Speaker 1: Are you worried that something out there in space might
Speaker 1: kill us all every day? Man? You mean like aliens.
Speaker 1: We haven't even started the podcast yet and we're already
Speaker 1: talking about aliens. Actually, this one time, I was not
Speaker 1: talking about aliens. There are other things out there in
Speaker 1: space that can kill us. Yeah, there are other things
Speaker 1: out there that could end humanity. Oh, I see what
Speaker 1: you mean, like a killer meteor. I'm thinking about something
Speaker 1: much much stranger. Him or Hamdack, cartoonists and the creator
Speaker 1: of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist,
Speaker 1: and I'm sometimes described as a strange personality. But well
Speaker 1: of their podcast, Daniel and Jorge explain this Strange Universe,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio That's right, in which
Speaker 1: we go out there on mental journeys into the universe
Speaker 1: and bring home the strange, the bonkers, the crazy, but
Speaker 1: the real and pipe it directly into your brain. That's right.
Speaker 1: We'd like to think about and talk about all the
Speaker 1: amazing things that are out there in space, out there
Speaker 1: in the far reaches of the universe, and also right
Speaker 1: here in front of us, in the small things around
Speaker 1: us that are sort of normal for the universe. But
Speaker 1: if you, if you as humans sort of think about it,
Speaker 1: they're kind of strange. We like to peel back the
Speaker 1: layer of reality that you encounter in your everyday life
Speaker 1: and reveal to you that the universe is far weirder,
Speaker 1: far more amazing, far more beautiful, far more nasty, and
Speaker 1: far more strange than you might have imagined, and potentially
Speaker 1: far more dangerous than you thought. Definitely more dangerous. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff out there that could Oh man,
Speaker 1: what out there can't kill? You? Love the fourth dimension,
Speaker 1: it's all you need. Um. It's amazing to me how
Speaker 1: many like new ideas in physics end up being potentially deadly,
Speaker 1: like oh, it turns out the Higgs Boson field might collapse,
Speaker 1: ending the universe, or wow, the universe says this massive expansion,
Speaker 1: which could isolate us from all other sorts of um
Speaker 1: galaxies out there. It's incredible that none of these new
Speaker 1: ideas and physics like provide coziness or warmth or like,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's strange to know that you're
Speaker 1: not surprised anymore. I mean, by now you should know
Speaker 1: that every time you uncover, you lift the rock, there's
Speaker 1: something there I can kill all of humanity. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: you should stop. Maybe maybe it says something about the
Speaker 1: fragility of our experience that anything that tells us that
Speaker 1: our situation is not typical or not unique, and that
Speaker 1: most of the universe is different shows us how most
Speaker 1: of the universe is inhospitable to human life and coziness.
Speaker 1: I think it says more about the fragility of physics funding,
Speaker 1: because if you included in every proposal like, hey, we
Speaker 1: want to discover this, but we might end up the
Speaker 1: story humanity, then somehow conveniently that doesn't get mentioned. Or
Speaker 1: maybe we should use that as clickbit in our physics funding,
Speaker 1: like or you know, a black hole might eat the
Speaker 1: Earth and that is the birth of a super villain.
Speaker 1: Right there, ladies and gentlemen, Daniel has now officially become
Speaker 1: mad Scientists villain in the bottom. Oh boy, that's you.
Speaker 1: You've practiced that. I feel that just sort of bubbled
Speaker 1: up out of me, you know, like the moment of
Speaker 1: birth of me as a super villain. I'll put my
Speaker 1: cape on. Wait, villains work cape only with the big lapels.
Speaker 1: If that's just a giant lapels. All right, I'm turning
Speaker 1: my collar up and being prepared to plan for the
Speaker 1: end of humanity. Popping the collar. All right, Well, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things out there in the universe
Speaker 1: and a lot of stuff that we haven't discovered that yet, right,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that might be weird or it
Speaker 1: might be kind of dangerous for humanity, for the sort
Speaker 1: of unstable existence of the universe. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: sort of a different dimension of weirdness. Like we're used
Speaker 1: to the fact that things out there far away in
Speaker 1: space might be different. There are stars and black holes
Speaker 1: and weird stuff out there that doesn't happen here. But
Speaker 1: there's another kind of direction of weirdness, which is like
Speaker 1: what can matter do? Like, can matter do things that
Speaker 1: we're not familiar with? Can inform weird new stable states
Speaker 1: that we haven't seen yet because we haven't created the conditions.
Speaker 1: You know, imagine if we lived on a planet, for example,
Speaker 1: that never had had iron on it because it just
Speaker 1: wasn't iron from nearby supernovas, and somebody showed up both
Speaker 1: like iron, Like, whoa, that's interesting, We've never seen that.
Speaker 1: Like a new kind of matter, Yeah, a new kind
Speaker 1: of matter. What if you could rearrange the lego pieces
Speaker 1: of the universe into new amazing kinds of stuff, because
Speaker 1: it's incredible, like the diversity of different kinds of things
Speaker 1: you can make with the same lego pieces, right, the
Speaker 1: same building blocks you can make you know, helium and
Speaker 1: hydrogen and iron and ice cream and hamsters and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. So there must be new weird kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff out there we haven't discovered. And so that's
Speaker 1: totally possible, Like it's possible that there's a matter that
Speaker 1: that can be made that we haven't made here on
Speaker 1: Earth you've ever seen. Yeah, it's totally possible. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's sort of two branches there. One it's like, take
Speaker 1: the matter and annihilated to try to make new fundamental particles.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing I work on by smashing
Speaker 1: particles together at the LHC. But a whole other question
Speaker 1: is like, don't smash the particles, just rearrange them trying
Speaker 1: to build up new stuff, you know, trying to put
Speaker 1: them together into new combinations and see if you can
Speaker 1: make weird new kinds of matter. And you know that's
Speaker 1: legos with reality. Yeah, the deepest legos ever, the most
Speaker 1: universal set of legos ever. Well to be on the podcast,
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about one such possible kind, possible or
Speaker 1: real kind of matter out there um that could potentially
Speaker 1: exist and which could potentially be maybe interesting and or
Speaker 1: deadly or dangerous to the universe. I think deadly definitely
Speaker 1: means interesting. You can't be interesting or deadly. Deadly definitely interesting. Unlike. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm totally not interested in dying, so that is not
Speaker 1: interesting to me. You're not interested in things that might
Speaker 1: kill you. If I'm like, hey, Jorge, it is a
Speaker 1: huge boulder about to fall and you fall in your house,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, not interested. I rather just tell me
Speaker 1: get out of your house. You know, you don't have
Speaker 1: to explain to me what's happening, what's coming towards me. Summurise, summurise, summerise, Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: too long, didn't read Now you're dead? All right. I'll
Speaker 1: start my emails at the top with get out of
Speaker 1: your house. Yeah, priority, priority, get out and let me
Speaker 1: explain to you why that's fair. That's barrels start with
Speaker 1: a call to action. Yeah, so there's as very interesting
Speaker 1: kind of matter out there that is theoretical, Daniel, it's
Speaker 1: for for real, Well, that's the question, you know, we don't. No,
Speaker 1: it's currently theoretical, but it might be real. It might
Speaker 1: be out there in the universe right now, waiting to
Speaker 1: gobble us up and destroy your house. Wow. Well, if
Speaker 1: it is possible, it is definitely going to be very strange,
Speaker 1: and so to be. On the podcast, we'll be asking
Speaker 1: the question what is strange matter? Daniel? This sounds really
Speaker 1: strange to me. It's maybe the one time physicists have
Speaker 1: given something an appropriate name, like like, you guys, you
Speaker 1: guys saw this or thought about it, and you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: that's strange. That's basically summarized the history of particle physics
Speaker 1: between the nineteen and nine sixties. Yeah, why wasn't everything
Speaker 1: else named strange? Why why is this particular one? I
Speaker 1: guess we'll get into it. We'll get into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But like, unless you think I'm stranger, you're strange. We're
Speaker 1: made of normal matter. People discovered new kinds of matter,
Speaker 1: which to them was strange, So strange sort of means
Speaker 1: not normal. Yeah, I mean, what does strange mean to you? Horror? Like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make you some strange ice cream. Expect me
Speaker 1: like favor ice cream. I feel like I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: like it. I feel right away that it's gonna be
Speaker 1: like garlic with cilantro. That's probably fair. And if I
Speaker 1: offered you a bowl of strange matter, I wouldn't recommend
Speaker 1: you actually eat it, all right, So, um, but we're wondering,
Speaker 1: as usual, if this is something that people have heard
Speaker 1: about or read about maybe or even the thought about
Speaker 1: possibly existing out there in the in the universe. And so,
Speaker 1: as usual, Daniel went out there into the streets to
Speaker 1: ask perfect strangers if they had ever heard of strange
Speaker 1: matter or it's I guess related cousin strange lets. That's right.
Speaker 1: And here's what folks around campus had to say when
Speaker 1: I accosted them with this strange question. No, no, that
Speaker 1: sounds it sounds cool. What do you think it might
Speaker 1: be tendom? Guess um, I think of the dark matter
Speaker 1: when you say that stuff we don't really know much about.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not solid liquid or gas. No no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's guess what I'm matter that doesn't behave like the
Speaker 1: matter that we already understand. No, no, no, I think
Speaker 1: strange only like scientific thing that I know about. It
Speaker 1: isn't a cork, isn't there a strange quirk. All right,
Speaker 1: I guess that that shouldn't be too strange. And nobody
Speaker 1: had heard about strange matter. It is strange. But I
Speaker 1: like how these answers are all like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: there's not like m let me think about No, there's
Speaker 1: like no, there's no subtlety here. Didn't tickle anybody's brain
Speaker 1: or make them think about something else or give them
Speaker 1: a hint of something. It's like, maybe there hasn't been
Speaker 1: a lot of clickbait about this, or no nova specials
Speaker 1: about strange matter. It hasn't really penetrated the culturals. Like guys,
Speaker 1: nobody's worried about it. So everybody, um, listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast episode and prepare your strange a matter of proof bunker.
Speaker 1: Do you think maybe people were suspicious of you, like
Speaker 1: maybe they thought you were pranking them, like, because it
Speaker 1: does sound sort of sound like something NG out of
Speaker 1: I don't know, fifties sci fi like strange Matter. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I asked them this question just after I
Speaker 1: asked them the question about which physics adventure they would like,
Speaker 1: which we did recently on the podcast. So I think
Speaker 1: you know they were primed to think in a fun
Speaker 1: way to expand their minds. There was just no reaction there.
Speaker 1: There's just there's wrung Nobell. This is like if I
Speaker 1: picked two random words, you know, have you heard of
Speaker 1: dragon souffla, and they'd be like, what, No, I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is and I don't even want to know, Teach,
Speaker 1: I don't even wanted to know. It's excellent with garlic
Speaker 1: ice cream, by the way, dragon soufla the scoop of
Speaker 1: garlic ice cream on the side, I feel like this
Speaker 1: is really close to stranger things, Like really stranger things
Speaker 1: are made would be made out of strange matter. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the upside down is made of, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but actually maybe the upside down is where every up
Speaker 1: cork is a down cork and every down cork is
Speaker 1: an upcourt. Oh wow, Daniel, you totally call them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's would be why it's called the upside down.
Speaker 1: I know exactly. It's actually a physics reason for something,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's get into this strange topic and Daniels,
Speaker 1: so they explained to us what is strange matter? Right,
Speaker 1: So we have a few different concepts. We want to
Speaker 1: tease a part on the show. I want to strange matter,
Speaker 1: and then later we'll talk about strange lits and strange stars.
Speaker 1: But when particle physicists talk about strange matter, what they
Speaker 1: mean is any matter containing this one particular cork, which
Speaker 1: is called a strange cork. Now, you and I don't
Speaker 1: have any strange quirks in us, or at least not
Speaker 1: any real strange quirks. Like you and I are made
Speaker 1: of protons and neutrons and electrons. And remember that inside
Speaker 1: the protons and neutrons we have two kinds of quirks,
Speaker 1: up quirks and down corks. This would be matter made
Speaker 1: out of like protons and neutrons, but in which the
Speaker 1: courts inside of him are all this kind of cork,
Speaker 1: which is a strange cork. That's right. We now know
Speaker 1: that in the universe there are six kinds of corks
Speaker 1: up down charms, strange top bottom, and protons and neutrons
Speaker 1: are made out of three upquirks and down quirks mixed
Speaker 1: together there. And you can put these lego pieces together
Speaker 1: to make lots of different kind of particles. You can
Speaker 1: put the up quorks together to make pions. You can
Speaker 1: do all sorts of crazy stuff. But if you add
Speaker 1: a strange cork. If you used the strange cork lego,
Speaker 1: then we call it strange matter. Oh, I see, And
Speaker 1: why was that cork called strange? Was it like the
Speaker 1: strange cousin that nobody could figure out or what was it?
Speaker 1: Is there something particularly strange about this as opposed to
Speaker 1: like a charm cork or a top cork. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it comes from the early history of particle physics. We
Speaker 1: first were trying to figure out, like, what are all
Speaker 1: the kind of particles that are out there? We knew
Speaker 1: protons and neutrons and electrons, and then people started building
Speaker 1: particle colliders, and in particle colliders they would smash stuff
Speaker 1: together and they could get more energy. And the thing
Speaker 1: about the strange cork is that it's heavier than these
Speaker 1: other corks. It's more massive, so cost more energy to make.
Speaker 1: So this is the first time they could ever make it,
Speaker 1: and they made these particles that had strange quirks in them,
Speaker 1: though at the time they didn't know they were strange quirks.
Speaker 1: And these particles were a little weird. There were chaons
Speaker 1: and sigma particles, and they had sort of strange behaviors
Speaker 1: compared to protons and neutrons, and specifically the thing that
Speaker 1: was strange about these particles is that they lived longer
Speaker 1: than anyone expected for such heavy particles. Remember, usually heavy
Speaker 1: particles decay down very quickly to lighter particles. These new
Speaker 1: particles strangely stuck around a bit longer than anyone expected
Speaker 1: before decaying. Oh wait, so they made stuff that made
Speaker 1: out of strange matter. Like they made strange matter and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, what this is weird? Yeah, they we
Speaker 1: do this all the time at particle colliders. It's not
Speaker 1: that unusual now. I mean, it's still strange in its behavior.
Speaker 1: But like, we smash particles together and we get kaons out.
Speaker 1: Kon is a combination of an upcork and a strange cork,
Speaker 1: or a down cork and a strange cork. Wait, what
Speaker 1: do you mean, Like if they pair together, they form
Speaker 1: a special particle. Yeah. Like we talked in our podcast
Speaker 1: about how quirks can never be by themselves, and so
Speaker 1: they either have to be like with an antiquork, or
Speaker 1: you need triple see neither pairs of corks or triplets.
Speaker 1: If you get like an up and a strange to
Speaker 1: pair together, you call that a kon. If you get
Speaker 1: like two ups and a strange together, that's a sigma particle.
Speaker 1: If you mix up the kinds of the basic particles,
Speaker 1: and so that's possible. You can mix like a two
Speaker 1: up corks and a strange cork and they'll be happy together.
Speaker 1: They will be happy together, but not for very long.
Speaker 1: These particles are all unstable because they have this strange
Speaker 1: cork in them, and the strange cork is heavy and
Speaker 1: it decays, so sometimes it will decay to a down cork.
Speaker 1: And so these particles are energy or something and spit
Speaker 1: out some energy precisely um. And so these particles are
Speaker 1: very short lived. They're very strange. They have weird behaviors.
Speaker 1: They some of them switch back and forth from one
Speaker 1: kind to another. But they're all very unstable. But we
Speaker 1: make this all the time. Every collision we make at
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider, every twenty five nano seconds, we're
Speaker 1: producing some strange quirks and so therefore some strange matter,
Speaker 1: but it never lasts for very long. These particles are normal,
Speaker 1: no longer strange. They just have the name strange from
Speaker 1: kind of back when you didn't you couldn't figure figure
Speaker 1: them out. Yeah, and it was really kind of an
Speaker 1: exciting time and particle physics. Sometimes I wonder if they
Speaker 1: were having more fun back then than here, because back
Speaker 1: then they were every time they do you want to
Speaker 1: make physics great again, Daniel, Yes, I want to make
Speaker 1: physics great again. Now, every time they turned on the
Speaker 1: collider they discovered a new particle because they were able
Speaker 1: to get these little quirks to fit together in a
Speaker 1: new way. Because you've got three different quirks now up
Speaker 1: down in strange they didn't have the energy to make
Speaker 1: any of the other heavier ones. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: different combinations, and so there's a lot of particles to discover,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have any idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: So every time he turned it on, you're like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, here's another particle. Oh, here's another particle. And
Speaker 1: then and they called it the Era of the Particle
Speaker 1: Zoo because they were just like, every time you turn
Speaker 1: this thing on, new particles popped out. And then finally somebody,
Speaker 1: it took like twenty years. Finally somebody in the sixties
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, this would all make sense
Speaker 1: if you had three basic particles and all this spectrum
Speaker 1: of particles. All this zoo of particles were just rearrangements
Speaker 1: of those three and he was able to explain all
Speaker 1: of those in terms of these basic idea. These quarks
Speaker 1: up and down in the strange and that's like and
Speaker 1: the charm one to write, not the charm yet we
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the charm, so we only ever made particles
Speaker 1: with the up, down and strange. And that's like a
Speaker 1: real moment of insight. Oh I see. But um, so
Speaker 1: they discovered all three quarks at the same time, like up,
Speaker 1: down and strange at the same time. Where did they
Speaker 1: know about the up and down? And then they discovered
Speaker 1: the strange. They didn't know about the up and down,
Speaker 1: like as a real thing. It was sort of like
Speaker 1: developing as an idea. And then somebody said, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have these three particles inside, then it explains
Speaker 1: all of this that's happening. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways to try to explain. It's like everybody's looking
Speaker 1: at this huge list of particles, and remember the game
Speaker 1: and particle physics is simplified is describe everything we see
Speaker 1: in the universe in terms of the smallest set of
Speaker 1: building blocks. Were always trying to peel back one layer
Speaker 1: of reality. So this is a huge success is to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I have some new idea for an even smaller particle
Speaker 1: that explains all the weirdness we're seeing. I guess my
Speaker 1: question is why wasn't why we're in the up and
Speaker 1: downs called weird and bizarre? Well, because they're part of
Speaker 1: me and you. They're normal, they're every day, they're they're
Speaker 1: all around us. Right. Oh, they saw that that regular
Speaker 1: matter that we're familiar with is made out of just
Speaker 1: ups and downs, these other versions of normal matter, which
Speaker 1: which which is strange? And they found that the what
Speaker 1: that the common ingredient was this strange cork. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's this property called strangeness, which is turns out to
Speaker 1: be just like related to how many strange corks you
Speaker 1: have in you. Strangeness, yeah, is related to how many
Speaker 1: strange corks are in a particle. And some forces conserve
Speaker 1: strangeness and some forces don't conserve strangeness. And so it
Speaker 1: was a real puzzle for a while, but it was
Speaker 1: all put together just by understanding that there are three
Speaker 1: kinds of quirks and you can put them together in
Speaker 1: lots of different ways to make this incredible variety of particles.
Speaker 1: Then strange matter is just anything that has a strange
Speaker 1: quirk in it, or that is made entirely out of
Speaker 1: strange court. That's right. It's anything that has at least
Speaker 1: one strange cork in it. And you can make matter
Speaker 1: out of just strange quirks. In fact, the guy who
Speaker 1: proposed this, the guy who had this idea um you know,
Speaker 1: of quirks, he stood up at a conference and he
Speaker 1: proposed this and he predicted, He said, if my idea
Speaker 1: is correct, then there should also be this particle that's
Speaker 1: pure strange quirks. And he predicted how you would find
Speaker 1: it and how heavy it would be before he was seen,
Speaker 1: and he was right. So that's pretty awesome, he called
Speaker 1: his shot. Yeah, so that's strange matter. And so I
Speaker 1: have a lot of opinions about the way you guys
Speaker 1: name things as usual, but nice. We'll get into what
Speaker 1: happens to this kind of matter and whether or not
Speaker 1: it actually is something we should worry about destroying the
Speaker 1: universe or not. But first let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: all right. I know, so strange matter you're telling me,
Speaker 1: is just any kind of matter that is that has
Speaker 1: a little bit of or is made with this particular
Speaker 1: core called the strange cork. And so that's that's what
Speaker 1: makes it strange. Like, if you had this court, then
Speaker 1: you are you automatically strangely? Do you behave strangely or did?
Speaker 1: That's just the name you get, that's just the name
Speaker 1: you get. And whether you consider these particles to be
Speaker 1: behaving strangely just depends really on your perspective. It's totally subjective.
Speaker 1: But at the time when these particles were found, they
Speaker 1: did things other particles weren't doing. You know, they had
Speaker 1: weird decay patterns, they would turn into each other, they
Speaker 1: would slash back and forth from one particle to another. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were a little weird. Some of these particles, for example,
Speaker 1: violate some conservation laws that we hadn't seen other particles violate,
Speaker 1: like CP violation, charts parody violation was seen in the
Speaker 1: Chaon system. And so these particles are a little strange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're strange from normal matter, which is us, yes, which
Speaker 1: and we are made of just up and down corks
Speaker 1: or vanilla and chocolate corks. But you know what we
Speaker 1: don't know is what else can this strange cork do?
Speaker 1: Can it can it create other weirder kinds of matter
Speaker 1: that we haven't seen here on Earth? We haven't even
Speaker 1: created in particle colliders that could do bizarre stuff we
Speaker 1: haven't anticipated. Oh you mean, like can we if you
Speaker 1: were to sort of be more creative with this strange cork,
Speaker 1: what else could you make with it? Yeah? Or if
Speaker 1: you had really weird conditions like the center of a
Speaker 1: neutron star or you know, the Big Bang or very
Speaker 1: high energy particle collisions, could you make new kinds of
Speaker 1: matter with strange quirks that we haven't seen before that
Speaker 1: have completely different properties? And that's what people talk about
Speaker 1: when they talk about strange lits. It sounds sort of cute, right, like, um,
Speaker 1: you know something you would name for your pet or
Speaker 1: something like, you know, strange lito or something strange geno
Speaker 1: or something, but it's actually quite potentially potentially quite scary
Speaker 1: and dangerous. It's cute and years great. A lot of
Speaker 1: things fall in that category. It's like the Bundy from
Speaker 1: my depathon. But so that's what um, So, that's what
Speaker 1: a strange lit is. It's a kind of strange matter.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of strange matter in a particular configuration.
Speaker 1: That we haven't seen before. Oh so I see, so
Speaker 1: it's hypothetical. So far, it's hypothetical. Nobody's ever seen strange
Speaker 1: lists before. Strange matter we create all the time in
Speaker 1: particle collisions. Strange lists are a hypothetical new combination of
Speaker 1: quarks that we've never observed but could potentially end us.
Speaker 1: And it comes from this sort of idea of maybe
Speaker 1: forming an entirely new kind of matter. We're talking earlier
Speaker 1: about how quirks are usually bound into triplets, you know,
Speaker 1: like up up down or up down down. That's what
Speaker 1: gives you protons and neutrons, or sometimes into pairs. But
Speaker 1: the idea is that maybe quarks, if you squeeze them enough,
Speaker 1: if you compress them enough, like in the center of
Speaker 1: really danse stars, they might form some new kind of
Speaker 1: matter where it's not just pair or triplets, but like
Speaker 1: you know, thirty or fifty or a hundred or a
Speaker 1: million quarks could form some sort of like mega particle
Speaker 1: and it all behaves is one or does it just
Speaker 1: behave like a big blob? It behaves like one big blob,
Speaker 1: but it's like in one big bound state. So this
Speaker 1: is what they call quark matter. Oh, I see you
Speaker 1: mean like it's stable, like it doesn't just break apart
Speaker 1: right away, like it stays in that blob. Nobody really knows,
Speaker 1: and it's really hard to calculate these things, and it's
Speaker 1: completely hypothetical, and they don't think it's stable unless here's
Speaker 1: the key, unless you add strange quirks to it. So
Speaker 1: you make a big blob of cork matter, and if
Speaker 1: you have some strange quirks in it, it could end
Speaker 1: up in this configuration that is actually very stable. So
Speaker 1: it could be like an enormous blob like essentially a
Speaker 1: single particle like the size of a star um that's
Speaker 1: totally stable. So you call it a particle because it's
Speaker 1: quarks bound together. Yeah, and you know, proton is three
Speaker 1: quarks bound together, and a kon is two quarks bound together.
Speaker 1: And so if instead of just having a pile of neutrons,
Speaker 1: if you squeeze them enough so they become like one
Speaker 1: big particle, so that the bonds between the corks are
Speaker 1: sort of equivalent anywhere across the particle, then you think
Speaker 1: of it like, you know, I think of it like
Speaker 1: one big particle at least. And you're saying that the
Speaker 1: secret ingredient would need to be strange particles at quarks.
Speaker 1: Like without the strange quarks, you couldn't have this heaven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need the strange quirks to make this sort of
Speaker 1: theoretical matter happen. And so that's what strangelets are. They're
Speaker 1: this weird new combination of up quarks, down corks and
Speaker 1: strange quirks in this way that's not like bound inside
Speaker 1: one little particle, but potentially can grow. Right It's not
Speaker 1: just three quirks. It could be five, it could be
Speaker 1: a hundred, it could be ten million corks. It could
Speaker 1: be tended the ten. It's like a special recipe because
Speaker 1: you told me, you said earlier, the sigma particles are
Speaker 1: also up down and strange, but there's like a like
Speaker 1: a near recipe for the sigma particle. Exactly Sigma particles,
Speaker 1: one kind of sigma particle is up down stream. But
Speaker 1: this would be a new configuration of them that that
Speaker 1: doesn't decay right away. Yeah, it wouldn't just be three.
Speaker 1: You could be three or six or a billion, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't decay right away. And it's it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing and you can only make it in very
Speaker 1: high energy, high density configurations like the inside of a
Speaker 1: neutron star or you know, particle collisions. And again it's theoretical.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows if you could actually make this stuff, but
Speaker 1: the numbers, the calculations we do suggest that it might
Speaker 1: be possible. Okay, so um, so it's a hypothetical type
Speaker 1: of matter which might be super stable, very stable, and
Speaker 1: maybe even contagious. Yeah, that's the amazing thing is number one.
Speaker 1: It's super stable. And the reason for that is sort
Speaker 1: of interesting. It's like you could combine just up quirks
Speaker 1: and down quirks this way, squeeze them together to make
Speaker 1: something really dense, but it wouldn't be very stable. And
Speaker 1: if you add strange quirks, it becomes stable for this
Speaker 1: weird reason because the particles don't like to sort of
Speaker 1: share spots. Like you know how electrons when you have
Speaker 1: them are atom they fill up different orbitals. You add
Speaker 1: another electron, they don't just sit on top of each other.
Speaker 1: That's because they're fermions and they don't like to be
Speaker 1: in the same quantum state. There are rules that say
Speaker 1: that you to two of these can be at the
Speaker 1: same spot. Yeah, so you can't add another electron in
Speaker 1: the same spot, but you could add another different kind
Speaker 1: of particle, like you could have a muon orbiting your proton,
Speaker 1: and it's okay if it's in the same energy levels
Speaker 1: the electron, because they're not the same kind of particle.
Speaker 1: And so what why why are these strange lots so interesting?
Speaker 1: Are they just because there's theoretical and they could be
Speaker 1: they could exist? Well, I mean everybody's interested in like
Speaker 1: new kinds of matter. I mean, who doesn't like sit
Speaker 1: around on a Saturday afternoon one or new kinds of matter? Right,
Speaker 1: I mean everybody does that, right? Um. No, Theoretically they're interesting,
Speaker 1: like could you make this new hyper stable kind of matter?
Speaker 1: And in this case, the matter is extra stable because
Speaker 1: the strange quirks can fill in the sort of lower
Speaker 1: energy levels that the up corks and down corks can't
Speaker 1: because they're a different kind of particle. And it's fascinating
Speaker 1: because it could grow, like if they encounter a new
Speaker 1: kind of matter, it could spread this sort of strange littleness.
Speaker 1: What what do you mean, like how could it? It
Speaker 1: would turn like I'm made out of up and down.
Speaker 1: Course you're saying if I touch one of these blobs
Speaker 1: of strange lead matter. It would somehow turn some of
Speaker 1: my up and ups and down corks into strange corks,
Speaker 1: and you become bizarro Jorge or you know, strange strange
Speaker 1: warhe Yeah, then the comberbat horn more strange? Is that
Speaker 1: your voice? Yeah? So you know the only thing that
Speaker 1: prevents you from being a strange lid is that you
Speaker 1: don't have strange quirks in you. Um, but any of
Speaker 1: the down quirks in your body could get converted to
Speaker 1: strange quirks. They just need some energy. They could get upgraded.
Speaker 1: They could get yeah, literally upgraded to strange quirks. And
Speaker 1: that might happen if I touched some of this strange
Speaker 1: lad matter. Yeah, and nobody knows. Again, does strange that
Speaker 1: matter exists and if so, what properties as a have?
Speaker 1: But in some versions of this theory, then yeah, it
Speaker 1: adds to itself. When it encounters other kinds of matter,
Speaker 1: it converts that matter into strange lit matter like collapses
Speaker 1: it because strange that matter is more stable than other
Speaker 1: kinds of matter. So you can imagine sort of like
Speaker 1: our normal kind of matter just sort of like waiting
Speaker 1: to turn into strangelets. And as soon as you get
Speaker 1: one nearby, like crystallizes, Like if you put a drop
Speaker 1: of sugar into sugar water, it'll form a huge crystal
Speaker 1: around it. It's like a seed that spreads its pattern.
Speaker 1: And what would happen to me if I touched this
Speaker 1: strangelet matter? Would I just automatically sort of get blobified
Speaker 1: and then absorbed into the bigger blob or would it
Speaker 1: still be me except I would be sort of strange
Speaker 1: and have superpowers. I'm usually the one has unanswerable philosophical questions.
Speaker 1: But would you still be you? Well, you become very
Speaker 1: dense because strange matter is extraordinarily dense. It's much denser
Speaker 1: than like the content of a neutron star. So the
Speaker 1: original Jorge particles would be, you know, condensed to something
Speaker 1: like the size of a tiny little drop. And whether
Speaker 1: you would still feel like you, I don't know. You
Speaker 1: might feel more like Benedict commer Batch. I suppose more
Speaker 1: like Paul run and Admin. It sounds like you get smaller, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would get smaller. Maybe that's what the pim particle is, Daniel.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a strange particle. Yeah, that makes everything contest
Speaker 1: all right, Well, now you need to write to Marvel
Speaker 1: and get credit for that one. So we're even then
Speaker 1: I'll take half of those profits. We are just rolling
Speaker 1: the movies advice here. So you're saying that you could
Speaker 1: maybe create protons and neutrons out of this strange matter
Speaker 1: and then you could still have atoms and stuff. We
Speaker 1: don't think you would have like atoms inside of it.
Speaker 1: There's no like division between the particles. You don't get
Speaker 1: protons and neutrons. It's like this, just the morgue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it probably would be the end of Jorge exactly.
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't recommend it. Now, you tell me. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into whether or not this is real and
Speaker 1: whether it can happen, and whether we should be worried
Speaker 1: about this coming here and absorbing us and obliterating us
Speaker 1: and turning us into a strange live matter. But first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel, it is
Speaker 1: strange matter. Well, we know a strange matter is real,
Speaker 1: But are these strange lids that might absorb things and
Speaker 1: destroy everything? Is that real? Should we be worried about it? Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know if it's real. We can't say that
Speaker 1: it's not. We've never seen it before. But it's sort
Speaker 1: of theoretically makes some sense, so it's worth taking seriously.
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting you, like change the way you live
Speaker 1: your life, but it could be that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of these strangers out there and we just haven't
Speaker 1: seen them yet. Oh I see, you can't disprove it,
Speaker 1: so therefore you've got to consider it like aliens. It's
Speaker 1: just like aliens are like me being mistaken by Benedict
Speaker 1: comber Back. It could happen. It could happen, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of times in physics that were in
Speaker 1: this scenario where we haven't really looked, so we don't
Speaker 1: know if it's there. And then the more we look,
Speaker 1: the more we can say, if it's there, it's rare.
Speaker 1: And then once we've looked, like really exhaustively, we can say, well,
Speaker 1: either it doesn't exist or it's super duper rare. And
Speaker 1: we're in that situation with a lot of particles like
Speaker 1: magnetic monopoles that we talked about on the project, but
Speaker 1: in this case we've only sort of recently begun to
Speaker 1: figure out, like how to look for strangelets. It doesn't
Speaker 1: happen in normal occurrences. It sounds like it's it sounds
Speaker 1: like it only happens in the core of like super
Speaker 1: dance stars or high energy collisions, and and it like it.
Speaker 1: Even if you created some here on Earth, it might
Speaker 1: be difficult to sustain, right, because we're not inside of
Speaker 1: an nuentrance star. You don't need to be inside a
Speaker 1: dense environment to sustain it, just to create it. Just
Speaker 1: like you can make heavy metals and the inside of
Speaker 1: the Sun, and then when they blow up, there's still
Speaker 1: those heavy metals, right, iron lanes here on Earth. It
Speaker 1: doesn't just fall apart into protons and neutrons. Right. It's stable.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing with this stuff is that it's
Speaker 1: it's there. Once you make it, it's there, and anything
Speaker 1: it touches it will grow and add onto it because
Speaker 1: it's more stable than this other kind of matter. So
Speaker 1: like collapses normal matter into strange lit matter. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: more stable than regular matter. It's more stable. It's like
Speaker 1: a lower estate. So what you're saying that if you
Speaker 1: create something the large hadron collider and it touches the
Speaker 1: walls of the collider, it can just grow and grow
Speaker 1: and swallow up the whole earth. That's exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: saying and is that Daniel interesting or qute to you?
Speaker 1: Does that sound like a like a fun, fuzzy outcome
Speaker 1: for the huge human race. I think it would be
Speaker 1: pretty spectacular but pretty cool to see on screen. It's
Speaker 1: not something we are worried about. Me. We took it seriously,
Speaker 1: We thought about it, we did the calculations, and just
Speaker 1: like whether the LHC will create black holes, we're not
Speaker 1: worried about it because the same kind of collisions are
Speaker 1: happening all the time right now in the atmosphere, really
Speaker 1: high energy particles smashing into other particles from cosmic rays.
Speaker 1: So we think if that was likely to happen um at,
Speaker 1: the LHC would have already happened in the atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: we don't see that. So we don't think the LFC
Speaker 1: is powerful enough to create strangelets if they do exist.
Speaker 1: You don't think. We don't think, but you know, keep
Speaker 1: your ears open. But you're saying, but a scenario might
Speaker 1: be that you do create these things and it does
Speaker 1: sort of like spread and swallow up and suddenly the
Speaker 1: whole earth is just a giant ball of strange cords,
Speaker 1: you know, floating around like a blob, not even that
Speaker 1: giant because it would collapse into a very very dense matter,
Speaker 1: so like all the mass of the Earth would get
Speaker 1: turned into strangelets, would be like the size of a grapefruit.
Speaker 1: And then it would just sit there in place of
Speaker 1: the Earth and still go around the Sun and the
Speaker 1: Moon would still go around this blob, but we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be would be all sorts, this one little ball of energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd be living our strangest life. Um, And that's one scenario.
Speaker 1: Like if we actually made strange that's on Earth, but
Speaker 1: not something we're worried about. And you know, we've been
Speaker 1: turned We turned this thing on years ago. We've been
Speaker 1: doing collisions every seconds for almost a decade, so not
Speaker 1: something to worry about. But it's possible that you're still here,
Speaker 1: don't worry. If you're listening to this podcast, then your
Speaker 1: final word. But it's possible that there are other scenarios
Speaker 1: out there in the universe that are capable of making strangelets,
Speaker 1: like the core of a neutron star. We haven't made
Speaker 1: it here because maybe we don't have enough energy, but
Speaker 1: there are places with enough energy to make this strange
Speaker 1: lit matter. If it's real, if it's actually a thing
Speaker 1: that can happen in our universe. We think it's possible
Speaker 1: to make them in the core of neutron stars, where
Speaker 1: it's very very dense, remember neutron stars, or places where
Speaker 1: it's had a gravitational collapse, it's stopped burning, is no
Speaker 1: more m forces or pressure pushing out, so it's like
Speaker 1: really densely packed, and all the protons and electrons have
Speaker 1: gotten squeezed together and converted into neutrons. If you push
Speaker 1: even further, then we think that maybe the core of
Speaker 1: that could turn into a strangelet which would then spread
Speaker 1: and take over the entire star. Oh, it would go
Speaker 1: from like a neutron star to a strangelet star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to us, they call it a strange star. And we
Speaker 1: can look at stars and try to tell if that's happened.
Speaker 1: Like we've seen some neutron stars, and we can look
Speaker 1: at them and look at the sort of radiation from them,
Speaker 1: and so far, all the neutron stars we've seen look
Speaker 1: like they're just normal, vanilla, amazingly crazy weird neutron stars
Speaker 1: that they haven't converted to strange stars. And you know,
Speaker 1: this depends on our understanding of how what this would
Speaker 1: look like from really far away using on the X rays.
Speaker 1: But so far it seems like it hasn't happened. And
Speaker 1: you know, if the calculations are correct, then it's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that should happen to neutron stars eventually.
Speaker 1: So if we haven't seen one ever turn into a
Speaker 1: strange star, then maybe it's not possible. Maybe it's not possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just a strange dream. Maybe it's just a
Speaker 1: strange idea from afternoon physicist who didn't have enough coffee.
Speaker 1: Or strange lets, Yes, strange lets. Could they be like
Speaker 1: inside of a black hole or something? Well, actually, that's
Speaker 1: the only thing you can do to save yourself from strange.
Speaker 1: That's like if you saw a blob of strange that's
Speaker 1: heading here, there's almost nothing you can do to like
Speaker 1: divert it or you know, prevented, because anything that touches
Speaker 1: it just makes it bigger. Um. But if you could
Speaker 1: somehow funnel it into a black hole, yeah, then you'd
Speaker 1: be safe. But then you have to worry about the
Speaker 1: black hole. Yes, yes, then you have to worry about
Speaker 1: the black hole. It's like you got a rabbit problem,
Speaker 1: so you put a bunch of wolves on your property
Speaker 1: and wolf problem. But hey, I like these long term
Speaker 1: physics solutions. It's all about putting out one by your
Speaker 1: long term with another fire. But even if we're not
Speaker 1: making them inside neutron stars, it might be that they're
Speaker 1: out there anyway. There could be what we call primordial strangelets.
Speaker 1: Primordial strange it are things that were made in the
Speaker 1: Big Bang because the densest, craziest, hottest party in the universe,
Speaker 1: of course, was the verse very first few moments when
Speaker 1: things were really hot and crazy, and it could be
Speaker 1: that a few strangets were made back then and they're
Speaker 1: still floating around. Emily might not see them. We wouldn't
Speaker 1: see them. They don't like glow or anything. But one
Speaker 1: of them could just like bump into the Earth and
Speaker 1: then the whole earth becomes a strangelet. The whole Earth
Speaker 1: becomes a strangelet. And of course that hasn't happened yet,
Speaker 1: and we've never seen a planet disappear, and we've been
Speaker 1: watching for a while, and you know, so that tells
Speaker 1: you something about how unlikely it is. But we just
Speaker 1: don't know. And there's some people do calculations and they
Speaker 1: suggest that there are more strangelets out there than stars
Speaker 1: in the universe. But you know, I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: like physicists having way too many cups of coffee and
Speaker 1: they're like, dude, even that's strange for us. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's important to sort of stretch your mental muscles to
Speaker 1: think about all the ways that the universe could be
Speaker 1: toticipate these things, and to think about how to protect yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, fund this proposal to build a shield against
Speaker 1: strange matter, or we might all die. Well. I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting still to just think about the idea
Speaker 1: that that there are kinds of matter that we haven't
Speaker 1: touched upon, you know, like there are maybe there are
Speaker 1: strange ways to arrange the legos of the universe, and
Speaker 1: ways that are sort of like cool and interesting and
Speaker 1: might be maybe even solve all all of our problems.
Speaker 1: There definitely are. And you know, another direction of this
Speaker 1: research is just to make new elements, you know, use
Speaker 1: up quirks and down corks and combine protons and neutrons
Speaker 1: and a way to make heavier and heavier elements. And
Speaker 1: I having kept up with it, but you know, they're
Speaker 1: up into the teens or maybe evento the hundred twenties
Speaker 1: and the periodic table, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really fascinating ways to combine things together to make new
Speaker 1: kinds of goo. There's a lot of different directions to go,
Speaker 1: and we've only explored, you know, a little bit. And
Speaker 1: so it's another one of these angles where you realize
Speaker 1: that we have a tiny little slice of the past
Speaker 1: will experiences that humans can have in this universe. There's
Speaker 1: all sorts of different kind of stuff out there waiting
Speaker 1: for us to discover it or for us to invent right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then for it to destroy us hopefully not all right, Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this strange trip down into the
Speaker 1: little legos of the universe and think to think about
Speaker 1: all different ways in which normal and strange that you
Speaker 1: can assemble the universe together. And remember that this is
Speaker 1: mostly a mental exercise. We're wondering how can matter fit together,
Speaker 1: what kind of things can be in the universe, And
Speaker 1: for us, it's just interesting and fascinating to think about
Speaker 1: all the ways that this can happen. It's not something
Speaker 1: we worry about. I do not think you need to
Speaker 1: worry about strange that's destroying your house, But Yeah, So
Speaker 1: next time we'll get into charm matter, Daniel or we will.
Speaker 1: Actually we're gonna do an episode about how the charm
Speaker 1: cork was discovered. That pretty crazy story. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. We hope you enjoyed that. See
Speaker 1: you next time. Yea, before you still have a question
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
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