WEBVTT - What is a particle? 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:12.600 Hey, Daniel, what exactly is your job title these days? Well? 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.520 I call myself a particle physicist, all right, so then 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.600 this question should be pretty easy for you. Can you 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:24.279 tell me what exactly a particle is? Oh? Boy, I 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.880 wish I could. What I mean you wish? Aren't you 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.720 a particle physicist? How can you not know what it is? Well? 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:33.040 I guess it's kind of just a made up job title, 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:37.000 I suppose. I mean, you must be smashing something there 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.080 in your large accelerator. Yeah, maybe that's what we should 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:44.280 have called it, the large something collider, the large something 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:47.840 something collider. I mean, I voted for something collider face, 0:00:47.960 --> 0:01:05.400 but nobody else wanted that. It's not too late. I 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.160 am more handmade cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.360 I'm Daniel. I'm a professor of physics at you see ermine, 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.160 and I'm also a particle physicist whatever that means. Maybe 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.200 that should be the title should be whatever physicist technically 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:20.520 that encompasses the whole universe. Or I could just be 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:24.760 a professor of whatever. What are you teaching this year? Whatever? 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:27.679 In your house, you're probably a professor of that. I'm 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:30.480 sure you hear from your kids a lot whatever. Yeah, 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:32.400 I do have two teenagers, so I do get that 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:34.440 a lot. You get a lot of something at home. 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:37.520 Not a whole lot of interests in physics, but a 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:41.240 whole lot interest in whatever, dad, or a lot of 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:45.200 non interests. I guess in whatever. Sometimes I can trick 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:48.360 them into being interested in physics. Oh yeah, how does 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.320 that work? You pay them now? They asked me a 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.600 question about something else they're honestly curious about, and then 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.520 I turned it into a question about physics. I guess 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:00.840 everything at the end is physics sort of, and so 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.680 basically anything that anything they ask you as a physics question. 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:05.880 When can I go to sleep? Well, it depends on 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:09.320 the physics of the chemistry and your brain. Let's explore that. 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:11.359 Sit down, I'll give you a lecture, and that's a 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.399 good way to put them to sleep. It all works out. 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.239 But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.840 the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:22.920 we turn the whole universe into a physics question and 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.440 ask what is it, how does it work? And can 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:28.359 we figure it out without putting you to sleep. We 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.600 take your mind on a journey into the craziest things 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:35.320 that the universe contains, the craziest things that the universe does, 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:39.760 and the craziest, strangest things that the universe might also 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:41.560 be made out of. That's right. We take you in 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:45.320 a journey to the big whatever because the universe is 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.519 full of what you know, it's full of stuff, and 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.239 there's also an ever there because the universe is several 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.720 billion years old and maybe around for trillions of more years. 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:56.800 That's right. There's not many things that we can say 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.400 with certainty in physics and philosophy, but we can say 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.240 that there is something out there and we're something, right, also, 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.520 are don't we something? I'm something? You're something. The listener 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.120 is something and you're definitely listening to something right now. Well, 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:16.160 you're more, you're more of a something else, Dan. I'm 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:18.600 gonna take that in the entirely positive way that it 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.560 was meant. Definitely not nothing. Something. It stands out you mean, 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.399 like a ZiT sort of rises above the skin. That's 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:29.200 that's something else, Daniel. But I'm happy to be the 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:31.640 black head in this universe. But it is a pretty 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:35.120 wonderful universal of amazing things to discover, and every day 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:37.880 we're learning more and more about it. We're looking out 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.480 there into the stars and looking with our microscopes at 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:44.560 the smallest things in existence, and we're giving names. We're 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.040 not just taking names, we're giving out names to these things. 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.040 And we're doing more than just trying to see what's 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:52.680 out there in the universe. We're trying to make sense 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.960 of it. We're trying to describe the crazy bonkers universe 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.680 that we see out there in terms of ideas that 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.320 makes sense in our It's we have a small mental 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.800 toolbox of concepts that we are familiar with, and we 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:08.280 need to describe the whole crazy universe out there in 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.200 terms of these simple ideas. Yeah, does that mean we 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:13.800 have like little tiny hammers inside of our brains and 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.200 little tiny screwdrivers sort of? I think that as kids 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.400 grow up, they experienced the universe and they encounter new 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.240 ideas and they sort of become familiar with them, and 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:25.320 then that things in your brain is like the set 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.320 of ideas that you are comfortable with. You know, a thing, 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:30.400 what can the thing do, what can the thing be? 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.080 What are the rules of a thing? And then lady, 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:35.240 you try to describe other stuff in terms of that 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:37.200 kind of thing. Yeah, it's almost like we sort of 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.560 experienced two different universes in a way, right, Like, as 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:42.760 you grow up, the universe seems to be one way. 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:46.279 It seems to follow sort of like Newtonian physics. Things 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.520 bouncing around, things are hard, things are soft, things fly 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:51.640 through the air. But then as you learn more and 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.200 more about the universe, as humanity has learned more and 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:57.360 more about the universe, things got more complex. They certainly did. 0:04:57.600 --> 0:04:59.760 There are so many things out there in the universe 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.920 that we do not experience in childhood that we do 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:07.000 not have intuitive concepts for, because they're not the kind 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:09.920 of thing that our brains involved to understand, and not 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:12.480 the kind of things that we learned to deal with 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.000 when we were children. And yet they are out there 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:17.200 and they are part of the real world, and so 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.800 we need to somehow extrapolate from the kinds of concepts 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:23.839 that we do understand out there into the fuzzy weirdness 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:26.359 that the universe is. And it makes me wonder how 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.080 other intelligent species think about the universe, if they have 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.560 different ways of interacting with the universe, or if they're 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:35.960 very very small or very very large or very very fast, 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.520 would they think that our understanding of the universe is 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.800 strange and alien. The way we might think there's is whoa. 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:43.840 You just kind of blew my mind there, right, Like 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.039 we usually assume aliens are the same size and the 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.479 same shape as we are. But maybe aliens are you know, 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:53.400 a tiny microscopic of almost quantum size and beings. Yeah, 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:57.840 or maybe aliens can like taste photons and smell electrons 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:01.120 and have weird quantum interactions, and for them, quantum mechanics 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.120 is totally intuitive and they would find you know, classical 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:07.000 mechanics is like, wow, that's fantastic and beautiful. What an 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.919 interesting simplification of big quantum mechanics. It's really fun. And 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.080 of course you know, I can turn any question into 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.000 one about aliens, yes, or maybe the aliens are just 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.800 going like whatever, that's actually what my kids complain about 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:23.320 their Like, dad stopped turning this into something about aliens. 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:28.159 I didn't ask about aliens. Well, all teenagers act like 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.720 aliens sometimes, or at least they feel alienated or they 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:35.599 wonder if their parents are aliens. You just need a 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.520 cone head, I guess. But it does seem like we're 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.159 sort of maybe stuck it away in our childhood view 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:43.680 of the universe sometimes or at least it's hard to 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:46.960 you know, kind of think about the real universe because 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.159 it is sort of complex and not intuitive from a 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.479 child's perspective. But then our language and our way of 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.000 thinking is sort of stuck because that's how we grew up. 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:58.960 And it's a real question whether or not we can 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:03.400 comprehend a true, chaotic, buzzing reality that's out there in 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.200 terms of the kinds of ideas that we have, or 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.680 do we need to somehow invent or discover a completely 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:13.840 new kind of concept which previously was alien two our thinking, 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.760 you know, just following the mathematics and then developing inventing 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.960 some new kind of intuition sort of as an adult 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.920 intellectual species that we need to grapple with the craziness 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.000 of reality. I wonder if even our brains are capable, 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.520 right or equipped or designed to maybe grasp the true 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:33.800 nature of the universe. You know, it could be that, 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.040 you know, like sort of like dogs can't do calculus, 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:40.320 maybe we really understand the define mathematics at the core 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:42.560 of reality. And I don't like the way you're talking 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:44.600 about my dog there, man, I mean, don't put limits 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:48.840 on my dog's village. Dog can do calculus or at 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:53.240 least algebra. Come on, you can count treats. I'm pretty sure. 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.720 There you go. I'm sure he can calculate the radio 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.280 treats too, So that's sort of like calculus. Yeah, but 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:01.800 you're right, we don't know if the human brain is 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.600 capable of grasping the true nature of reality. Certainly dogs 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.040 are not, as much as we love them, and so 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.240 then there's no guarantee that we are infinitely intelligent and 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.800 capable of understanding. If super intelligent aliens come to Earth 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:17.800 and want to explain physics to us, could we even 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:20.360 understand it? Could we grocket even if they knew how 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.920 to speak our language and our mathematics and our physics. 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.400 Would we fail that class? Yeah? Or maybe they would 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:29.480 have to like trick us into understanding or liking or 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.160 asking the right questions about physics. You know, you think 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.520 we'd just be like whatever, aliens, we don't want to 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:38.400 hear it. Just give me a headache, man, I would 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.520 sign up for that headache. I would go to that class. 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.600 What if it was a constant headache, like seven headache? Man? 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.360 Have you tried quantum mechanics? That's basically seven headache. I 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.360 feel like that's humanity trying to absorb something which is 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.560 truly alien, which is far from our experience, something we 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.600 have never experienced on the early Savannahs. I mean, we 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:00.800 didn't need to know to be able to hunt mammoth, 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:03.400 and yet we are somehow beginning to grapple with it. 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.400 We are getting a sort of mathematical fluency with a 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.560 truly alien concept. We'll just need to require the aliens 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.040 to bring espirin at least give us a hand. But 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:14.560 it is interesting to try to, you know, understand these 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.960 fundamental concepts about the universe. And there is one concept 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:21.040 out there that may seem pretty easy to understand, but 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:24.280 actually there is a lot of uncertainty about it. Something 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:26.920 very basic about the universe, that's right, And if you 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:30.199 ask people whose job it is to understand this stuff, 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.680 you get lots of very different answers, to my surprise. 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:35.640 So to be on the podcast, we will be tackling 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:44.320 the question what is a particle? And just to be clear, 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.440 then in your official title is particle physicists. So you know, 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:50.400 first of all, it's shocking that you don't know. And 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:52.960 second of all, if we were going to ask somebody 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.360 we should ask you. You know we have one of 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:57.320 the leading experts in the field here. Yeah. Well, I 0:09:57.320 --> 0:09:59.679 suppose you could say that a particle physicist is someone 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.880 who tries to understand what particles are, not somebody who 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.840 already knows the answers, right, because member science is a journey. 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.640 You ask somebody who's an expert in dinosaurs, they don't 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.640 know everything about dinosaurs. Maybe they know everything that humans 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:15.360 know about dinosaurs, but they don't already have all the 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:18.480 answers right. Right. When I hire a plumber, I don't 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:20.720 really want someone who knows plumbing. I just want someone 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:23.800 who comes in to learn about plumbing. Well, that's why 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:25.800 you don't hire a physicist to do your plumbing, because 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:27.240 they'll be like, Oh, I have this great R and 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:30.920 D project. I'm curious this new theoretical idea for plumbing 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.200 will work in your toilet. That's right. I wanna build 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:37.120 a water collider inside your walls and we'll see what happens. No, 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:39.960 I'm just putting a small black hole under your toilet 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:42.280 and it's just gonna suck everything away. That would be 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:48.080 a pretty green solution. It would conserve water for sure. 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:50.920 Whether dark matter can go into a black hole. Oh man, 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:54.840 that's next level physics, spread there, or lower level physics. 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.400 But you know, particle physicists are people who are curious 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.559 about these questions. What is the universe is made out 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.360 of at its most fundamental level, And it's something we've 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:05.480 made a lot of progress thinking about in the last 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:08.920 hundred years or so. But there's a shocking diversity of answers, 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.760 even among particles physicists. Yeah, something as simple of award 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:16.840 as a particle can have many different meanings, and in 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.800 physics it can mean very different things. So it's usually 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:21.719 we were wondering how many people out there have thought 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.640 about this very basic question what is a particle, and 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.680 whether or not they have a true answer to it. 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:29.959 So thank you very much for everybody who is willing 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:33.600 to answer random questions for the podcast. It's some great 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:36.040 help to us and we love hearing your voice and 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:38.520 having you all out there participated makes us feel a 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.240 little bit like this is a conversation, So please, if 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:43.600 you'd like to participate, don't be shy right to us. 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:46.600 Two questions at Daniel I and Jorge dot com. So 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:48.720 think about it for a second, what do you think 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:52.640 is a particle. Here's what people have to say, Well, 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:54.920 Daniel and Jrrey, I think I learned this one from you. 0:11:55.400 --> 0:12:00.880 At a particle is a certain excitation of a certain field. 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.240 I'll leave it at that. To me, a particle is 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.839 the smallest, this great thing that you can poke where 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:12.520 we don't yet know how to smash it into smaller bits. 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:17.640 My understanding is that a particle is just an excitation 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:22.959 in a quantum field, and when it reaches a certain 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:27.720 energy level um our many electron golds in that field. 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:32.960 That causes a particle to just appear as a consequence 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.800 of the energy in the field. It's just the basic 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:43.520 unit for that has of matter and um and energy. 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:47.160 We have different definitions based on how we're talking about 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:49.760 what a particle is. Maybe talking about a particle from 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.240 the perspective of an engineer building a particle collider, you 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:56.040 might have a certain definition. If you're talking about it 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.040 in a theoretical physics sort of minded way, you might 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:05.080 have a slightly different definition. I think it's something that 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:07.640 we're still grappling with because it's not something that we 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.640 have an intuitive understanding of. So I think there's a 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:16.480 lot of different ideas and a lot of different ways 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.760 to try and make analogies that we can understand to 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.360 sort of encompass this concept of particle. A particle is 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:31.959 that portion of the standard model divided into quantized pieces 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.680 which may or may not be fundamental. They may be 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.959 thought of as the building blocks of the universe, and 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:43.800 they may be also thought of as perturbations, wiggles, or 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:50.000 vibrations of their concommittant field. I generally use the word 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:55.360 particle to describe small bits of stuff, and it doesn't 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.120 just mean atom. You can even say, like a cork 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.920 is a particle, and of course are made up of 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:04.360 other things. Those two are particles. So I guess the 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:08.679 word particle just means a bit of something, the smallest 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:11.559 bit of something you could possibly have. All Right, I 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.840 got a little existential there and a little basic. Some 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:18.120 people were, like, a particle, it's just a particle, right, 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:20.720 It's like the basically unit of stuff. Yeah, it is 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:23.360 a really fascinating question, and you hear in these answers 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.560 a lot of different ideas. Yeah. Yeah, some people say 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.360 it's like an excitation in a quantum field, and some 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:32.240 people say it's just like the smallest thing you can 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:36.240 poke at Nobody said it was Daniel job. Nobody said 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:39.400 why are you asking me? If you're asking me, we're 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.080 in trouble. It's like if your dentist asks you what 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:44.400 am I supposed to do next? At least nobody said 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.960 something or whatever. It's not nothing. Oh, there you go. 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:51.680 Maybe it's not nothing. Is that one of the leading theories. 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:55.240 That's not an explanation though, that's just like ruling out 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:59.520 other explanations. Maybe that is the answer, Daniel. That's like 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:01.160 when you ask your teenager who didnt to the car 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:02.800 and they say, I don't know, but it wasn't me. 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.720 That's not an answer. Yeah, so let's dig into this. 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.920 It's it's almost almost like a philosophical question, right Daniel, 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.560 like what is a particle? Or maybe more like a 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:14.960 semantic question, you know, about the meaning of the word 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.160 or is this actual? Like physics questions like we don't 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.400 even have math for it. I think it's all of 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.880 the above. It's definitely an interesting lesson in history how 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.880 we came up with this concept of a particle, what 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.880 it meant to people through time. There's also a philosophical question, 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.680 you know, if you could describe the universe in terms 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.840 of particles versus fields, versus something else, which is the 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.040 true stuff of the universe. But it's also really a 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:43.000 physics question. You know, we are trying to understand the universe, 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.360 and it's most basic level, what is the fundamental element 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:50.480 of the universe. Some things are fundamental, they're inherent properties 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:52.880 of the universe, and other things like ice cream cones, 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.400 are emergent. They arise out of the complex interactions of 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:58.560 other stuff. So it's really sort of the heart of 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.880 particle physics is understanding the very nature of the universe. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.480 So I think it really is a physical question as well. 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:08.320 It's a it's a party, It's right there in the 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:12.040 name particle. Well I never made that connection. My whole 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:16.280 job is just a party. You're a party animal, professional 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.920 party animal, professional party. Yeah, and if you have had 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:22.120 a bunch of particle physicists at your party, you know 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:26.080 that's true. Yeah, you know it's not really a party. 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.200 But anyways, let's dig into this kind of deep question, Daniel, 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:31.760 I guess how would you even start to tackle this question. 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.840 I think a good way to begin is to recognize 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.200 that particles are really at the heart of what we 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.480 mean by the stuff around us. It's a huge inside 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:44.640 already to say that the things that are around us, 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:47.720 the ice cream cone, the lava, the kittens, whatever you 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.120 ate for lunch, all of this stuff is made out 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.960 of smaller pieces. Right, So the fact that you had 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:55.680 a cheese sandwich for lunch is not because that cheese 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:59.440 sandwich is made out of like cheese bits and sandwich bits. 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:02.160 It's all made out of the same stuff, right. There's 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:06.080 no cheese sandwichiness to the universe. There's no lava eatness 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:08.520 to the universe. That's all made out of the same 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:12.000 fundamental pieces. And so when you take the universe apart, 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.840 you discover this really deep and fascinating fact that most 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.600 of the qualities of the things around you are determined 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:20.680 by the smaller bits they're made out of. And not 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.560 like the identity of those bits, but how those bits 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.800 are arranged. Right. But that that's sort of a modern 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:29.560 view of the universe, right, I mean, when we started 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.160 back in ancient times, you know, we noticed, I think 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:34.159 we noticed that we can you can break stuff apart, 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.640 right like you can break a person apart. You can 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:38.720 take a rock and smash it into smaller and smaller 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:40.760 bits but it probably our limitation was that if you 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:43.600 break a rock into smaller bits, eventually just get tiny 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.560 little rocks or kind of little pieces of people. But 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:48.520 there's sort of no way for us to know, like, oh, 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.200 this rock stuff is different than this plant stuff. Right, 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.480 Certainly in ancient times, but there was this concept that 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.560 maybe there are a few basic elements. You know, they 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.119 thought it was air, wind, fire, and water initially, but 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:06.040 this idea that maybe everything around us was made of 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.959 basic ingredients mixed together in different ways. That is an 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:12.959 ancient idea. Although you know, every time you're giving credit 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.920 to the Greeks for some ancient idea that sounds very 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:18.840 modern and insightful, you gotta remember they had lots of 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.600 other crazy ancient ideas that we never forget because they're 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.520 so far off that we ignore them. Right right, I'm 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.720 well aware of your anti Grecian is m. You're kind 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:29.239 of down on the Greeks. Do you think they were 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.840 just like shooting ideas everywhere and some of them stuck 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:33.920 on the wall. I mean, have you read Greek philosophy, 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:36.160 And basically that's exactly what they did. They sent around 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:38.760 in robes, eating olives and throwing ideas against the wall. 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:41.720 It sounds like a great way to do things. It 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:43.480 is a great way to do things, and it's wonderful 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:45.880 that people were thinking so deeply a long time ago. 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:48.000 The problem is they didn't really have ways to test 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:51.160 these ideas until very very recently. So for a long 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:53.359 time the idea has just sort of floated out there 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.760 in idea space. But more recently we have actually gained 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.359 insights about the universe by doing experiments. And it was 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.199 something like a hundred and fifty years ago that the 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.040 concept of a particle really came together and it emerged 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.919 out of experiments that people were doing. Interesting, So was 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:12.679 this before or after the idea of the atom, Like, 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:15.000 do we have an idea of what an atom was, 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.680 is the smallest thing you can kind of break stuff 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:20.720 apart into, before the idea of a particle? Or did 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.720 we think about particles before atoms? We thought about atoms first. 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.959 I mean atoms also come from the Greeks, right, Democratus 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.639 had the idea of atoms, and then later on in 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:33.040 chemistry we noticed that there were these integer quantities in 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:36.640 chemical equations. So people had this concept that maybe things 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:39.000 were made out of atoms. But we didn't really know 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.280 how those atoms worked, you know, what was inside the atom, 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.560 what was the structure of the atom itself, what made 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:49.160 this element different from that element, And that didn't come 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.680 about until the discovery of the electron in the late 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:56.080 eighteen hundreds. This is J. J. Thompson who was playing 0:19:56.080 --> 0:20:00.440 around with cathode rays, these strange glowing rays in these 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:04.080 tubes where they had pumped out most of the gas. Mmm. Interesting, 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.000 So you're saying that, I guess we tried bringing down 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:07.960 rocks as small as we could and at some point, 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.240 which chemistry, you get to the idea of like maybe 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.639 there's the smallest possible bit of stuff. And so we 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:15.679 knew about atoms, but maybe we thought that, you know, 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.240 there was a carbon atom and that was different than 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.720 a hydrogen atom, and that was different than an oxygen atom, right, 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:23.760 Like that's kind of where we were before we thought 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.480 about things smaller than an atom exactly. And there's a 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:29.160 reductive approach, and so we wonder, like, well, what makes 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:32.119 a carbon atom different from an oxygen atom? Is that 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.800 just it is that like the fundamental element of the universe. 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.760 It's like the carbon genus and the oxygen genus or 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:42.080 is there some quality to carbon that makes it carbon 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.639 ey and a different quality that makes it oxygen e? Right, 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:47.520 And so we wonder like, is that come out of 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:50.359 the internal structure? Are there the same bits inside are 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:52.880 arranged in different ways? Can we explain them in terms 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.320 of another deeper layer of reality? And so that's of 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:58.720 course the goal of particle physics to keep tearing things 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:02.280 apart and understand in the relationship between these things and 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:05.080 what explains their nature what makes carbon carbony and what 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:08.879 makes oxygen oxygen e? Right? Right? Because I guess it 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:11.040 could have been that could have been the answer, right, 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:13.919 Like we could have lived in the universe where carbon 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:16.639 was one of the fundamental particles and oxygen was one 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.280 of the fundamental you know, units of the universe, right, Like, 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.920