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Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, how do you feel about mushrooms. I'm a

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Speaker 1: big fan. They actually make a mean pizza fung Guy

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Speaker 1: over here that reminds me of the best pizza I

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Speaker 1: ever ate. It was covered in morals. I still think

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Speaker 1: about that pizza, like twenty years later. Yeah, they actually

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Speaker 1: have these really good fried mushrooms, these local ones, and

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Speaker 1: it was absolutely amazing. But yeah, that is that is

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Speaker 1: entry level stuff, Daniel. If you're a real mushroom fan,

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Speaker 1: you would be into the weirder varieties. I'll bring on

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Speaker 1: the challenge, you know, hand in the woods, oyster mushrooms.

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Speaker 1: I'm into all of it. You young young, Well, what

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Speaker 1: about manticor's tongue? Is that real? Did you just make

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Speaker 1: that up? Wait until you see monkey's head? Well, put

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Speaker 1: it on a pizza and I will take a bite. Hi.

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

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Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I will taste any mushroom that isn't

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Speaker 1: labeled as toxic. I am Katie Golden, and I too

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Speaker 1: will eat any mushroom as long as you eat it first.

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Speaker 1: I am the host of the podcast Creature Feature, and

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Speaker 1: I'm stepping in for Jorge or, as some theorize on

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Speaker 1: the Internet, we are actually sort of like two states

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Speaker 1: of the same person. Maybe if you eat the right

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Speaker 1: mushroom returned into Jorge, is that how it works? I'll

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Speaker 1: never tell the banana mushroom. Well, Welcome to the podcast

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, in which we take

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Speaker 1: a big juicy bite out of the weirdest, strangest, slimiest

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Speaker 1: mysteries in the universe. We think that the whole universe

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Speaker 1: deserves to be understood, deserves to be explained, and deserves

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Speaker 1: to be explored, at least mentally by these funny little

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Speaker 1: apes living on this weird little rock in the corner

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Speaker 1: of the galaxy. We think all of it should make sense,

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Speaker 1: and we do our best to tackle the biggest, weirdest, slimiest,

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Speaker 1: amazing questions about this bonkers and beautiful universe and explain

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Speaker 1: all of it to you. My friend and co host

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Speaker 1: Orgy can't make it today. As it as usual, we

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Speaker 1: are very grateful to have Katie usual host of Creature

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Speaker 1: feature podcast. Katie, thanks again for joining us. Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: I am pumped to be on. I guess like the

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Speaker 1: slimiest episode you guys have ever done. Did you eat

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Speaker 1: some slimy mushrooms to prepare yourself to get yourself in

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Speaker 1: the right mental frame. I just kind of licked the

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Speaker 1: walls of a cave, a random cave, to get myself

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Speaker 1: in the right mindset. I think everybody out there just

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Speaker 1: had their stomach turnover that mental imagic key not into

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Speaker 1: cave cave tasting. I see, Oh well, and I suggest

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Speaker 1: that nobody out there google cave tasting because you have

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Speaker 1: no idea what might pop up. But today on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be taking advantage of Katie's knowledge of biology

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Speaker 1: to try to bring together two very disparate topics, to

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Speaker 1: try to unify our desire to understand the whole structure

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Speaker 1: of the universe, its shape, its form, its history, together

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Speaker 1: with the things that we see here down on Earth.

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Speaker 1: You know, a lot of folks write to me and

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Speaker 1: wonder about whether there are connections between the shape of

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Speaker 1: the universe on the biggest scale, you know, this cosmic

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Speaker 1: web with filaments and sheets of stars and the patterns

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Speaker 1: that we see down here on Earth, or the organization

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Speaker 1: of the atoms, as if maybe there's some deep structure

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Speaker 1: to the universe, and it reveals itself on many levels. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love that. I think that they're often seems to

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Speaker 1: be this parallel between the facets of physics, like the

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Speaker 1: kinds of behaviors that particles will exhibit and the behaviors

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Speaker 1: that biological organisms will exhibit. So these patterns that we

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Speaker 1: see for these you know, inorganic particles will pop up

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Speaker 1: when you're looking at organic particle organic organisms, and I

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Speaker 1: just find that so fascinating. It is fascinating because it

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Speaker 1: hints at something really really deep. If you discover some

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Speaker 1: basic mathematics about the way the particles organized themselves, and

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Speaker 1: it also applies to the way sea lions build colonies

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Speaker 1: and the way that galaxies organize themselves. That suggests that

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Speaker 1: you've revealed something really really true about the universe, that

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Speaker 1: there's an organizing principle of play that can unify them.

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Speaker 1: You know. One of the first people to do this

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Speaker 1: was Isaac Newton. His theory of gravity could describe not

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Speaker 1: just the motion of apples falling from trees, but also

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Speaker 1: the motions of bodies in the heaven. And so to

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Speaker 1: have this moment where you feel like, oh, I've discovered

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Speaker 1: something which is true not just about what's around me,

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Speaker 1: but also about what's in the sky and maybe about everything.

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Speaker 1: That must have been an incredible moment. Of course, we

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Speaker 1: know now that he was wrong about everything, but you know,

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Speaker 1: the idea that you could potentially discover these organizing principles

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Speaker 1: that work across incredibly distant length scales, because galaxies are

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of light years across, and particles are

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Speaker 1: tend the minus twenty meters across, and so to imagine

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Speaker 1: that you could have rules that describe everything on those scales,

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Speaker 1: it's very tempting, it's very tantalizing, and I think that's

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Speaker 1: why people look for these connections, and that's why we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about some of those today. Yeah, even Alan

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Speaker 1: Turing would sometimes use his incredible genius level skills to

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Speaker 1: make these connections between things like math and particles and biology.

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Speaker 1: Like he explored the how animals can have things like

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Speaker 1: stripes or spots, like these clusters of melanin, and he

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Speaker 1: worked out this whole kind of model with like the

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Speaker 1: move randomized movements of particles and sort of using that

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Speaker 1: as a way to understand and how you could get

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Speaker 1: a pattern like stripes through the like semi random movement

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Speaker 1: of say like melanine cells. And it's really it's just

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Speaker 1: so interesting how deep these things go, like these very

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Speaker 1: broad mathematical or physics based principles. Yeah, it's like the

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Speaker 1: universe is a grand experiment and it's revealing the underlying

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Speaker 1: rules as it plays out, and if you pay attention,

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Speaker 1: you can spot them here, and you can spot them there,

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Speaker 1: and you can learn things about galaxies by looking at

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Speaker 1: things under a log in the forest. The universe is

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Speaker 1: the world's biggest escape roam. That's exactly. There are clues everywhere,

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Speaker 1: you know. I was talking to my son about science

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Speaker 1: fiction movies and he was asking me why I'm so

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Speaker 1: picky about the science being right, and I was telling

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Speaker 1: him that it was like a detective movie. You know,

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Speaker 1: if you get a bunch of clues and they point

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Speaker 1: you in one direction, and then at the end the

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Speaker 1: clues didn't make sense or they're not consistent with the answer,

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Speaker 1: then it feels pretty frustrating and disappointing. And I see

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Speaker 1: every science fiction movie as sort of like a new mystery,

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Speaker 1: like what are the rules of this universe? How does

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Speaker 1: it all come together? What clues are we getting? And

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Speaker 1: so I want the clues to be accurate and not

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Speaker 1: just to lead you Australia to be nonsense and you

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Speaker 1: don't want to like accidentally frame a neutrino for murder

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Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. They're pretty sneaky, those neutrinos

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Speaker 1: really weird, pretty suspicious. But you know, there is one

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Speaker 1: organism which has inspired a lot of strange reactions in

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Speaker 1: people to wonder whether or not it's intelligent, or whether

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Speaker 1: or not it's structure reveals something about the nature of

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Speaker 1: the universe. And this is very weird entity called the

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Speaker 1: slime mold. And you know, my first interaction with the

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Speaker 1: slime mold actually came from a listener email. We had

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Speaker 1: an episode about the book Semiosis, which is a science

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Speaker 1: fiction novel in which plants organize and become intelligent in

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Speaker 1: sort of a strange way that's not exactly penetrable by

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Speaker 1: human intelligence, but you know, they can act and they

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Speaker 1: can think and they can plan in this novel. And

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Speaker 1: one listener, Ian Hans Portman, from the UK, wrote to

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Speaker 1: me and said that it reminded him of one of

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Speaker 1: his favorite pets, which were slime molds, and would I

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Speaker 1: be interested in him mailing me some example slime molds

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Speaker 1: so of course I said, sure, please send me these

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Speaker 1: crazy creatures via the post, and he did so. He

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Speaker 1: sent us some slime molds via the mail. Because they're

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Speaker 1: very hardy, right, they can survive a long time. And

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Speaker 1: my wife grew them for a while, and then I

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Speaker 1: think she threw them out and they ended up taking

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Speaker 1: over our compost bin for a while. So they're out

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Speaker 1: there now exploring southern California and gobbling up all the

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Speaker 1: amazing treats that they can find. Wonderful. I'm sure that

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Speaker 1: won't sort of come back to bide us and say,

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Speaker 1: a hundred million years. But slime olds are fascinating because

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Speaker 1: they are these tiny little creatures, but they also seem

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Speaker 1: to exhibit some form of intelligence, and the way they

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Speaker 1: organize themselves might provide clues as to where the whole

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Speaker 1: universe organizes itself. The patterns of slime mold networks might

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Speaker 1: reveal something which tells us about the structure of the

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Speaker 1: universe and where all the dark matter is. And I

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Speaker 1: guess where all the compost keeps Jupiter has been keeping. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe dark matter is just the compost of the universe,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's just the universe is recycling would that

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Speaker 1: make black holes the sort of uh incincreators of the

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Speaker 1: universe universal garbage disposals. So I was curious if people

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Speaker 1: had thought about this or understood that there might be

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Speaker 1: a connection between weird, sticky blobs on forest floors and

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Speaker 1: the structure of the universe on the grandest scale. So

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Speaker 1: I went out to our cadre of Internet volunteers and

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Speaker 1: ask them what they thought about a potential connection between

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Speaker 1: slime molds and dark matter. So thanks to everybody who participated,

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Speaker 1: and if you would like to get similarly puzzling questions

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Speaker 1: via email from me, don't be shy, right to me

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Speaker 1: two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So before

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Speaker 1: you hear these answers, think to yourself, what do you

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Speaker 1: think slime molds might tell us about dark matter? And

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Speaker 1: I have no idea what slim mode is, but I'm

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Speaker 1: guessing it might be the movement of dark matter around

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Speaker 1: the universe, and objects help discus and fluid it is

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Speaker 1: where it fills in the gaps. I actually don't know

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Speaker 1: slime molds. I know they can they've been shown to

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Speaker 1: be able to compute stuff, but what that has to

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Speaker 1: do with dark matter? I have no idea. I didn't

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Speaker 1: I didn't expect to expect a question like this. I

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Speaker 1: have no idea whatsoever slime molds. Uh, no, nothing, I've

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Speaker 1: got absolutely nothing. Sorry, best I can do these lime

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Speaker 1: molds and dark matter. I'm all in favor of mixing

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Speaker 1: up stuff, but I don't see any connection between those two.

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Speaker 1: Very curious to know what. I have no idea what

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Speaker 1: slime molds have to do with dark matter, but I

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Speaker 1: imagine they are growth or something in their molecular constitution

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Speaker 1: that might be maybe affected by dark matter. I'm not sure.

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Speaker 1: I have no idea. I have no idea what slime

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Speaker 1: molds are. When I think of slime, I just think

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Speaker 1: of the green goo. I'm sure that has nothing to

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Speaker 1: do with what we're talking about. I don't know what

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Speaker 1: they say about arma matter. Um. I just know that

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Speaker 1: they try to map something. I don't do too much,

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Speaker 1: too many details about it, but it is interesting. How

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Speaker 1: close can can you get with this with this model?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Is there's something about slime molds that

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Speaker 1: we just do not know, Like it's like the mystery

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Speaker 1: mold of the universe. It's what holds all mold together.

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Speaker 1: Ah Man, Maybe it just tells us there's more mystery

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Speaker 1: here than we really thought there was, all right, So

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Speaker 1: a lot of confusion in these answers. Not a lot

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Speaker 1: of people have even heard of slime molds or had

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Speaker 1: any idea what they might tell us about the universe.

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Speaker 1: That surprised you, Katie, Yeah, yeah, I mean I love

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Speaker 1: slime molds, so I feel like everyone should love them

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Speaker 1: as well. Obviously they are in a way cute. I

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Speaker 1: suppose I try to find the cuteness in every organism

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Speaker 1: or I guess like globular cluster of organisms. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I really hope people gain some slime mold awareness through this.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're pro slime mold, that you're really

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Speaker 1: thinking about what the slimes need. They need human representatives

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Speaker 1: to really speak up for them, advocates. Yes, our interest

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Speaker 1: here is not just to think about what the slime

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Speaker 1: mold needs, but to try to solve the mysteries of

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Speaker 1: the universe, to think about where in the universe everything

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Speaker 1: is and how it got there and how we can

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Speaker 1: learn about it. Yeah. Yeah, I I am really curious

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Speaker 1: because slime molds are one of the most mysterious organisms

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Speaker 1: on Earth that their behave year and what exactly is

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Speaker 1: going on with them is really interesting, and it's relative.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of room to explore still, so there's

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Speaker 1: a lot unknown about them. There are a lot of

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Speaker 1: studies and a lot of controversy. So I feel like

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Speaker 1: the fact they are just so already so mysterious, it's

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Speaker 1: just very intriguing that if we unlock some of these

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Speaker 1: mysteries of the slime mold, we may be able to

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Speaker 1: unlock some of the mysteries of the universe exactly. Maybe

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Speaker 1: slime molder aliens and they're here to tell us the

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Speaker 1: secrets of the universe. They do look very alien like

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Speaker 1: in just like they're sort of a blob, a growing blob.

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Speaker 1: So if that is your image of an alien sort

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Speaker 1: of a blob, I think there's been a few sort

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Speaker 1: of be movies where an alien blob comes from outer

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Speaker 1: space and then consumes people or takes over the world. Well,

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Speaker 1: I'd love to talk about b movies with blob aliens.

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Speaker 1: Let's first talk about the structure the universe, where everything

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Speaker 1: is and where everything isn't because you probably know the

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Speaker 1: universe is not just the stuff that we see out there.

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Speaker 1: Of course, there are galaxies and there are stars, and

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Speaker 1: there are planets, and there's huge clouds and gas and dust.

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Speaker 1: But that only adds up to about five percent of

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Speaker 1: all of the stuff in the universe. The rest of

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Speaker 1: the universe is other stuff, stuff that we do not

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Speaker 1: understand a huge chunk of that, Like is dark matter

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Speaker 1: something we know is out there. We know it's matter,

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Speaker 1: we know it's stuff, we know it has gravity, but

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Speaker 1: we don't know what it's made out of. And all

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Speaker 1: that just adds up to about of the universe. The

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Speaker 1: other seventy percent of the energy density of the universe.

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Speaker 1: If you took like a cubic light year of the

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Speaker 1: universe and asked where is all the energy, seventy percent

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Speaker 1: of that would be in something else called dark energy,

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Speaker 1: which is accelerating the expansion of the universe, tearing it

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Speaker 1: apart faster and faster every year. And while we'd love

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Speaker 1: to dig into dark energy on every podcast because it's

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Speaker 1: an amazing mystery, today we're focusing on sort of where

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Speaker 1: is the stuff in the universe? Where is the matter

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Speaker 1: by which we mean dark matter and normal matter. How

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Speaker 1: do we even know that dark matter exists? If it's

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Speaker 1: something that's so mysterious and so seemingly extremely difficult to

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Speaker 1: like directly observe it. What are the signs that dark

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Speaker 1: matter exists, Like, is it sort of a negative space

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Speaker 1: scenario where we are able to see the dark matter

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Speaker 1: based on the things around dark matter? Exactly, we can't

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Speaker 1: see dark matter directly. The name dark matter itself is

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Speaker 1: a little misleading because it makes you think of like

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Speaker 1: a big dark cloud that would block your vision. But

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Speaker 1: actually dark matter is more like invisible or transparent matter

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Speaker 1: because light passes right through it doesn't give off any light,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't reflect any light. You can't see it directly

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Speaker 1: using light because it just doesn't interact with photons at all.

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Speaker 1: And the only way that we can see it is

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Speaker 1: through its gravitational effects on other things. And so that means,

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Speaker 1: for example, that it holds galaxies together, because we think

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Speaker 1: that all galaxies are swimming in these big dark matter

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Speaker 1: halos that are compressing them and keeping them together as

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Speaker 1: they spin really really fast. We also know that dark

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Speaker 1: matter has played a huge role in determining the structure

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Speaker 1: of the universe, Like why is there a galaxy here

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Speaker 1: at all? It's because there was a big pool of

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Speaker 1: dark matter that pulled together all these gas and dust

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Speaker 1: to form stars. Without dark matter in the universe, that

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Speaker 1: structure would take a lot longer to form, be like

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Speaker 1: another ten billion years before the gravity of just the

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Speaker 1: gas and the dust was able to pull it together

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Speaker 1: to make stars. So dark matter really has shaped the

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Speaker 1: universe even though we can't see it directly. So it's

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Speaker 1: kind of like the invisible hand of the universe if

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Speaker 1: we want to get all economics about it. But that

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Speaker 1: is really interesting. Could you, I mean, if you gave

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Speaker 1: me a spoonful of dark matter, like, could I feel it?

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Speaker 1: Or would it just sort of destroy me? Would it

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Speaker 1: start impacting the things around it? Would my office chairs

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Speaker 1: start to float up and get sucked in around and

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Speaker 1: are pushed around? What is that sort of physical attribute

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Speaker 1: of the dark matter? Because my sense of matter is

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Speaker 1: matter is a physical thing that impacts things physically, whereas

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Speaker 1: energy differs from matter, and that it's not it's not

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Speaker 1: like a it is it's hard for me to describe

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Speaker 1: without the kind of reiterating the physics concepts. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a great question, but unfortunately, dark matter is not something

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Speaker 1: that you can like put on your pizza. Dark matter

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Speaker 1: interacts with you gravitationally, which means that it pulls on you.

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Speaker 1: It tugs on you gravitationally, but because it doesn't interact

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Speaker 1: with you using electromagnetism, it passes right through you, the

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Speaker 1: same way that like neutrinos can. Neutrinos come from the

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Speaker 1: Sun and they shoot through the Earth and they don't stop.

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Speaker 1: They don't obey the boundaries of your body or the

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Speaker 1: walls or the ground because they don't see them. The

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Speaker 1: universe is transparent to them. They don't have that way

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Speaker 1: to interact, so they just ignore that kind of matter

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Speaker 1: and pass right through it. The same is true for

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Speaker 1: dark matter, which remember, is not out there in the universe.

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Speaker 1: It's here surrounding us. It's all around us. It's in

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Speaker 1: this very room that you are in. But if a

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Speaker 1: piece of dark matter flew right through your brain, you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't notice, and either would it, because you two cannot

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Speaker 1: interact except through gravity, which is super duper weak. The

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Speaker 1: only way we can even know dark matter is there

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Speaker 1: is when there are enormous, like galaxy sized blobs of

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Speaker 1: it having gravitational effects on the visible matter. What you

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Speaker 1: didn't see it was me with a broom trying to

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Speaker 1: sweep out all the dark matter, as you told me

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Speaker 1: that it's here with me right now, So like it's

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Speaker 1: it's scattered throughout the universe. But then you can have

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Speaker 1: like these big sort of blobs of it as well

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Speaker 1: that have a stronger impact on their surroundings. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: these blobs have an amazing history that really shaped the

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Speaker 1: whole structure of the universe. If you cast your mind

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Speaker 1: back to the very very beginning of the universe, everything

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Speaker 1: was filled with like an even smooth amount of energy.

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Speaker 1: No spot was any different from any other spot, because like,

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Speaker 1: why would any spot be special. The universe doesn't have

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Speaker 1: a center. No location is different from any other location,

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Speaker 1: so everything is the same. But if everything is the same,

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Speaker 1: then gravity can't really do anything because it's being tugged

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Speaker 1: in every direction the same amount. But what happened very

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Speaker 1: early on was that you've got quantum fluctuations. You know,

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Speaker 1: pairs of particles were created out of the vacuum just randomly,

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Speaker 1: energy converted into matter and back, and so some places

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Speaker 1: were a little denser than others. And then the universe

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Speaker 1: expanded very very rapidly. So those little quantum fluctuations, which

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Speaker 1: normally you would never notice, I would have no gravitational

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Speaker 1: impact got blown up to enormous proportions. The early universe

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Speaker 1: expansion is like a factor of tend to the thirty.

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Speaker 1: That's ten with thirty zeros in front of it. Something

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Speaker 1: used to be like a nanometer is now light years across.

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Speaker 1: And so then gravity had something to hang onto. You

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Speaker 1: could say, oh, this spot here is denser than its

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Speaker 1: neighboring spots. I'm gonna start tugging on those particles. And

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Speaker 1: that's how structure was formed. It it was the sea

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Speaker 1: the gravity needed to grab onto. And then you fast

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Speaker 1: forward some millions of years and gravity has gathered that

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Speaker 1: together into these huge sheets of dark matter. And where

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Speaker 1: those sheets overlap with each other, you get even stronger densities,

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Speaker 1: and those we call filaments. And where those filaments intersect

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Speaker 1: with other filaments are the most powerful densities. And those

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Speaker 1: are the intersections where galaxies form. Because you get this

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Speaker 1: intersection with a lot of dark matter, and it's like

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Speaker 1: a lake with all the filaments sort of like contributing

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Speaker 1: to it. Everything is flowing towards the densest spots, and

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Speaker 1: that's where galaxy is formed. So these sheets and these

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Speaker 1: filaments of dark matter really have determined the whole structure

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Speaker 1: of the universe. Well, so we we kind of started

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Speaker 1: out as a puree and then became like Campbell's chunky

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Speaker 1: chicken noodle soup. But yeah, that is I mean, even

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Speaker 1: the way you describe it does sound very biological. Things

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Speaker 1: kind of coagulating and coalescing and pulling on each other.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like something like milk curdling, which is really interesting.

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Speaker 1: So dark matter has this huge impact on the universe.

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Speaker 1: How do we How have we kind of observed that happening.

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Speaker 1: It's a great question because dark matter is kind of invisible.

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Speaker 1: So some of this is a little bit theoretical. Some

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Speaker 1: of this is like running simulations and saying, if we

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Speaker 1: put all these rules into the universe, what kind of

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Speaker 1: universe do we get? Do we get the kinds of

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Speaker 1: structure that we see today. But of course we'd like

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Speaker 1: to see the actual structure. We'd like to look out

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Speaker 1: into the universe and observe how things really are. And

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Speaker 1: the fascinating thing about these filaments is like connections between galaxies. Right,

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Speaker 1: Like our galaxy is floating in space and the's another

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Speaker 1: galaxy nearby Andromeda. But there's not just empty space between

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Speaker 1: US and Andromeda. There's an invisible filament of dark matter,

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Speaker 1: but there's also a filament of normal matter. Not all

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Speaker 1: of the gas and the dust ended up in the galaxies,

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Speaker 1: a lot of it is actually between the galaxies. And

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Speaker 1: so for example, like only ten percent of the matter

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Speaker 1: is in galaxies, Like if you take a random proton

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Speaker 1: in the universe, only one other ten are in the

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Speaker 1: galaxy right now. Another fifty percent of them are around

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Speaker 1: the galaxies, like in a big blob of gas that

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Speaker 1: hasn't yet fallen in but might soon. And the rest

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Speaker 1: of it, like of the stuff in the universe, we're

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Speaker 1: not even sure where it is. It might be in

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Speaker 1: these filaments between galaxies. Might be that there's huge amounts

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Speaker 1: of gas lying along these filaments made by dark matter,

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Speaker 1: but it's hard to tell. It's hard to see these

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Speaker 1: things because the gas is so faint. That's so interesting.

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Speaker 1: So we've got like these almost these like tendons or

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Speaker 1: sort of strings that are connecting these galaxies and but

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Speaker 1: not not just connecting them, but also influencing the matter

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Speaker 1: around them by by pulling on it. Can we actually

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Speaker 1: like when say we got just a really good telescope,

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Speaker 1: could we actually see these filaments, or would since dark

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Speaker 1: matter is invisible, would we not really see anything. We

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Speaker 1: can see them a little bit, but it's very unlimited.

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Speaker 1: So these filaments have lots of gas in them, and

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Speaker 1: if the gas is hot, meaning the particles are moving

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Speaker 1: really really fast, then they emit light. They emit X rays,

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Speaker 1: for example, and we can see that with our X

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Speaker 1: ray telescopes, And you might be confused, like, how can

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Speaker 1: this gas be hot? We're talking about something in deep

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Speaker 1: space between galaxies or remember that things can be hot,

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Speaker 1: but they can also be dilute. It's not like hot

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Speaker 1: in the sense that you could like hang out there

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Speaker 1: in your swimsuit and have a nice time. You would

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Speaker 1: definitely freeze if somebody dumped you in these filaments because

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Speaker 1: there isn't a lot of heat there. But there are

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Speaker 1: vast moving particles and those emit X rays. So we

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Speaker 1: have seen these filaments directly. The problem is that it's

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Speaker 1: hard to see the whole cosmic web using these X rays,

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Speaker 1: because where at one little spot of it, it's easiest

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Speaker 1: to only see their really close parts. We'd like to

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Speaker 1: see the whole map of the universe. Another way we

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Speaker 1: can look at these is to see how light is

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Speaker 1: absorbed as it comes to us from things behind these filaments.

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Speaker 1: For example, quasars are very very bright sources of light.

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Speaker 1: They are black holes that have swirling gas around them,

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Speaker 1: and that gas is being squeezed by the tidal forces

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Speaker 1: of the black hole and heated up to incredible temperatures

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Speaker 1: and emitting these very very bright pencil beams of light.

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Speaker 1: And when they pass through the filaments, some frequencies of

432
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:20,040
Speaker 1: light get absorbed based on what's in them. So we

433
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: can use this to sort of like X ray these

434
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:25,080
Speaker 1: filaments to say, oh, here's one and it has some

435
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:26,879
Speaker 1: hydrogen in it. Oh, and look it also has some

436
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:28,760
Speaker 1: iron in it. How did that get there? So we

437
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 1: can see sort of the nearest ones using X rays,

438
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:33,400
Speaker 1: and we can have a few like pencil beams through

439
00:24:33,440 --> 00:24:35,439
Speaker 1: the universe to give us a sense for where some

440
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:37,479
Speaker 1: of the other ones are, but we don't have a

441
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:40,880
Speaker 1: great way in general to figure out where these filaments are.

442
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, I mean, it seems like basically trying

443
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: to detect these filaments, it's like trying to sort of

444
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: toss a marble at another marble, like another a mile

445
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:55,239
Speaker 1: away and hit it. So by observing sort of like

446
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: how the effect it's having on light as it's passing through.

447
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 1: We can kind of tell a little bit about them. Yeah,

448
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:04,879
Speaker 1: but you need a source of light, You need like

449
00:25:04,880 --> 00:25:08,920
Speaker 1: a conveniently placed quasar to show you where these things are.

450
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:10,919
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the way a laser beam in

451
00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 1: a dark room will show you where the dust is,

452
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: but it won't show you where the dust is where

453
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 1: the laser is not pointing, you know. And so if

454
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:18,959
Speaker 1: you have a few lasers to a room, you can

455
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 1: see where the dust motes are, but most of the

456
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,600
Speaker 1: room is still invisible to you. Wow. So we're really

457
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 1: just relying on luck to be able to see any

458
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 1: any sign of these filaments. Yeah, and it's a huge

459
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:34,080
Speaker 1: mystery how much gas is in these filaments. You know,

460
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: we're talking about a big chunk of the universe's budget

461
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: is like unexplained. And people are used to the idea

462
00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:42,200
Speaker 1: that dark matter is sort of like this missing chunk

463
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,439
Speaker 1: of the universe and that five percent of the universe

464
00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: is our kind of matter. Now we're talking about like

465
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: of that five percent, not some mysterious form of matter,

466
00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 1: but just like normal matter, protons and neutrons. We can't

467
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: explain where all that stuff is, like a huge chunk.

468
00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:00,160
Speaker 1: But a third of the visible universe, the stuff we're

469
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: supposed to understand, is gone missing. This is called the

470
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:06,880
Speaker 1: missing Baryon problem, and so understanding if it's in these

471
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:09,159
Speaker 1: filaments could really help us get a clear picture of

472
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: you know, the whole universe. I mean, have we tried

473
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: printing out posters with missing baryon call this number reward.

474
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: We've tried sending traps, you know, with nice hasty Russian

475
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: pizzas on them, but they don't seem interested. So let

476
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: me go grab delicious pizza right now. And when we

477
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 1: get back, why don't we talk a little bit about

478
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 1: those slime molds and uh see what they're about. And

479
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 1: now that we've learned a little more about dark matter,

480
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:55,440
Speaker 1: all right, and we are back and I have just

481
00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: polished off this wonderful slime mold pizza. Actually, no, don't

482
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 1: do that. Don't eat unidentified slime molds. But Daniel, I mean,

483
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:09,560
Speaker 1: you have gotten to know a slime mold personally, so

484
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 1: you've actually had a personal relationship with a slime old.

485
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:16,360
Speaker 1: What did you learn in that relationship with that slime mold?

486
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: The listener sent you, Um, I learned the slime molds

487
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: are not as slimy as you might expect. You know,

488
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:25,399
Speaker 1: they're one of these weird creatures with multiple stages in

489
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: their life that look very different. You know, like how

490
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,679
Speaker 1: caterpillars and butterflies are in the same creature, just in

491
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 1: a different part of its life, and slime molds only

492
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: are slimy and like one mode of their life. So

493
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:38,159
Speaker 1: sometimes it can look just sort of like a normal

494
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 1: weird blob or like an actual mushroom or something sort

495
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: of crawling its way across your countertop. So it's a

496
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: little bit underslimed. Yeah. That is one of the most

497
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:52,760
Speaker 1: baffling things about slime molds is they have a life

498
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:57,120
Speaker 1: cycle that's just very confusing, and it's almost like they

499
00:27:57,160 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 1: turned into completely different sort of organisms throughout their life.

500
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:06,360
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not something unheard of for other animals.

501
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:09,119
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, the first person to see a

502
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:11,720
Speaker 1: caterpillar and then see a butterfly, I would have no

503
00:28:11,840 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 1: idea this is the same animal. It goes through these

504
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:19,120
Speaker 1: very different stages, and it goes through a crawling stage

505
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: and then the chrysalists this immobile, sessile stage and then

506
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:26,880
Speaker 1: a flying stage. So that is must have been very

507
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: mystifying for the first people to to see these organisms.

508
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:35,679
Speaker 1: And of course slime molds are also really mysterious, and

509
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: we're learning so much about them even now. But yeah,

510
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: so the first thing I think to know about them

511
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: is that it is not a single organism. It is,

512
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 1: generally speaking, these slime molds that you you will see

513
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: like this kind of blob or splat mark is going

514
00:28:54,800 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: to be a amalgamation of a bunch of individual organisms

515
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: that are all interacting with each other, like an ant

516
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 1: colony or a b colony, but on a microscopic scale

517
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 1: and smooshed together. So it's like a community you're saying,

518
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: not just like a single organism. Yeah, I mean it.

519
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,600
Speaker 1: They will have stages in their life where they will

520
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 1: be sort of a single organism, but yeah, the most

521
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: of their life, and indeed, like they when we can

522
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: actually see this thing that looks like a single organism,

523
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: that is a cluster of these single celled organisms. So

524
00:29:34,280 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 1: they used to be classified as fun guy. You know,

525
00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: we've talked about the mushroom pizza and everything, but that's

526
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 1: actually a somewhat outdated classification. So now they are just

527
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: kind of their own thing. It's a very strange classification

528
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: because it is like eight hundred species who are all

529
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 1: sort of loose related phylogenetically, but kind of lumped together

530
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,719
Speaker 1: as It's like the extra pile in terms of organisms,

531
00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: where we try to make these classifications, and now we

532
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: have this group of kind of weird those that we

533
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: don't know how else to classify them, so they all

534
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: get lumped together as slime molds. I mean, if I

535
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: just google slime mold, for example, I see a bunch

536
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 1: of interesting things. I see some weird yellow things with

537
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:29,680
Speaker 1: like what looks like veins in them, you know, these

538
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:32,959
Speaker 1: like transport networks. And then also see like weird purple

539
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:35,840
Speaker 1: blobs and weird pink things that look like mushrooms, and

540
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: you know some things that just really do look like

541
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:41,719
Speaker 1: gelatinous cubes taking over the earth. You know. So are

542
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:43,959
Speaker 1: you saying this is sort of like a biological frontiers,

543
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: not something we really understand how they evolved and how

544
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: they're related to, sort of like a grouping of mysterious

545
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:52,239
Speaker 1: objects that are sort of similar to each other. I mean,

546
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's completely mysterious. We have I mean

547
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 1: researchers have discovered a lot about them, but it is

548
00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: a little more of a wild West situation than maybe

549
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:08,000
Speaker 1: some other organisms that we've studied. So basically they are

550
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,719
Speaker 1: What we do know is they are eukaryotes like humans, plants,

551
00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: and animals. These are all eukaryotes, but they are protests.

552
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: So a protest is any kind of eukaryote that is

553
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: not an animal, plant, or fungus. So it's just basically

554
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: we know definitely what they aren't. So we know that

555
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 1: they are not animals, plants, or fungus, so we kind

556
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 1: of give them their own group. But in terms of

557
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 1: figuring out how they are related at each of these

558
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 1: slime old species, you know, that is still a growing

559
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: topic of research um And in fact, that a slime

560
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 1: old you google that yellow one probably is the Phicerum polycephalum,

561
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 1: which is that yellow blob. And I think we've actually

562
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: shot that species of slime mold into space to see

563
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 1: exactly what is going to happen with it in a

564
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: low gravity setting. So do you think that they're going

565
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: to land on the Moon and partner with tar degrades

566
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 1: to build the next alien empire? I fear what would

567
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: happen if they partnered with tar degrades. So they have

568
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 1: a very strange life cycle. So during one stage of

569
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 1: its life, it's an a cellular organism. So instead of

570
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: actually like at least for this phi serum paul cephalum,

571
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 1: so it differs depending on the slime mold, but like

572
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 1: for that specific slime mold, it just has like one

573
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 1: kind of cell that instead of just like dividing into

574
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:45,760
Speaker 1: multiple cells as it grows, it's just like one big

575
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 1: kind of goopy blob. But you know, other types of

576
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:54,640
Speaker 1: slime molds are a group of individual you know, cellular organisms,

577
00:32:54,840 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 1: and they can really a mass to large sizes. So

578
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 1: some can be up tom and mass and they can

579
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 1: be measured in square meters in size, which is alarming.

580
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 1: Twenty ms. Wow, that's like big enough to tackle somebody.

581
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: I mean, has a slime mold ever taken down a person?

582
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:23,120
Speaker 1: I don't think they have, just because they move so slowly.

583
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: What about like a cartoonist that was like sleeping in

584
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: really late, and do you think it could eat Jorge

585
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: if he was not paying attention? I think maybe, Yeah,

586
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: Jorge was staying up late at night finishing a cartoon

587
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: and kind of slept in. Maybe all right, well, let's

588
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: hope somebody warns him. That's why you set alarm clocks

589
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: so your local slime mold won't devour you as you

590
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: sleep in. So I think slime molds are fascinating because

591
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: they have these weird life cycle and biologically they're really interesting.

592
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: But also they seem to be able to like to

593
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 1: do things. And you talked about slime molds at these

594
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: individual entities which sometimes come together to act communally, And

595
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: it's amazing to me when they can do things as

596
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: a group that an individual couldn't do. Some example, these

597
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: things like learning. Yeah. Yeah, So they can either live

598
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:13,839
Speaker 1: freely or they will join together to form a multicellular aggregate.

599
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:17,399
Speaker 1: And this is where, yeah, it gets really weird and

600
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: really interesting. So like there have been multiple studies to

601
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:24,360
Speaker 1: see how they act as a group. I mean, you know,

602
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:27,480
Speaker 1: when you think about something like an ant colony and

603
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: you leave a piece of food out, the ant colony

604
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:32,799
Speaker 1: is going to sort of act as a group. They'll

605
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 1: form these lines of ants guided by pheromones to go

606
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 1: pick up this food. But we can still kind of

607
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: see these individual ants for sly molds when they get

608
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,399
Speaker 1: together they're so small. What we're seeing is basically a

609
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: blob or a slug seeming to act as one organism,

610
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,839
Speaker 1: even though it's made up of many individual organisms. So

611
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: they will sometimes when they detect food, they will come

612
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,359
Speaker 1: to other and kind of act together as if they

613
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: are a single organism. And there was actually a study

614
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: that was done that was like kind of trying to

615
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 1: see like whether slime old could figure out how to

616
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: get to food, and they would put these little oat

617
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:24,439
Speaker 1: flakes around in a little dish with the slime mold,

618
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 1: and the slime wold was able to relatively efficiently figure

619
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:35,439
Speaker 1: out how to um get to these oat flakes, and

620
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 1: it actually somewhat resembled like the Tokyo train system because

621
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: it was finding out roots to the oat flakes in

622
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: a relatively efficient way. I think that's super fascinating and

623
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: that connects to the idea we were talking about at

624
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,800
Speaker 1: the top of the episode about having similar mathematical problems

625
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: on different scales. You know, people want or like how

626
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,239
Speaker 1: could a slime mold replicate the Tokyo rail network? What

627
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:05,880
Speaker 1: does that mean? Well, think about like how you build

628
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 1: a rail network. You want it to be efficient, you

629
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:09,440
Speaker 1: want to be able to get from one place to

630
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: the other with a minimal number of connections and the

631
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:14,840
Speaker 1: shortest distances. So you build this network between your cities

632
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 1: and the slime mold, it seems like it's sort of

633
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: solving a similar problem. It's like, if I have food

634
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 1: in these locations, then where should I build my connections

635
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:25,760
Speaker 1: between them so I can most efficiently move my nutrients

636
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: around and get my cells from one food source to

637
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:30,840
Speaker 1: the next. You know, where should I focus my energies.

638
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,719
Speaker 1: And it's amazing that the network that comes out of that,

639
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 1: if you place like the oats in the same structure

640
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: as like the Japanese cities, that it basically replicates the

641
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:43,319
Speaker 1: Tokyo rail network because it suggests that it's solving a

642
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:46,759
Speaker 1: mathematical problem, not like it's got a little chalkboard in there,

643
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: but that effectively it's doing computing. You know, what is

644
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: a computer other than like a physical representation of a

645
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,440
Speaker 1: mathematical problem. You get the universe in terms of transistors

646
00:36:56,560 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 1: or whatever to solve a problem you've represented symbolically. And

647
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,439
Speaker 1: that seems like that's what the slime mold is doing.

648
00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 1: It's like basically doing slime mold computing. It's solving this

649
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:11,320
Speaker 1: optimization problem. Yeah. Actually, some researchers are interested in studying

650
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 1: whether it could be used to build like a bio

651
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 1: computer and use the slime mold to form these logic

652
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 1: gates in a biocomputer, so instead of using you know,

653
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: a circuit board, you would have a gooey, living sort

654
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:29,399
Speaker 1: of bioboard. Yeah, you can form computers out of all

655
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. You know, people think about computers as

656
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: like transistors and switches flipping, and that is one way

657
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,760
Speaker 1: to use a computer, one way to design a computer.

658
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: But any time that you build something which solves a

659
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: math problem where you're using the physical universe to represent

660
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:47,440
Speaker 1: your problem again an answer effectively, that's a computer. And

661
00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:50,880
Speaker 1: so yeah, you could represent a computational problem as a

662
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,879
Speaker 1: challenge for a slime mold where the answer is how

663
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:56,799
Speaker 1: the slime mold builds its network, which is pretty cool.

664
00:37:57,040 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 1: I also really like these studies that show that slime

665
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: molds can like learn, and remember they had these experiments

666
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:06,280
Speaker 1: where they were basically torturing slime molds every ten minutes

667
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: on the hour. They would like cool it downs. It

668
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:11,839
Speaker 1: was uncomfortable for the slime molds and the slime wolds

669
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 1: would like react to that, and then when they stopped

670
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:17,280
Speaker 1: doing it, they took a break. The slime molds anticipated

671
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:18,800
Speaker 1: it anyway, They were like, oh, is it going to

672
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 1: get cold? And they reacted before the cold snap would come.

673
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:25,440
Speaker 1: Would suggest that they have like some internal clock or something,

674
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: some way to keep track of time and anticipate what's

675
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 1: going to happen based on what's happened to them before.

676
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: That's incredible to me. Yeah, that's absolutely so strange because

677
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 1: it is a question of exactly how do they store

678
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: that kind of data, right, Like how are they storing

679
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:47,399
Speaker 1: this memory of the cold snaps? And I don't mean

680
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 1: memory in terms of like a human memory like thinking

681
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: back to something, but how a computer might store memories.

682
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 1: So it is really it's spooky, it's really strange, And

683
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:01,000
Speaker 1: I think comparing it to accume puter is so apt

684
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:04,320
Speaker 1: because at this point, in terms of how we've developed computers,

685
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:09,480
Speaker 1: computers don't probably have a sort of conscious understanding or

686
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:14,120
Speaker 1: or a cognitive system like It's AI is still a

687
00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:18,919
Speaker 1: pretty distant goal at this point. And so sometimes these

688
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 1: slime olds will do things that make it seem like

689
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:26,800
Speaker 1: they are behaving in this very like conscious way or

690
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: even altruistic way, but then when you look at the

691
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 1: mechanisms behind it, it's actually this weird just probability maths.

692
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 1: So slime olds like this study you mentioned with the

693
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 1: researchers just torturing them when they are behaving as a

694
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:48,120
Speaker 1: collective as that mass, they will try to avoid hostile

695
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 1: environments and get out of it. And one way they

696
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: can do that is they will actually, like if they

697
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:57,759
Speaker 1: are on an environment and they want to kind of

698
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: make sure that there's spores will be able to get

699
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:06,839
Speaker 1: to another place, they will form a slug and then

700
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:10,960
Speaker 1: that slug will stop somewhere and then will grow a

701
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: stock like a plant, and then form like a fruiting

702
00:40:14,719 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: body at the end that releases these slime old spores

703
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:24,879
Speaker 1: that can then go colonize another area. And it seems

704
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,680
Speaker 1: like the because it remember this is made out of

705
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 1: a bunch of individuals. The ones that are like on

706
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:33,960
Speaker 1: the base of the stock or forming the stock, the

707
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:36,279
Speaker 1: ones that are not at the fruiting body that get

708
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 1: to release their spores. It seems like they are sacrificing

709
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:44,279
Speaker 1: for their comrades to be able to get to the

710
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:48,200
Speaker 1: tops where they can release their spores, but in fact

711
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: they are probably not acting altruistically. It is simply sort

712
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: of a probability distribution where they are all trying to

713
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:01,680
Speaker 1: climb up to the top, and only some can reach

714
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: the top. But as they are all collectively trying to

715
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: make this climb, they happen just by the sort of

716
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:11,759
Speaker 1: the the probability distribution of how these slime molds are

717
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 1: going to stack up they form the stock and this

718
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 1: fruiting body, and it's just it's purely math. There's no

719
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 1: slime mold cooperation or camaraderie going on. What is it

720
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 1: like to be a slime mold? Will never know, but

721
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 1: it's amazing that they have something that seems like an intelligence,

722
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: ability to learn, to remember, to anticipate, though they have

723
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: no central processing unit. There is no brain to these things.

724
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 1: As you say, It all just emerges from the operations

725
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:41,960
Speaker 1: of these individual entities following local rules. That's really incredible

726
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: to me. So let's take another break and we get back.

727
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: We'll talk about how slime molds and the slime mold

728
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 1: computing problems that they solve might give us a clue

729
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: about the whole structure of the universe and where the

730
00:41:54,160 --> 00:42:09,759
Speaker 1: dark matter is I have to hear this. All right,

731
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: we're back and it was my turn to go off

732
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 1: and polish a pizza. But I imagine that I'm getting

733
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: over here in southern California are not really as you know,

734
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: amazing as the ones you get over there. How far

735
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 1: are you from a really excellent pizza if you want

736
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: to go from zero to pizza Katie, how long does

737
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: it take you? Well, there's a really good, like for

738
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:30,880
Speaker 1: catcha pizza place that's maybe a like five minute walk

739
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:33,280
Speaker 1: for me, and then yeah there's and then there's another

740
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:37,200
Speaker 1: just traditional pizza place that's maybe a seven minute walk.

741
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:40,440
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, you know what, if you're a human

742
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 1: and you want to live the slime old life of

743
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: trying to find the shortest distance between two points, finding

744
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:48,919
Speaker 1: out a walkable city is a way to go because

745
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,600
Speaker 1: you can just walk right to a pizza place. If

746
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 1: I live there, then I think the map of my

747
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,720
Speaker 1: walking around with follow the slime old map of the city.

748
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: You know, the efficient paths between pizza joints. Yeah, your

749
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:04,799
Speaker 1: your oat flakes would be all the pizza joints around here. Yeah.

750
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:07,320
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about the mystery of the structure

751
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 1: the universe. Where is some of the missing stuff in

752
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:13,320
Speaker 1: the universe, the normal matter, the protons, the neutrons, the electrons,

753
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: A lot of that might be between galaxies, but we

754
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: can't see it directly. We also suspect that there are

755
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:22,920
Speaker 1: filaments of dark matter, these tendrils between galaxies that feed

756
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: new matter into the dark matter haloes and connect us

757
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 1: and show us sort of the history of where things

758
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:30,719
Speaker 1: split apart, but we can't see them directly. And now

759
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:32,720
Speaker 1: we have, on the other hand, this sort of slime

760
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:35,839
Speaker 1: mold computer that lets us think about networks and how

761
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 1: to build them efficiently. So you might be wondering, like,

762
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,319
Speaker 1: what do these things have in common? There were some

763
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 1: researchers in Santa Cruz I had an idea for how

764
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: to use slime molds to build a map of these tendrils,

765
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: these cosmic filaments. The idea actually starts with galaxies. You know,

766
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 1: if you want to know where the filaments are, you

767
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:55,480
Speaker 1: want to know where the connections are between galaxies. Instead

768
00:43:55,480 --> 00:43:58,359
Speaker 1: of looking for the filaments directly, why not just look

769
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: for the galaxies because galaxy are something that we can see.

770
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: Galaxies are like the nodes of this network, right, we

771
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 1: can see them because they generate a lot of light.

772
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: They have billions and billions of stars in them. We

773
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: could see them across the universe. And there's a huge

774
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:15,839
Speaker 1: number of galaxies, right, quasars that we used to see

775
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 1: the filaments when they shoot these like pencil rays of

776
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:21,399
Speaker 1: light and we can see them highlighting the filaments. Those

777
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:24,440
Speaker 1: are pretty rare. There aren't that many quasars in the universe.

778
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 1: But galaxies are goodness because if there were too many quasars,

779
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:30,759
Speaker 1: that would mean a bunch of black holes that we

780
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:34,719
Speaker 1: would all get be getting sucked into. Yeah, an incredible radiation.

781
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,799
Speaker 1: But you know, if you hold up your finger, then

782
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: like the size of your finger nail, for example, the

783
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,320
Speaker 1: size of your fingernail has like a million galaxies behind

784
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:47,280
Speaker 1: it just in the observable universe. Like if the universe

785
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: is infinite, there's an infinite number of galaxies behind it,

786
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:51,759
Speaker 1: but just in the part that we can see. If

787
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: you like focused hubble on that one spot in the sky,

788
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 1: there'd be a million galaxies each with hundreds of billions

789
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:00,800
Speaker 1: of stars. You know, it's just it's mind boggling the

790
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: hole this in your mind, but it's a really good

791
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: way to get a sense for what the network is.

792
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:07,879
Speaker 1: It's like asking, we want to know where the trains run.

793
00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: Why don't you start out by looking for the stations

794
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 1: and then figure out where the trains run in between

795
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,840
Speaker 1: the stations. Just don't stand in between the stations on

796
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:20,160
Speaker 1: the railroad tracks with your camera because that's probably not

797
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:23,759
Speaker 1: a good idea exactly. So that's the easy part is

798
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:25,880
Speaker 1: to figure out where the galaxies are. We spend a

799
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,520
Speaker 1: lot of time looking at galaxies. We have big catalogs

800
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:31,120
Speaker 1: of where galaxies are. But these folks are wondering, well,

801
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 1: if you know where the galaxies are, does that tell

802
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:35,919
Speaker 1: you necessarily where the filaments are. You can't just draw

803
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: a line between every pair of galaxy. You'd have like

804
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:42,240
Speaker 1: lines everywhere, Right, These filaments tend to cluster together places

805
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: of larger mass. These filaments tend to form between the

806
00:45:44,800 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: larger clusters of galaxy, and they form between the neighbors.

807
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 1: There's a bit of an optimization problem here, right, Like

808
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: how do you find the filaments? You need to explain

809
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,840
Speaker 1: the galaxy clusters that we have. You can't just spread

810
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: them everywhere. And so folks have this idea. They're like,

811
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:03,239
Speaker 1: maybe we need to use slime mold computing to find

812
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 1: out what is the optimal way to place filaments between

813
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,200
Speaker 1: the galaxies that we can see to figure out where

814
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: those filaments probably are. So in order for that to work,

815
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:17,759
Speaker 1: the filaments, the dark matter filaments would have to have

816
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 1: some kind of behavioral similarity to slime molds. So filaments

817
00:46:23,600 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 1: have that push, pull, attraction and repulsion sort of characteristics.

818
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: And is that sort of the connection with slime old.

819
00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:36,840
Speaker 1: So if slime old has like an attraction to food

820
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:41,800
Speaker 1: and uh, sort of a wanting to avoid scientists trying

821
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 1: to torture it, what are sort of the analogous behaviors

822
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:49,520
Speaker 1: of dark matter filaments. Well, it's all gravity, right. Dark

823
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:53,240
Speaker 1: matter creates those galaxies where there is more dark matter,

824
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:55,439
Speaker 1: then you get more dark matter halos and you get

825
00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:58,759
Speaker 1: more bowls for galaxies to form in. So there's a

826
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: tight connection between where the filaments are and where the

827
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:04,720
Speaker 1: galaxies formed sort of like support and encourage and create

828
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:07,240
Speaker 1: each other. So that's the push, right, They helped create

829
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: each other, and there's also a pull they pull on

830
00:47:09,600 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 1: each other. They sort of like tug on each other

831
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: to make each other more compact. And so instead of

832
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 1: just like spreading out in every direction. The dark matter

833
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:21,399
Speaker 1: pulls itself into these halos and into these filaments between them,

834
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 1: and so that's why it's sort of like a push

835
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 1: and a pull, as you say, like an optimization problem.

836
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:27,839
Speaker 1: You can't just spread out everywhere. You need to figure

837
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,520
Speaker 1: out like what is the best arrangement of dark matter?

838
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:32,440
Speaker 1: If I give you some dark matter, how would you

839
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:35,839
Speaker 1: sprinkle it around the universe to create the galaxy map

840
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:38,759
Speaker 1: that we see. What's the best place to put it?

841
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:40,880
Speaker 1: And so they discover that slime bolds could help us

842
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:43,959
Speaker 1: figure this out if they turn this like dark matter

843
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: filament problem into a food problem. So they did this,

844
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: of course in simulation. They didn't use real slime molds,

845
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 1: So they didn't put a pile of slime mold next

846
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: to a powerful telescope and say, what do you think?

847
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: What would you guys do? You guys are in charge?

848
00:47:57,719 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 1: Tell us where to look? And that's scenario. What would

849
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 1: how would you behave? So what they do is they

850
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 1: put blobs of simulated the slime mold where they see

851
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: the galaxies, and then they simulated slime molds send out

852
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: tendrils in every direction and if it finds another galaxy,

853
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 1: then it strengthens that connection. And so this is the

854
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:19,239
Speaker 1: part where it's like simulating how a slime mold explores

855
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: its space. It's sending out tendrils and looking for stuff,

856
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: and when it's successful, a slime mold will build a

857
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 1: stronger network. That's how it replicated, for example, the Tokyo

858
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:30,720
Speaker 1: train map. And so in the universe, these simulated slime

859
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 1: molds start from galaxies and when they find other galaxies

860
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:36,839
Speaker 1: and they like enhance that connection between them. So there

861
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:39,400
Speaker 1: must be more of a filament here. So they're not

862
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:42,960
Speaker 1: actually modeling like the real physics of dark map. They're

863
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:45,360
Speaker 1: like saying, if you had a stimulated slime mold and

864
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:47,960
Speaker 1: you put in this artificial problem, would it solve that

865
00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 1: problem effectively? Can you use slime mold computing to figure

866
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 1: out where the filaments should be? What are the benefits

867
00:48:55,520 --> 00:48:59,240
Speaker 1: of trying out sort of a slime mold model versus

868
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 1: modeling physics. Is it that having some kind of physics model,

869
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:06,799
Speaker 1: we're still asking the questions that we would need to

870
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:09,280
Speaker 1: be able to make a physics model. At this point.

871
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:11,359
Speaker 1: You can do it with physics as well, but it's

872
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 1: difficult because you don't know what the initial conditions are. Like,

873
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 1: what we can do with physics is we can say,

874
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:19,359
Speaker 1: let's say we had a random universe and let's run

875
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:22,760
Speaker 1: a simulation of that and understand how the particles interact

876
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:24,600
Speaker 1: and how gravity works. What do you get? And you

877
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 1: get a universe with tendrils and galaxies, but you don't

878
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 1: get our universe, right, that's a different random universe. So

879
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:33,479
Speaker 1: because we don't know what the initial conditions of our

880
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:36,719
Speaker 1: universe are, it's hard to run that simulation and so

881
00:49:36,840 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 1: you could like try to run it backwards. So this

882
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 1: is just like an alternative approach to say, like, maybe

883
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 1: we can find a shortcut, a clever way to solve

884
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:47,239
Speaker 1: this problem using ideas from slime molds so that we

885
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: don't have to figure out how to run the universe backwards. Man,

886
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:54,240
Speaker 1: slime molds are so smart. They're teaching us about about physics.

887
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:56,960
Speaker 1: It's so interesting and mind blowing to me because with

888
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 1: slime molds, when we talk about their intelligent it is

889
00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:04,960
Speaker 1: not the kind of intelligence of a researcher sitting there

890
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:11,080
Speaker 1: programming this, uh, this mimicry of for the slime mold.

891
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:14,839
Speaker 1: It's just the the intelligence of a pattern of like

892
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:18,879
Speaker 1: individual particles. Let's let's just call one of the unicellular

893
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:23,719
Speaker 1: organisms like a particle doing a behavior. What gets even

894
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:27,040
Speaker 1: more kind of like Russian nesting dollars. You look at

895
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:32,400
Speaker 1: that individual, uh unicellular organism, and it is also basically

896
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: just a domino effect of particles colliding with each other

897
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:40,840
Speaker 1: and interacting so like molecules setting off other molecules. And

898
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:44,680
Speaker 1: then that's how that unicellular organism is able to move around.

899
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 1: And then you zoom back out, and then many of

900
00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: these unicellular organisms such just it almost makes my eyes

901
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:56,760
Speaker 1: crossed just thinking about how many complex like basically little

902
00:50:56,960 --> 00:51:01,240
Speaker 1: little individual units bonking into each other many many times,

903
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:06,280
Speaker 1: and how that can create such incredibly complex and seemingly

904
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: very intelligent behavior. Yeah, the same way that like a

905
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: computer can seem intelligence can do complicated things, but at

906
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,360
Speaker 1: the lowest level, it's just following very simple rules about

907
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 1: flipping bits from zeros to ones. And of course we

908
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: don't know if consciousness could arise from that kind of system,

909
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 1: and we also don't know why intelligence and consciousness does

910
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: arise from our biological system, which in the end, it's

911
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:30,319
Speaker 1: just a bunch of neurons zapping each other. So there

912
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 1: is really a deep mystery there about the connection between

913
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 1: the underlying rules and the emergence of consciousness. But I

914
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:38,520
Speaker 1: think it's really cool and you can take advantage of

915
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: that and say like, well, let's model these systems. Let's

916
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: figure out what they're doing, and see if we can

917
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 1: use that to solve this other problem. And it's awesome

918
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 1: to see the connections between problems on the cosmological scale,

919
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:52,600
Speaker 1: like the filaments between galaxies and how the universe formed

920
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:56,480
Speaker 1: and how this weird GROOPI thing crawls across the forest floor.

921
00:51:56,719 --> 00:52:00,239
Speaker 1: It really suggests that there are some mathematical connections that

922
00:52:00,239 --> 00:52:03,840
Speaker 1: they're the problems are similar in some deep way. In

923
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:06,319
Speaker 1: the end, the galaxies and the slime molds are both

924
00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 1: just solving and optimization problem to figure out what's the

925
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:11,920
Speaker 1: best way to hang together. I mean that makes me

926
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:15,240
Speaker 1: feel kind of more I guess connected to the universe,

927
00:52:15,320 --> 00:52:18,520
Speaker 1: where you know, it's not the way that these galaxies

928
00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:23,640
Speaker 1: are behaving, it's it's similar to how something is seemingly simple,

929
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:26,400
Speaker 1: as like the slime mold that we can find licking

930
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:29,800
Speaker 1: the walls of your local cave or maybe not, maybe

931
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,480
Speaker 1: don't do that has not been cleared by our legal department.

932
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,319
Speaker 1: By the way, do not endorse cave looking here at

933
00:52:35,360 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 1: your own risk. I mean there are many they're like

934
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:43,400
Speaker 1: splunking in cave looking are both only activities for highly

935
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 1: trained individuals, exactly. Professional cave liquors were used for this

936
00:52:48,320 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: podcast and folks, But even these slime molds have taught

937
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:56,399
Speaker 1: us something about the nature of the universe. These guys

938
00:52:56,480 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: ran this simulation and they now have a map of

939
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:02,319
Speaker 1: these cosmic filaments between the galaxies. And what they did

940
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:04,680
Speaker 1: is then they turned Hubble to one of these locations

941
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 1: where they thought, maybe here's a cosmic filament. Our slime

942
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: mold simulation tells us that should be there, and they

943
00:53:10,040 --> 00:53:12,760
Speaker 1: were able to see little hints of X rays emissions

944
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:15,840
Speaker 1: from what was otherwise deep empty space. So they found

945
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: new filaments using this simulation. So if they get a

946
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:22,280
Speaker 1: Nobel prize, is that going to go to the slime

947
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:26,040
Speaker 1: mold or to the researchers who ripped off the slime

948
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: molds mathematical model. Well, you know, in the great history

949
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:31,879
Speaker 1: of professors taking advantage of their students, I think will

950
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:33,880
Speaker 1: probably just toss him a few oat flakes and assume

951
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: that that's enough. But this is a deep mystery in

952
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 1: the universe, not just where are the filaments, but where

953
00:53:38,600 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: is all the missing stuff? And so understanding where these

954
00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:43,880
Speaker 1: filaments are might give us a clue is to like,

955
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 1: where those missing particles are. Are they really stretching between

956
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 1: the galaxies what seems like otherwise empty space. Is there

957
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 1: really a third of all the normal matter in the

958
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 1: universe in these long bands between galaxies. It would be

959
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:59,400
Speaker 1: incredible to discover that a whole third of the pie

960
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: is really there and what we otherwise thought was deep

961
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 1: empty space. I mean, that makes me feel good, warm

962
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:09,120
Speaker 1: and fuzzy. It's like we're holding hands with other galaxies.

963
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 1: It's not just just cold empty nothingness. We're all just

964
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:19,480
Speaker 1: part of the big galactic slime mold. Ah. That's gross,

965
00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:21,840
Speaker 1: all right, So thanks everybody for joining us for this

966
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: fun conversation about the structure of the whole universe and

967
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: how it's creeping along the forest floor of the cosmos,

968
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 1: as well as the mysteries of slime molds and how

969
00:54:30,920 --> 00:54:33,800
Speaker 1: we can take advantage of them to understand the questions

970
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: of the universe. And thanks Katie for coming along and

971
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: telling us about your cave looking habits. Yeah. Absolutely, I

972
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 1: hope people have an appreciation for even the slimiest, moldiest

973
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 1: pritters out there, because maybe they contain the keys to

974
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:50,120
Speaker 1: the universe. And it never ceases to amaze me how

975
00:54:50,239 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 1: is even possible for us to understand the universe at

976
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:56,800
Speaker 1: any scale, especially at these largest scales, using the tiny

977
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 1: little networks encased in our skulls. And so I'm glad

978
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,759
Speaker 1: that our slime mold brethren have come to help us

979
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:06,719
Speaker 1: in that great cosmic detective mystery, the escape Room of

980
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:09,840
Speaker 1: the Universe. Is that just your way of saying everyone's

981
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:14,000
Speaker 1: got slime for brains? I mean, you ever tasted brains,

982
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:20,240
Speaker 1: They're pretty slimey. Alright, Thanks everybody for joining us. Tune

983
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: in next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

984
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:33,160
Speaker 1: and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I

985
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:36,839
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast for my Heart Radio, visit

986
00:55:36,840 --> 00:55:40,360
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

987
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:41,960
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.