WEBVTT - Why is strange matter so strange? 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:12.680 Are you worried that something out there in space might 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.599 kill us all every day? Man? You mean like aliens. 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.440 We haven't even started the podcast yet and we're already 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.600 talking about aliens. Actually, this one time, I was not 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.439 talking about aliens. There are other things out there in 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.320 space that can kill us. Yeah, there are other things 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:31.960 out there that could end humanity. Oh, I see what 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:34.760 you mean, like a killer meteor. I'm thinking about something 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:55.760 much much stranger. Him or Hamdack, cartoonists and the creator 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.520 of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.840 and I'm sometimes described as a strange personality. But well 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:06.080 of their podcast, Daniel and Jorge explain this Strange Universe, 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.840 a production of I Heart Radio That's right, in which 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.520 we go out there on mental journeys into the universe 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:14.600 and bring home the strange, the bonkers, the crazy, but 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.360 the real and pipe it directly into your brain. That's right. 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.360 We'd like to think about and talk about all the 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.959 amazing things that are out there in space, out there 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:26.080 in the far reaches of the universe, and also right 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.080 here in front of us, in the small things around 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.520 us that are sort of normal for the universe. But 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:33.760 if you, if you as humans sort of think about it, 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.640 they're kind of strange. We like to peel back the 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:39.759 layer of reality that you encounter in your everyday life 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.560 and reveal to you that the universe is far weirder, 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.800 far more amazing, far more beautiful, far more nasty, and 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.600 far more strange than you might have imagined, and potentially 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.360 far more dangerous than you thought. Definitely more dangerous. There's 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.440 a lot of stuff out there that could Oh man, 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:03.480 what out there can't kill? You? Love the fourth dimension, 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:06.320 it's all you need. Um. It's amazing to me how 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.840 many like new ideas in physics end up being potentially deadly, 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:13.359 like oh, it turns out the Higgs Boson field might collapse, 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:17.800 ending the universe, or wow, the universe says this massive expansion, 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:20.320 which could isolate us from all other sorts of um 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.480 galaxies out there. It's incredible that none of these new 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:27.600 ideas and physics like provide coziness or warmth or like, 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:30.440 you know, I think it's strange to know that you're 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:32.760 not surprised anymore. I mean, by now you should know 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.519 that every time you uncover, you lift the rock, there's 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:39.600 something there I can kill all of humanity. Maybe maybe 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.640 you should stop. Maybe maybe it says something about the 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.960 fragility of our experience that anything that tells us that 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:50.079 our situation is not typical or not unique, and that 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:52.799 most of the universe is different shows us how most 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.400 of the universe is inhospitable to human life and coziness. 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.720 I think it says more about the fragility of physics funding, 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.320 because if you included in every proposal like, hey, we 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:05.600 want to discover this, but we might end up the 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:10.280 story humanity, then somehow conveniently that doesn't get mentioned. Or 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:13.360 maybe we should use that as clickbit in our physics funding, 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.240 like or you know, a black hole might eat the 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.760 Earth and that is the birth of a super villain. 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:23.480 Right there, ladies and gentlemen, Daniel has now officially become 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:30.080 mad Scientists villain in the bottom. Oh boy, that's you. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.640 You've practiced that. I feel that just sort of bubbled 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:35.840 up out of me, you know, like the moment of 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.520 birth of me as a super villain. I'll put my 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:42.480 cape on. Wait, villains work cape only with the big lapels. 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:46.160 If that's just a giant lapels. All right, I'm turning 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.480 my collar up and being prepared to plan for the 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:50.880 end of humanity. Popping the collar. All right, Well, there 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:52.840 are a lot of things out there in the universe 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.920 and a lot of stuff that we haven't discovered that yet, right, 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.440 and a lot of that might be weird or it 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:02.160 might be kind of dangerous for humanity, for the sort 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:04.960 of unstable existence of the universe. Yeah, and this is 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.680 sort of a different dimension of weirdness. Like we're used 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.080 to the fact that things out there far away in 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.520 space might be different. There are stars and black holes 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.200 and weird stuff out there that doesn't happen here. But 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.120 there's another kind of direction of weirdness, which is like 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.880 what can matter do? Like, can matter do things that 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:27.279 we're not familiar with? Can inform weird new stable states 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.560 that we haven't seen yet because we haven't created the conditions. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:33.400 You know, imagine if we lived on a planet, for example, 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:35.680 that never had had iron on it because it just 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.520 wasn't iron from nearby supernovas, and somebody showed up both 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.520 like iron, Like, whoa, that's interesting, We've never seen that. 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:46.320 Like a new kind of matter, Yeah, a new kind 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.120 of matter. What if you could rearrange the lego pieces 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.159 of the universe into new amazing kinds of stuff, because 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.719 it's incredible, like the diversity of different kinds of things 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.159 you can make with the same lego pieces, right, the 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:01.240 same building blocks you can make you know, helium and 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.640 hydrogen and iron and ice cream and hamsters and all 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.840 of that stuff. So there must be new weird kinds 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:10.760 of stuff out there we haven't discovered. And so that's 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.359 totally possible, Like it's possible that there's a matter that 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.080 that can be made that we haven't made here on 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.440 Earth you've ever seen. Yeah, it's totally possible. And you know, 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:21.800 there's sort of two branches there. One it's like, take 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.160 the matter and annihilated to try to make new fundamental particles. 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:27.360 That's the kind of thing I work on by smashing 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.360 particles together at the LHC. But a whole other question 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.440 is like, don't smash the particles, just rearrange them trying 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:36.039 to build up new stuff, you know, trying to put 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.720 them together into new combinations and see if you can 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.040 make weird new kinds of matter. And you know that's 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:47.039 legos with reality. Yeah, the deepest legos ever, the most 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.040 universal set of legos ever. Well to be on the podcast, 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:54.040 we'll be talking about one such possible kind, possible or 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:58.280 real kind of matter out there um that could potentially 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:03.280 exist and which could potentially be maybe interesting and or 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.599 deadly or dangerous to the universe. I think deadly definitely 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:13.600 means interesting. You can't be interesting or deadly. Deadly definitely interesting. Unlike. Yeah, 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.440 I'm totally not interested in dying, so that is not 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:20.120 interesting to me. You're not interested in things that might 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:21.960 kill you. If I'm like, hey, Jorge, it is a 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:23.800 huge boulder about to fall and you fall in your house, 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.880 you'd be like, not interested. I rather just tell me 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:29.560 get out of your house. You know, you don't have 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:34.440 to explain to me what's happening, what's coming towards me. Summurise, summurise, summerise, Right, yeah, 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:39.320 too long, didn't read Now you're dead? All right. I'll 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.359 start my emails at the top with get out of 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:44.800 your house. Yeah, priority, priority, get out and let me 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:49.279 explain to you why that's fair. That's barrels start with 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:54.200 a call to action. Yeah, so there's as very interesting 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:56.920 kind of matter out there that is theoretical, Daniel, it's 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.159 for for real, Well, that's the question, you know, we don't. No, 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.640 it's currently theoretical, but it might be real. It might 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.400 be out there in the universe right now, waiting to 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.920 gobble us up and destroy your house. Wow. Well, if 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.400 it is possible, it is definitely going to be very strange, 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:15.880 and so to be. On the podcast, we'll be asking 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:25.120 the question what is strange matter? Daniel? This sounds really 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.000 strange to me. It's maybe the one time physicists have 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:33.720 given something an appropriate name, like like, you guys, you 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:35.960 guys saw this or thought about it, and you're like, whoa, 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.880 that's strange. That's basically summarized the history of particle physics 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.520 between the nineteen and nine sixties. Yeah, why wasn't everything 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.120 else named strange? Why why is this particular one? I 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.040 guess we'll get into it. We'll get into it. Yeah, 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:50.720 But like, unless you think I'm stranger, you're strange. We're 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.920 made of normal matter. People discovered new kinds of matter, 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.000 which to them was strange, So strange sort of means 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:01.280 not normal. Yeah, I mean, what does strange mean to you? Horror? Like, Hey, 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.920 I'm gonna make you some strange ice cream. Expect me 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.040 like favor ice cream. I feel like I'm not gonna 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.000 like it. I feel right away that it's gonna be 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:14.200 like garlic with cilantro. That's probably fair. And if I 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:16.560 offered you a bowl of strange matter, I wouldn't recommend 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:19.000 you actually eat it, all right, So, um, but we're wondering, 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.040 as usual, if this is something that people have heard 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.320 about or read about maybe or even the thought about 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.320 possibly existing out there in the in the universe. And so, 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:29.520 as usual, Daniel went out there into the streets to 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:33.120 ask perfect strangers if they had ever heard of strange 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:38.280 matter or it's I guess related cousin strange lets. That's right. 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:40.959 And here's what folks around campus had to say when 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:45.640 I accosted them with this strange question. No, no, that 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:47.640 sounds it sounds cool. What do you think it might 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.160 be tendom? Guess um, I think of the dark matter 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.880 when you say that stuff we don't really know much about. 0:08:53.440 --> 0:09:00.800 Maybe it's not solid liquid or gas. No no, no, no, no, 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.320 that's guess what I'm matter that doesn't behave like the 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:08.840 matter that we already understand. No, no, no, I think 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.640 strange only like scientific thing that I know about. It 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:16.199 isn't a cork, isn't there a strange quirk. All right, 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:18.280 I guess that that shouldn't be too strange. And nobody 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:23.040 had heard about strange matter. It is strange. But I 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.199 like how these answers are all like no, no, no, 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.680 there's not like m let me think about No, there's 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.720 like no, there's no subtlety here. Didn't tickle anybody's brain 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.520 or make them think about something else or give them 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:38.719 a hint of something. It's like, maybe there hasn't been 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.480 a lot of clickbait about this, or no nova specials 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:46.760 about strange matter. It hasn't really penetrated the culturals. Like guys, 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:50.080 nobody's worried about it. So everybody, um, listen to this 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:53.400 podcast episode and prepare your strange a matter of proof bunker. 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:55.520 Do you think maybe people were suspicious of you, like 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.560 maybe they thought you were pranking them, like, because it 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:00.400 does sound sort of sound like something NG out of 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:03.800 I don't know, fifties sci fi like strange Matter. I 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:06.240 don't know. I asked them this question just after I 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.640 asked them the question about which physics adventure they would like, 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.280 which we did recently on the podcast. So I think 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.720 you know they were primed to think in a fun 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:17.520 way to expand their minds. There was just no reaction there. 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:19.840 There's just there's wrung Nobell. This is like if I 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.840 picked two random words, you know, have you heard of 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.199 dragon souffla, and they'd be like, what, No, I don't 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.640 know what that is and I don't even want to know, Teach, 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:31.959 I don't even wanted to know. It's excellent with garlic 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:34.600 ice cream, by the way, dragon soufla the scoop of 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:36.440 garlic ice cream on the side, I feel like this 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.440 is really close to stranger things, Like really stranger things 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.640 are made would be made out of strange matter. I 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.160 don't know what the upside down is made of, but yeah, 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:46.560 but actually maybe the upside down is where every up 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:48.439 cork is a down cork and every down cork is 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:54.240 an upcourt. Oh wow, Daniel, you totally call them. Yeah, 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:56.560 that that's would be why it's called the upside down. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.440 I know exactly. It's actually a physics reason for something, 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:03.400 all right, So let's get into this strange topic and Daniels, 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:07.080 so they explained to us what is strange matter? Right, 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:09.360 So we have a few different concepts. We want to 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.280 tease a part on the show. I want to strange matter, 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:16.040 and then later we'll talk about strange lits and strange stars. 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:19.240 But when particle physicists talk about strange matter, what they 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.440 mean is any matter containing this one particular cork, which 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.640 is called a strange cork. Now, you and I don't 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:29.400 have any strange quirks in us, or at least not 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.000 any real strange quirks. Like you and I are made 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:35.680 of protons and neutrons and electrons. And remember that inside 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.320 the protons and neutrons we have two kinds of quirks, 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.480 up quirks and down corks. This would be matter made 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:43.800 out of like protons and neutrons, but in which the 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.520 courts inside of him are all this kind of cork, 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.160 which is a strange cork. That's right. We now know 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:51.880 that in the universe there are six kinds of corks 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:56.840 up down charms, strange top bottom, and protons and neutrons 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.720 are made out of three upquirks and down quirks mixed 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.680 together there. And you can put these lego pieces together 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:04.719 to make lots of different kind of particles. You can 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.560 put the up quorks together to make pions. You can 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:09.839 do all sorts of crazy stuff. But if you add 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:12.120 a strange cork. If you used the strange cork lego, 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:14.840 then we call it strange matter. Oh, I see, And 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:17.240 why was that cork called strange? Was it like the 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.440 strange cousin that nobody could figure out or what was it? 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.720 Is there something particularly strange about this as opposed to 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:27.080 like a charm cork or a top cork. Yeah, well, 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.200 it comes from the early history of particle physics. We 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.200 first were trying to figure out, like, what are all 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.200 the kind of particles that are out there? We knew 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.440 protons and neutrons and electrons, and then people started building 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.839 particle colliders, and in particle colliders they would smash stuff 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.199 together and they could get more energy. And the thing 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:45.760 about the strange cork is that it's heavier than these 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.720 other corks. It's more massive, so cost more energy to make. 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:50.840 So this is the first time they could ever make it, 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:53.760 and they made these particles that had strange quirks in them, 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:56.079 though at the time they didn't know they were strange quirks. 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.679 And these particles were a little weird. There were chaons 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:03.400 and sigma particles, and they had sort of strange behaviors 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.679 compared to protons and neutrons, and specifically the thing that 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:10.120 was strange about these particles is that they lived longer 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:14.880 than anyone expected for such heavy particles. Remember, usually heavy 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:19.199 particles decay down very quickly to lighter particles. These new 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.760 particles strangely stuck around a bit longer than anyone expected 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:28.960 before decaying. Oh wait, so they made stuff that made 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.800 out of strange matter. Like they made strange matter and 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.320 they're like, well, what this is weird? Yeah, they we 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:36.679 do this all the time at particle colliders. It's not 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.880 that unusual now. I mean, it's still strange in its behavior. 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:43.440 But like, we smash particles together and we get kaons out. 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.640 Kon is a combination of an upcork and a strange cork, 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:48.760 or a down cork and a strange cork. Wait, what 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:50.760 do you mean, Like if they pair together, they form 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.600 a special particle. Yeah. Like we talked in our podcast 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.400 about how quirks can never be by themselves, and so 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.240 they either have to be like with an antiquork, or 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:02.199 you need triple see neither pairs of corks or triplets. 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:04.720 If you get like an up and a strange to 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:07.560 pair together, you call that a kon. If you get 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.800 like two ups and a strange together, that's a sigma particle. 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.720 If you mix up the kinds of the basic particles, 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:15.840 and so that's possible. You can mix like a two 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:18.760 up corks and a strange cork and they'll be happy together. 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.480 They will be happy together, but not for very long. 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.240 These particles are all unstable because they have this strange 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.800 cork in them, and the strange cork is heavy and 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:30.320 it decays, so sometimes it will decay to a down cork. 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:34.440 And so these particles are energy or something and spit 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.520 out some energy precisely um. And so these particles are 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.160 very short lived. They're very strange. They have weird behaviors. 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.280 They some of them switch back and forth from one 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:45.160 kind to another. But they're all very unstable. But we 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:47.800 make this all the time. Every collision we make at 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.800 the Large Hadron Collider, every twenty five nano seconds, we're 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.320 producing some strange quirks and so therefore some strange matter, 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.160 but it never lasts for very long. These particles are normal, 0:14:57.200 --> 0:14:59.640 no longer strange. They just have the name strange from 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.520 kind of back when you didn't you couldn't figure figure 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:04.200 them out. Yeah, and it was really kind of an 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.040 exciting time and particle physics. Sometimes I wonder if they 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:10.240 were having more fun back then than here, because back 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:12.360 then they were every time they do you want to 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:14.360 make physics great again, Daniel, Yes, I want to make 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:16.800 physics great again. Now, every time they turned on the 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.360 collider they discovered a new particle because they were able 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.080 to get these little quirks to fit together in a 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:25.840 new way. Because you've got three different quirks now up 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:27.840 down in strange they didn't have the energy to make 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.000 any of the other heavier ones. There's a lot of 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:33.440 different combinations, and so there's a lot of particles to discover, 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:35.520 and they didn't have any idea what was going on. 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:36.880 So every time he turned it on, you're like, oh 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.840 my gosh, here's another particle. Oh, here's another particle. And 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:41.960 then and they called it the Era of the Particle 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:44.560 Zoo because they were just like, every time you turn 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.840 this thing on, new particles popped out. And then finally somebody, 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:50.160 it took like twenty years. Finally somebody in the sixties 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.480 was like, you know what, this would all make sense 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:57.720 if you had three basic particles and all this spectrum 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.800 of particles. All this zoo of particles were just rearrangements 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:03.520 of those three and he was able to explain all 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:06.160 of those in terms of these basic idea. These quarks 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.800 up and down in the strange and that's like and 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:12.160 the charm one to write, not the charm yet we 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:15.120 hadn't seen the charm, so we only ever made particles 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:17.560 with the up, down and strange. And that's like a 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:21.320 real moment of insight. Oh I see. But um, so 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.120 they discovered all three quarks at the same time, like up, 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:25.760 down and strange at the same time. Where did they 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:27.880 know about the up and down? And then they discovered 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.640 the strange. They didn't know about the up and down, 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:32.520 like as a real thing. It was sort of like 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.200 developing as an idea. And then somebody said, you know, 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:39.520 if you have these three particles inside, then it explains 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:41.800 all of this that's happening. There are a lot of 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:43.880 different ways to try to explain. It's like everybody's looking 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:46.680 at this huge list of particles, and remember the game 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:50.600 and particle physics is simplified is describe everything we see 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:52.720 in the universe in terms of the smallest set of 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.480 building blocks. Were always trying to peel back one layer 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:58.640 of reality. So this is a huge success is to say, oh, 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.640 I have some new idea for an even smaller particle 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:04.280 that explains all the weirdness we're seeing. I guess my 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:06.080 question is why wasn't why we're in the up and 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:09.560 downs called weird and bizarre? Well, because they're part of 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:11.920 me and you. They're normal, they're every day, they're they're 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.320 all around us. Right. Oh, they saw that that regular 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:18.080 matter that we're familiar with is made out of just 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:22.359 ups and downs, these other versions of normal matter, which 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.160 which which is strange? And they found that the what 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:30.600 that the common ingredient was this strange cork. Yeah, And 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.720 there's this property called strangeness, which is turns out to 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:37.159 be just like related to how many strange corks you 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:42.000 have in you. Strangeness, yeah, is related to how many 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:46.040 strange corks are in a particle. And some forces conserve 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.119 strangeness and some forces don't conserve strangeness. And so it 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:51.600 was a real puzzle for a while, but it was 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:54.080 all put together just by understanding that there are three 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:56.320 kinds of quirks and you can put them together in 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.680 lots of different ways to make this incredible variety of particles. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:02.600 Then strange matter is just anything that has a strange 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:05.680 quirk in it, or that is made entirely out of 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:09.920 strange court. That's right. It's anything that has at least 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.080 one strange cork in it. And you can make matter 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.680 out of just strange quirks. In fact, the guy who 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.800 proposed this, the guy who had this idea um you know, 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.320 of quirks, he stood up at a conference and he 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:24.160 proposed this and he predicted, He said, if my idea 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:26.440 is correct, then there should also be this particle that's 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:29.560 pure strange quirks. And he predicted how you would find 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.800 it and how heavy it would be before he was seen, 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:34.840 and he was right. So that's pretty awesome, he called 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:37.159 his shot. Yeah, so that's strange matter. And so I 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:38.960 have a lot of opinions about the way you guys 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.720 name things as usual, but nice. We'll get into what 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:44.959 happens to this kind of matter and whether or not 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:47.919 it actually is something we should worry about destroying the 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.320 universe or not. But first let's take a quick break, 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:06.520 all right. I know, so strange matter you're telling me, 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:09.160 is just any kind of matter that is that has 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:13.040 a little bit of or is made with this particular 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:16.520 core called the strange cork. And so that's that's what 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.320 makes it strange. Like, if you had this court, then 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:23.640 you are you automatically strangely? Do you behave strangely or did? 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.200 That's just the name you get, that's just the name 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.080 you get. And whether you consider these particles to be 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:33.000 behaving strangely just depends really on your perspective. It's totally subjective. 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:35.640 But at the time when these particles were found, they 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:37.679 did things other particles weren't doing. You know, they had 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:40.560 weird decay patterns, they would turn into each other, they 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:44.040 would slash back and forth from one particle to another. Uh, 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:46.479 they were a little weird. Some of these particles, for example, 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:50.200 violate some conservation laws that we hadn't seen other particles violate, 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:54.680 like CP violation, charts parody violation was seen in the 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.200 Chaon system. And so these particles are a little strange. Yeah, 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.600 they're strange from normal matter, which is us, yes, which 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:04.600 and we are made of just up and down corks 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.280 or vanilla and chocolate corks. But you know what we 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.240 don't know is what else can this strange cork do? 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:15.240 Can it can it create other weirder kinds of matter 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:17.560 that we haven't seen here on Earth? We haven't even 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.800 created in particle colliders that could do bizarre stuff we 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.600 haven't anticipated. Oh you mean, like can we if you 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:27.399 were to sort of be more creative with this strange cork, 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:29.399 what else could you make with it? Yeah? Or if 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:31.760 you had really weird conditions like the center of a 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:35.480 neutron star or you know, the Big Bang or very 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.840 high energy particle collisions, could you make new kinds of 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.720 matter with strange quirks that we haven't seen before that 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.240 have completely different properties? And that's what people talk about 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:49.440 when they talk about strange lits. It sounds sort of cute, right, like, um, 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:51.320 you know something you would name for your pet or 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.960 something like, you know, strange lito or something strange geno 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:58.480 or something, but it's actually quite potentially potentially quite scary 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.600 and dangerous. It's cute and years great. A lot of 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:06.159 things fall in that category. It's like the Bundy from 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:08.520 my depathon. But so that's what um, So, that's what 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.720 a strange lit is. It's a kind of strange matter. 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.840 It's a kind of strange matter in a particular configuration. 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:17.520 That we haven't seen before. Oh so I see, so 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:21.680 it's hypothetical. So far, it's hypothetical. Nobody's ever seen strange 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:24.720 lists before. Strange matter we create all the time in 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:29.199 particle collisions. Strange lists are a hypothetical new combination of 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:33.080