WEBVTT - What are fermi bubbles? 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:10.920 If I told you that today we're talking about bubbles, 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:15.040 what comes to mind? I'm thinking of bathtime. Are you 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:17.599 in the bath as we're recording this. I'm just worried. 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.320 I listened to the Higgs boson. I think that rubber 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.119 duck ees might destroy the universe. All right, well, I 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.320 want you to think bigger than just your bathtube. Okay, 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.480 like those hula hoop bubbles that you make with your 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.720 kids in this classic bath that's the right direction. But 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.760 go bigger, bigger than that. Then you've got to be 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:40.840 talking about like our atmosphere or something as a huge 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:44.680 bubble around the whole ward, even bigger. Can a bubble 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:48.160 be that pig? Can you even think about a bubble 0:00:48.200 --> 0:01:06.680 that big? Or is it gonna blow your mind? Hi? 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:09.560 This is Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and the co 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.600 author of the book We Have No Idea, A Guide 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:15.880 the Unknown Universe. My other co host and co author 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.440 is Jorge cham, a cartoonist and a friend of mine. 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.319 Jorge is not here today, so we have a guest host, 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:26.400 Professor Matt Georgianni of the University of Maryland. Say Hi 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:29.600 to everybody. Matt, Hello, everybody. Yeah, I'm Matt Georgiohnny, And 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.199 I'm a biologist, so I don't know anything about physics 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:38.319 unless it makes animals. Biology is basically just big physics, though, 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:41.839 isn't it It is? I mean, it's biologist what physicists 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:47.880 which they could study to lay the gauntlet down. Now, Wow, 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:50.320 I thought you were admitting that biology is nothing but 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:53.680 an emergent phenomenon of physics. But now it seems you're 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:55.280 trying to turn the tables on me. It won't be 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:58.000 the first time, So tell everybody a little bit about yourself, Matt. 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:00.200 Why are you a biologist? What do you study? What 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.160 do you find fascinating? I loved mathematics early on, in 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:08.440 in high school and in college, but I got really taken. 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:11.240 Loved is in past tense. I loved, I still love, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.440 But I got really taken with evolution. And I loved 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:19.359 how big, you know, animals evolved into different shapes and beings, 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:21.920 and how all of life on Earth came to be. 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.400 And I just find it utterly fascinating. You mean the 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:28.680 theory of evolution, right, the theory of evolution, yes, but 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:31.320 what a wonderful theory right up there with the theory 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:34.520 of gravity. Two of my favorite theory. Oh snap, snap, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:37.760 all right, I will I'll take that blow touchet. So 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.280 do you study evolution in your research? I do. I 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:45.440 study rattlesnake venom actually, and how that has evolved across 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.960 different types of snakes. Wow? So how many years until 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.359 humans evolve venom that we can squirt out of our teeth? Man? 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:54.760 I am keep waiting. Every day I check my teeth 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:56.880 and I haven't done it yet. What do you mean waiting? 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.000 If anybody's going to develop that technology, it's going to 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.079 be you. We are waiting for you to develop it. Matt. Well, 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:05.320 I'm working on it. I'll get there. Have you tried 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.880 getting bitten by a radioactive rattlesnake? I feel like now 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.320 this is why I called you. Now I can finally 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.480 complete my research. Al Right, Well, I want authorship or 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:17.760 at least acknowledgement on the paper where you announced that. 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:20.600 Give me my first bite? How about that? That's a deal. 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:23.520 That's a deal. All right? Well, welcome you are our 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:26.720 co host today our guest host on the podcast Daniel 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.639 and Jorge explain the Universe featuring Today Matt Georgianni. So 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.880 I guess it's Daniel and Matt explained Daniel and Jorges 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.480 universe or I'm not sure what the temporary name should be, 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:39.320 or maybe I can just work up what you guys explain. 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:42.440 That's right. Daniel tries to explain the universe and Matt 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:46.640 confuses everybody. That's right. And our podcast is a production 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:49.400 of I Heart Radio. Today we're gonna be talking about 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:51.840 all those amazing things that you do go into science 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:54.080 to discover. You went into science to talk to discover 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.760 evolution and unravel the secrets of the history of life. 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.640 And I went into physics to reveal a deeper truth 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.600 about the nature of the universe. And as always when 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.240 you jump into something scientific, you never know what you're 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:07.320 going to discover. And today's episode is going to be 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:11.480 all about that, about unexpected discoveries. What's the most interesting 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.840 or famous unexpected discovery in biology or in rattlesnake venom. 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:17.960 I can only say that one of the things about 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:21.000 biology is that we as we keep discovering things, we 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:25.520 the conclusion is always that everything is way more complicated 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:27.560 than we ever thought it was. Oh, I see, so 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:30.520 we're like, hey, we evolved from primates. There must be 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.640 a straight, dotted line between us and some common ancestor 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:35.320 of chimps, and then we dig up a bunch of 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:38.400 fossils and they don't make a nice dotted line. I 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.000 think human evolution is one of these great cases where 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:43.320 we did kind of think maybe there would be a 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:46.719 sort of simple line, and all we keep learning is 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:51.520 that populations of early humans and different hominids were intermingling 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.720 and mixing, and that the modern human that we that 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:57.839 what we envision is actually this really complex mixture of 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:02.400 a bunch of different populations of humans and early humans 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:05.120 and we're just way more complex than we ever thought 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:07.920 we were. And do you think that's like a really 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.080 fun moment when you're, you know, digging up a skeleton 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.240 that doesn't look anything like the one you expected to find, 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:17.640 because that opens the doors to crazy new ideas. Or 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:19.400 do you think it's like frustrating. We're like, look, I 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:21.400 just got to graduate, I want to write this paper, 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:23.560 and now this data doesn't make any sense to me. 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:26.200 I think it it's a little of both. I think 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.200 the first time you realize it's not the answer you expected, 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:32.760 you think, oh great, I was really hoping I could 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:35.479 wrap this up, and then your mind starts to click 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:37.160 and you start to think of all the other new 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:39.440 questions you suddenly have, and then all of a sudden, 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:42.279 the world just becomes that much bigger. And that's that's 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:44.200 really a fun moment. Yeah, And I think there's an 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:46.720 analogy there. I think like the progress of science in 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:50.920 general is something like the weird, complicated mess of human evolution. 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.040 You know, we make progress in this direction, and we 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:54.640 got to back up and go this other way, and 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:56.960 then we stumble across this thing, and then the end 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:01.000 we draw some conclusions based on this big mess combination 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:04.680 of ideas, this population of discoveries. Yeah. And so today 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.040 on the podcast, we'll be talking about an amazing discovery 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.280 that was made very recently, within the last ten years, uh, 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:14.000 something which totally changes what we know about the very 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.560 galaxy we live in. I love that physics is still 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.720 discovering things. You thought physics was used up like a 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.440 hundred years ago, But I thought that Einstein and Newton 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.680 had figured it all out. No, No, not at all. 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.560 So today on the podcast, we'll be answering the question 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:38.560 what are the FIRMI bubbles? When we're talking about bubbles, 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.400 we're not talking about Matt having a soapy bath, or 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.040 making Hulaho bubbles, or even the bubble of our atmosphere. 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.560 We're talking about something on an enormous scale, something basically 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.599 the size of the galaxy that was only recently discovered, 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:54.400 and we talked about recently on a podcast about how 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.200 stuff at the center of the galaxy is still a 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.000 huge mystery. Like, we know there's a big black hole there. 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:02.920 We have lots of questions about black holes. There's a 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:05.360 bunch of stuff swirling around that black hole, and questions 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:07.640 about how those black holes were made and all sorts 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:10.600 of stuff. It's a big, messy swarm of goop there 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.200 in the middle of the galaxy. And even Gwyneth Paltrow 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:18.000 can't give us any insight. Yeah, yeah, well maybe she's 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:21.360 in this Fermi bubbles that we'll see. That's right. And 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.600 so today we're gonna be talking about an amazing discovery 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.880 that they made recently. They found these huge blobs of 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.080 gas they're like basically the size of the galaxy, and 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.040 they called them the Fermi bubbles. And before we dig 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:34.360 into talking about what they are and what they mean 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:36.640 and what they might reveal about the nature of our 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:40.120 galaxy and the universe in general. I was wondering had 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.840 anybody heard of this? Because in my field and physics, 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.520 everybody knows about it because it's a big discovery made 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.800 pretty recently. Somebody was recently awarded a big prize for it. 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.920 But I wasn't sure if it had sort of penetrated 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:54.240 into the cultural Zeite guys to people who have been 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.240 talking about this, and so I walked around campus at 0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.520 U C Irvine and I asked people, Hey, have you 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:01.080 ever heard of the Fermi bubbles? Do you know what 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:03.960 they are? Before you listen to these answers, think to yourself, 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:05.840 do you know what the Fermi bubbles are? If I 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.240 had asked you randomly on the street, what would you 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:10.760 have said. This is actually my favorite part of your podcast, 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.280 when we're asked to just quietly listen, think, think about 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.200 our own answer. I love it, and I'm never right, 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:20.360 so I love It's a good time. All right, Well, 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.360 listen to these answers and hear what people had to say. 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:29.240 Have you ever heard of the Fermi bubbles? No? No, no, no, no, 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:31.560 I have not known. I've heard the name, but I 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:35.080 the definition escapes me. All right, Matt, what did you 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.080 think of people's responses. I have to say that I 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.800 also had not heard of Fermi bubbles and I wasn't 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:42.640 really aware of them. I know who for Me is 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:45.240 because I was in Chicago, However, I didn't really know 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:47.480 what these were. And it seems like the people on 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:50.439 her mind did not really know much about him either. No, 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:52.880 pretty much nobody had ever heard of them. You hear 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:55.000 some clever guesses, right, people like, oh, I think I 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.160 know who for Me is, or you know, maybe there's 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.120 some connection to particle physics with the chamber. That was clever, 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.160 But basically zero percent of these people had ever heard 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:06.920 of the Fermi bubbles. And God, that blows me away 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:10.800 because we're making these huge discoveries. This is like when 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:14.079 we talked about on the podcast about the hexagon on Saturn. 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.040 You know, everybody has heard of Jupiter's red spot, obvious thing, 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.920 fascinating mystery, but very few are Almost nobody had heard 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.200 of the fact that there's a huge hexagon on the 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.880 top of Saturn. Like, people just don't know that there 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.240 are these big mysteries out there, these recent discoveries, and 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.000 so um I hope at least after today people will 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:34.120 know a little bit about what the formy bubbles are, 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.200 why they're such a fascinating discovery. All right, so we'll 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:39.760 dig into what the formy bubbles are, but first let's 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:55.400 take a quick break, okay, Daniel. So now I've got 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:57.600 some questions, right, So what I've done is I've looked 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:01.280 at a picture at Google search where Fernie bubbles. Is 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:03.600 that how you biologists do research or just type stuff 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.719 into Google? The world of the answers are pretty much 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:09.679 already out there, so I so I'm looking at these 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:12.720 Fermi bubbles, and what I'm seeing is this really great 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:16.040 picture of our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, and I 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.880 see two big purple bubbles I guess that are extending 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.680 out from the plane perpendicular to the plane of our 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.960 hard spinning disk. So I guess I can start with 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.400 my first questions, which is what am I looking at? Yeah, 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:33.680 it's amazing you visualize the galaxy. Most people think of 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:36.640 something pretty flat like a disc. It's got these swirling 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.400 arms of stars and that's correct, right. But in this 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:41.400 image that we're looking at, and that I hope that 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.240 the folks out there have a chance to Google if 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.360 they're not currently driving, you see these huge balls, these 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.800 big purple balls. And the most important thing for people 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.960 to know is these things are basically the same size 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.160 of the galaxy. There like twenty five thousand light years 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:59.680 above and below the galaxy. They're basically the biggest feature 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:03.040 of our galaxy, and nobody even knew they existed until 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.120 ten years ago. Right, the disc becomes this, uh, this 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:10.319 little belt that are of all the galaxy has, yeah, exactly, 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:12.800 all the planets, all of life, all of the stars 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:15.880 are kind of like the feature around the balls. I 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:18.440 know exactly. It's like we are the side note to 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:20.959 this enormous feature. Right, And for those of you who 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:23.000 don't know, the whole galaxy in the Milky Way galaxy 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:26.160 is about a hundred thousand light years across, So to 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:29.480 have something that's fifty tho light years wide, that's a 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.960 pretty big feature, right, that's maybe the dominant thing. Um. 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:35.200 And so there are these two giant blobs and they're 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.360 basically circular, also, like they're tight at the at the 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:40.439 center of the galaxy and then they sort of expand 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.280 out and then taper off a little bit. So they 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.760 look basically like two huge basketballs um one above and 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.520 one below. The galaxy touching right there at the center 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.079 of the galaxy, or if I tried my belt really tight, 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:56.880 not my waist. Okay, I just got a very disturbing 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:02.600 mental image. Let's let's pack that out. And there's very 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.800 beautiful And there's two of them, right, there's the north 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.680 one in the south one, and they're about the same size. 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.200 Right there, there is there's a lot of symmetry here, 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:13.040 So let's just start with what are they made of? 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:15.679 We don't even know the answer to that question. We 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.920 think that maybe they're made of some sort of hot gas, 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:23.160 which in this case basically means protons. Right, Remember that gas. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.280 Most of the gas in the universe is hydrogen, which 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:27.600 is a proton and an electron, but a lot of 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:29.360 it is hot, which means it's I and I, so 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.839 the electron has escaped, so basically just protons. So one 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:35.360 idea is maybe it's just a huge number of protons. 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:38.000 And and the thing to know is, like it would 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:40.360 be a huge number of protons. Like if you took 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.280 all those protons and like use them to build stars, 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:45.760 which is something our galaxy is good at, you could 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.200 make two million stars. Right, This is not a small 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.679 amount of gas. So one idea is maybe they're protons. 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.920 The other idea is that maybe they're electrons. Right, maybe 0:12:55.960 --> 0:13:00.280 they're like really fast moving, zippy electrons. And I think 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.559 the thing to understand is is what we're looking at. 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.520 What we're seeing, of course, is light. Right, we have 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.880 a telescope out in space that can see these things, 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:11.960 so we're seeing photons from these objects. Right. You know, 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.080 when we see like stars that are really far away, 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.400 we're not seeing the star. We're seeing the life from 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:19.080 that star. So things that we only see things that 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.199 give off light. Right, there could be something out there 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.000 like a big black rock or a black hole. We 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:26.400 wouldn't see it because it's not giving off any photons. 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.439 So how did we just discover this? Then? I know, right, 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.520 how did we not see this before? Well, the story 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:35.079 is that, you know, we didn't have a telescope that 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:38.120 could see these things before. People I think imagine that 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.760 we've looked out into the universe, that we've basically seen 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.120 the whole universe. But that's not true, right, We've looked 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.160 at a very tiny fraction of the universe. Just recently, 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:49.160 we had an episode about like how many stars have 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:50.880 we seen in the sky? And we talked about how 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:53.959 the Hubble, which can see really deep into the universe, 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.120 has only looked at a tiny patch of the sky. 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.400 Most of the sky has not even been examined by Hubble, 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:02.080 and you could look out there and find this crazy, 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:04.960 amazing stuff nobody's ever seen before. There could be huge 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.880 surprises there. So I think the lesson is like every 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.120 time we turn on a new astronomical device, we see 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:13.679 crazy stuff that we didn't expect because the universe is 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.400 filled with crazy stuff and we just got open lots 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:18.160 of new kinds of eyes. And the key is not 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:20.000 that we're it's not that we're not pointing in the 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:21.960 right direction. If that we're not looking with the right 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.880 or we're not using all the wavelengths or something, yeah, exactly. 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.280 So this this these things are called Fermi bubbles because 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:32.120 they were discovered by the Fermi telescope, which is named 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:34.920 after Enrico Fermy. So it's a bit of a you know, 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:38.920 double misdirection there. People thought Fermi might have discovered these things, 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.680 but now the telescope named after him discovered it. So 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:43.480 I think it's cool he sort of gets credit for 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.920 stuff he didn't discover, because, like you know, if you 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.040 become a famous scientist and then they name something after 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:52.200 you and then that device is used to discover stuff, 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:54.320 you get like secondary credit for it. I think that's 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:56.840 pretty cool. But yeah, that telescope was the first one 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.680 that could see these photons. These are very high energy 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:03.560 gam raise like above fifty or a hundred giga electron volts, 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.320 and we just didn't have a great space telescope that 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:08.960 could see these things before. And so essentially the first 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.240 time they build one of these things, put it in 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:14.200 space and then looked out into the universe with it, 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:16.200 they spotted these things. It was pretty quick, like it 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:18.480 only took a couple of years of data before they 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:20.720 noticed these things. So we just hadn't been looking at 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:22.840 the right energies before. So there are more of them, 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:25.720 Well there's the our galaxy has only these two. Yeah, 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:27.800 there's the one, the north one and the South one. 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:30.520 And there's a lot of really weird things about them. 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:32.480 Like if you look at the picture, you notice there's 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:35.480 like a really strong cut off, Like they're not these 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.400 like amorphous blobs. They're not like, you know, sort of 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:42.320 gradually fading out. They're pretty crisp, like the edges are 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.640 kind of sharp, right, And that's really interesting because they're 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:47.440 trying to understand, like what are these things made of, 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:51.080 like you were asking, and so either their protons or 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:53.640 their electrons or you know, they could always be something 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.440 totally weird and different. But the thing that's happening is 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:59.400 that you know, there's photons out there all over the universe, 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.240 is caused a gray background and and and other sort 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.680 of soft photons, and then these really high energy particles, 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:08.880 the protons or the electrons in these bubbles. What they 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.920 do is they basically give those photons a boost, like 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.920 they interact with those photons, and the photons like get 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.520 pushed and then they become really high energy gamma rays 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:20.720 and they come to Earth. And that's what we're seeing. 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:24.000 So we're not literally seeing the gas or the photo 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.200 or the electrons directly. We're seeing the photons that got 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:30.880 boosted by those high energy particles in these bubbles. So 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:33.080 it's almost like this little chamber that's everything that comes 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.640 into its shooting it out or it's a I guess 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.240 that's the high energy part of it. Yeah, exactly, it's 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.120 like a little accelerator, right, everything that comes in gets 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.480 zoomed out and that's what we're seeing. We're seeing that 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:47.680 photons in this region of space are getting pushed, are 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.840 getting boosted up to some really high energy. And that's 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.560 the mysteries, like what why are these things here, what 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.560 are they doing, what's causing it? Where do they come from? 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:58.240 And do we think it's a cloud of gas or 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:00.200 is it like a bubble with a perimeter than a 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.520 hollow center. Now that's really interesting things that it seems 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:05.840 to be sort of smooth. It's not like there's an 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.159 edge like a bubble right where it. Mostly it's happening 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.640 on the edge um And it's also not really much 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.159 more intense closer to the center of the galaxy. We 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:15.960 see the same intensity basically all the way across it, 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.160 which is really hard to explain physically. Like we'll talk 0:17:19.240 --> 0:17:21.600 later about the possible things that could have made these things, 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.760 but none of those hypotheses explain what we see because 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.159 none of them can generate a bubble that's smooth all 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:30.400 the way through it. It's really weird. I can't believe 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.280 you're gonna make me wait for an answer. Okay, Matt, 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:34.840 at least you have to listen to the rest of 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:39.320 the podcast. You're on the podcast, don't tune out? Should 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:43.600 I tell everybody to skip forward ten minutes? Now, let's 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.520 not do that. This might be one of these moments, right, 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.479 So when these things were first discovered, can actually what 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:51.720 was it like? If it was recent, then what was 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.639 it like in the physics community. It was a big surprise, 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.000 right because the Fermi telescope was not launched to find 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:00.840 the Fermi bubbles because nobody knew the over there. It's 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:02.800 one of these moments when you build a device to 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:05.600 look for something and you find something totally different, you know. 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:09.359 A famous example is like the cosmic microwave background. These 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:12.920 guys built a radio telescope to do radar testing and 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:15.560 listen to other stuff from the universe, and they found 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:18.600 this weird buzz background that they couldn't explain, and it 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:21.920 turned out to be this amazing discovery cosmic marcroway background. 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.280 We got a podcast schedule for that next week, I think. 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:26.360 And this is the kind of thing that happens a lot. 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:28.720 You build a new instrument, you look out in the universe. 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:31.199 Do you expect to see something? You see something totally different. 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.200 So this one was designed basically to discover dark matter 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.200 I mean, it also has other intentions. But in my community, 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.680 we're most interested in the Fermi telescope because it could 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.600 see dark matter, and you might wonder, like, how can 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.560 you see you dark matter? Right? And the idea is 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:50.280 that dark matter could bounce into other dark matter and annihilate, 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.800 and maybe sometimes that would produce photons and you could 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:57.240 see those. So this device, the Fermi telescope, it's basically 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.960 it's like a big particle detector in space. You could 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.960 see high energy photons. It turns them into electrons and positrons, 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.080 splits them and then it can measure their energy. And 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.360 so essentially it's like looking out into space with a 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.159 very very high energy light. Right. You know, the Hubble, 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.040 for example, looks at visible light um, but this looks 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:18.960 at really really high energy photons. Did they think there 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.639 would be anything near the center of the galaxy like 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:24.560 this above and you know above and below it, Yeah, 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.760 great question. There was another instrument recently called w MAP, 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:29.920 and it's a sort of like a fuzz. They called 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:32.760 it the w MAP haze above and below the center 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:35.159 of the galaxy, and it was more in the radio waves, 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.120 and nobody understood what that was either, and so these 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:40.359 guys were interested, like, well, let's look at that, but 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:42.960 let's also they were looking more specifically at the center 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:45.560 of the galaxy to try to understand whether they could 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.199 see a signal of dark matter from there. And you know, 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:49.959 when you do that, you've got to understand the day 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:51.679 that you have to say, like, what are we seeing 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:53.359 to make sure we understand what we can see so 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.040 then we can look for the thing we're looking for. 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:57.520 It's like, you know, you gotta understand the backgrounds before 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:00.159 you can look for your signal. But they couldn't. They 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:04.399 were like, what is this you know, yeah, yeah, And 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:05.959 it's one of those moments where they're like it's an 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:09.000 obstacle because they wanted to answer this other science question. 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:12.320 But then potentially that obstacle is a whole new avenue 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.200 for discovery. And so they released this paper. It was 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.919