Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you know I'm a comic person, so I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know what would be your superpower if you're
Speaker 1: a superhero. It would be what superpower would you pick?
Speaker 1: I might have to decide between laser beams from the eyes,
Speaker 1: which seems very useful for like cracking safes and when
Speaker 1: you lose your keys and stuff, or flying. Flying is
Speaker 1: always seemed to me like a majestic, amazing thing I
Speaker 1: wish we could do. Yeah, that's my favorite one too, flying.
Speaker 1: I would love to fly. The problem is gravity, that's right.
Speaker 1: It's all about conquering gravity, being anti gravity, that's right.
Speaker 1: I always wonder how Superman does it, you know, the
Speaker 1: Superman push himself up or a c somehow canceling the
Speaker 1: force of gravity. Oh well, we have him scheduled to
Speaker 1: be a guest on the podcast in a few weeks,
Speaker 1: so you can ask him directly. Good good, I look
Speaker 1: forward to talking. I thought. We also had this interview
Speaker 1: with this reporter called can't didn't we al scheduled with you?
Speaker 1: We have to cancel that one because we can get
Speaker 1: Superman instead. Okay, all right, that's kind of suspicious, but
Speaker 1: all right. They said they wouldn't appear together. So what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Hi, I'm and I'm Daniel. Welcome
Speaker 1: to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe, in
Speaker 1: which we take things in the universe, pulled them apart,
Speaker 1: and explain them to you, including how you might be
Speaker 1: able to cancel some of them. Yeah, we are pro
Speaker 1: universe and also anti universe in this podcast. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Today we want to talk about the concept of getting
Speaker 1: rid of gravity. Is it possible to escape the shackles
Speaker 1: of the Earth not just by pushing up against it,
Speaker 1: by climbing out of that gravity well, but by actually
Speaker 1: negating it, by turning off Earth's gravity somehow, so we
Speaker 1: could float through the atmosphere and even escape into into space.
Speaker 1: That's right. Today's topic is anti gravity? Is it possible?
Speaker 1: What is it? Will anti gravity technology ever work? Will
Speaker 1: you or your children or your children's children ever get
Speaker 1: that flying skateboard so you can just float around and
Speaker 1: avoid traffic and get wherever you want? Is that actually
Speaker 1: something that's going to happen or is it always going
Speaker 1: to be in the realms of science fiction? Yeah? Do
Speaker 1: you think it's possible to make something that somehow is
Speaker 1: anti gravity? You know? That it's somehow not affected by gravity.
Speaker 1: That's the idea, right, yeah, exactly, that would be the idea. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's the question of today's podcast, and as usual,
Speaker 1: before we dig into it, we thought, let's go out
Speaker 1: and see what people think. Is this something people imagine
Speaker 1: it's possible or people think is ridiculous and absurd? Do
Speaker 1: you think anti gravity technology will ever work? Here's what
Speaker 1: people had to say. Yeah, I think that might be possible.
Speaker 1: Probably not, okay, yes, yes, what is that? Um? I
Speaker 1: just think as technology progresses, it's just something that can
Speaker 1: become possible. Speaking of really anti gravity, which like we're
Speaker 1: completely removed gravity, and I don't think that's possible at
Speaker 1: least from my imagination in the really short period of time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Probably yeah, why do you think so?
Speaker 1: Mean it's probably too expensively build, but we know that
Speaker 1: it's theoretically possible. Okay, yeah, yeah, what gives you so
Speaker 1: much faith? I don't know. I just have a lot
Speaker 1: of faith, um that with enough effort and people working together,
Speaker 1: that we can figure it out. All right. So, as usual,
Speaker 1: I am impressed and slightly scared by the faith people
Speaker 1: have in scientists to basically accomplish anything technological. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people are saying that, yeah, it's possible
Speaker 1: that that they have high confident ends in people like you. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's because they don't know me very well. But I
Speaker 1: think this is general sense that once an idea about
Speaker 1: something is made, comes up in science fiction or somewhere else,
Speaker 1: that eventually will figure it out. That it's just sort
Speaker 1: of like on the queue of stuff scientists got to
Speaker 1: get done, and maybe not this week or next week,
Speaker 1: but eventually technology always achieves these things. That seems to
Speaker 1: be the sense people have. Yeah, it seems that they
Speaker 1: have the impression that it's just a hard technical problem,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's possible, they just have to figure
Speaker 1: out how. Yeah, and I think this must be a
Speaker 1: new sensation, you know, the feeling that the world is
Speaker 1: constantly changing, that in a year or ten years or
Speaker 1: in fifty years, technology will be available that makes the
Speaker 1: everyday experience really different. Whereas you know, if you think
Speaker 1: about like a thousand years ago, everybody's life was basically
Speaker 1: like their grandparents life and their great grandparents life, and
Speaker 1: the general sense was nothing will ever change because the
Speaker 1: pace of change was so slow. Is basically invisible, whereas
Speaker 1: now people expect that their kids grow up in a
Speaker 1: different world and their grandkids wouldn't even recognize their world.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of amazing. Yeah, I guess people expect
Speaker 1: their grandkids to be floating around flying, that's right. They
Speaker 1: have to visit their their great grandkids up in the
Speaker 1: clouds somewhere. Yeah, but you're right. I think maybe even
Speaker 1: just fifty years ago or seventy years ago, this feeling
Speaker 1: probably wasn't there, you know. Yeah, and us accurate. Right,
Speaker 1: the pace of change is accelerating, like things are changing
Speaker 1: faster and faster. Uh. Somebody said the other day I
Speaker 1: thought was really insightful. They said, Um, nobody lives in
Speaker 1: the world they grew up in. Whoa, because the world
Speaker 1: you get used to when you're a kid is not
Speaker 1: the world anymore when you're an adult, Right, so you're
Speaker 1: always prepared to live in an older, more antique world
Speaker 1: than you grew up in. Interesting. When do you think
Speaker 1: that started? I mean even at the turn of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. I mean people were going through these huge changes, right,
Speaker 1: cars and radio and television. Yeah, I think around then,
Speaker 1: you know, industrial revolution is when things started to pick up.
Speaker 1: But I've gets after World War Two the things really
Speaker 1: started to get crazy, you know, as the development of
Speaker 1: electronics and computers and and all that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that really accelerated the pace of technological change. Um, now
Speaker 1: we're on this like very steeply moving curve that's accelerating
Speaker 1: to who knows where. Right, it's so difficult to predict
Speaker 1: what technology will have in just a few years. So
Speaker 1: surely something's easy as anti gravity should be done in
Speaker 1: a couple of years, right, Well, that's the thing. It's
Speaker 1: just because it's on people's wish list doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's possible, right, And it doesn't mean that it's easy,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't mean that it's imminent. People have been
Speaker 1: waiting for flying cars for a while now, and I
Speaker 1: don't see any, you know, on the street. What do
Speaker 1: you we have them? They're called helicopters or airplanes or drones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, that's true. Yeah, Um if they haven't really
Speaker 1: replaced your your car yet. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: do you have a helicopter warhead? No? Old, come on,
Speaker 1: I have three? Great, Um, I'd like to sorrow your
Speaker 1: helicopter by the way. Okay, So let's get into it. Um,
Speaker 1: So what do you think it means for something to
Speaker 1: be anti gravity or for to achieve anti gravity, or
Speaker 1: to make something that allows you to be anti gravity?
Speaker 1: So in my mind, there's something of an important distinction here.
Speaker 1: There's a difference between opposing gravity, Like what does a
Speaker 1: rocket do. A rocket pushes back against gravity. Gravity is
Speaker 1: pulling you down. The rocket is pushing up so you
Speaker 1: can overcome gravity. You can oppose gravity. That we can
Speaker 1: do for sure. Everybody here can jump, right, you're defeating
Speaker 1: the gravity of the Earth every time you take a leap.
Speaker 1: But that's not what we're talking about. I think we're
Speaker 1: talking about effortless floating. We're talking about negating gravity. We're
Speaker 1: talking about turning it off or something like shielding ourselves
Speaker 1: from the Earth's gravitational field. Right. I think people imagine
Speaker 1: it to be that you're floating, but you're not really
Speaker 1: doing much, right, Like if you're floating but you're burning
Speaker 1: explosive rocket fuel, or you're floating but you're whipping around
Speaker 1: this helicopter blade. But then that's that doesn't really feel
Speaker 1: like anti gravity, right, that's right because it cost energy, right,
Speaker 1: costum time and money and energy to do with the
Speaker 1: idea of the whole content effort. Yeah, the whole concept
Speaker 1: of anti gravity is effortless floating, effortless flying, So it
Speaker 1: doesn't take a huge amount of energy, right, And also
Speaker 1: it's nice and quiet and calm, and you know, you
Speaker 1: can you can read your magazine or whatever. So there's
Speaker 1: a concept there of of avoiding the cost of climbing
Speaker 1: out of the gravity. Well, right, it's not pushing against gravity.
Speaker 1: It's like the idea is canceling gravity somehow, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: shielding yourself somehow. And the amazing thing is that this
Speaker 1: is possible for the other forces, right, like electromagnetism, for example,
Speaker 1: that's something you can shield yourself from. You can cancel
Speaker 1: um the influence of electric and magnetic fields. What do
Speaker 1: you mean, like a shield? Exactly like a shield. And if,
Speaker 1: for example, you've ever heard of a Faraday cage, a
Speaker 1: Faraday cage is just a box made out of metal.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even have to be complete, The sides don't
Speaker 1: even have to be complete. It can be like chain
Speaker 1: link fence, a box made out of metal. It's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to make a cell phone call from right, like
Speaker 1: you're in an elevator, you lose coverage. Why because the
Speaker 1: elevator is a box made of metal, and a box
Speaker 1: made of metal will shield you from electromagnetic fields. So
Speaker 1: all those mixed martial arts art is fighting in a cage,
Speaker 1: they're all imprevious to electromagnetic radiation. That's right. They can't
Speaker 1: call their coach and say what should I do? Now?
Speaker 1: Should I kick them in the head? And that's why
Speaker 1: that's right, That's why they're not on their phones because
Speaker 1: they just don't work. Um. And the reason that's possible
Speaker 1: is because there's two kinds of electromagnetic charges, right, this
Speaker 1: positive in this negative. So electrons are negative and protons
Speaker 1: are positive, for example. And what happens when you put
Speaker 1: a metal box inside an electromagnetic field is that it
Speaker 1: pulls the the positive negative charges apart in just such
Speaker 1: a way that it cancels itself inside the box. What
Speaker 1: do you mean, it pulls him apart in the box.
Speaker 1: It's material like in the metal, Yeah, yeah, in metal.
Speaker 1: Metal is that is a conductor, which means that there's
Speaker 1: negative charges all around um which can be moved, right.
Speaker 1: And what happens is that you have the electromagnetic field
Speaker 1: and that moves the charges around. It responds to the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field and just the right way to produce the
Speaker 1: opposing electromagnetic field, which essentially cancels it. Right. It sort
Speaker 1: of absorbs the forces of from electromagnetic magnetism. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: or it makes a shield. Right, It's like having the
Speaker 1: opposite field at the same time, so the two things
Speaker 1: really are canceled, kind of like soundproofing a little bit,
Speaker 1: like it absorbs the impacts, you know, like it absorbs
Speaker 1: the energy. I think it's a better analogy is more
Speaker 1: like noise canceling headphones. Right. Noise canceling headphones don't just
Speaker 1: block the sound, They produce sound which distr recatively interferes
Speaker 1: with the sound waves to cancel them out. So that
Speaker 1: would be cool if you can somehow get into a
Speaker 1: box that somehow shields you from the force of gravity.
Speaker 1: You would basically be inside and you would float, right.
Speaker 1: That would be cool. That would be pretty cool. It
Speaker 1: would be pretty cool. I would like that. But I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the idea, right, get into it? Is it? We're
Speaker 1: looking for a way to cancel out the forces of
Speaker 1: gravity that would normally get to you and pull you.
Speaker 1: That's right, And You can do that for electromagnetism because
Speaker 1: there's a positive and negative charge. The thing with gravity
Speaker 1: is that there's only positive charges, right. Gravity is a
Speaker 1: force that acts between any objects that have mass, and
Speaker 1: as far as we know, there's only positive mass, which
Speaker 1: means it's only attractive gravity. So there's no way to
Speaker 1: build something that cancels the gravity or you know, no,
Speaker 1: there's no way for a box to arrange itself in
Speaker 1: such a way that it negates gravity because there is
Speaker 1: no other kind of charge. There's no other kind of mass,
Speaker 1: is no negative mass you can use to newgate gravity.
Speaker 1: That's why anti gravity is much trickier than anti electromagnetism.
Speaker 1: So in a metal box, there are positive and negative
Speaker 1: particles that cancel out the fours that normally would go through.
Speaker 1: But you're saying that with gravity, we can't do that
Speaker 1: because there's only one kind of gravity charge. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And that's why it has to be a metal box.
Speaker 1: So the metal box has those charges that can move around.
Speaker 1: If you're in a wooden box, then it doesn't have
Speaker 1: extra electrons which can be rearranged to cancel out the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field that's coming from the outside. That's why a
Speaker 1: Faraday cage has to be made out of metal. So
Speaker 1: if you don't want the government to snoop on you,
Speaker 1: or you don't want able to listen to your cell phone,
Speaker 1: then you can just get into a chain link box, right,
Speaker 1: make yourself offense, or find your dog kennel or something
Speaker 1: right where you keep your dog at night and crawl
Speaker 1: into there and nobody can snoop on your cell phone.
Speaker 1: You can't get any cell phone calls right, right. Well,
Speaker 1: when you have to ground, you have to ground it, right,
Speaker 1: like you have to connected to electrical round. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has to be ounded you all right, Well, let's think
Speaker 1: about what are other ways that you could make anti gravity? Right? So,
Speaker 1: how could anti gravity actually work? Let's talk about that,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a break. Okay, So anti gravity
Speaker 1: the idea of making something that is not affected by gravity,
Speaker 1: or creating a space that is not affected by gravity
Speaker 1: where gravitational forces can get to you. That's right, you
Speaker 1: have to come up with some way to negate gravity.
Speaker 1: And um, you know it sounds pretty difficult, and what
Speaker 1: I said earlier about not having any negative mass make
Speaker 1: this sound pretty hard. Um, but you know there are
Speaker 1: some possibilities. There are some things people are working on,
Speaker 1: something ways people think about that one day might eventually
Speaker 1: lead to anti gravity. Okay, so what are what are
Speaker 1: these possibilities? Well, one of them has to do with antimatter.
Speaker 1: We talked about antimatter in another podcast and for those
Speaker 1: of you who haven't listened to it yet, antimatter is
Speaker 1: a form of matter where most of the things are flipped. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the opposite of an electron is a positron.
Speaker 1: Instead of having a negative charge, it has a positive charge.
Speaker 1: So the positron is the antimatter version of the electron.
Speaker 1: And we don't understand a lot of things about antimatter,
Speaker 1: like why it exists at all, but why there's very
Speaker 1: little of it, why the universe is matter of matter
Speaker 1: or not antimatter. But antimatter is a real thing, and
Speaker 1: we can create in the laboratory. We do it as
Speaker 1: certain all the time, and we can play with it.
Speaker 1: And one of the interesting things about antimatter is that
Speaker 1: we don't know what kind of gravity it feels like.
Speaker 1: We know that antimatter has the opposite electric charge of matter,
Speaker 1: so it feels electromagnetism the opposite way. What does it
Speaker 1: feel about gravity. We know it has positive mass, but
Speaker 1: there's some theories of physics that say it could have
Speaker 1: negative gravity, negative meaning it responds to gravity in the
Speaker 1: opposite way. Exactly. There could just be a minus sign there,
Speaker 1: because antimatter has a lot of minus signs where normal
Speaker 1: matter has positive signs. And so it's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: antimatter feels um gravity the other way that it's a
Speaker 1: for antimatter, gravity is not an attractive force, but a
Speaker 1: repulsive force against everything else, that's right, Yeah, against everything
Speaker 1: that has mass. And so, for example, if you brought
Speaker 1: matter and antimatter together, if they were electrically neutral, so
Speaker 1: there are no other forces, then um, you know, one
Speaker 1: would be the matter would be attracted to the antimatter,
Speaker 1: but the antimatter would be repulsed from the matter. What,
Speaker 1: so they would be continually chasing each other. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that would be pretty crazy, right, Well, what, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it sounds ridiculous. It sounds like I'm making this up.
Speaker 1: It sounds like I've been smoking too many of ann appeals.
Speaker 1: But it's honestly a real possibility. Now, in order to
Speaker 1: investigate this, we've been studying it. We've been trying to
Speaker 1: make antimatter and we have. We've made peak grams of
Speaker 1: antimatter in the lab in order to study it and see, like,
Speaker 1: is antimatter the same as matter except for having these
Speaker 1: flipped charges. And we've answered all those questions. But the
Speaker 1: problem is that we haven't made enough anti matter. It's
Speaker 1: pretty tricky to make anti matter to hold it and
Speaker 1: to do experiments with it, and you need a lot
Speaker 1: of antimatter to test these theories just because gravity is
Speaker 1: so weak. Right. Remember gravity is the weakest force in
Speaker 1: the universe by a huge amount. So to test the
Speaker 1: theory of gravity, you need like a chunk of the stuff.
Speaker 1: And we've made pico grams of it. Wow. So I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm still trying to wrap my my head around
Speaker 1: this idea of something having anti gravity instead of having
Speaker 1: positive gravity. I know now you're excited, right you started
Speaker 1: off this podcast You're like this is crazy, and then
Speaker 1: you're like, wait, this is a great idea. So, like
Speaker 1: a little ball of this antimatter would just not it
Speaker 1: wouldn't fall down to the Earth. It would try to
Speaker 1: leave the Earth as quickly as possible. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: feel the Earth's gravitational field the opposite way, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: would it would would stay together, Like would an antimatter
Speaker 1: particle be attracted to another antibioto particle through gravity? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. If they both have negative gravity,
Speaker 1: then if they then two negative charges would probably attract
Speaker 1: each other and a positive negative would repel each other.
Speaker 1: So you could have a whole planet of anti gravity stuff,
Speaker 1: but it would just being It would just constantly be
Speaker 1: trying to be as far away from everything else as possible. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's another really tricky question there, which
Speaker 1: is about the kind of about what we mean by mass,
Speaker 1: right with it's actually two definitions of mass. What is
Speaker 1: gravitational mass, which means how are you affected by gravity? Right,
Speaker 1: you are pulled down by the Earth because you have mass.
Speaker 1: That's the gravitational mass. But there's a whole other concept
Speaker 1: of mass called inertial mass, and this has to do
Speaker 1: with F equals m. A force is mass times acceleration.
Speaker 1: It says how much do you move when you're pushed?
Speaker 1: So if you get a big push, you move more.
Speaker 1: You get a little push, you move less. Right, But
Speaker 1: it's also this question of mass that's the M and
Speaker 1: F equals m A. If you push something really small
Speaker 1: like a ping pong ball, it goes pretty far. If
Speaker 1: you push something really heavy, like a boulder, it doesn't
Speaker 1: go as far right, so the mass affects it. And
Speaker 1: for most things in the universe that we've ever studied,
Speaker 1: those two things are exactly the same. They're different concepts,
Speaker 1: but they're identical when we measure them. Right, everything we've
Speaker 1: ever seen has the same gravitational and inertial mass. But
Speaker 1: it would be really weird if antimatter had the opposite
Speaker 1: gravitational mass but like the same inertial mass, or even
Speaker 1: weirder would be have opposite inertial mass, which would mean,
Speaker 1: like you push it left and it goes right. What, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you had opposite if you had negative inertial mass,
Speaker 1: it seems impossible. Well, that's just because it's unfamiliar. Right now,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing we've actually tested. So
Speaker 1: we've done experiments with antimatter. We know that they have
Speaker 1: positive inertial mass because we can manipulate it, right. We've
Speaker 1: even built accelerators like the a Tron collider at Fermilab
Speaker 1: used anti protons, and so we know what happens when
Speaker 1: you push a piece of anti matter. We know it
Speaker 1: has positive inertial mass. You can't tell if it's falling
Speaker 1: down to the Earth, like you can't tell if you
Speaker 1: need to hold it up for it to be there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because what is the gravitational force on a proton? It's
Speaker 1: so tiny, because the massive proton is so tiny, all
Speaker 1: the other forces are thousands and millions and billions of
Speaker 1: times stronger. So it's almost impossible to measure the gravitational
Speaker 1: force on a proton because it's so close to zero. Right,
Speaker 1: But if you just left it alone, wouldn't it fall
Speaker 1: up or fall down? Yeah? But if you have an
Speaker 1: anti proton and you just leave it alone, it's going
Speaker 1: to interact with everything around it. Right. It's it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to have an anti proton and have it be
Speaker 1: nowhere near any other matter and have no electric magnetic
Speaker 1: fields at all, so that you cancel everything else out.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty difficult experiment to do. And so I
Speaker 1: mean they're trying to do that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: they've they've built blobs of matter to play with them
Speaker 1: at cern, but they don't have enough where they can
Speaker 1: register the gravitational force on an antiparticle. That's just not
Speaker 1: something we know yet. And it's amazing when such a
Speaker 1: basic question about antimatter, like which way does it feel gravity,
Speaker 1: we just don't know the answer because we don't have
Speaker 1: enough of it. We haven't been able to do the
Speaker 1: experiment yet. We haven't been able to ask the universe
Speaker 1: that question, so that answer is out there waiting for us.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that we as humans can make stuff
Speaker 1: that might possibly be anti gravity. We can make antimatter
Speaker 1: which might be anti gravity, might float naturally. That's right. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: The problem, of course is that we can't make a
Speaker 1: lot of it. It's pretty difficult, which makes it pretty
Speaker 1: which means you know, making your hoverboard is gonna be
Speaker 1: pretty far down the list. And the other problem is
Speaker 1: if you make an anti matter hoverboard, like, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna want to stand on it unless you're made of
Speaker 1: anti person, unless you're an anti person made of antimatter,
Speaker 1: because if normal matter stands on anti matter hoverboard, kaboom, Right,
Speaker 1: that's the trope from science fiction, which is actually true
Speaker 1: matter meeting anti matter big explosions. So anti matter would
Speaker 1: be even if it was anti gravity, it would be
Speaker 1: a bad idea to make stuff out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend it. And I also wouldn't recommend investing
Speaker 1: in your friends venture capital firm which is investing in
Speaker 1: an anti gravity technology based on anti matter not likely
Speaker 1: to succeed. Not for your safety, just for your bank account.
Speaker 1: That's right. Free financial advice from a physicist who knows
Speaker 1: nothing about finance, that's right. Don't invest in things that
Speaker 1: might explode or destroy the universe unless they're designed to explode,
Speaker 1: in which case, invest away, right, right, But then you
Speaker 1: have blood in your hands, that's right. You know that
Speaker 1: brings us to another way to think about gravity, because
Speaker 1: you know, we've been talking about gravity sort of in
Speaker 1: the context of Newton's ideas about gravity, where you have
Speaker 1: two blobs and you think of gravity is like a
Speaker 1: force between those blobs, right, negative mass, positive mass, negative
Speaker 1: forces whatever. But you know, we have a more modern
Speaker 1: way of thinking about gravity, and that's as a bending
Speaker 1: of space, meaning that when something is attracted to you
Speaker 1: by gravity, it's not that there's a fourth between you.
Speaker 1: It's just that the shape of space time between the
Speaker 1: two of you is bending to bring you together. That's right. Exactly,
Speaker 1: So you can ask like, why does the Earth go
Speaker 1: around the Sun? Well, Newton would say there's a force
Speaker 1: of gravity, but Einstein would say, no, the Sun has
Speaker 1: bent space in such a way that moving in a
Speaker 1: circle seems to be going in a straight line. That's
Speaker 1: the simplest path, the path of least resistance, is just
Speaker 1: moving in a straight line around the Sun. So from
Speaker 1: that point of view, right, gravity is the bending of space.
Speaker 1: And a common way to think about this is, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine a rubber sheet and a bowling ball bend space,
Speaker 1: and you have a marble that goes around in that
Speaker 1: inside that depression the gravity. Well, right, So from that
Speaker 1: point of view, it's much trickier to imagine how you
Speaker 1: could avoid gravity, right, because to avoid gravity, shield yourself
Speaker 1: from gravity, to negate gravity would mean sort of unbending
Speaker 1: the space only in your local area, right, how you
Speaker 1: have to like cancel out the bending of space. But wait,
Speaker 1: what do you need to unbend, for example, to space
Speaker 1: around Earth? You know, like that's would be huge, Like
Speaker 1: the Earth I'm sure is bending space a lot, right, Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you can feel it, right, you can feel because it's
Speaker 1: pulling you down, You're sliding down that gravity. Well in
Speaker 1: bent space towards the center of the Earth to you
Speaker 1: on the Earth just around me. Correct that little bending
Speaker 1: of space. Yeah exactly. I like how you say correct,
Speaker 1: like it's the natural way of things. Would be for you,
Speaker 1: for Jorge to float above the ground like the Buddha
Speaker 1: or something. Um, that's a nice image. Um, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So from the general relativistic point of view, the way
Speaker 1: to do would be to somehow make space flat or
Speaker 1: only around you, right, And that's pretty hard to imagine. Yeah, unbended, right,
Speaker 1: And that's pretty hard to imagine because you'd have to
Speaker 1: have something which bends space. The other way that that
Speaker 1: Earth does, right, Earth is bending space, and one way
Speaker 1: you have to sort of oppose that, not climb up
Speaker 1: the gravity. Well, but like unbend space. Oh, I see
Speaker 1: you're saying. To to achieve anti gravity, I don't have
Speaker 1: to myself become anti gravity, I just have to affect
Speaker 1: the space time around me, exactly like unbended from distortion
Speaker 1: of the planet Earth. Yeah, exactly. Imagine you're imagine the
Speaker 1: earth gravitational field as like a bowl, right, and you're
Speaker 1: on the slippery side of it. Okay, so Earth is
Speaker 1: pulling you down and then imagine instead, you can create
Speaker 1: a ledge. You can flatten it so you have a
Speaker 1: place to stand, so that no longer is the Earth
Speaker 1: pulling on you. Right, that's that's the idea, is to
Speaker 1: create a flat spot in space all around you so
Speaker 1: that you're not sliding down towards the center of the
Speaker 1: Earth anymore. I see. So that's kind of a roundabout way, right,
Speaker 1: because you're not you're not trying to cancel gravity. You're
Speaker 1: just trying to reshape spacetime. Yeah, but remember Einstein says
Speaker 1: that the shape of spacetime is gravity. That's what gravity is.
Speaker 1: Gravity is just us feeling the shape of spacetime. That
Speaker 1: there is no force. Gravity is not a force, It's
Speaker 1: just the results of spacetime being bent by various pieces
Speaker 1: of matter and energy. Right. But I'm saying, if you
Speaker 1: can find a way to bend space time, then you
Speaker 1: could technically achieve anti gravity. Yeah, exactly. And so how
Speaker 1: do you do that? How is that possible? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, according to Einstein's theory, what you would have
Speaker 1: to have is something which has in the opposite effect.
Speaker 1: And so there is this concept it's called exotic matter.
Speaker 1: When we dug into it, a little bit. On another
Speaker 1: podcast episode, we were talking about wormholes and the idea
Speaker 1: is that you could have matter with negative mass. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is not antimatter with positive mass that feels
Speaker 1: gravity the opposite way. This is something which actually has
Speaker 1: negative mass. That's right, And uh yeah, let's talk about
Speaker 1: that a little bit more. But first quick break, So
Speaker 1: what's the difference between exotic matter and something like antimatter?
Speaker 1: Is an antimatter exotic antimatter? It's pretty weird, but exotic
Speaker 1: matter is different. So, first of all, antimatter is real. Okay,
Speaker 1: if we've seen it, we've made it, we know it's
Speaker 1: their Nobel Prizes have been awarded for it, so it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. Nobody's anti antimatter, that's right. I am
Speaker 1: pro antimatter um, and which makes me just matter. I guess. Hey,
Speaker 1: look finally I matter. Um. Now it's terrible joke, but
Speaker 1: exotic matter is not. It's just theoretical. Now. The difference
Speaker 1: is antimatter we know has positive mass, okay um, and
Speaker 1: but exotic matter we think would have negative mass, right,
Speaker 1: which is a really weird concept. What does that even mean? Like,
Speaker 1: the more you have of it, the easier it would
Speaker 1: be to push, or if you push it it would
Speaker 1: come back at you. Yeah, exactly. Um, it has negative mass,
Speaker 1: which means if it has negative inertial mass, and we
Speaker 1: don't know, but if it had negative inertial mass, it
Speaker 1: would mean if you push it, it comes back against
Speaker 1: it right. You push it left and it goes right.
Speaker 1: So fff equals like minus m a essentially um if
Speaker 1: it has negative inertial mass. But the hope is it
Speaker 1: has negative gravitational mass, and um, you know this is cool.
Speaker 1: Concept was sort of invented in order to stabilize theoretical wormholes.
Speaker 1: Nobody's ever seen exotic matter, and nobody even knows if
Speaker 1: it exists. It's allowed in the equations, which puts on
Speaker 1: a list of like stuff that could exist, but we
Speaker 1: don't know if it actually does. And some of that
Speaker 1: stuff on that list has turned out to be real,
Speaker 1: you know, like black holes was for a long time
Speaker 1: theoretically possible but never observed. Now observed definitely exists. So
Speaker 1: exotic matter might be real, but we don't know how
Speaker 1: to make it. We need that The equations of the
Speaker 1: universe say that technically you can't you can't have this
Speaker 1: kind of matter. We just never have never seen it.
Speaker 1: That's right, we've never seen it before, so we don't.
Speaker 1: It's called exotic because because it's a crazy idea. It
Speaker 1: should have been called crazy loony tunes matter because it's
Speaker 1: it's just a suit. It's this silly idea. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, let's invent It's sort of like
Speaker 1: the argument is like this, what would you need to
Speaker 1: solve this problem of wormholes and anti gravity? Okay, well
Speaker 1: you need something like this, Well, could that possibly exist?
Speaker 1: Let's check the math. The math, sois that could exist?
Speaker 1: All right, go out and find it. So it's a
Speaker 1: reasonable way to proceed. Yeah, we're just we're just stuck
Speaker 1: on that. Go out and find it. Point. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this exotic matter might have negative mass, which what you
Speaker 1: could use potentially to reshape space time around you so
Speaker 1: that you don't feel graphic exactly. And there's there's one
Speaker 1: more way to use general relativity to maybe reshape space.
Speaker 1: And this is both more plausible and less plausible at
Speaker 1: the same time if you believe that it's a short
Speaker 1: angers matter exactly, and that's to use something called inflationary matter.
Speaker 1: So if you ask, like, can gravity ever be repulsive
Speaker 1: and we said earlier that in order for gravity to
Speaker 1: be repulsive, you need to have negative mass of some sort.
Speaker 1: That's not exactly true, because general relativity tells us that
Speaker 1: it's not just mass that bends space, it's energy, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't in a really complex way. It's a combination
Speaker 1: of mass and energy. And it turns out there are
Speaker 1: ways to arrange matter and energy so that you get
Speaker 1: negative pressure, because general relativity is really mathematically complicated, and
Speaker 1: there are some fancy ways to arrange stuff so that
Speaker 1: gravity becomes repulsive. What do you mean arrange? What does
Speaker 1: that mean, like put it in a certain configuration or
Speaker 1: do weird things to it? I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: don't know what kind of weird things you want to
Speaker 1: do to your matter? Boy, I'm glad that this is
Speaker 1: a podcast. It's audio only at this point. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certain arrangements. And so for those of you are
Speaker 1: very technically minded, you can google this and read all
Speaker 1: about the mass energy tensor, which is used to calculate
Speaker 1: gravitational forces in general relativity, and there are ways to
Speaker 1: to arrange that in such a way to get negative pressure.
Speaker 1: And you might think, what this sounds cookie It sounds crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: the reason it's called inflationary math or is that we
Speaker 1: think it might have existed in the very first few
Speaker 1: moments of the universe and it's responsible for inflation. You know,
Speaker 1: Inflation is the super huge, rapid stretching of space in
Speaker 1: the first bill a second of the universe that made
Speaker 1: the universe as big as it is. And so it's
Speaker 1: less plausible because like, wow, how would you ever do that?
Speaker 1: But it's more plausible because we think it might have
Speaker 1: happened already. But wait, how is it different than exotic
Speaker 1: matter or antimatter? Well, inflationary matter, what we don't know?
Speaker 1: I mean this is we're like way out on the
Speaker 1: edges of theoretical um speculation here. Um. There's lots of
Speaker 1: different theories about how inflation happened. Um. Some of some
Speaker 1: theories require some super kind of weird particle called an inflaton, right,
Speaker 1: an infloton inflaton, I know is another craziest It causes inflation, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, my money is getting weaker. Somebody's been
Speaker 1: shooting inflotons at me. Um. So that's one idea is
Speaker 1: it's a special kind of matter which causes it. Um.
Speaker 1: So that that would basically be in the same categories exotically,
Speaker 1: I see, it's like it's like a weird kind of
Speaker 1: matter that feels gravity, has inertial regular inertial mass, but
Speaker 1: somehow in its inner configuration it kind of ben space
Speaker 1: the other way, inflate space instead of causing divid's for
Speaker 1: you to fall into exactly right. And you know, we
Speaker 1: are again we are way on the limb here of speculation.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of varieties of theories of inflotons.
Speaker 1: It's not like one idea, it's like a whole family
Speaker 1: of crazy ideas um And you know, some people think
Speaker 1: about making inflationary matter out of weird configurations of normal matter,
Speaker 1: and so you get pretty far out there. But again,
Speaker 1: we think it might have existed. We use it as
Speaker 1: a way to explain the way the universe inflated early on,
Speaker 1: but we don't know how to make it. It's not
Speaker 1: like we can create inflationary matter, we know anything else
Speaker 1: about it. It's just it's another one of these sort
Speaker 1: of empty boxes in the theory. We say, if this
Speaker 1: kind of thing isisted, it would help solve this problem.
Speaker 1: So let's check it out and see if we can
Speaker 1: make it. We're nowhere close to even determining that it's
Speaker 1: that it can exist in the universe, that it does exist,
Speaker 1: not to mention being able to create it or use
Speaker 1: it for something like consumer technologies. All right, Well, so
Speaker 1: you're saying it may not be possible to with technology
Speaker 1: or materials that we have now to somehow figure out
Speaker 1: how to create some kind of field that that negates gravity.
Speaker 1: That doesn't seem very likely. I would not bet on
Speaker 1: that happening in the next few years. I would say theoretically,
Speaker 1: there are some avenues you might be able to go
Speaker 1: down to make it work. So I would not say
Speaker 1: it's totally impossible, but I would say it's also very impractical.
Speaker 1: But you know, there are people working on it. Really,
Speaker 1: there are anti gravity researchers, that's right, or maybe gravity
Speaker 1: anti researchers, based on how well respected they are. Even
Speaker 1: there's a prize if you can demonstrate anti gravity you
Speaker 1: can win a one million euro prize from this European
Speaker 1: foundation that's seeking to stimulate research. And there are people
Speaker 1: out there working on it. There are even people out
Speaker 1: there who have claimed to invented anti gravity devices. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there are people out there who claimed to
Speaker 1: make zero gravity armchairs. That's right, That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: they are anti zero gravity. Yeah, if you want to
Speaker 1: win the prize, just by one of those zero gravity
Speaker 1: massage chairs, put some stamps on it and send it in.
Speaker 1: Nobody's thought of that. There's a there's a sort of
Speaker 1: famous or infamous guy named Pod Clifton Off, and he's
Speaker 1: claimed to have developed anti gravity technology, and nobody has
Speaker 1: been able to reproduce his results. I meaning he claimed
Speaker 1: he made something that was antimatter, or he claimed to
Speaker 1: have fun a way to you know, cancel out the
Speaker 1: gravitational field of a planet. Right. He claims to have
Speaker 1: made a device which can reduce the gravitational field of
Speaker 1: the planet, and nobody knows how it works because it
Speaker 1: doesn't um, And nobody's been able to reproduce his results.
Speaker 1: And he always claims, oh, you haven't actually retried it
Speaker 1: the way I did it, or you did it wrong
Speaker 1: or whatever, but he's never let people like explore his
Speaker 1: lab um and so it's a bit shape. Nobody really nobody,
Speaker 1: no mainstream scientist takes these results seriously at all. But
Speaker 1: people are out there working on it, and sometimes great
Speaker 1: results come from the extremes right from the fringes. And
Speaker 1: so I'm glad that people are out there tinkering and
Speaker 1: maybe someday somebody will make it work, yeah, and win
Speaker 1: a million euros just somehow doesn't seem like enough reward
Speaker 1: or creating anti gravity. No. I think it probably costs
Speaker 1: a lot more than a million euros to make anti gravity, right,
Speaker 1: so it's not really a big enough prize. Plus if
Speaker 1: you make anti gravity, oh my god, that technological applications
Speaker 1: are huge, right, so you could be it's a bazillion
Speaker 1: dollar invention. There is no way you're turning it over
Speaker 1: to some foundation for a million euros. Well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about that. I mean, how would the world change if
Speaker 1: we somehow invented anti gravity? Like things would be pretty different, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything would be a lot lighter, right, Um, yeah you could.
Speaker 1: I mean, transportation would would cost almost no energy. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: we could all take the skies almost for free. You
Speaker 1: could go to space for free, right, So we could
Speaker 1: very rapidly build up a space based industry, right, lifting
Speaker 1: heavy industry into space. You like, build a factory on
Speaker 1: Earth and you just lift it up into space and
Speaker 1: then you have factories in space. Pumping out spaceships or
Speaker 1: habitats or something, right, So that would be amazing. That's
Speaker 1: basically what's preventing us from going out into space and
Speaker 1: colonizing other planets and solar systems. It's it's the gravity
Speaker 1: of planet Earth that's holding us down, that's right. And
Speaker 1: the gravity of yourself. Like, say you want to accelerate
Speaker 1: to the speed of light or your spaceship to go
Speaker 1: really fast, one of the things that slows you down
Speaker 1: is is the gravity of things around you, right, And
Speaker 1: so if you could reduce that, then you can go
Speaker 1: a lot faster, you can accelerate more quickly. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was just in Alabama at the Space Center there they
Speaker 1: have in Huntsville, Alabama, and they have this huge saturny
Speaker 1: five rocket on display. And the way they talk about
Speaker 1: it is that they say that to leave the planet Earth,
Speaker 1: to go into orbit around the Earth, your vehicle, your
Speaker 1: rocket has to be fuel. So most of it, like
Speaker 1: if you see a giant rocket taken off into space,
Speaker 1: of that rocket is just basically gasoline. It's it's rocket
Speaker 1: fuel that you need to burn just to get the
Speaker 1: little tip of the rocket out into space, that's right.
Speaker 1: And most of your fuel is spent lifting the rest
Speaker 1: of the fuel, right, Because the more fuel you carry,
Speaker 1: the heavier you are, the more fuel you need, and
Speaker 1: so it gets expensive pretty fast. Right. But if you
Speaker 1: can somehow make anti gravity, you would just not need
Speaker 1: so much fuel. You can just float above all of
Speaker 1: the earthly problems. So if you have a great idea
Speaker 1: for anti gravity, hey, get to work on it, or
Speaker 1: send it to us at feedback at Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: dot com. Send it to us a zero gravity armchairs
Speaker 1: at that we'll cut you in part of the million
Speaker 1: dollar prize, we promise, all right, we'll help you, all
Speaker 1: of you out there feel just a little bit lighter
Speaker 1: having listened to this podcast. All right, thanks everyone for listening,
Speaker 1: See you next time. If you still have a question
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
Speaker 1: at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
Speaker 1: one word, or email us at feedback at Daniel and
Speaker 1: Orge dot com.