Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, you're a visual artist, so I have
Speaker 1: a question for you about how you visualize things. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, thank you for calling me an artist.
Speaker 1: Cartoonist don't usually get that kind of respect. But do
Speaker 1: you mean can I draw my answer? Yeah, maybe when
Speaker 1: we upgrade this podcast to a YouTube channel, But until then,
Speaker 1: here's my question. What is the biggest distance that you
Speaker 1: can visualize that you can sort of see in your mind? Well,
Speaker 1: I think anything bigger than the distance between my bed
Speaker 1: and the fridge feels like an infinity. I guess maybe
Speaker 1: like the biggest distance that I can wrap my head
Speaker 1: around would be maybe like the size of the solar system,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I think I have a intuitive sense
Speaker 1: of that, but maybe anything bigger it just kind of
Speaker 1: blows my mind. All right, So then turn it around.
Speaker 1: What is the small all this distance that you can visualize?
Speaker 1: Probably the width of a thinly sliced banana. Feels like
Speaker 1: maybe you should have had a snack before we did
Speaker 1: today's podcast. I am Rhammad, cartoonists and the creator of
Speaker 1: PhD comments. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and
Speaker 1: I don't eat bananas no matter how then you slice
Speaker 1: them really you're anti banana like you avoid them. I'm
Speaker 1: anti bananite, yes on the air. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how do we even get along all
Speaker 1: these years? I don't know if we I can continue
Speaker 1: doing this with you anymore. So if you if you
Speaker 1: get him in a salad, you picked them out or something.
Speaker 1: How far puts banana in a salad? What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? You were offending salads? How far this is
Speaker 1: anti bananas? Goes go? Daniel, Well, let's see, if I
Speaker 1: was dying of starvation next to banana tree, I would
Speaker 1: eat some bananas. I'll put it that way. I would.
Speaker 1: I see. Oh man, you don't know what you're missing.
Speaker 1: But for those of you who are not anti banana,
Speaker 1: welcome to this podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
Speaker 1: a production of Our Heart Radio, and banana lovers and
Speaker 1: banana haters are all welcome on this podcast because we
Speaker 1: only the lovers, because we all share the love of
Speaker 1: the universe and the mystery is and the incredible cosmic
Speaker 1: questions like how can anybody stand to eat a banana? No? Like?
Speaker 1: How big is our universe? And does it all make sense?
Speaker 1: Should ever rebody Daniel that bananas are part of the universe.
Speaker 1: If you love the universe, technically you love bananas. But
Speaker 1: welcome to our podcast, in which we do try to
Speaker 1: explore everything around us, including bananas and other delicious or
Speaker 1: non delicious items, and explore lane how it all works
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, we try to think about the bigness
Speaker 1: of the universe, the limits of space and planets and stars,
Speaker 1: but we also like to talk about the small things
Speaker 1: in life and in the universe, and and sometimes it
Speaker 1: really stretches your mind right to sort of sort of
Speaker 1: in one conversation think about how big the universe is
Speaker 1: and how also how small things are. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: try to take you on a tour of the sort
Speaker 1: of current thinking of scientists. How do scientists think about
Speaker 1: this stuff? How do they fit the whole universe in
Speaker 1: their brains? Or what do they visualize when they think
Speaker 1: about the inside of a black hole? Or how do
Speaker 1: scientists think about the very very tiny What does a
Speaker 1: particle look like inside the mind of a party goal physicist? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, we know that the universe is made
Speaker 1: out of tiny little particles, and we like to say
Speaker 1: tiny little particles. But I guess you don't often think
Speaker 1: about it, what tiny really means. Yeah, we do this
Speaker 1: a lot when we think about the quantum realm. We
Speaker 1: try to sort of use the ideas we have from
Speaker 1: our everyday experience and apply them to particles, apply them
Speaker 1: to these tiny little bits so that we can make
Speaker 1: sense of them, because you know, you can't see these
Speaker 1: things directly, so you have to sort of build a
Speaker 1: mental picture, and we try to talk about how they
Speaker 1: have mass and charge, and we even give them you know,
Speaker 1: labor and spin and other sorts of things that were
Speaker 1: familiar with from our world. But you have to wonder, like,
Speaker 1: how well does that really work? Is it really relevant
Speaker 1: or is the quantum realm just totally alien and we
Speaker 1: will never really get our minds around it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought we had already decided that everything looks like Lego
Speaker 1: pieces down at the fundamental level. They don't look like
Speaker 1: little blocks with circles that say Lego on them. Well,
Speaker 1: it's easy to do a test. You know, if you
Speaker 1: step on them and they cause you great pain, then
Speaker 1: they definitely are the shape of Lego pieces. I think
Speaker 1: they make round legos too. Now finally to save parents,
Speaker 1: But you know, this is all we can do as
Speaker 1: humans is we can take the ideas we are familiar
Speaker 1: with and we can try to map them down to
Speaker 1: the quantum realm to think about this. Yeah, and sometimes
Speaker 1: that intuition kind of fails, right, or it breaks down
Speaker 1: when you get down to that quantum realm, that quantum level, right,
Speaker 1: our ideas of what something is, or how solid something is,
Speaker 1: or what shape it has, and it all sort of
Speaker 1: breaks down into kind of mathematical goop right down at
Speaker 1: the quantum. I think it has a little bit more
Speaker 1: substance than mathematical GOOPI gloop, but really it's a bit
Speaker 1: more No, it's a bit more poetic than mathematical sometimes
Speaker 1: because well, we try to draw connections, like we talk
Speaker 1: about quantum spin, and we fully admit that these particles
Speaker 1: are not actually spinning, but they're doing something that is
Speaker 1: very much like spin. It has a lot of similar characteristics,
Speaker 1: and so we draw this analogy. And I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the most beautiful things about physics, is
Speaker 1: trying to describe the unknown in terms of the known.
Speaker 1: You know, that's what languages, that's what art is, that's
Speaker 1: what that's what it means to explore the universe is
Speaker 1: to express it in a way that we can understand it,
Speaker 1: and so that's all we can do. Yeah, are you
Speaker 1: saying you don't understand google Goog? I'm saying googly groop
Speaker 1: suggests some lack of understanding or nonsense, whereas in its
Speaker 1: place there are some elegant intellectual structures to guide your mind.
Speaker 1: I see, you know, potato, potato again, theoretical structures, googly goog,
Speaker 1: it's all, it's all, you know, different names. But so
Speaker 1: to the other podcast, we thought we would take a
Speaker 1: trip down to that quantum level and kind of think
Speaker 1: about a particular, you know, object that I think we're
Speaker 1: all familiar with, and to sort of challenge our understanding
Speaker 1: of what it looks like and what shape it has
Speaker 1: and most importantly, what size it has down at the
Speaker 1: quantum realm. And this is something that I have struggled
Speaker 1: with as a particle physicist, just trying to visualize, just
Speaker 1: trying to conceptualize it. How do I put this in
Speaker 1: my mind? How do I think about this so I
Speaker 1: can get some intuition right? And so today we'll be
Speaker 1: tackling the question how big is an electron? Or how
Speaker 1: small is an electron? Oh? Man, is this another potato
Speaker 1: po typle thing. It's big and small depending on which
Speaker 1: country here. The representatives of the Electron Union prefer to
Speaker 1: be called big rather than small. Oh, I see, But
Speaker 1: what does the electron itself prefer? Does it see itself
Speaker 1: as a as a big or a little? Interview with
Speaker 1: an Electron speculative fiction novel by J H winner of
Speaker 1: the Nobel Price in literature and physics at the same time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, electrons are everywhere. They're one of
Speaker 1: the three fundamental particles that make up everything that we are,
Speaker 1: that you are, That planets and stars and galaxies and
Speaker 1: dust are made out of um. And so it's an
Speaker 1: important particle. And it makes yourself phone work, which without
Speaker 1: which you would probably not be listening to this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it sort of sits at the frontier of particle physics.
Speaker 1: Our goal is to explain everything in the universe in
Speaker 1: terms of the smallest bits and pieces, the tiniest, roundest
Speaker 1: lego pieces anywhere, And as far as we know, these
Speaker 1: are the smallest bits. And so we wonder, like, is
Speaker 1: it made of something smaller? How small is this thing? Anyway? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the size of an electron? I guess that's a
Speaker 1: question we haven't really talked about before. We just sort
Speaker 1: of talked about electron and what they can do and
Speaker 1: what they do, and we know they're small. But I
Speaker 1: guess the question here is how small it is? Or
Speaker 1: how big is it? Not? How big isn't it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like with many of these mappings to the quantum realm,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're going to be dissatisfied with the
Speaker 1: answer because did you misname something again? Is it not
Speaker 1: really called? Is it like an electron? Not really an electron? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to give away the end there, you'll
Speaker 1: have to stick around for another half hour. Well, this
Speaker 1: is a question that, as always, we were wondering how
Speaker 1: many people out there had thought about or wondered about
Speaker 1: and what they knew about the answer to this question. So,
Speaker 1: as usual, Daniel went out there into the wilderness of
Speaker 1: the streets of Irvine, California and ask people how big
Speaker 1: they thought an electron is. I like the way you
Speaker 1: make it sound dangerous, like I'm hacking my way through
Speaker 1: the jungle. I think talking to perfect strangers, it sounds
Speaker 1: terrified to me. Well, here's what people had to say.
Speaker 1: But before you hear these answers, think to yourself, what
Speaker 1: would you guess is the size of an electron? Very small?
Speaker 1: I know, like a couple of billion Adams can fit
Speaker 1: on a period in in a book, So an electron
Speaker 1: is Chillian quadrillion. I don't know. Sudden thinkers like small,
Speaker 1: like smaller than that. Best guys like like a hundred
Speaker 1: of a nanometer ten to the minus sixteen. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess it's when it's a way function falls off? Is
Speaker 1: one over eight or something like that? Is that how
Speaker 1: we want to call it? What's thirteen point six e
Speaker 1: v s and nanometers that it does red stuff? So
Speaker 1: a couple d nanometers? Let's doing that? Also, no idea,
Speaker 1: best es not that big tend to the negative on
Speaker 1: all eleven or twelve or something like that. Like all right,
Speaker 1: some pretty I feel like, pretty educated answers, Like some
Speaker 1: people were talking about electron volts even I like the
Speaker 1: guy who says smaller than a centimeter, like yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's true, yes and also correct, Yes, it's definitely correct. Um. No,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't make fun of these people. They are giving
Speaker 1: us their time, their and their energy, and so it's
Speaker 1: fun just to just to know what people have in
Speaker 1: their minds. And I think one of the common answers
Speaker 1: is like, tend to the mind is a pretty big number.
Speaker 1: But yeah, know I thought they were pretty I guess
Speaker 1: you're at a at a university, so maybe a lot
Speaker 1: of these folks just think in physics or something. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, if you ask me, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I would guess with exact figures or units. Well it's
Speaker 1: interesting because if you ask me, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I would say. It's a tricky question. Even what is
Speaker 1: the meaning of the question, Like what does it mean
Speaker 1: for the electron to have a side? Is? So it's complicated.
Speaker 1: So someone interviewed on you on the street and ask
Speaker 1: you this question, you'd be like, let's sit down for
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, let me pull out my white board,
Speaker 1: thank you for asking that question. And you see the
Speaker 1: panic in their eyes. I've been waiting all my life
Speaker 1: for perfect strangers. They would feign a phone call and
Speaker 1: run away quickly. All right, Well, let's get into the
Speaker 1: trying to answer this question. And I guess the first
Speaker 1: thing is is that you're telling me is that this
Speaker 1: is even Um, it's kind of almost a philosophical question.
Speaker 1: It's like a tricky question in itself to ask what
Speaker 1: is the size of an electron? Yeah, And you have
Speaker 1: to be really careful about what you're doing. When you're
Speaker 1: asking a question that you're used to asking about macroscopic
Speaker 1: stuff and then applying that to microscopic stuff, you have
Speaker 1: to be really careful about what you mean and what
Speaker 1: exactly it is you're trying to learn. You know, like
Speaker 1: when we think about a ball moving through space, we
Speaker 1: can talk about its velocity. Cool, But when you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the velocity of an electron, it's more
Speaker 1: complicated because it doesn't have like the same kind of
Speaker 1: half and so it's philosophy changes, and sometimes you can
Speaker 1: know it, sometimes it's unknown, and so you know, there's
Speaker 1: an analogy you can make there, but you have to
Speaker 1: be careful about exactly what you're asking. And the same
Speaker 1: is true when you ask about the size of something
Speaker 1: super duper tiny, right, and and especially when you ask
Speaker 1: about the size of a single thing, right, Like what
Speaker 1: is it? What does it even mean to ask about
Speaker 1: the size of anything? Is it like how much space
Speaker 1: you occupy? Is it like the my longest dimension? Is
Speaker 1: it the distance between you know, one and one side
Speaker 1: of me to the other side of me. I think
Speaker 1: that's it. I think it's the distance between your edges.
Speaker 1: And so you have a size if you have edges
Speaker 1: that don't touch, right, if you have if there's a
Speaker 1: meaning to like there being a left of view and
Speaker 1: a right of view, and your size is the distance
Speaker 1: between them. You know, we have a meter stick, how
Speaker 1: big is it? Well, the left side is one meter
Speaker 1: from the right side. So that's sort of makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: And this this all sounds, you know, obvious, but it's
Speaker 1: going to be important when we get to the quantum
Speaker 1: realm to be thinking about it in the same same
Speaker 1: sort of set of ideas. Right, Yeah, I guess you've
Speaker 1: got to think about what makes it a thing and
Speaker 1: when is it stopped being a thing? And then then
Speaker 1: you calculate kind of the distance between the edges of
Speaker 1: what is and what is not a thing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so you answer the question like what a size mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it's the distance between the edges and that immediately, but
Speaker 1: you can see you to the other question, what is
Speaker 1: the edge, Like what is the edge of a meter
Speaker 1: stick or the edge of a banana? How do you
Speaker 1: define where that stops? And that's not so easy. Oh man,
Speaker 1: you just make me imagine it endless banana and I
Speaker 1: salivated a little bit. That's a whole universe to you,
Speaker 1: right there. Man, maybe the whole universe is just one banana.
Speaker 1: We are all just banana nos in a banana. We
Speaker 1: should start that in the restaurant. You know, Olive Garden
Speaker 1: has the endless bowl of salad, endless bread stick. We
Speaker 1: can we can start selling the endless banana. But anyways,
Speaker 1: so where is the edge of the banana? Right? You
Speaker 1: would think, oh, I'm looking at it, I can tell
Speaker 1: where it stops. And you either you poke it or
Speaker 1: you're just looking at it. It sort of gives you
Speaker 1: a sense for like where the edges. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: a fuzzy edge, like it stops the all the atoms
Speaker 1: that make up the banana are kind of stuck together,
Speaker 1: and at some point there aren't any more of the
Speaker 1: atoms that make up the banana. Yeah, although, if you're
Speaker 1: zooming close enough right, everything that's not an absolute zero
Speaker 1: is has a bit of a fuzzy edge, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like boiling off atoms. Like the reason you can
Speaker 1: smell banana is that there are volatile molecules on it
Speaker 1: that are always leaving and so zooming close enough, and
Speaker 1: there's there's a bit of a fuzzy edge there. But
Speaker 1: still you can like take a stick and you can
Speaker 1: poke the banana with your tiny stick and you can ask, like,
Speaker 1: when does the banana give me resistance? Or is the
Speaker 1: edge of it is sort of like, you know, where
Speaker 1: is it push back? Okay, so that that would be
Speaker 1: the edge of like an object microscopic option you're saying.
Speaker 1: It has to do with when it no longer interacts
Speaker 1: with you in the same way as the rest of
Speaker 1: the banana. Yeah, And there's an important idea there, I think,
Speaker 1: which is it's not where the stuff of the banana ends,
Speaker 1: it's where the bananas forces push back. Because you know,
Speaker 1: the banana itself is mostly made of these we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in a minute, but time much smaller particles, and
Speaker 1: the stuff of the banana, the thing that gives it
Speaker 1: its volume is the forces. Right, If there were no
Speaker 1: forces between these particles, they will collapse to a much
Speaker 1: smaller pile. Like you just made a pile of all
Speaker 1: the atoms inside the banana, it would be almost invisible.
Speaker 1: Most of that volume comes from them spacing each other.
Speaker 1: Out by the forces. So it's really the forces, the
Speaker 1: pushing back that gives the banana it's volume and therefore
Speaker 1: its size. I see, you wouldn't measure it as between
Speaker 1: the center of the rightmost atom of the banana to
Speaker 1: the center of the leftmost atom of the banana. You
Speaker 1: would be you would extend that a little bit to
Speaker 1: include like when that atom starts pushing back another adom
Speaker 1: that tries to poke through the banana. Precisely because if
Speaker 1: you bring your stick nearby, then the farthest, the most
Speaker 1: extreme atom and your stick is not going to touch
Speaker 1: the nucleus of that atom in your banana. They're going
Speaker 1: to push against each other before they touch. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I think of sort of the edge of
Speaker 1: the banana is that force field that sort of protects
Speaker 1: it from you know, external forces. Okay, so you're saying,
Speaker 1: as a physicist, you would define the size of something
Speaker 1: as as the edges of it, and the edges you
Speaker 1: would define is when they start pushing other things from
Speaker 1: going through it. Yeah, So really it's more about interactions
Speaker 1: than it is about matter itself and particle physics, we
Speaker 1: think a lot about particles and forces, matter and interactions.
Speaker 1: And I think the size of something really depends more
Speaker 1: on its interactions then on the stuff that's inside of it.
Speaker 1: And that makes sense because if you want to know
Speaker 1: the size of something, you want to know it for
Speaker 1: a reason usually right, like you want to see if
Speaker 1: the banana fits inside of a special you know, banana
Speaker 1: carrying case that you aren't designing. You need to know,
Speaker 1: you know, not when the set where the centers of
Speaker 1: the atoms are, but you want to know, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can fit the banana inside the case. That's
Speaker 1: exactly it. But it already raises some problems, like what
Speaker 1: if you had a blob of dark batter the shape
Speaker 1: of a banana, how big is it? Well, if you
Speaker 1: can't really interact with it, if you could like put
Speaker 1: your finger through it, then you know, does that mean
Speaker 1: that it's a banana shaped and blob of dark batter
Speaker 1: is smaller? It doesn't have a size maybe even boy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it gets it gets tricky pretty quickly. This thing,
Speaker 1: which which we thought was simple is actually turns out
Speaker 1: to be kind of subtle. Yeah, it's feel back the
Speaker 1: answer to this question and also get into how big
Speaker 1: an atom is, and then we'll get into how big
Speaker 1: an electron it is. But first let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel. So it seems like the question of
Speaker 1: how big something is is kind of fuzzy in itself,
Speaker 1: and so maybe a good way to kind of tackle
Speaker 1: it is to start with the next level down from
Speaker 1: a banana, which is like how big is a is
Speaker 1: one of the atoms in the in the banana. So
Speaker 1: remember that we decided that if we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the size of the atom, we're not going to
Speaker 1: ask where is the stuff inside of it? We're gonna
Speaker 1: ask where does it push back when it's poked? And
Speaker 1: to figure that out, it's helpful to sort of imagine
Speaker 1: a whole pile of atoms packed together. Here you have
Speaker 1: you like imagine the banana is sort of like a crystal.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like closely packed atoms of the banana.
Speaker 1: And here it's determined again by the interaction between them,
Speaker 1: Like how closely packed are they depends on how much
Speaker 1: they resist being squeezed together. And in this case, for
Speaker 1: an atom, it's you know, for banana. For other stuff,
Speaker 1: it's a it's pretty small. It's like you know, fifty
Speaker 1: to a couple hundred trillions of a meter. Is what
Speaker 1: how you you would define how big anatom is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like this the separation between the center of one
Speaker 1: atom and the center of another atom. Depending on the material,
Speaker 1: and different things can sort of pack more tightly together
Speaker 1: than other things. Like hydrogen, you can squeeze it down
Speaker 1: to like thirty trillions of an atom between protons. But
Speaker 1: if you're packing lead together, for example, it's almost two
Speaker 1: d trillions of a meter between sort of the centers
Speaker 1: of the nuclei. I say, it's it's like if you're
Speaker 1: trying to measure the size of a bunch of marbles.
Speaker 1: You would stick him in a container and see how
Speaker 1: many you can sort of cramp together, and that kind
Speaker 1: of tells you the size of each marble. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: distance between the centers of the marbles. There you pack
Speaker 1: them as closely as you can, and then you measure
Speaker 1: the distance between the centers of the marbles. Is that
Speaker 1: actually sort of because you know, when I think of
Speaker 1: an atom, I think of like, um, you know, like
Speaker 1: the popular culture drawing of an atom, which is like,
Speaker 1: you know, little balls in the center and then electrons
Speaker 1: flying around in orbit. You know, you know, and I
Speaker 1: know that you know, they're actually like electron clouds. But
Speaker 1: even the clouds have sort of a size, right, they're
Speaker 1: drawn as little balloons that stick out of this center.
Speaker 1: Is the size is the packing size that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like how many you can crime in banana, the same
Speaker 1: as the size of those like electron clouds. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very closely connected. And for a reason, those electrons are
Speaker 1: the reason that the atoms don't pack more closely together,
Speaker 1: Like you bring two hydrogen atoms near each other. It's
Speaker 1: the electron clouds that determine how closely they get together
Speaker 1: because they form like a covalent bond and make an
Speaker 1: H two or something like that. And so it's those
Speaker 1: electrons that determine the interactions between the atoms and determine
Speaker 1: their spacing. And it's when those two things start overlapping,
Speaker 1: is when they can no longer really get closer together. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the size of the electron cloud is very closely connected
Speaker 1: to the size of the atom. It really is what
Speaker 1: defines it. They're always interacting, right, no matter how far
Speaker 1: apart there are, Like if I had a hydrogen atom
Speaker 1: here and you had a hydrogen atom and Jupiter. Technically
Speaker 1: they're sort of repelling each other, right or and or
Speaker 1: attracting each other or not. They definitely do feel each other.
Speaker 1: You're write the the extent of the electromagnetic force is infinite,
Speaker 1: So there are electrons in Alpha Centaur that are pulling
Speaker 1: on you or pushing on you, or depending on whatever
Speaker 1: they're doing, technically touching you. Right, you're being touched by
Speaker 1: an alpha centaur right now. I just got chills down
Speaker 1: my spine a little bit to the left. Please, yes,
Speaker 1: thank you. Crash that is that I've had. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's a tricky concept. You're right. If we're going to
Speaker 1: define size by sort of how you were responding when
Speaker 1: you get poked, then you're right. You're being constantly poked
Speaker 1: by everything in the universe. Well, even the stuff like
Speaker 1: a build B zillion nine years away. Yeah, it is everything.
Speaker 1: Everything in the universe is feeling you. Although you know
Speaker 1: there's a time delay there, so the stuff in Alpha
Speaker 1: Centauri is only feeling. Stuff is feeling where we were
Speaker 1: a long time ago as a separate issue. So my
Speaker 1: size depends on time as well. Jeez. But you know,
Speaker 1: those those things are pretty negligible, and so you can
Speaker 1: think about like when these things really have an effect
Speaker 1: if you probe if you shot an electron at um
Speaker 1: hi'd gin atom, when would it deflect the electron? And
Speaker 1: if you shot you know, a meter to the right,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't change the path of the electron really at all.
Speaker 1: It would, but just it would be very little, It
Speaker 1: would be very little bit negligible. But then when you
Speaker 1: you know, hit it right on, then it's going to
Speaker 1: bounce right back. And and so you can use that
Speaker 1: to sort of get a sense for what is the
Speaker 1: meaningful sort of charge radius of a particle. And you're right,
Speaker 1: it's there's no crisp edge there. So there's a small
Speaker 1: complication there also because it turns out that the size
Speaker 1: of something depends on not just what you poke it with,
Speaker 1: but how hard you poke it. Like, if you poke
Speaker 1: an atom very gently, it'll seem bigger because you'll notice
Speaker 1: smaller deflections further away. If you poke it very hard,
Speaker 1: it will actually seem smaller because you'll overpower the electrons
Speaker 1: and the outside and only see the nucleus on the inside.
Speaker 1: There's no point at which it goes to zero though,
Speaker 1: you're right, right, yeah, So it's it's kind of fuzzy
Speaker 1: and maybe kind of arbitrary, but you're saying, it's like
Speaker 1: when when you would actually fee you the force of
Speaker 1: that electron, that's when maybe you would say, all right,
Speaker 1: it's sort of impinging on it, which means it's sort
Speaker 1: of bumping up against it. Mm hmm, And it's not
Speaker 1: totally arbitrary. Like when you squeeze atoms together, they settle
Speaker 1: in at a certain distance from each other, so that
Speaker 1: totally tells you what the equilibrium location is for for
Speaker 1: the distance between atoms, and that I think is a
Speaker 1: reasonable way to define the size. But you know, you're right,
Speaker 1: you have to think about, like what am my meaning
Speaker 1: by size in this context? In this other context? This
Speaker 1: basic thing we think about like should be obvious to
Speaker 1: talk about is it turns out to have a lot
Speaker 1: of wrinkles to it, all right, So that's kind of
Speaker 1: how you would define an atom is when it starts
Speaker 1: to push back another atom, and how much when you
Speaker 1: crow them inside of a box, you know, what's the
Speaker 1: natural spacing that they have between them? And it's you're
Speaker 1: saying sort of related to those electron clouds, which is
Speaker 1: how kind of how far away the electron goes from
Speaker 1: the nuclei right, Okay, so that's a that's an atom um.
Speaker 1: But I guess it gets strict when you talk about
Speaker 1: individual particles. So let's go down one more level to
Speaker 1: the proton inside of the nucleus. How big? How how
Speaker 1: big would you say a proton is? This is a
Speaker 1: wonderful question. And you know, if you're breaking open the atom,
Speaker 1: if you're shooting electrons at the atom, it's going to
Speaker 1: get repelled by the electrons on the outside of it.
Speaker 1: But if you give them enough energy, then they can
Speaker 1: sort of penetrate through there, and then you can start
Speaker 1: to probe the proton inside there, and you can ask, like,
Speaker 1: how big is this thing? And so we do that exactly.
Speaker 1: We shoot electrons at protons or hydrogen atoms or or
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter if the electron is there anymore,
Speaker 1: because the probe we're shooting with has so much energy,
Speaker 1: and we see where does it bounce back and where
Speaker 1: does it sort of stop bouncing back, and that gives
Speaker 1: us a sense for how big the proton is, and
Speaker 1: so we actually have a number for that. But it's
Speaker 1: tricky because the proton is also made out of things
Speaker 1: inside of it, sort of like the atom itself. It is.
Speaker 1: Protons are made of smaller bits that are slashing around
Speaker 1: inside of it. Those are the corks. But remember that
Speaker 1: we're trying to define the size of an object, the
Speaker 1: proton this case, not by where the stuff is inside it,
Speaker 1: but where it pushes back. And the corks hang out
Speaker 1: together and push back against the other protons. So if
Speaker 1: we use our definition, it's the distance between the protons
Speaker 1: that's going to determine the size of the protons. And
Speaker 1: that's connected, of course to how the corks are arranged,
Speaker 1: how they're happy to be inside the proton. The proton
Speaker 1: is sort of like a cork atom. I See if
Speaker 1: they were comfortable being a mile apart, you know, like
Speaker 1: if you try to split it more than a mile
Speaker 1: or squish the more of them out, they would prefer
Speaker 1: to be a mile up apart from each other. Now,
Speaker 1: you would say the size of those two electron at
Speaker 1: courts is about a mile. So the size of the
Speaker 1: proton that's that's made up of those corks, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be about a mile. But you know, we have
Speaker 1: nuclei and they have got protons and neutrons inside of them,
Speaker 1: and each one is like its own little particle. They
Speaker 1: get squeezed together, but they hang out. They keep their
Speaker 1: own little particle nature, and so it's just like packing
Speaker 1: marbles together. You can ask about like the distance between
Speaker 1: the center of one proton and another, or a proton
Speaker 1: and a neutron. That's what we think of as the
Speaker 1: size of the proton. How much can you pack in
Speaker 1: the quarts that are inside of the proton? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's a really crazy number. That's like one quadrillionth of
Speaker 1: a meter. It's a really small number. Uh. And that's
Speaker 1: smaller than a nanometer for sure. It's smaller than a
Speaker 1: centimeter as well. It's smaller than a mile apparently as well. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty small. That's pretty small. Yeah, Like, how
Speaker 1: how big is that in relation to like the size
Speaker 1: of an atom. Well, an atom is you know, like
Speaker 1: ten to a hundred ish um trillionth of a meter,
Speaker 1: So this is one quadrillionth of a meter, So it's
Speaker 1: like one ten thousands or one hundred thousands the size
Speaker 1: of an atom. So it's very small compared to the atom.
Speaker 1: Bare to the electron radius, the proton is super tiny. Okay,
Speaker 1: wait wait, so um, we have an atom and how
Speaker 1: about the just the nucleus of the atom. How close
Speaker 1: together are those protons and neutrons in the nucleus packed together?
Speaker 1: Those are very tightly packed together. And and again remember
Speaker 1: that's because that's sort of how the size of the
Speaker 1: proton is determined. It's like how do those things cluster together?
Speaker 1: And so the size of like if you have the
Speaker 1: nucleus of an atom with you know, a hundred protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons in it, it's not that much bigger than
Speaker 1: one protonomy. It's like packing above those marbles together. So
Speaker 1: it's going to be ordered magnitude quadrilliants of a meter.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so the new And that's why they say,
Speaker 1: like the anatom is mostly empty space because you know
Speaker 1: what you would say is the size of it. Actually
Speaker 1: the nucleus is like this tiny little bit of it inside. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the way that they probe this is two different ways.
Speaker 1: One is they shoot an electron at proton. But sometimes
Speaker 1: also they just look at an atom. They just watch
Speaker 1: an atom sitting there. It's got a proton and an
Speaker 1: electron and the electron is whizzing all around. And sometimes
Speaker 1: this is super weird. Sometimes the electron goes inside the proton,
Speaker 1: like in a quantum mechanical way, or like it actually
Speaker 1: goes through what's the difference quantum mechanics is reality, dude, um,
Speaker 1: Like if you were to you know, I mean, like
Speaker 1: if you were to open the true Dinger's box and
Speaker 1: you would you would suddenly find it inside of the news. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the electron in one of its states has non zero
Speaker 1: probability density to be inside the proton. And when this happens,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like partially cancels some of the charge
Speaker 1: pull of this thing because you have the electron now
Speaker 1: inside the positive atom and then it escapes. But depending
Speaker 1: on the size of the proton it escaped, this happens
Speaker 1: more or less often, so you can measure like how
Speaker 1: often the electron is inside the proton, and that tells
Speaker 1: you how big the proton is, because the bigger the
Speaker 1: proton is, the more often this happens. So this is
Speaker 1: another way we sort of get a sense for how
Speaker 1: big is the proton. I see, using like probability, like
Speaker 1: you throw a bunch of darts at it, only sometimes
Speaker 1: you hit hit the proton. Then that sort of tells
Speaker 1: you the size. Yeah, exactly, And that's actually the most
Speaker 1: sensitive test. Basically using the hydrogen's own electron, like pass
Speaker 1: it through the proton and give you a sense for
Speaker 1: how big it is. It's crazy. Well, all right, so
Speaker 1: a proton is about you're seeing one ten thousands of
Speaker 1: the size of a typical atom. That's pretty small, because
Speaker 1: a pretty small. So alright, so let's get there. Let's
Speaker 1: get down now to the last level, which is how
Speaker 1: big is an electron? And I imagine that's going to
Speaker 1: be even smaller, but we'll get into that, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel. So now
Speaker 1: we're down to one of the fundamental particles, the electron,
Speaker 1: and we're asking the question how big is it? Or
Speaker 1: how small isn't it? Or how big isn't it? Amount
Speaker 1: of negatives here, um and so, And I guess what
Speaker 1: we're talking going to talk about. It sort of applies
Speaker 1: to quarts as well, right, because we're now talking about
Speaker 1: single particles, not like clusters of particles. Yeah, and remember
Speaker 1: that our theory is very hierarchical. We start with matter,
Speaker 1: and then we go to molecules, from molecules to atoms,
Speaker 1: from atoms to protons and electrons, and then to quarks
Speaker 1: and electrons, and we're sort of have shells inside shells
Speaker 1: inside shells, and so this is sort of our current
Speaker 1: level of knowledge, and we can ask like, are these
Speaker 1: particles that we see, um, are they the smallest possible thing?
Speaker 1: Or is it possible there's something else inside them? So
Speaker 1: you're right there, quarks and electrons are sort of as
Speaker 1: far as we've gone, and so in some sense, asking
Speaker 1: how big are they is asking are they the end?
Speaker 1: Are they the tiniest, smallest possible thing? Or they possibly
Speaker 1: made of something smaller? Oh? I see, because if you
Speaker 1: can split them, that means there's something smaller inside. I
Speaker 1: guess that's pretty obvious. And that's for you. That sounds
Speaker 1: deep and it is deep, but it's also kind of obvious,
Speaker 1: like if you can break it into smaller pieces, then
Speaker 1: it's there were made of something else. As far as
Speaker 1: we know, quarks and electrons are not yet made of
Speaker 1: something smaller. But that doesn't tell you necessarily how big
Speaker 1: they are. Right, they could be the smallest possible thing
Speaker 1: and still have a finite size. Right they could be um,
Speaker 1: the legos of the universe. Lego. Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: the smallest lego you can have, but um, that can
Speaker 1: be smaller, smaller, big, that could be smaller big, And
Speaker 1: that's fascinating when you learn a number about the universe. Like,
Speaker 1: let's say we somehow proved that quirks and electrons are
Speaker 1: not made of anything smaller. They have the smallest lego blocks,
Speaker 1: and we measured their size, Then we'd we'd know something
Speaker 1: really deep and basic about the universe, like it's made
Speaker 1: of legos this size, and you have to wonder, like, well,
Speaker 1: why that size and not something else? What does that
Speaker 1: tell you about the universe to know that fundamental fact? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you know there are legos that are smaller than
Speaker 1: the single unit lego? What? Like you you would think
Speaker 1: the smallest lego is just like one square with one
Speaker 1: circle on it, right by saying people have smashed the
Speaker 1: legos together and make some legos covered the constituent pieces
Speaker 1: and legos. No, yeah, they make uh this is kind
Speaker 1: of weird but uh probably not consequential. But um, they
Speaker 1: make smaller pieces. It makes pieces that fit inside of
Speaker 1: the whole that some of the single circle lego pieces
Speaker 1: have inside. Oh my god, you have just violated the
Speaker 1: standard model of legos. Noble price. Please you've got the
Speaker 1: prize from that one. Anyways, Um, so, yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about how big an electron Isn't let's use that
Speaker 1: as our single particle example. And does it even make
Speaker 1: sense to talk about the size of a single particle, Daniel,
Speaker 1: It's hard to talk about the size of a single
Speaker 1: particle if you haven't measured the stuff inside of it.
Speaker 1: Because we've talked about the size of atoms and protons
Speaker 1: based on like how happy this stuff inside of it
Speaker 1: is to be next near each other, like how closely
Speaker 1: does it pack? So for a fundamental particle you have
Speaker 1: to go back to like the poking it and be like, well,
Speaker 1: if I poked an electron with a stick, where were
Speaker 1: pushed back? But that's sort of unsatisfying to me. Couldn't
Speaker 1: can't I just you know, pack a bunch of electrons
Speaker 1: in a in a glass jar and see, wouldn't that
Speaker 1: tell me sort of the size of it, Like how
Speaker 1: comfortable an electron is to another electron or to a proton.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that sort of tell you this sort of the size,
Speaker 1: just like we did with the marbles and the atoms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a really fun experiment. I want to
Speaker 1: take like a gas of pure electrons and squeeze it
Speaker 1: down together and see what happens. The problem is that
Speaker 1: there's not like a clear answer, like the heart do
Speaker 1: you squeeze the closer they get together, it's not like
Speaker 1: an equilibrium like with protons or with atoms, because these
Speaker 1: are all just negatively charged particles. There's no chill state
Speaker 1: where they're like, hey, you're there, I'm here. All is good,
Speaker 1: and so instead you want to like take them and
Speaker 1: like poke them, like, well, if you poke them with
Speaker 1: an electron, then they bounce back for sure, But what
Speaker 1: if you poke them with neutrinos then they don't bounce
Speaker 1: back at all, Or what if you poke them with
Speaker 1: dark matter? Then they don't bounce back, And so you're
Speaker 1: back to this like fuzziness of like you know, if
Speaker 1: it depends on how it's pushing back, then it depends
Speaker 1: on what you're poking it with. And then size isn't
Speaker 1: something that's like inherent to the object. It's about the interaction,
Speaker 1: which means it depends also on the thing you're interacting
Speaker 1: it with, which is so frustrating. Oh, I see what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Like if I had a cloud of electrons,
Speaker 1: you could maybe talk about where the cloud is, and
Speaker 1: where the cloud isn't, where the electors are and where
Speaker 1: there aren't. But with one single electron, it's hard to
Speaker 1: say where it ends. It's hard to say where it ends,
Speaker 1: like is there a left side to the electron and
Speaker 1: the right side to the electron? Are those things even
Speaker 1: the same thing? Because it depends on what you you're
Speaker 1: trying to touch it with, right, Like, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to touch it with another electron, it would maybe repel
Speaker 1: at a certain distance, But if you try to poke
Speaker 1: it with a proton, then it would maybe attract at
Speaker 1: a different distance. Yeah, well not so much electron versus proton,
Speaker 1: because they both feel the electromagnetism. But what if you
Speaker 1: used a different force, if you use like the weak
Speaker 1: nuclear force, or if you used you know, gravity, or
Speaker 1: if you used electromagnetism, is them than the size that
Speaker 1: you would get from electron is different. And we're turning
Speaker 1: to a neutrino. An electron has those eyes. It doesn't like,
Speaker 1: I don't care, Like the neutrino doesn't care. A neutrino
Speaker 1: would pass through a cloud of electrons and have a
Speaker 1: much lower chance of interacting than another electron would, like
Speaker 1: it wouldn't even know it's there, yeah, or dark matter, right,
Speaker 1: pokeing a pile of electrons with a stick of dark matter,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get almost no interactions, or maybe no interactions.
Speaker 1: We don't even know about dark matter. And this is
Speaker 1: the problem. It makes sense to define size in terms
Speaker 1: of interactions, like where is something pushed back, But it
Speaker 1: also is troublesome because then it depends on what you're
Speaker 1: pushing on it with. So that's kind of a problem
Speaker 1: in defining the size of an electron because it depends
Speaker 1: on what you poke it with. So then we try
Speaker 1: something else. We say, well, let's think about it like
Speaker 1: quantum mechanically, Like we've talked about where the electron is,
Speaker 1: and it's defined by like it's quantum mechanical wave function,
Speaker 1: and you know you were talking about like those balloon
Speaker 1: shapes where the electron is. You know, it's the sort
Speaker 1: of the most you can localize an electron, Like what's
Speaker 1: the size of that quantum packet? You want to think
Speaker 1: about it like as a tiny quantum object. That's like
Speaker 1: another way to try to grapple with it because their
Speaker 1: probability curves right, Like you know where the cloud is
Speaker 1: fuzzy tells you that the probability that the electron is
Speaker 1: there is small, but where the cloud is kind of thick,
Speaker 1: it tells you that there's a high probability that the
Speaker 1: electron is there. But that doesn't really give you any
Speaker 1: insight because that size can be almost anything. It depends
Speaker 1: on the uncertainty principle. If you know almost nothing about
Speaker 1: the velocity of the momentum of the electron, then you
Speaker 1: can know exactly where it is, which means it has
Speaker 1: like zero that quantum mechanical packets zero with And on
Speaker 1: the flip side, if you know everything about its velocity,
Speaker 1: then it's packet is infinitely wide, like exists everywhere in
Speaker 1: the universe simultaneously have like a universe sized electron. So
Speaker 1: that's intellectually not that satisfying either. But what if you
Speaker 1: assume an electron is just standing still, like when you're
Speaker 1: to measure your kid how all they are and it's
Speaker 1: impossible because they keep moving. But what if you can
Speaker 1: get it to stand still? Oh wouldn't what would that happen?
Speaker 1: Would you be able to then get a pretty accurate size.
Speaker 1: If you're measuring the velocity of the particle, you're getting
Speaker 1: it to stand still has no velocity, and you say
Speaker 1: it has zero velocity, then it has infinite size because
Speaker 1: you can't know the product. Remember the product of the
Speaker 1: position and momentum uncertainty has to equal a certain number.
Speaker 1: And so if you're narrowing down the speed of the
Speaker 1: electron really really well, that means you don't know anything
Speaker 1: about where it is. It's an infinite plane. Wave size
Speaker 1: is only distance, whereas you know in particle physics, distance
Speaker 1: is kind of intertwined with time as well in velocity.
Speaker 1: But then on the flip side, if you say I
Speaker 1: don't care at all about how fast it is, I
Speaker 1: just want to know where it is, then you can
Speaker 1: localize it as much as you want. You can make
Speaker 1: it infinitely narrow. And so that also doesn't give you
Speaker 1: any sense of like the size of the electron. So
Speaker 1: strike to we can can use poking or are quantum mathematics.
Speaker 1: So does that mean that the electron has no size,
Speaker 1: that it's impossible to define the size of an electron.
Speaker 1: It kind of does currently. I mean in our theory,
Speaker 1: the way we actually use it is we assume the
Speaker 1: electron has no size at all, It has zero volume.
Speaker 1: That it's just like a point in space. The left
Speaker 1: is the right, the top is the bottom, the back
Speaker 1: is the front. There's no extent to it at all.
Speaker 1: It's sort of mathematically and and because of all the
Speaker 1: things we just talked about, I guess that that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't measure the size of an electron. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense to think about it. Yeah, in our theories,
Speaker 1: we just put zero because we assume that there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: We have no way to really see the size of
Speaker 1: the electron. But you know, we do continue to try.
Speaker 1: We do smash particles at the electron, hoping that we'll
Speaker 1: see a break open, hoping that we'll see other little
Speaker 1: particles come out of it. But I guess getting back
Speaker 1: to the size of the electron itself, um, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like it has no size because it's it's
Speaker 1: not a mile wide, Like, would you even say that
Speaker 1: the electron is all electrons are a mile mile wide?
Speaker 1: I don't know what to say for the size of
Speaker 1: the electron, you know, And that's why I predicted, I
Speaker 1: think correctly, that you'd be unsatisfied with Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's not really you can't tell the future, can Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I can in this case, like I think the way
Speaker 1: I think about it currently is as a point, But
Speaker 1: I also know that that makes no sense because like,
Speaker 1: how do you have something that has mass but has
Speaker 1: no volume because then has infinite density, which is nonsense,
Speaker 1: right is it? Electrons have mass, they have mass, and
Speaker 1: they have charge, Like where does that charge go? Where
Speaker 1: is it in the electron if it has no volume.
Speaker 1: We're just used to thinking about stuff as having sizes
Speaker 1: having volume, So to imagine that the basic building box
Speaker 1: of the universe themselves are of zero volume is really weird.
Speaker 1: But I guess maybe you know that that's the theory
Speaker 1: of it. But practically speaking, I mean, we can talk
Speaker 1: about what's what's practical to you and me is like
Speaker 1: electromagnetic forces, right, you know, And it doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: in terms of neutrinos are dark matter, but kind of
Speaker 1: what's practical electromagnetic forces? And so couldn't we sort of
Speaker 1: maybe give a practical size to the electron because of that,
Speaker 1: like like what's the closest to electrons in one atom?
Speaker 1: How close can they get to electrons in another atom?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that give you a general size? Yeah, and we've
Speaker 1: done that we like pounded electrons near each other and
Speaker 1: try to get them as close together as possible, And
Speaker 1: so far we haven't found a limit, Like, there's no
Speaker 1: point at which the electrons will not get closer to
Speaker 1: each other. And so far we've gotten down about ten
Speaker 1: to the minus twenty meters. And you do that by
Speaker 1: shooting really high energy electrons at other electrons and try
Speaker 1: to get them really close together. So that's as far
Speaker 1: as we could tell. We can't tell the difference between
Speaker 1: the electrons have no volume, and they have some volume
Speaker 1: that's smaller than ten to the minus twenty. We can't
Speaker 1: tell the difference. So far. They look like their point like,
Speaker 1: but we have some sort of limited resolution there in
Speaker 1: our ability to probe. So what happens if I the
Speaker 1: whole universe was just like a proton and an electron,
Speaker 1: I guess the electron would orbit the proton. That's what
Speaker 1: hydrogen is. Yeah, The size the hydrogen comes from their interactions. Right,
Speaker 1: Most of the volume of all the stuff in the
Speaker 1: universe comes from the interactions, not from any actual volume
Speaker 1: of the particles that make them up. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: you're right, this is very unsatisfying. Anim Well, that's satisfying
Speaker 1: to me that at least I was right about that.
Speaker 1: But it's a it's a really fun puzzle because I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting to try to grapple with the quantum
Speaker 1: realm and try to understand what are the limits of
Speaker 1: our ability to map these concepts size and mass and
Speaker 1: charge and velocity down to these tiny particles that, in
Speaker 1: the end are the reality, are the truth about our universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting how, you know, you sort
Speaker 1: of put it that it's all about the interactions, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's hard to think about an electron not having
Speaker 1: like a surface or you know, an st where it's
Speaker 1: no longer an electron, And it all sort of depends
Speaker 1: on what you're trying to look at it with, you know,
Speaker 1: Like if you're trying to look at it with neutrinos,
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't see anything at all. Yeah, But if
Speaker 1: you looked at it with the electrons, it would feel
Speaker 1: like a certain size maybe. Yeah. And this is connected
Speaker 1: to some of the other puzzles we talked about, like
Speaker 1: does the electron actually spin? We know that it's either
Speaker 1: a point, in which case it doesn't make sense for
Speaker 1: it to spin like a point literally cannot spin, or
Speaker 1: that it's super tiny. But if it's super tiny and
Speaker 1: it has a surface, then it's spinning so fast that
Speaker 1: that surface is moving faster than the speed of light.
Speaker 1: So at some point, like it doesn't even make sense
Speaker 1: for it to have a non zero size. At some point,
Speaker 1: nothing makes sense, Daniel, life is meaningless, And that's usually
Speaker 1: about forty five minutes into every episode. The incredible thing
Speaker 1: is that we can understand it at all, That we
Speaker 1: can take these ideas from our everyday experience of like
Speaker 1: eating bananas and throwing balls around, and then it can
Speaker 1: give us any side into the microscopic. You know that,
Speaker 1: because the microscopic is so weird, so alien, it's incredible
Speaker 1: it works at all that I even have a job.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but that's the thing it was. We don't
Speaker 1: understand it, but yet at the same time we're able to,
Speaker 1: you know, predict it and describe it with math. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean we understand it, right, That's what understanding is.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, I don't know any deeper
Speaker 1: level of understanding. When you pass it off to the
Speaker 1: philosophers and you can ask them, like, you know, what
Speaker 1: does it mean? Man? But in the end. What we're
Speaker 1: trying to do is physicists is just sort of describe
Speaker 1: accurately the world we see around us, build a model
Speaker 1: in our heads that makes sense, describe all this unknown
Speaker 1: in terms of the known. That's that's all the understanding
Speaker 1: we can hope for. Well, I guess what I mean
Speaker 1: is like at some point we thought the proton was
Speaker 1: a proton, and we had to math to describe it,
Speaker 1: and we thought we understood it. But then then it
Speaker 1: turned out we that we there was more to the
Speaker 1: proton than we thought, and we didn't actually understand the proton.
Speaker 1: It was made out of quirks, for example. So I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, you have a mathematical di ccription
Speaker 1: of stuff, but you don't know if you're really understanding
Speaker 1: it to the fundamental level. And all of these mathematical
Speaker 1: descriptions they work up to a point. Like your idea
Speaker 1: thinking about a proton as a fundamental particle as a
Speaker 1: point particle that mostly works. It works unless you get
Speaker 1: up to really high energies, energies where you can see
Speaker 1: inside the proton, because the energies are greater than the
Speaker 1: bonds that are holding the proton together. And so as
Speaker 1: we keep pushing to higher and higher energies. We're looking
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into the real truth the smallest scales
Speaker 1: of the universe. And that's what limits how small we
Speaker 1: can see is the energy with which we probe it.
Speaker 1: And that's why, like building a bigger super collider would
Speaker 1: let us maybe see whether the electron had bits inside
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, keep funding physics is hey, I'm on message.
Speaker 1: If nothing else, keep sending those checks. Please, if you
Speaker 1: have to pick between donating to bananas or fundamental physics,
Speaker 1: you know where I stand on that. Bananas, right, because
Speaker 1: bananas are made out of fundamental partners. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that, And maybe the next time
Speaker 1: you take a bite out of a banana or your
Speaker 1: fruit of choice, maybe think about what it actually means
Speaker 1: to take a bite. I feel like we've thrown everything
Speaker 1: into question now, Daniel, Like, what does it even mean
Speaker 1: to take a bite into When my teeth end and
Speaker 1: when does the banana begin? I don't know, but every
Speaker 1: banana you've ever eaten is made out of zero volume particles.
Speaker 1: Chew on that and think about it until next week.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Before you
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah m