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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, if I wanted to win a Nobel Prize

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Speaker 1: super quickly, like right now, what would I have to do?

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Speaker 1: Are you in some sort of hurry You're applying for

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Speaker 1: a new job or something. I might be applying for

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Speaker 1: some new cartooning jobs and I figured that might help.

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Speaker 1: Or you looking apply for my job? Is that what's

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Speaker 1: going on here? Anyway? If you wanted to win a

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize super quickly, you'd have to discover something new,

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Speaker 1: like a new particle. You know. That sounds good, but

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Speaker 1: actually we kind of see new particles all the time.

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Speaker 1: They're just like different versions of the particles we already knew.

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Speaker 1: So I'm not sure that would cut it. So what

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Speaker 1: would I have to discover? Then? Maybe like a new

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Speaker 1: force of nature? What if I discover the force like

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Speaker 1: in Star Wars. Well, it depends on where you're applying

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Speaker 1: for your job, if you want to discover the dark

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Speaker 1: side or not. Hi am Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and

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Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi I'm Daniel. I'm a

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Speaker 1: particle physicist, though I've never discovered a particle, nor have

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Speaker 1: I ever won the Nobel Prize yet yet. Daniel career

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Speaker 1: over yet. That's right, You've got you still got a

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Speaker 1: lot of podcasts to record here. That's right. Every podcast

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Speaker 1: I do decreases my chances of discovering a new particle

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Speaker 1: or finding or learning a Nobel Prize. And sorry, but

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Speaker 1: remember we are discovering new friends through this podcast every time,

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Speaker 1: and we're helping everybody else discover the amazing, crazy, wonderful

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Speaker 1: truths about our universe. That's right, So welcome to our podcast,

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we take the things that actual

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Speaker 1: working scientists are doing and revealing and learning about our

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Speaker 1: universe and explain them to you in a way that

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Speaker 1: you can actually understand and maybe even makes you chuckle. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And we often try to talk about what's out in

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Speaker 1: the news recently, you know, the latest discoveries, the latest

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Speaker 1: headlines that are catching people's attentions out there about exciting

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Speaker 1: new things that scientists and physicists and Becausemolo Juice have found. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And something I take as a real vote of confidence

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Speaker 1: in our ability to explain things is when something appears

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Speaker 1: in the news about science and a bunch of listeners

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Speaker 1: right in and say, hun, can you explain this to us?

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Speaker 1: And that's just what happened this weekend. I got a

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Speaker 1: torrent of emails from listeners asking us to explain something

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Speaker 1: exciting that they saw in the Science News. Do you

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Speaker 1: think people had options here? Daniel? Like, I could ask

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Speaker 1: all these different physicists, but I'll uh, I know Daniel,

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Speaker 1: so I'll ask him instead. Well, Daniel actually writes back,

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Speaker 1: So maybe that's why they saw or maybe they just

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Speaker 1: blasted everybody. And you know, I just thought we were

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Speaker 1: special and we don't charge your fee. That's the best part.

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Speaker 1: That's right. We do download malware into people's laptops when

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Speaker 1: the email us. But wait, I'm not supposed to say

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Speaker 1: that online. Yeah, welcome to Daniel and Jorges bought net

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Speaker 1: about the universe. Try we do it to Jennifer listener numbers. No,

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Speaker 1: there was an exciting piece of news over the weekend,

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Speaker 1: and dating back a couple of years, has been a

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Speaker 1: trend here and some exciting results dribbling in about a

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Speaker 1: potentially enormous discovery. Yeah. I saw that this weekend and

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Speaker 1: I was very curious it was. It was in the

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Speaker 1: front page of CNN, and my favorite part about that

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Speaker 1: was that it showed two scientists and lap codes doing

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Speaker 1: something next to really exciting machines. So I thought, wow,

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Speaker 1: that's that must be science. It's got to be science

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Speaker 1: because they're wearing lab coats. Exactly every time I'm about

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Speaker 1: to get a really good idea, I rushed over to

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Speaker 1: put on my labat to make sure it's extra science,

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Speaker 1: just in case someone takes a picture of you. Nobody's

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Speaker 1: ready ever going to take a picture of me in zience.

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Speaker 1: But let's not keep our listeners in the dark anymore.

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Speaker 1: Let's tell them what these article is about. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: over the weekend there was there was some big headlines

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Speaker 1: about a new discovery that was done I think in

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Speaker 1: Europe that might potentially kind of up in our understanding

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Speaker 1: of the universe. That's right. The headline of the article

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Speaker 1: has to do with finding a fifth force of nature. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is maybe more exciting than finding that fifth Beatle.

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Speaker 1: I here, Well, it depends. If the fifth Beatle gets

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Speaker 1: to share of all that money, you could be a

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Speaker 1: much bigger deal. They can they can buy a new

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Speaker 1: force that money. Yeah. And you know, sometimes you'll see

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Speaker 1: something online it's like, wow, that sounds like an amazing discovery,

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Speaker 1: But you don't know is this just the science journalist

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Speaker 1: drumming it up for clicks, or is this actually a

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Speaker 1: real turning point in the history of science. And a

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Speaker 1: lot of times you'll read that and then it'll sort

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Speaker 1: of fade and you never hear about it again, and

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Speaker 1: you wonder like, huh, was that actually a thing? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's hard to tell the difference. And so today on

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Speaker 1: the podcast will be asking the question is there a

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Speaker 1: fifth force of nature? What's the right context here, Daniel

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Speaker 1: that makes it epic? Is it force of nature? A

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Speaker 1: new force of nature or a new force of the

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Speaker 1: universe or reality? Or what are we talking about? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think the common phrase is a force of nature.

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Speaker 1: But you know that also like makes you think of

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Speaker 1: like a hurricane, or clauses and legal documents that let you,

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Speaker 1: you know, get out of things, acts of God, but

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Speaker 1: or or just a really motivated person. They're like, Wow,

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Speaker 1: it's a real force of nature. Somebody must have discovered

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Speaker 1: her while wearing a lab coat. Yeah in Hungary. No,

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Speaker 1: for me, it has to do with these sort of

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Speaker 1: fundamental forces I guess of the universe. You know, to me,

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Speaker 1: there's not really a difference between nature, reality and the universe.

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Speaker 1: These things are sort of interchangeable unless we're talking about

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Speaker 1: the Marvel Comics universe or the d See universe or

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Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe or other fictional universes. But for

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Speaker 1: the real universe, what we're trying to do is understand

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Speaker 1: how it works and understand how many forces there are.

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Speaker 1: And so that was a It's a big deal. And

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Speaker 1: do you think it got a lot of play in

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Speaker 1: the media that people can afforded it a lot and

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Speaker 1: ask questions about it? Yeah? I think so. Our listeners

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Speaker 1: certainly seem to have picked up on it, and there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of interest Is this real? What does

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Speaker 1: it mean? Can you help us break it down? Um?

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Speaker 1: And so to sort of get a broader context or

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Speaker 1: whether this had penetrated into, you know, the community in general,

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Speaker 1: I did something a little bit different with our street interviews.

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Speaker 1: Rather than walking around campus at you see Irvine, I

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Speaker 1: just went to a random coffee shop in Orange County

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Speaker 1: and I asked random folks if they had heard about

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Speaker 1: this discovery and if even if they knew about the

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Speaker 1: original four forces of nature. So these might be a

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Speaker 1: little bit more caffeinated than the usual answers a little

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Speaker 1: bit more caffeinated, a little bit less ramen noodle infused.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps I academic less academic exactly, you know, a broader

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Speaker 1: section of the Orange County public. So think about it

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Speaker 1: for a second dose of you listening out there. If

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Speaker 1: someone asked you at a coffee shop, what is the

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Speaker 1: fifth force? Think about what you would answer. Here's what

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Speaker 1: people had to say. No, never, I've never. I didn't

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Speaker 1: even know what better? Okay, no, what is it? No? No,

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Speaker 1: I'm not hunting through. I saw an article if I

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Speaker 1: just saw the headache? No, no, well, I don't know

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Speaker 1: what the four forces about it? No, don't you do that?

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Speaker 1: The song earth wind and fire like wind, fire, earth

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Speaker 1: like earthquakes and then also water. All right, I guess

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Speaker 1: maybe they hadn't checked this front page of the CNN

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Speaker 1: yet a lot of people, it seems, no, only one

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Speaker 1: person had even heard of the article, and very few

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Speaker 1: people could even really comment intelligently on the four forces

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Speaker 1: of nature. I got a lot of sort of ancient

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Speaker 1: Greek ideas, like earth in the Fire. I thought they

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Speaker 1: were talking about the rock group Earth Wind and Fire.

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Speaker 1: They really were a force of nature. What will be

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Speaker 1: the fifth force? In that case, Earth when fire, Sun politics,

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Speaker 1: rama noodles. Yeah, so I'm not sure that everybody else

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Speaker 1: out there understands the ramifications of this potentially mind bending,

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Speaker 1: earth shattering, universe upturning discovery. So maybe we should really

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Speaker 1: start at the beginning. Yeah, I guess it wasn't like

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Speaker 1: we interrupt this broadcast for an important physics announcement, have

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Speaker 1: landed on the Moon and discovery the fifth Force. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't like a stop the press this kind of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we didn't have President Trump commenting on this discovery yet

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Speaker 1: looking up at the Sun to see if that's were

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Speaker 1: the fourth the fifth force was no comment, but that

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Speaker 1: was the headline. The headline was scientists discover a new

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Speaker 1: force of nature, right like, um, like, if you didn't

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Speaker 1: know there were forces, they just found a new one. Yeah, precisely,

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Speaker 1: and so um that sounds like a big deal. But

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Speaker 1: I thought, since people out there might not be terribly

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Speaker 1: familiar with the forces that are out there and what

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Speaker 1: means to be a force and what we think of

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Speaker 1: from a physics point of view as a force, I

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Speaker 1: thought maybe we should start by talking about what the

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Speaker 1: four forces actually are. Yeah, the ones that we do

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Speaker 1: know about, right, the fat four of fundamental forces. That's right,

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Speaker 1: all these physics you'll be shocked to discover that there

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Speaker 1: is not consensus agreement among physicists about how many forces

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Speaker 1: we've discovered. Oh jeez, some say three, some say four,

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Speaker 1: some say five. There's controversy about how many there are now,

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Speaker 1: but they but now they've discovered another one. This controversy

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Speaker 1: about that too. All right, well, let's get into it, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about the forces we do know about. Um, so,

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Speaker 1: what are the four or three fundamental forces in the universe?

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Speaker 1: So off the bat, we think about the four fundamental

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Speaker 1: forces as gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force,

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Speaker 1: and electromagnetism. If you have to ask me, or you're

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Speaker 1: costed me on the street and ask me what the

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Speaker 1: four forces where, that's what I would say. You wouldn't

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Speaker 1: say there are only three. Well, you know, from a

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Speaker 1: particle physics point of view, we've done a pretty good

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Speaker 1: job of showing that electromagnetism and the weak force are

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Speaker 1: really one and the same. They're just two sides of

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Speaker 1: the same coin. In fact, in particle physics we refer

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Speaker 1: to them as the electroweak force, so that from that

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Speaker 1: point of view, you have three forces gravity, the strong force,

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Speaker 1: and the electroweak force. But traditionally the weak force is

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Speaker 1: kind of its own thing, and it's kind of is

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Speaker 1: because it has its own like particles that interacts with, right.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't use the photon like the electromagnetism forced us. Right.

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Speaker 1: But you know, if you want to talk traditionally, like historically,

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Speaker 1: electromagnetism is a new thing. They used to be electricity

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Speaker 1: and magnetism they were identified initially is totally separate phenomena

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Speaker 1: and then later understood to be too sides of the

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Speaker 1: same coin and merge into one that we now call electromagnetism.

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Speaker 1: So you know, years and years ago you might have

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Speaker 1: said five fundamental forces, that we emerged that down into four.

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Speaker 1: Now we've merged that down into three. So I think

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Speaker 1: three is actually the best description of you know, what

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Speaker 1: we currently understand. But that's not a widely held opinion.

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Speaker 1: Is this, like the Greeks thought that maybe there are

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Speaker 1: only three forces, like like women, fire were actually the same. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: except that we actually have more data than the Greeks.

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Speaker 1: Did we conclude this pretty conclusively and mathematically. Yeah. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so there are three or and or four. We'll say

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Speaker 1: there are three point five forces about that the difference.

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Speaker 1: This is not the kind of thing you want to

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Speaker 1: compromise on. This non negotiation. I'll give you three point

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Speaker 1: seven five plus you get the house on weekends. Maybe

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Speaker 1: you should, and maybe you would have more headlines that way. No,

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Speaker 1: And to remind people, electromagnetism is a force you're familiar with.

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Speaker 1: It's responsible for electricity from magnetism um and also for

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Speaker 1: chemical bonds. Is basically what holds your body together. It's

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Speaker 1: what makes the wall seems solid, you know. It's it's

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Speaker 1: responsible for most of the forces you actually feel. And

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Speaker 1: the weak force is not one you come and commonly feel,

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Speaker 1: but it is sort of related to the electromagnetic force. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's very closely related to electromagnetism. The particles that contribute

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Speaker 1: to the weak force are the W and the Z,

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Speaker 1: and you can think of them sort of like heavy photons.

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Speaker 1: Because they're heavy, it makes the force very weak and

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Speaker 1: it makes a very short distance scale. And so this

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Speaker 1: one really only comes into play for things like neutrinos

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Speaker 1: and radioactive decay. And I was actually talking to a

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Speaker 1: particle theorist this morning who said he didn't even consider

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Speaker 1: the weak force a force because you can't really feel it,

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Speaker 1: not even weakly. Not even weakly. Yeah, um, but I

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Speaker 1: consider it a force. Is a it's one of the

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Speaker 1: fundamental forces of nature, part of it because but it

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Speaker 1: gets lumped in with electromagnetism because like the math and

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Speaker 1: the the photon and the bosons, they are all sort

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Speaker 1: of act the same way, or they all fit into

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Speaker 1: the same mathematical box. Is that kind of why you

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Speaker 1: think they're all the same. Yeah, it just makes much

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Speaker 1: more sense mathematically if you put them all together in

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Speaker 1: the same box, and you can show that you start

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Speaker 1: from a certain set of particles and they get rotated

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Speaker 1: sort of by the Higgs boson and turn into the

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Speaker 1: particles we have. We should do a whole interesting podcast

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Speaker 1: episode about electroweak symmetry breaking. But just briefly, you know,

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Speaker 1: we have these forces, electromagnetism and the weak force, and

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Speaker 1: they're responsible for some of these physical effects. But then

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Speaker 1: of course there's also the strong force and gravity, right,

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Speaker 1: and so the strong force is the one that holds

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Speaker 1: the nucleus together, right, Like, without that one, all of

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Speaker 1: our nuclear which is fall apart. That's right. Remember, the

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Speaker 1: nuclei are protons and neutrons, and protons are positively charged

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Speaker 1: and so they repel each other, and the neutrons are neutral,

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Speaker 1: so they can't do anything to really help. So from

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Speaker 1: an electromagnetic point of view, the nucleus shouldn't even hang together.

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Speaker 1: We did a whole podcast episode about how the strong

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Speaker 1: nuclear force holds the nucleus to other So without the

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Speaker 1: strong force, we wouldn't have nucleari, we wouldn't have fusion,

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Speaker 1: we wouldn't have stars. It's pretty important. And gravity, that's

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Speaker 1: the that's the heavy one, right. Yeah, gravity is the

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Speaker 1: weakest force actually by all of these things. But it's

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Speaker 1: something you're familiar with because there are big sources of

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Speaker 1: gravity nearby, and so gravity will pull together anything that

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Speaker 1: has mass. You, your friend, your neighbor. You guys actually

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Speaker 1: feel gravity pulling on each other. Um, you just can't

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Speaker 1: really sense it because it's so small. Most of the

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Speaker 1: gravity you feel is with respect to the Earth or

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Speaker 1: if you're the oceans, with respect to the moon. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so those are the four or three and a half

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Speaker 1: forces um electromagnetism, weak force, strong first gravity, And that's

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Speaker 1: what we've known for a long time, right, I mean

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Speaker 1: at least maybe years is what we have known there

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Speaker 1: to be in nature. Like, that's it. You can't two

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Speaker 1: things can't pull or push on each other any other way.

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Speaker 1: These are the four ways that they can do it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's important to understand that these are descriptive. They're

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Speaker 1: just a description of all the stuff we've seen happen.

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Speaker 1: It's not like they come from some deep principle of

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Speaker 1: nature where we've derived a rule that there have to

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Speaker 1: be four forces or there can't be anymore. You know,

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Speaker 1: you could see tomorrow some new physical effect that can't

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Speaker 1: be explained by anything else, and that might be a

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Speaker 1: discovery of a new force of nature. It's just that

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Speaker 1: so far these forces have been able to describe everything

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Speaker 1: we've seen. But again, there's no theoretical limit. There could

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Speaker 1: be like forces and the other nineties are just super

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Speaker 1: duper duper feeble. We can't even sense them. Oh, I see,

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Speaker 1: up until Saturday, there was no indication in any of

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Speaker 1: the up until you went into that Starbucks to ask

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Speaker 1: people questions. Uh, there's no indication from any experiments that

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Speaker 1: humans have ever done that there was anything else going

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Speaker 1: on in the universe. Basically right like that, we hadn't

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Speaker 1: seen anything. They couldn't be explained by these four fundamental

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Speaker 1: forces precisely. And that's the way we like to do science. Right.

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Speaker 1: You see something new and weird, first thing you do

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Speaker 1: is say, can I explain it with things we know?

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Speaker 1: Because if you can, and that's the most likely explanation,

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Speaker 1: just a comes razor. And then you know, if you can't,

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Speaker 1: then you consider, well, maybe there's something new. I have

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Speaker 1: to add, something new to my theory, a new particle,

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Speaker 1: a new force, and new something to explain this new

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Speaker 1: phenomenon that nothing else I know can't explain. And you

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Speaker 1: guys felt pretty confident that there were only these four,

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Speaker 1: because you mean, you've done so many experiments over the

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Speaker 1: last seventy years, you know, smashing particles over and over

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Speaker 1: and over and over, that it didn't seem maybe likely

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Speaker 1: that there were more forces, right, I would have guessed

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Speaker 1: actually that there were. You know, if I had to guess,

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Speaker 1: gun in my head, are there more forces? I would

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Speaker 1: have guessed yes, And that doesn't happen. Hold hold the

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Speaker 1: gun to your head, Danniel. Somebody in a lab code

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Speaker 1: I'm sure Rappid from in the dramatic movie right now

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Speaker 1: my life, you know where physics, And the reason is

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Speaker 1: that there's a lot going on in the universe that

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Speaker 1: we know that we don't understand. End um. You know,

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Speaker 1: we wrote this book all about all the things we

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Speaker 1: don't know about the universe, and one of them is

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Speaker 1: that there's dark matter out there. And if there's dark matter,

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Speaker 1: that means it's a new particle, and a new particle

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Speaker 1: probably has a new kind of force, because we know

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Speaker 1: that dark matter doesn't interact with normal matter in any

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Speaker 1: way that we're aware of other than gravity. But we

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Speaker 1: think that dark matter probably does interact with normal matter

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Speaker 1: in some way in order to account for how much

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Speaker 1: we see it in the early universe. So I would

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Speaker 1: have guessed that there's a new force out there, like

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Speaker 1: a dark photon particle that mediates some new dark force.

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Speaker 1: But we don't have any actual evidence for it's just

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Speaker 1: a suspicion. Oh, I see all the experiments you've done

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Speaker 1: pointed to these four forces. But there are still things

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Speaker 1: out there in the universe we don't understand. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: as always, there are patterns and the things we do

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Speaker 1: understand that suggests something is missing. To say, you know,

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Speaker 1: This would be a lot simpler if you found this

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Speaker 1: new particle. So you know, until Saturday, we didn't have

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Speaker 1: any evidence for that. All right, let's get into this

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Speaker 1: new discovery and what the news article was all about

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Speaker 1: and whether it did revolutionize our understanding of physics. But first,

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Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Al Right, So what was

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Speaker 1: the actual article about that came out this weekend that

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Speaker 1: said that they found a new force of the universe.

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Speaker 1: What did they actually discover? Yeah, so the article was

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Speaker 1: misleading in several ways. You won't meet surprised to learn, um.

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Speaker 1: And the first thing is that this last weekend wasn't

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Speaker 1: really the most important moment. There's been a series of

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Speaker 1: papers from the same group in Hungary announcing discoveries for

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Speaker 1: the last few years, so they've been teasing this. No,

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Speaker 1: they've been trying to replicate their experiments. So maybe the

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Speaker 1: most important result came out in two thousand and sixteen

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Speaker 1: when they first saw evidence for what might be a

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Speaker 1: new particle, and this paper from recently just sort of

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Speaker 1: confirmed it in a different system. So let's talk about

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Speaker 1: what happened in two thousand sixteen, because I think that's

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Speaker 1: really the most important result. Okay, let's go back in time.

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Speaker 1: So wh then, what was the actual experiment and in

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Speaker 1: who who were these scientists and what did they actually discover. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so it's a group in Hungary and their experiment is

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Speaker 1: called the atom key Experiment a t O m k I.

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Speaker 1: The short version of the story is that they see

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Speaker 1: some things in their detector that they think are consistent

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Speaker 1: with a new particle, meaning something that they had never

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Speaker 1: seen before. Yeah, and something that, as we were talking

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Speaker 1: about before, they cannot explain using the fundamental forces and

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Speaker 1: particles that we know about. So that sounds exciting. It is,

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Speaker 1: And they've been doing it since two thousand sixteen, like

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Speaker 1: they've been talking about this for a while. Yeah, In fact,

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Speaker 1: they've been doing this kind of physics for quite a while,

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Speaker 1: and but this particular experiment is interesting. What they do

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Speaker 1: is they take a proton and they shoot at a

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Speaker 1: lithium nucleus and then it turns into burrillium because that's

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Speaker 1: one more atomic number up. So the nucleus sort of

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Speaker 1: absorbs the proton, but it's not just brilliant, it's like

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Speaker 1: excited burrillium. It's like has extra energy, so it's like

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Speaker 1: wiggling and dancing should we picture a dance that the

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Speaker 1: billium is doing? Which of the Fortnite dances is it doing?

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Speaker 1: You're the cartoon is you're the visual person. So I

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Speaker 1: want to see a doodle of dancing Burrellium. When we're done,

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Speaker 1: it's doing the Charleston. Let's go with that. And just

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Speaker 1: like you know how electrons can get excited up from

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Speaker 1: their ground state and then jump down a state. When

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Speaker 1: you jump down the state, you give off energy. And

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Speaker 1: so what they what we expect to happen is this

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Speaker 1: burrillium jumps down back into the ground state and gives

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Speaker 1: off energy in terms of a photon. Oh I see,

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Speaker 1: So the proton not just transforms it into a new element,

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Speaker 1: It transport forms it and gives it kind of extra

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Speaker 1: surplus energy. Yea. Then it has to get rid of yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the proton that comes in has a bunch of energy.

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Speaker 1: It's not just at rest proton just sort of hanging

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Speaker 1: out comes zooming in with a lot of energy. And

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Speaker 1: then the brillium nucleus which is then formed, has this

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Speaker 1: extra energy. It wants to get rid of it. And

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Speaker 1: so what you expect is for it to shoot off

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Speaker 1: a photon and then that photon would turn into a

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Speaker 1: pair of particles, an electron and a positron, and you

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Speaker 1: can measure the energy of that photon by finding the

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Speaker 1: electron oppositron and sort of adding them back up. Why

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Speaker 1: doesn't the photon just keep going as a photon, as

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Speaker 1: a little bit of light. Why does it have to

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Speaker 1: turn into an electron and a anti electron? Yeah, they can.

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Speaker 1: Photons like this can fly across the universe and just

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Speaker 1: go forever. But these guys have a special trick for

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Speaker 1: measuring it. In the way they measure the energy the

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Speaker 1: photon essentially is to induce it to turning into an

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Speaker 1: electron and an anti electron, so they can it helps

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Speaker 1: them measure the energy. How do you induce a photon

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Speaker 1: to not be a photon? Well, every time a photon

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Speaker 1: goes through matter, it interacts with the all the electromagnetic

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Speaker 1: fields inside that matter, and that tends to make it

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Speaker 1: pair produced. That we call it turning from a photon

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Speaker 1: into a pair of particles. You're gonna like slam it

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Speaker 1: against something, yeah, And the key thing is that when

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Speaker 1: you do that, you measure the energy of it, and

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Speaker 1: you can measure the mass of that particle and photons,

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Speaker 1: of course, don't have any mass. So you expect that

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Speaker 1: you get this electron and this positron. You add them

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Speaker 1: back up to reconstruct what the photon was like, and

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Speaker 1: you calculate what this mass was. You should get zero.

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Speaker 1: But what they see is a bunch of events where

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Speaker 1: it doesn't add up to zero. It adds up to

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Speaker 1: a different number. It adds up to a blob all

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Speaker 1: around the same number, around seventeen mega electron volts. So

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Speaker 1: where did this mass come from? Wit um? So photon

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Speaker 1: doesn't have mass, so you expected to split off into

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Speaker 1: an electron and an anti electron. You're saying that that

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Speaker 1: has to add up to zero. The mass of that

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Speaker 1: pair has to add up to zero. Yeah, But sometimes

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Speaker 1: they see something that they can't explain, which is the

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Speaker 1: mass of that pair adds up to something which is

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Speaker 1: not zero, which means that the particle that carried that

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Speaker 1: energy didn't have zero mass, It had non zero mass.

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Speaker 1: And so essentially what they think they've seen is like

428
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:07,280
Speaker 1: another version of the photon, a different particle that does

429
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:10,200
Speaker 1: have mass. Oh, they think that the photon they're seeing

430
00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:13,159
Speaker 1: is not a photon precisely. They think they call it

431
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:16,400
Speaker 1: the X particle good branding. I was wondering if you'd

432
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:19,880
Speaker 1: like that or not exert for like mysterious. We don't know,

433
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:21,920
Speaker 1: you know, if it actually becomes something real, and I

434
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:23,639
Speaker 1: guess they'll give it a real name. I think that

435
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:28,239
Speaker 1: means that they're doing physics X at the end. So

436
00:23:28,280 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: that's the basic thing is that when they plot this

437
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:33,520
Speaker 1: or the mass of this pair of electron and positrons,

438
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:35,920
Speaker 1: they see a bunch of year zero where you expect

439
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 1: to see photons, but they also see a blob all

440
00:23:38,600 --> 00:23:42,919
Speaker 1: clustered together around seventeen mega electron volts. And that's the

441
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:44,720
Speaker 1: kind of thing you would expect to see if there

442
00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:47,800
Speaker 1: was a new particle. There's something which wasn't a photon,

443
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:51,160
Speaker 1: but brilliant was emitting this X particle when it went

444
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 1: down to its ground state. Oh like sometimes or usually

445
00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 1: gives us a gives off a regular photon, but sometimes

446
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 1: you get a lot measurements of something that doesn't look

447
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: like a photon precisely. And that's exactly the kind of

448
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:07,480
Speaker 1: thing you would expect to see if there really was

449
00:24:07,520 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 1: a new particle there. But it's not like there's something

450
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:13,679
Speaker 1: terribly different going on here. I think maybe That's the

451
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:16,840
Speaker 1: weird part for me is like, like I was following you,

452
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:19,159
Speaker 1: it sounded like things I've heard before, but some of

453
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: that you're telling me that, like on irregular atom decaying,

454
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:27,680
Speaker 1: suddenly there there's this weird new kind of particle coming out. Yeah,

455
00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:30,679
Speaker 1: that's precisely what they're suggesting. And remember that to be

456
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: consistent with everything else we've ever seen, it would have

457
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:35,639
Speaker 1: to be pretty subtle. If this was happening a lot,

458
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 1: or shooting out some really powerful rays, or happening really often,

459
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: then we would have noticed. Are already we studied atomic

460
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:46,399
Speaker 1: nuclei great detail. We have a pretty good understanding of

461
00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:49,200
Speaker 1: how this works. So for this to evade all other

462
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 1: previous experiments, it have to be pretty subtle. Not something

463
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: in particular to the beryllium or the lithium. It's just

464
00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:00,280
Speaker 1: something that nobody had that had flown under people's it are.

465
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: It's not like these um they were taking like super

466
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:07,640
Speaker 1: exotic matter and doing experiments with experiments with it and

467
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:09,640
Speaker 1: they found something new. It's like they were doing something

468
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 1: pretty what sounds pretty regular run of the mill physics. Yeah,

469
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 1: and what they did last weekend, this new result that

470
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:20,440
Speaker 1: just came out is that they reproduced the same results

471
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 1: using helium. So instead of brillium, they excited helium into

472
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:26,560
Speaker 1: a new state and when they saw a decay, they

473
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:29,120
Speaker 1: found a few of these examples of this X particle

474
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:33,360
Speaker 1: that looked just like in the brillium decays, like helium

475
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 1: and helium balloons have some sort of secret particles in them. Yeah,

476
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 1: but you know, if it's real and it's actually there,

477
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:43,120
Speaker 1: it's just turning into electrons and positrons and you can't

478
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 1: tell the difference. So if this thing is real, and

479
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,120
Speaker 1: then it could be happening around us all the time,

480
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't make much difference to your world. I mean,

481
00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:53,680
Speaker 1: the world with four forces or five forces doesn't look

482
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:55,760
Speaker 1: very different to you. And what did they say in

483
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: the paper? Are they just saying like, hey, we look

484
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:03,679
Speaker 1: better than everybody else and so we found it. Or

485
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 1: are they saying, you know, nobody's looked in this range before,

486
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 1: or are they saying this is an interaction like a

487
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:15,479
Speaker 1: reaction that nobody had studied closely before to see it. Well,

488
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: nobody else has ever seen this before. Only this one

489
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: group from Hungary has seen this before. Now, other people

490
00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 1: have done nuclear physics experiments other people have looked at burrillium,

491
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: other people have looked at helium. Nobody's ever seen this before. Now,

492
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:30,880
Speaker 1: when they put out the paper in two thousand and sixteen,

493
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,160
Speaker 1: nobody really paid attention. They were like, huh, whatever, that's interesting,

494
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: but it's sort of in conflict with other results because

495
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: nobody had ever seen this thing before. But then a

496
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:44,320
Speaker 1: group of theorists here you see Irvine, actually, Jonathan Fang

497
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 1: and Tim Tate, they read this paper and they thought,

498
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:50,359
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Can we find a way to explain this

499
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:54,119
Speaker 1: result in terms of a new particle that also doesn't

500
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: break all the other results that we've seen. Can we

501
00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: find a reason why all those other experiments wouldn't have

502
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 1: seen this particle yet they looked at it. And Jonathan's

503
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: a friend of ours, right we you're a friend of Jonathan,

504
00:27:04,840 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: and I've met Jonathan and he's been in our videos

505
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 1: that we've made for YouTube before, which is why I

506
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: was like, I saw the article and then I saw

507
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:14,480
Speaker 1: his name. I was like, what, I know this guy

508
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:16,639
Speaker 1: because it was his paper that got this group a

509
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: lot of attention. They published their paper and nobody really

510
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: paid attention. But then Jonathan showed that their result could

511
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: be consistent with a new particle and also be consistent

512
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:27,959
Speaker 1: with all the other experiments. Essentially, Jonathan found a way

513
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 1: to explain away all the other results because all the

514
00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:34,200
Speaker 1: other experiments have slightly different configurations or use a different

515
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: energy range or a different kind of particle a different

516
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 1: kind of detector. So Jonathan found a theory that explained

517
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 1: this new result and also was consistent with everything we've

518
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: seen before, and that is what made it exciting. I

519
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:47,919
Speaker 1: feel like that's really gutsy, you know, like if you

520
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:52,199
Speaker 1: read a paper with a crazy idea that probably clearly

521
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 1: sounds like they just made a mistake to be like Nope,

522
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna double down and

523
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: find a theory that might explain weird circumstance. Yeah. I

524
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 1: think it actually sort of went the opposite direction. They

525
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: were like, well, here's a crazy result. It's ruled out

526
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 1: by all these other experiments, right, let's do the calculation,

527
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 1: let's estimate, let's see if these other experiments actually are

528
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: in conflict with this one, or if we can find

529
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 1: a way to wiggle this one out. I think it

530
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 1: started as an exercise and then they realized ham there

531
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:22,199
Speaker 1: really is an opening there. There's a way that you

532
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 1: can explain this new result that doesn't conflict with the

533
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: other ones. And that's when they got excited. Do you

534
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: mean it was kind of like Jonathan was sitting on

535
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 1: a Sunday and he's like, I could do the cross

536
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 1: word puzzle today, or I could just you know, pass

537
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: some time working out some equations for this experiment. Um.

538
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it was an exercise at

539
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: the time. He was working with his post doc Flip Tonedo,

540
00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:45,680
Speaker 1: who's also a friend of ours on the podcast and

541
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 1: is now a professor e C Riverside, and they were

542
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 1: just sort of working through this as an exercise and

543
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: then discovered, hey, maybe this overlooked piece of evidence from

544
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,880
Speaker 1: Hungary is actually evidence for a new force of nature.

545
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: That was an exciting moment for them. Interesting. If he

546
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: hadn't done that, then people might have just ignored this experiment. Yeah, yeah,

547
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 1: I think so. I think it was the attention of

548
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: this frankly world class group of theorists and this reasonable

549
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 1: argument for how it might be a big discovery that

550
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:17,040
Speaker 1: pointed the world's scientific attention to this group and Hungary.

551
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'll have to ask Jonathan over a

552
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 1: beer or something, how he got in, how he found

553
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:26,120
Speaker 1: this article and what made him get interested in it.

554
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's talking about the result itself and whether

555
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: it's significant and whether it is actually a new force

556
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: of nature. But first let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel,

557
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: So have they found a new fifth force or I

558
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: guess four and a half fource of the universe. I

559
00:29:57,040 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 1: would say it's way too early to tell. I mean,

560
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't think we can even really

561
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,280
Speaker 1: conclusively say that they have seen a new particle. And

562
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: then there's the follow up question of if it is

563
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 1: a new particle, is it a new force? Also, so

564
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 1: you you have doubts about or you want to see

565
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: more evidence about whether or not even found anything. And

566
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 1: then there's actual deeper questions about whether it actually means

567
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: there's a new force. That's right, this result only comes

568
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: from one team, this team in Hungary. And before you

569
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 1: really believe that a particle exists, do you want to

570
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: see it replicated by an independent team? You want to

571
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:32,720
Speaker 1: see another group that has a different setup and maybe

572
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 1: different potential biases, make the same measurements and see the

573
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 1: same thing. I mean, if it's a real thing in nature,

574
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: you should be able to see it in more than

575
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:43,720
Speaker 1: one place. It's like when we discovered cold fusion, that

576
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: group in Utah. Other groups immediately went out to see

577
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 1: if they could reproduce it, and nobody could, which is

578
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 1: how we knew that it was bogus. And that doesn't

579
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 1: mean necessarily malfeasance, you know, it doesn't mean that they're

580
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 1: lying to us, But it's a There's a lot of

581
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 1: ways to accidentally bias your result or introduce a mistake,

582
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 1: and that's why we cross check things to science. So

583
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 1: where are we at now? Have people tried to replicate

584
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: it or has just nobody tried And so that's why

585
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 1: it's an open question. Like it doesn't sound like a

586
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 1: super difficult experiment, isn't like you don't need billions of

587
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:19,239
Speaker 1: dollars for it. You don't need billions of dollars. You

588
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 1: need some sort of particle accelerator so you can get

589
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: these protons up to the right energy, and then you

590
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 1: need a detector that can transform this particle into your

591
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 1: positiron electron pair and measure it precisely. And you also

592
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: just need time and interest. And so there are a

593
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 1: few groups out there that are interested in potentially reproducing

594
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 1: this measurement using slightly different equipment, but nobody has done

595
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: it yet, and until that happens, I don't think anybody

596
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: in science is really going to take this result seriously. Well,

597
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: it's kind of a weird incentive, right, because like, if

598
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: I'm a physicist, what's my incentive to being the second

599
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: guy who confirms the first guys or first girls or

600
00:31:56,800 --> 00:31:59,239
Speaker 1: gals experiment? You know what I mean? Like, it's like

601
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 1: it's a weird thing to jump into, you know, because

602
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: you want to get all the glory, and if you

603
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: disprove it, then you know, you would you probably wouldn't

604
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: get munch of glory either. That's an interesting question, and

605
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 1: I think that goes to like who would get the

606
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:15,000
Speaker 1: credit for this kind of discovery, you know? And should

607
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: it go to the Hungarian folks? Should it go to

608
00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 1: Jonathan and those folks for recognizing the importance of this,

609
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 1: should it go do a new team that verifies it?

610
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: Should you split it three ways? I'm not sure. To

611
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: me for having a podcast about it, I'm not sure.

612
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: And you know, there's also a question of sort of

613
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: priorities and credibility you know, everybody out there's a lot

614
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: to do in science and a long list of experiments

615
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 1: they'd love to get done, and given infinite funding, sure,

616
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: I'd like to see this thing happen, But you know,

617
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 1: is it the most important thing that these other groups

618
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: can be doing with their time? And also, does anybody

619
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 1: really believe this result? This Hungarian group has sort of

620
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 1: a I mean there are whispers and hallways and physics

621
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: departments about a checkered past from this group, claiming discoveries

622
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 1: which didn't pan out. Oh man, gossip gossip. There is

623
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 1: physics gossip. And you know there's people who have now

624
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: retired and I think passed away who used the same

625
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 1: facilities and made a lot of claims about new particles

626
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,760
Speaker 1: they thought they discovered, which then sort of went away

627
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: and no longer part of this team, of course because

628
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 1: they've passed on. But it sort of lingers. The questions

629
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 1: linger about whether results from this facility can really be trusted.

630
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:28,600
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that TV show Gossip Girl for

631
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:31,280
Speaker 1: for physics. And you know, in the end, the results

632
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: speak for themselves, either you believe them or you don't.

633
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:36,440
Speaker 1: And and importantly, nobody has found a flaw in their work.

634
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,040
Speaker 1: People have combed through the details and nobody has found

635
00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: a mistake. And also people have worked really hard to

636
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: try to explain the results using just standard physics, using

637
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: the four forces we know, and nobody has been able to.

638
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 1: So it's either a very subtle mistake or it's real.

639
00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: You're kind of saying that it's suspect. But if it's

640
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 1: a hoax, it's a really good hoax. I'm not saying

641
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:01,520
Speaker 1: it's a hoax, right. Hoax implies that these folks are

642
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 1: tricking us. I think they're doing honest work. Oh, I

643
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 1: see right. But if it's a mistake, it's a really

644
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:09,840
Speaker 1: well hidden mistake. If it is a mistake or not, no,

645
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: And it's really easy to make subtle mistakes. You know,

646
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:15,239
Speaker 1: these detectors only see a fraction of the events, and

647
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 1: so you have to make some assumptions about the ones

648
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: you missed, and it's very easy to introduce biases. We

649
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 1: have lots of examples in particle colliders, for example, where

650
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:23,799
Speaker 1: we see bumps in our data and we think, oh

651
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:25,919
Speaker 1: my gosh, maybe that's a new particle, and it turns

652
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: out it came from a complicated series of of influences

653
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 1: from this and that me other which produce a bump

654
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 1: in your data. So it's easy to produce false bumps.

655
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: And so what you really just need is a totally

656
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 1: independent cross check. And you would need that for any group, right,

657
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 1: even if this was a very well respected group from Harvard,

658
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: you would definitely need independent confirmation before you believed it.

659
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into the details a little bit.

660
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: I think we have time and talk about to the

661
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 1: idea that Jonathan proposed, or that this group proposed at

662
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:58,040
Speaker 1: the same time, was that like, maybe this is a

663
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:01,480
Speaker 1: new particle that we're seeing. Maybe this particle has a

664
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,800
Speaker 1: new force of nature attached to it. Yeah, and that's

665
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: really sort of just interpretation. All we know is if

666
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 1: this particle is real, it decays into an electron and

667
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 1: positron pair, and that means that it has to have

668
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:18,439
Speaker 1: into your spin because the electrons and positrons are spin

669
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:20,439
Speaker 1: half and so they have to add up to either

670
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: spin zero or spin one or whatever, but into your spin.

671
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of particle we call a boson.

672
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 1: Bosons have intoed your spin. And so this looks like

673
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: it's a boson, that's right. And so the most conservative

674
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: thing you could say, is if this is real, it's

675
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: a new boson. Is a photon a boson. A photon

676
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,879
Speaker 1: is a boson, the W, the z, bluon, all these

677
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:43,919
Speaker 1: particles are boson's. Every boson we know of is associated

678
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:47,840
Speaker 1: with the force. Photon carries electromagnetism, that W and Z

679
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:51,359
Speaker 1: carry the weak force, gluons carry the strong force. If

680
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: gravity is a quantum force, it would have a graviton,

681
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: which is a boson. So this is there's this association

682
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: between bosons and forces. Okay, and you think so you

683
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: you sort of know it's a boson because of the spin,

684
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: but do you think it might be a new boson

685
00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 1: because it weighs differently than all the other bosons you

686
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 1: know about? Precisely? But I think there's some disagreement in

687
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 1: the physics community about whether every new boson has to

688
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: be a force. For example, we discovered a new boson

689
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 1: a few years ago, the Higgs boson. Is the Higgs

690
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: boson represent a new fundamental force of nature. Some theorists

691
00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: say yes, Some theorists say no, because the Higgs boson

692
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 1: also doesn't just fall out of requiring what we call

693
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 1: a local gauge symmetry, which is a fancy jargon for

694
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: having a certain kind of math. But how do you

695
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 1: know it's not just a like a W boson that

696
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 1: weighs differently, or like a boson W boson that eight

697
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: too much for lunch. This is much much lighter, right.

698
00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:50,879
Speaker 1: The W boson is about, let me do some math

699
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:55,760
Speaker 1: um four thousand times heavier than this new X particle.

700
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 1: So it has to be a W boson on a

701
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:02,280
Speaker 1: strict diet. It's like intermittent fast W boson. It's a

702
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:05,840
Speaker 1: W boson that's skip lunch. Well, that's a good question.

703
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 1: So you also call that in a different like like

704
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 1: a W boson that ways less would still be a

705
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 1: new boson. W boson that wass less would still be

706
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: a new boson. Like we are looking right now for

707
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: new versions of the W that have different masses. That

708
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:21,800
Speaker 1: would be a different particle, because the mass of the

709
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:24,759
Speaker 1: particle really shapes its identity. It's part of what we

710
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 1: call a particle. And you know, like finding a heavier

711
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: version of the electron, that would be a new particle.

712
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: It's who they are, it's who they are um. And

713
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:35,760
Speaker 1: so there's not an agreement about whether every boson really

714
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 1: represents a new force or not. Even if you find

715
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,320
Speaker 1: a heavier W Boson, that doesn't mean there's a new force.

716
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: It just means you found a heavier W Boson. That's right.

717
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:46,600
Speaker 1: But of course it sounds cooler to discover a new

718
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:48,919
Speaker 1: force than a new particle, and so I think that's

719
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:51,840
Speaker 1: why some people described in the media is like, discovery

720
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: of a new force of nature sounds sexier. It it

721
00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: focus grouped better than discovery of a new particle of nature.

722
00:37:57,920 --> 00:37:59,760
Speaker 1: You would get more clicks if you say we found

723
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 1: any force then you say and then if you say

724
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,879
Speaker 1: we find a new Boson, that get lunch. That's right,

725
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: But it could be It could be that there is

726
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: a new fundamental force out there and this boson carries

727
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:12,560
Speaker 1: that force, and that this is the first piece of

728
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:15,279
Speaker 1: evidence for the discovery of this new particle, which is

729
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 1: the clue to the new force, which tells us something about,

730
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: you know, the way the universe works. Although I think

731
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 1: you would get a lot of clicks if you wrote

732
00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 1: the headline as you won't believe what this boson life

733
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 1: now with its new diet. That's right, But you know

734
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: there's also competing forces here because physicists are trying to

735
00:38:32,719 --> 00:38:35,560
Speaker 1: discover new forces, we're also trying to get rid of forces.

736
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,319
Speaker 1: You know. One of our goals is to describe all

737
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 1: the forces in terms of one mathematical structure, Like we

738
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:45,719
Speaker 1: combined electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism, and then with the

739
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:48,239
Speaker 1: weak force into the electro week. We'd love to find

740
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:52,319
Speaker 1: the grand unified force that encapsulates everything. So on one hand,

741
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 1: we want to find more forces, and then on the

742
00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: other hand, we want to sort of shoehorn them together

743
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:58,839
Speaker 1: into one framework. It's like when you're trying to clean

744
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:01,799
Speaker 1: up your kid's room and you got everything sort in

745
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: the closet, and then the kid comes up and says, look,

746
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:09,719
Speaker 1: I found this toy, and you're like, great, well. It's

747
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:11,720
Speaker 1: sort of like when you're trying to solve the jigsaw puzzle.

748
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:14,439
Speaker 1: First you want to get all the pieces and categorize them,

749
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 1: and then you want to see if they fit together

750
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: into one nice picture. But you can't do that if

751
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:20,720
Speaker 1: you don't have all the pieces. And so we desperately

752
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: want to figure out are there other pieces out there

753
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:24,839
Speaker 1: that we're missing? Because we know this a lot about

754
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 1: the universe. We haven't understood. When you get a headline

755
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 1: like this, you're both kind of excited but also like

756
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:34,040
Speaker 1: you've grown a little bit, like, oh, that means that

757
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 1: means we're behind. But hey, isn't it exciting that we're behind.

758
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,759
Speaker 1: We're always behind. It's not like this a schedule for

759
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: discoveries of the universe. We're never gonna understand everything behind

760
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:49,759
Speaker 1: one of my jet packs yesterday, yesterday. You know, we

761
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:52,240
Speaker 1: are always going to be behind. So it's always exciting

762
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 1: to hear about more physics to understand. All right, Well,

763
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: it sounds like the answer here is stay tuned. Sounds like, um,

764
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: they found something amazing, or maybe they found something but

765
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:07,799
Speaker 1: it's it's not that revolutionary, or maybe they maybe they

766
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 1: didn't find anything. Maybe it's just something that there that

767
00:40:11,239 --> 00:40:15,319
Speaker 1: people are overlooking. Yeah, stay tuned for independent confirmation. Until

768
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 1: we get that, you really should just put a pin

769
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 1: in it and think about it as a cool result

770
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 1: that maybe we'll understand one day. Right, until then, we

771
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:25,880
Speaker 1: still only have three and a half fundamental forces three.

772
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:30,800
Speaker 1: That's my final offer. Let's get three point six and

773
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 1: then weekend end this podcast Daniel done, especially after we

774
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: account for Lawyer's fees on the forces. All right, Well,

775
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:41,160
Speaker 1: hopefully that answered people's curiosity and questions about this headline

776
00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 1: that came over the weekend. Yeah, so thanks for sending

777
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 1: in your questions. If you see something in the Science

778
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: News that you don't understand, please send it to us

779
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,800
Speaker 1: at Questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. We'll break

780
00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 1: it down for you. And remember Daniel answers Twitter and email,

781
00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: but he doesn't answer Instagram, Instill what instead? You know

782
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 1: what the kids are using? But I think you do

783
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: answer TikTok? Do you do TikTok? I don't know what

784
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:12,879
Speaker 1: that is, but I definitely do it. Loll the kids

785
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 1: are doing it. I mean I'll put a lab coat

786
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 1: on and make one of those ticker talkers. There you go.

787
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 1: Well all right, well, we hope you enjoyed that and

788
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:26,759
Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for tuning in, and thanks

789
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 1: for lending us your brain for fifty minutes. Before you

790
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,

791
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.

792
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:46,359
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at

793
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:49,879
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at

794
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening

795
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:56,520
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is

796
00:41:56,600 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from

797
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:03,879
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio a Apple Podcasts,

798
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H