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Speaker 1: Hey, or do you think our podcast episodes are getting

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Speaker 1: like a little too long?

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Speaker 2: Are they longer than it used to be?

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Speaker 1: You know, we used to start out around forty ish minutes,

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Speaker 1: and some of the recent ones been hitting an hour.

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Speaker 2: But not the ones with me in it. Right, I'll

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Speaker 2: just try to keep it short.

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Speaker 1: You ask a lot of questions, and sometimes it takes

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Speaker 1: an hour to explain them all.

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Speaker 2: I guess we are trying to explain the whole universe,

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Speaker 2: so that's supposed to take a while.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually amazing if you can explain like a

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Speaker 1: whole year's worth of physics in like sixty minutes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And the funny thing is that I usually forget

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Speaker 2: it within sixty seconds.

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Speaker 1: That's where you got to listen to it sixty times.

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Speaker 2: But then I'll give it when sixty of the attention

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Speaker 2: it needs. So, hey, we're done after an hour, right.

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Speaker 1: I think the math works out?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I do pay attention to math. Hi. I'm poor

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Speaker 2: Hee Make cartoonist and the author of Oliver It's Great,

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Speaker 2: Big Universe.

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

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Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I'm very conscious of our finite

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Speaker 1: amounts of time.

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Speaker 2: You mean, like here on Earth or on the air.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, both, Absolutely, we're spending a non trivial amount of

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Speaker 1: time on Earth on the air now that we've done

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Speaker 1: so many episodes, you know, it's like a non zero

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Speaker 1: fraction of our lives we spent doing this podcast.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know.

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Speaker 1: But you know, more existentially, my kids are growing up.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to leave home soon, and so yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: valuing every hour I have with them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they grow up pretty fast, sometimes too fast.

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Speaker 1: Do you believe in parental time dilation? Everybody says, oh,

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Speaker 1: those years go by so fast, but you know, when

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Speaker 1: you have a screaming top and it's two in the morning,

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Speaker 1: it feels like about a million hours before they go

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Speaker 1: down for their nap.

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Speaker 2: Definitely, times needs to go by faster. But I feel

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Speaker 2: like I've paid attention pretty good. There's definitely a lot

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Speaker 2: of video records of our children, so we always go back.

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Speaker 1: Down memory lean Yeah, that's true.

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Speaker 2: But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain

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Speaker 2: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio in.

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Speaker 1: Which we try to take an hour to slow down

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Speaker 1: and really understand something. We think it's worthwhile to update

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Speaker 1: the mental model in your mind that's explaining the way

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Speaker 1: the universe works out there. We wanted to correspond as

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Speaker 1: much as possible so to the way the universe actually works,

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Speaker 1: the weird rules that quantum particles follow, the incredible powerful

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Speaker 1: forces swirling in the hearts of black holes. We want

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Speaker 1: your brain to be aligned with the universe, even if

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Speaker 1: it does take a little bit of time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we do like to take our time to make

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Speaker 2: the most of your time when it's time to understand

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Speaker 2: the universe.

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Speaker 1: And the universe operates on so many amazingly different time scales.

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Speaker 1: We think about our lives and you know, tens of years,

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Speaker 1: maybe one hundred if we're lucky, but that's just the

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Speaker 1: blink of an eye. In the history of the universe

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Speaker 1: that is billions of years old. And then also between

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Speaker 1: every second, there's an incredible number of quantum operations happening,

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Speaker 1: electrons buzzing and tuing and throwing, and particles appearing and disappearing.

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Speaker 1: Things happen in the universe from the tiniest fractions of

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Speaker 1: a second all the way out to billions and maybe

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Speaker 1: even trillions of years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot going on in the universe, and

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Speaker 2: times seems to be underneath it all, dictating at what

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Speaker 2: rate things happen and in what order things happen.

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Speaker 1: And I wonder sometimes whether the deepest answers to the

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Speaker 1: nature of the universe are at the shortest time scales,

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Speaker 1: Like what is the real fabric of reality the smallest

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Speaker 1: bits in the smallest pieces of time, dictating how everything

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Speaker 1: else works somehow bubbling up to form our universe, or

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Speaker 1: whether the real story is of the longest time periods.

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Speaker 1: What's happening to the universe? How does it form? What

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Speaker 1: is its future? Over billions or maybe trillions of years?

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Speaker 1: You know, the billions of years that our universe has

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Speaker 1: existed could just be the first few moments of a

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Speaker 1: much longer, impossibly to imagine deep time future.

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Speaker 2: Do you feel like maybe you have a little bit

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Speaker 2: of a fear of missing out in the universe? You know,

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Speaker 2: but maybe things are happening too fast for you to

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Speaker 2: notice or too long for you to live through.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I have FOMU. I have fear of missing the

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Speaker 1: universe for sure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, physical fear of missing the universe f FOMU.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Some of the most interesting things that happen in

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Speaker 1: the universe are not the tiniest rules of the little particles,

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Speaker 1: but how things come together over time. You know, galaxies

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Speaker 1: took hundreds of millions of years to form. Imagine you

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Speaker 1: were an intelligent species that existed somehow in the first

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Speaker 1: one hundred million years of the universe. You would never

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Speaker 1: even see a galaxy, which to us now is like

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Speaker 1: the basic building block of what's out there in space.

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Speaker 1: What if the most basic building block of the future

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Speaker 1: hasn't yet formed, and intelligent species that evolve in a

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Speaker 1: trillion years will wonder about what it was like to

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Speaker 1: be us, never even seeing the most basic thing that

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Speaker 1: exists in their universe.

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Speaker 2: Or even if the future is set at all.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Right, they're a big question of whether the universe is deterministic,

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Speaker 2: meaning you can sort of know what's going to happen

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Speaker 2: in the future or at least in one of the futures,

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Speaker 2: or whether it's totally random.

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Speaker 1: That's right, And we're hoping to push ourselves into a

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Speaker 1: future where we understand the universe a little bit better

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Speaker 1: from the largest time scales to the shortest time scales.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and when it's time to do that, we will

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Speaker 2: take a little bit of time to explain it to

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Speaker 2: you in hopefully more or less an hour, because time

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Speaker 2: seems to be one of the most fundamental things in

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Speaker 2: the universe, but sometimes you have to ask questions about

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Speaker 2: time itself.

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Speaker 1: And while we can't see the deep future yet, we

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Speaker 1: can do our best to try to understand the shortest

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Speaker 1: time scales to zoom in on how fast things are

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Speaker 1: happening in the universe.

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Speaker 2: So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling what's the

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Speaker 2: fastest event ever measured?

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Speaker 1: You know, when people run simulations like the Hearts of

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Speaker 1: Neutron stars or like weather or whatever, they always have

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Speaker 1: to choose like a minimum time step. Now you have

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Speaker 1: your universe, and then you evolve it forward in time,

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Speaker 1: one step in time, and then again and again and again,

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Speaker 1: and eventually you describe something longer. But there's that minimum

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Speaker 1: time on the computer, right, Yeah, on the computer when

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Speaker 1: you run simulations, and so in our real universe, I

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Speaker 1: think it's fascinating to think about, like, well, what is

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Speaker 1: the shortest time step? How far have we zoomed in

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Speaker 1: to see like the fastest thing ever happened?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, or possibly we are living in the simulation, right.

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Speaker 2: Isn't that something that even smart people think about, not

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Speaker 2: just conspiracy theorists.

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Speaker 1: I think it's definitely true that smart people think about it.

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Speaker 1: I don't know how true it is that smart people

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Speaker 1: believe in it or think that it's realistic. I know

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of talk out there about it, and

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Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun to think about, but if

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Speaker 1: you have to ask people like whether they really believed it,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's unlikely we're living in a simulation.

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Speaker 1: For example, you.

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Speaker 2: Mean it's fun to simulate in your head that maybe

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Speaker 2: we're living in a simulation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really clever sort of meta idea. Like

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Speaker 1: we think about simulations, as you say, we run simulations

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Speaker 1: in our head. We use simulations for our science. We

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Speaker 1: had a whole fun podcast episode about the importance of

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Speaker 1: doing simulations in science. It's really a whole new branch

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Speaker 1: of science, sort of different from experimental and theoretical physics.

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Speaker 1: You know, we describe things like in vivo or in

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Speaker 1: vitro and now sometimes we call them in silico. But

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Speaker 1: I don't know that we actually are living in a simulation,

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Speaker 1: or you know how we would actually prove that. But

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Speaker 1: we have a whole episode about that. So folks interested

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Speaker 1: in that go check out that episode.

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Speaker 2: Right, right, But whether it's a simulation or not, there's

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Speaker 2: definitely time in it. And as you said, when we

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Speaker 2: create little universes in our computers, you have to pick

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Speaker 2: a timestep to do your simulation, and so you can

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Speaker 2: kind of ask the question, does that happen in the

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Speaker 2: real universe?

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Speaker 1: Well, yeah, And when we do it in our simulations,

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Speaker 1: we pick a timestep short enough that we're not ignoring

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Speaker 1: anything important, So we try to figure out, like, what

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Speaker 1: is the shortest time step we're interested in. You know,

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Speaker 1: if you're simulating like a evolution of a galaxy, nothing

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Speaker 1: really exciting happens in a year or one hundred years,

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Speaker 1: so you might take like thousand year time steps. But

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Speaker 1: if you're simulating like a nuclear explosion underground, you might

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Speaker 1: take time steps of like a millionth of a second

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Speaker 1: to make sure you're capturing all of the dynamics.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and as you said, there's lots of things happening

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Speaker 2: in the universe, and the idea of a timestep is

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Speaker 2: also important when you try to measure things, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: Like if you're trying to measure an explosion, you don't

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Speaker 2: want to sample the explosion every three minutes because it's

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Speaker 2: going to be gone and over and when you're sampling,

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Speaker 2: you know had the motion of a start. You don't

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Speaker 2: want to do it every femtosecond because you're going to

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Speaker 2: have too much data.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So things happen on different timescales, and the

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Speaker 1: question is like, what's the fastest thing we've ever measured?

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Speaker 1: And what's the actual minimum time slice of the universe?

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Speaker 2: Two big questions about very small things. Hopefully we can

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Speaker 2: do it in the short amount of time that we have. Well,

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Speaker 2: as usually, we were wondering how many people out there

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Speaker 2: had thought about the question of what is the fastest

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Speaker 2: event ever measured? So Daniel went out there once again

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Speaker 2: to ask people, what do you think is the most

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Speaker 2: fleeting or fastest physical event ever measured?

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Speaker 1: Thanks very much to our listeners who answer these questions

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Speaker 1: very very quickly. I'm very grateful for your contributions. It

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Speaker 1: helps me understand what people are thinking about. And I

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Speaker 1: hope you enjoy hearing your voice on the air. And

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Speaker 1: if you are out there listening and would like to

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Speaker 1: hear your voice answering these questions, please don't be shy

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Speaker 1: write to me to questions at Danielandjorgey dot com.

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Speaker 2: So think about it for a second. What do you

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Speaker 2: think is the fastest thing humans have ever detected. Here's

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Speaker 2: what people had to say.

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Speaker 4: I don't know what the smallest time slice ever measured. Here,

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Speaker 4: I'm going to assume that it's somehow around fempto seconds.

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Speaker 4: I don't know why that number sticks my brain. I'm

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Speaker 4: gonna say thempto seconds. The smallest amount of space ever measured,

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Speaker 4: I think is the plank space.

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Speaker 1: Gonna go with plank time.

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Speaker 3: That's easy. It's the time between when butter goes from

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Speaker 3: being soft to being soup. But actually it probably tend

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Speaker 3: to the negative twenty something, at which point I guess

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Speaker 3: doesn't even show that time makes any sense anymore.

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Speaker 2: All Right, we got some cooking answers here.

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Speaker 1: You know, some people listen to our podcast while they're

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Speaker 1: making dinner, and that might have influenced this answer.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm very interested in this recipe that where you

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Speaker 2: make soup out of butter.

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Speaker 1: You've never had butter soup. Oh man, that.

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Speaker 2: Sounds so healthy, so healthy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll have butter soup low fat version. Please.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll definitely shorten your time on Earth for sure.

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Speaker 2: I mean, expand your space, but short in your time.

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Speaker 2: I mean that seems like the wrong proportion.

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Speaker 1: With well. Buttered chicken is a very popular recipe, so

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Speaker 1: I'm sure butter soup is a thing people can make.

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Speaker 2: M but buttered chicken soup. Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 1: What's better than.

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Speaker 2: The physics of that? How does it even work?

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Speaker 1: It definitely adds mass.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, it's definitely an interesting question, and so let's

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Speaker 2: jump into it. Daniel. First of all, I guess let's

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Speaker 2: talk about time in general and the idea that maybe

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Speaker 2: time is pixelated or there's a minimum amount of time

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Speaker 2: in the universe. What if physicists think about that.

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Speaker 1: Physicists really have no idea how time works.

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Speaker 2: All right, we're done.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's about time we gave up.

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Speaker 2: No, Yeah, the shortest episode Ever's the shortest podcast about

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Speaker 2: physics ever recorded? Today's episode?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, every podcast is just we don't know. Done.

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Speaker 4: No.

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Speaker 1: It is really an enduring mystery, And it's weird because

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Speaker 1: time is something we sort of feel like we understand.

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Speaker 1: It's part of our everyday lives. We talk about all

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Speaker 1: the time. We all have complicated schedule, We rely on time,

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Speaker 1: we do time zones, we mess them up and miss meetings.

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Speaker 1: Time is both familiar and also mysterious because we don't

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Speaker 1: understand like what it is. Special relativity tells us that

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Speaker 1: it's deeply connected to space, and it makes actually much

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Speaker 1: more sense to think about time and space together as

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Speaker 1: one unit space time. And that makes sense because some

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Speaker 1: of the things in special relativity show us that space

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Speaker 1: and time are mixed. That you know, moving quickly through

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Speaker 1: space can affect your measurement of time. All these sorts

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Speaker 1: of things sort of the same way that like electricity

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Speaker 1: and magnetism make more sense when stuck together into one idea.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't tell you that electricity and magnetism are the

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Speaker 1: same thing, just that they're connected in the same way

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Speaker 1: space and time are connected. They're not the same, but

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Speaker 1: they're related to each other in special relativity.

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Speaker 2: Right, because I guess we grow up, you know, not

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Speaker 2: just as kids, but also like sort of through elementary

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Speaker 2: high school, thinking that space and time are sort of immovable, right,

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Speaker 2: like fixed in the universe. But really then eventually you

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Speaker 2: learn that space and time are both kind of squishy, right, envirorable,

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Speaker 2: and time can slow down, time can speed up, space

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Speaker 2: can contract, space can expand they can both wiggle. But

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Speaker 2: where did this idea that maybe time is pixelated? Where

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Speaker 2: did it come from or what would make physicists think

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Speaker 2: that it might be.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating you. You sort of trace the evolution of

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Speaker 1: the ideas and we all sort of have that same experience.

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Speaker 1: Like Newton thought of space and time as absolute and fixed,

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Speaker 1: as you say, sort of immutable. They're like the backdrop

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Speaker 1: of the universe. But then Einstein should us that they're not.

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Speaker 1: Actually they're flexible, they're interconnected. But most importantly, Einstein's theory

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Speaker 1: of general relativity and special relativity still suggests that time

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Speaker 1: is continuous, it's smooth, it's infinitely divisible, that it's not

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Speaker 1: discrete or pixelated. It's not like there are steps in time.

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Speaker 1: In Einstein's theory of the universe, you can take any

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Speaker 1: two moments and there's always another moment in between, right,

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Speaker 1: there's no minimum times that in Einstein's universe and general

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Speaker 1: relativity describes the universe very very well. It describes the

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Speaker 1: expansion of the universe and the motion of galaxies and

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Speaker 1: everything we've ever been able to test about general relativity

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Speaker 1: has always been bang on, exactly correct, with astonishing accuracy.

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Speaker 2: Now when you say the astin theories suggest that what

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Speaker 2: does that mean? Does that mean that it only works

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Speaker 2: but continuous time, or that is just always used continuous

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Speaker 2: time and nobody has thought about applying it to the

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Speaker 2: pixelated time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. It works assuming that space is continuous.

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Speaker 1: So you're like, let's start from that assumption and then

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Speaker 1: build on top of that. And then you could ask, well,

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Speaker 1: could you have a different theory that didn't make that assumption.

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Speaker 1: What if you assumed instead that space was pixelated? And

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Speaker 1: then you run into all sorts of mathematical problems that

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Speaker 1: nobody has been able to solve before. The motivation for

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Speaker 1: that comes from quantum mechanics, Like you might ask, well,

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Speaker 1: why would you wake time pixelated? It feels pretty smooth

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Speaker 1: to me. I mean we measure it in seconds, but

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Speaker 1: we know there's always milliseconds below those and microseconds those.

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Speaker 1: Why would you ever imagine there would be pixels? And

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Speaker 1: that comes from the idea of quantum mechanics, which tells

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Speaker 1: us that the nature of reality is a sort of discrete.

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Speaker 1: It's like made out of chunks. It's not smooth, you know,

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Speaker 1: like when we look at a beam of life from

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Speaker 1: a flashlight. Einstein's actual discovery from the photoelectric effect tells

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Speaker 1: us that it's not just like smooth beams of light

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Speaker 1: that you could like chop up infinitely small, that there's

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Speaker 1: like a minimum brightness because light comes in packets, these

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Speaker 1: little things called photons, right, And so quantum mechanics suggests

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Speaker 1: that even though the universe seems continuous and smooth when

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Speaker 1: you zoom in, it really is kind of pixelated. It's

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Speaker 1: just like when you look at your computer screen and

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Speaker 1: you zoom in, it seems smooth, right, but actually there's

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Speaker 1: little dots there. There are little basic units.

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Speaker 2: So that's the motivation, right, Like, even this podcast is pixelated, right,

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Speaker 2: Like we're recording into a digital device. It's recording it

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Speaker 2: with a time sample with a minimum time sampling rate,

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Speaker 2: and then it gets transmitted as bits and then it

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Speaker 2: plays out there where you're listening to this as those

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Speaker 2: little bits.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you're exactly right. Digitization is creating some pixelization, right,

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Speaker 1: You're creating these units and exactly the sort of way

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Speaker 1: quantum mechanics works. Fascinatingly though, even analog measurements have a resolution,

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Speaker 1: right like a photograph. You think of it as like, oh,

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Speaker 1: it's photons. It's not like pixels like a digital camera

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Speaker 1: or a analog recording on like vinyl or on a tape.

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Speaker 1: It's not using digits. It's analog. It's using some sort

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Speaker 1: of like magnetic technology to record it, or like physical

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Speaker 1: bumps on the vinyl. Still that is discrete, right, because

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Speaker 1: in the end, there's a finite resolution. Like for photographs,

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Speaker 1: there's a resolution of a photon or the molecule of

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Speaker 1: the chemical atoms that are you know, recording the light,

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Speaker 1: or on the tape, there's still the resolution of like

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Speaker 1: the little magnets that are aligned to record your information,

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Speaker 1: or on the vinyl there's still like the chemistry of

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Speaker 1: the vinyl itself. So analog is higher resolution, but it's

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Speaker 1: not infinite resolution, right.

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Speaker 2: And so the idea is that maybe time is also pixelated.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's weird to think about time as infinite.

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Speaker 1: You know, we don't see infinities in reality. Everywhere we

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Speaker 1: see infinities in our theory, always something acts to prevent

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Speaker 1: it from happening in reality. And this is what quantum

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Speaker 1: mechanics tells us, that there are new infinities. You can't

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Speaker 1: divide things infinitely small, and maybe space itself and time

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Speaker 1: are pixelated. Maybe there's a minimum unit of space and

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Speaker 1: a minimum unit of time. This would be very natural

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Speaker 1: from a quantum mechanical point of view. You asked earlier, like, well,

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Speaker 1: has anybody tried that? What if you built general relativity

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Speaker 1: out of discrete units of space and time, you know,

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Speaker 1: pixelated the universe. And people are trying to do that,

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Speaker 1: but bringing together the ideas of general relativity and the

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Speaker 1: ideas of quantum mechanics to make that new concept, like

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Speaker 1: a theory of gravity and space and time that's built

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Speaker 1: on discrete units has so far not been successful. People

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Speaker 1: have been trying for decades. You run into all sorts

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Speaker 1: of mathematical problems doing so. So we don't have a

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Speaker 1: theory of general relativity that's built on discrete time. So

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Speaker 1: we have this theory of general relativity. It tells us

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Speaker 1: about space and gravity but assumes continuous time. And then

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Speaker 1: this idea that the universe is quantum mechanical and time

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Speaker 1: and space are probably discrete. But we can't bring these

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Speaker 1: two things together.

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Speaker 2: Right. But this theory, even though it comes from Einstein,

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Speaker 2: does have its problems, right, Like it sort of breaks down,

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Speaker 2: especially when you get down to the smallest levels of

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Speaker 2: particles in quantum physics.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. General relativity is very, very accurate. But everything

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Speaker 1: we think in physics has its limitations, Like every theory

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Speaker 1: you describe is applicable only in certain situations, situations where

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Speaker 1: you've derived it, you know, under the assumptions that are valid,

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Speaker 1: and so as you mentioned, like general relativity we think

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Speaker 1: breaks down in certain situations Like number one, It can't

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Speaker 1: describe particles, like what is the gravity of a particle?

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Speaker 1: We don't know because particles have uncertainty. General relativity can

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Speaker 1: only tell you about how space is bent when you

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Speaker 1: know where a mass is, Well, what if you don't

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Speaker 1: know where it is is? What if it only has

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Speaker 1: a probability to be here and a probability to be there,

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Speaker 1: is space probably bent or space bent on average? We

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Speaker 1: don't know the answers to these questions, So we don't

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Speaker 1: know how to do general relativity for quantum particles, and

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Speaker 1: it makes weird predictions.

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Speaker 2: Are we ever going to find out? Like how are

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Speaker 2: we going to tell if the universe is pixelated in time? Ever?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, those are two great questions. Will we ever find

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Speaker 1: out how general relativity or how space is bent by

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Speaker 1: quantum particles. There's a bunch of really cool, clever experiments. Well,

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Speaker 1: one way to do it is to try to come

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Speaker 1: up with a theory of quantum gravity that mirrors these

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Speaker 1: things together and tells us sort of like conceptually how

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Speaker 1: time might work. Another is to try to like make

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Speaker 1: approximate calculations and guess even without the theory of quantum gravity.

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Speaker 1: And you heard one of the listeners talk about the

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Speaker 1: plank time. And another is to try to make fast

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Speaker 1: measurements and see, like, can we zoom in on stuff

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Speaker 1: in the universe and see if we can measure these

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Speaker 1: pixels if we can notice some like discrete unit of

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Speaker 1: time happening in our experiments.

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Speaker 2: Like we might measure some in an experiment and actually

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Speaker 2: see the pixels of time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, the way you can zoom in on a

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Speaker 1: screen and see the pixels are there, right, Or you

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Speaker 1: could slow down a movie and notice, oh, it's not

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Speaker 1: actually a continuous motion, it's just a bunch of still frames.

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Speaker 1: If you could zoom in on the physical universe in time,

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Speaker 1: then you might notice those time pixels if they're there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I guess the question is how fast are

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Speaker 2: things in nature? And the second question you can ask

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Speaker 2: is what's the fastest thing that we can measure or

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Speaker 2: that we have been able to measure? Yeah, so far,

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Speaker 2: So let's dig into both of those small questions. I

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Speaker 2: guess short questions. Probably not, But unfortunately it's time to

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Speaker 2: take a quick break. All right, very quickly, Daniel, what

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Speaker 2: are we talking about today?

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Speaker 1: We're talking about the fastest thing that ever happened.

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Speaker 2: Not the fastest podcast episode. I think we're we're already

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Speaker 2: passed that point.

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Speaker 1: Maybe somebody out there is playing our podcast at like

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Speaker 1: ten x, so they're understanding the universe's so much faster

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Speaker 1: than us.

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Speaker 2: Well, do we sound like chipmunks now?

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Speaker 1: Then to them we should talk really slowly for those people.

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Speaker 2: Maybe we shouldn't like figure out how to encode secret

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Speaker 2: messages by talking backwards. Like if you play the podcast backwards.

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Speaker 1: If you only listen to every twenty fifth word, I say,

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Speaker 1: I've been talking in secret messages the whole time. It's

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Speaker 1: for the special audience.

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Speaker 2: It's like you and Tater Swift hiding secret messages.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like those books where if you read only

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Speaker 1: the words along the left side of the page, it's

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Speaker 1: a whole second message.

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Speaker 2: There all right, if you take every twenty fifth word

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00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:50,520
Speaker 2: Daniel has ever said in all five hundred plus episodes,

440
00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:53,240
Speaker 2: and you take every thirteenth word that I ever said

441
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:55,920
Speaker 2: in all five hundred episodes, and you put them in

442
00:21:55,960 --> 00:21:58,840
Speaker 2: the right order, you'll get the answer to the origin

443
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:00,480
Speaker 2: of the universe, like the.

444
00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:03,520
Speaker 1: Universe and everything. Yeah, that's exactly. It is the big

445
00:22:03,560 --> 00:22:05,239
Speaker 1: reveal of folks plot twist at the end.

446
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:06,679
Speaker 2: Today's a day where we announce it.

447
00:22:06,880 --> 00:22:09,840
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, But we.

448
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:12,080
Speaker 2: Are talking about how fast things are in the universe.

449
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:15,639
Speaker 2: And I guess two sort of basic questions. What's the

450
00:22:15,720 --> 00:22:17,879
Speaker 2: fastest thing that we know about in the universe and

451
00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:20,960
Speaker 2: what's the fastest thing we've ever measured in the universe. Yeah,

452
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:23,879
Speaker 2: so talk to us about how fast things are in

453
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:26,439
Speaker 2: the universe, Like what are the different scales that we

454
00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:27,200
Speaker 2: know about.

455
00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:29,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, first of all, there's the unit of the second, right,

456
00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:32,760
Speaker 1: The second is like our natural unit of time, but

457
00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:35,639
Speaker 1: it's totally arbitrary. We just made it up. It's not

458
00:22:35,680 --> 00:22:38,520
Speaker 1: like a physical thing. You know, light travels a certain

459
00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:41,720
Speaker 1: distance in a second. There's some caesium atom that oscillates

460
00:22:41,760 --> 00:22:44,560
Speaker 1: billions of times in a second. But a second tells

461
00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:47,440
Speaker 1: us something about ourselves and our relationship with time, because

462
00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:50,720
Speaker 1: it's what we feel like is the minimum unit of

463
00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:53,719
Speaker 1: time that sort of makes sense to talk about between people.

464
00:22:53,840 --> 00:22:56,600
Speaker 1: It's like the natural rhythm of our thoughts. One second,

465
00:22:56,960 --> 00:22:58,960
Speaker 1: is it? I think that's why we pick the second,

466
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 1: you know, because it's a reason, like you pick a

467
00:23:01,119 --> 00:23:04,640
Speaker 1: unit so that you're usually talking about small numbers. I mean,

468
00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:07,280
Speaker 1: we could live our lives with clocks that go down

469
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:09,639
Speaker 1: to the microseconds, but it would be pretty exhausting, you know,

470
00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:11,720
Speaker 1: if you had to tell your kid, like, okay, you

471
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:15,960
Speaker 1: can watch TV for six billion milliseconds or six billion nanoseconds,

472
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:18,359
Speaker 1: that'd be confusing all the time. So we tend to

473
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:20,520
Speaker 1: pick units so you can say small numbers.

474
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:22,440
Speaker 2: I think you're talking about like the scale of a second,

475
00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:24,879
Speaker 2: not exactly like the second, Like why is in the

476
00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:27,879
Speaker 2: second one point one seconds? Nobody knows, right.

477
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:30,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody knows. It's totally arbitrary, But why is this

478
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:33,160
Speaker 1: second not like one hundred times longer or one hundred

479
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:35,800
Speaker 1: times shorter? That tells us something about like the scale

480
00:23:35,800 --> 00:23:36,520
Speaker 1: in which we live.

481
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 2: We also talk about like minutes and hours. Those are

482
00:23:39,119 --> 00:23:41,639
Speaker 2: really important too, But I think you're saying like the

483
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:44,600
Speaker 2: second is maybe the minimum amount of time that sort

484
00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 2: of our brains can grow or understand or grasp.

485
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:51,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, we have no smaller time unit that's not

486
00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:53,359
Speaker 1: just like a fraction of a second.

487
00:23:53,480 --> 00:23:55,639
Speaker 2: That makes sense, right, Like nobody worries about things that

488
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:58,639
Speaker 2: happen in the millisecond level on an everyday basis.

489
00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:00,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And if you think, but by the way

490
00:24:00,359 --> 00:24:02,840
Speaker 1: your body works, you know, like roughly your heart beats

491
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: once a second ish, depending on whether you're an athlete

492
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:09,439
Speaker 1: or not. And your eyes, for example, blink in like

493
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: a tenth of a second, and your eyes can only

494
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 1: see things that happen, you know, to like one thirtieth

495
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:16,919
Speaker 1: of a second, which is why you can play a

496
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,360
Speaker 1: movie with like thirty frames per second and it looks continuous.

497
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 1: Your eye can't tell the difference between that and actual

498
00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:24,080
Speaker 1: continuous motion.

499
00:24:25,280 --> 00:24:26,919
Speaker 2: So maybe more it's more like the one tenth of

500
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:29,159
Speaker 2: a second is really kind of the minimum unit that

501
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 2: we were used to thinking about, right, But we are

502
00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:32,880
Speaker 2: used to thinking about things that happen in the blink

503
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:33,359
Speaker 2: of an eye.

504
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: And I think that's why you choose a unit to

505
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: be like a second, and you can think about small

506
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 1: numbers of it, you know, a tenth of a second

507
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: or ten seconds. It encapsulates the typical range of human activity.

508
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: But of course the physical universe things happen much faster,

509
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: you know, like even inside your brain, neurons fire. You know,

510
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:52,959
Speaker 1: we think like about a thousand times a second, so

511
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:55,280
Speaker 1: the processing speed of your brain is like a thousand

512
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: times faster than a second. And you know, tiny particles

513
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 1: out there can interact and live for much shorter times,

514
00:25:02,359 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 1: like do you create a muon in the upper atmosphere

515
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: because the cosmic rays smashed into a particle, that muon

516
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:10,879
Speaker 1: lives for ten to the minus six seconds a millionth

517
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 1: of a second. Whoa, And you can zoom in much faster,

518
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,199
Speaker 1: of course, and think about like what happens in a

519
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:19,119
Speaker 1: billionth of a second. Well, in a billionth of a second,

520
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:20,959
Speaker 1: light travels about a foot.

521
00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, light is fast.

522
00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:25,200
Speaker 1: Light is pretty fast. But it's amazing to think about,

523
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: like slowing time down enough to see light move right,

524
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:31,359
Speaker 1: for light to travel at a small distance. Usually we

525
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 1: think about light as going like around the Earth lots

526
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,119
Speaker 1: of times, but in a billionth of a second, it

527
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: only goes afoot, which is cool. There are other tiny

528
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,200
Speaker 1: particles that live much shorter than the muon. For example,

529
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:43,800
Speaker 1: if you create a bottom cork, it lives about a

530
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 1: billionth of a second before flying off to something else.

531
00:25:47,440 --> 00:25:49,160
Speaker 1: This is a slice of time it's hard to even

532
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: really think about, Like does that really exist? Is there

533
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 1: like a moment when the bottom cork is like there

534
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 1: and doing its thing before it decays? It feels almost

535
00:25:57,640 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 1: like zero time already.

536
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 2: Well, I wonder if it feels like zero time to

537
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 2: us because we're so slow, you know, in our thinking.

538
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,360
Speaker 2: But maybe if you have like you know, microscopic creatures

539
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 2: or you know, really tiny beings that probably think a

540
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,480
Speaker 2: lot faster, I wonder if that will seem slow to them.

541
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's all relative, right, this choice of a second.

542
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: It tells us about like how we live our lives.

543
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:21,919
Speaker 1: It's relative to the length of our lives and the

544
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 1: operating of our brain, but it's arbitrary. Time extends on

545
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 1: this enormous spectrum from the many, many, many billions of

546
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:31,679
Speaker 1: years down to the tiniest slice, and we're operating on

547
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 1: a tiny little bit of it. It's sort of like

548
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 1: the way we can see a little slice of the

549
00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:38,639
Speaker 1: visual spectrum, but there's light with much higher frequencies and

550
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:40,879
Speaker 1: lower frequencies in the universe is a wash in that

551
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: kind of light that we don't normally see. It's just

552
00:26:43,280 --> 00:26:46,879
Speaker 1: it's like our human perspective, but the universe operates on

553
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: even shorter time scales. You know, if you go down

554
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: to like ten to the minus fifteen seconds, this is

555
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: now a themto second.

556
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 2: I wonder if because we also know time is sort

557
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 2: of relative, right, So I wonder, like, if you create

558
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 2: a bottom cored near a black hole hole or in

559
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 2: a space ship going at near the speed of light,

560
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 2: is that we're going to seem longer lived to us

561
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 2: from our perspective.

562
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:11,359
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Yeah. And like these muons, for example, that we

563
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:14,080
Speaker 1: create in the upper atmosphere, they only live for a

564
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: millionth of a second, and so you might wonder like, well,

565
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: would they ever get down to the surface of the Earth.

566
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: And the answer is yes. And the only reason they

567
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 1: do make it to the surface is because they're going

568
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: very very fast relative to us, so their clocks are

569
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:29,879
Speaker 1: running slow. So even though they live for a millionth

570
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 1: of a second, that's enough time for them to make

571
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: it to the surface because that million of a second

572
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: clicks very very slowly as we're watching them.

573
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 2: Essentially, to them, so are you saying it, they live

574
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 2: a million of a second if you're the muon, But

575
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 2: to us they actually live longer.

576
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: To us they live longer. Yet they travel much further

577
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 1: than otherwise because they're going fast, and so their time

578
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:53,679
Speaker 1: ticks slowly. From our point of view. If you had

579
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: like a little clock traveling with a muon, you would

580
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: see its ticks going very very slowly, and it would

581
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:01,680
Speaker 1: fly very far before a millionth of a second ticked over,

582
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 1: and then that muon decayed. From its point of view,

583
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: it only lives for a millionth of a second, but

584
00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: it sees the atmosphere is compressed because when you're moving

585
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 1: fast relative to something you see, it's shortened. So for

586
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:16,120
Speaker 1: the muon's point of view, it sees the atmosphere is compressed.

587
00:28:16,119 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 1: In short, it can make it to the bottom of

588
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: the atmosphere to the surface in a millionth of a second.

589
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 1: So that's an example of how special relativity is cool,

590
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 1: because from one point of view, it's time dilation, from

591
00:28:26,040 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 1: another point of view, it's length contraction. It's really the

592
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 1: same physics. But yeah, time is.

593
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:33,640
Speaker 2: Relative, okay, So what else is fast in the universe.

594
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 1: So if you go down to like a femtosecond, how

595
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: far can light travel and like ten to the minus

596
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds. Now we're talking about short distances. We're talking

597
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:45,280
Speaker 1: about like less than a micrometer, and you can go

598
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:48,400
Speaker 1: down even further to attoseconds. This is ten to the

599
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: mince eighteen seconds. This is a hard number to think about.

600
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 1: It's so short that the number of atoseconds in a

601
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 1: single second is the same as the number of seconds

602
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: that have elapsed in the whole history three of the universe. Like,

603
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: there's been about ten to the eighteen seconds since the

604
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: beginning of the universe, and an autosecond is one in

605
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: ten to the eighteenth of a second. So it's really

606
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: an incredible slice. WHOA.

607
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 2: That's like if you take a second and you split

608
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 2: it into a million, and then take each of those

609
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 2: and split it it into a million, and then take

610
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 2: each of those and split it it into a million timesteps.

611
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 2: That's what an atosecond is.

612
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's a millionth of a millionth of a millionth.

613
00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 2: Is there anything that happens at the at a second

614
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 2: level that we know about?

615
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:32,400
Speaker 1: Absolutely? There are lots of particles that decay in an autosecond,

616
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:34,719
Speaker 1: and as we'll talk about a minute, we've actually measured

617
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 1: things down to the autosecond. It's sort of incredible. But

618
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: the universe happens even faster. So we can think about

619
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 1: like a zepto second, which is ten to the minus

620
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: twenty one seconds. This is how long it takes a

621
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 1: photon to go from one side of the hydrogen atom

622
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: to the other side of the hydrogen atom. Like super

623
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 1: fast photon moving a very short distance, only takes a

624
00:29:56,000 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 1: zepto second. Pretty zipty, pretty zipty. But you know, down

625
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:03,240
Speaker 1: in the realm of fundamental particles, even a zepto second

626
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: can feel like a long time. If we create a

627
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: Higgs boson in the Large Hadron Collider, for example, that

628
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 1: lasts for a thousandths of a zepto second, it's ten

629
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 1: to the minus twenty four seconds.

630
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:17,040
Speaker 2: Well, meaning like you create a Higgs boson, but in

631
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 2: less than one thousands of a zept to second, it's

632
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 2: gone yeah, or probably gone.

633
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 1: It's probably gone yeah. Each one has a distribution, they're

634
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: pretty tighty. It's sort of like radioactive decay. It's not

635
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 1: an exact measurement doesn't disappear when its time is up.

636
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: There's an average there, but yeah, they live much much

637
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 1: shorter than muons. Muons live forever compared to a higgs boson.

638
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 1: You know, higgs boson can be born and died ten

639
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 1: to eighteen times before a muon decays. Whoa digging down

640
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,320
Speaker 1: even deeper. Some of the shortest lived particles we know

641
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: about are things like the W boson, the z boson

642
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: on the top quark. These last for like ten to

643
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 1: the minus twenty seven seconds. And that's about as far

644
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 1: as we can go in terms of like theoretical stuff

645
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 1: that we can describe. And this is just probing theoretically,

646
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: like what can we describe in our theories of quantum

647
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: particles that takes this short amount of time. That's about

648
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: the bottom of.

649
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 2: It, meaning like of all the things that we have

650
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 2: names for physically in the universe, that's about the shortest

651
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 2: scale that the operating.

652
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:19,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And you could postulate something that happens short.

653
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 1: There's no limitation there, Like we think about other particles

654
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: that are really really heavy that might decay much much faster.

655
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: There's nothing that's stopping you from thinking about that. But

656
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:30,720
Speaker 1: we don't know of any particles in the universe that

657
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: operate on a shorter timescale.

658
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 2: You can always talk about how fast things go right

659
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:37,840
Speaker 2: or light goes right, like like, can't you say, well,

660
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 2: light travels one zipto fento minisecond in less amount of

661
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 2: time than that?

662
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, exactly. You can always divide time further

663
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 1: according to general relativity. You can just keep slicing it

664
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: and you could measure it the way you describe, like

665
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 1: how far does light go? And if space is continuous

666
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: and time is continuous, you could just keep doing that forever. Right,

667
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: you go down to ten to the minus a million,

668
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: you know, zero point zero with a million zeros and

669
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: then a one of seconds, and think about how far

670
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: light goes there. But at some point you're beyond the

671
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 1: extrapolation the same way that we talked about like genm

672
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 1: relativity breaking down. You know, when we go to the

673
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: heart of black holes and having infinite density. We're not

674
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 1: really comfortable thinking about things theoretically smaller than a certain

675
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: time called the Plank time, which is ten to the

676
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: minus forty four seconds. We think that our theory of

677
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 1: quantum particles and quantum field theory and the standard model

678
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: works very very well down to about that resolution, and

679
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: beyond that we don't trust it.

680
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 2: I know we had an episode about the plank time,

681
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 2: but it was too much time ago I don't remember.

682
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 2: So maybe for our listeners, what is the plank time?

683
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 2: But make it quick.

684
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:52,720
Speaker 1: The plank time is sort of two things. It's on

685
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: one hand, just like you put together a bunch of

686
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: physical constants of the universe until you get something that

687
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 1: has units of time, and then you ask, okay, what's

688
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: the number. So you take like the speed of light

689
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: and the gravitational constant and planks constant, and those all

690
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 1: have units on them, you know, energy or meters or

691
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 1: seconds whatever, but you can put them together in a

692
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:13,400
Speaker 1: way that cancels and you get a number, and that

693
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: number is ten to the minus forty four seconds, and

694
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 1: then you can ask, well, what does that number mean?

695
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: And you know the number doesn't mean anything very precisely.

696
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:22,960
Speaker 1: You hear a lot in popular science that it's like,

697
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: definitively the minimum resolution of time. It's definitely not that.

698
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: It's just like, this is what we can do to

699
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: say roughly where things start to be different because at

700
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: the plank time, or if you rearrange it to the

701
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: plank distance, or you rearrange it differently to like the

702
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: plank energy. That's where we think our theories break down,

703
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: where we need to have some contribution from gravity and

704
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: some contribution from quant mechanics, and again we don't know

705
00:33:47,120 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 1: how to put those two things together. So we can

706
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: extrapolate our theories up to about the plank energy or

707
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: down to the plank time it's equivalent, but beyond that

708
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:58,000
Speaker 1: is basically a question mark. Theoretically, we don't know how

709
00:33:58,040 --> 00:34:01,400
Speaker 1: to do calculations that we trust and rely on shorter

710
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: than the plank time.

711
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 2: Maybe another way to look at it is that it's

712
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:07,240
Speaker 2: sort of like when the things that we know about

713
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:09,799
Speaker 2: that happen physically in the universe sort of end, right,

714
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 2: Like we don't know of anything that's smaller than the

715
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 2: plank distance, or we don't know of anything that happens

716
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 2: shorter than the plank time to scale, and so it's

717
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 2: like unknown territory.

718
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unknown territory, and it's unknown territory. We can't

719
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:26,359
Speaker 1: even like really think coherently past it, like we've never

720
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: seen anything at ten to the minus forty four seconds.

721
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 1: But we can talk about it, and we can calculate it,

722
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 1: we can imagine it, we can use our theories, but

723
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:36,879
Speaker 1: beyond that, we don't even really know how to think

724
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 1: about it carefully. Like you could think about it not carefully.

725
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:41,399
Speaker 1: You could say, well, I'm just going to use general

726
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:44,240
Speaker 1: relativity and assume it is correct and talk about infinite

727
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: slices of time and infinitely short distances like travel. You

728
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:49,759
Speaker 1: could do that, but nobody believes that that describes reality,

729
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,279
Speaker 1: the same way nobody believes that there's a singularity the

730
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: heart of a black hole. It's a naive extrapolation of

731
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: general relativity beyond what we think is reasonable, and so

732
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: we can't even really think coherently about it, sort of

733
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 1: the way we can't think coherently about what happened before

734
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: the Big Bang, because for the same reason our theories

735
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:09,720
Speaker 1: break down there. We need a theory of quantum gravity

736
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 1: to take us further back. So we don't even have

737
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 1: like mental theoretical pictures that we can trust.

738
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:17,800
Speaker 2: Right right, all right, Well, that's kind of a picture

739
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 2: of how fast things move in the universe, now, Daniel,

740
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 2: how fast do kids grow up? Faster than that? Or flow?

741
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: It feels like a million years every hour when you're

742
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: in it and then it feels like a million of

743
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:30,480
Speaker 1: a second, and when you're looking back on.

744
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:35,399
Speaker 2: It as their physical effect. A name for that. It's

745
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 2: called the theory of relations, theory of relatives. Yeah, that's

746
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:43,120
Speaker 2: what I was gonna say, the relatives. Yeah, the relative

747
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 2: theory of relatives.

748
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 1: Parental time dilation in the theory of relatives. But no,

749
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 1: we have been doing our best to try to understand

750
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:53,680
Speaker 1: how fast things actually happen in our universe, not just

751
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:57,360
Speaker 1: think about them theoretically, and lots of really cool, amazing

752
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: techniques out there to measure really really short of time.

753
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:05,000
Speaker 2: I guess what we've been talking about are things that

754
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 2: we know happen in super short time scales. But then

755
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,359
Speaker 2: there's the other question, the flip side, which is which

756
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 2: of these events can we actually measure and see for

757
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 2: ourselves that they happen at that timescale. Yeah, so let's

758
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 2: get into that technology. But first let's take another quick break.

759
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 2: All right, we're talking about the fastest things in the universe,

760
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 2: or I guess, the fastest events in the universe, the

761
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 2: things that happened in at the shortest time scales.

762
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, the most fleeting things in the universe.

763
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and this podcast is I think at it

764
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 2: for maybe the longest event in the universe. But let's

765
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:54,879
Speaker 2: get to it because we're gonna get a run short

766
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 2: of time soon.

767
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. So when we try to see things happening in

768
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:01,080
Speaker 1: the universe, we do something pretty basic. We take slow

769
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: motion footage. Like if you're taking a movie and you

770
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:06,359
Speaker 1: measure thirty frames per second and then you play them

771
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 1: on the screen at thirty frames per second, then everything

772
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,399
Speaker 1: plays like normal. But if instead you take like three

773
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: hundred frames per second and you play them on the

774
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,720
Speaker 1: screen at thirty frames per second, then time looks slow.

775
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:20,919
Speaker 1: In the movie, everything is slowed down. You can see

776
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: ussin Bolt running at a reasonable rate. You can see

777
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:28,200
Speaker 1: fast things happening more slowly. So that's what we try

778
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 1: to do, is we try to develop cameras that can

779
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:35,480
Speaker 1: basically take pictures or make measurements equivalently much faster than

780
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 1: thirty frames per second, so that we can watch them

781
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: slow down and try to understand what happens.

782
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 2: Right, And it sort of depends on what you're trying

783
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 2: to capture too, Right, Like the slow motion camera on

784
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:48,319
Speaker 2: your phone can capture you know, your kids running, maybe

785
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:51,359
Speaker 2: somebody jumping into a pool, pretty good. But if you're

786
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,560
Speaker 2: trying to capture something faster, like a bullet or an explosion,

787
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:56,840
Speaker 2: it's not going to be fast enough exactly.

788
00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: And in the old days, people used shutters for this,

789
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: Like you had a camera and you open the shutter

790
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 1: and you let light in. And if you're trying to take,

791
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: for example, a picture of a sporting event, where when

792
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: things are moving really fast, you had a really fast

793
00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:10,720
Speaker 1: shutter setting right, your shutters open for a tiny fraction

794
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 1: of a second. Whereas if you're taking a picture of

795
00:38:13,239 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 1: something in the dark, like at night, I have a

796
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:18,360
Speaker 1: really long exposure, so gather as much light maybe seconds

797
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: or even hours.

798
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,919
Speaker 2: Now, what made you think of a camera? I wonder

799
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:25,319
Speaker 2: if that, in the history of humanity, if cameras are

800
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 2: maybe the first time that we've had something like automated

801
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 2: recording instances of data about the world, because before that, I imagine,

802
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 2: you know, it was maybe people writing things down on

803
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 2: a piece of paper.

804
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,239
Speaker 1: I think that before cameras, we probably had recordings of

805
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: sound also, right, which you could think about the same way,

806
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 1: you know, probably within decades of each other. I haven't

807
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 1: looked at the details.

808
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:51,720
Speaker 2: But those were analogue probably right, Yeah.

809
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 1: Those were definitely analog. The first measurements were definitely analog.

810
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: It's a interesting question, like how far back do we

811
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: have like data things where we have recordings that are

812
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: not just eyewitness testimony, you know. I mean Gallet, for example,

813
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,200
Speaker 1: has his drawings of the night sky, and in some

814
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:08,439
Speaker 1: sense that's still data, right, it went into his eye

815
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: and out his arm, so he's sort of the recording

816
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 1: device there.

817
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's what I mean. Like I wonder for

818
00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:16,040
Speaker 2: most of the history of science, people will just writing

819
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 2: things down a piece of paper. But maybe the cameras,

820
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 2: where you expose a piece of film or played for

821
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 2: a certain amount of time, that's maybe some of the

822
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:26,319
Speaker 2: first times that we had kind of this idea of

823
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 2: a mechanical recording of what's happening in the universe.

824
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:33,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, very cool question. I'm not sure we'll dig into

825
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: the history that. Maybe I'll look into that for an episode.

826
00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:39,799
Speaker 1: But these days we use digital cameras, right, And these

827
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:43,279
Speaker 1: digital cameras can be very very fast, and the technology

828
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: behind the digital camera actually limits how fast they can go.

829
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: The way a digital camera works is that a photon

830
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 1: comes in the lens the same way it does for

831
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: a normal camera. But instead of hitting a piece of

832
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:56,600
Speaker 1: film which has like special chemicals on it that react

833
00:39:56,640 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 1: to the light, instead you hit a pixel, which is

834
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: a piece of phil and the photon hits an electron

835
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 1: inside that piece of silicon, and then the electron is

836
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 1: like free. It's like bumped out a little hole it

837
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:08,839
Speaker 1: was stuck in. It can move along a little bit,

838
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:10,400
Speaker 1: and then it drifts along to the edge of the

839
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: pixel and it gets picked up by some electronics and measured.

840
00:40:14,040 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 1: That's how individual pixel works inside your digital camera. It's

841
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:20,680
Speaker 1: this interaction between the photon the electron. The electron causes

842
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:23,359
Speaker 1: a little bit of current, and those can be really fast.

843
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: Like you can get CCDs or sea moss devices which

844
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,880
Speaker 1: are more modern, which can take pictures down to millions

845
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 1: of frames per second.

846
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 2: Well, you mean, like the camera in my phone can

847
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:32,399
Speaker 2: do that.

848
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:34,919
Speaker 1: Not necessarily the camera in your phone, but like very

849
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 1: high tech sea moss and CCD devices can do this.

850
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: People who want to take pictures of lightning or like

851
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: fuel in a plasma dissolving, or very high speed scientific events,

852
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:47,800
Speaker 1: they have specialized cameras that can get down to millions

853
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: of frames per second In order to be that fast,

854
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 1: you need like very small pixels with very fast electron

855
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 1: drift time. That's what in the end limits it how

856
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:58,480
Speaker 1: long it takes the electron once it's been freed to

857
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: like slide over to the park to the PicTel where

858
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:02,799
Speaker 1: it gets read out. If you went really really high

859
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 1: speed cameras, you're going to make some sacrifices in the

860
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: design to make it that fast. So then it's not

861
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 1: as good for like taking pictures of your kids, but

862
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:11,960
Speaker 1: it's really good for measuring fast things.

863
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 2: You might be able to catch the exact point at

864
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 2: which they grew up and record it forever.

865
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly when they started rolling their eyes at you

866
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:21,880
Speaker 1: instead of laughing at your jokes.

867
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:24,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. That's slow roll their eyes. You

868
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 2: can have it at a million of a second resolution.

869
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these are cool devices. Actually played with one

870
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: for one of my first science projects when I was

871
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:36,040
Speaker 1: a summer student, using it to take pictures of lightning

872
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 1: in the skies in New Mexico at thousands of frames

873
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 1: per second, which is pretty cool. It's amazing to see

874
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:42,160
Speaker 1: the world slow down.

875
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 2: But I wonder why you bring up cameras. I know

876
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 2: cameras are used in astronomy, right, like those big telescopes

877
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 2: they have basically camera sensors at the end of the telescope.

878
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 2: But how much are cameras used in like physics labs.

879
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:57,360
Speaker 1: Well, it's a little bit philosophical.

880
00:41:57,400 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 3: You know.

881
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: You could think of our particle physics detectors kind of

882
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: a camera. You know, it's a bunch of pixels arranged

883
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:06,520
Speaker 1: around a collision point, and it takes an image. In

884
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 1: some sense, a camera really is just an array of detectors.

885
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 1: You know, any kind of detector you have, just make

886
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: an array of them so you get some sort of

887
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:16,279
Speaker 1: like spatial measurement as well as time. You know, that's

888
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 1: really what a picture is. It's just like a bunch

889
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:20,280
Speaker 1: of measurements all in an array.

890
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 2: Are you saying that the large Hadron collider the eight

891
00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:25,799
Speaker 2: billion dollar machine there, and we could have just used

892
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 2: the cell phone camera.

893
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, actually that's what we did. We just bought one

894
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 1: iPhone and we kept the rest of the month for ourselves.

895
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,800
Speaker 2: It's just a whole bunch of iPhones, yes, arranged around

896
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 2: the collision point.

897
00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 1: Your hard hitting investigative journalism right here has exposed the

898
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 1: scam today.

899
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 2: Yes, no, but seriously, like what's the difference between the

900
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 2: sensors that the large had and collider and like my

901
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 2: cell phone camera, do they work faster or are they

902
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 2: basically the same or.

903
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 1: They are basically the same. I mean, actually the devices

904
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: near the center of the collision, the fastest, smallest devices

905
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 1: we have are silicon devices, and we borrow the technology

906
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:04,760
Speaker 1: from the semiconductor industry, which use them to develop chips

907
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: and cameras, so we're basically piggybacking off of that technology.

908
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:11,360
Speaker 1: It's a little bit different because we apply higher voltage

909
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 1: across these pixels to make them read out a little

910
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: bit faster, but it's fundamentally the same thing. Yeah.

911
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 2: Wait wait, so then when you take a picture of

912
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 2: a Higgs boson, can you put it in portrait mode?

913
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 1: Also you can do the touch up? Yeah? Absolutely, I

914
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 1: like my Sepia Higgs boson only timey Higgs boson.

915
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 2: Or like the Higgs boson with bunny ears or something.

916
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 1: All the best scientific papers and bunny ears. Absolutely.

917
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I know it'd be very popular in TikTok.

918
00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:41,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in the end, this is limited in time.

919
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 1: You know, in the large Hadron collider, we don't need

920
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:46,360
Speaker 1: things much faster than that. We have millions of collisions

921
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: per second, and so that the fact that our devices

922
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: can read out millions of times per second is fast enough.

923
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:53,719
Speaker 1: We don't need to go faster. But there are people

924
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 1: who are interested in things that happen in like a

925
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: trillionth of a second instead of a billionth or a millionth.

926
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 1: There are special vice some special cameras that can take

927
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 1: footage with trillions of frames per second.

928
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 2: Wait. Wait, so you're saying the large pattern collider. You

929
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 2: don't care about things or you can't measure things that

930
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 2: happen faster than a minute of a second.

931
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:14,319
Speaker 1: We don't care about things that happen faster than that,

932
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 1: and we can't resolve it anyway. It would be much

933
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: more expensive to have our devices be able to do that.

934
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:20,840
Speaker 1: But we only have one collision.

935
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:22,320
Speaker 2: I know you need the latest iPhone.

936
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 1: Probably we're interested in one collision at a time, right,

937
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: So if we only looked at one collision, we wouldn't

938
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:31,920
Speaker 1: need to be very fast. You just have a collision.

939
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:34,239
Speaker 1: It sits in your detector, you read it out. It's

940
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: like a single picture. We're not taking movies of these interactions.

941
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,440
Speaker 1: We only take one picture basically per interaction.

942
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 2: Oh I see, but could you would you learn more?

943
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 2: Ife you could take a slow motion movie of like

944
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:48,319
Speaker 2: two protons hitting each other.

945
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:51,840
Speaker 1: We can't actually instrument the collision itself, only the stuff

946
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:53,840
Speaker 1: that flies out of it, and so in the end

947
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: we're just sort of looking at the debris. And sometimes

948
00:44:56,400 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: we are interested in like when bits arise, because it

949
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: tells us like how fast they're moving. So we do

950
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: have some specialized time of flight detectors people developed to

951
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 1: see like did this photon arrive before that electron in

952
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 1: the same collision or not, So we do sometimes dig

953
00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: into that a little bit, but mostly we just care

954
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: about what flew out. We don't usually care about like

955
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 1: what the order was or the sequence of events doesn't

956
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 1: really tell us that much more. And it's really really

957
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:21,760
Speaker 1: hard to do, especially that fast.

958
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:24,439
Speaker 2: Interesting, but you're saying that there are, as we talked

959
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 2: about before, there are physical events that happen in a

960
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 2: much shorter timescale, and so for that you need even

961
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:30,880
Speaker 2: better cameras.

962
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these are called streak cameras. The idea of

963
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,319
Speaker 1: a CCD or SEEMS device is a photon releases an

964
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: electron and then you pick up those electrons. But you

965
00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 1: don't distinguish between an electron that arrived near the end

966
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:45,160
Speaker 1: of your time cycle and near the beginning of it,

967
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:47,360
Speaker 1: and within a single frame, you count those electrons the

968
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:49,919
Speaker 1: same way, and that loses information. If there are things

969
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: happening faster than your time cycle than your frame, then

970
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: you're losing them. So a streak camera tries to take

971
00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 1: advantage of that, and it applies a time varying electric feel.

972
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 1: So electrons that are released at one moment and electrons

973
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: are released another moment will end up in different directions,

974
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:09,919
Speaker 1: so it sort of like sweeps a single frame across

975
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:13,359
Speaker 1: something in space and like spreads it out. That's why

976
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,160
Speaker 1: it's called a streak camera, like takes these electrons and

977
00:46:16,200 --> 00:46:19,880
Speaker 1: sprays them across something so you can tell when they arrived.

978
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 2: Well wait, wait, so this is like a sensor just

979
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 2: like the camera or is this a different kind of sensor.

980
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: It's fundamentally like a camera, right. A photon comes in

981
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: and releases an electron, but instead of just letting the

982
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: electrons drift across your pixel, you know, guiding these electrons

983
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 1: to different places like on a mini screen based on

984
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:39,120
Speaker 1: when they arrived.

985
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 2: So sort of instead of catching the electrons in a bucket.

986
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 2: You sort of sweep the bucket so that you can

987
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:48,600
Speaker 2: tell when the electrons were released, which tells you when

988
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:50,840
Speaker 2: the photons arrived at your sensor.

989
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:54,759
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, So where the electron hits tells you when

990
00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:57,360
Speaker 1: it was created, which tells you when the photon arrived.

991
00:46:57,360 --> 00:46:59,560
Speaker 1: So then you could tell the difference between a photon

992
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 1: that arrived at the beginning or the end of your frame.

993
00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:05,920
Speaker 2: And this gets you more more time resolution.

994
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, And so street cameras go down to like

995
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,799
Speaker 1: ten to the minus fourteen seconds. The fastest that I

996
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: found was one that can do seventy trillion frames per second.

997
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:18,480
Speaker 1: That's like a lot of pictures of your kid picking

998
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:18,959
Speaker 1: their nose.

999
00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 2: Well, depends how quickly they do it. But what kinds

1000
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 2: of things are being measured with this crazy camera? Like

1001
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 2: what are they trying to do?

1002
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: These things are used to understand like biochemistry and some

1003
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 1: kind of interactions, you know, like proteins folding or bonds forming,

1004
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: you know, basically chemicals interacting this kind of stuff. But

1005
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:45,880
Speaker 1: you know, lots of people are just curious and nobody

1006
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:48,399
Speaker 1: really knows. It's sort of like uncharted territory. There are

1007
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:50,320
Speaker 1: things we think happen in a certain way, and it

1008
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 1: might be that if you slow them down they happen differently.

1009
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: This weird stuff happening that nobody expected. So it's sort

1010
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:59,360
Speaker 1: of like exploring the unknown. So people are using street

1011
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 1: cameras to or all sorts of things hoping to find

1012
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:02,600
Speaker 1: something new.

1013
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 2: Now, this is if you're trying to capture photons, right.

1014
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, in order to like take a picture of something.

1015
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 2: Right, right, But you can also just measure things in

1016
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:14,360
Speaker 2: other ways, right, like measure the voltage of something, or

1017
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 2: measure I don't know, the magnetic field or something.

1018
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 1: Hmm.

1019
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:20,040
Speaker 2: Would those be able to be measured faster?

1020
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:23,880
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, there's not a fundamental limitation there. You know.

1021
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 1: The question is really like can you capture something which

1022
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 1: varies that quickly? Can you isolate it? And in order

1023
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: to do that you need to like probe it. You

1024
00:48:32,040 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 1: need to like create something that happens at that fast

1025
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 1: time slice so that you can take a picture of it.

1026
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:39,560
Speaker 1: You need like something that happens really quickly, and then

1027
00:48:39,560 --> 00:48:42,400
Speaker 1: something that can respond very quickly, and then something that

1028
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: can record that. And people are really pushing the forefront

1029
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 1: of that technology. This is actually what won the Nobel

1030
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: Prize in twenty twenty three is making super duper short

1031
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:56,440
Speaker 1: laser pulses down to the atto second, down to ten

1032
00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 1: to the minus eighteen seconds. And these were super short

1033
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:04,480
Speaker 1: laser pulses created by layering longer laser pulses on top

1034
00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:06,160
Speaker 1: of each other to sort of like interfere with each

1035
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 1: other to make a super short pulse. And you can

1036
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: use this to like probe things that are happening inside

1037
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 1: the nucleus or inside an atom. You can give it

1038
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:17,800
Speaker 1: a super short kick and see what happens.

1039
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, how does that help you measure of something fast

1040
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:22,240
Speaker 2: a short laser pulse.

1041
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:25,759
Speaker 1: They use this technique called pump probe measurements. Basically, you

1042
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 1: shoot this laser pulse at the thing you're trying to

1043
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:30,160
Speaker 1: look at and you take one measurement of it, so

1044
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 1: you have like one measurement of where your electron is

1045
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: after you zap it with a laser. And what you're

1046
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:37,839
Speaker 1: really interested in is like a movie, So you want

1047
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:40,160
Speaker 1: to see, like how does the electron jumping from one

1048
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 1: energy level to another or from one atom to another.

1049
00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 1: So you zap it with this laser pulse and you

1050
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: take one measurement of your electron. That doesn't give you

1051
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 1: a whole movie, but you can do it over and

1052
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:51,719
Speaker 1: over again. So if you can set up the same

1053
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:54,200
Speaker 1: system over and over again and zap it with a

1054
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:58,160
Speaker 1: laser pulse at slightly different times along the process, and

1055
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 1: take a measurement each time, and you can put them

1056
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 1: together into a movie. So it's like if you watch

1057
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:06,759
Speaker 1: your kid do a long jump, and you take a

1058
00:50:06,800 --> 00:50:09,359
Speaker 1: really fast picture, but only one picture per long jump,

1059
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 1: and then you stitch them together into a whole description

1060
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 1: of the long jump. Because you're able to take really

1061
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:17,320
Speaker 1: fast pictures, you have a now very slow motion movie

1062
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 1: of the long jump. It's really a movie of like

1063
00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:22,600
Speaker 1: a thousand long jumps. So you took one picture from each,

1064
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:25,360
Speaker 1: so it's not exactly the same thing, but in principle,

1065
00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: they are very fast measurements of this event.

1066
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 2: I think I see what you're saying that this is

1067
00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 2: like a flash basically, right, Yeah, you're basicallyating a super

1068
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 2: fast flash, which lets you capture what's going on even

1069
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 2: if that thing is going super super fast. By having

1070
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 2: a really short flash, you can get a picture of

1071
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:45,880
Speaker 2: it because otherwise, like even the flash in your camera

1072
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 2: takes a while. And so if anything happens faster than

1073
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:50,920
Speaker 2: that will just get streaked in your photo.

1074
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Like remember those Strobe photographs. People develop really

1075
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:57,400
Speaker 1: fast flashes and they took pictures like a bullet them

1076
00:50:57,480 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: through an apple. You don't need a really fast camera

1077
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 1: if you have a really fast flash and everything is

1078
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,799
Speaker 1: dark otherwise, because then you're only illuminating it during one

1079
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:08,200
Speaker 1: very brief moment. Now imagine you did that same experiment

1080
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 1: a million times, and you turn the flash on a

1081
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:13,480
Speaker 1: slightly different time each time. You'd have a whole movie,

1082
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 1: a whole slow motion movie. It'd be from different bullets

1083
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 1: hitting different apples, but in principle you'd put together the

1084
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:20,360
Speaker 1: dynamics of what's happening.

1085
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 2: All right, So that's a camera then that can take

1086
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:27,520
Speaker 2: pictures as essentially sort of every at a second.

1087
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:31,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. The limitation so far as forty three auto seconds.

1088
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:33,759
Speaker 1: So this is really getting to the edge of what

1089
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:37,920
Speaker 1: we can do. But the fastest thing ever measured actually

1090
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,880
Speaker 1: does get down to the zepdo second. This is a

1091
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:45,560
Speaker 1: really cool technique where they shoot a photon and a

1092
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 1: molecule that has two electrons. So say, for example, you

1093
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 1: have like H two, which is two protons and two electrons, right,

1094
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:56,720
Speaker 1: two atoms of hydrogen bonded together. You shoot a photon

1095
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 1: at it, and it actually interacts with both electrons. Okay,

1096
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: So this single photon like hits one electron and then

1097
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: it hits another electrons and those electrons react, right, both

1098
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:10,880
Speaker 1: of them generate some signal, and those signals interfere. And

1099
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 1: by looking at the interference between the light generated from

1100
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: those two electrons, you can see this time difference. So

1101
00:52:18,239 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 1: you can tell that the photon hit one and then

1102
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,040
Speaker 1: later it hit the other one, and the time difference

1103
00:52:23,040 --> 00:52:25,800
Speaker 1: between those two things is about two hundred and fifty

1104
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: zepto seconds.

1105
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:31,239
Speaker 2: WHOA, now, what does this help you measure? When you

1106
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:33,240
Speaker 2: use this to take a photograph.

1107
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:35,399
Speaker 1: Of it, lets you declare yourself the king of time. Man.

1108
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:38,800
Speaker 1: This is the fastest thing ever measured. So, in one sense,

1109
00:52:38,880 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 1: this is just like engineers being awesome and like trying

1110
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:44,680
Speaker 1: to make things as fast as possible, just for the

1111
00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:46,520
Speaker 1: purpose of making things as fast as possible.

1112
00:52:46,600 --> 00:52:49,120
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, Daniel, engineers are awesome, yes, just

1113
00:52:49,160 --> 00:52:50,360
Speaker 2: by being engineeredselves.

1114
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:52,920
Speaker 1: Yes, even when they sleep in and sit around in

1115
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,800
Speaker 1: their pajamas and doodle cartoons all day. Engineers are exactly.

1116
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 2: I mean, that's even more awesome. Let's face it, absolutely,

1117
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:01,560
Speaker 2: that's the pinnacle of awesome obviously, right, Like who wouldn't

1118
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:02,800
Speaker 2: go on that job.

1119
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 1: Without doubt, without doubt. But you know, if you're interested

1120
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:10,040
Speaker 1: in how H two works and how electrons interfere with

1121
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: each other, you know, and understanding the system and all

1122
00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:16,200
Speaker 1: is full glory. Usually we think about like an individual

1123
00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:18,600
Speaker 1: electron one at a time, but really it's a complicated

1124
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:21,680
Speaker 1: system where the electrons can interact and affect each other.

1125
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:24,960
Speaker 1: If you want to understand the finite gradations of energy

1126
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:27,960
Speaker 1: levels in H two, then this can help you understand that.

1127
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: By poking one electron and poking another.

1128
00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 2: So what is it actually measuring, like the difference in

1129
00:53:33,280 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 2: time between when the electrons came out of the atom

1130
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:39,320
Speaker 2: or just when the photons hit each of the atoms

1131
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:39,879
Speaker 2: or what.

1132
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:42,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's measuring those two electrons. So you're knocking both

1133
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:45,320
Speaker 1: electrons out of the atom, and then you're making measurements

1134
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:48,440
Speaker 1: of those electrons, and because they're sort of almost on

1135
00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: top of each other, those two electrons can interfere, and

1136
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:54,359
Speaker 1: the interference pattern lets you recover that there's a time

1137
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 1: difference between the two electrons when they get knocked out.

1138
00:53:57,760 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 2: And the normal measurement you think, oh, both electrons can

1139
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:01,839
Speaker 2: not at the same time. But yeah, now you're saying

1140
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:03,879
Speaker 2: we can actually tell like, oh, this one, the right

1141
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 2: one came out first, then the black one exactly.

1142
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,479
Speaker 1: And the difference in time is really minute. It's two

1143
00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:12,840
Speaker 1: times ten of the negative nineteen seconds. And that is

1144
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: the fastest thing ever measured.

1145
00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 2: Wha, that's even faster than the Higgs boson.

1146
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:21,200
Speaker 1: It's not faster than the Higgs boson, but we've never

1147
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,320
Speaker 1: measured the lifetime of a Higgs boson. The Higgs boson

1148
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 1: lifetime ten of the minus twenty four seconds. That's theoretical, Like,

1149
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,480
Speaker 1: we don't know how long the Higgs boson lasts. We'd

1150
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:32,359
Speaker 1: haven't measured it.

1151
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 2: Actually, maybe if you install the new iOS on your

1152
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 2: large hydron collider phones here, yeah, a particle physics portrait mode.

1153
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:43,000
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.

1154
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 1: There's a way indirectly to understand the lifetime of the

1155
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:48,240
Speaker 1: Higgs boson because it's connected to its mass and how

1156
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:51,399
Speaker 1: different Higgs bosons have different masses, And there's a bunch

1157
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 1: of theory that lets you say, if you measure the

1158
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:55,799
Speaker 1: mass of the Higgs boson. You can then extrapolate to

1159
00:54:55,840 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: know what its lifetime is, but that's not the same

1160
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,640
Speaker 1: as actually measuring its lifetime. That theory and be wrong.

1161
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:03,360
Speaker 1: So we haven't been able to resolve the lifetime of

1162
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:06,360
Speaker 1: a Higgs boson, like the time between when it's created

1163
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:10,320
Speaker 1: and it decays. And even this zep doo second measuring

1164
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:13,800
Speaker 1: device is like a factor of ten thousand too slow

1165
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 1: to observe a Higgs boson.

1166
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 2: Well, I guess maybe what you mean, like, this is

1167
00:55:18,160 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 2: the fastest physical event we've seen. Yeah, with like a

1168
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:24,320
Speaker 2: camera basically.

1169
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:26,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, with a camera, we're like the definition of a

1170
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: camera is kind of loose here because we're not like

1171
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: getting pixels or images here. We're just sort of making

1172
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:33,680
Speaker 1: measurements after illuminating it, right, we flash it with an

1173
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:35,560
Speaker 1: X ray, maybe take some measurements.

1174
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,319
Speaker 2: Right, So this is the fastest event that we have

1175
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 2: a pick for. So definitely it happened exactly, because otherwise

1176
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:43,840
Speaker 2: it didn't happen.

1177
00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: Pigs, or it didn't happen, and this is the fastest.

1178
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:48,479
Speaker 2: Pigs it didn't happen, Yeah, exactly, And.

1179
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:51,359
Speaker 1: We think probably the universe is operating on a much

1180
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:55,840
Speaker 1: shorter timescale we do these calculations. We're pretty confident in

1181
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:59,319
Speaker 1: our theory about Higgs bosons and Wz's bosons. We think

1182
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 1: it's happening, but it's not the same as actually seeing it.

1183
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 2: M all right, Well, it's kind of this interesting convergence

1184
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:09,799
Speaker 2: of technology and theory, right, It's like this is where

1185
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:12,320
Speaker 2: rubber meets throat basically, right, Like you have these theories,

1186
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:14,799
Speaker 2: but then you need actual measurements to prove that these

1187
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:17,479
Speaker 2: things are happening at those time scales, and that's where

1188
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:19,840
Speaker 2: the technology is right now, that's right.

1189
00:56:19,719 --> 00:56:22,839
Speaker 1: And the experimental technology actually taking these pictures is still

1190
00:56:22,840 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 1: like twenty five orders of magnitude away from the theory.

1191
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:28,360
Speaker 1: Like the theory will work down to ten of the

1192
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:31,440
Speaker 1: mist forty four seconds. We've only measured down to ten

1193
00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: of the mist nineteen seconds. So there's a long way

1194
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 1: to go.

1195
00:56:35,040 --> 00:56:39,120
Speaker 2: Oh so we're halfway there. Sure, Sure, we've done that

1196
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:40,040
Speaker 2: in what twenty years?

1197
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:43,240
Speaker 1: So yeah, the same way that like getting one thousand

1198
00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:45,480
Speaker 1: dollars is like halfway to a million dollars, right, it's

1199
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:47,080
Speaker 1: just ten to the three insteah exactly.

1200
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 2: If you think logarithms scale actually or the way inflation

1201
00:56:53,760 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 2: is going right now for much to say, totally fair.

1202
00:56:58,200 --> 00:57:01,840
Speaker 1: Anyway, we're making progress. We're illuminating the universe. It's smaller

1203
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: and smaller time slices. Maybe eventually, one day we'll see

1204
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:09,080
Speaker 1: it at its smallest time slice and discover the granularity

1205
00:57:09,200 --> 00:57:10,280
Speaker 1: of the universe itself.

1206
00:57:10,640 --> 00:57:13,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we can measure the progress of human eyes

1207
00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 2: to see the fast things in the universe. Daniel, when

1208
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 2: should be the next podcast episode where we sample how

1209
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 2: fast things can be measured?

1210
00:57:22,600 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 1: You know, things are happening pretty rapidly, so maybe in

1211
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:27,959
Speaker 1: the next couple of years so we will break this record.

1212
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 2: In which case we might set a new record for

1213
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:33,760
Speaker 2: what's the fastest change in how fast we can measure

1214
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:36,959
Speaker 2: things measured by a podcast in portrait mode.

1215
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:39,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe by then we'll be making millions of

1216
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 1: dollars instead of thousands.

1217
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, by then we're halfway there. Yeah, hopefully hopefully, we

1218
00:57:44,160 --> 00:57:48,080
Speaker 2: can only hope so and maybe by then I'll actually

1219
00:57:48,080 --> 00:57:51,560
Speaker 2: remember what we talked about in the episodes. Sounds like

1220
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 2: a plan, All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that.

1221
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, See you next time.

1222
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:04,400
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media,

1223
00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:08,640
Speaker 1: where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg,

1224
00:58:08,720 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 1: Insta and now TikTok. Thanks for listening and remember that

1225
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:16,320
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1226
00:58:16,600 --> 00:58:21,720
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1227
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.