Speaker 1: Crystal, did you know that the secrets of the universe
Speaker 1: are all around us? What? Where? No? I mean answers
Speaker 1: to some of the deepest questions in science are literally
Speaker 1: all around us, like hiding under my bed or what
Speaker 1: do you mean? Yeah, they're under your bed, but they're
Speaker 1: also just right here in the air between me and you.
Speaker 1: I guess Bob Dylan was right. What do you mean,
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan? They're all just blowing in the wind. I
Speaker 1: guess Bob Dylan was a poet and also secretly a
Speaker 1: physicist and a philosopher, Which aren't We are doctors a
Speaker 1: philosophy anyway. That's right. That doesn't mean we know anything
Speaker 1: about it, but we have the title. Hi. I'm Daniel.
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and co host of the podcast
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorgey Explain the Universe, brought to you by
Speaker 1: I Heart Review. My co host, the hilarious and good
Speaker 1: looking Jorge Cham is not here today to join us
Speaker 1: with his amazing jokes about bananas. He does love a
Speaker 1: good banana, He does love a good banana. But instead
Speaker 1: today we have a wonderful, amazing co host, Crystal Dilworth. Crystal,
Speaker 1: introduce yourself. Hello. I'm Dr Crystal Dilworth. I'm a neuroscientist,
Speaker 1: um my PhD s and molecular neuroscience, so the molecular
Speaker 1: basis of nicotine dependence from cal Tex. So I'm just
Speaker 1: a curious person that loves science communication and I'm super
Speaker 1: excited to be here to talk to you today. All right, well,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. So you studied nicotine addiction. Does
Speaker 1: that make you um in the pocket for big tobacco?
Speaker 1: It's a classic dilemma, right do you accept research funding
Speaker 1: from big tobacco? Um? I was supported by ni H,
Speaker 1: so I escaped that quandary, so you stayed clean. In
Speaker 1: my field, it's always a question of do you take
Speaker 1: money for weapons researchis you know, like my parents, for example,
Speaker 1: worked at National Labs, work in weapons programs and helped
Speaker 1: develop essentially weapons of mass destruction, whereas I try to
Speaker 1: stay away from that and work on things that will
Speaker 1: never affect anybody's life. So maybe there's a parallel there. Um.
Speaker 1: But Crystal, you are a PhD scientist, but you're also
Speaker 1: not just a scientist, right, You're a dancer, you're a
Speaker 1: movie star, You're I guess I should have led with that.
Speaker 1: So I became part of the PhD Comics universe, um
Speaker 1: through the PhD movie. So I played Tagel in the
Speaker 1: PhD movie and the PhD movie too, and that's how
Speaker 1: I sort of came into ys Orbit and we've been
Speaker 1: working together on and off to audition for a movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, you ever acted before? I had acted in
Speaker 1: children's theater, So nothing on camera, nothing serious that was
Speaker 1: going to be seen on every continent on the planet.
Speaker 1: And it was really hard for me because I had
Speaker 1: started grad school thinking I was going to give up
Speaker 1: my life in the performing arts. No more dance, no
Speaker 1: more theater, no no stages for me. I was going
Speaker 1: to be the best scientist anyone had ever seen. I
Speaker 1: was going to eat, sleep, breathe science, do the right thing,
Speaker 1: be a good person. Um. But I had been reading
Speaker 1: PhD comics since I was working in the lab. And
Speaker 1: when you get an email saying PhD Comics is coming
Speaker 1: to your campus and they want to make a movie,
Speaker 1: a live action movie or live action YouTube series about
Speaker 1: this comic that has been your you know, your inspiration
Speaker 1: for grad school? Do you want to be a part
Speaker 1: of And it's like therapy for people, right. And I
Speaker 1: traveled with or hate people who come up to him
Speaker 1: and say, it hadn't been for your comic, I would
Speaker 1: never have made it through grad school, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for the comic, I never would
Speaker 1: have gone to grad school. So that's that's a whole
Speaker 1: other conversation shin before then, to blame you for your
Speaker 1: grad school. Yes, they hold him very much to blame.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he knows that, Jorge, it's your fault, um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was just the carrot was too big.
Speaker 1: So I was I was at a Biophysics Society meeting,
Speaker 1: which is about three hours away from Pasadena at the
Speaker 1: time that Jorge was running auditions for the PhD movie,
Speaker 1: and I went to my last session, got in the car,
Speaker 1: drove from San Diego up to Pasadena audition for the movie,
Speaker 1: and then drove back so I could be there for
Speaker 1: my eight am poster session the next morning. Like my
Speaker 1: my advisor like as if as if I was never gone,
Speaker 1: he would never know. Yeah, And that was sort of
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end for me, because through working
Speaker 1: with Jorge, I discovered that science communication was an area
Speaker 1: that I could work in after grad school, and that's
Speaker 1: what I do now. I host a show for a
Speaker 1: Voice of America that highlights science and technology that's happening
Speaker 1: here in the United States. It's broadcast internationally. UM I
Speaker 1: was recently selected as one of the Triple A s
Speaker 1: if THEN Ambassadors. I'm a role model for women in STEM.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and I'm really excited about what that means.
Speaker 1: And I've you know, I love doing these types of things.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to sit down here with you and do
Speaker 1: you feel like people these days still have to sort
Speaker 1: of choose between having a career in science or having
Speaker 1: a career in sort of the creative sector art, dance,
Speaker 1: you know, public speaking, or do you think it's more
Speaker 1: opening now for people to bridge that gap and live
Speaker 1: two lives and not have to hide from their advisor
Speaker 1: that they're doing this other thing. I think that the
Speaker 1: Ivory Tower is still pretty restrictive in terms of what
Speaker 1: it will accept for its tenure track faculty. But I
Speaker 1: think that if you haven't chosen that as your path
Speaker 1: to walk, there's a lot more leniency. UM. You asked
Speaker 1: about careers. I think it's difficult to make a full
Speaker 1: living in the arts and a full living in science.
Speaker 1: So in that respect, Abe you would have to choose
Speaker 1: one or the other. But there's so many exciting spaces
Speaker 1: for collaboration. I don't feel that anyone should feel that
Speaker 1: they have to give one of those up in order
Speaker 1: to do the other. Well. I'm really excited about the
Speaker 1: idea that science could be more open to more kinds
Speaker 1: of people, not just people who look different or come
Speaker 1: from different places, but people whose interests are broader, and
Speaker 1: that we don't have to be only people who are
Speaker 1: super zero focused on exactly this one kind of science,
Speaker 1: and then they have other interests and they do other
Speaker 1: things in their life. I think that's probably going to
Speaker 1: be good for science and also good for science communication
Speaker 1: if we have people from science who know how to
Speaker 1: do this thing. In my lab, specifically, I encourage the
Speaker 1: students to do science communication, send them to conferences, this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I don't know if that's good for
Speaker 1: their careers or not, but I figured, since I try
Speaker 1: to do science communication, that I should try to not
Speaker 1: prevent my students from also doing it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's a good idea or not, but on this
Speaker 1: open minded process I'm experimenting on my students, but also
Speaker 1: on this podcast, we want people to understand that everybody
Speaker 1: can understand scien It's one of the goals of this
Speaker 1: podcast is to zoom around the universe and take crazy,
Speaker 1: amazing things and make them actually understandable, not just jargon
Speaker 1: said while waving your hands, which isn't helpful on podcast,
Speaker 1: but people can go away and feel like I get it,
Speaker 1: I know what that is. I understand relativity now, and
Speaker 1: I want to make breakdown those barriers and make people
Speaker 1: feel like they can figure it out too. Oh I'm
Speaker 1: all for that, all right, So let's get into it today.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about something really amazing, as we alluded
Speaker 1: to earlier, something that's all around us, a secret of
Speaker 1: the universe, deep dark knowledge about how things in the
Speaker 1: universe work, the ancient history of the universe that has
Speaker 1: just been sort of floating around in the air around
Speaker 1: us with nobody noticing for I guess thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Literally like a color you can't see, yes, exactly, if
Speaker 1: only our eyes could open it. I talk a lot
Speaker 1: in this podcast about opening new eyes. I feel like
Speaker 1: science is always figuring out new ways to look at
Speaker 1: the universe, and every time we do so, we realize
Speaker 1: the universe. Wow. It looks so different and using these
Speaker 1: other eyes than than the ones we're familiar with. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a color that we can't see. And also
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite stories because it was discovered
Speaker 1: kind of by accident. You know, Folks were trying to
Speaker 1: do one thing, developed this technology, accidentally stumbled into this
Speaker 1: incredible wealth of knowledge about the universe. I think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of really cool stories, especially in astro
Speaker 1: about accidental major discoveries. That seems to be one of
Speaker 1: the really big fields of science where that that's possible.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm so jealous sometimes with astronomy because
Speaker 1: every time they look out into the universe with a
Speaker 1: new device, they find something that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: We talked about recently the podcast These Fermi Bubbles. It's
Speaker 1: like huge structure the size of the galaxy and nobody
Speaker 1: ever seen before, found ten years ago. But whereas in
Speaker 1: particle physics it feels sometimes a little bit more difficult
Speaker 1: to find new things. It's rarer that we like find
Speaker 1: a new particle nobody hadn't expected. Um. So sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: jealous of astronomers because they get to they get to
Speaker 1: see things they don't understand more often, and that's like
Speaker 1: the launching point for discovery, right when the universe gives
Speaker 1: you a clue and says, here's something you didn't expect,
Speaker 1: then you get to unravel it. I feel like, for
Speaker 1: a chemistry and neuroscience, which are my area, is like
Speaker 1: the analogous story is like the discovery of LSD. Like
Speaker 1: some chemist was like, what's this? I'm going to eat it?
Speaker 1: And I was like, WHOA, Well that's the big leap
Speaker 1: forward in neuroscience. So what were they trying to do
Speaker 1: when they discovered LSD? I don't actually remember. It's like
Speaker 1: such an irrelevant part of the discovery story that I can't,
Speaker 1: off the top of my head even remember what they
Speaker 1: were trying to synthesize. Al Right, well, today we're talking
Speaker 1: about something unseen but then discovered something a surprisingly revealed
Speaker 1: that told us deep knowledge about the universe. So let's
Speaker 1: not tease it anymore. Today we're going to be answering
Speaker 1: the question what is the cosmic microwave background? So this
Speaker 1: is something which is invisible and carries a huge amount
Speaker 1: of information all around us, and it discovered by accident
Speaker 1: about fifty years ago. It's a pretty funny story. Actually,
Speaker 1: some folks were building a radio telescope to do something else.
Speaker 1: They want to do radar and communication, and so they
Speaker 1: built this device and then they heard this buzz on
Speaker 1: the device. Is this noise? And at first they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is annoying and we can't get rid of it.
Speaker 1: They thought it was like a malfunction of their telescope.
Speaker 1: Um they couldn't understand where it came from. So microwaves,
Speaker 1: can we just start there? I have one. I so
Speaker 1: you're an expert in microwave backgrounds because you can use
Speaker 1: a microwave. I can use a microwave. I'm an expert microwaver.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how to extrapolate my knowledge of heating
Speaker 1: up soup to the beginning of the universe. Can you
Speaker 1: help me draw that connection? Yes, for once our podcast
Speaker 1: will actually have practical knowledge and it folks. Yes, we'll
Speaker 1: draw that connection. But first I was wondering what everybody
Speaker 1: knew about microwaves, Like, do people understand microwave back ground radiation?
Speaker 1: Dos that make sense to them? Is this something everybody
Speaker 1: is already familiar with or is it something nobody had
Speaker 1: ever heard of before? And so, as usual, I walked
Speaker 1: around campus here you see Irvine, and I'm eternally grateful
Speaker 1: to the students here for being open to being asked
Speaker 1: these random questions by a scruffy looking physicist. So before
Speaker 1: you hear their answers, think to yourself, do you know
Speaker 1: what the cosmic microwave background is? How could you explain
Speaker 1: it to a random dude who accosted you on the street.
Speaker 1: Here's what, folks that you see Irvine had to say
Speaker 1: something that's ongoing in the atmosphere having to do with microwaves.
Speaker 1: I don't know, no micro waves that are present everywhere.
Speaker 1: I do not know. I've heard the topic. I've watched
Speaker 1: couple of videos, but I don't understand that whatsoever. Wave
Speaker 1: like yeah, I don't know it's material or just wave.
Speaker 1: There is something like that a president outside Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a elemnent of those in a big thing.
Speaker 1: All right, So Crystal, what do you think of those answers?
Speaker 1: You impressed? Um, I don't think i'd say impressed. But
Speaker 1: there's quite a diversity of topics that the answers are
Speaker 1: connecting to, like electricity or something. Yes, yeah, well, it's
Speaker 1: like electricity or something that's a pretty broad answer, so
Speaker 1: it's pretty close. You could tell that some people had
Speaker 1: no idea what we're talking about and just sort of
Speaker 1: guest generally physics. A few people had heard of it.
Speaker 1: I like think, I said, I watched a couple of videos,
Speaker 1: but I have no idea what it is that tells
Speaker 1: me that there's an opening here to really explain the
Speaker 1: microwave background. She really needs this podcast, Yes, exactly, this
Speaker 1: one is for you, dude. But I like the I
Speaker 1: like this answer remnant of the Big Bang. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're really getting to something there, aren't we. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: somebody definitely knew what we were talking about. So let's
Speaker 1: get back to your question and break it down. I
Speaker 1: know how to heat up soup in a microwave. I
Speaker 1: even know that microwaves are long radio waves. I think
Speaker 1: of them as really big waves. I mean, I'm a
Speaker 1: I did a lot of fluorescence microscopy UM in a lab,
Speaker 1: so I like nanometer is a scale that I'm used
Speaker 1: to dealing with in microwaves, I think of being so
Speaker 1: big as to be ineligible. UM, so help me out here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love this sense of scales and science right for me.
Speaker 1: For example, anything big on the proton is like way
Speaker 1: too big and complicated even think about, right, whereas mechanical
Speaker 1: engineers never think about the individual molecules. So microwaves is
Speaker 1: really really just a relative term. Remember, microwaves are electromagnetic radiation,
Speaker 1: just like light. So everything that's coming into your eyeballs
Speaker 1: is electromagnetic radiation, but it's part of a much larger spectrum.
Speaker 1: The visible light is just this one little slice that
Speaker 1: we happen to be able to see because our eyes
Speaker 1: react to it. But down the lower um frequency, the
Speaker 1: longer wavelengths, you have radio waves, and at the higher
Speaker 1: end you have gamma rays and X rays. It's all
Speaker 1: just part of the same big electromagnetic family. And microwaves
Speaker 1: are a kind of radio waves, as you said, and
Speaker 1: they're might be called micro because they're short for radio waves.
Speaker 1: Radio waves can have wavelengths like meters long. It's just
Speaker 1: all about scale, it's all about scales, and so compared
Speaker 1: to that, microwaves, which have wavelength like millimeter, are really small.
Speaker 1: But of course you know, they're huge compared to visible
Speaker 1: light or gamma rays or anything that I know anything about. Frankly,
Speaker 1: So microwaves are mega waves for me and microwaves for
Speaker 1: most people. So cosmic microwave background. The connection is the
Speaker 1: wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation. And we talked on this
Speaker 1: podcast recently about how microwaves work, and they work in
Speaker 1: the same way. They pump this same kind of radiation
Speaker 1: into your soup to make it hot, using it to
Speaker 1: add energy to the system. That's right, Um, and then
Speaker 1: fueling you so that you can think about the universe
Speaker 1: and reveal all of its secrets. I'll work on that,
Speaker 1: all of the secrets revealed. Yeah, exactly. Um, Jorge usually
Speaker 1: has a banana before every podcast because apparently he can't
Speaker 1: think without a Is that's something you know about him
Speaker 1: through I know that he definitely does not operate without
Speaker 1: a banana. I do not operate without a coffee. So
Speaker 1: as long as he's got bananas and I've got coffee,
Speaker 1: we're usually good to go. That's all that's required around here. Well,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect spot to take a break. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Um. Yeah, So, cosmic microwave background radiation.
Speaker 1: The microwave radiation part just refers to the length of
Speaker 1: the waves of the electromagnetic radiation. So where are the
Speaker 1: waves coming from? Yeah, they're coming from everywhere, Like if
Speaker 1: you look out into the sky, you see this radiation
Speaker 1: coming from everywhere. And that was the weird thing about
Speaker 1: their discovery. When they turned on this radio telescope for
Speaker 1: the first time, they heard this buzz and they heard
Speaker 1: it from every direction. There's sort of two answer parts
Speaker 1: to that answer. One is where do we see them? Right,
Speaker 1: And it's coming from every direction, so we see it
Speaker 1: from everywhere in the sky. And often if you see
Speaker 1: a map of the cosmic microwave background radiation, it's this
Speaker 1: weird ellipse with these little dots on it, and that's
Speaker 1: an attempt to describe what you see in each direction
Speaker 1: the sky. So, because the sky is a circle, right,
Speaker 1: the Earth is a sphere. It's hard to map a
Speaker 1: sphere onto a flat piece of paper. The best way
Speaker 1: to describe what you see is if you could print
Speaker 1: it on the inside of a sphere, so you could
Speaker 1: look at and say, oh, in this direction, we see this.
Speaker 1: In that direction, we see this. The same way, it's
Speaker 1: hard to make a map of the stars you see
Speaker 1: in the sky, right. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is like a planetarium, you can print them on the
Speaker 1: inside of a curved surface, so you can show what
Speaker 1: we're seeing. So what we see when we talk about
Speaker 1: the cosmic microwave background is we see this buzz, this
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation from every direction at once, so just filling
Speaker 1: the space that is the universe. Yeah, it's coming from
Speaker 1: every direction and hitting us. And it's everywhere. Like if
Speaker 1: we were here or around Jupiter, or in the center
Speaker 1: of the galaxy or in between galaxies, we would see
Speaker 1: it everywhere. So it's originating from the universe. It's just
Speaker 1: an energy that now exists and bounces around and comes
Speaker 1: from everywhere. Yeah, it comes from everywhere. And that's the
Speaker 1: confused seeing part, I think to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: because people think, Okay, it's light, so it's traveling at
Speaker 1: light speed and it's getting here. How can it be
Speaker 1: getting here? Where did it come from? Right? And that's
Speaker 1: pretty confusing if you imagine that, if you think about
Speaker 1: the beginning of the universe as a point and from
Speaker 1: that point things flew outwards, and people trying to imagine, well,
Speaker 1: then if it's getting here now it's coming from that point,
Speaker 1: how can we be seeing it from two directions? And
Speaker 1: the reason that's confusing is that I think that's the
Speaker 1: wrong way to think about the start of the universe.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, how should I be thinking about the
Speaker 1: start of the universe. Well, you start with the bowl soup, right, Um. No.
Speaker 1: The way I think about the start of the universe
Speaker 1: is that it started off infinite, that it's the moment
Speaker 1: of creation is not a single point in space, but
Speaker 1: that the Big Bang happened everywhere all at once. There
Speaker 1: was sort of multiple starts from every direction. And what
Speaker 1: we're seeing now is leftover bits from really far away
Speaker 1: in that in one direction, and really far away in
Speaker 1: the other direction. So if I'm looking at the cosmic
Speaker 1: microwave background reradiation, I'm seeing light that came from the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the universe. It took almost fourteen billion
Speaker 1: years to get here from somewhere really far away in
Speaker 1: one direction. And I'll turn around and I look in
Speaker 1: the other direction. I'm seeing light come from the other direction,
Speaker 1: which came really far away from the other direction, from
Speaker 1: somewhere else, really really far away. So these two pieces
Speaker 1: of light haven't talked to each other ever. Are they
Speaker 1: meeting for the first time in the history of the
Speaker 1: universe here on Earth. So they're not coming from the
Speaker 1: same place. It's not like we're looking at a little object.
Speaker 1: We're looking at a huge universe at its beginning. Every
Speaker 1: direction you look at, you're looking at a different part
Speaker 1: of the early universe. So does that mean that the
Speaker 1: different particles, the different waves of light that are meeting
Speaker 1: here for the very first time can tell us different
Speaker 1: things about the beginning of the universe. Yes, absolutely, they
Speaker 1: tell us what was going on at one spot of
Speaker 1: the universe over there, and what was going on at
Speaker 1: one spot of the universe over there, just the same
Speaker 1: way when we look at the night sky. Now you
Speaker 1: look at one star, it's telling you that light is
Speaker 1: telling you what happened a long time ago in that direction.
Speaker 1: You turn another way, and like from another star is
Speaker 1: telling you what happened in a totally different part of
Speaker 1: the universe, also a long time ago. Those two photons
Speaker 1: are also meeting for the first time. So I have
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about how that information is carried
Speaker 1: and decoded. But first I'd like to ask, when this
Speaker 1: background radiation was discovered, what did we think it was.
Speaker 1: How did we know that it could teach us and
Speaker 1: tell us things. Yeah, if that's a really fun part
Speaker 1: of the story because the guys who discovered this, they
Speaker 1: weren't looking for it, but there was another team of
Speaker 1: people who were looking for it, and they got scooped.
Speaker 1: So there was a team around the corner. This telescope
Speaker 1: they built was in New Jersey and it just happened
Speaker 1: to be around the corner from Princeton. It was a
Speaker 1: team of Princeton who was looking for this radiation. They
Speaker 1: were like scrambling to build the device. They could see it,
Speaker 1: and they got scooped by these guys who were like
Speaker 1: building something to do something else. The reason they were
Speaker 1: looking for it is that there was this idea that
Speaker 1: we could find evidence for the Big Bang. And this
Speaker 1: is back in the sixties when the Big Bang was
Speaker 1: still like kind of a crazy idea, not neces serily
Speaker 1: totally accepted. Definitely not a television show, yeah, not yet,
Speaker 1: a hilarious television show that probably gates stereotypes about scientists. Um.
Speaker 1: But the idea was that if the universe had started
Speaker 1: smaller or more dense right at the universe had started
Speaker 1: from um really dense mass and then exploded, then originally
Speaker 1: it was sort of hotter and denser. And the reason
Speaker 1: people thought that this radiation might exist. Is that they
Speaker 1: looked back into the history of the universe. They said, Okay,
Speaker 1: the universe now is a bunch of stars and galaxies,
Speaker 1: but if there had been a big bang, then the
Speaker 1: universe we sort of rewind the history of the universe.
Speaker 1: Everything pulls together and gets hotter and denser, and eventually
Speaker 1: it gets so hot and dense that it becomes a plasma.
Speaker 1: And a plasma is really interesting because light can't just
Speaker 1: passed through it. It's opaque. So this this moment in
Speaker 1: the history of the universe they thought when the universe
Speaker 1: went from opaque like like couldn't go through it too transparent,
Speaker 1: Suddenly the universe cooled um and became crystal clear, so
Speaker 1: that you could, like photons could fly through the universe
Speaker 1: without necessarily getting absorbed. And so this is this last
Speaker 1: moment when the universe was a hot plasma and then
Speaker 1: it cooled, and the light from that moment, they figured
Speaker 1: should still be around. That's crazy. I know. It's like, um,
Speaker 1: you know your baby picture that your parents took, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, years ago. Um, the light from that picture
Speaker 1: is still out in space somewhere. Like that's literally true.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like gestational periods of the universe, which
Speaker 1: was like a really weird mental trip that I just
Speaker 1: went on and back. Now, okay, welcome back, um. But
Speaker 1: you know the same way that everything that happened on
Speaker 1: Earth a long time ago, the light from that is
Speaker 1: out there in space, the way like TV shows that
Speaker 1: we broadcast are out there in space flying away. Um,
Speaker 1: everything that happened in the early universe is still out
Speaker 1: there in space. So if the early universe used to
Speaker 1: be hot and dense and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: became cool, then this light could fly through the universe
Speaker 1: untouched and it should still be out there. And that's
Speaker 1: what they were looking for. They were looking for this
Speaker 1: last light from the hot plasma other early universe, which
Speaker 1: should then still just be flying around and we should
Speaker 1: be able to find it. And you know microwave background.
Speaker 1: Remember that's just another kind of electromagnetic radiation. So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about light, we really just mean electromagnetic radiation.
Speaker 1: So finding this radiation meant that we were on the
Speaker 1: right track in terms of the origins of the universe model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really the first experimental evidence that said, wow,
Speaker 1: this crazy idea that the universe used to be hot
Speaker 1: and dense and then expanded really fast. Might be true.
Speaker 1: It's you know, this rhythm and science where we say, okay,
Speaker 1: you've got a crazy idea that sort of explains the
Speaker 1: way things work. Make a prediction, prove it, predict something
Speaker 1: that we could find that we could only see if
Speaker 1: your idea is correct. And this is what was the prediction.
Speaker 1: And coincidentally, Jim Peebles, one of the guys who predicted it,
Speaker 1: just won the Nobel Prize for that prediction this very week.
Speaker 1: The competing idea at the time was the sort of
Speaker 1: steady state universe. Universe had been like this, been like
Speaker 1: this forever. You know, maybe it was expanding, but there's
Speaker 1: some sort of new source so stuff in it, and
Speaker 1: that people wanted to believe that. I don't really understand
Speaker 1: why people wanted to believe Biblical origins. Don't you think
Speaker 1: we'll see but biblical origins tell you the universe had
Speaker 1: a beginning, right, The steady state idea sort of like
Speaker 1: the eternal universe. The universe has been like this forever,
Speaker 1: And for some reason, I think that seemed more natural
Speaker 1: to people. It seems more natural to me that the
Speaker 1: universe had a beginning. I guess to some people, thinking
Speaker 1: the universe had an origin brought up other questions like
Speaker 1: what happened before that? And I'm not afraid of questions.
Speaker 1: I love those questions, But to me, it would be
Speaker 1: weird at the universe it existed forever. I was actually
Speaker 1: trapped at the Caldec Faculty Club while a visiting professor
Speaker 1: and one of our staff scientists had an argument over
Speaker 1: what came before the Big Bang, and none of the
Speaker 1: graduate students were willing to interrupt the argument to say like,
Speaker 1: can we order because we're really hungry, and the waiter
Speaker 1: kept coming to take our order, and the graduate students
Speaker 1: kept making eyes at them like were we we can't
Speaker 1: They're still argue. Eventually, I think somebody came and was like, sirs,
Speaker 1: can we move this process along? But I guess this
Speaker 1: is still a hotly contested idea, at least in the
Speaker 1: Caltec fact of the club at lunchtime. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes this arguments can feel like they last forever um.
Speaker 1: But at the time there was these two camps. It
Speaker 1: was the steady State University. University existed sort of in
Speaker 1: this similar state forever, and the other idea that it
Speaker 1: came from this hot, dense initial point. And this was
Speaker 1: the prediction that that they made that if the universe
Speaker 1: had been hotter and denser, it would have be this
Speaker 1: plasma and it would admit this radiation and we could
Speaker 1: still find it. You know, it's like if you, um,
Speaker 1: if there had been a rave in an apartment last night,
Speaker 1: and you know, you expect like lots of loud music,
Speaker 1: and the moment that music turns off, that music is
Speaker 1: still flying out there somewhere. So this is like saying,
Speaker 1: let's go find that music as evidence that there was
Speaker 1: a rave in my apartment last night, But of course
Speaker 1: that music is flying off away from us. You would
Speaker 1: have to like travel the speed of sound to catch it.
Speaker 1: This is like that we're finding here. So I think
Speaker 1: it can be a little confusing to digest, like why
Speaker 1: are we seeing that light here? And seeing it from
Speaker 1: multiple directions. So when it was detected or discovered, the
Speaker 1: scientists knew what they had, and they also knew that
Speaker 1: there were some were going to be some really upset
Speaker 1: people at Princeton Um. They didn't know what they had,
Speaker 1: Like the guys who found it, Penzias and Wilson, they
Speaker 1: just thought it was noise. They just heard this hiss
Speaker 1: in their telescope and it was an obstacle to them.
Speaker 1: They thought, we can't get rid of this. What was
Speaker 1: going on? Um? And they're like, this is really strange.
Speaker 1: And then they went around the corner to the physicist
Speaker 1: of Princeton and they're like, we found this weird thing.
Speaker 1: What do you know about it? And I think the
Speaker 1: physicist must have been like, oh my god, we've been
Speaker 1: trying to find this and you scooped us slash. Wow, wonderful,
Speaker 1: we learned this amazing thing about the universe. That must
Speaker 1: have been a really sort of you know, plus and
Speaker 1: minus moment for them. So they published it separately. There
Speaker 1: was no post talk collaboration. Now they wrote two papers.
Speaker 1: The guys who actually found it published their discovered, like
Speaker 1: here's what we found, and then immediately afterwards the Princeton
Speaker 1: guys wrote a paper saying here's what this means and
Speaker 1: here's why it's important. But the Penzias and Wilson, they're
Speaker 1: the ones who got the Nobel Prize because they're the
Speaker 1: ones who found it. Man, science sometimes it's luck, yes,
Speaker 1: I know, And you can be like days or weeks
Speaker 1: away from a discovery that wins the Nobel Prize, if
Speaker 1: those folks at Princeton, if their grad students had worked
Speaker 1: a little harder, or they hadn't taken us along to
Speaker 1: order lunch. Professor. When I was an undergrad professor of
Speaker 1: mine who was teaching thermodynamics, he was one of the
Speaker 1: folks racing to discover the Bose Einstein condensate, this weird
Speaker 1: state of matter, and there were other groups. Was when
Speaker 1: m I T and when it nised and he was
Speaker 1: able to create the Bose Einstein condensate and published it,
Speaker 1: but he was two weeks too late, and he was
Speaker 1: left out of the Nobel Prize. So there was shared
Speaker 1: between NIST and M I. T. And he was two
Speaker 1: weeks away from the winning the Nobel Prize. And I
Speaker 1: always thought, wow, that must be tragic, and he must,
Speaker 1: you know, wonder like should I have given my grad
Speaker 1: students two weeks off for Chris Smiths or we could
Speaker 1: all be sharing the Nobel Prize right now? Right, I
Speaker 1: feel like we should probably move on because I could,
Speaker 1: I could take this topic my soapboxman really want to
Speaker 1: be you know right now. But it's true, right, like
Speaker 1: these these things can be so so far yet so close,
Speaker 1: and you never know. You never know if you're around
Speaker 1: the corner from discovering something amazing, and also if somebody
Speaker 1: else is one week ahead of you, or if you're
Speaker 1: sort of on your own and you're about to discover
Speaker 1: this incredible thing. That's the pressed grad students showing up
Speaker 1: in the lab every day, right, is the hope that
Speaker 1: the next day is going to be different. It's also
Speaker 1: the definition of insanity. That's right slash of research. So
Speaker 1: when the Princeton group published sorry to bring us back,
Speaker 1: when the Princeton Group published their paper saying this is
Speaker 1: what the discovery means, what did it mean? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: meant that there was this evidence that the universe had
Speaker 1: once been hot and dense, and since the universe is
Speaker 1: dot hot and dense right now, it's like huge and
Speaker 1: empty and cold. That means that the period of the
Speaker 1: universe we're living in is not the way things have
Speaker 1: always been, and it means that the history is quite different.
Speaker 1: And we found relics of the history. This is like
Speaker 1: fossils of the universe. It's like a discovering whoy there
Speaker 1: there used to be these huge, crazy animals that walked
Speaker 1: along the Earth. Earth used to be totally different from
Speaker 1: what we're experiencing now. Now this is on the universe scale.
Speaker 1: Now we learned whow the universe used to be this hot, dense, nasty,
Speaker 1: wet plasma where nothing could probably get through and then
Speaker 1: it cooled. And so that was really very convincing um
Speaker 1: evidence that the Big Bang was a real thing, and
Speaker 1: the Big Bang like happened. It's not just an idea,
Speaker 1: it's not just a story. It's not just something you
Speaker 1: read about in the book. It was reality. It was
Speaker 1: it was these physical events took place. H And to me,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. You know that there's there's this history of
Speaker 1: the universe and we can uncover it, that there's enough
Speaker 1: clues out there that we can actually figure out what
Speaker 1: the objective truth is of the universe, which has sort
Speaker 1: of been like a big question in human existence, right
Speaker 1: where do we come from? How has this whole thing
Speaker 1: been created? We're unraveling that. We're like using science to
Speaker 1: figure out what the true history of the universe is.
Speaker 1: That's incredible power. So when you're talking about objective truth,
Speaker 1: is this things that can be described using mathematics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have models that described the early universe, and those
Speaker 1: models made predictions, and those predictions are born out to
Speaker 1: be true. And you know, we can never really claim
Speaker 1: objective truth. We don't really know what's out there. You
Speaker 1: can just be trapped in a brain, in a vat somewhere.
Speaker 1: You don't know if the universe exists. But assuming that
Speaker 1: the things that we're experiencing are real and that physics
Speaker 1: can describe them, we're making incredible progress in revealing the
Speaker 1: way we think the earlier universe happened. And I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty incredible. As a physicist, you know that there
Speaker 1: is a noable truth that is always true, at least
Speaker 1: within the universe that you yourself are experiencing. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things I like about physics. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love doing creative stuff also, But the thing I
Speaker 1: like about physics is that the universe answers questions and
Speaker 1: it's you know, yes or no. It's not like, well, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you wrote this thing, this novel and it's
Speaker 1: pretty good and somebody else's no, it's wonderful, somebody else's no,
Speaker 1: it's trash. Right, the universe, you can ask a question
Speaker 1: to say, all right, which theory is correct? And he
Speaker 1: says this one and that one. You love it. It's beautiful,
Speaker 1: but it's wrong. There's an objectivity there. It's not just
Speaker 1: people's opinion. You know, the universe tells you this is
Speaker 1: the way things happen. But only if you can find
Speaker 1: those clues, only if you can figure out a way
Speaker 1: to sort of corner the universe and make it reveal
Speaker 1: this truth. You don't just get to stand in a
Speaker 1: mountaintop and say, tell me the answers. You have to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to find these clues and on
Speaker 1: earth it like a detective and that's a slow process. Right.
Speaker 1: If you think about early interpretation of physical fossils like
Speaker 1: you know, dinosaurs, et cetera, or you know small ce creatures.
Speaker 1: We use that to fuel stories of monsters and uh,
Speaker 1: it evolved the way that we were describing our universe
Speaker 1: are our world, but not necessarily to bring it completely
Speaker 1: in line with the scientific understanding we have now. So
Speaker 1: how long did that process take discovering this fossil of
Speaker 1: microwave background? Yeah? Well, I think the idea of the
Speaker 1: Big Bang dates to the earlier part of the last century.
Speaker 1: The whole idea that the universe was bigger than the
Speaker 1: galaxy is only than only a hundred years old, and
Speaker 1: then so discovering these other galaxies, finding that they're moving
Speaker 1: away from us, and then trying to understand, well, if
Speaker 1: the universe, if galaxies are moving away from us, right,
Speaker 1: then how can we have a at all a sort
Speaker 1: of steady state model? Thing? Before that people imagine galaxies
Speaker 1: just sort of hanging in space. So then discover things
Speaker 1: are moving away from us, that's sort of immediately implies
Speaker 1: some sort of expansion. And then that brought up these
Speaker 1: questions like, well, how can you have expansion if the
Speaker 1: universe is bajillions of years old? And Einstein didn't like
Speaker 1: that at all either. That's really the origin of that idea.
Speaker 1: And so then to find this evidence is really conclusive.
Speaker 1: And then they discovered on top of all that evidence
Speaker 1: that this is really from the Big Bang. There's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge amount of detailed information in this buzz, in this
Speaker 1: light from the first plasma that gives us clues about
Speaker 1: what was happening in the Big Bang, the way like
Speaker 1: you can look at your baby picture and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can tell like you know, I'm drinking coffee as
Speaker 1: a two year old or whatever, or Orge has got
Speaker 1: a little banana his baby picture. Um, you can look
Speaker 1: back at this baby picture of the universe and and
Speaker 1: understand why our universe looks the way it does and
Speaker 1: gives us a huge amount of information about our universe today. Well,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect spot to take a break. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. So how is that information coded. It's
Speaker 1: coded in the little differences. So if you look at
Speaker 1: the cosmic microwave background radiation maps, and if you're in
Speaker 1: front of a computer, you should google cosmic microwave background
Speaker 1: and you'll see this image. It's sort of like reds
Speaker 1: and blues and greens. And what you're seeing there is
Speaker 1: that is this slightly different energies you see if you
Speaker 1: look in different directions. So you get this radio wave
Speaker 1: it's microwave, and that has a certain frequency, and their
Speaker 1: frequency means a certain energy and there's very small variations. UM.
Speaker 1: And so what we do is we measure the energy
Speaker 1: in different directions and we see that in some places
Speaker 1: it's like one one hundred thousands hotter or one one
Speaker 1: thousands colder, and that's telling us something about the density
Speaker 1: of that plasma. Four hundred thousand years after the Big
Speaker 1: Bank fourteen, almost fourteen billion years ago telling us, oh
Speaker 1: this was a hot spot, this is a cold spot.
Speaker 1: And those are very small variations in sort of the
Speaker 1: temperature of the universe at that time. And you might think,
Speaker 1: well that why does that matter, alright, who cares about
Speaker 1: the tiny a little bit hotter, tined, a little bit colder. Well,
Speaker 1: those are the structures, the seeds of the structure of
Speaker 1: the universe itself. The universe has been totally smooth, like
Speaker 1: exactly homogeneous everywhere, and there's no way to sort of
Speaker 1: build anything because every particle is being pulled in every
Speaker 1: direction simultaneously. What you need to start the seed structure
Speaker 1: to get like galaxies and planets and stars and people
Speaker 1: and bananas and hamsters is you need a little bit
Speaker 1: of variation. And so these are the original seeds of
Speaker 1: variation that caused the structure that we see today. So
Speaker 1: if everything was all the same, maybe you're really boring here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be here because that you would never form
Speaker 1: any structure. You would never form really hot, dense things
Speaker 1: like stars to give light and planets for people to
Speaker 1: live on. It would just be smooth and not very dense.
Speaker 1: So in order to get anything interesting in the universe.
Speaker 1: You need little packets of density to start off with.
Speaker 1: And if those packets were even slightly different, our universe
Speaker 1: would be so completely different we wouldn't even recognize it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have a galaxy here, You might have a
Speaker 1: galaxy somewhere else, totally far away. Yeah. And the amazing
Speaker 1: thing is that these those variations are totally random. They
Speaker 1: come from quantum mechanics. Like, where do you get these
Speaker 1: variations from the beginning? The universe started out sort of symmetric,
Speaker 1: and how else could it start? Then? How you get
Speaker 1: any variation to see the structure comes from quantum mechanics.
Speaker 1: Quantum randomness strikes again. It keeps following me around. It's everywhere.
Speaker 1: So you get little random fluctuations. Those little fluctuations get
Speaker 1: expanded into bigger fluctuations, and then they become, you know,
Speaker 1: larger and larger. So we said, see these really really minor,
Speaker 1: very subtle fluctuations in this early plasma. You know that
Speaker 1: took fourteen billion years for gravity to build on and
Speaker 1: to make something big and beautiful and elaborate that we
Speaker 1: are living in today. So for scientists starts studying the
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave back on the c MB right now. Are
Speaker 1: they asking questions about the past or are they looking
Speaker 1: at either at present time or future time? Yeah, that well,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. I think people want to understand
Speaker 1: the past because they want to know the future. Like
Speaker 1: I'd like to know how long is the univer is
Speaker 1: gonna be around, is going to keep pairing itself apart
Speaker 1: or turn around and crunch? And part of answering the
Speaker 1: questions about the future means looking into the past and
Speaker 1: understanding the origins and revealing the mechanisms. So I think
Speaker 1: we're asking mostly asking questions about the past, but really
Speaker 1: because we want to know the answers about the future.
Speaker 1: And the CNB reveals all sorts of things like how
Speaker 1: much dark energy was there, how much dark matter was
Speaker 1: there in the very early universe, how much matter was
Speaker 1: there in general, All sorts of things are encoded in
Speaker 1: the details of the CNB, And that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that scientists are focusing on today's is pulling out
Speaker 1: as much information as possible from this early map of
Speaker 1: the universe. So this is just one of the many
Speaker 1: types of radiation that I can't see that's being like that.
Speaker 1: I'm basically swimming through as I go about my day.
Speaker 1: Imagine if we were all blind, humanity was all blind
Speaker 1: and nobody could see it would be difficult to imagine. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's all this information around us that we're not capturing,
Speaker 1: and the light would be there, but we just wouldn't
Speaker 1: be using it to understand our world. Well, that is
Speaker 1: our situation. We are all blind. We're blind to all
Speaker 1: these different other kinds of light and particle that are
Speaker 1: all around us with incredible information about the universe that
Speaker 1: we just can't see. In hill, we build telescopes and
Speaker 1: new devices that are sensitive to these kinds of radiation
Speaker 1: and these particles that can help us understand these clues.
Speaker 1: What's the most mind blowing thing about the CMB that
Speaker 1: you ever learned? And can you describe that moment? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing that I think is amazing about the CMB
Speaker 1: is that we can see sound in the CMB, Like, okay, wait,
Speaker 1: we can see sound. Yeah, we can see sound. So
Speaker 1: what is sound? Sound is waves? Sound is a like ripples.
Speaker 1: So for example, you're sitting your bathtub and you move
Speaker 1: your arm, you see waves in the water, right, So
Speaker 1: those are waves. Sound is just waves in air. So
Speaker 1: when we say, well, maybe instead of saying sound, I
Speaker 1: should have said we see ripples. We see waves in
Speaker 1: the CMB, we see ostillations because there's some kind of
Speaker 1: matter in the early universe, in the early plasma that
Speaker 1: can interact, like pulls itself together like normal matter, and
Speaker 1: some matter that doesn't, like dark matter, doesn't really feel anything,
Speaker 1: and so those different kinds of matter have different kinds
Speaker 1: of oscillles, like one grand one is pulling in one way,
Speaker 1: the other one is pushing the other way, because it interacts.
Speaker 1: And we can see patterns in the cosmic microwave background
Speaker 1: radiation that reflects the oscillations of the plasma, and those
Speaker 1: oscillations are sensitive to like how much matter was there
Speaker 1: that was interacting, how much matter was it that was
Speaker 1: not interacting, And that tells us how much dark matter
Speaker 1: there was a bit jillion years ago. And to me,
Speaker 1: like revealing that crazy, complicated, subtle fact about the early
Speaker 1: universe from looking at like the wiggles in this tiny
Speaker 1: little bit of light that nobody even knew about until
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. It blew my mind when I when
Speaker 1: I thought, like, wow, people are really dig in details
Speaker 1: out of this thing. Do you remember where you were
Speaker 1: or what you were doing when you had that thought.
Speaker 1: That was earlier this morning when I googled cosmic microwave
Speaker 1: background the agent no. UM. I came to astrophysics and
Speaker 1: cosmology sort of late because my background was more in
Speaker 1: particle physics and understanding, you know, the basic building structure
Speaker 1: and basic building blocks. But I was always interested in
Speaker 1: the universe, and so I did a little bit of
Speaker 1: self teaching after I got tenure, did a little bit
Speaker 1: more reading and try to understand this stuff. So about
Speaker 1: ten years ago, I think that I really started to
Speaker 1: try to wrap my mind around what is this stuff
Speaker 1: out there in the universe? What is uh? What are
Speaker 1: we learning about the origins of the universe from the
Speaker 1: light that we can see here on Earth. So you
Speaker 1: mentioned the CMB being able to give us clues about
Speaker 1: dark matter behavior. Is that sort of one of the
Speaker 1: new areas of research for the CMB, or you know,
Speaker 1: what what are the hot topics now? If there's a
Speaker 1: gold Russian data for you know, CMB related research, what
Speaker 1: questions should I be putting on my grant application? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That's great, Um. I think the most important question that
Speaker 1: the CMB can answer is sort of like the pie
Speaker 1: chart of the universe, like, what is most of the
Speaker 1: energy in the universe used for? And we know roughly
Speaker 1: the answer. It's five percent matter. Dark matter a huge
Speaker 1: chunk of his dark energy. And the cool thing is
Speaker 1: that we know that from you know, looking at matter
Speaker 1: and looking at stars and looking at galaxy and seeing
Speaker 1: the expansion of the universe. But the CMB gives is
Speaker 1: a totally independent way to measure those fractions because again
Speaker 1: sort of the oscillations in the plasma are sensitive to
Speaker 1: those fractions. So what people are doing now is trying
Speaker 1: to just get more precise measurements and asking does that
Speaker 1: agree with what we already think. And the way you
Speaker 1: get more precise measurements you just get more data because
Speaker 1: you're looking for really small variations. So we have these
Speaker 1: successive generations. First the telescope in the sixty four that
Speaker 1: just heard like, oh it's there. Then there was a
Speaker 1: satellite called Kobe in the nineties that found these variations.
Speaker 1: They were like, oh, look this interesting information. Then there
Speaker 1: was w MAP, which is a satellite saw even more details,
Speaker 1: and then recently the Plank experiment. And so if you
Speaker 1: look at the CNB over years, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: this blob that's becoming more and more and sharper and
Speaker 1: sharper focus and answering these questions in more detail, and
Speaker 1: recently we're sort of getting slightly different answers, like the
Speaker 1: CMB tells us this is this much dark energy in
Speaker 1: the universe, whereas other measurements tell us a slightly different answer.
Speaker 1: We don't know why those things don't agree. Is it
Speaker 1: because our model the universe is wrong or because one
Speaker 1: of these measurements is wrong? And so that's sort of
Speaker 1: the current puzzles, like how let's make these two kinds
Speaker 1: of measurements as precise as possible and see if they
Speaker 1: agree and if they don't, Oh, that's a fun clue
Speaker 1: because it tells us we're going to learn something. So
Speaker 1: how do I interact with the cosmic microwave background every day?
Speaker 1: Or do I is there any way for me to
Speaker 1: see it? Or is it a way for it to
Speaker 1: influence my life that I just might not be aware of. Well,
Speaker 1: because there are microwaves, they hit your body and they
Speaker 1: heat you up very slightly, right, it's not a huge
Speaker 1: amount of radiation, but you can see if you have
Speaker 1: one of those old television screens that a cathode ray tube,
Speaker 1: not like a flat panel display. Those things are sensitive
Speaker 1: to the microwave background, and part of the fuzz on
Speaker 1: those screens comes from this background radiation. Really, and the
Speaker 1: snow on those screens comes from this microwave background radiation.
Speaker 1: So you could literally see this evidence years and years
Speaker 1: and years ago. So I don't need a radio telescope,
Speaker 1: I just need an old TV and I can I
Speaker 1: can see it. That's right, you can see the secrets
Speaker 1: of the early universe. That's a really great TV show. Amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think another thing that people are often confused
Speaker 1: by sort of again this like where was it? And
Speaker 1: I think the thing to remember is that it was everywhere.
Speaker 1: And so the CNB they were seeing in one direction
Speaker 1: was hot plasma that was in one place, and the
Speaker 1: stuff we're seeing another direction was hot plasma we're seeing
Speaker 1: from somewhere else. So I know in academia there's often
Speaker 1: multiple schools of thought about really important things, theories, hypotheses, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like the detection of these radio waves
Speaker 1: this microwave um background helped to resolve one of those disagreements.
Speaker 1: Has it caused others do people not believe in it?
Speaker 1: Or are there heated debates happening in the whole hallowed
Speaker 1: halls of the Ivory Tower about the CMB. I think
Speaker 1: it's a sort of a process, like a lot of
Speaker 1: the old question has been put to rest. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody seriously disagrees with the Big Bang theory anymore.
Speaker 1: But of course there are new questions, and some of
Speaker 1: those new questions are about like what do we see
Speaker 1: in the CMB. There are some weird things we don't understand,
Speaker 1: and those lead to like crazy ideas. For example, there's
Speaker 1: one spot in the CNB that's colder than all the
Speaker 1: other spots. It's called the cold spot. What a great name.
Speaker 1: And it's also kind of big. And you can say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's random fluctuations. You would expect, some cold
Speaker 1: and some hot, but this one is colder than you
Speaker 1: would expect and bigger than you expect. So it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of unusual. And anytime you see something a little
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary, you wonder, is that a clue
Speaker 1: or is that, you know, just random. And so people
Speaker 1: speculated things like maybe that cold spot is evidence that
Speaker 1: our universe when it was really young, bumped into another
Speaker 1: universe and left basically a bruise. I know that's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine, it's hard to even think about. But some
Speaker 1: people have this theory that there are multiple universes created
Speaker 1: one sort of in a multiverse theory, and if those
Speaker 1: universes were near enough each other, they could have interacted
Speaker 1: very early on, and they predict exactly this kind of
Speaker 1: signature in the CMB as evidence for that. Now is
Speaker 1: that a prediction or is this sort of a post addiction,
Speaker 1: Like Okay, I saw this weird thing and now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to explain it, and I get to make
Speaker 1: this crazy theory. I don't know, but that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing people argue about. So still TBD, watch it,
Speaker 1: watch this space. That's right, there's a lot left to
Speaker 1: learn about the universe from the cosmic microwave background. How
Speaker 1: should I be thinking about this? Like when I'm having
Speaker 1: my you know, shower thoughts are so important. I think.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're idly at rest doing a mundane
Speaker 1: task that your brain doesn't have to think about, it
Speaker 1: wanders off and usually for me into like existential questions.
Speaker 1: That's when you think about physics. Physics, Yeah, more more philosophy. UM,
Speaker 1: you know those big questions like why why are we here?
Speaker 1: Is this seven am call I'm getting ready for? Really
Speaker 1: that important in the grand scheme of things, like on
Speaker 1: a universal time scale? You know, does anything matter? Should
Speaker 1: I just be watching a Netflix marathon all day to day?
Speaker 1: These types of things. So as I'm having those thoughts,
Speaker 1: deep deep thoughts, how should I be thinking about the
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background? Is it um fossil as you said before,
Speaker 1: because that sounds very static, but it's something that's continuing
Speaker 1: to move and continuing to give information. Is it a
Speaker 1: comforting um wrap of radiation from the early universe that's
Speaker 1: giving me a hug? How should I? How should I
Speaker 1: think about this? UM? I think you should think about
Speaker 1: it aspirationally. You should wonder what else is out there?
Speaker 1: What other information is floating out there in space. It's
Speaker 1: going to give us some incredible deep knowledge about the universe.
Speaker 1: It's going to change the entire context of our lives.
Speaker 1: And we don't even know it exists yet, and then
Speaker 1: in a hundred years or fifty years or two years,
Speaker 1: somebody will discover it reveal something deep about the universe,
Speaker 1: and we will have not even known. Um, I like
Speaker 1: to look at the history of physics that way and
Speaker 1: be like people stumble across something and it changes the
Speaker 1: way we think about the universe. And I hope that
Speaker 1: there are so I said aspirationally, because I hope there
Speaker 1: are more of these. I hope there are more moments
Speaker 1: when we dig up something from the early universe and
Speaker 1: it teaches us something and maybe it's surprising, and people
Speaker 1: are trying to do that right now. The plasma from
Speaker 1: the early universe ended about four hundred thousand years after
Speaker 1: the Big Bang, and that this is the only light
Speaker 1: we can see because before that all the light was
Speaker 1: just reabsorbed by the plasma, so it's sort of gone.
Speaker 1: But people are trying to dig deeper, just saying, well,
Speaker 1: what about like neutrinos from before from inside of that plasma,
Speaker 1: because they don't interact very much, and maybe we could
Speaker 1: see them were gravitational waves from the very first moment.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to open up new kinds of eyes
Speaker 1: to see deeper and deeper into the history of the
Speaker 1: universe and answer our questions about that. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think about that. I think about what your children
Speaker 1: or their children will know about the universe that we
Speaker 1: can't even imagine. So I'm like, I'm in justest imagining
Speaker 1: the situation in which the people that ask questions and
Speaker 1: want to know things are kind of like this nerve center.
Speaker 1: And we have so many different senses like you and
Speaker 1: I would have site and and sound, but we have
Speaker 1: all of these different detectors that scientists have have developed
Speaker 1: as as part of their senses. And so what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing you say is that we're going to continue to
Speaker 1: develop more senses as we want to be able to
Speaker 1: detect the information around us. Is that accurate science is
Speaker 1: making esp real. We are developing new senses to experience
Speaker 1: the university you already here. First, guys, the universe was
Speaker 1: in a state in which this type of radiation wasn't
Speaker 1: able to escape, and then there was a cooling event
Speaker 1: in which, uh, the universe became transparent, allowing light to
Speaker 1: emanate through it. And this radiation is part of that
Speaker 1: early expansion, and it's coming from all of these different
Speaker 1: directions because we're expanding our idea of the Big Bang
Speaker 1: beyond the point theory um, and so it's radiating from
Speaker 1: everywhere because we are the center of the universe. Obviously
Speaker 1: we're humans. It's meeting here on Earth right where we
Speaker 1: are standing in the world and able to give us
Speaker 1: information about the past experiences that that it had and
Speaker 1: helping us understand the universe. That's right. But aliens somewhere else,
Speaker 1: they're also seeing a CMB. They see a slightly different
Speaker 1: map because the light that's getting to them left from
Speaker 1: a different place, but the same way, they see different
Speaker 1: stars in the sky than than we do. They're seeing
Speaker 1: a slightly different CNB, So everyone would see everyone, all
Speaker 1: of the different extraterrestrials in our universe is seeing a
Speaker 1: different one and studying it differently. And maybe one day
Speaker 1: we'll be able to put our data together and I
Speaker 1: get the most accurate picture of what started all of this.
Speaker 1: That's right, So I hope we do one day get
Speaker 1: to talk to alien physicists. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: questions for them about how the universe works and how
Speaker 1: they think about it, and whether we're UM studying objective
Speaker 1: truth or just based on our human bias and and
Speaker 1: uh on our senses. I think they probably have all
Speaker 1: sorts of other ways to observe the universe. We can't
Speaker 1: even imagine UM. But I hope that they're impressed with
Speaker 1: what we've accomplished and that we can learn from them. So,
Speaker 1: the universe began, and had it begun slightly differently, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here, but it developed the way that it did,
Speaker 1: and so we're able to ask questions about how it
Speaker 1: all started. That's right. So the amazing thing about the
Speaker 1: Cosmic Microwave Background Edition is that it's all around us
Speaker 1: and it gives us clues about the very beginning of
Speaker 1: the universe, and hopefully one day we'll find more clues
Speaker 1: and learn even more about the origins of our very existence.
Speaker 1: And it's heating me the way that I heat soup.
Speaker 1: That's my gutso made my big tang out for this.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's exciting you. It's exciting you the way
Speaker 1: you're microwave excitor soup. And I hope this podcast is
Speaker 1: excited our listeners. I hope so too. So thanks Crystal
Speaker 1: very much for joining me today. Oh thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. This was a great conversation. And for those
Speaker 1: of you out there, if you still have questions about
Speaker 1: this topic, send them to us to questions at Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge dot com. We really do answer all of
Speaker 1: our emails and thanks for tuning in. If you still
Speaker 1: have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
Speaker 1: drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's One Word, or email us at
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
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