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Speaker 1: Ay Daniel, where do you think the next big discovery

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Speaker 1: in physics will come from? Oh? Man, if I knew that,

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Speaker 1: I would be working on it right now, So it

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Speaker 1: might come from anywhere, like particles or galaxies or anything

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Speaker 1: in between. I think that's a pretty fair assessment. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's like most of the universe. So is your strategy

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Speaker 1: just look everywhere at everything all at once? Hey? I

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Speaker 1: mean I think that will cover your basis. But you

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Speaker 1: can decide what to do on a daily basis, right,

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Speaker 1: You can't like study everything every day. I wish I could,

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Speaker 1: But you know, everybody has one burning question about the

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Speaker 1: universe inside them, So you just have to listen to

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Speaker 1: your curious inner child to decide what's the most important question.

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Speaker 1: Do you know, what if your inner child just wants

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Speaker 1: to play video games, that's what my deals are mostly

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Speaker 1: want to do, then maybe they'll discover the video on particle, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or the roadblocks particle. Or what if your inner child

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Speaker 1: just into snack, they'll discover the fundamental force that binds

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Speaker 1: together the universe and the tasty on particle. I hear

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Speaker 1: that one transmits flavor I am poor handmade cartoonists and

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Speaker 1: the co author frequently asked questions about the universe. Hi,

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at

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Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and my PhD thesis was literally about heavy flavor.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, was it a tasty thesis. It took a

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Speaker 1: lot longer to swallow than I wanted. Did you make

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Speaker 1: a cake out of it at the end and eat it? No,

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Speaker 1: but it sounded a lot more like a good rap

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Speaker 1: song than it actually was. You know, Oh, please give

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Speaker 1: us a sample. Absolutely not, absolutely not. But heavy flavor

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Speaker 1: flavor is my physics rap alter ego, just saying do

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Speaker 1: you have a lot of bling also? Or you know

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Speaker 1: stuff you've generated from a particle collider. I got ten

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Speaker 1: billion dollars worth the stacks of hundreds you know that

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Speaker 1: I spent on a particle collider. So that's pretty blinky.

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Speaker 1: Oh I thought you were going to rhyme right there,

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Speaker 1: Take a moment, do it. I'm not freestyle in man.

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Speaker 1: I like big particles and I cannot lie. The other

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Speaker 1: physicists won't deny. There you go. I was gonna say,

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Speaker 1: my name is Daniel, and I researched particles. I published

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Speaker 1: papers and lots of articles. I smashed him together like

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Speaker 1: birds of a feather. Open your eyes and check out

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Speaker 1: my Nobel prize. There you go, printed on a record

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Speaker 1: N three d J Jazzy Jorge and Heavy Flavor. Maybe

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Speaker 1: one of our fans we'll do that for us. We

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Speaker 1: do have some fans with musical talents. I hope you

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Speaker 1: guys all enjoyed that particle song. I've always wanted to

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Speaker 1: be a loop in a rep song. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: always wanted to get sampled, Yeah, looped around? Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is my chance. I just once the answer to a

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Speaker 1: trivia question on a quiz show. I checked that off

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Speaker 1: my bucket list. Was it which cartoonists didn't show up

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Speaker 1: for the quiz show? Yeah? Unfortunately none of the contestants

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Speaker 1: got it right. Nobody knew me, but I still I

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Speaker 1: was I was a question. You know that's something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know that's a level of fame for sure. Anyways,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we wrap

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Speaker 1: at you about the nature of the universe, the way

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Speaker 1: it works, the things we understand, the enduring mysteries of

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Speaker 1: our incredible cosmic context. We want to understand everything that's

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Speaker 1: out there. We want to distill the universe down into

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Speaker 1: something simple and beautiful and mathematical, but fundamentally also explainable.

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Speaker 1: We want to digest the universe. We want to intuitively

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Speaker 1: understand it. We think it's possible by the universe to

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Speaker 1: make sense to us and our tiny human brains, or

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Speaker 1: at least we think it's fun to make banana jokes

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Speaker 1: as we try. That's right, because it is an amazing

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Speaker 1: and incredible universe that's also very tasty, and so we

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Speaker 1: like to taste it for you and bring it down

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Speaker 1: to your dinner table or our ears for you to

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Speaker 1: sample and to go. That's delicious and the tastiest thing

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Speaker 1: about the universe, if you ask me, is about how

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Speaker 1: it's always satisfying our craving for discovery. We go out there,

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Speaker 1: we ask questions about the universe. We do some investigations,

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Speaker 1: and often we discover something surprising, something weird, something very

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Speaker 1: different from anything we might have expected. Yeah, because we

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Speaker 1: all hunger for answers out there in the universe. You

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Speaker 1: know how it all works, what's going on, and how

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Speaker 1: it all started, and where it's it all going to go.

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Speaker 1: And we have this incredible technique that works pretty well

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Speaker 1: if figuring it out. You know, we do experiments, we

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Speaker 1: test them against theories. We sometimes see things that we

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Speaker 1: didn't expect and have to go back and totally revise

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Speaker 1: our ideas about the very nature of the universe. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it all starts with something that all of our

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Speaker 1: inner childs do on a daily basis, which is to

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Speaker 1: ask questions. Everyone looks at onto the universe and then

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Speaker 1: wonders and they have questions about what's going on. It's

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Speaker 1: not just scientists and podcasters who ask questions about the

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Speaker 1: nature of the universe. It's everybody. It's the physicist inside you,

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Speaker 1: the philosopher who wants to know why the universe is

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Speaker 1: this way and not some other way. So on this podcast,

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Speaker 1: we don't just talk about the questions asked by academic

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Speaker 1: scientists in their ivory towers. We love answering questions from you,

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Speaker 1: our listeners. Wait, inside of me, I have an inner

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Speaker 1: child and an inner physicist. Where are they the same person?

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Speaker 1: And a philosopher too? Do they get into fights? You

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Speaker 1: contain multitudes, man, But that's right. Everyone has questions inside

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Speaker 1: of them, and everybody can ask questions about the universe

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Speaker 1: and sometimes we take those questions and we answer them

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Speaker 1: here on the podcast, we take questions from listeners and

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Speaker 1: we break it down for you. That's right. If you

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Speaker 1: have a question that you would like answered, something you

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Speaker 1: saw talked about in a science article, or something that

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Speaker 1: just doesn't quite fit right in your mind, please don't

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Speaker 1: be shy. Right to us two questions at Daniel and

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Speaker 1: Jorge dot com or tweet to us at Daniel and Jorge.

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Speaker 1: We answer everybody's questions. We engage with everybody. We want

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Speaker 1: to make sure you understand. And sometimes we'll get a

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Speaker 1: question that we think I met other people have this

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Speaker 1: question or just think it'd be fun to chat abou

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Speaker 1: out on the podcast, and so then we ask you

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Speaker 1: to send in some audio so that we can share

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Speaker 1: your question with everybody. So today on the podcast, we'll

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Speaker 1: be tackling listener questions Discovery Edition. Now, Daniel, did we

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Speaker 1: have to pay the Discovery Channel to use the Discovery

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Speaker 1: on our title? Here? You've gotta stop saying that, man,

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Speaker 1: It costs us like a thousand dollars every time you

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Speaker 1: say that d word. Do we say discovery the Discovery

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Speaker 1: word every like five minutes on this podcast? We do exactly.

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Speaker 1: I hope nobody's trademark curiosity, because then we owe them

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Speaker 1: a big chunk of change. Man or banana? Do we

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Speaker 1: all dull fruit like a bazillion dollars by now? You man,

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Speaker 1: that's a you thing. Yeah. I thought we both owned

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Speaker 1: this podcast. Are we both liable? My lawyer says, I'm

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Speaker 1: just kidding. I hope that Discovery doesn't own that word.

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Speaker 1: We certainly didn't pay them when we discovered the Higgs boson, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: although it would have been a pretty minor cost compared

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Speaker 1: to the cost of actually finding the Higgs boson. That's right.

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Speaker 1: What's a hundred K and license fees when you've already

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Speaker 1: sunk tin bill? Yeah. So we're tackling listener questions here today,

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Speaker 1: and we got three pretty awesome questions from listeners. One

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Speaker 1: of them is about the lifespan of particles, another one

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Speaker 1: about consequential discoveries in physics, and a third one about

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Speaker 1: Dyson's fears. Wait, that's not the vacuum cleaner, is it. Now?

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Speaker 1: You owe those guys money too, man, Jeez, all of

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Speaker 1: this ad money is going to our sponsors. That's right.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna have to run this too, legal and listen

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Speaker 1: to with here a heavily beeped version. Oh man, it's

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Speaker 1: I feel like all of our money is going to

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Speaker 1: go to lawyer fees. So let's get to it. Let's

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Speaker 1: tackle this first question about the lifespan of particles. And

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Speaker 1: this question comes from Elisa from Indiana. Hey, Daniel and Jorge,

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Speaker 1: this is Elissa from Indiana, and I had a question

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Speaker 1: for Daniel. At the large Hadron Collider, when you smash

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Speaker 1: particles together, how do you actually observe what happens? Just

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Speaker 1: the particles are so small and some last for such

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Speaker 1: a short time. Also, is it only protons that you

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Speaker 1: collide there? And why not electrons or neutrons? Thanks so much,

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Speaker 1: looking forward to hearing the response. Awesome question, Thank you

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Speaker 1: Elisa and Daniel. She said, this question is for you. Um,

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Speaker 1: So I'll just take a break for like fifteen minutes.

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Speaker 1: I'll come back, all right. We'll probably save money if

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Speaker 1: you stop mentioning company names. Anyway, I'll save money and

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Speaker 1: I can go work on other things. But it's a

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Speaker 1: great question, you know. She's asking, first of all, how

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Speaker 1: do we see the particles that we have created at

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Speaker 1: the large a drunklider? We think we discovered the Higgs boson,

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Speaker 1: but what does it look like? How can we tell

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Speaker 1: that it's actually there? The particles are so small and

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Speaker 1: don't live very long. It's a good question. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: wonder if she's asking with a tint of suspicion or skepticism,

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Speaker 1: like is she is she asking like, are you really

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Speaker 1: looking at things here that seems impossible? Well, it's a

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Speaker 1: fair question, and you know, I guess she's maybe a

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Speaker 1: reviewer number two on our paper. You know, she's asking

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Speaker 1: if we really know what we're doing, And she's right,

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Speaker 1: this is hard. This is one of the major challenges

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Speaker 1: of discovering new particles is that they are very, very small,

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Speaker 1: and they don't last for very long. You know, you

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Speaker 1: might like to just take a picture of the Higgs

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Speaker 1: boson and see what it looks like. But as far

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Speaker 1: as we know, the Higgs boson is a fundamental particle,

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Speaker 1: which means that it's tiny. It's really, really, really small. Technically,

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Speaker 1: it's probably a dot, has zero volume. It might be

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Speaker 1: made out of smaller things we just haven't seen yet.

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Speaker 1: But the point is that it's smaller than any wavelength

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Speaker 1: of light that we can shoot at it, which means

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Speaker 1: technically we can't see it, right. You can't see things

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Speaker 1: smaller than the wavelength of light you are using. That's why,

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Speaker 1: for example, when we want to see really really small things,

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Speaker 1: we use microscopes that shoot electrons at stuff, because electrons

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Speaker 1: have a wavelength that's smaller than photons we can use

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Speaker 1: in our microscopes. But these things are even smaller, and

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Speaker 1: so we can't see them, and even if we could,

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Speaker 1: they don't last for very long. The Higgs boson, for example,

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Speaker 1: lasts for ten to the minus twenty three seconds before decays.

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Speaker 1: It's like unfathomably short amount of time. So even if

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Speaker 1: you could somehow build a chroscope to see this thing,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't have enough time to see it. So the

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Speaker 1: short answer to her question is that we don't see

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Speaker 1: these things. What we see is what they turn into.

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Speaker 1: So the Higgs boson, for example, turns into a pair

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Speaker 1: of other particles. Like every other massive particle in the universe,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't like to stick around for very long. The

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Speaker 1: universe likes to spread out its energy. You've got a

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Speaker 1: lot of energy in a massive particle, it will decay

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Speaker 1: into lower mass particles, just like the top cork decays

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Speaker 1: or the neutron decays. All these particles decay into other particles,

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Speaker 1: So the Higgs boson, for example, decays into a pair

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Speaker 1: of photons or a pair of z bosons, and we

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Speaker 1: can see those particles as they shoot out from the

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Speaker 1: collision point. Wait, what what do you need me? I

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Speaker 1: think what's interesting, um, is that maybe you can break

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Speaker 1: this down into two things, right, Like one is how

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Speaker 1: can you see particles that are that small? And two

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Speaker 1: how can you see them if they last that long?

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Speaker 1: Because maybe one thing that people do know is that

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Speaker 1: you can actually sort of detect single particles in your colliders. Right,

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Speaker 1: we can detect single particles, but only articles that are

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Speaker 1: fairly stable, articles like electrons or even muans, which technically

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Speaker 1: aren't stable, but they live long enough to fly through

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Speaker 1: our detector. The image you should have in your mind

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Speaker 1: is a tiny little collision point where the protons smash

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Speaker 1: into each other. Then surrounding that are many, many layers

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Speaker 1: out of that collision point, the collision point itself, and

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Speaker 1: we never even look at We don't see if we

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Speaker 1: don't cameras focused on it at all, we just look

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Speaker 1: at what comes out of the collision. So the collision

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Speaker 1: point itself is embedded inside this huge detector which is

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Speaker 1: turns into two photons. Each of those photons will streak

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Speaker 1: so we can say, oh, here's a photon at this

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Speaker 1: angle and this energy. There was another photon at that

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Speaker 1: say this must have been a Higgs boson. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think you've made the analogy before that. It's sort of

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Speaker 1: like a studying a car crash, Like you don't actually

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Speaker 1: study the crash of two cars colliding. You actually just

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Speaker 1: all the bits of debris that are spread around or

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Speaker 1: is what must have happened when the two cars collided. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's just like that. You didn't get CCTV to capture

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Speaker 1: the collision. You have to try to figure out who

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Speaker 1: was to blame just by looking at the evidence afterwards,

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Speaker 1: and so unfortunately we never get to like touch of

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Speaker 1: Higgs or see a Higgs. But we're pretty sure that

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Speaker 1: they exist because we have a bunch of collisions where

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Speaker 1: a pair of photons came out, and if you reconstruct

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Speaker 1: all the energy that those photons had, it adds up

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Speaker 1: to a certain amount, and that amount is the mass

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Speaker 1: of the Higgs boson. So the mass of the Higgs

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Speaker 1: went into the energy of those photons. So we can

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Speaker 1: reconstruct what the mass of the Higgs boson was. If

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Speaker 1: you look at a distribution of where the photon pair

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Speaker 1: a hundred twenty g v where the Higgs boson is.

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Speaker 1: So that's how we knew that the Higgs was there.

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Speaker 1: We had a bunch of these photon pair events that

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Speaker 1: all added up to the same value. Now, technically you

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Speaker 1: can't look at an individual event and say these two

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Speaker 1: photons came from a Higgs boson. We can just say

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Speaker 1: it's more likely because there are other ways to make

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Speaker 1: pairs of photons that look kind of like the Higgs boson.

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Speaker 1: So in the end, it's also statistical. We can't say

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Speaker 1: for any individual collision whether there was a Higgs boson.

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Speaker 1: We can just say, in this year of collisions, we're

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Speaker 1: pretty sure we made seventy five Higgs bosons, right, And

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Speaker 1: I think at least's question was also that the Higgs

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Speaker 1: boson doesn't last very long, Like it's not out in

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Speaker 1: the universe by itself very long. It disappears or turns

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Speaker 1: into other particles that do last a long time. And

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Speaker 1: I think that's the idea, right, Like, it turns into

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Speaker 1: things that do last for a while that you can

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Speaker 1: detect in your colliders, and that amazingly you you can,

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Speaker 1: like in your detectors, you can tell of a single

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Speaker 1: photon or electron passed through a certain point, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: that's how sensitive your sensors are. Yeah, And the sensors

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Speaker 1: are specifically designed to tell apart the different particles, so

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Speaker 1: we can tell whether an electron went or a photon,

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Speaker 1: or a muon or a kon or proton, all these

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Speaker 1: different kinds of particles have specialized detectors that are good

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Speaker 1: telling those apart, so we can tell what it was

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Speaker 1: and also really accurately measure its direction. And its momentum,

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Speaker 1: so we can figure out what it came from originally.

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Speaker 1: So that's the whole name of the game. You know,

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Speaker 1: the accelerator complex itself cost billions of dollars, but these

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Speaker 1: detectors also cost almost a billion dollars to build because

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Speaker 1: they're really sensitive technology. Plus they have to operate in

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Speaker 1: a really high radiation environment. They're getting blasted by particles

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Speaker 1: all the time, so the only last few years they

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Speaker 1: have to go in and take them apart and rebuild them,

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Speaker 1: which is what we just finished doing. And we're just

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Speaker 1: starting a new run of the Large Atter and Collider

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Speaker 1: with our fancy refurbished detectors. Yeah, with a clear, clean

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Speaker 1: set of lenses. Well, it's it's kind of interesting because

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Speaker 1: this idea that you can detect single particles and maybe

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Speaker 1: something that people hadn't thought about because you know, we

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Speaker 1: all assume that particles are too small to detect, but actually,

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Speaker 1: like your eyeball, it just can detect single photons, right,

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Speaker 1: and your camera phones can detect single electrons or protons

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Speaker 1: from the sky. Right. Yeah. We had an episode of

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Speaker 1: recently about the eyeball as a single photon detector, which

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Speaker 1: is pretty awesome and definitely. We have detector technology capable

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Speaker 1: of seeing single photons, and so yeah, you can interact

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Speaker 1: with these like quantum objects almost directly, which is pretty cool. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think like if you're in a perfectly dark room, um,

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Speaker 1: you could sometimes see a photon hitting your eyeball right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And they do these crazy experiments where they take a

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Speaker 1: single photon and they split it with a special crystal

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Speaker 1: into two photons, one which gets shot at the experiment's

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Speaker 1: eye and another one which goes into a receptor. So

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Speaker 1: you can tell that a single photon has come and

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Speaker 1: people will press the button when they see it, like

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Speaker 1: they can see an individual flash of a photon. It's

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Speaker 1: pretty cool. Okay. So the second part of Lesa's question

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Speaker 1: was why do you smash protons at the Large Hadron

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Speaker 1: Collider and why not electrons or neutrons. And I'm guessing

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Speaker 1: it's not just because the name of the place is

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Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider, because the other way it's called

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Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider because we collide hadrons. But it's

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Speaker 1: a good question because neutrons are also hadron, so why

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Speaker 1: don't we collide deutrons? But first I like to mention

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Speaker 1: that Protons are not the only things that we collide

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Speaker 1: at a hat drun collider. We actually also smash other stuff.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we smash lead nuclei together. So you take a

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Speaker 1: lead atom, you strip off all the electrons. You have

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Speaker 1: this big blobb or protons and neutrons, and you take

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Speaker 1: another one. You accelerate that in the collider and smash

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Speaker 1: that together. Makes a huge messy splash, and people use

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Speaker 1: it to study crazy nuclear physics scenarios like quark gluon

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Speaker 1: plasmas that we talked about recently on the podcast Cool Well,

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Speaker 1: why don't you collide electrons by protons and not electrons.

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Speaker 1: So the tunnel that we use for the Large Hadron

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Speaker 1: Collider is the same tunnel that we used for the

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Speaker 1: previous collider at CERN, which was l EP LEFT, the

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Speaker 1: Large Electron Positron Collider, So we have done e plus

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Speaker 1: e minus collisions in the same tunnel. The advantage of

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Speaker 1: using electrons is that they're very clean because their fundamental

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Speaker 1: particles and they don't feel the strong force. So you

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Speaker 1: get a collision and you know exactly how much energy

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Speaker 1: went into it because you can control the energy of

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Speaker 1: your beams, and the beams are fundamental particles. The disadvantages

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Speaker 1: that electrons are very little mass and so they tend

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Speaker 1: to radiate away their energy very quickly, so it's hard

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Speaker 1: to get electrons up to really high energies. Protons are

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Speaker 1: more massive, and so you can get them up to

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Speaker 1: really high energies more easily without them radiating away all

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Speaker 1: of that energy. So proton colliders are better at discovering

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Speaker 1: really high mass stuff because you can get them up

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Speaker 1: to higher energies than electrons. The disadvantage is that protons

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Speaker 1: are not fundamental particles, the little bags of corks, So

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Speaker 1: you're colliding bags of corks against other bags of quirks,

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Speaker 1: and it's really messy because corks feel a strong force,

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Speaker 1: so you get this gluon radiation everywhere. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: a mess, but it has more power to discover stuff

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Speaker 1: in the end. But can you just accelerate electrons to

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Speaker 1: go faster to get the same amount of energy. You

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Speaker 1: could accelerate electrons to go faster, but if you use

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Speaker 1: the same tunnel, then as they turn, they would radiate

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Speaker 1: away that energy really fast, so it's hard to get

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Speaker 1: electrons up to that speed. Alternatively, you could use a

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Speaker 1: bigger tunnel, so they don't have to curve as much

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Speaker 1: because that's when they're losing the energy by radiating away

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Speaker 1: as they bend. But then you need a bigger tunnel,

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Speaker 1: which is more expensive. So if you have a fixed

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Speaker 1: sized tunnel and a fixed strength magnet, then you can

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Speaker 1: get protons up to higher energy than you can electrons. Well,

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Speaker 1: also they have to be protons and electronics. They need

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Speaker 1: to have a charge in order for you to not

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Speaker 1: just accelerate them but make them go in a circle, right,

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Speaker 1: because if it's a neutral particle, it won't go into circle,

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Speaker 1: We'll just go straight. Yeah. We use electric fields to

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Speaker 1: accelerate these particles, to push them, and then we use

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Speaker 1: magnetic fields to bend them. And neutrons don't have a charge,

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Speaker 1: so they don't get accelerated by electric fields and they

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Speaker 1: don't get bent by magnetic fields. So a neutron collider

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Speaker 1: might be interesting, but we don't have a way to

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Speaker 1: build a neutron collider because they don't have that crucial feature,

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Speaker 1: the electric charge that we can use to tug them along. Cool. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think that's the answer for a Lisa, My question

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Speaker 1: is why don't you smash other things just for fun

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Speaker 1: toaster Oven's bananas, you know late at night. Has anyone

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Speaker 1: been tempted to like, hey, what if we just stick

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Speaker 1: a cat in there? Can you accelerate a cat? Cats

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Speaker 1: actually do have a pretty good charge, but no feelines

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Speaker 1: were heard in the production of this podcast. We've had

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Speaker 1: a bit of a variety of our colliders over the years.

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Speaker 1: We once build an electron proton collider. Do you smash

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Speaker 1: on electron against a proton? Which is really helpful for

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Speaker 1: seeing inside the proton and the electron like breaks up

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Speaker 1: the proton gives you a nice view of the quarks inside.

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Speaker 1: People are talking about building a muon collider where you're

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Speaker 1: smashing Muon beams against each other. We also have beams

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Speaker 1: of new trinos that we shoot against targets. We have

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Speaker 1: all sorts of different kind of beams that we'd like

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Speaker 1: to play with, but no nobody has a cat beam

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Speaker 1: or a toaster beam yet yet. Well, right now we're

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Speaker 1: making plans for the future of particle physics, and I'll

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Speaker 1: make sure to add that to the list. Yeah, you know,

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Speaker 1: everyone loves cats on the internet. So if you want

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Speaker 1: a new headline the local viral, I think cats is

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Speaker 1: your your main bit most expensive cat video ever. All right,

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Speaker 1: well that's a question for at least I thank you're

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Speaker 1: asking the question. So let's get into our other questions

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Speaker 1: here about consequential developments in physics and also about Dyson

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Speaker 1: sphere years. But first let's take a quick break. Right.

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Speaker 1: We're answering listener questions here today, and we just answered

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Speaker 1: a pretty interesting one about the large hadron collider and

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Speaker 1: wide collides large hadrons. It's a large collider of small

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Speaker 1: addrons actually, which is better than a small collider of

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Speaker 1: large hadrons in terms of making discoveries. You're right, I

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Speaker 1: know I hadn't thought about that. You know, you could

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Speaker 1: part Are there small hadrons that you could collide to? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: You know, hadrons are any particles that have quarks inside,

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Speaker 1: and the proton has three of them. But you can

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Speaker 1: also make particles out of pairs of quarks like kaons

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Speaker 1: and pions some principle, there are smaller hadrons. Interesting, and

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Speaker 1: also cats are made out of hadron so you could

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Speaker 1: also have a feline hadron collider. Yeah, and if you

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Speaker 1: have a pion pion collider, then you could you know,

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Speaker 1: read do that famous cream pie collision experiment. But at

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Speaker 1: the fundamental level. Oh my goodness, you might discover the

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Speaker 1: laughyan or the slat stickne. We could convert one kind

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Speaker 1: of pion into another kind of pion. You know, chocolate

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Speaker 1: cream pieon into a banana cream pion. You could smash

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Speaker 1: cats with cream pies. There's a viral video that will

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Speaker 1: get us canceled, but it might be hilarious only you

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Speaker 1: like animals. All right, let's get into some of our

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Speaker 1: other questions here today. Our next question comes from Cavinda,

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Speaker 1: who's asking this from Sri Lanka. Hello, Daniel and hor

428
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Speaker 1: this is Carvin the My question to you is what

429
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:38,159
Speaker 1: are the five most consequential developments in physics that have

430
00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:41,960
Speaker 1: taken place since the start of the show. Thank you

431
00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:45,960
Speaker 1: very much for the knowledge enjoy you bring. Best regards

432
00:21:46,200 --> 00:21:49,280
Speaker 1: from Sri Lanka. Awesome. It's great to hear from listeners

433
00:21:49,320 --> 00:21:51,480
Speaker 1: all over the world. And the question is what are

434
00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:54,280
Speaker 1: the five most consequence of developments in physics since the

435
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:57,200
Speaker 1: start of the show. I think the answer is zero, right, Daniel,

436
00:21:57,280 --> 00:22:00,480
Speaker 1: I mean once we started the show, nothing more could

437
00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 1: be more consequential in physics than this show. That's right. Also,

438
00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:07,640
Speaker 1: I stopped doing research since the start of the show,

439
00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 1: So how could anybody have done anything important since I'm

440
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:14,800
Speaker 1: not participating anymore? Yeah, there you go. Is that why

441
00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:18,000
Speaker 1: you haven't produced any significant research in the last couple

442
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:21,760
Speaker 1: of years? That's not why did you retire like Michael

443
00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:25,439
Speaker 1: Jordan's and you went into baseball or podcasting? Yeah, exactly.

444
00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:27,159
Speaker 1: I retired at the top of my game. No, I

445
00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:29,480
Speaker 1: haven't given up physics. I'm still working on it. But

446
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:31,480
Speaker 1: I think the question is really fun because the goal

447
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:34,640
Speaker 1: of the podcast is not just to like summarize everything

448
00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:37,000
Speaker 1: we know about physics, but to keep people up to

449
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:40,560
Speaker 1: date and to like evolve with the time, and so

450
00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:44,000
Speaker 1: physics itself is a dynamic, living thing. Right. Our understanding

451
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:47,120
Speaker 1: the universe is changing as time goes on, and so

452
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,800
Speaker 1: amazingly the podcast has gone on for long enough that

453
00:22:49,880 --> 00:22:52,600
Speaker 1: our understanding the universe is different from where it was

454
00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:55,080
Speaker 1: when we started. Yeah, we've been on the air for

455
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:57,560
Speaker 1: what three years now or more three and a half. Yeah,

456
00:22:57,600 --> 00:22:59,879
Speaker 1: I think we're at almost four episodes and we do

457
00:22:59,920 --> 00:23:01,440
Speaker 1: it out a hundred a year, so I think we're

458
00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:04,280
Speaker 1: going on four years. Oh my goodness, where has the

459
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:07,679
Speaker 1: time gone? Into a black hole of podcasts? Alright, So

460
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 1: in the last four years, what have been the most

461
00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:13,159
Speaker 1: consequence of developments in physics. So we only asked for five.

462
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:15,639
Speaker 1: And this was really hard to think about what was

463
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:19,000
Speaker 1: the most important because there's so many fascinating discoveries. So

464
00:23:19,119 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: for me, in no particular order, I would start with,

465
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:24,000
Speaker 1: you know, the Hubble tension. This is our attempt to

466
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:27,800
Speaker 1: understand the rate of expansion of the universe, and we

467
00:23:28,119 --> 00:23:30,440
Speaker 1: measure it by looking at how fast things are moving

468
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:33,160
Speaker 1: away from us nearby, and how fast things moving away

469
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 1: from us in the past. And we look at the

470
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:38,320
Speaker 1: very early universe, the cosmic microwave background, and we measure

471
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 1: the expansion of the universe at all these different times,

472
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:43,000
Speaker 1: and we see different numbers and they don't really add up,

473
00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: which tells us that, like, maybe we don't understand something

474
00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:48,840
Speaker 1: deep about the early universe. This is really fun because

475
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,359
Speaker 1: we were making sort of fuzzy measurements a few years

476
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: ago and they didn't really agree. But people thought when

477
00:23:53,600 --> 00:23:55,640
Speaker 1: they get more precise, I'm sure they'll all come into

478
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:58,159
Speaker 1: focus and agree with each other. But they didn't, and

479
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:01,239
Speaker 1: so that suggests like maybe there's something new going on.

480
00:24:01,320 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 1: It's like a really big hint about something we might

481
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:06,680
Speaker 1: discover around the corner. Yeah, I think we covered this

482
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 1: in a recent episode. This idea that we're sort of

483
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:12,159
Speaker 1: measuring the expansion of the universe at the beginning of

484
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:15,000
Speaker 1: the universe, and that we were measuring it through different

485
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:17,199
Speaker 1: ways and they sort of don't match. Right. One of

486
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:19,880
Speaker 1: him says that the universe was expanding or is expanding

487
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:22,159
Speaker 1: faster than the other. Yeah. If you measure at the

488
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:25,879
Speaker 1: early universe, the expansion you get is higher, and so

489
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:29,119
Speaker 1: the universe should be expanding faster. So that predicts it

490
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:31,760
Speaker 1: today we should see a faster expansion rate than we do.

491
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:34,399
Speaker 1: Is suggests the universe might be like a billion years

492
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 1: younger than we thought it was. It could have gotten

493
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,280
Speaker 1: to this size faster than we thought, or it could

494
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 1: be that there's a mistake in one of these measurements.

495
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool because no matter how we resolve it,

496
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:48,960
Speaker 1: we're going to learn something really interesting about something really important.

497
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:50,920
Speaker 1: We don't know what the answer is yet, but it's

498
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 1: a big screaming clue that there's something big to learn. Yeah,

499
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: or maybe the universe. That's just one of those people

500
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:00,320
Speaker 1: who look young, you know, just ages well, like the

501
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 1: canaries of the universe. Could that explain it? Could that

502
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:05,920
Speaker 1: be a consequential discovery there? The universe has been using

503
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: lotion all these years. That's the key, right, Yeah, the

504
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:14,200
Speaker 1: cosmic lotion theory. It's on a strict diet of snack yawns,

505
00:25:15,560 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 1: which are pretty low calorie. All right, what's the next

506
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 1: big discovery do you think that we've made in the

507
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: least four years? Well, I think in terms of consequential developments,

508
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:27,560
Speaker 1: something that's been really interesting is that we haven't seen

509
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,080
Speaker 1: anything else at the Large Hagon collider. We found the

510
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:32,159
Speaker 1: Higgs boson in two thousand and twelve, and before we

511
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: found it, we didn't know how heavy it was going

512
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 1: to be. We didn't know there's gonna be a hundred

513
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: times as heavy as the proton, and a lot of

514
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 1: folks expected it to be much much heavier because the

515
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:44,040
Speaker 1: mass of the Higgs boson is we've talked about once

516
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:46,879
Speaker 1: on the podcast, is affected by all the other particles

517
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: in the universe, and there's a bunch of ones that

518
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:51,120
Speaker 1: make it heavier and a bunch of ones that make

519
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:53,840
Speaker 1: it lighter, and those numbers are really really big, and

520
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: they seem to sort of like weirdly balance out to

521
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:58,800
Speaker 1: get kind of a small value for the Higgs boson.

522
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:03,000
Speaker 1: Was suggests like, either the universe is fine tuned, it's

523
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: like precisely put together in this way to give us

524
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: a low mass Higgs boson, or maybe there's a bunch

525
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:12,159
Speaker 1: of other particles out there that are balancing it. So

526
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: people really expected us to find a whole slew of

527
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 1: particles with the Large Hadron Collider to explain why the

528
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 1: Higgs boson is so low mass, but then we didn't,

529
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:24,600
Speaker 1: and that's had like a lot of reverberations in the field.

530
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 1: It's definitely consequential. So sometimes a non discovery can be

531
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:32,280
Speaker 1: as significant as a discovery, right, But I guess maybe

532
00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: explained to us what that means. So if you haven't

533
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: found any other particles after the Higgs boson, that means

534
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: that the Higgs boson is smaller than you expected. Is

535
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:41,679
Speaker 1: that sort of like a big mystery? Then there's a

536
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 1: lot of arguing about how big a mystery this is.

537
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:47,320
Speaker 1: You know, either the universe just is this way where

538
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:49,159
Speaker 1: some of the particles make the Higgs heavier and some

539
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 1: of the particles make it lighter, and it just sort

540
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 1: of weirdly adds up to a small value. It's like

541
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,640
Speaker 1: if you subtracted a ten digit number from another ten

542
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 1: digit number, you'd expect to get something about ten digits.

543
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: If you get something which is like very close to zero,

544
00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: you think that's a weird coincidence. And so in science,

545
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,280
Speaker 1: whenever we see a coincidence, we wonder is it just

546
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:09,919
Speaker 1: a coincidence or is there an explanation, and we hunger

547
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: for an explanation. We don't like coincidences. We think probably

548
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: there's a reason, and we want to know what it is.

549
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: But you never know. There are coincidences in the universe.

550
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:20,760
Speaker 1: Right The Sun of the Moon are almost exactly the

551
00:27:20,760 --> 00:27:22,480
Speaker 1: same size in the sky, which is why we have

552
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:26,719
Speaker 1: incredible ellipses. That's just a coincidence. There's no deep reason

553
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 1: for it. So we still don't know. Is the Higgs

554
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 1: mass a coincidence or is that a hint about something

555
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: else that's happening that we could discover at an even

556
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 1: bigger collider where we smash cats into banana cream pons.

557
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is that the fact that

558
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:43,399
Speaker 1: you haven't discovered anything significant since the Higgs boson is

559
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 1: significant in itself. Exactly, it really is significant. It's canceled

560
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of theories that people really expected to

561
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: describe the universe. So it's really made us rethink our

562
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 1: questions about the universe and how we try to answer them.

563
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:58,240
Speaker 1: It's been also a bit of a disappointment. You know,

564
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: it's more fun to discover particles to not discover particles.

565
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 1: But when you have specific predictions and they're not confirmed,

566
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 1: you got to go back to the drawing board and

567
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:09,120
Speaker 1: think about what assumptions you made might have been wrong. Yeah,

568
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:11,280
Speaker 1: it also seems like a convenient way to put a

569
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: positive spin on the fact that you haven't done anything, Like,

570
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:16,880
Speaker 1: how do we know you were even looking? Maybe you're

571
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,879
Speaker 1: just sitting around eating banana and clean pies. It's win win.

572
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: If we discover particles, we say, give us more money

573
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 1: to study these particles. We don't discover particles, we say,

574
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: give us more money to discover some particles. It's a scam.

575
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 1: It's an investment scam. All right. Well, that's pretty significant

576
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 1: or insignificant, I guess, or significantly insignificant. What are some

577
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 1: of the other great discoveries. Another one which really made

578
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 1: ripples in my physics soul was the observation of gravitational waves.

579
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:46,239
Speaker 1: This is discovered by Lego and Virgo just about the

580
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 1: time that we started the podcast, and for me, it's

581
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:52,240
Speaker 1: really changed the whole nature of astronomy and our understanding

582
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 1: of what's going on out there in the universe. We've

583
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: seen black holes smashing into each other, forming super big

584
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 1: black hole and radiating away enormous amounts of their energy.

585
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: In terms of these gravitational waves, which are these ripples

586
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: in space and time itself, they propagate through the universe

587
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: and then they squeeze these detectors that are like two

588
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: miles long, and they shrink them by like a tiny

589
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 1: factor smaller than the width of a human hair. It's

590
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 1: incredible technological achievement that we can even see these little wiggles.

591
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:27,720
Speaker 1: Einstein himself thought it would be impossible to ever see them.

592
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: It also means something really interesting about the universe. It

593
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 1: means that gravitational waves are real. General relativity, the theory,

594
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 1: which we're pretty sure is fundamentally wrong at some level,

595
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: keeps predicting these crazy things and being correct about the

596
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 1: nature of the universe. And it also tells us how

597
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: often black holes collide, which is really often a lot

598
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 1: more often than we thought. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to

599
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: see ripples in the fabric of space time itself. It's

600
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: it's like noticing that the world around you is squishing around, right,

601
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: it's not like a fixed reality we live. Yeah, this

602
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 1: is to me a really incredible avenue for exploration. It

603
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: helps us really think about one of the deepest questions

604
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: in physics, which is like, what is the fundamental nature

605
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: of the universe? What is space anyway? And Newton thought

606
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 1: space was just like eternal and unchangeable and just a

607
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: backdrop to the universe. But Einstein showed us that it wasn't.

608
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 1: That it's fungible, you know, that it's gonna be squeezed,

609
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: that it can ripple, that it can expand it's really

610
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: just like a dynamic thing. It's incredible, And now we've

611
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 1: seen it do something that we had never seen it

612
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:33,720
Speaker 1: do before. So to me, that was a really consequential

613
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 1: moment in physics, and it's continued to be We've seen

614
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 1: now dozens of these black hole mergers and even neutron

615
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: star murders, and so it's opened up a whole new eyeball,

616
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: a whole new way to look at the universe right, right,

617
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: although some people say it's it's more like hearing the universe, right,

618
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: It's more like opening another ear to the universe. I

619
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: know that the PR folks like to take those waves

620
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: and change them into sound waves that you can play them.

621
00:30:57,920 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: In the end, though, everything we're looking at his way

622
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: is like you could take photons and turn them into

623
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 1: sound waves if you wanted to. You're not really hearing

624
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: gravitational waves. They're not like sonic ripples through the universe

625
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 1: anymore than photons are. In my view, it's just a

626
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 1: PR thing. Well, they're more analogous to sonic waves, right,

627
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 1: because like the waves go up and down, right, they

628
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 1: change in amplitude, and those changes in the amplitude tell

629
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 1: you whether you know it's two black holes colliding or

630
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 1: a black hole and ntron start Like there's something a

631
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: little bit sound wavy about them, more than like just

632
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: getting photons that tell you about the look of stars,

633
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 1: I suppose. So in the end, we're always interpreting this

634
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: data in a way that makes sense to us intuitively,

635
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 1: and so we have to translate it into our senses.

636
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 1: You know, when we see infrared radiation, we wave length

637
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 1: shifted into the visible so we can look at those pictures.

638
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:45,200
Speaker 1: It's not what it actually looks like in real life

639
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: because it's changing their frequency. But in the end we

640
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 1: have to translate these things to our senses. Makes me wonder,

641
00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: like alien physicists observing gravitational waves, what do they think

642
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 1: about them? Are they hearing them or tasting them? Whether

643
00:31:57,080 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: they don't even have eyeballs, or what if they have

644
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: four eyeballs, or what if gravitational waves are like a

645
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: natural sense for them and so they don't need to

646
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: translate it into anything. It's just gravitational waves. Man. Yeah,

647
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:09,600
Speaker 1: may they like to serve gravitation waves, who knows. But

648
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:12,560
Speaker 1: speaking of black holes, that's another pretty significant discovering. The

649
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 1: last couple of years, we've actually gone into see black holes, right,

650
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 1: We actually have We have pictures of the black hole

651
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 1: from m A seven, and we also very recently have

652
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 1: pictures of the black hole at the center of our

653
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: own galaxy, Sagittarius, a star. It look sort of like

654
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: crispy cream donuts floating in space, And you might think, like,

655
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: what's the big deal If we really learned it's not

656
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: just like a picture of a ring in space, what

657
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 1: does that tell us about the universe. To me, it's

658
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 1: really fascinating because it closes the window of what they

659
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 1: really could be. You know, we measured the mass of

660
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: these things, but we don't really know exactly how big

661
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: they are until we can get a picture of them.

662
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: We can see things like whooshing really close to the

663
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: edge of the event horizon, and the closer we can

664
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: see things passing by the black hole near the event horizon,

665
00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: the more we know about the density of that object

666
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 1: we sort of close. Is the door on like other

667
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: explanations for people who don't really believe in black holes.

668
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 1: So seeing these images of black holes really is almost

669
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: like a smoking gun that tells us that black holes

670
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: are real. Right, I think we should send people who

671
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:15,480
Speaker 1: don't believe in black holes to a black hole so

672
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: they can verify with themselves. No, I'm just kidding. Well,

673
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: it's also an incredible technological feed. You know, these black

674
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 1: holes that we took pictures of are incredibly far away,

675
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: there in another galaxy, there in the middle of another galaxy,

676
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,840
Speaker 1: in between Brazilian stars that are shining bright. It's it's

677
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: incredible that we can get a picture of something so

678
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: far away, so small and in the middle of so

679
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: many other stuff. Yes, technologically it's very impressive, absolutely, and

680
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: also though does answer important science questions, it really does

681
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 1: tell us something. You know, black holes are not something

682
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: we can ever see directly, but you can only see

683
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:51,360
Speaker 1: their lack of radiation, and you can see their effect

684
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: on the stuff very very close to them. And so

685
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: the closer we can get our probes, the more we

686
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 1: can be certain that these really are these weird divots

687
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: in space and time. Yeah, or at least we think

688
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 1: it was a black hole, right, there is still the

689
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: possibility that it's something else, like a super dance star

690
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,879
Speaker 1: in the middle of there. Not technically about black hole. Yeah,

691
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:11,799
Speaker 1: we're still not know for sure, and to understand what's

692
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: going on inside this reguion space and time will need

693
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:17,360
Speaker 1: some theory of quantum gravity, and there are other theories

694
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: that are still consistent with these black hole pictures. So

695
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:23,279
Speaker 1: we are not a sure these black holes really are

696
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: black holes, but taking these pictures helps eliminate some other

697
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:30,719
Speaker 1: theories that suggested maybe they were larger objects that extended

698
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 1: past the event horizon. Yeah, it's pretty cool alright, So

699
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: then what's the last in your opinion, big significant discovery

700
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:39,560
Speaker 1: in the last four years. Well, this is closer to

701
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 1: my heart again. It's particle physics. We recently saw the

702
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:45,720
Speaker 1: mu on doing something kind of weird. Had this really

703
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:49,160
Speaker 1: precise experiment called G minus two. They take muance and

704
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: they send them around a loop in the magnetic field

705
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: and watch them. Will you did a really fun cartoon

706
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,360
Speaker 1: explaining the significance of this. Everybody should go check that

707
00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: out because it has Jorges awesome drawings explanations. But the

708
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: short version is that the muans were wiggling a little

709
00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: bit differently from what we expected. When muans go around

710
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:09,360
Speaker 1: in these circles, they interact with all the quantum fields

711
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,920
Speaker 1: that are out there, and if there are more quantum

712
00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:14,480
Speaker 1: fields than the ones we account for, then when the

713
00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 1: mu ones go around, they'll interact with those fields and

714
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 1: they'll end up pointing in a different direction from the

715
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:22,240
Speaker 1: one we expect. And so they did this really careful

716
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 1: calculation and this study for several years at the experiment,

717
00:35:26,120 --> 00:35:28,440
Speaker 1: and they get a pretty different answer when they compare

718
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: the experiment and the theory, which suggests maybe there are

719
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:34,560
Speaker 1: these extra fields out there. Right. Because there more fields

720
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: there are, the more it will have this magnetic moment

721
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:39,360
Speaker 1: the particle, and so what they measure was that they'd

722
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 1: had a higher magnetic moment than what our current lists

723
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: of quantum fields sessors should be exactly. And that's sort

724
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: of the field picture of it. Like thinking about particles,

725
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: then you can imagine that as the muan is going around,

726
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 1: there are these virtual particles that it can interact with.

727
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: So maybe more fields or more particles out there in

728
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: the universe, ones that might also explain the mystery of

729
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson mass, though they might just be too

730
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: heavy for us to create at the large aange On cliner.

731
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 1: Pretty cool, pretty interesting, pretty tantalizing about our knowledge of

732
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: the universe. It could mean that we are kind of

733
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: wrong or incomplete about what we think is out there exactly.

734
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 1: And so those are the most fun clues, the most

735
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 1: consequential developments when we find out that we are wrong,

736
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 1: when our expectation is different from what the universe tells us,

737
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:25,520
Speaker 1: Because that's the moment just before we make an incredible discovery,

738
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:28,680
Speaker 1: when we understand something new about the universe. Alright, Well,

739
00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: those are the five most consequential developments in physics in

740
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,880
Speaker 1: the last four years, according to Daniel Whitson. I should

741
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:38,439
Speaker 1: know that two of these are particle physics experiments which

742
00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:41,359
Speaker 1: Daniel is in. One of them is his project which

743
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: actually didn't find anything, but come out. It's still on

744
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 1: the list. I'm just saying maybe you should go ask

745
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:49,240
Speaker 1: an astrophists just in case. Of course, these are very subjective.

746
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:51,560
Speaker 1: There are lots of exciting developments in other fields of

747
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:53,919
Speaker 1: physics as well. All right, let's get to our last

748
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: question here on the podcast, and this one is a

749
00:36:56,400 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: bout Dyson's fears in potentially using mythology to discover them.

750
00:37:01,160 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: So let's get into that, but first let's take another

751
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:19,319
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, we're answering listener questions here on

752
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:22,760
Speaker 1: the podcast, and our last question comes from Chris Peg

753
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 1: was wondering about how we can discover Dyson's fears. Hi, Daniel,

754
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 1: and Johey, I was listening to a recent podcast when

755
00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: your guests mentioned dycense fees and how we hadn't found

756
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 1: any yet. He's got me thinking how could we go

757
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:40,319
Speaker 1: about discovering a dicense fee. One thought I had was

758
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 1: trying to use ancient mythology about disappearing stars, often devoured

759
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:49,479
Speaker 1: by some mythical being leaving the night sky dark? Could

760
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: these stories be observed dicense fees? Is there any other

761
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:55,480
Speaker 1: way to tell Thanks for the thought of woking and

762
00:37:55,600 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 1: insightful podcasts, all right, ask him question, Thank you, Chris.

763
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: And he's asking how we can discover a Dyson sphere.

764
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing, Daniel, this is not the little ball

765
00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: that's in those Dyson vacuum cleaners. That's right there, dude,

766
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:13,320
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. I forgot wait I said discovering a

767
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: din Sir. That's so that's double trademark fees that we

768
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,359
Speaker 1: over there. I should just say nothing. I think a

769
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners be like, yes, please horry stop talking.

770
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: Nodes in sphere is a really fun idea that comes

771
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 1: from Freeman Dyson, a physicist, and his idea was basically

772
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:31,400
Speaker 1: to make super solar panels. So you know, if you

773
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: have a solar panel on your roof, it's absorbing the

774
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 1: energy of the Sun and it's turning that into electricity

775
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: or into hot water. The idea is, what if you

776
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: build a bunch of solar panels, so you surrounded an

777
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 1: entire star with solar panels, right, because think about the

778
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 1: fraction of the Sun's energy that falls on your solar panels.

779
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:51,839
Speaker 1: It's almost zero. It's insignificant. So if you could wrap

780
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: solar panels around an entire star, I think of the

781
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 1: energy at your disposal. Yeah, i'd be massive, right, It'd

782
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 1: be like the entire energy of the Sun that you

783
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 1: could capture and use for like one thing or a

784
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:05,879
Speaker 1: lot of things. Yeah, you could build a laser beam

785
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,439
Speaker 1: to destroy planets, or you could use it for good.

786
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:11,400
Speaker 1: What could you use the giant laser beam the size

787
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 1: of the Sun for to good purpose? Here? Oh, I

788
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 1: don't know. You could beam the energy to planets around

789
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: the Solar system that needed it. You could grow stuff

790
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 1: on io and ghana, meat and all sorts of stuff.

791
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:25,320
Speaker 1: I mean, if you could harness that much energy, you

792
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:29,360
Speaker 1: could basically build anything you wanted in space out of asteroids.

793
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: It can power an entire solar construction industry. We could

794
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:35,240
Speaker 1: build huge settlements in space. If we could zip around

795
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: the Solar system on solar sales, it would be really incredible.

796
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:41,879
Speaker 1: Energy really is the limiting factor for our entire economy. Oh,

797
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:43,320
Speaker 1: that's interesting. It would be a way to sort of

798
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 1: like harness the Sun and focus it on maybe the

799
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 1: like the planets were really far away, like you could

800
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 1: maybe heat up Neptune and make it habitable, or you know,

801
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:54,480
Speaker 1: heat up one of the movements of Jupiter and make

802
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 1: it a nice tropical vacation spot. Yeah. I think this

803
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,320
Speaker 1: appeared in Isaac Asthmas story I read a long time ago.

804
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 1: Solar panels that being that energy to various parts of

805
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: the Solar System. Because remember, the Sun's energy goes like

806
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 1: one overall distance squared, and so there's a reason that

807
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 1: like Neptune and Urinus are called the ice giants because

808
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:15,239
Speaker 1: it's cold out there, and so we could capture all

809
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:17,840
Speaker 1: the Sun's energy and then beam it around the Solar system,

810
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:20,759
Speaker 1: then you can make a lot of these places really hospitable. Yeah,

811
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:22,720
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, the Sun is shooting

812
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:24,600
Speaker 1: off all this energy, but most of it is just

813
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:26,840
Speaker 1: going out into empty space, right It's it's sort of

814
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,440
Speaker 1: almost being lost because there's nothing there to receive it,

815
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 1: or it's nothing there to really capture that sunlight. So

816
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,879
Speaker 1: there's a lot going out there in all directions that's

817
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 1: not being used. Yeah. Well, maybe it's being used by

818
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:40,439
Speaker 1: alien astronomers who are studying our Sun and looking for

819
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: our planets, but otherwise, yes, it's being wasted, and so

820
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,280
Speaker 1: the ideas that you can maybe build a structure around

821
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: the sun, the whole structure of solar panels to partners

822
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:51,759
Speaker 1: that energy. And I think the question that Chris Peck

823
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:54,920
Speaker 1: has is like maybe we could detect it by seeing

824
00:40:55,680 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: or looking at records or starts that have suddenly been

825
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,680
Speaker 1: covered up. Yeah, it's question is could we see if

826
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: aliens are building a dicense fhere. And the idea is

827
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: if somebody builds one of these things, then their star

828
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: is gonna blink out of the night sky. So if

829
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: aliens are putting this thing together, we should see a

830
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:13,720
Speaker 1: star disappear, and that would be a pretty cool signature

831
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:15,800
Speaker 1: because you know, we think we understand the life cycle

832
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 1: of stars. They don't just blink out right, They blow

833
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: up in supernovas, or they go red giant and expel

834
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 1: their outer layers. We understand the life cycle of stars.

835
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:26,200
Speaker 1: So if we saw one that just like disappeared weirdly,

836
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:29,080
Speaker 1: that would be an interesting clue. If there are aliens

837
00:41:29,080 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 1: who are building a dicense fhere around a star out there,

838
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: it's kind of unrealized such a thing. They could do

839
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: it in a in a single day, right, Like would

840
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:37,840
Speaker 1: it it maybe take thousands or hundreds of years. You know,

841
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: like imagine building a structure the size of the Sun.

842
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:44,440
Speaker 1: It's it's like a million times bigger than the Earth. Yeah,

843
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: it would be a big project, and to finish it

844
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:48,840
Speaker 1: in one day it would be exceptional. And so I

845
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:51,520
Speaker 1: don't know anything about alien engineering, but you can imagine

846
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:53,719
Speaker 1: that it would be making steady progress. So what you

847
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: can do is look for stars that are steadily dimming, right,

848
00:41:56,600 --> 00:41:59,359
Speaker 1: that they're getting dimmer and dimmer as time goes on.

849
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,240
Speaker 1: And we rely have been noticing some interesting things about

850
00:42:02,280 --> 00:42:05,320
Speaker 1: a couple of stars in the sky. Beetle Juice for example,

851
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 1: a very familiar star, remember the Orion constellation, the tenth

852
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 1: brightest star in the sky and one of the largest

853
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 1: stars visible to the naked eye. This thing is massive,

854
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:17,440
Speaker 1: like if you put it in our solar system, it

855
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:21,160
Speaker 1: would extend out past Mars into the asteroid belt. But

856
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 1: the amazing thing about this star is that it's been

857
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 1: dimming in the last few years. It's brightness has gone

858
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 1: down by like a factor of three. So that got

859
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,360
Speaker 1: people wondering, like maybe the aliens have started building a

860
00:42:32,520 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 1: dicensphere around beetle juice m and maybe they can do

861
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 1: it in three days. Is that the idea build something

862
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: the size of the sun in three days. Well, the

863
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:44,360
Speaker 1: problem with this theory is that it wasn't dimming steadily,

864
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 1: and like went down and went back up, and then

865
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:48,279
Speaker 1: it went down, went the back up, and actually by

866
00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: February two thousand twenty two, it's back to its normal

867
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 1: brightness again. And so it doesn't seem likely to be

868
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:57,279
Speaker 1: a dicensphere unless they were working on the dicensphere and

869
00:42:57,320 --> 00:42:59,879
Speaker 1: they had some terrible accident and the whole thing blew

870
00:42:59,920 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 1: up up right right, or they ran out of money

871
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,600
Speaker 1: they have to dismantle the whole thing in three days,

872
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:09,959
Speaker 1: you know. The leading theory these days is that there's

873
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:13,399
Speaker 1: some big dust cloud, maybe from a collision, like maybe

874
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 1: beetle juice ejected some material in some huge coronal mass

875
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: ejection which then floated out in cooled and partially blocked

876
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:23,400
Speaker 1: beetle juice for a little while. Or maybe like some

877
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 1: exo moon came in and smashed into a planet and

878
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:28,279
Speaker 1: turned it into dust. You might wonder, like, how could

879
00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 1: we tell the difference if the star is getting dimmer?

880
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:32,600
Speaker 1: How can you tell what's dibbing it. But we do

881
00:43:32,680 --> 00:43:34,840
Speaker 1: have one extra handle on it, which is that we

882
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:37,759
Speaker 1: can look at the different wavelengths of light we get

883
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 1: from these stars. Because remember, stars don't just glow in

884
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: the visible they also glow in the infrared and in

885
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: the ultra violet, and those different kinds of light they

886
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 1: passed through the universe differently, so ultra violet light and

887
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:53,239
Speaker 1: infrared light and visible light, some kinds of material are

888
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 1: paked to those wavelengths, and other kinds of material are transparent.

889
00:43:56,480 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 1: And so if we look at what frequencies it's glowing in,

890
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 1: we can try to use what might be blocking it right,

891
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: because I think the idea is that stars don't typically

892
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,240
Speaker 1: dim right, or at least dim in a time scale

893
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: that we can notice. They don't typically change, and so

894
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 1: if we see one dimming even a little bit, it's

895
00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 1: sort of as a sign that maybe something else is

896
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:16,919
Speaker 1: going on. Well, there are some stars that do damn

897
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: their variable stars, but it happens since sort of a

898
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,280
Speaker 1: regular cycle, and we think we understand what's going on inside,

899
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: and those typically happened on a fairly short time scale,

900
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: So you can see it dim and come back and

901
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: dim and come back. Sephids, for example, are variable brightness stars.

902
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 1: But to see a star that's like just gradually dims

903
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 1: and then eventually blinks out, yeah, that's not something we expect.

904
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 1: And if you did build a dicense fear, if you

905
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: surrounded your star with all this material, then we would

906
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:44,359
Speaker 1: expect that the star would go dim in all frequencies

907
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:46,799
Speaker 1: because this dicense here should be absorbing all of that light.

908
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,680
Speaker 1: But then the dicense fear itself would heat up a

909
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:52,319
Speaker 1: little bit, so you expect to see a little bit

910
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:55,759
Speaker 1: of infrared radiation from this thing. Like nothing in the

911
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 1: universe is totally dark. So if they build a sphere

912
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:02,160
Speaker 1: to absorb all the energy, the heat of the sphere

913
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: itself would glow in the infrared. So a signature of

914
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 1: a dicensphere is a star that disappears and then you

915
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:11,799
Speaker 1: see something only in the infrared where the star was,

916
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:15,239
Speaker 1: you would see like the diceenosphere kind of burning hot,

917
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: kind of the same way you could see the Earth.

918
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:19,319
Speaker 1: And the Earth itself doesn't glow, but if you looked

919
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 1: at the Earth with an infrared telescope, you could see it,

920
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: because the Earth does glow in the infrared, even though

921
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: it doesn't glow in the visible right, you couldn't see

922
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: the Earth from an optical telescope that uses visible light.

923
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 1: You could see the Earth from other solar systems using

924
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: infrared telescopes, which is why people are so excited about

925
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: the James Web telescope, for example, could see exoplanets in

926
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:41,480
Speaker 1: the infrared. So if there's a dicensphere, we should be

927
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 1: able to see it glowing in the infrared. So the

928
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 1: Beetle juice was exciting, but then you know, the brightness

929
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 1: came back up, and also it wasn't glowing only in

930
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:51,960
Speaker 1: the infrared the way you would expect from a dicensphere.

931
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:54,840
Speaker 1: All right, but there are other examples of stars dimming

932
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 1: that might be hints that somebody is building a dicensphere

933
00:45:57,880 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: out there. People are not excited about another star called

934
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 1: Tabby Stars about light years from Earth, and it deemed

935
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 1: about twenty two in its brightness starting in about two fifteen.

936
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:11,879
Speaker 1: People didn't understand initially what was happening to this star,

937
00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: But then again they studied the frequencies of light that

938
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: were still coming from the star, and they noticed that

939
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: the wavelength dependence of his dimming was consistent with dust.

940
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 1: Dust was blocking certain frequencies of light but not other frequencies,

941
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:26,960
Speaker 1: So not consistent with an alien megastructure, right, which was

942
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 1: again just glow in the infrared. So probably what's happening

943
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 1: is again like some big collision, some new creation of

944
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 1: dust is blocking this star. Probably not a dicensphere unfortunately. Well,

945
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 1: I feel like these scenarios you're you're painting. Assume that

946
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: we catch the dicensphere as it's being built like this,

947
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: then we would see a star dimming, and then we

948
00:46:48,400 --> 00:46:51,320
Speaker 1: would see a glowing infrared I wonder if Chris is wondering.

949
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:53,800
Speaker 1: His question is more about, like what if somebody already

950
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:57,320
Speaker 1: built one? Is there any way that we can see

951
00:46:57,360 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 1: see it there? Like maybe it was built billions of

952
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 1: years ago or hundreds of years ago, And could we

953
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: tell it's there just from like you know, the fact

954
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: that it would have the mass of the sun, but

955
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,439
Speaker 1: it would only be glowing dimly in the infrared. Yeah,

956
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: that would be really fascinating. That's not the kind of

957
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:15,360
Speaker 1: object we expect to see. And so if you sensed

958
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:18,320
Speaker 1: its gravitational pull on nearby objects and then it was

959
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:21,239
Speaker 1: only glowing in the infrared. Then I don't know if

960
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 1: anything else in the universe that could explain that. You know,

961
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,279
Speaker 1: we might expect that a white dwarf, the remnant of

962
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:30,480
Speaker 1: a red super giant that's left over is no longer fusing,

963
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 1: would eventually cool into something we call a black dwarf.

964
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: So you have a white dwarf, which is a big

965
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:38,800
Speaker 1: hot lump of metal glowing in space. Eventually it cools

966
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:42,360
Speaker 1: off into something that's so cold it's only glowing the infrared.

967
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:44,480
Speaker 1: But we think that would take trillions of years, and

968
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: we don't think there are any black dwarfs in the universe.

969
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: So something with the mass of a star that's not

970
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: glowing except in the infrared, that would be a great

971
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:54,880
Speaker 1: candidate for a Dicen sphere. But those are hard to find, right.

972
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: You have to like scan the sky in the infrared. Yeah,

973
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,399
Speaker 1: and you have to sort of know whether not has

974
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:03,200
Speaker 1: planets going around it. Right. The other fun part of

975
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:06,440
Speaker 1: Chris's question is whether we can use ancient records to

976
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:09,479
Speaker 1: see whether this happened a thousand years ago or five

977
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. Because people have been looking at the

978
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: night sky for a long time, we have records like

979
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 1: Chinese astronomers who saw supernova even though they didn't really

980
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: know what they were looking at. So people have been

981
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: carefully looking at the sky for a long time, which

982
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:25,719
Speaker 1: is a really fun idea. Yeah, And I think the

983
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 1: idea is that maybe, you know, back then in ancient civilization,

984
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 1: they didn't have telescopes or even photographs, but maybe you know,

985
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: they were looking at a constellation and they saw that

986
00:48:35,080 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 1: maybe one of the stars in the constellation disappeared, And

987
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:40,919
Speaker 1: if it disappeared, could it be that an alien build

988
00:48:40,920 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 1: a disensphere at that time? That would be super awesome.

989
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 1: I did a bit of digging to see if I

990
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:48,400
Speaker 1: could find anything an ancient record that hinted at that,

991
00:48:48,480 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: and of course I'm not a scholar of ancient Chinese astronomy,

992
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 1: but I couldn't find anything in the literature of that nature.

993
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:55,840
Speaker 1: What I did find is that there's a really fun

994
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:59,040
Speaker 1: project called Vasco, which is trying to look back at

995
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 1: all of our photo graphic records of early astronomy. So

996
00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:04,919
Speaker 1: you know, we've been taking pictures of the night sky

997
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 1: for decades and decades and decades, and people are looking

998
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 1: back through that to try to see, like Hey, is

999
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:13,600
Speaker 1: anything big changed since we started carefully documenting the night sky?

1000
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:16,040
Speaker 1: You can't look at every single star as a person

1001
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: and notice whether it's disappeared or not. But maybe a

1002
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 1: careful study of these old photographic plates might reveal something.

1003
00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: So this is a tough problem because these photographs aren't

1004
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:29,840
Speaker 1: always in great condition. So it's sort of fun astronomical archaeology. Well,

1005
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:32,520
Speaker 1: it's a lot of disciplines in one in one sentence

1006
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:37,560
Speaker 1: photography as as an archaeology. Yeah, it's really fun, and

1007
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:39,800
Speaker 1: it's fun to think about how in fifty years or

1008
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:42,399
Speaker 1: a hundred years, people might be digging through our old

1009
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,600
Speaker 1: data wondering if there's something that we missed. You know,

1010
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: there's all these examples of times in history when we

1011
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:50,240
Speaker 1: make a discovery and then we think, hold on a second,

1012
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: somebody else should have been able to see that thirty

1013
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:54,439
Speaker 1: years ago, and we look and we discover, oh, yeah,

1014
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: it's right there in their data. They just missed it.

1015
00:49:57,120 --> 00:50:00,080
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize winning to be found that nobody noticed. So

1016
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 1: scientists out there is entirely possible that the daity you're

1017
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:05,000
Speaker 1: taking today, somebody else could be looking through it in

1018
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:08,960
Speaker 1: fifty years or a hundred years and seeing your big mistake. Yeah,

1019
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll be talking about it in our four

1020
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,440
Speaker 1: thousand episode. You know what has been the most significant

1021
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:18,360
Speaker 1: discovery since we started this podcast fifty years ago. We

1022
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 1: discovered that we can do four thousand podcasts. Well, it's interesting.

1023
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:24,239
Speaker 1: I wonder if you're like an astronomer in ancient times

1024
00:50:24,239 --> 00:50:26,359
Speaker 1: and you're like trying to convince everyone that a star

1025
00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:29,279
Speaker 1: that was there before is no longer there, Like, would

1026
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:32,399
Speaker 1: people believe you right? Like, you're right right, You didn't

1027
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:34,760
Speaker 1: take a photograph of it before. Why would they believe

1028
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: you that a start disappeared? They could be gas lighting you.

1029
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:39,439
Speaker 1: They'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about.

1030
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:41,840
Speaker 1: That's never been a star there. There's never been a

1031
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 1: star there. Yeah, you could gas light yourself now that

1032
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: they had gas light. That's right. But I guess if

1033
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 1: it was a pretty famous star when people were familiar with,

1034
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: you know, the North Star or something, and people would

1035
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:55,840
Speaker 1: definitely notice if it hadn't disappeared. But yeah, there's nothing

1036
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:57,800
Speaker 1: in sort of ancient literature that I'm aware of that

1037
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 1: suggests that that happened. I see, So, Chris Peck, I

1038
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:04,080
Speaker 1: guess I'm keep looking. We're counting on you to spot

1039
00:51:04,120 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 1: that giant alien solar panels fear, and we're counting on

1040
00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:10,279
Speaker 1: all of you to keep asking questions and to keep

1041
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 1: sending them to us so we can talk about them

1042
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:14,759
Speaker 1: on this podcast. We love your questions, but I love

1043
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 1: hearing you think about the universe and wonder about how

1044
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 1: it works, and I love helping you understand it. So

1045
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 1: please don't be shy and write to us with your questions.

1046
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 1: Two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Yeah, and

1047
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 1: keep listening, because who knows when the next consequential discovery

1048
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:33,080
Speaker 1: will happen, or Daniel's case, not not happen. It might

1049
00:51:33,120 --> 00:51:35,560
Speaker 1: be a Dicen sphere, or it might be some new

1050
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:39,440
Speaker 1: kinds of particles. Stay tuned. That's the history of humanities,

1051
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: to stay tuned, because we were making discoveries all the time. Whoops,

1052
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 1: I just said the word again. I might run down

1053
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 1: the hall excitedly shouting, we didn't discover anything today again.

1054
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 1: Non eureka, non eureka. Right, you should celebrate every day, Daniel,

1055
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: that you don't get anything done. That's my philosophy. Doing

1056
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 1: a podcast is how I celebrate. It also keeps me

1057
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:04,319
Speaker 1: from getting things done. So all right, Well, we hope

1058
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.

1059
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:18,320
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained.

1060
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:21,239
Speaker 1: The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For

1061
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:24,279
Speaker 1: more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart

1062
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:27,960
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1063
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:28,760
Speaker 1: favorite shows.