Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And I was just out
Speaker 1: of town for about a week and a half. So
Speaker 1: where were you recorded some interviews while I was out?
Speaker 1: That's right, I didn't have you to talk to, so
Speaker 1: I'm like, who am I going to talk to? So
Speaker 1: I just started calling people up and saying, hey, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about some stuff. And one of these individuals
Speaker 1: was Daniel Whitson, who is a physicist and the co
Speaker 1: host of the podcast Daniel and Jorae Explain the Universe.
Speaker 1: We've been meaning to talk to these guys for a while,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry I missed the chance to chat with
Speaker 1: you and Daniel, but I'm excited to hear what you
Speaker 1: all talked about. Yeah, this is a this is a
Speaker 1: fun little conversation we talked. We talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about you know, physics and particle physics, a little bit
Speaker 1: about science communication and just also just the nature of science.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was just really a really fun little chat.
Speaker 1: It was nice to to actually, you know, chat with
Speaker 1: a physicist about this, because you know, there are times
Speaker 1: where you and I we we are not physicists, so
Speaker 1: a little bit not and and so when we're tackling
Speaker 1: some of these like really complicated physics related topics, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: we're we're at times struggling with the content, and you know,
Speaker 1: having and helping the listeners struggle with the content is
Speaker 1: when our nature is generalists is brought out. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I think there's a there's certainly an advantage in being
Speaker 1: a journalist and listening to a journalist, but uh, it
Speaker 1: was also just really cool to to speak to an
Speaker 1: expert about some of these topics. So yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really really fun one. Uh So, without further Ado,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and jump into the interview, and we'll
Speaker 1: jump out for ad Rex of course, and then we'll
Speaker 1: meet you at the end. Hi, Daniel, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Can you go ahead and just introduce yourself, your name,
Speaker 1: and your title for for everybody out there listening, Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for having me on. I'm Daniel Whiteson.
Speaker 1: I'm a professor of experimental particle physics at University of
Speaker 1: California at Irvine, I'm also the co host of Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, our podcast that comes out
Speaker 1: twice a week about mind blowing crazy stuff about the universe,
Speaker 1: and together with Jorge cham we also wrote a book
Speaker 1: called We Have No Idea, A Guide the Unknown Universe
Speaker 1: that tells you all about all the things that we
Speaker 1: don't know about the universe. And uh, how, let's see,
Speaker 1: how when did the show actually start? I know it's
Speaker 1: been going for uh for for quite a while. Now
Speaker 1: you have a number of episodes banked up. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: actually just hit a hundred episodes. Oh nice, So we've
Speaker 1: been Yeah, it comes out twice a week, and so
Speaker 1: we've been doing it for just over a year. And
Speaker 1: you know, the topics vary from like how big is
Speaker 1: the universe to more pedantic stuff like how does lightning work?
Speaker 1: And does anybody actually understand it? We just look for
Speaker 1: mysteries anywhere, you know, puzzles that physicists like to unravel,
Speaker 1: and we hope our listeners like to hear us blather about.
Speaker 1: Now again, you're you're a physicist and a science communicator.
Speaker 1: Jorge is um a science communicator and a comic artist. Correct,
Speaker 1: that's right. But he actually also has a PhD of
Speaker 1: his own. Oh yeah, he has a hilarious background. He
Speaker 1: went to grad school in robotics and was developing little
Speaker 1: robots that could run like cockroaches, which is pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1: But on the side he started doing a comic strip
Speaker 1: just so sort of procrastinated the real work he should
Speaker 1: have been doing. And then that took off and became,
Speaker 1: you know, frankly more popular than his academic research and
Speaker 1: turned into a full time gig for him. So how
Speaker 1: did you guys come together first on the book and
Speaker 1: then again you know, the podcast to follow. Well, we
Speaker 1: met on Tinder of course. Like no Um, Jorge is
Speaker 1: sort of is something of a celebrity in academia. Um
Speaker 1: his comics that he's been putting out, called pah d Comics,
Speaker 1: really captured the sort of existential angst or doing research
Speaker 1: and working under a professor and being a grad student.
Speaker 1: And so when I was a grad student, I loved
Speaker 1: his work, and everybody around me loved his work because
Speaker 1: they expressed something we were all feeling, you know, how
Speaker 1: you can be in the lab all day and make
Speaker 1: no progress or even move backwards. So he was something
Speaker 1: of a celebrity, and maybe ten years ago, I was
Speaker 1: working on some science communication and I had the idea,
Speaker 1: what if we could use comics to explain some of
Speaker 1: these complicated concepts in physics that might be much simpler visually.
Speaker 1: But the problem was I don't have any artistic skill myself,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't draw these things. So my wife, who's
Speaker 1: also an academic, she suggested to me. She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: why didn't you email Jorge cham and asked him to
Speaker 1: do your drawings? And I was like, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: I'll email Brad Pitt and asked him to a movie
Speaker 1: with me, right, I mean, it's sort of at the
Speaker 1: same level for me. But emailed Jorge cold email and
Speaker 1: he actually wrote back, and I thought it was sounded
Speaker 1: like a fun project, and we've been working on stuff
Speaker 1: ever since. Awesome. Well, yeah, I mean obviously it worked
Speaker 1: well together in the book. But and then on the
Speaker 1: podcast you guys have Wonderful or four. Yeah, we um,
Speaker 1: we had fun. We have fun doing the podcast, mostly
Speaker 1: because we have fun talking science to each other. I mean,
Speaker 1: when we were working on the book, we would spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about the concepts and figuring
Speaker 1: it out and Um, something that Jorge is really good
Speaker 1: at is teasing out what's interesting about a topic and
Speaker 1: figuring out how to connect it to the general public.
Speaker 1: You know, he's not trained as a physicist, but he
Speaker 1: has a science background obviously the brain force, so we
Speaker 1: can understand these concepts, but he's outside the field, so
Speaker 1: he's able to sort of bridge between you know, the
Speaker 1: the hard science and the general public. And so I
Speaker 1: think that works really well. But yeah, we just had fun.
Speaker 1: We're just laughing all the time while talking, and so
Speaker 1: we thought it'd be fun to, hey, record those conversations
Speaker 1: and share them with people. So you are you already
Speaker 1: touched on this a little bit, but the you know
Speaker 1: part of this. You know, as a scientist and a
Speaker 1: science communicator, you you're you're privy to the the inside
Speaker 1: world of scientific research and an acade me, but then
Speaker 1: you're you're communicating it to a more general audience. And
Speaker 1: you mentioned the you know, the idea of going in
Speaker 1: working every day and either feeling as if you're not
Speaker 1: making progress or feeling like you're you're slipping backwards. Do
Speaker 1: do you feel that there is a like there's a
Speaker 1: myth or a misconception concerning science in the general public
Speaker 1: that you know, regarding like the rate of progress uh
Speaker 1: in in science or what progress looks like. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think that most people have no idea what the
Speaker 1: life of a scientist is like, just out of not
Speaker 1: having had the experience. You know. I think most people
Speaker 1: go to work and they have a pilot work in
Speaker 1: front of them, and then they work through it, you know,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the day they've done
Speaker 1: something right. You know, even somebody who's job is very simple,
Speaker 1: like a chopping wood or something right. This is famous
Speaker 1: time when Einstein spent a day chopping wood and he
Speaker 1: was like, wow, that is really satisfying. Spend a day,
Speaker 1: you get a day's worth of work done. Um. Whereas
Speaker 1: in science you can work for or months and make
Speaker 1: no progress or ruin things that you have established. But
Speaker 1: then one day, you know, you can make a huge
Speaker 1: leap forward, and those are the days we live for.
Speaker 1: It's very stochastic, um. And it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: really remember what I thought science was like before I
Speaker 1: became a scientist. But you know, as a kid, I
Speaker 1: imagined it was days filled with insight and discovery and
Speaker 1: mind blowing realizations about the universe, you know, but those
Speaker 1: are very rare and few and far between. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think on you know, on the exterior and in the
Speaker 1: general public, we tend to focus in on those those
Speaker 1: big moments, right, those aha moments, those discoveries, like the
Speaker 1: final paper, or not the final paper, but the resulting
Speaker 1: paper that comes out. Uh, you know. It's it's those
Speaker 1: moments and not the day to day to day that
Speaker 1: we end up focusing on. That's right. And in order
Speaker 1: to be a scientist, you need to be interested in
Speaker 1: those big moments, those drive you, that's what pulls you
Speaker 1: through the work. But you also have to have an
Speaker 1: appreciation for the craft of it, right, the day to
Speaker 1: day actual work. And I learned this when I was
Speaker 1: trying to become a scientist because I first joined the
Speaker 1: field that I thought was exciting, like I became a
Speaker 1: plasma physicist when I was um first exploring physics, and
Speaker 1: because because I wanted to solve the world's energy problem
Speaker 1: and develop fusion, I thought that was really awesome. But
Speaker 1: the day to day work of working on these reactors,
Speaker 1: I found mine knowingly dull, right, just the concept like
Speaker 1: I might one day develop a fusion reactor wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to interest me every day. And and then I tried
Speaker 1: condensed matter physics, where you're like shooting lasers at GOO
Speaker 1: and trying to make it do weird stuff, and I
Speaker 1: thought that was awesome, But day to day you're like
Speaker 1: tweaking a laser and trying to make it work, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't that much fun. And then eventually I stumbled
Speaker 1: on particle physics, where most of the work day to
Speaker 1: day is writing computer programs, so you're solving these little
Speaker 1: intellectual puzzles involved with debugging computer programs and understanding statistics,
Speaker 1: and for me, that was really fun. It's totally separate
Speaker 1: from the actual big questions we're trying to answer every day.
Speaker 1: You know, what's the universe? It out of what's the
Speaker 1: smallest thing. So I tell this a lot to grad
Speaker 1: students who are thinking about particle physics. I say, find
Speaker 1: a field where you're excited about the big questions, but
Speaker 1: you also got to enjoy the day to day wood
Speaker 1: shopping because that's what you're mostly doing. So in your work,
Speaker 1: you you deal with sub atomic particles and UH and astronomy,
Speaker 1: you deal with reality at the micro scale and the
Speaker 1: macro scale. Distances smaller and and vaster than our our
Speaker 1: as humans are evolved sensory perceptions. What does it feel
Speaker 1: like as a as a human scientist to be sort
Speaker 1: of trapped between these two realms that you know at
Speaker 1: times are are difficult to imagine. Yeah, it makes me
Speaker 1: feel very very small. You know. It's ah. I feel
Speaker 1: like the job of physics at this level is to
Speaker 1: expand our horizons. You know, we've seen the universe sort
Speaker 1: of the scale of stuff that's like a meter down
Speaker 1: to a centimeter, down to maybe a millimeter we can
Speaker 1: grasp right with our minds, and what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do is push those boundaries to the very very small
Speaker 1: and very very large. And you know, the first thing
Speaker 1: you learn is that there's a huge amount going on
Speaker 1: at the very small level and at the very big level.
Speaker 1: And that just makes me feel like, you know, small
Speaker 1: and insignificant in so do the best possible way. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like it tells me that the universe is so
Speaker 1: fascinating and so filled with mysteries, um that we're really
Speaker 1: just beginning to crack the surface. And I love that feeling.
Speaker 1: I love feeling like there are amazing discoveries out there
Speaker 1: waiting for us, and so it makes me feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm an explorer and there's a huge amount
Speaker 1: of territory that is left to touch. So it's an
Speaker 1: exciting feeling, but also intimidating. Now there's I guess there's
Speaker 1: you know, even no matter how you know, large or small,
Speaker 1: the you know, the details of the universe you're dealing
Speaker 1: with your there there is this bedrock experience of reality
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I've I've I've read a little
Speaker 1: bit about you know, the idea that you know can
Speaker 1: read lead to um like a reality bias. Is that
Speaker 1: a problem for physics? A reality bias? That's awesome? Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's a problem for physics. But it's also
Speaker 1: the only thing we can do. I mean, most of
Speaker 1: what we do in physics is try to extrapolate from
Speaker 1: what we know into what we don't know. Right, let's
Speaker 1: explore the new territory, the sum atomic particles. How does
Speaker 1: that stuff work? What does it look like? When we
Speaker 1: do that, we build mental models, right, models in our
Speaker 1: mind of what might be happening that are based on
Speaker 1: the kind of things we know. Right. When I say particle,
Speaker 1: probably in your head you're thinking tiny little ball, Right,
Speaker 1: maybe it's spinning or something. Why do you think that?
Speaker 1: Because that's one of the things in the catalog of
Speaker 1: your mind. It's harder to come up with a completely
Speaker 1: new thing. Right. It's like if somebody gave you a
Speaker 1: totally new fruit you've never eaten before, you might be like,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like apple with maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of cherry and banana in it. Right. You describe things
Speaker 1: you don't know in terms of things you know, because
Speaker 1: that's the only thing we really can do. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a reality bias because we've experien oarence the
Speaker 1: world in this sort of very specific, unusual set of
Speaker 1: circumstances where we're not moving close to the speed of light,
Speaker 1: where don't have as much energy as the sun. And
Speaker 1: because of that, we have a sort of a set
Speaker 1: of basic objects we can build off of. And and
Speaker 1: that that changes how we see the world, and it
Speaker 1: changes um what we think we have learned about the world,
Speaker 1: and and it leads to mistakes, right, Like photons and
Speaker 1: other particles are not tying little balls, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of misconceptions there. But it's also I think
Speaker 1: all we can do. I can't sweep away everything we've
Speaker 1: learned and start tabby larassa. You know, I think one
Speaker 1: exciting way to probe that reality bias, frankly is talking
Speaker 1: to alien physicists. This is why I'm so excited for
Speaker 1: the arrival of extraterrestrial because I have so many questions
Speaker 1: I want and I want to know, like how do
Speaker 1: you guys think about photons? Or do you think about
Speaker 1: photons or you know all this? I have so many
Speaker 1: questions for the aliens, and right, you know, I was
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this the other day when my
Speaker 1: my son, who's um, whose seven, is asking about about
Speaker 1: light and light years. I think it had to do
Speaker 1: with its telling about some news about a planet a
Speaker 1: hundred and eleven light years away and UM and trying
Speaker 1: to explain it to him. And I was thinking at
Speaker 1: the time, well, it's kind of like I have I
Speaker 1: have two ways of looking at or thinking about light.
Speaker 1: There's the you know, the explanation of photons, and then
Speaker 1: there's this kind of default but incorrect version of like
Speaker 1: of light that I kind of fall back into, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of like sight as a laser beam, um,
Speaker 1: you know, where where it's something emitted rather than received,
Speaker 1: but but based on on the way you just described
Speaker 1: it, it it makes me think, well, maybe they're really doing
Speaker 1: like three different levels. They're sort of like photons as
Speaker 1: they actually are. The metaphor metaphorical version of photons that
Speaker 1: we used to understand that, and then the you know whatever,
Speaker 1: the sort of basic incorrect version based on just the
Speaker 1: experience of physical reality is yeah, and we even have
Speaker 1: more than one metaphor right, because one doesn't do the
Speaker 1: job right. Photons is a particle. We also have photons
Speaker 1: as a wave because sometimes photons do things like, you know,
Speaker 1: interfere with each other um in patterns that we see
Speaker 1: waves do. And so we're like, oh, well, let's explain
Speaker 1: that using our wave analogy. And then we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: but now the photons are like bouncing around the way
Speaker 1: particles do. Okay, now let's use our particle analogy. And
Speaker 1: the question we often get on our podcast is like,
Speaker 1: our photons particles or are they waves? Or are they both? Right?
Speaker 1: And the answer is there neither right. They're not. They're
Speaker 1: not particles, they're not tiny little balls, they're not waves.
Speaker 1: Those are two different metaphors we used to try to
Speaker 1: capture the fundamental essential weirdness of this thing, which we
Speaker 1: never can completely describe in terms of things we're familiar with,
Speaker 1: because they're totally different from anything we've ever seen before. Right,
Speaker 1: it's this weird quantum mechanical particle. They can do things
Speaker 1: that basketballs and water waves just cannot do. So some
Speaker 1: combination of those two ideas comes closer to this scribing
Speaker 1: what it is. But I don't think we'll ever truly
Speaker 1: deeply understand it the way we understand the way basketball bounces,
Speaker 1: just because we didn't grow up experiencing it. Right. It's
Speaker 1: like if you don't grow up hearing Chinese, you're never
Speaker 1: going to speak it without an accent. It's just impossible.
Speaker 1: In the same way we're never going to really understand photons,
Speaker 1: no matter how many banan appeals we smoke. Um. I
Speaker 1: like the idea you mentioned about about alien physicists, So
Speaker 1: so yeah, if they had to do you know, any
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I do not. But but but I love the
Speaker 1: idea of of an alien being, you know, not only
Speaker 1: having you know, perhaps access to you know, different technological
Speaker 1: levels of understanding regarding you know, the cosmos, but having
Speaker 1: access to like different metaphors based on uh, you know,
Speaker 1: different levels of sensory awareness, etcetera. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: we would learn so much, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: like what is the language they used to describe this stuff?
Speaker 1: Are they mathematical? You know? We have questions about like
Speaker 1: is a something that comes out of human the human
Speaker 1: mind is reflect the way we think, or is it
Speaker 1: something deep about the universe. It seems to us like
Speaker 1: it must be deep about the universe because it's so
Speaker 1: pure and crystalline and and clean, right, and and all
Speaker 1: of our physical laws can to be described in terms
Speaker 1: of mathematics, so it must be deep and true. But
Speaker 1: that's a thought in human minds, shared between human minds, right,
Speaker 1: we might meet an alien species that doesn't think about
Speaker 1: math and has some other deep insight into the way
Speaker 1: the universe works. The thing that excites and frustrates me
Speaker 1: is those movies where the aliens come and then like
Speaker 1: five minutes later, their physicists and our physicist around a
Speaker 1: chalk at a chalkboard, excitedly making progress. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: we've spent like ten years figuring out what zero means,
Speaker 1: you know, and then another five talking about real numbers,
Speaker 1: and then maybe you know, twenty years and we can
Speaker 1: start talking about science or something. I suspect that we
Speaker 1: would have that that our entire you of the universe
Speaker 1: and that we we think about physics and math is
Speaker 1: so biased by our experience. Of course, it has to
Speaker 1: be that we would learn a tremendous amount just by
Speaker 1: encountering those aliens and trying to communicate with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting to think about, because a lot of times
Speaker 1: we do fall back on this idea of of math
Speaker 1: be at a be at this you know, wonderful human
Speaker 1: invention that gets to the heart of reality, or being
Speaker 1: this thing that underlies reality that we've discovered. That either way,
Speaker 1: it would be like this universal language that would not
Speaker 1: in itself require translation. Yeah, and and and demonstrating that
Speaker 1: by finding an alien species and discovering that they also
Speaker 1: think in math, that would be an enormous question answered,
Speaker 1: like one of the deepest questions in the history of
Speaker 1: human experience crossed off the list. That would be a
Speaker 1: great day. All right, it is time for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break, and we're back with the interview. Now.
Speaker 1: In terms of of things that you know, various scientific experiments, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, large scale experiments, especially h that that humans
Speaker 1: are engaged in. Want. One question that we've asked on
Speaker 1: the show before that I'd like to ask you is
Speaker 1: if you could summon the collective will, the political capital
Speaker 1: and of course the funding to um, you know, to
Speaker 1: launch any terrestrial based scientific experiment, you know, be at
Speaker 1: a collider, a telescope, etcetera. What would it be? And
Speaker 1: uh and why oh no, oh no, you're gonna ask
Speaker 1: me to betray my own field. Um. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and I work with these amazing facilities.
Speaker 1: They caused tens of billions of dollars to smash particles together,
Speaker 1: and they're wonderful and they provided me a lifetime so
Speaker 1: far of intellectual curiosity, etcetera, etcetera. Um, last decade or so,
Speaker 1: I haven't really revealed that many surprises. You know, we
Speaker 1: smashed particles together. We don't know what we're gonna find.
Speaker 1: Maybe crazy new purple bananas may mean nothing. Um, it's exploration. Recently,
Speaker 1: we haven't really found anything. And we don't know if
Speaker 1: building a bigger one for a hundred billion dollars would
Speaker 1: provide anything or just or or you know more nothing.
Speaker 1: We don't know. Um. But The thing that's always amazed
Speaker 1: me is about is telescopes, because every time we build
Speaker 1: a new telescope that looks out into the universe, either
Speaker 1: in a new way like X ray or you know,
Speaker 1: um infra red or whatever, or looks in a new
Speaker 1: direction or looks deeper like the hubble, we always find
Speaker 1: crazy stuff that blows your mind. Stuff that astronomers think,
Speaker 1: what why is that there? Or we didn't think that
Speaker 1: was possible. So astronomy amazes me because every time humans
Speaker 1: open up new eyes into the universe, they see something
Speaker 1: crazy and new that teaches us something deep about the
Speaker 1: universe and was out there. So I think, if I
Speaker 1: had to choose, I would build, you know, a huge, fancy,
Speaker 1: amazing telescope that lets us look ever deeper into the
Speaker 1: universe with clearer and clearer eyes, because there's just so
Speaker 1: much to discover there. It feels like it feels like
Speaker 1: every dollar spent there is a dollar of understanding. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, in regularly consuming the you know, the science
Speaker 1: headlines and the new studies that come out, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to sort of grow numb to some of the
Speaker 1: especially the anthropomorphized headlines. But like just in like the
Speaker 1: last few weeks we've had we you know, we've just
Speaker 1: yesterday there's the uh, the the new Exo planet that
Speaker 1: they've been discussing, the one that's a hundred eleven light
Speaker 1: years away, you know, the possible presence of water there,
Speaker 1: the Fermi bubbles from Sagittarius, a star. You know, there's
Speaker 1: all there's there's something exciting. You know, it seems like
Speaker 1: almost every week if you just you know, pay attention
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, and and you don't you can also
Speaker 1: just focus on this stuff we've already found that nobody understands, like,
Speaker 1: you know, where are these crazy particles coming from with
Speaker 1: super high energy. Nobody knows what's the source of these
Speaker 1: fast radio bursts, these crazy little, super loud, very short
Speaker 1: bursts of radi of energy from other galaxies. We have
Speaker 1: no idea. It's incredible how much stuff is already out
Speaker 1: there that we're clueless about. That if we could look
Speaker 1: deeper and find more of them, we could start to
Speaker 1: get clues of where are they coming from, what makes them,
Speaker 1: and what's going on over there. And it's wonderful to
Speaker 1: me to to learn about these things happening in the
Speaker 1: universe that are sort of of shocking scale. You know,
Speaker 1: like you learned about the amazing magnetic field around some
Speaker 1: of these neutron stars, or the incredible density of stuff,
Speaker 1: or the huge temperatures, and again, it just makes me
Speaker 1: feel sort of wonderfully small. And you know, the universe
Speaker 1: is so much bigger than we ever imagine, but it's
Speaker 1: also so much more extreme. You know, there's dense stuff
Speaker 1: and hot stuff and fast stuff and crazy stuff, and
Speaker 1: I love that because it just tells me that there
Speaker 1: are more these crazy, mind blowing moments in the future,
Speaker 1: and that's that's what I live for, right and in
Speaker 1: any of them close to home. You know, it's easy
Speaker 1: to get wrapped up in the various exoplanet stories and
Speaker 1: you know, considerations of of black holes. But but then
Speaker 1: like all the mysteries that relate just to our Solar system,
Speaker 1: and you know, the the end, the less uh known,
Speaker 1: you know, outer reaches of it are always fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that we have moons of Jupiter that have like oceans
Speaker 1: underneath their surface that might have life on them. Right,
Speaker 1: there's potentially incredible discoveries basically just around the corner. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I would love to send something up there
Speaker 1: to drooll into that ice and figure out what's underneath
Speaker 1: and what's swimming around in that ocean. Like, I would
Speaker 1: definitely pay more tax if we could have more missions
Speaker 1: to explore just our own solar system for sure. Sign
Speaker 1: me up. So you're a you're a scientist and a
Speaker 1: science communicator, and we we find ourselves in a time when,
Speaker 1: especially in the United States, there's a there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of hostility to certain scientific topics, generally politicized topics,
Speaker 1: especially climate change. Uh. And of course the stakes for
Speaker 1: the future are are huge when it comes to climate change.
Speaker 1: Do you do you think there have been mistakes, any
Speaker 1: mistakes in science communication that let us see, Um, I
Speaker 1: think everybody makes mistakes because everybody's human and everybody comes
Speaker 1: from their own perspective. And you know, I've heard people
Speaker 1: be asked questions like is there a chance the large
Speaker 1: Hadron collider will destroy the Earth? And you know the
Speaker 1: answer to that question, of course, is there's a chance. Right.
Speaker 1: But you have to know your audience, right, you have
Speaker 1: to know really what are they asking? They're asking should
Speaker 1: I be worried? Right? And the answer to that is no, um.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's a matter of sort of bridging
Speaker 1: those communities of knowing who your audience is and knowing
Speaker 1: how to talk to them. And um, you know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't blame anybody in particular. I think everybody was well
Speaker 1: intentioned and doing their best. And I commend any scientist
Speaker 1: who's trying to explain what we're doing and why we're
Speaker 1: doing it to the public, because in the end, we're
Speaker 1: doing it for the public. The public are paying for it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's their science also, so I think we have an
Speaker 1: obligation to try to share with them and everybody why
Speaker 1: we're doing it, and and also to reach out to
Speaker 1: to the next generation and excite them, right because the
Speaker 1: next generation of scientists comes from the next generation of children.
Speaker 1: And the reason a lot of us are scientists is
Speaker 1: because some scientists took the time to explain why they
Speaker 1: were amazed and what they learned. UM. So I don't
Speaker 1: think it's that useful to assign blame and say, like,
Speaker 1: this person said the wrong thing. But I think we
Speaker 1: can think about, you know, how has it done well?
Speaker 1: And um, I think that we should find those scientists
Speaker 1: who are good at it and who have a passion
Speaker 1: for it. You know, one thing I really like about
Speaker 1: science is that it's mostly people following their passions. It's
Speaker 1: not like somebody came and told me, Daniel, study deuced topic.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this particular one because I'm pulled into it
Speaker 1: because I want to know the answers. Somebody else is
Speaker 1: doing plasma physics because they love it and they love
Speaker 1: the day to day work of climbing around on the
Speaker 1: fusion reactor. And some people love science communication, and other
Speaker 1: people like hiding in their office and never talking to
Speaker 1: human beings. And so you know, let's let the huge
Speaker 1: and varied set of talents we have do their best.
Speaker 1: So it times, you know, in in dealing with things
Speaker 1: that the macro or the micro scale, dealing with things
Speaker 1: like like radiation, you know, we're dealing with things that
Speaker 1: are again beyond our our our our ability to really perceive.
Speaker 1: You know, as humans were kind of dealing with invisible realms.
Speaker 1: And and one thing that was kind of striking me
Speaker 1: when I was, you know, thinking about things to ask
Speaker 1: you about, was we have um, you know, we we
Speaker 1: have for for ages humans have have have been willing
Speaker 1: and able to comprehend invisible realities. Uh, you know, along
Speaker 1: spiritual models and religious models Um. And yet sometimes like
Speaker 1: the invisible or you know, uh difficult to to understand
Speaker 1: aspects of the scientific invisible realms seems to be kind
Speaker 1: of a stumbling block to some people. Uh why do
Speaker 1: you think that is? Like if you like, if you
Speaker 1: just put it on paper, it seems so seemed like, oh, well, look,
Speaker 1: for thousands of years people have had no, no problems
Speaker 1: buying into you know, models of reality and and reasons
Speaker 1: for their conditions that that that are not visible. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like they would have a natural
Speaker 1: proclivity to to take to these uh more you know,
Speaker 1: you know, seemingly exotic scientific explanations. Yeah, I agree. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the attractive things about it, right,
Speaker 1: that science let's you sort of open up a new
Speaker 1: set of eyes and get a glimpse of another way
Speaker 1: that the universe is working. You know, it's like discovering
Speaker 1: that you've been blind for a thousand years and finally
Speaker 1: you can see the universe in a new way, the
Speaker 1: stuff going on you never even imagined. Um. So I agree,
Speaker 1: I think it gives you a new view, and it
Speaker 1: gives you a new insight. It also shows you what
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of the universe you can actually experience, you know,
Speaker 1: I tell people a lot, for example, that that um,
Speaker 1: every second, one billion new trino passes through your fingernails.
Speaker 1: Like the air around us is just stuffed filled with
Speaker 1: these new trinos. Right, You don't notice them. You go
Speaker 1: around your everyday life. You never think about them. They
Speaker 1: never think a at you either, right, So sort of
Speaker 1: like being snubbed on the street. But it tells you
Speaker 1: it's a clue that there's a huge amount of stuff
Speaker 1: going on around you all the time that you're not
Speaker 1: aware of that you're seeing a tiny little slice of
Speaker 1: what's happening. So actually, I think the opposite. I think
Speaker 1: that UM, people's historical acceptance of mysticism and hidden powers
Speaker 1: and invisible actions UM lets them makes it easier for
Speaker 1: them to understand that the universe is filled with invisible
Speaker 1: crazy stuff UM that they might not have imagined. So
Speaker 1: I've actually had the opposite experience UM. I think that
Speaker 1: that people are quite receptive to this kind of thinking UM,
Speaker 1: and that they love hearing about it. They love that
Speaker 1: the feeling of awe when you when you show them
Speaker 1: that the universe that you can peel back a layer
Speaker 1: of reality and show them the universe is different from
Speaker 1: what they imagine because the and that's what physics is
Speaker 1: trying to do, right, peel back layers of reality and
Speaker 1: show us sort of what's really there. Alright, time for
Speaker 1: a break to hear from the sponsor. We will be
Speaker 1: right back, and we are back with the interview. Coming
Speaker 1: back to just the idea of public perceptions of science
Speaker 1: and uh and the work of scientists. What are some
Speaker 1: other examples that that you've encountered before, you know, big
Speaker 1: misconceptions that the general public has about about science or scientists.
Speaker 1: You know, I think a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: science is always fun, you know, and it's not. There
Speaker 1: are days when I'm pulling my hair out because I
Speaker 1: just can't make something work, or I thought I understood
Speaker 1: something and then it turns out I've been wrong for
Speaker 1: five years. Um. And and the other thing I think
Speaker 1: that's important for people to understand is that science is
Speaker 1: not some church of objectivity, right. Science is people. It's
Speaker 1: people trying to understand the universe. It's just a community
Speaker 1: of of of people, right. And so you know, when
Speaker 1: we talk about science, we try to some people imagine
Speaker 1: this like edifice of knowledge that we're building up this
Speaker 1: list of facts. But it's really it's just a community
Speaker 1: of the curious, right And those people are of course subjective.
Speaker 1: I'm not perfectly objective. I've things I've biases, and things
Speaker 1: I like and things I'm interested in and things I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in. And so as a scientist you can't
Speaker 1: be just like off on your own figuring out the universe.
Speaker 1: You have to sort of move the community with you,
Speaker 1: right Like, for example, I get a lot of emails
Speaker 1: from people who think they have figured out the universe. There,
Speaker 1: here's my theory. I've I've been thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: here's my theory. And I think that's wonderful because I
Speaker 1: love the people out there thinking about this stuff, that
Speaker 1: they're inspired by the grand mysteries of physics to try
Speaker 1: to solve it. Awesome. And often these are technical folks
Speaker 1: of an engineered Boeing who on the side is thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the nature of light or whatever. That's cool.
Speaker 1: The thing that I think they don't understand is that
Speaker 1: you can't just work on your own own for twenty
Speaker 1: years and then deliver your magnum opus the theory of everything,
Speaker 1: because nobody knows how to digest that even you're speaking.
Speaker 1: You're inventing your own mathematics and working on your own
Speaker 1: for two decades. You're so far away from where we're thinking,
Speaker 1: there's hard for us to even understand what you're doing.
Speaker 1: It's like meeting an alien physicist. And so to be accepted,
Speaker 1: to change the direction of science, to make some progress,
Speaker 1: you have to be part of the community and sort
Speaker 1: of steer the ship a little bit and convince people
Speaker 1: that what you're doing is interesting so that they will
Speaker 1: get involved and digested and build on your work. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's not a bunch of people delivering grand insights
Speaker 1: in front of an audience of people who totally unprepared.
Speaker 1: It's the slow accumulation of work, the movement of the
Speaker 1: crowd of minds sort of in a new direction. That's
Speaker 1: what leads to these really big insights. We we um
Speaker 1: cite the website Eon a lot, and you actually wrote
Speaker 1: a wonderful piece for them a little while back titled
Speaker 1: the most Wonderful Words and Science We have no idea yet, uh,
Speaker 1: And it gets into this idea you know that the
Speaker 1: science is this ever expanding under understanding of reality like
Speaker 1: we've been discussing, and it's it's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that always makes me think of like a slime mold
Speaker 1: and in an experimental maze, you know, in the most
Speaker 1: flattering possible way. Yes, yeah, yeah, And that it's it's expanding,
Speaker 1: it's following uh potential pathways, shrinking back from the ones
Speaker 1: that don't have food, but just expanding uh uh. And
Speaker 1: you mentioned in your your piece that if we were
Speaker 1: to grab a science textbook from uh, like a thousand
Speaker 1: years in the future, that it would be beyond our understanding.
Speaker 1: And it reminds me a lot of the I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've encountered this, but the you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of fixed versus growth mind sets, and you see
Speaker 1: this a lot in business circles, for instance. Is science
Speaker 1: sort of a um a growth mindset process for a
Speaker 1: fixed growth species. Yeah, I think it's um it's the
Speaker 1: slow evolution of concepts, right, that build on each other.
Speaker 1: And I think what I was trying to get up
Speaker 1: with that is that you can't leap frog. You can't
Speaker 1: just like fast forward a thousand years and digest everything
Speaker 1: those physicists have been doing. Like if I want a
Speaker 1: thousand years in the future and try to talk to
Speaker 1: those physicists. They would be not just using some crazy
Speaker 1: technology to talk to each other, and right, you know,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have chalkboards or white boards. They will probably
Speaker 1: have crazy kinds of math that made no sense to me, right,
Speaker 1: even if they were still speaking English. And so it's
Speaker 1: you know, you have to in order to catch up.
Speaker 1: I need to probably go through a thousand years of
Speaker 1: work to get from where I am to where they are. Right.
Speaker 1: You need to sort of build that bridge. You can't
Speaker 1: just take an enormous leap out into nothing. Um. But
Speaker 1: the thing that amazes me is the children. The children
Speaker 1: in that time they will never have known anything else,
Speaker 1: and so they will have been have They will have
Speaker 1: been introduced to these concepts from the beginning, and they
Speaker 1: will think they're totally natural. Right. So things that those
Speaker 1: those scientists learned nine years from now and then teach
Speaker 1: to children a thou us and years from now, we'll
Speaker 1: be totally natural to those kids and totally alien to us. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's again it's just a process
Speaker 1: of explaining what we don't know in terms of what
Speaker 1: we do know. And then that basis set of ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, what the basic concepts we think we understand
Speaker 1: that slowly evolves. You know, take for example, trying to
Speaker 1: get some perspective. Um, it's only been a hundred years
Speaker 1: that we've understood that there's more than one galaxy in
Speaker 1: the universe, right that that it was Hubble like less
Speaker 1: than a hundred years ago who looked out and found
Speaker 1: what he saw were star he thought were stars that
Speaker 1: turned out to be way too far away. Nobody understood,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, those are other galaxies. Like that's a
Speaker 1: completely different mindset about the universe. Right, So if you
Speaker 1: go back a hundred years and try to explain to
Speaker 1: people your research about how galaxies form, they'll be like,
Speaker 1: what what do you mean galaxies? There's just so many
Speaker 1: basic things to explain before you can get to the
Speaker 1: interesting bit. So that's why I was trying to capture,
Speaker 1: is trying to express how, on one hand, somebody from
Speaker 1: my time, our time would have a hard time knowing
Speaker 1: what those scientists are working on. At the same time,
Speaker 1: those children would find it totally intuitive because they would
Speaker 1: know nothing else, and so that would be really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And frankly, if I went to the year three thousand,
Speaker 1: I would not be prepared to read anything other than
Speaker 1: a children's book, because everything else would be so far
Speaker 1: beyond us. Awesome, Well, let's let's be As we begin
Speaker 1: to close out here, I want to come back to
Speaker 1: the podcast and uh, you know, part of the podcast
Speaker 1: mission statement, um is to explain the universe. Uh, where
Speaker 1: where are you? A one year in on the you know,
Speaker 1: your completion level of explaining the universe? I would say
Speaker 1: approximately zero percent. No, you know, science has you know
Speaker 1: what fraction in the universe has science understood? I think
Speaker 1: zero percent is a good estimate. You know, we've only
Speaker 1: recently stumbled across big questions, you know, questions like why
Speaker 1: is the universe expanding and expand ning faster and faster? Um,
Speaker 1: This is a question we only discovered twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and we still have no idea how to explain it.
Speaker 1: And what that tells me is that there are huge
Speaker 1: questions out there that we haven't even discovered yet. You know,
Speaker 1: there are also other questions we don't even know how
Speaker 1: to make progress on, like what is the nature of time?
Speaker 1: Why does it only move forwards? What is even space?
Speaker 1: You know it has three dimensions or maybe more. It
Speaker 1: can wiggle and shake and expand and bend. What is
Speaker 1: this stuff? Um, there's so many things we have not
Speaker 1: yet scratched, and I think the deepest questions we have
Speaker 1: not even discovered the questions yet, and so um, I
Speaker 1: think a zero percentage is approximately a fair estimate. You know.
Speaker 1: There are other ways to look at it, though, Like
Speaker 1: we know, for example, how much energy there is in
Speaker 1: the universe sort of crazy and amazing, But we can
Speaker 1: measure the total energy density of the universe by measuring
Speaker 1: how much it bends space, and then we can ask, like,
Speaker 1: how much of that energy can we account for? And
Speaker 1: there we've made a solid five percent progress because five
Speaker 1: percent of the energy is in terms of matter like
Speaker 1: me and you and hamsters and bananas. So that's some
Speaker 1: concrete progress, you know, but it leaves of the totally unexplained.
Speaker 1: So um, there's lots of stuff to keep exploring and
Speaker 1: definitely lots of material for future episodes. So for anyone
Speaker 1: out there who is checking out Daniel Joy explaining the
Speaker 1: universe for the first time, what do you recommend? Start
Speaker 1: at the beginning, Start with the most recent episodes or
Speaker 1: their key episodes that you would recommend. Uh in particular,
Speaker 1: we try to cover a pretty broad variety of stuff
Speaker 1: from like how big is the universe? Too? Is the
Speaker 1: universe of simulation? Down to more you know, everyday stuff
Speaker 1: like how does a microwave work? Or you know how
Speaker 1: today's episode was, like how is it possible for stones
Speaker 1: to skip on water? And so what I would suggest
Speaker 1: people just sort of skim the titles and find one
Speaker 1: that pulls them in and says, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: know about that, because everybody's got different curiosity and different passion,
Speaker 1: and um, my favorite ones are the particle physics ones.
Speaker 1: You know what is a quantum fielder? Is light, a
Speaker 1: particle or a wave. That's the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: really gets me going. But I think, well, they're all fun,
Speaker 1: and people should follow the ones that touch their personal curiosity. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: if people want to find the podcasts, they can, they
Speaker 1: can find it wherever podcasts are available. But what are
Speaker 1: some other key addresses or contact points you want to
Speaker 1: get out there? Yeah, you can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge or Facebook and Instagram, and you can
Speaker 1: look at our website Daniel and Jorge dot com. And
Speaker 1: if you have a question that you'd love us to answer,
Speaker 1: just email us questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Speaker 1: We answer all of our listener emails every physics question
Speaker 1: we get, and we love suggestions from listeners because we
Speaker 1: want to know what you want to hear about. Awesome. Well, Daniel,
Speaker 1: thanks for taking time out of your day to chat
Speaker 1: with me here on the show. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Joe and I may take you up on on that
Speaker 1: that email situ wish and because we have physics questions
Speaker 1: from time to time that we certainly cannot answer, so
Speaker 1: it would be nice to bounce some of them off
Speaker 1: of you. Awesome, Well, thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: Really fun to talk about this stuff. I love the
Speaker 1: questions and uh, thanks again. All right, so there you
Speaker 1: have it again. That was Daniel whiteson uh, co host
Speaker 1: of Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, and you can
Speaker 1: find that at Daniel and Jorge dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also find that podcast anywhere you get your podcasts. It's
Speaker 1: a it's an in network show. There are essentially our
Speaker 1: co workers on the other side of the continent here,
Speaker 1: but it's a's tremendous show. I highly recommended awesome. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind heading over to stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com because that is where
Speaker 1: you will find them. We also find them everywhere you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and as always we ask you, if
Speaker 1: you have a chance, support the show by leaving a
Speaker 1: nice rating and a review. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us to let us know
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to Joe, to
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
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