it's two firings of your rocket, 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.760 two accelerations, two delta v's as they call them in 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:43.640 the space business. 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.120 Oh, I see, So you wouldn't have to fire your 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.240 rockets or push the planet the hallway. You just give 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:52.959 it like a one initial push, and then later when 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:55.040 you're further where you want to be, you give it 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:55.680 another push. 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:56.720 Yeah, exactly. 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:58.480 And in the case where you want to get closer 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:02.840 to the Sun. You're talking about out slowing down the planet, right. 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:04.480 You want to slow it down. You also have to 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:08.160 change its direction, right, because an elliptical orbit operates differently 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:10.360 from a circular orbit, So you want to change your 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.160 whole vector, not just the magnitude. 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.400 But yeah, okay, so we'd have to slow down Mars. 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.000 And then once it gets closer to Earth, or maybe 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:22.360 even beyond Earth or it's orbit, then you want to 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:23.480 slow it down some more. 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.800 Well, things in the inner Solar System orbit at a 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:30.360 higher velocity than things in the outer Solar System, and 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.400 that's just basic circular motion. So for example, Earth is 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.640 moving at thirty kilometers per second relative to the Sun 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.200 and Mars is moving at twenty four kilometers per second 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.760 relative to the Sun. And that doesn't depend on mass, 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.720 It just depends on radius. At every radius is a 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.240 certain velocity you need in order to move in a 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:51.400 circular orbit. In the end, you'd have to speed Mars 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.160 up in order to get it to move at the Earth's. 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.640 Orbit, all right, So then once you're in the closer 0:13:56.760 --> 0:13:59.480 orbit to the Sun, then you'll eat in a stable orbit. 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:02.960 Yeah, exactly, And so it did the calculation for like, 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:05.400 how much of a kick would you need to give 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:10.120 Mars in order to accomplish this? And so initially, to 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:12.559 move Mars into an elliptical orbit, you have to change 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.600 its velocity by like two and a half kilometers per second, 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:20.080 which is not a small amount. I mean, Mars is 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:24.080 currently going like twenty four kilometers per second, so it's 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.880 like more than ten percent of the speed of Mars. 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:29.480 And then you're in the elliptical orbit. And then to 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:31.600 kick it back into a circular orbit, you have to 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:35.360 give it a delta v of almost three kilometers per second. 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.120 And so those are the two kicks that you have 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:40.320 to give Mars in order to change its orbit to 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:42.200 have the same radius as the Earth's orbit. 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.680 Oh interesting, So it sort of sounds like it's going 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:47.000 to be hard, right because you have to slow it 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:49.560 down by ten percent of a whole giant planet. 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:52.800 Yeah, exactly. And it's fascinating because these numbers don't depend 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:54.880 on mass, Like it's the same for a proton as 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:56.960 it is for a planet when you're talking in terms 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.040 of delta v. But then when you think about it 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.560 in terms of energy, right, the energy is like one 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:06.000 half mv squared. Then the mass really does affect it. 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:08.840 It takes a lot more energy to change the orbit 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:12.400 of a planet relative to a proton, and these planets 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.160 just have so much mass. Even Mars, which is kind 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:19.760 of small, has like an unfathomable amount of stuff, and 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.360 so to move Mars from one orbit to the other 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:26.160 would take like ten to the thirty one jewels. 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.080 Well, that's a lot of jewels. What would that mean, Like, 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:32.040 could you use rockets to you know, slow yourself down? 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:33.520 How would you even slow down a planet? 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:36.280 This is a huge amount of energy, like orders of magnitude, 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:41.040 much more than humanity produces and uses every year, So 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.960 you'd need something crazy. You basically have to build like 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:48.400 a rocket and attach it to the planet and drive 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.080 the planet like a spaceship. So the simplest way to 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:53.600 do this is to like dig stuff out of the 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:56.160 planet and launch it into space. If you could pick 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.360 up a rock and throw it into space so it 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.440 doesn't like come back to the planet reaches escape velocity, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.000 then effectively that's giving the whole planet a little push, 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.280 right because by conservation momentum, the rock goes one way, 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.200 the planet goes the other way. Now that's a really 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:13.360 tiny little push because it's just a little rock. But 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:14.960 if you keep doing it, and you do a lot 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:17.560 of it, and you push those rocks really really fast, 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:21.000 then effectively you are pushing the planet. So if you 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:23.600 build something which like dig stuff out of Mars and 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.240 throws it into space, that's essentially a rocket attached to Mars. 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:28.400 And that's how you could do it. 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:31.480 Couldn't you just use rockets. 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:33.600 Like build rockets and just point them to the ground. 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:35.320 Yeah, basically build them upside that. 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:37.400 Yeah, absolutely, you can do that. But then where you're 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.640 going to get all the fuel? Right, The thing is 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.720 you need an enormous amount of energy, and so you 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.880 might as well take the propulsion from the planet itself. 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:48.960 This an incredible amount. Like, in order to do this 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.200 on Mars and achieve this kind of transfer, you just 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:56.760 dig out a trillion kilograms of material and eject it 0:16:56.840 --> 0:16:59.840 into space at ninety nine percent of the speed of 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.960 life light every single day for almost five thousand years. 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:08.399 WHOA, that sounds crazy. So this is using your like 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:10.600 scooping up dirt and throw it in into space scheme. 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:12.560 Yeah, and we haven't even talked about, like how do 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:15.240 you accomplish getting dirt to ninety nine percent the speed 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:15.800 of light. 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.399 Well, could you you just use like atomic bombs or 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:21.359 something you know, I'm thinking of like a rocket that 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:23.800 uses nuclear fission. 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.200 Maybe you might want to use fission or fusion as 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:28.480 a way to accelerate this stuff. But you can need 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.840 some propellant, right, you need to change the momentum of 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.560 the planet, which means you need to eject something from it. 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:37.760 The other thing you could do is like solar power, right, 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.720 try to use that somehow. But either way, it's just 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:44.119 an overwhelming amount of energy, something that humanity you can 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:47.720 even conceive of producing. Not to mention like wrestling into 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:49.320 this crazy scheme. 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:51.720 Because you need ten to the thirty one jewels, But like, 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:53.800 how much does this an an atomic bomb give off? 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:55.199 I'm just trying to get a sense of, like is 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.919 it thirty thousandfar bombs or thirty basillion? 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.520 Yeah, atomic are pretty impressive, but they give off order 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:04.919 of magnitude like ten to the twelve, ten to the 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.080 thirteen jewels, and we need ten to the thirty one. 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:11.480 So we're talking like, you know, ten to the nineteen 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:12.680 nuclear bombs. 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:17.040 Well, so that's one followed by nineteen zero number of 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:18.200 nuclear bombs. 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:24.119 Exactly so pretty impractical. Another way to do this maybe 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:26.159 is to try to take advantage of other things in 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:28.959 the Solar System that have energy in them, you know, 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:33.320 things like asteroids and comets. These things have a vast 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:36.320 amount of gravitational energy as they come towards the inner 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:39.960 Solar System, they're moving with very high velocity, and we 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.320 often are using the gravity of other things in the 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:44.800 Solar System to navigate, like when we send spacecraft out 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:47.120 there where you slingshot them around Jupiter or this kind 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:51.080 of stuff. So if you could somehow direct comets from 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.120 the Ord Cloud or the Kuiper Belt to rain down 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:57.320 and pass near Mars, each one of them would give 0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:59.760 Mars a little bit of a tug. If you did 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:03.400 a gravitational slingshot using comets, it would change the trajectory 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:06.040 of the comet and the planet. So if you did 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:09.119 that enough times, you could change the trajectory of the 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.920 planet enough to accomplish the same maneuver. But it would 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:14.240 still take a lot of comets. 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.360 WHA, Yeah, it sounds like you're just making it more 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:19.879 complicated because you still have to spend all that energy 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:21.679 to move the comets to get out there. To the 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:22.800 commets and then move them. 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:24.720 Well, I don't think it would take that much energy 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.639 to move the comets because you're using the energy of 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:29.480 the Sun. You just take the comment, give it a 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.200 little nudge so it falls out of orbit. You know, 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:34.960 they're moving pretty slow that far out, and so it 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:37.120 doesn't take a big nudge to get them to fall 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:39.439 towards the Inner Solar System, and then they gather a 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.200 lot of energy as they're coming in. Then you take 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:44.959 advantage of it when they're zipping by. But you know 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.040 that's dangerous for other reasons, like you make a miscalculation 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.919 and boom, a comet hits the Earth and it's all over. 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:56.800 Yeah, then we'll really need to move to another planet exactly. 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:00.400 So, Lydia a great question. I don't think it's really 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.639 practical anytime in the near future, but I hope somebody 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:04.320 figures it out. 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:04.680 Hmm. 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.639 It sounds like maybe it's easier just to terra form Mars, 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:09.800 so that becomes warmer. 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:12.440 Yeah, we have a whole episode about how you might 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:17.000 do that. It's very challenging and quite impractical. Maybe less 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.840 impractical than moving the planet, it's still very very difficult. 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:23.919 I see. All right, Well, maybe the solution is just 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:26.760 to hire Marie Conda to come clean up our planet 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:29.320 and then nobody will want to move. 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:33.200 That's right, Lydia, and I hope you clean up your room. 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:39.960 Yeah, and Lydia's parents, you're welcome. All right, Well, thank 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.080 you Lydia for that awesome question. Now let's get to 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:44.359 our other questions of the day. We have a question 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:48.880 about the Higgs field and about particle colliders, so let's 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.679 get to those. But first let's take a quick break. 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:06.800 All right, we're answering listener questions here today, and our 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:10.320 next question comes from Mark was a question about the 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:11.520 Higgs field. 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.639 Hey, daniel Le Jorge, I'm back with a serious question. 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.240 Just as I sort of feel confident that I'm building 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:22.760 a mental map, at least at the most primitive level, 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:26.840 of how this quantum stuff works. This Higgs Boston is 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.480 I don't understand how does a field lend mass to 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:32.520 other fields? 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:34.080 What is it? In part? 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.240 If mass is like what potential energy you're gathered? 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:40.040 What? 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.600 Yeah, that's the question. Where is the mass coming from? 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:47.960 Then it just seems like we're at another level of 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:49.800 incomprehensibility here. 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:52.480 What how is it transferring mass? 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:57.919 All right? A pretty massive question here about basically, how 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.560 does the Higgs field work, How does it give mass 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:01.600 other particles? 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:04.679 Yeah, a really good question, a really deep question, and 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:06.800 one that we've been sort of probing in several different 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:09.680 episodes on the podcast, trying to give people an intuition 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:11.240 for how this works. 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:13.639 Well, I guess maybe let's go get back to basics. 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:17.080 So the Higgs field is something that was proven to 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:21.399 exist about ten years ago, and in the media you 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:23.879 always hear that it's the field and the particle that 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:26.399 gives other particles their maths. 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:30.080 Yeah, exactly, And maybe we should start with the concept 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.480 of a field because this is a little bit mysterious 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:36.520 for people. I mean, particles are something we can sort 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:38.840 of imagine. We think of them as tiny specs of 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:43.439 stuff explaining the microscopic world. You see their traces in 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:47.320 cloud chambers or particle detectors. But fields are a little 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:49.840 bit more in direct We don't ever see fields directly, 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:53.199 and we say that particles move through fields and particles 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:57.119 are excitations of fields. And field is just like a 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:00.240 number that you put everywhere in space, like the Higgs field, 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:02.720 for example. It's just a number. It has a value here, 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:04.760 has a value there, it has a value somewhere else. 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:08.560 But those values aren't just random and arbitrary. There's mathematics 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:11.240 that describe how those values relate to each other and 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:14.040 how those values change in time. The same way. It's 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:15.680 like if you have a sheet, one that you might 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:18.800 put on your bed and you wave it in the air. Right, 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:21.880 waves move through that sheet, and the same way waves 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:24.800 can move through the Higgs field or any other kind 0:23:24.880 --> 0:23:25.720 of field. 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:28.320 Right. Right. But I guess maybe a question is like 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:33.280 our fields physical things or just sort of like mathematical 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:39.199 conveniences that physicists use in their equations, meaning like if 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:41.439 you have a field but no particles in it, is 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:42.280 that field there? 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.760 Nobody knows the answer to that question, man, I mean, 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:48.840 I think the mainstream view is that fields are the 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:51.920 fundamental building blocks of the universe as we know so far. 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:54.560 We don't know what they're made out of, and we 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:57.320 think of particles as emerging from fields. There are these 0:23:57.320 --> 0:24:00.720 special ripples in the fields. They move in this special way. 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:03.440 There's something that comes out of the fields, But nobody 0:24:03.520 --> 0:24:05.280 really knows that the fields are there, or if they're 0:24:05.359 --> 0:24:08.600 just something we think about. To answer your second question, 0:24:08.680 --> 0:24:11.000 in our current conception. If you believe fields are there, 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:14.320 then they're still there with no particles in them. Right, 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:16.760 They exist everywhere in space and they can never go 0:24:16.840 --> 0:24:18.840 down all the way to zero because they're quantum, so 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:22.320 they're always fuzzing and frothing a tiny little bit. But 0:24:22.400 --> 0:24:25.479 whether fields are really there, like when we're not looking 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:28.359 at them, is not a science question. It's a philosophy question. 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:31.119 It's when you can't test because it requires answering the 0:24:31.200 --> 0:24:33.600 question what happens when you don't look, And to do 0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:35.480 science you have to look. Hmm. 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:38.359 But I guess you know we talked about and I 0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:42.000 know you said that fields have like an energy to them. 0:24:42.320 --> 0:24:44.280 So if they have an energy to them, doesn't that 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:47.639 mean that they sort of exist when you're not looking. 0:24:48.320 --> 0:24:51.560 Well, we describe them as existing and having energy, That 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:53.879 doesn't mean that they are there, that they are real. 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:56.639 You know, there's no way to interact with a field 0:24:56.680 --> 0:24:59.480 directly and to like measure it. You know, you can 0:24:59.520 --> 0:25:02.679 see this effect on other stuff, but you can't actually 0:25:02.680 --> 0:25:05.760 measure them directly, even if you do ascribe energy to it. 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:09.160 But the energy in the field is a crucial concept 0:25:09.440 --> 0:25:12.360 for getting an intuition for like how this all works 0:25:12.640 --> 0:25:15.960 because what's happening in the field when it's oscillating is 0:25:16.119 --> 0:25:18.800 sometimes it's oscillating in a way that moves like way 0:25:18.840 --> 0:25:21.160 you wiggle your sheet and a ripple moves through it. 0:25:21.400 --> 0:25:24.720 But sometimes it can also oscillate in place, and what's 0:25:24.760 --> 0:25:27.280 happening there is that the field is wiggling sort of 0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:29.959 the same way that like a ball trapped in a well, 0:25:30.320 --> 0:25:32.720 if there isn't any friction, can go up and down forever. 0:25:33.000 --> 0:25:35.760 It's switching between like kinetic energy it's moving fast to 0:25:35.840 --> 0:25:38.840 the bottom of the well, and potential energy. It's not moving, 0:25:38.880 --> 0:25:41.000 but it still has energy of location. When it's at 0:25:41.040 --> 0:25:42.960 the top of the well. Put a ball in a 0:25:43.000 --> 0:25:46.320 little well, it can oscillate around that forever. Fields can 0:25:46.359 --> 0:25:48.639 do that too. They can sort of oscillate in place 0:25:48.680 --> 0:25:52.080 like a little standing wave, and that's where their mass 0:25:52.080 --> 0:25:52.879 comes from. 0:25:52.880 --> 0:25:56.119 Like the whole field, or just like in a little spot. 0:25:56.320 --> 0:25:58.600 At any point these fields can do that. So, for example, 0:25:58.920 --> 0:26:02.639 the electron field can be mostly empty and then in 0:26:02.680 --> 0:26:05.479 one spot it can be doing this special oscillation. And 0:26:05.520 --> 0:26:09.199 that's what an electron is. It's this special oscillation of 0:26:09.240 --> 0:26:12.639 the electron field. It's got some energy, and it's oscillating 0:26:12.680 --> 0:26:15.719 in this stable way. And some fields can do this, 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:17.359 like the electron field can do this. They can just 0:26:17.400 --> 0:26:20.400 oscillate in place, and that's what we call an electron, 0:26:20.440 --> 0:26:23.680 and that's an electron at rest. And fields that can 0:26:23.720 --> 0:26:26.800 do this are fields that have mass. Like the photon field, 0:26:27.160 --> 0:26:29.440 it can only oscillate in the way the ripples move. 0:26:29.800 --> 0:26:32.840 It can never oscillate in place. Right, The electromagnetic field 0:26:32.880 --> 0:26:35.639 can't make you a photon that's just sitting there because 0:26:35.640 --> 0:26:38.919 photons don't have mass, and so in order to do 0:26:39.000 --> 0:26:41.479 this thing, to oscillate in place, they have to have mass. 0:26:42.000 --> 0:26:44.800 Oh well, that's sort of another philosophical question, right, Like 0:26:44.960 --> 0:26:48.560 can an electron stay still? Like isn't it a quantum particle? 0:26:48.720 --> 0:26:50.560 Yeah, that's a good point. An electron can never be 0:26:50.600 --> 0:26:53.800 located to exactly one location. What you have is like 0:26:53.840 --> 0:26:56.720 a little packet. And we talked about like how long 0:26:56.840 --> 0:26:59.119 is a particle, how wide is a particle on a 0:26:59.160 --> 0:27:01.840 recent podcast. It depends on how much uncertainty there is. 0:27:02.440 --> 0:27:04.359 And so you always have like a little neighborhood of 0:27:04.400 --> 0:27:08.320 the field that's sort of oscillating coherently, and that depends 0:27:08.320 --> 0:27:11.080 on the uncertainty in those measurements, so it's never like 0:27:11.119 --> 0:27:12.960 a dot, it's none. Think of it like a single 0:27:13.000 --> 0:27:15.280 point in the field as doing the oscillation. Think of 0:27:15.320 --> 0:27:18.000 it like a little localized packet. And the important thing 0:27:18.000 --> 0:27:21.120 to understand is that none of these fields operate independently. Right, 0:27:21.280 --> 0:27:23.480 You have a field that has some energy it's oscillating, 0:27:23.680 --> 0:27:25.719 but there are also other fields, and the fields can 0:27:25.760 --> 0:27:28.800 transfer energy back and forth. That's how, for example, the 0:27:28.840 --> 0:27:32.280 photon field and the electron field, energy can slide between them, 0:27:32.320 --> 0:27:36.480 Photons can turn into electrons and positrons, or photons can 0:27:36.520 --> 0:27:39.359 push on electrons, for example. In the same way, the 0:27:39.440 --> 0:27:42.720 Higgs field interacts with all of these fields and changes 0:27:42.800 --> 0:27:45.959 how they wiggle, and then changing how they wiggle it 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:47.960 gives them mass. It gives some of these fields the 0:27:48.000 --> 0:27:51.800 capacity to do this wiggle in place thing, which is 0:27:51.840 --> 0:27:53.480 what gives those particles mass. 0:27:53.760 --> 0:27:56.400 I think you're getting to Mark's question now, which is 0:27:56.440 --> 0:28:00.680 that like, how exactly does that happen? It seems like 0:28:00.720 --> 0:28:02.600 you sort of said it this both ways, like you 0:28:02.640 --> 0:28:06.240 need mass for it to stay in place, or it 0:28:06.240 --> 0:28:08.359 can only stay in place if you give it mass. 0:28:08.600 --> 0:28:10.960 Yeah, exactly, So go back to thinking about the ball 0:28:11.080 --> 0:28:13.600 in the well. The ball in the well moves in 0:28:13.640 --> 0:28:16.720 a certain way because it has mass. Right now, if 0:28:16.720 --> 0:28:19.200 the ball didn't have mass, it would operate very differently, 0:28:19.560 --> 0:28:21.920 like it wouldn't feel the same gravitational potential energy, it 0:28:21.920 --> 0:28:25.119 wouldn't oscillate in the well that way. So imagine you 0:28:25.119 --> 0:28:28.080 took a ball without mass and you added some special 0:28:28.160 --> 0:28:31.040 magic force that changed the way the ball moved. So 0:28:31.080 --> 0:28:33.680 now it moves exactly the same way it would if 0:28:33.720 --> 0:28:36.800 it did have mass. Okay, so every time the ball 0:28:36.880 --> 0:28:39.520 is moving, you give it a little special push to 0:28:39.680 --> 0:28:42.360 change its direction so that it moves exactly the same 0:28:42.360 --> 0:28:44.719 way it did as if it had mass. That's what 0:28:44.760 --> 0:28:48.120 the Higgs field is doing. It's taking particles that naturally 0:28:48.160 --> 0:28:50.720 don't have mass. The electron wouldn't have any mass without 0:28:50.800 --> 0:28:54.520 Higgs field and changing the way it moves in exactly 0:28:54.560 --> 0:28:56.880 the same way that you would expect if the electron 0:28:56.920 --> 0:29:00.160 field had its own mass by itself. That's why we 0:29:00.200 --> 0:29:03.200 say it gives the electron mass because it changes the 0:29:03.240 --> 0:29:06.240 way the electron field wiggles and precisely the way it 0:29:06.280 --> 0:29:09.200 would if the electron had its own mass. So the 0:29:09.240 --> 0:29:12.560 mass comes from the Higgs field, and the interaction between 0:29:12.600 --> 0:29:15.400 the Higgs field and the electron field is not inherent 0:29:15.520 --> 0:29:17.000 in the electron field itself. 0:29:17.480 --> 0:29:20.400 Meaning I guess I got a little confused with your 0:29:20.400 --> 0:29:22.880 ball analogy because now I'm thinking, like the ball has 0:29:23.000 --> 0:29:27.440 mass or what. But it seemed interesting to think about that. 0:29:27.520 --> 0:29:30.840 An electron is just a standing wiggle in the electron field, 0:29:32.320 --> 0:29:36.640 and you're saying that because of the way that the 0:29:36.640 --> 0:29:39.520 electron field and the Higgs field interact, then that wiggle 0:29:39.560 --> 0:29:42.000 can stay in place. Is that kind of what you're saying. 0:29:42.160 --> 0:29:45.280 Yeah, exactly. So for the electron field to wiggle in place, 0:29:45.680 --> 0:29:48.080 it needs to be able to trade kinetic energy for 0:29:48.120 --> 0:29:50.360 potential energy and back to kinetic energy and then back 0:29:50.400 --> 0:29:54.480 to back to potential energy. That's what the wiggle is, right, 0:29:54.880 --> 0:29:57.000 And in order to do that, it needs to be 0:29:57.040 --> 0:29:59.280 able to have potential energy, and that's what the Higgs 0:29:59.280 --> 0:30:02.400 field gives it. Interactions between the electron field and the 0:30:02.480 --> 0:30:06.240 Higgs field create a potential well for the electron which 0:30:06.320 --> 0:30:07.720 lets it oscillate. 0:30:07.320 --> 0:30:09.680 In place, like it gives it a place for the 0:30:09.800 --> 0:30:10.920 energy to go to. 0:30:11.440 --> 0:30:14.200 Yeah, exactly, it can go from kinetic to potential and 0:30:14.240 --> 0:30:17.560 then back, whereas a photon field is like just kinetic energy. 0:30:17.600 --> 0:30:21.000 It's always flying through space that doesn't slosh back into 0:30:21.040 --> 0:30:23.400 potential energy and then kinetic energy and potential energy and 0:30:23.480 --> 0:30:24.240 kinetic energy. 0:30:24.360 --> 0:30:26.280 Well, let me recap. Maybe what you're saying is that 0:30:27.000 --> 0:30:29.080 in order for the electron field to wiggle in place 0:30:29.120 --> 0:30:33.520 and therefore have an electron instead of need something to 0:30:33.720 --> 0:30:36.000 suck some energy out of it kind of in place. 0:30:36.320 --> 0:30:39.080 Otherwise we'll just go somewhere, we'll take off. 0:30:39.200 --> 0:30:41.880 You could still have an electron, it would be massless. Right, 0:30:41.920 --> 0:30:43.840 in order to have an electron at rest, it has 0:30:43.920 --> 0:30:46.320 to have mass, and so you need something to change 0:30:46.360 --> 0:30:49.600 how the electron is oscillating. It's not exactly taking the 0:30:49.680 --> 0:30:53.080 energy out of the electron field. It's just creating potential 0:30:53.200 --> 0:30:56.680 energy for the electron. You know. Imagine, for example, a 0:30:56.760 --> 0:30:58.520 kid on a swing right, in order for the kid 0:30:58.600 --> 0:31:01.120 to swing back and forth, to be the swing there 0:31:01.160 --> 0:31:04.560 pushing them back as they move. Without the swing, the 0:31:04.640 --> 0:31:07.080 kid just flies off. So the Higgs field is sort 0:31:07.080 --> 0:31:10.280 of like the swing that keeps the kid oscillating back 0:31:10.320 --> 0:31:12.400 and forth rather than just flying off. 0:31:12.840 --> 0:31:15.600 It pushes the electron wiggle to stay in place. 0:31:15.720 --> 0:31:18.320 Yeah, exactly. And in another universe where you didn't have 0:31:18.360 --> 0:31:20.600 a Higgs field, and you had an electron field that 0:31:20.640 --> 0:31:23.280 actually had mass on its own, it would wiggle in 0:31:23.320 --> 0:31:24.720 exactly the same way. 0:31:24.960 --> 0:31:27.280 Are there things that have mass on their own? 0:31:27.440 --> 0:31:30.640 There are none in our universe. We don't think particles 0:31:30.680 --> 0:31:32.520 like that can exist because they would break some of 0:31:32.560 --> 0:31:35.200 the other laws of particle physics, some of the symmetries 0:31:35.240 --> 0:31:37.959 that we think are held. That's why you need something 0:31:38.040 --> 0:31:40.240 like the Higgs field to give these particles mass. 0:31:40.880 --> 0:31:43.640 Ah interesting, And I guess, just to be clear, you 0:31:43.640 --> 0:31:46.840 need the Higgs field to give things resting mass, right. 0:31:47.000 --> 0:31:49.080 Yeah, resting mass is the only kind of mass we 0:31:49.080 --> 0:31:53.240 think about. There's this concept called relativistic mass, which is 0:31:53.280 --> 0:31:56.160 really just a confusing way to think about energy. You 0:31:56.200 --> 0:31:59.040 shouldn't think about things gaining mass as they go faster. 0:32:00.320 --> 0:32:02.960 Mass to be an invarying quantity, the same as you 0:32:03.000 --> 0:32:03.960 would measure at rest. 0:32:05.120 --> 0:32:07.520 But I guess this idea that you know a lot 0:32:07.560 --> 0:32:09.520 of our mass that we have in our bodies comes 0:32:09.560 --> 0:32:12.360 from the energy doesn't necessarily come from particles. It comes 0:32:12.400 --> 0:32:16.000 from the trapped energy between the particles. That's a different 0:32:16.080 --> 0:32:18.360 kind of mass, right, Or does that mass also comes 0:32:18.320 --> 0:32:19.160 from the Higgs field. 0:32:19.280 --> 0:32:21.440 Oh no, great point. You're right, this is not the 0:32:21.440 --> 0:32:25.240 only way to get mass, right, Mass in general comes 0:32:25.280 --> 0:32:28.400 from internal stored energy. What we've been describing is like 0:32:28.560 --> 0:32:31.480 how the electron gets internal stored energy, is that oscillates 0:32:31.480 --> 0:32:34.360 in place. That comes from the Higgs field. Quarks do 0:32:34.400 --> 0:32:36.560 the same thing. Quarks get energy from the Higgs field. 0:32:36.720 --> 0:32:39.239 But you put three quarks together into a proton that 0:32:39.320 --> 0:32:42.320 has much more mass than the mass of the individual quarks, 0:32:42.600 --> 0:32:45.280 and that's because those quarks now have a little bounce state. 0:32:45.320 --> 0:32:47.959 The proton is like a little box keeping them oscillating 0:32:48.000 --> 0:32:51.200 in place, and that energy comes from the strong force 0:32:51.280 --> 0:32:54.120 creating that box, not from the Higgs field. And that's 0:32:54.200 --> 0:32:56.880 most of the mass of the proton comes from the 0:32:57.000 --> 0:32:59.440 energy of the bonds between the quarks, this little bowl 0:32:59.520 --> 0:33:01.760 that the quark live in that we call the proton. 0:33:02.200 --> 0:33:04.960 So most of the mass in your bodies comes actually 0:33:05.000 --> 0:33:08.120 from these bounds created by the strong force that give 0:33:08.400 --> 0:33:11.880 the proton internal stored energy. And that's really where mass 0:33:11.920 --> 0:33:14.760 comes from, any kind of internal stored energy, not energy 0:33:14.800 --> 0:33:18.000 of motion, energy at rest, internal stored energy. 0:33:19.200 --> 0:33:22.360 So then the Higgs field is responsible for some of 0:33:22.400 --> 0:33:24.280 our mass. But not all of it. 0:33:24.560 --> 0:33:27.520 Yeah, really a tiny, tiny fraction, because quarks have almost 0:33:27.600 --> 0:33:30.280 no mass. Almost all of your mass comes from the 0:33:30.280 --> 0:33:33.600 mass of protons and neutrons, which is overwhelmingly from the 0:33:33.640 --> 0:33:34.280 strong force. 0:33:35.480 --> 0:33:37.400 So when they say, like the Higgs field and the 0:33:37.440 --> 0:33:41.440 Higgs boson gives particles their mass, it's maybe not as 0:33:41.480 --> 0:33:44.520 grand deal as of a statement as it may sound 0:33:44.560 --> 0:33:45.280 to a lot of people. 0:33:45.600 --> 0:33:47.880 Yeah, exactly. I mean, without the Higgs field, all the 0:33:47.880 --> 0:33:51.360 fundamental particles would have no mass, and then nothing would 0:33:51.400 --> 0:33:53.960 be possible, like electrons would fly out of orbits at 0:33:54.000 --> 0:33:56.000 the speed of light, all this kind of stuff. But 0:33:56.080 --> 0:33:58.120 you're right, most of the mass in the universe doesn't 0:33:58.120 --> 0:33:59.640 come directly from the Higgs field. 0:34:00.000 --> 0:34:01.080 Where does it come from, Daniel? 0:34:02.800 --> 0:34:06.440 Most of the mass in protons comes from the strong force, right. 0:34:06.480 --> 0:34:09.520 It gives internal stored energy to the proton, and that's 0:34:09.560 --> 0:34:12.200 what gives us mass. A deeper question is like, well, 0:34:12.200 --> 0:34:15.320 all right, you're talking about mass, but why is inertial 0:34:15.360 --> 0:34:19.040 mass a thing? Anyway? Why is internal stored energy change 0:34:19.360 --> 0:34:22.200 how much force it takes to get some acceleration? And 0:34:22.239 --> 0:34:23.360 that's a really deep. 0:34:23.280 --> 0:34:25.960 Question, that's what I mean. Yeah, that's still a big unknown. 0:34:25.800 --> 0:34:27.239 Right, still a big unknown. You know, why do we 0:34:27.280 --> 0:34:28.160 even have a inertia? 0:34:28.320 --> 0:34:28.560 Man? 0:34:29.960 --> 0:34:33.160 Yeah? Like why are heavier? Or at the same time, 0:34:33.280 --> 0:34:35.640 why are more energetic things harder to move? 0:34:35.840 --> 0:34:35.920 Like? 0:34:36.520 --> 0:34:38.440 We don't know that, right, nobody knows that. 0:34:38.520 --> 0:34:42.000 Yeah, we describe that using general relativity, but we don't 0:34:42.000 --> 0:34:44.600 have an answer for like why in the same way that, 0:34:44.640 --> 0:34:48.840 like general relativity describes that space does get curbed in 0:34:48.880 --> 0:34:50.880 the presence of mass, but doesn't really tell us like 0:34:51.080 --> 0:34:53.799 why does that happen? What is the mechanism for it 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:56.239 underlying it? To understand that, we'd need to have some 0:34:56.440 --> 0:35:00.200 deeper level theory that explains like what space is, but 0:35:00.239 --> 0:35:01.880 we have no idea yet, right. 0:35:01.760 --> 0:35:03.880 Right, Or maybe we could just move to a universe 0:35:04.520 --> 0:35:05.879 in which people have figured it out. 0:35:06.840 --> 0:35:09.360 Let's just take a big rocket, put U haul, we 0:35:09.480 --> 0:35:13.440 get a U haul, we'll put pack all the physicists 0:35:13.480 --> 0:35:16.799 into it and then and then just ship into a 0:35:16.880 --> 0:35:18.440 more knowledgeable universe. 0:35:18.520 --> 0:35:21.120 Yeah, or just more knowledgeable solar system even, you know, 0:35:21.200 --> 0:35:24.160 to go to another universe, let's just go visit the 0:35:24.200 --> 0:35:26.960 Aliens and go to their physics school and learn how 0:35:26.960 --> 0:35:27.600 this all works. 0:35:27.800 --> 0:35:29.680 Unless they're also on the move, in which case you 0:35:29.719 --> 0:35:31.080 might get there and then nobody's there. 0:35:33.080 --> 0:35:35.560 We missed the party, man. 0:35:36.440 --> 0:35:39.239 Yeah, you missed the main course, which might have might 0:35:39.280 --> 0:35:42.960 be you if there are aliens involved. All right, well, 0:35:42.960 --> 0:35:46.560 I think that answers a question for Mark, which is 0:35:46.719 --> 0:35:48.640 just sort of like, how does the Higgs field work? 0:35:48.760 --> 0:35:51.840 And it sounds like it's mainly about the interaction between 0:35:51.840 --> 0:35:55.279 the Higgs field and the electron field allowing it to 0:35:55.480 --> 0:35:58.800 wiggle in place, which is what looks like mass. 0:35:58.840 --> 0:36:01.320 That's right, And if you want a deep intuition into 0:36:01.520 --> 0:36:03.240 what fields are and how. 0:36:03.080 --> 0:36:05.320 This all works, then it's not possible. 0:36:05.320 --> 0:36:09.040 So then I really recommend Matt Stressler's book Waves In 0:36:09.080 --> 0:36:12.680 an Impossible See, which starts from almost nothing, uses almost 0:36:12.680 --> 0:36:16.359 no math, and gives you a really deep intuition for fields. 0:36:16.600 --> 0:36:18.600 All right, well, thank you Mark for that question. Now 0:36:18.640 --> 0:36:21.400 let's get to our last question of the day, and 0:36:21.560 --> 0:36:25.880 it's about Daniel's future career. It seems about the particle 0:36:25.880 --> 0:36:28.839 collider at CERN, so let's dig into that. But first 0:36:29.000 --> 0:36:45.640 let's take another quick break where we're talking about listener 0:36:45.719 --> 0:36:48.880 questions here today, and our last question comes from Bill 0:36:50.080 --> 0:36:52.120 comes from Union City, California. 0:36:53.080 --> 0:36:56.520 Hi, Daniel and Jorge. This is a. Bill Quirk, a 0:36:56.680 --> 0:37:04.239 retired astrophysicists living in Union City, California. I'm curious what's 0:37:04.280 --> 0:37:06.800 going to happen now at CERN and the other large 0:37:06.840 --> 0:37:12.160 particle colliders now that you haven't found the supersymmetric particles. 0:37:12.840 --> 0:37:16.800 What are people going to be looking at? What possible 0:37:16.840 --> 0:37:23.560 discoveries can this lead to? Daniel, I don't understand how 0:37:23.560 --> 0:37:26.440 you can understand so many different things you and explain 0:37:26.520 --> 0:37:30.319 them so well. Thanks for everything, enjoy the show very much. 0:37:30.600 --> 0:37:31.000 Bye. 0:37:31.560 --> 0:37:34.640 All right, great question from Bill. So CERN is the 0:37:34.680 --> 0:37:39.480 big facility outside of Geneva where the large hadron collider is, 0:37:40.320 --> 0:37:43.200 and I think Bill is asking what's going to happen 0:37:43.200 --> 0:37:45.200 to it? You know, there was a lot of fanfare 0:37:45.280 --> 0:37:47.840 about ten fifteen years ago about the Higgs boson, but 0:37:48.040 --> 0:37:50.560 not a lot of news since then. What are the 0:37:50.600 --> 0:37:51.160 plans for it? 0:37:51.920 --> 0:37:55.399 Yeah, the plans are to keep running it because though 0:37:55.400 --> 0:37:58.239 we haven't found anything after the Higgs boson, there are 0:37:58.239 --> 0:38:04.000 still lots of possibilities for discoveries. Bill mentions super symmetric particles. 0:38:04.440 --> 0:38:06.719 These are particles that a lot of physicists hoped to 0:38:06.880 --> 0:38:10.640 discover shortly after finding the Higgs, but we haven't seen 0:38:10.680 --> 0:38:13.720 any of them, which has been a bit of a disappointment. 0:38:13.239 --> 0:38:15.759 Like have you ruled them out totally like we've given 0:38:15.840 --> 0:38:18.279 up or is there still a possibility or do most 0:38:18.280 --> 0:38:19.680 physicists things they don't exist? 0:38:20.000 --> 0:38:21.960 Yeah, a little bit of all of that. Sort of 0:38:22.480 --> 0:38:26.000 we can't ever rule out something exists because it could 0:38:26.040 --> 0:38:28.960 exist but just be really really rare, like if it 0:38:29.000 --> 0:38:32.040 only happens once every twenty years in our collider and 0:38:32.120 --> 0:38:34.040 we only run the collider for one year, we can't 0:38:34.080 --> 0:38:37.080 rule it out. It could also be really really heavy, 0:38:37.360 --> 0:38:40.319 like maybe our collider doesn't have enough energy to make it. 0:38:41.120 --> 0:38:43.320 So all we can do is we can rule out 0:38:43.640 --> 0:38:47.000 low mass stuff that we could make that isn't rare, 0:38:47.560 --> 0:38:49.680 And so it's sort of a statistical statement. The longer 0:38:49.760 --> 0:38:51.560 we run the collider, the more we can rule out 0:38:51.640 --> 0:38:54.279 rare stuff, and the higher the energy the collider, the 0:38:54.320 --> 0:38:56.760 more we can rule out heavy stuff. So we're always 0:38:56.800 --> 0:39:00.160 just ruling out like a fraction of that space that 0:39:00.160 --> 0:39:03.840 I said. A lot of physicists claimed that nature really 0:39:03.880 --> 0:39:08.759 wanted very common, very low mass supersymmetric particles, and those 0:39:08.760 --> 0:39:11.399 people were wrong. A lot of the fields has moved 0:39:11.400 --> 0:39:13.520 on from supersymmetry they're sort of given up on it, 0:39:13.600 --> 0:39:16.080 But there's also a lot of diehards that really believe 0:39:16.080 --> 0:39:16.439 in it. 0:39:16.960 --> 0:39:20.080 And they believe that maybe they're there, but they're just 0:39:20.160 --> 0:39:22.880 heavier or rarer than we thought before. 0:39:23.040 --> 0:39:25.560 Yeah, and maybe we're just looking for them wrong, and 0:39:25.600 --> 0:39:28.239 so they don't appear the way that we expected, and 0:39:28.280 --> 0:39:30.560 we need to look for them in new interesting ways. 0:39:31.080 --> 0:39:33.480 Maybe they're hidden in certain ways and we can reveal 0:39:33.520 --> 0:39:36.040 them if we're clever enough. So there's definitely a lot 0:39:36.080 --> 0:39:39.120 of people looking for supersymmetry. And realize also that the 0:39:39.239 --> 0:39:41.920 LEDC has been running for fifteen years or so. It's 0:39:41.960 --> 0:39:44.839 going to run for another fifteen but the rate at 0:39:44.840 --> 0:39:48.680 which the collisions happens increases very quickly. But most of 0:39:48.719 --> 0:39:50.960 the collisions we're ever going to see are in the future. 0:39:51.360 --> 0:39:53.800 That's because we get better and better operating the machine, 0:39:53.920 --> 0:39:56.200 so we can have more collisions per second as time 0:39:56.239 --> 0:39:59.320 goes on. So we've seen like one percent of the 0:39:59.400 --> 0:40:01.719 data where ever ever going to see from the machine. 0:40:02.040 --> 0:40:04.080 Most of the data is still in the future, and 0:40:04.160 --> 0:40:06.760 so it could be that that future data reveals something 0:40:06.840 --> 0:40:09.000 like supersymmetry or something else interesting. 0:40:09.200 --> 0:40:09.439 MMM. 0:40:09.960 --> 0:40:12.480 So to answer Bill's question, that's sort of part of 0:40:12.520 --> 0:40:15.840 the plan. The plan is for the Large Hydron Collider 0:40:15.920 --> 0:40:19.440 to just keep u smashing particles for another fifteen years. 0:40:19.680 --> 0:40:23.080 Yeah, exactly, for about another fifteen years. And we're not 0:40:23.200 --> 0:40:25.960 just looking for supersymmetry. We're also looking for all sorts 0:40:26.000 --> 0:40:29.120 of other stuff. We're looking for things we didn't necessarily anticipate, 0:40:29.360 --> 0:40:31.560 because you know, you land on Mars, you don't just 0:40:31.560 --> 0:40:33.520 look for cats and dogs and people. You look for 0:40:33.600 --> 0:40:36.720 any kind of life. So we're trying to broadly imagine, 0:40:36.760 --> 0:40:39.080 like what new particles might be out there that we 0:40:39.160 --> 0:40:42.440 didn't imagine or that are really weird and crazy. And 0:40:42.480 --> 0:40:45.160 one of my favorite example is actually Bill's last name. 0:40:45.600 --> 0:40:48.200 There's a theory of a particle called a quirk, not 0:40:48.239 --> 0:40:52.640 a quirk, but a quirk with an eye just like Bill. WHOA. 0:40:52.760 --> 0:40:54.160 That's an interesting coincidence. 0:40:54.400 --> 0:40:55.960 It is really a fun coincidence. 0:40:56.360 --> 0:40:57.640 I mean it sounds like, if you just want to 0:40:57.640 --> 0:40:59.640 find a quirk, just good call Bill. 0:41:00.000 --> 0:41:03.440 Exactly. It's a really quirky theory and it predicts particles 0:41:03.440 --> 0:41:05.760 that look very different from anything we've ever seen before. 0:41:05.800 --> 0:41:08.200 They were sort of move in a really weird way 0:41:08.280 --> 0:41:11.000 in our detector, and so far the way we've analyzed 0:41:11.040 --> 0:41:13.000 the data, we wouldn't be able to see these quirks, 0:41:13.000 --> 0:41:14.920 and so my group and a bunch of other people 0:41:15.200 --> 0:41:17.480 are starting to go back and analyze data to see 0:41:17.520 --> 0:41:20.520 if we can find evidence for these quirks. So that's 0:41:20.520 --> 0:41:23.120 just one example, but there could be stuff in the 0:41:23.200 --> 0:41:25.560 data we've taken already that we haven't found yet because 0:41:25.560 --> 0:41:27.400 we haven't figured out how to look for it yet. 0:41:27.520 --> 0:41:29.759 Some of the stuff is trickier to look for than 0:41:29.840 --> 0:41:32.600 your standard electrons and muons and this kind of stuff. 0:41:32.920 --> 0:41:35.000 So as we develop new techniques, we might be able 0:41:35.000 --> 0:41:37.840 to discover things in existing data, not just wait for 0:41:37.960 --> 0:41:38.480 more data. 0:41:39.440 --> 0:41:41.720 I see. Well, since you mentioned that, maybe give people 0:41:42.200 --> 0:41:45.400 a quick three minute explanation of what is a quirk, 0:41:45.640 --> 0:41:47.600 because I don't think we've talked about it before, have we? 0:41:47.800 --> 0:41:51.960 No, we have not. Yeah, a quirk is like a quark, 0:41:52.560 --> 0:41:54.600 but it has a different kind of force. It's like 0:41:54.640 --> 0:41:57.440 a new version of the strong force, and quirks are 0:41:57.600 --> 0:42:01.640 much heavier than quarks. And you produce two quarks at 0:42:01.640 --> 0:42:04.319 the particle collider. What happens is that the strong force 0:42:04.360 --> 0:42:06.759 doesn't like them being far apart, so it creates a 0:42:06.760 --> 0:42:10.120 bunch of new quarks out of that energy. For quirks, 0:42:10.160 --> 0:42:13.680 that's not possible because quirks are too massive, So the 0:42:13.760 --> 0:42:16.799 universe can't turn that energy into new quirks because there 0:42:16.840 --> 0:42:19.480 isn't enough energy to make quarks because their mass is higher. 0:42:19.960 --> 0:42:21.719 And so what that means is that you have these 0:42:21.719 --> 0:42:24.000 two particles that now fly apart from each other and 0:42:24.040 --> 0:42:26.960 they still have that great energy between them, which means 0:42:26.960 --> 0:42:30.120 they wiggle in really weird ways. Rather than just flying 0:42:30.160 --> 0:42:33.120 through a magnetic field like a charge particle, they oscillate 0:42:33.239 --> 0:42:36.319 inside the detector, which is really a challenge for our 0:42:36.320 --> 0:42:38.760 current data analysis pipeline to discover. 0:42:39.239 --> 0:42:41.040 So then that's sort of the answer for bills that 0:42:41.080 --> 0:42:42.880 you're a large hundred collider is going to keep running 0:42:43.280 --> 0:42:46.719 and you're looking for I guess rarer or harder to 0:42:46.760 --> 0:42:47.799 find particles. 0:42:47.960 --> 0:42:50.480 Yeah, and people are also developing techniques to look for 0:42:50.520 --> 0:42:54.279 things that are completely unexpected, like running machine learning based 0:42:54.320 --> 0:42:57.279 anomaly detection algorithms to see if there's anything just like 0:42:57.400 --> 0:43:00.000 really weird in the data. So we're going to keep 0:43:00.120 --> 0:43:02.239 mine in this data hoping to make discoveries. 0:43:02.480 --> 0:43:05.560 And you're also trying to make antimatter right and stuff 0:43:05.600 --> 0:43:05.879 like that. 0:43:06.200 --> 0:43:08.760 Well, in a particle collider, you can make basically anything 0:43:08.800 --> 0:43:11.320 that the universe is capable of. You smash those protons 0:43:11.320 --> 0:43:14.759 together and eventually you make everything on nature's menu. And 0:43:14.840 --> 0:43:17.879 we often make antimatter. We're hoping we might even make 0:43:18.000 --> 0:43:19.960 like dark matter and be able to detect it in 0:43:20.040 --> 0:43:23.600 our collider, all sorts of stuff. There are other experiments 0:43:23.640 --> 0:43:26.640 that'scern not the collider, that do things like make anti 0:43:26.719 --> 0:43:28.480 hydrogen and study its behavior. 0:43:28.880 --> 0:43:32.400 Oh, I see now, are there plans to make more colliders, 0:43:32.480 --> 0:43:35.000 bigger colliders, or to expand the current collider? 0:43:35.360 --> 0:43:37.600 Yes, all of those. We just finished put it together 0:43:37.680 --> 0:43:40.799 like a ten year plan for particle physics, and there's 0:43:40.840 --> 0:43:43.520 some interesting proposals. Some people think that when the large 0:43:43.520 --> 0:43:46.840 Hadren collider is done running, we should build a bigger 0:43:46.880 --> 0:43:50.120 circular collider, and so this would involve like a larger 0:43:50.200 --> 0:43:53.880 tunnel under Geneva. And because it's bigger, you could have 0:43:53.960 --> 0:43:56.640 more energy in it. You're limited by like the strength 0:43:56.640 --> 0:43:59.160 of the magnets that you need to curve the particles 0:43:59.160 --> 0:44:01.960 around in that if you can't make your magnets stronger, 0:44:02.000 --> 0:44:04.000 you can just make the circle bigger and then you 0:44:04.040 --> 0:44:07.000 can get your particles moving faster with the same magnets, 0:44:07.360 --> 0:44:08.719 So that's one possibility. 0:44:09.200 --> 0:44:11.319 So you can make particles go at point nine nine 0:44:11.400 --> 0:44:13.399 nine nine nine nine nine nine the speed of light 0:44:13.440 --> 0:44:15.359 instead of point nine nine nine nine nine nine. 0:44:15.640 --> 0:44:19.040 Yeah. Well, currently the collider explores up to about thirteen 0:44:19.080 --> 0:44:23.120 and a half terra electron volts trillion electron volts, and 0:44:23.120 --> 0:44:24.880 this new one would go up to fifty or one 0:44:24.960 --> 0:44:27.799 hundred terra electron volts. And that doesn't sound like that 0:44:27.880 --> 0:44:31.279 big a jump, but that's like multiplying by four or 0:44:31.400 --> 0:44:35.160 eight the sort of entire energy range we've ever explored. 0:44:35.640 --> 0:44:38.400 You know, it's like landing on eight new Earth like 0:44:38.440 --> 0:44:41.799 planets simultaneously. It's an enormous range that we could use 0:44:41.840 --> 0:44:42.760 to discover something. 0:44:42.920 --> 0:44:44.959 So how many dines does that give us in terms 0:44:44.960 --> 0:44:47.960 of the how fast we can explain particles at a 0:44:48.000 --> 0:44:49.160 percentage at the speed of light? 0:44:49.560 --> 0:44:50.400 Oh, I don't even know. 0:44:50.520 --> 0:44:53.080 A lot of nines, half a nine, three nines. 0:44:54.719 --> 0:44:56.600 We don't even think about it in terms of velocity 0:44:56.719 --> 0:44:59.000 because it's a crazy asymptopic quantity. We just think in 0:44:59.040 --> 0:45:00.000 terms of energy. That's right. 0:45:00.480 --> 0:45:02.279 You don't want to think that each nine cause about 0:45:02.360 --> 0:45:03.040 ten billion bills. 0:45:03.160 --> 0:45:05.160 I don't like to think about that. No, but these 0:45:05.160 --> 0:45:07.279 colliders would be very expensive because you've got to drill 0:45:07.320 --> 0:45:09.560 the tunnel, you've got to build the magnets. The whole 0:45:09.560 --> 0:45:13.600 thing is expensive. It's tens of billions. And a competitor 0:45:13.640 --> 0:45:16.120 on the international scene is China. China is proposing to 0:45:16.239 --> 0:45:19.560 maybe build one of these colliders over there. They think 0:45:19.600 --> 0:45:21.839 they have the money, and they are ramping up very 0:45:21.880 --> 0:45:25.440 quickly in terms of particle physics in their universities, and 0:45:25.520 --> 0:45:27.160 I think they would like to be the leader in 0:45:27.239 --> 0:45:30.240 particle physics in the world. So there's two big competing 0:45:30.280 --> 0:45:33.120 proposals there, one from CERN, one from China, and then 0:45:33.160 --> 0:45:35.440 there's a dark horse, which is saying, hey, maybe we 0:45:35.440 --> 0:45:39.240 shouldn't be colliding protons or electrons, let's try colliding something else. 0:45:39.800 --> 0:45:42.080 What what else can you collide? 0:45:42.160 --> 0:45:45.080 Well, there's a really fun proposal for a muon collider. 0:45:45.480 --> 0:45:47.879 Muons are just like heavy versions of electrons. 0:45:48.000 --> 0:45:48.880 They're not hadrons. 0:45:48.960 --> 0:45:52.120 They're not hadrons to know, they're fundamental particles, and they're 0:45:52.160 --> 0:45:54.239 really hard to use because they don't last very long. 0:45:54.320 --> 0:45:57.600 Like electrons are stable they last forever, but muons last 0:45:57.600 --> 0:46:00.400 a few microseconds and so it's hard to get them 0:46:00.400 --> 0:46:02.000 in a collider and keep them going and all this 0:46:02.040 --> 0:46:05.080 kind of stuff. You might wonder like, well, why bother. Well, 0:46:05.080 --> 0:46:07.520 the answer is to have more mass than electrons do, 0:46:07.840 --> 0:46:11.920 and so colliding muons gives you more Higgs bosons than 0:46:12.120 --> 0:46:16.680 colliding electrons because higgs boson interacts with particles that have mass, right, 0:46:16.760 --> 0:46:19.960 it interacts more with particles that have more mass. So 0:46:20.000 --> 0:46:22.000 when you smash two muons together, you have a much 0:46:22.080 --> 0:46:24.640 higher chance of making a Higgs boson than when you 0:46:24.680 --> 0:46:28.200 smash two electrons together. So the muon collider is what 0:46:28.239 --> 0:46:31.160 they call a Higgs factory. It would produce oodles and 0:46:31.160 --> 0:46:33.480 oodles of Higgs bosons and allow us to study it 0:46:33.520 --> 0:46:34.720 in great detail. 0:46:35.360 --> 0:46:36.720 To answer I guess what question? 0:46:36.960 --> 0:46:39.160 Oh yeah, well, good point. I mean, the Higgs boson 0:46:39.360 --> 0:46:41.960 was discovered and it acts the way we expect, but 0:46:42.080 --> 0:46:44.240 it might be that it's not quite the Higgs boson 0:46:44.320 --> 0:46:47.080 we expected. It could have some weird new properties. And 0:46:47.120 --> 0:46:49.600 one way to make discoveries is to like measure all 0:46:49.640 --> 0:46:52.360 the properties of the Higgs boson, its mass, its spin, 0:46:52.680 --> 0:46:56.680 it's precise interactions with all the other particles, really really accurately, 0:46:56.719 --> 0:46:59.000 and see if it lines up with our predictions, and 0:46:59.040 --> 0:47:01.480 if it doesn't, that's a hint that there's something new 0:47:01.520 --> 0:47:03.560 going on, some new particles or feels out there that 0:47:03.600 --> 0:47:05.120 are messing up our calculations. 0:47:05.600 --> 0:47:09.320 All right, now, Daniel, since technically you are employed by CERN, 0:47:09.960 --> 0:47:12.759 do we need to give a sponsored content warning here? 0:47:14.280 --> 0:47:17.640 I am actually not technically employed by CERN. I'm employed 0:47:17.719 --> 0:47:19.760 with the University of California, though I do my research 0:47:19.880 --> 0:47:23.560 at CERN, and I'm certainly very heavily biased here that 0:47:23.640 --> 0:47:26.200 I think this stuff is a lot of fun. It's 0:47:26.400 --> 0:47:29.120 tens of billions of dollars, so whether or not governments 0:47:29.160 --> 0:47:32.480 want to spend that money is a very political question. Personally, 0:47:32.600 --> 0:47:34.720 I think we should spend lots more money on science, 0:47:34.800 --> 0:47:37.960 not just particle physics, but astrophysics and condensed matter physics 0:47:37.960 --> 0:47:41.279 and maybe even chemistry. So I'm all in favor. 0:47:40.960 --> 0:47:42.839 Of it, right right, but not philosophy. 0:47:44.440 --> 0:47:46.279 Definitely more money for philosophy. I don't know if you 0:47:46.280 --> 0:47:48.560 call that science or not. That's a philosophy question. 0:47:48.960 --> 0:47:51.680 All right, Well, great questions here today. Thanks for our 0:47:51.800 --> 0:47:54.200 question askers for sending in their questions. 0:47:54.480 --> 0:47:57.279 Thanks to everybody who thinks about the universe, wonders about 0:47:57.280 --> 0:48:00.520 it and tunes into the podcast, hoping to gain some ununderstanding. 0:48:00.880 --> 0:48:04.400 We really love hearing your thoughts and answering your questions. 0:48:04.640 --> 0:48:06.879 Do you hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. 0:48:07.680 --> 0:48:08.520 See you next time. 0:48:13.520 --> 0:48:16.400 For more science and curiosity, come find us on social 0:48:16.440 --> 0:48:21.280 media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Disport, Insta, 0:48:21.440 --> 0:48:25.160 and now TikTok. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel 0:48:25.160 --> 0:48:28.640 and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:48:28.920 --> 0:48:34.080 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:48:34.160 --> 0:48:36.520 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.