WEBVTT - What Is A Tachyon? 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:11.200 Hey, Daniel, do particle physicists ever make mistakes? Oh yeah, 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.840 all the time. One time I ordered licorice ice cream, 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:18.159 big mistake. I once had garlic ice cream that was 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.120 That was probably a bigger mistake. Do you know they 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:24.239 make garlic ice cream? Yeah, they have pretty experimental flavors, 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:26.759 sometimes with ice creams. What I mean is, have physicists 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.800 ever written papers that, like scientific papers that turn out 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.440 to be wrong? You know, it does happen. The most 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.599 famous example comes from the Maybe the Opera experiment, which 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.640 in two thousand eleven claimed to have measured neutrinos going 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:45.040 faster than the speed of light. Wow. Turns out they 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.159 just had a cable loose, and when they jiggled it, 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:49.280 all the numbers got back into sink and everything was 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.240 traveling happily less than the speed of light. Oh man, 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.760 particles can't travel faster than light. Probably not. But you know, 0:00:57.040 --> 0:00:59.400 if particles could travel fast in the speed of light, 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:02.640 physicist are already set up with an awesome name for them. 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:04.600 Oh yeah, they have a good name for this far 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.280 faster than light particles. They called the garlic kino or 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:15.880 the liquor on um linker. That's like a terrible pun 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:35.600 like a not safe for work pun him and I'm 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.840 Daniel and welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.080 the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:44.920 we take the universe and explain everything in it to you, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.680 including things which might not be possible that's right, thanks 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:50.880 with that are tasteful and nice, and things that are 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:55.640 maybe a little tacky, things which stretch the boundaries of understanding, 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.120 things which might even break the laws of physics themselves. 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:00.960 To be on the pro graam we're going to talk 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:10.320 about take eons. Are they real? What are they? Are 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:14.280 they really tacky? What are they on? Who taught them 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:19.080 their sense of style exactly? Um Tacons are a fascinating 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.440 concept because, first of all, theoret from the theoretical physics 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.239 point of view, they're interesting, like the idea for a 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:28.040 tachion is a particle that travels faster than the speed 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.240 of light, and so that already is like immediately arresting, 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.040 like is it possible? How would that work? What would 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:35.919 it mean? Right? But they also exist in science fiction. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.440 So this is a particle that it exists in the 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.480 minds of physicists, but we don't know if it exists 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.079 in the real world. Yeah, exactly, And it's the really 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:49.120 interesting history sort of of the idea. There was a 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.440 short story written by somebody in which they had particles 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:54.440 going faster than the speed of light. So it started 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.160 in science fiction, and then there was a physicist that 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:00.320 read that story and thought, could you do that? Would 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:02.720 that be possible? And sat down and sort of worked 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.160 out the mathematics of it, and then gave it a name, 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.959 called it attack eon Um. And then more science fiction 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.160 writers heard about that and thought, oh, well, this must 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:13.360 be a real thing now, And now it's like everywhere 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.320 and science fiction and we heard attack eons everywhere. It's 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:21.320 like a cosmic bad case of telephone exactly exactly, just 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:23.000 sort of an idea of bouncing around, and you know 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:25.560 there must be something really to it. If it's really 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.960 resonating in the minds of physicists and science fiction authors, 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.040 you know, it's something tantalizing, something exciting, something people want 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:35.480 to be true, right, because it it would expand our 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:38.480 kind of what's possible in the universe, right, yeah, Or 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.880 it would expand the plot options available to science fiction authors. Right. 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:43.960 If you can send particles fast in the speed of 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.160 light and backwards in time and all sorts of stuff. 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:48.480 Then there's lots of things you can do with your plots. 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:50.720 That's right. If you follow the laws of physics, all 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:54.920 science fiction would be pretty boring. Right, that's right. You 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.240 know everything in the first scene. You can predict the 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.440 whole story. Right. Actually, I feel like a lot of 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:01.720 science fics is like that. You read one chapter, you 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:03.960 know the whole story. You know the whole story. Yeah. 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:06.640 Did this writer come up with the name for the 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.080 tacon or was it the physicists who read this story? No, 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.720 it was the physicist. Um. So the story was written 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.039 by a guy named Blish and the story is called Beep. 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.520 Involves like messages from aliens that come in. At the 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:22.760 end of every message, there's a beep and it turns 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:25.120 out of the beep and codes like all future messages 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:29.720 or whatever. Oops, I just spoiled the story for everybody anyway, um, 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:31.720 because parts of the message traveled fast in the speed 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:33.719 of light. And so then the physicists read the story 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:37.120 and came up with it in a n paper of 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.360 this physicist named Gerald Feinberg, and so he coined the name. 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.719 Take on as far as I eroners did. But you 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:45.560 know now it's everywhere. It's in the pop culture, everywhere 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.080 you turn. Yeah, he should have named after the author 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:53.880 The Blisson, I think catch on quite as much or 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.200 the Beeps. No, but you know, I read about the 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.240 tacons because they're part of the integral part of the 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:01.560 plot of one of my favorite comic books and in fact, 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:03.480 one of the most famous comic books of all time. 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.839 What is Jorge's favorite comic book? I'm dying to know. 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:14.360 One of my favorites. Is it you can throw banana 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:16.559 peels from the tips of his fingers and make anybody slip. 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:24.560 It's a liquorice lady, lady. Wow, there's so many not 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:28.280 safer work jokes that can make about the curse lady. Yeah, 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:33.160 they'll they'll need to be peeped out. Um exactly. Um, 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.520 So tell me what is your favorite comic book. One 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.280 of my favorite comic books, and that, uh is one 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:40.960 of the most famous comic books of all time is Watchman? 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:43.919 Have you seen the comic book or the graphic novel 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:46.240 or the movie. I have read the graphic novel and 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.920 I have seen all eleven hours of the movie, all 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:56.839 different versions, all the slow emotion scenes that Zack Snyder added. Yeah, yeah, no, 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.960 I love Mr Tomic who can basically do anything at 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:01.720 the end of the movie, so all plots can just 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:06.560 be resolved by Mr Atomic if necessary, Mr Dr Manhattan 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:10.520 with his name document professor at I like your version better, 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.600 Mr Atomic. That sounds that sounds better. Now it's a 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:21.840 Doctor Manhattan or Mr Manhattan. I think Dr Manhattan And um, yeah, 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.760 so he can see Tacon, so that that's kind of 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:26.760 how he can and he sort of exists in this 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:33.520 kind of quantum you know, uncertainty space time kind of mindset, 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:35.480 so he can see the future, see the past, he 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:37.680 sees it all sort of at the same time. Um. 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.440 And so that's how the villain in the comic book 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:42.760 I'm not going to spoil it kind of gets around 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.320 is he confuses Dr Manhattan by adding a lot of 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.719 take on interference and so he can't take the future 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.880 and he doesn't know what's going to happen. M Very clever, Yes, 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.279 very clever. Um. You also see taggons a lot in 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.839 Star Trek. I noticed as like take on I pulses, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.920 tactionic fields and all sorts of stuff. Anytime they need 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:04.719 to go back in time or send messages back in 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.840 time or whatever they're They're always using tacons, right, They 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:10.119 just always sort of forget to say that these things 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.840 are not real. Well, you know, they're real in the 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.880 Star Trek universe. I suppose they don't really play with 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.200 all the consequences. You know, if you really did have takions, 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.320 a lot of things would break about modern physics. Um, 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:24.760 you know, I had a bit of a tachyonic experience today. Actually, 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:27.640 that just reminds me. I went to file some paperwork 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:30.000 for my student who just defended his PhD, and he 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:31.960 wasn't in town, so he couldn't file it himself. So 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:34.000 I went to this office in the basement and turned 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.480 in these forms, and the woman at the desk must 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:38.920 have thought that it was my PhD, because when I 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:42.720 turned the forum, she reached out she said congratulations, as 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.360 if I was getting my PhD. At this moment, I thought, wow, 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.280 all right, maybe I went back in time and now 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.920 I looked like I'm twenty seven again. Or maybe she 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.000 wasn't wearing her glasses. That's another It was a pretty 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:57.600 dark basement, so I can excuse her. It's in the basement, 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:01.400 it's in the basement, but his thesis was not on 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:05.040 take on. So, but actually we don't know if they're 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:09.120 real or not, right like we do. It's a theoretical possibility, 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.800 but we have no confirmation. Do we have confirmation that 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.520 they can exist. We do not know that they cannot exist. Right. 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:19.200 But that's a pretty broad caveat because in general, it's 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:22.200 really hard to prove the non existence of something. And 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.360 you can always say with an asterisk, like if all 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.680 we know about physics turns out to be wrong or 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:28.640 a special case of the unit part of the universe 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.360 we're living in, than anything could happen. Right, So in 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.280 general it's pretty hard to say with a very with 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:38.760 absolute certainty, something cannot exist. But you can say, and 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.040 we'll get into this more more deeply, that would be 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.040 pretty hard to full take eons into our modern understanding 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:47.480 of physics, right, maybe harder than choking down a whole 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.640 scoop of licorice ice cream more impleasant than you really 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:54.240 wish you would you could go back in time, you know. 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.240 The The joke is, my wife actually loves licorice ice cream, 0:08:57.320 --> 0:08:59.120 and one time we went to an ice cream place 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:01.000 and she ordered to scoop to the licorice ice cream 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.920 and I saw her eating her deliciously. She didn't tell 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.120 me what it was, and I tried to take a 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.199 bite out of it, and it literally like jumped out 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:13.760 of my mouth. It was impulsive. Wow, ejected itself from 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:21.320 my mouth. That's like your your kryptonite or your taon interference. Yeah, 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:23.400 it turns out, actually there's lots of things can defeat me. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.680 But one of them on the long list is a 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:28.960 licorice ice cream. Yes, one of them upsets your stomach, yeah, 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:35.720 or my tongue. Well, attacks is. It's kind of a 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.319 cool name. First of all, take eons and but and 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:41.439 we know that it's in science fiction a lot. It's 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:44.880 in comic books and science fictions in science fiction. But 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.000 we were wondering how many people out there knew what 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.520 it means and what it refers to it. So I 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:51.360 went around the U c ir on campus and I 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.240 accosted random students and said, hey, would you answer a 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.760 random zience question? And all of them said yes, And 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.480 so I asked them about take eons and here's what 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:03.240 they had to say. Have you ever heard of attack on? 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.360 You know what attack on is? What's your best guess 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:10.040 it's a particle which gets admitted from a backle is 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:15.320 that it I would assume it has something to do 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:20.440 with uh space, space, Okay, I have no idea. Okay, 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.880 not yet. I haven't heard of it, Okay. I've also 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:25.840 heard it in a TV show. I think it's in 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.480 the Flash. I think they talk about that, But I 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:31.400 don't know what it is. That sounds cool? Sound cool? No, 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:36.600 I have no idea, okay, oh, no, attack on. I 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:41.000 don't know what it is, but it sounds like something chemical, 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:45.680 something from Star Trek. That's literally, as far as my 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:48.800 knowledge goes. I'm not actually sure if it's even real 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:51.040 or not. It could be entirely from science fiction as 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:55.480 far as i'm more. Alright, not a single positive answer, 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.520 Not a single positive answer. A lot of people have 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:00.920 heard of it, right, Some well, I've never heard of it, 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:02.360 but some people heard of it in the context of 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.440 science fiction or Star Trek or this kind of stuff. Oh, 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:07.400 in the Flash, right, I think they have it in 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:09.760 the TV show with the Flash. Yeah, the Flash must 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:11.640 have it right, because he breaks all sorts of laws 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.040 of physics. It's basically the laws of physics break particle 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:17.440 right anytime you need to break physics just and start 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:25.680 some taions. She just called the plot hole on the plot. 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:29.000 It's like, yeah, it's like filling a pothole, right with 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:32.520 phil potholes with take eons, filled plot holes with takes. Yeah, 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:36.440 so it's done. Not not a common name that people 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:38.920 are familiar with. Um, So let's break it down, Daniel. 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:54.679 But first let's take a quick break. Let's start with this. 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:59.160 What is a tacon alright? So takeon is a theoretical particle, right, 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:01.880 it's an idea. It's idea for a particle that can 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:05.720 travel faster than the speed of light. Right, And remember, 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:08.640 in relativity we say nothing can travel faster than the 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:11.280 speed of light. We say things that have mass can 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:13.480 travel less than the speed of light. Thing and approach it. 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:16.880 Things with no mass, like photons, they travel always at 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:19.040 the speed of light. Right, this, so there's the speed 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:21.640 limit to the universe, the speed of light in a vacuum. 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:25.280 Tachons are like, what if something could break that? What 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:28.000 if something could move faster than the speed of light? 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:31.079 How would that work? And what should we call it? 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:33.520 So that's what a tachian is. I like, how that's 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:37.000 the second most important question about it, not how dis 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.679 revolutionize our understanding on our ability to travel the costumers, 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:42.840 It's like, what are we going to call it? Oh? Yeah, 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.000 there's big fights over the names of stuff, right. You know, 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.400 if you come up with a cool idea, you gotta 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:49.280 name it so it sticks right and you get the 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:51.360 credit for it. You know. This is that famous case 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.360 in particle physics where two groups discovered the same particle 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:56.920 on the same day and gave it different names right 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.640 the same day, the same day. Yeah, there's a whole 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.679 lot of fun whisper stories about how maybe grad students 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:06.319 in one group tipped off grad students in the other group. Anyway, 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:07.920 they named it on the same day, and they gave 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:09.800 it two different names. As so now we call that 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:13.959 particle the j sside particle. We use both names because 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.920 nobody can agree, right, really, people, you guys have fights 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.200 about this, Like I wanted to be called J No, 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:24.679 I wanted to be called side. Like, well, I think 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:26.439 it is personal with the guy who called it j. 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:30.360 He's Chinese, and I think jay Is looks like the 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.080 Chinese character for his name, so I think he's basically 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.480 naming it after himself. But now these are like the 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:37.680 kids of divorced parents, you know, end up with the long, 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:42.319 complicated names anyway. Yes, so naming things very important, and 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.960 as you and I have discussed many times in this podcast, 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.320 physicists don't always do a great job of naming things. 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:50.319 Like sometimes they don't even come up with a new name. 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.040 They're just like, use a word that already exists in 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.560 English that means something else to describe some physics thing, right, Like, 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.520 we have particles that have flavor and color, and like 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:02.800 part don't have actual flavor and color, so we should 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.120 have come up with different words. So in this case, 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.080 I think it's awesome that they actually came up with 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:10.439 a new, cool sounding word. Yeah. I think if you 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:12.800 discover a quark, Daniel, you should call it a new 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:22.040 flavor licorate, the disgusting quirks, the revolting quirks, the vomit quirks. 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:25.120 It turns out vomit is made a little vomit on particles. Technically, 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:29.640 that's true, Yeah, if you write it in a physics paper, right, 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:33.080 So um, but it's always fun theoretically to think about, 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:35.680 like how could this work? What would it mean if 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.680 we took the laws of special relativity and try to 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.040 use them to describe something going faster than the speed 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.760 of light. What would happen? What exactly would break? How 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.040 could we tested? That's sort of the point of attacking. 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:50.520 So it starts with a hypothesis like what if one 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.400 of these particles could go faster than like, what would 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.760 it look like? Yes, exactly exactly what would it look like? 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.080 How do we see it? Could you like break two 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.440 things at one so that in the end it's not broken, right, Like, 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.680 sometimes you have to break one law of physics and 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:07.720 that has a consequence somewhere else, and you're like, Okay, 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:09.840 well maybe I'll just break that one also, and then 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.800 things will be honky dory. Right. So sometimes you can 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.240 make big discoveries by breaking two things at once. Right, 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.560 you can reveal that there were two mistakes to misunderstandings 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:20.120 we had about the universe. That would be like two 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:24.520 Nobel Prizes in one afternoon, two wrongs making it right. Yeah, 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.440 And so that's actually sort of happens here. Um. And 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:31.760 so as you folks listening might know. The interesting idea 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:34.760 and relativity. One of the core ideas and relativity is 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.720 that you can have infinite amount of energy. There's no 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.080 limit on the energy of particle can have or you 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.480 can keep pouring energy into a particle, but there is 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:46.880 a limit on speed. Right. So for example the Large 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:50.040 Hadron Collider, we push particles using little waves, so they 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:52.680 surf and they get more and more energy, but then 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.040 they approach the speed of light and they never really 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:57.960 get faster. That doesn't limit us from adding more energy 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:01.920 to the particles, right, It's kind of like an infinite 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.160 bucket almost, like you can keep pouring energy into it, 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.080 but the speed just won't won't go over the speed 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:10.320 of light. Yeah, and if you're a visual person, you 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.640 can think of sort of a graph. Right. Our basic 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.400 idea of the relationship between speed and energy is that 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:19.640 they're they're directly connected. Right. Um, as you go faster, 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:21.800 you get more energy, and that's true, but then as 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:23.720 you approach the speed of light, it sort of bends 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.920 over and asymptotically approaches the speed of light. So you 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.440 can keep pouring energy in, but the speed never goes higher. 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.560 And there's this mathematical relationship. You can write it down 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:34.920 and you can look at it on Wikipedia. Um, you know, 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:39.520 involves this complicated expression. It's like energy is mass squared 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.560 over the square root of one minus v squared over 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.440 C squared. And that's mathematically how you get that expression. 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:48.120 The cool thing is you can say, all right, well, 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.720 what happens if you just plug in velocity is twice 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:55.280 the speed of light? What happens mathematically? What does that mean? Oh? 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:59.240 I see, like, what have you um cross over that line? 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.400 What have you assume that you filled the bucket and 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.720 went over? Yeah, exactly, And you know it's just playing around. 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:07.600 This is what theoretical physicist due for fun. They're like, 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.920 let's poke these equations and see what happens. And so 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.320 it does get interesting because on the bottom of the 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:17.320 equation um it gets the number inside the square root 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:20.440 goes negative. Right, so you have like the square root 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.720 of a negative number. And you're probably thinking, what you 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:25.520 can't have the square rod of a negative number, right, 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.679 Like what number when you multiplied by itself, gives you 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.280 negative two? Right, Well, there's no real number. You have 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.760 to go to imaginary numbers, which means that this particle 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.560 is imaginary or it has imaginary mass. Well, it means 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:44.000 it has imaginary energy, right, because the expression is energy 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.359 is basically mass over this crazy velocity term. If the 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:51.240 velocity term goes, it goes imaginary. Then the energy goes imaginary, 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:54.000 and you're like, what what does that mean? So this 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:55.960 is what I mean by breaking two things. So then 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:58.520 physicist thought, okay, well what if we make the top 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.040 part of the equation also in imaginary. So we make 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:05.119 the mass imaginary. Then you have velocity grid in the 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:10.080 speed of light, imaginary mass, but real energy like actual energy. 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.280 So if you just say that this particle has imaginary mass, 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.679 and let's get into what that means. But if you 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.320 say that it has imaginary mass, then the laws of 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.760 physics technically don't break. If this particle goes faster than 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.200 might well, if I don't know that, the loss of 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:26.280 physics don't break. We can talk about that a little later. 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:28.399 It turns out they break other things also. But this 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:31.840 one equation does hold, right, This equation for the relationship 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:35.720 essentially between energy and speed does hold. But yeah, it 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.040 requires you to have imaginary mass, and it also means 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.800 for other really weird things. For normal particles, as the 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.760 velocity increases, the energy increases, right Right In this case, 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:49.199 if you look at the equation, as the speed goes up, 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:53.280 the energy actually goes to zero. So the faster it goes, 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:57.440 the less energy it has. That's pretty weird, yeah, because 0:18:57.480 --> 0:18:59.760 everything in nature wants to have low energy. So that 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:02.680 means this particle will just keep going faster and faster 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.000 and faster to infinity exactly. So as it goes to 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.879 zero energy, it has infinite speed. Like what does that 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:12.239 even mean? You know, now you have a particle like 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:16.600 infinite speed and imaginary mass but no energy. Right, it's 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:21.480 pretty weird thing. But technically maybe could exist. Technically maybe 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:24.040 could exist. Right, There's some causality issues we'll talk about 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:26.040 a little later, but that's sort of the concept. Like, 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.680 that's the idea of attacking on and it's a fun 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.320 thing to play with theoretically, And you know this, before 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:34.520 you think this is a waste of time, remember this 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.280 is how progress is made. You know. This is how, 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.280 for example, antiparticles were discovered. People were looking at the 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.320 equations and they were like, what if you flip the 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:45.280 sign of this and flip the sign of that. Look 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:49.520 looks like this equation would also hold for opposite charge particles. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.240 I wonder if they exist. Let's go look, and they 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:55.600 did exist and they do exist. Yeah, this is a 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.639 rich source of searching around for the corners of the 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:02.040 equations and seeing they describe some actual physics that might 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:04.800 be real that we just hadn't imagined, because there's a 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:06.840 lot of crazy stuff out there in the universe that 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.600 we haven't conceived of. Well, it's kind of a philosophical 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:12.160 thing because it's it's you sort of saying that anything 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:17.800 that can exist mathematically so far we think has existed, 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:21.080 right Like, if the equations say that this is possible 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:24.359 and doesn't break everything else, then you keep searching, you 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.760 sort of so far you sort of you found it. Yeah, 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.320 it's a subtle point, right. Sometimes we have mathematical descriptions 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:33.879 of things and then we look at the mathematics, were like, 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.840 well the math says that, but physics says no. Right, Like, 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:39.800 sometimes a mathematical equation will have two solutions and one 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:41.520 of them will be nonsense, and you say, well, that's 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:43.879 not physical, so we'll ignore it. But yeah, then you 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.480 have to wonder is it really is that? Are we 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:50.280 doing science there? Are we just sort of like enforcing 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:54.560 our um prejudices, right? Should we be more open minded 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:57.680 and explore all the possibilities of the math? And sometimes 0:20:57.680 --> 0:20:59.800 the math is all we have, like, look at quantum mechanics. 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:02.000 You can't even apply your intuition. You just have to 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:05.280 blindly follow the math and say, well, quantum mechanics says 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:07.639 a particle can appear on one side of the barrier 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:09.240 and then appear on the other side of the barrier 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:11.600 without passing through it. So and then we do the 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:14.679 experiments and it happens, right, So sometimes you just have 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.240 to follow the math. Yeah, you're saying, sometimes you have 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:19.119 to be kind of open minded and say, hey, what 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.600 if mass could be imaginary and let's see what happens. Then, Yes, 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.840 that's exactly that's the whole point, right, That's why you 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.760 poke these equations, because it could just be our prejudice. 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:30.359 It could be that the way we're thinking about the 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:32.919