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Speaker 1: What is everything made out of? That seems like a

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Speaker 1: simple question, and it also seems like a reasonable question.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to know what I'm made out of, what

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Speaker 1: my food is made out of, what kittens are made

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Speaker 1: out of, what lava is made out of. It's also

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Speaker 1: an ancient question, I think, one that people have been

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Speaker 1: asking since people have been asking any questions. The Greeks,

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Speaker 1: famous for asking questions in their sexy robes, thought that

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Speaker 1: everything was made of earth, air, water, and fire. And

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Speaker 1: modern science, of course, has made a lot of progress

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Speaker 1: here and uncovered some pretty weird and kind of shocking

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Speaker 1: news about what everything is made out of. What seems

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Speaker 1: like smooth and continuous matter is actually made up of

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Speaker 1: tiny little bits that are woven together into some extremely

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Speaker 1: fine mesh. And we are all made of the same

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Speaker 1: basic bits, some together to make me or you, or

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Speaker 1: kittens or lava. The world is of particles. But our

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Speaker 1: curiosity doesn't just end because we have that answer. We

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Speaker 1: want to know what are these basic bits? How do

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Speaker 1: we think about them? What mental pictures should we have

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Speaker 1: in our mind? Are they tiny dots of stuff or

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Speaker 1: rippling waves or some other concept that's too alien to

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Speaker 1: even imagine. And what does it tell us about the

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Speaker 1: universe that these are its basic building blocks?

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Speaker 2: Or are they? So?

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Speaker 1: Today, on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, we'll be tackling

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Speaker 1: the basic yet confusing, the simple yet deep, the important

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Speaker 1: but impossible question what is a particle?

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. I'm Kelly Wiener Smith.

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Speaker 3: I'm a parasitologist and I'm particularly excited to be here today.

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Speaker 3: But it might have been really cute if I had

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Speaker 3: been able to pull it off, but I didn't.

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Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel.

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Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, which means I probably should know

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Speaker 1: what a particle is.

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Speaker 3: Well, we've got the right expert on the show today.

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Speaker 3: So Daniel, here's what I'm wondering. So you've told me

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Speaker 3: that you go to CERN in Switzerland to do your research.

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Speaker 3: Why doesn't the United States have the biggest particle collider?

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Why you are putting your foot in

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Speaker 1: a sensitive spot right there. You know, for many years

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Speaker 1: it was a race between the Europeans and the Americans.

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Speaker 1: So before CERN had the most powerful collider.

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Speaker 2: We had one.

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Speaker 1: It was outside of Chicago at Fermi Lab. It's called

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Speaker 1: the Tevatron. I did my PhD there. I had one

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Speaker 1: child born near that collider, and then my next child

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Speaker 1: born near Cerns. You know, not a kid at each collider.

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Speaker 3: Basically, wait, one of your kids was born abroad?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, my daughter Hazel was born in Switzerland, very close

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Speaker 1: to cern That's cool.

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Speaker 3: Did you have to not pay because you were in

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Speaker 3: Europe and they just do healthcare there or what was

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Speaker 3: that like?

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Speaker 2: No?

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Speaker 1: Actually they told us that when we showed up for

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Speaker 1: the delivery, we had to bring fifty thousand Swiss fronc

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Speaker 1: in cash if we didn't have local insurance.

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Speaker 3: WHOA.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, that was going to be an issue.

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Speaker 1: But then we discovered this a law in Switzerland that

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Speaker 1: if you're working there, which my wife was, they have

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Speaker 1: to insure you. So even though she had all sorts

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Speaker 1: of crazy pre existing conditions, we could buy insurance for

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Speaker 1: like one hundred franc and then we didn't have to

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Speaker 1: pay for anything. So it was amazing.

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Speaker 3: Actually nice, Okay, that's good.

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Speaker 1: And the insurance company even offered to retroactively cover a

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Speaker 1: bunch of appointments to where we hadn't yet had insurance.

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Speaker 1: It was very different experience than American insurance.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's incredible. I'm going to get depressed if we

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Speaker 3: stay on this topic too long. Let's go back to

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Speaker 3: particle colliders. Okay, so you have had each of your

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Speaker 3: children near very large particle colliders. Why isn't the biggest

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Speaker 3: one in the US.

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Speaker 1: Well, they planned to build the biggest one in the US,

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Speaker 1: the Superconducting super Collider in Waxahachie, Texas, and they started

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Speaker 1: building it, and they spend billions of dollars digging a hole.

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Speaker 2: But then the director of CERN.

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Speaker 1: At the time came and testified before Congress saying it

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Speaker 1: was a big waste of money because CERN was building

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Speaker 1: one that was going to be bigger and better and

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Speaker 1: they should just cancel it. And Congress, for all sorts

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Speaker 1: of complicated political reasons, listen to him and canceled the

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Speaker 1: American Superconnecting super Collider. And since then the lead has

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Speaker 1: been in Europe and probably will for a while. And

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Speaker 1: the US particle physics communities mostly focused on things like

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Speaker 1: neutrinos and stuff like that. So these days, if you

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Speaker 1: want to do cutting edge, high energy particle physics at colliders,

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Speaker 1: you got to go to Switzerland, which, hey, it's not

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Speaker 1: too bad.

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Speaker 2: The chocolate's amazing, no doubt.

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Speaker 3: You know what. Actually, I'm gonna go out on a

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Speaker 3: limb here and say I'm not a huge fantas with chocolate.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know you prefer Belgian I do.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there I said it. So every once in a

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Speaker 3: while I'll hear about like astronomy students who want to

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Speaker 3: get time on a telescope, but the telescope's all booked

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Speaker 3: up and it takes forever. Does cern have enough time

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Speaker 3: for everyone? So like, when that guy came to the

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Speaker 3: US and tanked our program, did he know he was

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Speaker 3: going to have enough time time for all of our

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Speaker 3: scientists to come over and do their work.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question, And people often ask me

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Speaker 1: about that, like what's it like to set up your

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Speaker 1: experiment at the collider? But the reality is very different.

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Speaker 1: Telescopes and colliders don't work the same way. A telescope

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Speaker 1: you have to point at the thing you want to

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Speaker 1: look at. So you write a proposal to say, let's

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Speaker 1: point our amazing telescope at this one star I want

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Speaker 1: to study, and then it's not pointing at any other stars.

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Speaker 2: But a particle collider is very general.

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Speaker 1: It always just does the same thing smashes the particles

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Speaker 1: together and you take pictures of it, and then afterwards

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Speaker 1: you analyze it. So everybody who uses the collider uses

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Speaker 1: the same data. They're just looking for different kinds of particles.

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Speaker 1: We don't have to point the collider at certain things.

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Speaker 1: We don't swap out what we're using to take pictures.

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Speaker 1: Every few years we turn the thing off, revamp it,

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Speaker 1: build a new detector that's better, faster, higher resolution or whatever,

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Speaker 1: and then we make it as general as possible so

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Speaker 1: everybody can use it so you don't have to swap

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Speaker 1: it out every day or every experiment. Everybody uses the

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Speaker 1: same data set, which makes it kind of crazy because

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Speaker 1: everybody's looking for discoveries in the set SA data set

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Speaker 1: at the same time, So you could get scooped by

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Speaker 1: any of your thousands of colleagues Yanks.

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Speaker 3: So do you actually need to be there in person

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Speaker 3: or if it's just data, they can make that available

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Speaker 3: anywhere right.

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Speaker 1: CERN has long been at the forefront of the Internet.

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Speaker 1: We invented the web at CERN, for example, and we

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Speaker 1: have excellent cloud computing and so we transfer that data

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Speaker 1: all around the world. We've collaborated from Japan to Singapore

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Speaker 1: to South Africa, to the northern tip of Canada, all

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Speaker 1: over the world. People analyze this data. Absolutely, you don't

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Speaker 1: have to go. I go frequently because I have students

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Speaker 1: there and postdocs are like on site building stuff and

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Speaker 1: helping keep it run. But technically you don't have to

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Speaker 1: to look at the data.

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Speaker 3: Cool. I mean, that's good and bad. I feel like

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Speaker 3: ecologists like we want to study exotic animals, but partly

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Speaker 3: because we want to go there, And I imagine it's

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Speaker 3: sort of the same with cern, like it'd be nice

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Speaker 3: to go to Switzerland. But I guess the more important

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Speaker 3: thing is answering the question.

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Speaker 1: It is nice to go to Switzerland, but then again,

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Speaker 1: it's also nice to be able to do science without

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Speaker 1: having thousands of dollars to go to Switzerland, which means

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Speaker 1: smaller groups and not such institutions, for example, could also participate.

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Speaker 1: So it makes it a little bit more democratic, you know.

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Speaker 3: Nice. That's awesome. Okay, So the whole point of having

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Speaker 3: a large particle collider is so that you can figure

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Speaker 3: out what those particles are made of, Is that right?

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Speaker 1: The whole point of having a particle collider is that

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Speaker 1: you can say you're smashing particles together and nearly the

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Speaker 1: speed of light, which sounds pretty awesome at parties.

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Speaker 3: It does, yeah, kind of like jousting for particles.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Well, particle colliders, I think, sort of have two different purposes.

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Speaker 1: One is like, hey, let's take stuff and see what's

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Speaker 1: inside it. Let's start with something familiar, you know, like

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Speaker 1: the proton, and smash it open and see what it's

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Speaker 1: made out of. And that's a continuation of like a

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Speaker 1: long glorious tradition of taking the stuff around us a

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Speaker 1: part to understand what it's made out of. You know,

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Speaker 1: I'm made of molecules, which are made of atoms which

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Speaker 1: have a nucleus and electron, and the nucleus is made

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Speaker 1: of protons. Let's go inside the proton. So that's definitely worthwhile.

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Speaker 2: And we do that.

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Speaker 1: But colliders can actually do something else, even more powerful,

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Speaker 1: which kind of sounds like magic, which is that they

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Speaker 1: can convert the mass of those protons into energy and

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Speaker 1: then back into mass, and so what can come out

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Speaker 1: of the collision is not just a rearrangement of what

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Speaker 1: went in. It's not like chemistry where you're like this

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Speaker 1: hydrogen moved from this atom to over there, and now

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Speaker 1: you have a different kind of compound. You can annihilate

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Speaker 1: these things, and then you basically have like a budget

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Speaker 1: to make anything. And the stuff that comes out of

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Speaker 1: the collision doesn't just have to be like a refashioned,

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Speaker 1: rearranged version of what went in. You can have entirely

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Speaker 1: new matter. It really is alchemy. So like protons go in,

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Speaker 1: you have this intermediate state of frothing energy, and then

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Speaker 1: you can make whatever the universe can make, dark matter, muons,

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Speaker 1: all sorts of other stuff. You're not just rearranging the protons.

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Speaker 3: There's got to be some rules right for what you

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Speaker 3: can make.

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Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, that's the whole premise of particle physics. There

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Speaker 1: are rules, there are patterns. Quantum mechanics tells us what's

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Speaker 1: likely to happen in certain collisions. We look at those patterns,

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Speaker 1: we notice, oh, this typically happens, typically shoots out at

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Speaker 1: those angles.

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Speaker 2: What are the rules that control this?

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Speaker 1: Absolutely there are rules, but fundamentally it's random. Right, Like

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Speaker 1: you do the same collision twice, you get two different answers.

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Speaker 1: Because it's quantum mechanical, it's not determined by the initial conditions.

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Speaker 1: So it's really a very powerful way to explore the

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Speaker 1: universe because you don't have to know what's out there

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Speaker 1: in order to discover it. You smash protons together often enough,

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Speaker 1: eventually everything the universe can do, it will do, and

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Speaker 1: you get to take pictures of it.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 1: It's like, imagine if you could build a box and

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Speaker 1: every kind of creature that could exist on Earth would

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Speaker 1: randomly cycle through that box. You could just sit there

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Speaker 1: and watch and be like, oh, wow, I didn't know

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Speaker 1: that existed. Oh look at those things.

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Speaker 2: What are those? You know?

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Speaker 1: That would be pretty powerful. That's basically what we can

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Speaker 1: do with particle physics.

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Speaker 3: Now you have my attention. Although that box, I guess,

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Speaker 3: could mostly be showing me like different species of bacteria,

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Speaker 3: which would be a bomber. You could show me different

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Speaker 3: speceis of bugs, that would be great.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be mostly beetles. You're like, wow, it's basically

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Speaker 1: a beetle box.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: So there is that famous saying that like God is

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Speaker 3: inordinately fond of beetles, because there's this thought that beetles

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Speaker 3: are the most common species group on the planet, but

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Speaker 3: actually quite often those beetles are infected by more than

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Speaker 3: one species of hymenopter and wasp, and so we think

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Speaker 3: there might actually be more wasp species on the planet

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Speaker 3: than there are beetles based on that observation.

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Speaker 1: And probably those wasps are infected by viruses, so they're

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Speaker 1: more viruses than wasps. Yes, and those viruses are made

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Speaker 1: of particles, and boom a boom, we're back to the

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Speaker 1: topic of the episode.

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Speaker 3: Well, what makes up a particle, Daniel exactly?

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Speaker 1: So we smash particles together, we look at what's inside them,

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Speaker 1: we annihilate them to make new kinds of particles. We

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Speaker 1: have this idea that particles are what everything is made

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Speaker 1: out of. But I struggle, still after decades in this field,

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Speaker 1: to understand this basic question what is a particle?

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Speaker 2: So I really want to explain to.

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Speaker 1: People what we do know and what we still don't

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Speaker 1: know about this very basic concept that everybody talks about

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Speaker 1: all the time.

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Speaker 3: Well, first, let's hear what our listeners think. And if

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Speaker 3: you would like to be a listener who tells us

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Speaker 3: what you think, send us an email at questions at

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Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly dot org and we will get you

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Speaker 3: in the loop and send you a question from time

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Speaker 3: to time and you can send us your answers. So

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Speaker 3: let's see hear how folks answer the question what is

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Speaker 3: a particle?

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Speaker 2: A particle is a thing that interacts with other things.

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Speaker 1: A particle is really just an excitation in a field.

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Speaker 2: A particle is a defined portion of something, something that

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Speaker 2: is infinitesanly small to us.

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Speaker 1: It's the smallest unit of energy or mass.

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Speaker 3: I think that particles are the excitement of different friends,

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Speaker 3: spatial spots, and interaction.

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Speaker 2: A particle could be very small vibrating field. A mass

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Speaker 2: or non mess object.

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Speaker 1: Exists within what we would perceive as matter.

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Speaker 4: A particle is a sub microscopic kernel of energy and

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Speaker 4: or matter. A particle is an excitation of a field.

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Speaker 4: I do know that particles aren't just tiny bits of matter.

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Speaker 4: I've heard that there fields, or strings, or some other

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Speaker 4: impossible to understand little bits of the universe.

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Speaker 2: Particle is a ripple and a quantum field. Particle is

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Speaker 2: the name we give to the smallest discrete, quantum little

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Speaker 2: bits that we know of and haven't been able to

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Speaker 2: break up.

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Speaker 3: Further yet, an expression of a field where the chances

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Speaker 3: of that occurrence happening is the greatest. There. The more

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Speaker 3: think about, the bigger this rabbit warren is going.

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Speaker 1: I think these answers perfectly encapsulate this episode. I mean, really,

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Speaker 1: it's an excellent snapshot because a lot of what people

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Speaker 1: have said in here is correct. But also there's a

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Speaker 1: huge list of conflicting answers, right, you know, is it

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Speaker 1: the smallest bit of stuff? Is it just something in

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Speaker 1: space time? Is it actually an excitation of a field?

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Speaker 1: You know, there's so many conflicting concepts for what a particle.

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Speaker 3: Is, and is this one of those topics where at

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Speaker 3: the end the answer is going to be we really

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Speaker 3: have no idea, could be all of these things? Or

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Speaker 3: is this a topic we're at the end. We're going

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Speaker 3: to have a pretty clear answer.

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Speaker 2: At the end.

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Speaker 1: We're going to have a pretty clear answer, but not

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Speaker 1: at the end of this episode, at the end of

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Speaker 1: this journey, which might be in ten or one hundred

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Speaker 1: years unfortunately. Okay, I mean we're going to get somewhere.

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Speaker 1: Today we have a pretty crisp clear view of what

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Speaker 1: a particle is mathematically, but we also know why that's

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Speaker 1: not really satisfactory, and there's lots of big open questions

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Speaker 1: about what that really means. So it's not like all

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Speaker 1: particle physics is a scam because we don't know what

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Speaker 1: a particle is. We have a working definition, but we

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Speaker 1: also know that it's incomplete, just like most of science.

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Speaker 3: Right, Oh yeah, amen, All right, well, so let's start

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Speaker 3: with the historical perspective. Bring me back to the beginning.

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Speaker 3: When did we start thinking about this question?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's important to trace the origin of

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Speaker 1: this historically because it still shapes how we think about

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Speaker 1: the universe. And you know, whenever you ask a big

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Speaker 1: question about science, you got to think about like what

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Speaker 1: kind of answer you're looking for.

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Speaker 2: And in science, even though.

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Speaker 1: We try to be like mathematical and open minded and

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Speaker 1: let the data tell us what the universe is saying,

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Speaker 1: we still need to understand that data. We still need

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Speaker 1: to interpret it. We still need to cogitate on it

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Speaker 1: in a way that makes sense to us. And we're

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Speaker 1: sort of limited in our mental intuitive language. We can't

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Speaker 1: really grapple with things that we've never experienced, that are

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Speaker 1: completely alien to us. We tend to translate the unfamiliar

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Speaker 1: into the familiar.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 1: My favorite example of this is like what happens when

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Speaker 1: you drink a wine or you taste a new fruit

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Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, this fruit tastes kind of like

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Speaker 1: a cherry and kind of like an apricot and whatever,

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Speaker 1: and a little bit like a kiwi. You're explaining something

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Speaker 1: new in terms of something you already know, and that

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Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense also what we do in science,

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Speaker 1: and so it's important like dig into like what are

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Speaker 1: the sort of basic mental building blocks we're using to

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Speaker 1: understand this stuff.

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Speaker 3: I think one of my favorite examples of that is

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Speaker 3: the brain being compared to whatever technology is hot and

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Speaker 3: new at the time. You know, like your brain is

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Speaker 3: like a clock, your brain is like a computer. And

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Speaker 3: some of those analogies work in some ways, but you know,

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Speaker 3: having an analogy like that sometimes limits the way you

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Speaker 3: actually attack a problem.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but it also is what allows you to understand it, right,

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Speaker 1: So in the end, it's sort of how we understand everything. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that's why it's useful to go back to like

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Speaker 1: fifth century BC and talk about Democratus and his buddy Lucepis,

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Speaker 1: because these folks were thinking about, hey, what is the

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Speaker 1: universe made out of? And they came up with this concept,

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Speaker 1: or they're credited with this concept of what seems like

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Speaker 1: smooth and continuous matter, you know, water, seems smooth and continuous.

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Speaker 1: Air seems smooth is actually made of tiny little bits

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Speaker 1: of stuff. This is a big idea, right, This is

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Speaker 1: a huge concept. It is like pulling back the veil

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Speaker 1: on the world and saying the world isn't the way

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Speaker 1: that it seems. It's actually quite different. You know, it

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Speaker 1: has like a resolution. These days, we're kind of familiar

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Speaker 1: with this because you're used to things like, Hey, I

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Speaker 1: look at my TV screen. It looks like I'm just

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Speaker 1: looking at a picture, but I know that if I

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Speaker 1: put my eyeball closed to the screen, I'll see pixels.

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Speaker 1: This is basically saying the whole world, all matter is

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Speaker 1: actually pixelated. It's built out of little bits instead of

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Speaker 1: smooth and continuous.

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Speaker 3: Did they have any thoughts about what the little bits

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Speaker 3: were like, like do you get different bits in the

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Speaker 3: sand and different bits in your skin? Or how fine

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Speaker 3: grained was this idea?

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Speaker 2: Oh my god?

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Speaker 1: They had hilarious ideas about what the little bits were.

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Speaker 1: They thought that everything was made up a little bit

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Speaker 1: of stuff, but that stuff had different shapes, and you know,

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Speaker 1: they were right on the spirit of it that they thought,

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Speaker 1: like the properties of the shape determined how we experienced

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Speaker 1: it and its property. But for example, they thought that

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Speaker 1: something's tasted sour because it was made of little sharp

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Speaker 1: needle shaped atoms that like stabbed your tongue when you

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Speaker 1: ate it.

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Speaker 3: This is going to be so condescending, but that's such

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Speaker 3: a cute idea.

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Speaker 2: It is so cute, I know.

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Speaker 1: And they thought that things that were white were white

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Speaker 1: because they were made of very smooth atoms. And they

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Speaker 1: thought that your soul was made of atoms, and that

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Speaker 1: those atoms were particularly fine grained. They were right in

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Speaker 1: the spirit in that the behavior and the structure of

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Speaker 1: the atom really does determine, like hey, what is shiny

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Speaker 1: and what conducts electricity and what's liquid at room temperature.

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Speaker 1: That's all true. They were just wrong on the details.

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Speaker 1: But you know, they couldn't see atoms. They were just imagining.

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Speaker 1: And I'm really impressed by this. I'm impressed by the

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Speaker 1: courage to imagine that the universe is so fundamentally different

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Speaker 1: from the way it seems, because that's really the scientific spirit, right, Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So we've got Democritus and his buddy what was

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Speaker 3: the buddy's.

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Speaker 1: Name mispronounced as Lacoupiskopis, But I don't know the correct pronunciation.

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Speaker 3: I hadn't heard of that person before. So you got

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Speaker 3: the two of them, and they're proposing that everything is

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Speaker 3: made of small bits of stuff. How long before we

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Speaker 3: get some clarity on the fact that sour isn't just

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Speaker 3: sharp little bits of stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're credited with this idea, probably came up

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Speaker 1: earlier because remember, we give people credit because we have

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Speaker 1: a written.

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Speaker 2: Record of it.

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Speaker 1: We have like a tiny fraction of everything the Greeks wrote,

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Speaker 1: though very excitingly, they're now scanning burnt scrolls from an

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Speaker 1: ancient Greek library. We're going to like double the amount

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Speaker 1: of Greek writing.

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Speaker 2: We have very soon.

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Speaker 1: But also, you know, we just don't have writing from

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Speaker 1: other civilizations. What do the Etruscans think ancient Chinese writing? So,

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Speaker 1: you know, people give the Greeks a lot of credit,

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Speaker 1: but we should remember like other people thought about this

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Speaker 1: stuff too.

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Speaker 3: Ain't that always the way?

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Speaker 2: It's always the way, I know.

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Speaker 1: And they use the word adam because atomos in Greek

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Speaker 1: means indivisible, So that's where that comes from. And this

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Speaker 1: is the origin of this idea that you know, smooth

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Speaker 1: stuff is actually made of little bits and that still

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Speaker 1: guides our mental picture. When I think particle, I still

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Speaker 1: think tiny little dot of stuff, like a little spinning

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Speaker 1: ball or a grain of sand.

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Speaker 2: That's what it means to me.

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Speaker 1: Like it's particular, Like if you say something is particulate, right,

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Speaker 1: you mean it's made of these little bits. And so

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Speaker 1: the words are powerful because they guide our mental images.

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Speaker 1: But it wasn't for a couple of thousand years that

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Speaker 1: we had really more information. I mean it was chemists

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Speaker 1: like Dalton who were doing experiments on chemical reactions and discovering,

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Speaker 1: you know, laws of ratios and proportions and the things

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Speaker 1: were divisible by integers. That really give us a clue that, oh,

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Speaker 1: there were like units of stuff going into these equations

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Speaker 1: that you really needed two to one hydrogen to oxygen

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Speaker 1: to make a certain amount of water. It gives you

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Speaker 1: a clue that it really has just clicked together out

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Speaker 1: of these tiny little bits. So that was a really

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Speaker 1: important clue. But it wasn't until the late eighteen hundreds

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Speaker 1: that we really had the discovery of anything that we

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Speaker 1: would today call a particle.

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Speaker 3: And is that because it's so tiny, it probably depends

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Speaker 3: on having the right technology to be able to address

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Speaker 3: that and so did we just have to wait until

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Speaker 3: the late eighteen hundreds because that's when we finally got

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Speaker 3: the technology where we could start making a dent.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: And in the great tradition of particle physics, we didn't

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Speaker 1: invent the technology that we used to make these discoveries.

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Speaker 2: We borrowed it. In this case, we borrowed it from

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Speaker 2: the circus.

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Speaker 3: From the circus, yes, exactly. All Right, we're going to

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Speaker 3: take a break, and when we come back, you're going

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Speaker 3: to tell me about how the circus allowed us to

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Speaker 3: understand the electron. All right, and we're back, and today

442
00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:43,760
Speaker 3: we're talking about the freak show that is particles, and

443
00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:46,399
Speaker 3: Daniel's gonna tell us about how we were able to

444
00:20:46,480 --> 00:20:52,040
Speaker 3: understand the electron from technology developed for the circus mm HM.

445
00:20:52,080 --> 00:20:54,600
Speaker 1: Back in the mid eighteen hundreds, there were circuses, and

446
00:20:54,640 --> 00:20:56,720
Speaker 1: there were these side shows, and you know, you had

447
00:20:57,040 --> 00:20:59,760
Speaker 1: bearded ladies or conjoined twins or whatever freak show you

448
00:20:59,760 --> 00:21:03,480
Speaker 1: wanted to see, but also you had people with weird gizmos,

449
00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:07,160
Speaker 1: and in particular, somebody invented basically the cathode ray tube,

450
00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:09,119
Speaker 1: but a cathoid ratube back then was actually called a

451
00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:11,720
Speaker 1: Crooks tube. And basically you have a glass and you

452
00:21:11,800 --> 00:21:15,280
Speaker 1: put electricity on one side, electricity on the other side,

453
00:21:15,600 --> 00:21:18,639
Speaker 1: and we now know what happens is that electrons boil

454
00:21:18,720 --> 00:21:20,640
Speaker 1: off of one and fly through it.

455
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:21,240
Speaker 2: And hit the other.

456
00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:23,760
Speaker 1: But if you left a little bit of gas in

457
00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:26,159
Speaker 1: that tube, then the electrons would hit that gas and

458
00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:28,879
Speaker 1: gas would glow. People were making these tubes because they

459
00:21:28,960 --> 00:21:31,600
Speaker 1: glowed in this eerie way and that was pretty cool.

460
00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:34,040
Speaker 1: And you know, back in the eighteen hundreds, this was

461
00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:37,520
Speaker 1: a magical thing to see that somebody could build this

462
00:21:37,560 --> 00:21:39,760
Speaker 1: thing and it would glow green, it would glow red

463
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:43,440
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so these Crooks tubes were very popular

464
00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:47,240
Speaker 1: on side shows. And then later scientists were like, what's

465
00:21:47,280 --> 00:21:49,280
Speaker 1: going on here, Let's see if we can understand what's

466
00:21:49,320 --> 00:21:52,359
Speaker 1: going on. And JJ Thompson in the late eighteen hundreds

467
00:21:52,640 --> 00:21:54,400
Speaker 1: used it to discover the electron.

468
00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 3: How do you go from ohnit that tube lights up

469
00:21:57,119 --> 00:21:59,960
Speaker 3: to and that's because of electrons.

470
00:22:00,560 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, So JJ Thompson was trying to understand what is

471
00:22:04,160 --> 00:22:06,800
Speaker 1: lighting up here. And they already called these things cathode

472
00:22:06,880 --> 00:22:10,359
Speaker 1: rays because they could see paths, like definitely, there's a

473
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:12,000
Speaker 1: line of stuff moving through them. And they were like,

474
00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:14,320
Speaker 1: what are these rays? Is it made of something? A

475
00:22:14,359 --> 00:22:16,520
Speaker 1: lot of people tried to understand this and failed, But

476
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,360
Speaker 1: he had like the best vacuum, so the best control

477
00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:22,480
Speaker 1: of this experiment, and he did it the most systematically.

478
00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:24,959
Speaker 1: What he did was he put these tubes under electric

479
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:27,560
Speaker 1: fields and he was like, hmm, can I bend these rays?

480
00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:29,920
Speaker 1: And then he tried with magnetic fields, like, oh, can

481
00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:31,399
Speaker 1: I bend the rays this way and that way? And

482
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,359
Speaker 1: he tried with combinations of them. And so we had

483
00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:38,080
Speaker 1: an understanding of electromagnetism back then. We understood that electric

484
00:22:38,119 --> 00:22:41,000
Speaker 1: fields whole things that have charge, and magnetic fields can

485
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:44,040
Speaker 1: bend them. So from this he determined, oh, these cathode

486
00:22:44,119 --> 00:22:48,040
Speaker 1: rays are little bits of charge. There's charge flowing here

487
00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 1: because I can bend it with fields, and so that

488
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:54,720
Speaker 1: was really fascinating. And then he very carefully bounced the

489
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:56,520
Speaker 1: two fields and he was able to measure the mass

490
00:22:56,600 --> 00:22:59,480
Speaker 1: of the thing, and that right there is the origin

491
00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:02,880
Speaker 1: of this sort of concept of a particle. He was like, oh,

492
00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 1: these rays are made of tiny little bits of stuff

493
00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:08,720
Speaker 1: that have a charge and a mass. And what he's

494
00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:11,320
Speaker 1: doing conceptually there is very important. He's saying there's a

495
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:13,760
Speaker 1: point in space, and I'm going to put two labels

496
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:15,359
Speaker 1: on it. I'm gonna say it has a charge and

497
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:18,159
Speaker 1: has a mass, and those two things cannot be separated.

498
00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:20,000
Speaker 1: He tried to separate the mass and the charge and

499
00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:22,359
Speaker 1: he couldn't. So he's like, now in his mind, he

500
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:24,560
Speaker 1: has these little dots that are moving through space and

501
00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 1: he's putting these mental labels on them. And that's really

502
00:23:27,520 --> 00:23:30,120
Speaker 1: the origin of the modern concept of a particle.

503
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:33,640
Speaker 3: Okay, So I'm imagining being in his lab He's got

504
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,719
Speaker 3: this ray, he's got a magnet on one side, and

505
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:39,800
Speaker 3: he does the magic, and he's got that line. Is

506
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 3: it like a bolt of lightning? Like does it go

507
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:44,280
Speaker 3: from one side to another and you can see all

508
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:45,879
Speaker 3: of it? And if so, how does he make the

509
00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:48,840
Speaker 3: jump from there's a line that lights up and bends

510
00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:51,800
Speaker 3: towards the magnet two, And that line is made up

511
00:23:51,800 --> 00:23:54,879
Speaker 3: of lots of little tiny things that come to be

512
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:56,400
Speaker 3: called electrons, You know what I mean.

513
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:58,719
Speaker 1: Yes, So what you should be imagining is sort of

514
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,160
Speaker 1: like what a fluorescent life. Well it looks like now,

515
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: it's like long and thin and filled with glowing gas, right,

516
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:06,960
Speaker 1: except there were like thinner lines. So these were very

517
00:24:06,960 --> 00:24:10,360
Speaker 1: clearly rays. And you're right that he measured that there's

518
00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 1: sort of a flow of charge. Right, So there was

519
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:14,720
Speaker 1: a screen on one end and you could see these

520
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,640
Speaker 1: glowing dots landing. But he also measured the mass. That's

521
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:20,960
Speaker 1: what told him that this was made of little bits

522
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 1: because he could measure actually their charge to mass ratio.

523
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:26,720
Speaker 1: He couldn't measure the mass itself, but he measured the

524
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:29,120
Speaker 1: charge to mass ratio by seeing how much they were

525
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 1: deflected by the magnetic fields.

526
00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 2: That's the thing that.

527
00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:34,240
Speaker 1: Gave him the clue that it was made of little bits,

528
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:37,639
Speaker 1: not just some continuous stream, because he could identify a

529
00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:40,680
Speaker 1: charge to mass ratio for these bits. And he almost

530
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: sent the world down a crazy path where my job

531
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:46,120
Speaker 1: title would be different because he didn't call this thing

532
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 1: a particle, he didn't call it an electron. He used

533
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: the word corpuscule. He thought that was a really cool

534
00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:58,359
Speaker 1: name for this thing that he help. To me, it

535
00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 1: sounds like especially explosive kind of Yeah.

536
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you were almost a corpuscoologist.

537
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:12,520
Speaker 1: Or a corpuscular physicist. Fortunately, the person who discovers the

538
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:15,600
Speaker 1: thing doesn't always get to name it, and later on

539
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 1: people adopted the name electron suggested by Fitzgerald and Lorentz

540
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: and other folks, and so fortunately the word corpuscular didn't

541
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 1: hang on. But that was really the seminal experiment where

542
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,640
Speaker 1: people discovered, okay, the world has made the little bits,

543
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: and we can put labels on them. And these days

544
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:35,879
Speaker 1: we have so many labels for particles. We put spin

545
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:38,640
Speaker 1: on them, we put charge. Of course, we put other

546
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:42,360
Speaker 1: kinds of charge. Every particle has a charge for electromagnetism,

547
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: as a charge for the weak force, a charge for

548
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:47,359
Speaker 1: the strong force. It has a mass. This is really

549
00:25:47,440 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 1: part of the concept of a particle is a little

550
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:52,640
Speaker 1: dot in space with labels that we put on it.

551
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 3: And it sounds like it gets complicated pretty quick. So

552
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 3: let's back up a little bit. So we've got mass

553
00:25:57,520 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 3: in charge. What is our next historical advancement?

554
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: Well, next came Rutherford because people were wondering, all right,

555
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: so these things exist, these corpus s gules, or these

556
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,719
Speaker 1: electrons as we they to call them. But how do

557
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:13,920
Speaker 1: you use that to make up the world. It's sort

558
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 1: of like the twofold question we were talking about before.

559
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: One thing you can do is try to answer, like,

560
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 1: what is everything around us made out of by taking

561
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 1: it apart. The other is just to ask what can

562
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 1: the universe do? Like, not necessarily, how am I built

563
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:27,679
Speaker 1: out of the universe, but what is the universe capable of?

564
00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: Sort of holistically, And so Thompson discovered, oh, the universe

565
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,880
Speaker 1: can make electrons. People were wondering, Okay, are those electrons part.

566
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 2: Of who we are?

567
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:39,679
Speaker 1: And you know, they were speculating, we think electrons are

568
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,399
Speaker 1: probably inside the atom. But nobody knew yet what the

569
00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:45,639
Speaker 1: atom structure was. We knew that we had chemicals and

570
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: we had these different atoms and periodic table the elements

571
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,399
Speaker 1: was a thing, but nobody understood how the atom itself

572
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:53,480
Speaker 1: was built. And we suspected electrons were in there, but

573
00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:56,199
Speaker 1: we didn't understand, like, well, what's balancing that charge? And

574
00:26:56,280 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 1: so Thompson proposed that, like, well, we have electrons because

575
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: I discovered them, and so they must be the building

576
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: block of everything, and they're embedded in like a jelly,

577
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:07,879
Speaker 1: like a positive jelly that balances the charge.

578
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:09,440
Speaker 2: That was sort of his idea.

579
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 1: But then Rutherford came along and said, well, let's see,

580
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:14,879
Speaker 1: and he took a sheet of gold foil and he

581
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 1: shot radiation at it, and he wanted to understand, like,

582
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 1: what is that positive stuff made out of And if

583
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: that positive stuff was like spread out like jelly, then

584
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: he would expect that his particle would mostly just slop

585
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: through it. But what he saw was that most of

586
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 1: the time they just shoot right through the foil, but

587
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:35,919
Speaker 1: occasionally they bounced right back. What he concluded from that

588
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:38,679
Speaker 1: was that the positive charges weren't spread out evenly. They

589
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:41,760
Speaker 1: were clustered into these little hard dots. So most of

590
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:45,720
Speaker 1: the time the radiation missed it, sometimes they bounced right back.

591
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 1: That gives us the more modern picture of the atom

592
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,440
Speaker 1: as a positive nucleus surrounded by electrons.

593
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:53,439
Speaker 3: Okay, so if we are still trying to think of

594
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:55,719
Speaker 3: this as a jelly, then we should be picturing like

595
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 3: that strawberry jelly that has seeds in it, and those

596
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 3: seeds are like the nucleus that the electron was bouncing

597
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 3: off of. Is that right?

598
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 2: M hmm exactly.

599
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:07,160
Speaker 1: And so now we have like electrons, and we also

600
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:09,960
Speaker 1: have the nucleus, which later on we discover is made

601
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: out of protons and neutrons. And so you were starting

602
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 1: to build up our catalog of particles to try to

603
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:17,959
Speaker 1: understand like what is the world made out of? What

604
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 1: are these particles? And at this point the concept of

605
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 1: a particle is still it's a dot in space that

606
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: we could put labels on, and one of those labels

607
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: is mass. But then that was all up ended when

608
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: we discovered the next particle, which is the photon.

609
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 3: Why does it always get more complicated?

610
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:34,960
Speaker 2: I know?

611
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: Photons mess everything up, right, my goodness. So around the

612
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: turn of the century, Einstein was thinking about what happens

613
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: when you shine light on metal, very bright beam of

614
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 1: light on metal. What happens is electrons boil off. This

615
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: is something people had seen but not really understood because

616
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 1: they were confusing results about what happened when you made

617
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: the beam brighter. People expected that if you make the

618
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 1: beam brighter, which if light is a wave, mean that

619
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: the em fields are oscillating with larger amplitude, so more energy.

620
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 1: Then they thought that electrons should get kicked off with

621
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: more energy. But instead what they saw was electrons kicked

622
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: off with the.

623
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 2: Same energy, but more of them.

624
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: So instead of having faster moving electrons, you have more

625
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: electrons at all the same speed. And it was Einstein

626
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 1: who figured out what that meant. What it means is

627
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 1: that the light you're shining at the metal is not

628
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 1: a continuous beam, perfectly smooth the way Maxwell imagined, but

629
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: made of chunks made of bits called photons. And what

630
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: was happening is that each electron can only absorb one

631
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: like the electron absorbs a photon or it doesn't.

632
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 2: If it absorbs a photon.

633
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: It gets kicked off, and it always has that photon's energy.

634
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: You can't eat two photons or ten photons, and so

635
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: when you make the being brighter, you're shooting more photons.

636
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 1: More electrons get to eat a photon. But because it's

637
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: based out of these chunks, it's not smooth and continuous.

638
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: It's basically a one on one interaction.

639
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 3: You said that was Einstein who helps figure outright, So

640
00:30:00,560 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 3: that wasn't that long ago one hundred years. Yeah, we

641
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 3: went from like nothing to amazing detail in the last

642
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 3: hundred years.

643
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 4: I know.

644
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: It's really incredible what we've understood. And this is a

645
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: huge advance because now we're like, oh wow, light is

646
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 1: also made of little mini servings. Right, there's a minimum

647
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 1: amount of light. Like you take a flashlight and you

648
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:20,240
Speaker 1: start to turn it down and down and down and down.

649
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:24,480
Speaker 1: You can't have it be arbitrarily dim like this one

650
00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:27,480
Speaker 1: setting where it's dark, completely dark, but then there's a

651
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 1: minimum brightness. You can't shoot half a photon out of

652
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 1: a flashlight or one and a half photons. It's quantized,

653
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: you know, it's not continuous and smooth. But this is

654
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: confusing because they were going to call a photon a

655
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: particle a minute ago. We set a particle something that

656
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: has like mass in charge. Photons don't have mass, So

657
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: already your mental conception of like, oh, a particle is

658
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: a little bit of stuff, Well, this boton doesn't have

659
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 1: any stuff to it. You know, you can't catch up

660
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: to a photon and look at it, you can't hold

661
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 1: it in your hand, and yet we think of it.

662
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 2: As a particle. So already one hundred years.

663
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: Ago, we have to like back up and broaden our understanding,

664
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: like what is a particle if it's not a little

665
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: bit of stuff the way Democratis was imagining.

666
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 3: And doesn't it get even more confusing yet, because then

667
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:17,440
Speaker 3: we decide that photons aren't necessarily particles. Sometimes maybe they're waves.

668
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 3: And at this point you're like, I'm majoring in biology.

669
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 1: It gets more confusing before it gets more interesting and

670
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: more clear. But yes, there's definitely a period of confusion there,

671
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:30,640
Speaker 1: and I do think that's kind of a filter. Some

672
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 1: people hear that and they're like, I need to understand

673
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: this and learn more. I'm going to become a physicist.

674
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: And some people are like, I'm going to go study eels,

675
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: and that's cool because eels can make waves too, you know,

676
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:41,520
Speaker 1: they're pretty.

677
00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 3: Wiggly and electric fields and yeah.

678
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

679
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: And something you said I want to get back to,

680
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 1: which is like, sometimes they're particles. I mean, a photon

681
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 1: is always a photon. What is a photon? Is it

682
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: a particle? Is it a wave?

683
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 2: Like really, it's neither.

684
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: The way that that new fruit is not a cherry

685
00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: or an apricot, it's not sometimes because it has hints

686
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: of it in your mouth. It's something new and weird.

687
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: And a photon has behaviors that we sometimes describe in

688
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: a particle way, and behaviors we sometimes describe in.

689
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 2: A wave like way.

690
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: But it's not choosing now I'm a wave, now I'm

691
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: a particle. It's always a photon. It's just that none

692
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:19,560
Speaker 1: of these descriptions perfectly capture what it is the way

693
00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: that like I can't perfectly describe you. I mean, you're

694
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 1: a mother, you're a partner, you're a podcaster. None of

695
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: those things define who you are. You're Kelly, right, and

696
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 1: you're sometimes well described by one of those labels.

697
00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 3: Right, yes, right, So this is another one of those problems,

698
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:36,960
Speaker 3: like brains are like a computer, yes, but not entirely.

699
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:40,000
Speaker 3: And by putting these labels on it, sometimes it helps

700
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 3: you think about it, but also sometimes it makes things

701
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 3: more confusing.

702
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: So let's dig into what it means though, because the

703
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:46,800
Speaker 1: thing people were trying to confront, the thing people were

704
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 1: struggling with is like, yeah, Einstein tells us light is

705
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 1: made out of these little packets, so we should think

706
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: of them as like individuals. But also we had all

707
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 1: these experiments showing that lighthead wave like behavior, you know,

708
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: it like interferes with itself, diffraction. There's all sorts of

709
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: stuff that we only usually attribute to waves, and so

710
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: people have this idea in their mind, and they hear

711
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 1: a lot about the particle wave duality that sometimes you

712
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: use wave to describe light and sometimes you use particles

713
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:15,400
Speaker 1: to describe light. And later on it got more confusing

714
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: because we saw that electrons do this too, like electrons

715
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: have wave like behavior. You could take beams of electrons

716
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: and they will interfere with themselves as if they are waves.

717
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 1: But you know, electron is like the original og particle.

718
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: So what's going on here? And there is definitely a

719
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: way to.

720
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 2: Think about this that's not Sometimes it's a.

721
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: Wave and then it switches suddenly to a particle. It's

722
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 1: the more quantum mechanical way to think about it, which

723
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: is rarely like a way to think more clearly about stuff,

724
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 1: but you know, it is the way that we think

725
00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 1: about it. And the quantum mechanical way to think about

726
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:49,080
Speaker 1: this without getting heavy into the math, is to say

727
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: that what controls where a particle goes is a mathematical

728
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: equation that looks like a wave equation.

729
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 2: We call it the Schrodinger.

730
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 1: Equation, and it tells us what's likely to happen to

731
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: a particle. So an electron enters an experiment, the shorting

732
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 1: equation tells us, oh, is it likely to go left?

733
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 1: Or is it likely to go right? A photon goes

734
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 1: through a slit, the shortening equation tells us is it

735
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: likely to go here?

736
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 2: Is it likely to go there? It's going to land

737
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 2: on a screen.

738
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: The shortening equation tells us what's the probability of something happening,

739
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: So it's wave like in that an equation that looks

740
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 1: a lot like other wave equations, the equations we use

741
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: to describe oceans and sound and all sorts of wave

742
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:30,360
Speaker 1: like behavior, which is amazingly everywhere in the universe. And

743
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 1: we can have a whole conversation about, like, why does

744
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,880
Speaker 1: the universe all seem like waves? There's a wavy equation

745
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: that describes where this stuff is likely to go. But

746
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:42,400
Speaker 1: then there's something weird that happens, which is the universe

747
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 1: has to go from here. All the things the photon

748
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: could do, and here's the various probabilities of it going

749
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:49,239
Speaker 1: here or there. Then we do the experiment. We want

750
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: to know the answer. The universe does this thing where

751
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 1: it picks one. It's like, all, right, of all the possibilities,

752
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: I'm going to decide this photon goes over there, and

753
00:34:57,280 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: this other photon is going to go over here, and

754
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: this third photon is going to go there. And it's

755
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: sort of amazing and it's a process. We fundamentally do

756
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 1: not understand how the universe goes from Here's the list

757
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: of probabilities to I'm going to pick one. But this

758
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:11,319
Speaker 1: is what people imagine when they think wave like to

759
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: particle like. Wavelike is like when the universe is still

760
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: maintaining all the possibilities. Particle like is like I've looked

761
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,040
Speaker 1: at it, I've measured it, I see a dot on

762
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:21,920
Speaker 1: the screen. So I'm thinking of it as acting like

763
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 1: a particle because it's here, has the location, and we

764
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: think of particles as like it is somewhere. It's a

765
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 1: tiny dot in space with labels. So when we force

766
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:32,440
Speaker 1: the universe to tell us where did that photon go,

767
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 1: we call it being particle like because we put a

768
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: location on it.

769
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:39,760
Speaker 3: Okay, And is this the right way to think about

770
00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 3: all particles or do some particles follow this wave function

771
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 3: thing and other particles don't.

772
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: This is the nineteen thirties way to think about all particles.

773
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: You can use this to describe photons, you can use

774
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:56,320
Speaker 1: it to describe electrons. You can do use to describe

775
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: any particle. This is the Shortener equation, and it works

776
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: really really well for individual particles, and these deep fundamental

777
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: problems with it still like we don't understand when the

778
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:08,240
Speaker 1: universe goes from here are all your possibilities to actually,

779
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:10,200
Speaker 1: we're going to do this one. People call this the

780
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 1: wave function collapse or quantum collapse, and philosophically it makes

781
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 1: no sense because it doesn't happen when a photon is

782
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: measured by a quantum particle. Like a photon can interact

783
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,319
Speaker 1: with an electron and maintain all of its possibilities. But

784
00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 1: if a photon hits an eyeball you see it here

785
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: or you don't see it there, it collapses. And so

786
00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: really this wave versus particle thing is about maintaining quantum

787
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: possibilities or collapsing to one. That's really the core of it,

788
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 1: and that is not something we understand why that happens,

789
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:43,719
Speaker 1: When that happens, If that happens, huge open question in

790
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 1: physics and in philosophy, and what is a particle sort

791
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,839
Speaker 1: of sits right at the nexus of that. So we've

792
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 1: mapped this question of like what is a particle to hey,

793
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: when do quantum wave functions collapse?

794
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 2: And do they?

795
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:58,120
Speaker 1: But that's not a question we have an answer to.

796
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:00,719
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how helpful it is. But the

797
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: modern view of what is a particle is actually a

798
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 1: little bit different from this sort of nineteen thirties concept

799
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 1: of a wave function and the Schrodinger equation.

800
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:27,800
Speaker 3: Well, let's take a break and then we'll get modern.

801
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,760
Speaker 3: So we are up to the nineteen thirties, and now

802
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 3: you are going to tell us about our more modern

803
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 3: understanding of particles.

804
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:39,720
Speaker 1: Yes, so this idea that particles are these weird quantum

805
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: objects and where they go is controlled by a wavy equation.

806
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 1: But sometimes we can make their measurements and force the

807
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: universe to tell us where they are in an instant

808
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: and they have these properties masked sometimes charge, sometimes spin. Sometimes.

809
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:58,200
Speaker 1: That's sort of an old fashioned view. When we started

810
00:37:58,239 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: dealing with lots and lots of particles discovered, Oh, this

811
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:03,439
Speaker 1: math is kind of clunky. Like if you have ten

812
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:06,920
Speaker 1: particles or one hundred particles, it becomes really awkward to

813
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: have a Shorteninger equation for each individual one and try

814
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 1: to bring it together. The math just becomes impossible. And

815
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 1: so people instead of thinking about like one wave function

816
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:18,200
Speaker 1: for each particle, they're like, let's just think about all

817
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:22,120
Speaker 1: the particles as if they're wiggling the same field. So

818
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,040
Speaker 1: instead of imagining like an individual person waving their hand,

819
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:27,800
Speaker 1: now imagine like a crowd at a football stadium and

820
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 1: they're doing the wave. So add this thing to your brain,

821
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 1: which is a field. Right, A field in space is

822
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:37,799
Speaker 1: just like a set of numbers. I say, over here

823
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 1: to my left, the field has a value of seven,

824
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 1: and over here to my right field is a value

825
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 1: of three or two or whatever. And there are wavy

826
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 1: equations that determine what is the value of the field.

827
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: And so you can have waves in that field. You

828
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:53,319
Speaker 1: can like ripples in that field where like a large

829
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 1: value of the field moves through space from here to there.

830
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: And then we think about particles as those ripples in

831
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: the field. So we take like individual wave functions, we

832
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,880
Speaker 1: try to sort of stitch them together into a single

833
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 1: field and think about all the particles as wiggles in

834
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 1: the same field.

835
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 3: So what assumptions do you have to make to make

836
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:15,400
Speaker 3: that transition? Do you have to assume that they don't

837
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,359
Speaker 3: interact with each other in a way that changes the

838
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 3: behavior of the group?

839
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 2: Ah, great question.

840
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:24,000
Speaker 1: You don't have to assume that, because you can have

841
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 1: lots of different kinds of fields. You can have some

842
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:29,759
Speaker 1: fields where the particles don't interact with each other. For example, photons,

843
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:33,400
Speaker 1: photons don't interact with each other. Photons only interact with

844
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: particles that have electric charge, like they will be eaten

845
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 1: by an electron or proton can give off a photon.

846
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 1: But photons ignore each other, like they wiggle right past

847
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 1: each other. Two beams of light cross without touching or

848
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:49,279
Speaker 1: bouncing off each other. Other particles do interact with each other,

849
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: like gluons. For example, gluons bounce off of other gluons

850
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 1: amid other gluons eat other gluons. It gets very complicated

851
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 1: and messy because gluons talk to each other all the time.

852
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:01,480
Speaker 1: So you don't have to assume that we build that

853
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 1: into each field. So we have a new mathematical framework

854
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 1: that allows us to make different kinds of fields. Some

855
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 1: fields are very simple, they're just numbers, like the Higgs field.

856
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:13,320
Speaker 1: It's just a number in space. Other fields, like the

857
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:17,240
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field. At every point in space, you have an arrow,

858
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: you have a direction, you have three numbers.

859
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 2: Basically.

860
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: So now imagine like a bunch of arrows filling space,

861
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,279
Speaker 1: and when a photon is moving through that field, what's

862
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: happening is those arrows are growing and shrinking, They're changing direction.

863
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:34,000
Speaker 1: It's oscillations. In these fields that we think about as particles.

864
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,319
Speaker 1: But we do have to make one important assumption which

865
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:39,360
Speaker 1: has a lot of consequences, which is that every electron

866
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 1: is basically the same and every photon is basically the

867
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: same because they're all part of the same field. It

868
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: was a question for a long time, like why does

869
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: every electron have exactly the same mass and exactly the

870
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: same charge? Why is every photon zero mass? Why are

871
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:55,320
Speaker 1: they all identical?

872
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 2: Right?

873
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 1: And the answer is kind of beautiful as well. They're

874
00:40:58,280 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: all wiggles in the same field.

875
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 2: It's not like the.

876
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,680
Speaker 1: Universe made a bunch of electrons and it was really

877
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:05,440
Speaker 1: good at it, so it was super precise, and the

878
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: electron factories like high precision engineering, so they're really you know,

879
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:13,000
Speaker 1: balls on perfect it's because they literally are the same

880
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 1: thing that are just ripples in the same field.

881
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 3: Well, that's convenient because it's easier to think of it

882
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:21,280
Speaker 3: as a field, right than as a particle.

883
00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: Mathematically, it's much easier because if you want to think

884
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: about like particles being created, oh, that's just energy going

885
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: into the field, whereas in the shirting equation it's like

886
00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:32,359
Speaker 1: pretty hard to create a particle and add its wave

887
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:35,759
Speaker 1: function to your calculations, and the same thing with destroying particles.

888
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 1: It's really awkward if you're thinking about it one particle

889
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:40,279
Speaker 1: at a time, and very natural if you're thinking about

890
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: it as a group of particles.

891
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 3: The universe threw us a softball. Thanks universe. Okay, So

892
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:50,399
Speaker 3: when I was in high school, I learned about electrons

893
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 3: and protons and neutrons. I don't remember hearing about quarks.

894
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:57,320
Speaker 3: But you know, since high school, I've learned that protons

895
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:00,879
Speaker 3: are made up of quarks. But I think particles as

896
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 3: being the smallest things that make up everything. And so

897
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 3: if quirks make up protons, does that mean protons aren't

898
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 3: particles or are they both particles but maybe different categories

899
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:15,319
Speaker 3: of particles? What's going on here?

900
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question. So we mostly use these

901
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: fields to describe fundamental particles, things that we think are

902
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:27,320
Speaker 1: not made of anything else. So the photon and the electron,

903
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:30,439
Speaker 1: et cetera. Those particles are wiggles and fields that are

904
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:32,840
Speaker 1: just a basic element of space itself.

905
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:35,280
Speaker 2: But you can totally use.

906
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:38,719
Speaker 1: The same math to describe wiggles in other stuff, like

907
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:41,240
Speaker 1: water in the ocean or sound waves in the air.

908
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:44,160
Speaker 1: These are just wave equations, and the universe is kind

909
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: of wavy, and you can also identify particles of those

910
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 1: fields quanta of those fields. A phonon, for example, is

911
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: a packet of sound, the way a photon is a

912
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:57,160
Speaker 1: packet of light. The math is the same, it's just

913
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 1: what's wiggling is not fundamentally universe stuff whatever that is,

914
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:05,720
Speaker 1: but something else water or air or plasma or whatever.

915
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:07,760
Speaker 2: So we distinguish these.

916
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:11,600
Speaker 1: Things from particles by calling them quasi particles. But the

917
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 1: point is that the math still works, all right. So

918
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:17,800
Speaker 1: to your question about the proton, we know the proton

919
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: is not a fundamental particle. It's made of quarks, so

920
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 1: there's no proton field, right. Well, actually, if you zoom

921
00:43:25,080 --> 00:43:27,799
Speaker 1: out far enough so you can't see the inside of

922
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 1: the proton, it kind of acts like a particle that

923
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: moves around the universe the way a particle does. And

924
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: you can pretend that there is a proton field. You

925
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 1: can write it down mathematically and use it to describe

926
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 1: the motion of the proton as a particle. And the

927
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 1: proton field is like an approximate description of the quark

928
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: fields dancing together. The way they interact together makes it

929
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: seem like there is a proton field, and until you

930
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:55,160
Speaker 1: get enough energy that breaks that proton apart, it all

931
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:57,880
Speaker 1: works just fine. And the same, of course, might be

932
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:00,480
Speaker 1: true of the electron. We think that there is an

933
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 1: electron field, a fundamental part of space. But if the

934
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 1: electron is just made of other little particles, which are

935
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,319
Speaker 1: the true fundamental particles, then the electron field is just

936
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: an approximate description of those fields dancing together.

937
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:14,760
Speaker 3: All right, So where do you go from there?

938
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 1: So in this picture, particles are not little bits of stuff, right,

939
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:20,759
Speaker 1: you have to give up that whole idea, that whole

940
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:24,920
Speaker 1: mental picture we've had since Democritus that said the universe

941
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,240
Speaker 1: is made of particles and particles are little bits of stuff.

942
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 1: Now we say, well, particles are not little bits of stuff.

943
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 1: They're wiggles in these fields. And that means something really deep.

944
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 1: It means that the universe is not made of particles.

945
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:41,720
Speaker 1: It's made of fields. Particles are just something that happens

946
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:44,160
Speaker 1: to fields. There's just something fields can do.

947
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 2: You know. It's like discovering.

948
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: Okay, ice cream exists in the world, but actually it's

949
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: not fundamental. Universe is not made of ice cream. There's

950
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: times when you don't have ice cream. There's whole periods

951
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:58,919
Speaker 1: in the universe when there was no ice cream. It's

952
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 1: hard to imagine there was a moment when somebody invented

953
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: ice cream for the first time, right, and the universe

954
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:06,960
Speaker 1: was filled with light. Yes, what it means is that

955
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 1: we've gone one level deeper though, right.

956
00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 2: This is the whole goal. It's like, what really is.

957
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 1: At the foundation? What is everything made out of? And

958
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,680
Speaker 1: this takes quite a left turn. It says, yeah, the

959
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: universe is not built of little bits. Those bits are

960
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 1: actually just ripples in these fields that fill the universe.

961
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:25,480
Speaker 1: And I want people to really have an accurate visual

962
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:28,320
Speaker 1: image of what these fields are because people think about, Okay,

963
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:30,319
Speaker 1: a particle is a ripple in the field, or it's

964
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: an excitation in the field, And you should understand that

965
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: a field really is a wavy kind of thing. It

966
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:37,399
Speaker 1: can do the same wavy kind of things that other

967
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 1: fields can do. You know, like imagine a guitar string.

968
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:43,000
Speaker 1: What does a guitar string do when you pluck it,

969
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:45,879
Speaker 1: you pull it back and so now it's like you're

970
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 1: stretching the string, right, we say in physics, now it

971
00:45:48,920 --> 00:45:51,279
Speaker 1: has a lot of potential energy because a lot of

972
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:53,359
Speaker 1: tangent in there really wants to go back to its

973
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 1: relaxed position.

974
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:56,040
Speaker 2: What happens when you relax it?

975
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: What happens when you let it go, Well, it flies

976
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 1: back to that relaxed position. But now it's moving really fast,

977
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: so now has a lot of speed, rights a lot

978
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: of kinetic energy. So it doesn't actually stop there when

979
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:08,880
Speaker 1: it gets back to the relaxed position. It keeps going

980
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:11,319
Speaker 1: and it bends the other way, and it oscillates back

981
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:13,280
Speaker 1: and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

982
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: It slashes back and forth between potential energy and kinetic energy.

983
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 1: That's what a wave equation, and that's a wave like phenomenal.

984
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 1: I mean that slashes back and forth. That's what fields

985
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: are doing. Fields you can think of them as these

986
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: numbers in space, but those numbers are slashing back and forth.

987
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: The field itself has potential energy and kinetic energy. The

988
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:36,640
Speaker 1: changing of those numbers has a speed to it. And

989
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:39,400
Speaker 1: when we solve the wave equations for fields, what is

990
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:43,840
Speaker 1: fundamentally quantum field theory the bedrock of modern particle physics.

991
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: That's what the solutions look like like. The Higgs field

992
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:50,480
Speaker 1: is oscillating when we say a photon is an oscillation

993
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:53,480
Speaker 1: in the electromagnetic field, We mean the values of the field.

994
00:46:53,520 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: Those numbers in space, Those arrows, they're moving, they're wiggling,

995
00:46:56,920 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: they're slashing around.

996
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 3: So when I was in high school, we got the

997
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:03,839
Speaker 3: like plum pudding model. So yes, I do think now

998
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:07,920
Speaker 3: about particles as like a raisin embedded in something, and

999
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 3: not as like a wave function. If I were in

1000
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:15,360
Speaker 3: high school right now, would I be taught something more

1001
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:17,279
Speaker 3: like what you just said? How long have we known

1002
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:19,759
Speaker 3: about this stuff? Why does this feel new? Is what

1003
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 3: I'm asking? Is it new? Or did I forget?

1004
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 1: It's a great time to ask me this question because

1005
00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: my daughter, who's taking high school chemistry right now, is

1006
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:31,400
Speaker 1: learning about this stuff and asking me questions about it.

1007
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:33,600
Speaker 1: So I'm getting like a front row seat too. How

1008
00:47:33,600 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 1: are people taught about the nature of matter in high school? Yeah,

1009
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:39,879
Speaker 1: and yeah, they're taught about the plum putting model. Though,

1010
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:41,759
Speaker 1: just for the record, the plum putting model is not

1011
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: a modern conception. It was like disproved by Rutherford, right.

1012
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: People thought, well, maybe the universe is filled with this

1013
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:50,480
Speaker 1: jelly of positive stuff. Sounds tasty, but it's not the

1014
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 1: way that we understand it. It's in contrast to having

1015
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,160
Speaker 1: like a hard dense nucleus at the core. So the

1016
00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:58,319
Speaker 1: plum putting model, they teach it to them and then

1017
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 1: they throw it out, but they don't really go very

1018
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:03,920
Speaker 1: deep into like the quantum mechanics of it. Even in

1019
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: AP chemistry, I discovered they don't really talk about this stuff,

1020
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 1: and they certainly don't talk about particle physics in AP physics.

1021
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 1: So in high school you don't really get a whole

1022
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 1: lot of this modern stuff. I teach modern physics at

1023
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 1: the college level, and that's the first time we really

1024
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: give people an understanding of the nineteen thirties concept of

1025
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:23,359
Speaker 1: what is a particle and how does quantum mechanics work.

1026
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:26,000
Speaker 1: And then we don't show them quantum fields until like

1027
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 1: graduate school. So I didn't learn about quanum field until

1028
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:30,320
Speaker 1: I was in like eighteenth grade.

1029
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:32,480
Speaker 2: So you know, this is not the kind of.

1030
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 1: Stuff that percolates mostly into high school. Maybe fortunately, maybe unfortunately,

1031
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 1: I would love to have some of these ideas introduced earlier.

1032
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 3: So you think if you talked to just about any

1033
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:45,719
Speaker 3: recent graduate of high school, they're probably still thinking of

1034
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:49,239
Speaker 3: electrons as particles that stay in one spot.

1035
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 1: Tiny little dots orbiting the nucleus. Do you know Electrons

1036
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: don't orbit, They don't have specific locations. They can't be

1037
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:58,920
Speaker 1: in one spot and have a specific velocity. You can

1038
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: measure them here, you can measure them there, but they're

1039
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:04,319
Speaker 1: weird quantum objects. They don't go from here to there.

1040
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: They don't obey all the intuitive rules that you expect

1041
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,359
Speaker 1: things that have specific locations to do.

1042
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:12,720
Speaker 3: So we can all feel good about our advanced physics knowledge.

1043
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 1: Now, yes, exactly, you have pushed well beyond high school

1044
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:19,440
Speaker 1: and even college physics. And you know, I have to

1045
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: underscore how powerful this quantum field theory approach is. To

1046
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:25,400
Speaker 1: say that all particles are just ripples and fields, and

1047
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: the universe fundamentally is made of these fields. All space

1048
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: is filled with many kinds of fields. You have one

1049
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:34,800
Speaker 1: for the electron, one for the muon, one for the upcork,

1050
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:35,719
Speaker 1: one for the down cork.

1051
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:36,719
Speaker 2: We have more than a.

1052
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: Dozen fields that fill space. This is a really powerful

1053
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: way to think about the universe. We see patterns in

1054
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 1: these fields, how energy flows from one to the other,

1055
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 1: their symmetries that they observe. It's allowed us to make

1056
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 1: really powerful, very accurate calculations of all sorts of stuff

1057
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:56,399
Speaker 1: that we see happening in particle experiments, and so it's

1058
00:49:56,440 --> 00:49:58,480
Speaker 1: really beautiful and really crisp and really clear. And I

1059
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:01,400
Speaker 1: think that most particle physicists this is what they think about,

1060
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:04,840
Speaker 1: or most theoretical physicists, imagine the universe as filled with

1061
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:08,279
Speaker 1: fields and particles as just ripples in them. But of

1062
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 1: course it's a field filled with controversy, and so not

1063
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:14,000
Speaker 1: everybody agrees with that view. There are lots of people

1064
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 1: who have a very different concept of what a particle

1065
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 1: is and fundamentally how it all works at the bottom level.

1066
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:23,759
Speaker 3: So to back up real quick, the field's theory has

1067
00:50:23,800 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 3: produced loads of testable hypotheses that have been tested and

1068
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 3: panned out. But there are still some people who think

1069
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,800
Speaker 3: maybe something else is going on that explains these resultss

1070
00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:37,720
Speaker 3: and what are they proposing is happening.

1071
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 1: Then they suggest the fields are a fiction, that the

1072
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 1: fields don't really exist, that the fields are basically just

1073
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 1: a calculational tool we use in our minds to explain

1074
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:50,320
Speaker 1: what we see, because in the end, you can't observe

1075
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 1: a field. You can't directly see a field. It's always

1076
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: an intermedia thing like what you can see are particles.

1077
00:50:57,600 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 1: You see those little dots on your screen, or you

1078
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:04,240
Speaker 1: see the electron deflected in your cathode ray. It's always particle,

1079
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:07,400
Speaker 1: like I'm doing air quotes when we see it, And

1080
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: particles are what we observe, They're what.

1081
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 2: We interact with.

1082
00:51:09,719 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 1: Yes, we can use fields to explain them, and yes

1083
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:15,360
Speaker 1: we can think about fields as being out there, but

1084
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue philosophically that we know fields are

1085
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 1: real in some way other than we can use them

1086
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 1: to calculate these experiments. You can't like really directly see them.

1087
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:28,280
Speaker 1: And lots of famous physicists like Nima or Kanye Ahmed,

1088
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:31,880
Speaker 1: one of the maybe most brilliant modern particle physicists, calls

1089
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 1: them a convenient fiction.

1090
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 3: Huh, So would someone like Nima then argue it's all

1091
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:42,879
Speaker 3: just particles, Like the field thing is throwing us off track.

1092
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 3: We were on track with the particles, and we just

1093
00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 3: got to stick with thinking about particles and figure out

1094
00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 3: a way to measure yes at that level instead.

1095
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, and here I want to take the opportunity to

1096
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:54,000
Speaker 1: disentangle something you hear about a lot in popular science.

1097
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: People probably hear oh, particles or ripples in a field.

1098
00:51:57,080 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 1: But they also hear this other story, like what happens

1099
00:52:00,239 --> 00:52:03,880
Speaker 1: when two electrons repel each other, Oh, they exchange a photon.

1100
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 1: They're passing a photon back and forth.

1101
00:52:06,200 --> 00:52:06,480
Speaker 2: Right.

1102
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 1: What you're doing there is rejecting the field picture. The

1103
00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 1: field picture of what happens when electrons push on each

1104
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 1: other is an electron makes a field around it, the

1105
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field, right, and that field pushes on the other electron.

1106
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:22,720
Speaker 1: That's the field picture. People who don't believe in fields,

1107
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:24,960
Speaker 1: they're like, just explain it all in terms of particles.

1108
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:27,360
Speaker 1: You don't need the field. What happens when an electron

1109
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:29,799
Speaker 1: pushes on another electron is it throws a photon at

1110
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:32,760
Speaker 1: the other one. And so you can either explain everything

1111
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:36,239
Speaker 1: in terms of particles that are pushed by fields, or

1112
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:38,279
Speaker 1: you can explain it just in terms of particles and

1113
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:40,759
Speaker 1: say you don't need fields. Just go particles all the

1114
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:42,959
Speaker 1: way down. There are particles we observe, and they push

1115
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:46,600
Speaker 1: on each other by passing other particles between themselves. So

1116
00:52:46,600 --> 00:52:49,840
Speaker 1: you can basically replace the fields with an infinite number

1117
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:52,239
Speaker 1: of particles doing all the pushing and pulling and all

1118
00:52:52,239 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: that other stuff that some people say fields are doing

1119
00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: and the frustrating, slash confusing, slash amazing thing is that

1120
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 1: you do the calculation since you get the same answer.

1121
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:04,399
Speaker 1: So is it particles is it fields? We can't tell

1122
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: the difference because the two theories mathematically are equivalent. It's like,

1123
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:11,799
Speaker 1: either you can imagine these fields which fill space, which

1124
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:14,040
Speaker 1: are beautiful and elegant but kind of weird, like what

1125
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 1: are they? Or you can say, I'm going to replace

1126
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:19,960
Speaker 1: those fields by a bunch of particles flying around doing

1127
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:20,800
Speaker 1: that same work.

1128
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 3: And are you a field guy?

1129
00:53:24,800 --> 00:53:26,800
Speaker 1: I was a fields guy until I read this book

1130
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:31,160
Speaker 1: about whether science can be done without math. You know,

1131
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:33,960
Speaker 1: people wonder like is math invented? Or is it something

1132
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 1: in our minds? And there's a guy who developed an

1133
00:53:36,800 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 1: alternative theory of gravity that doesn't use any math, no

1134
00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 1: numbers at all. It's called science without numbers, and it's

1135
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:48,239
Speaker 1: really weird. It's very alien. You read it and you're like,

1136
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:50,480
Speaker 1: what was this guy smoking? And where can I get some?

1137
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:53,080
Speaker 1: But he philosophically pulls it off. He shows that you

1138
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 1: don't need to have fields essentially, and the crucial insight

1139
00:53:56,040 --> 00:53:57,839
Speaker 1: in that book is to get rid of fields, because

1140
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:01,440
Speaker 1: fields are like numbers in space. So he divorces physics

1141
00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:04,400
Speaker 1: from mathematics by ditching fields. My favorite part of the

1142
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:10,240
Speaker 1: story the guy's last name Fields. So Professor Fields gets

1143
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:13,799
Speaker 1: rid of fields, the field fieldless theory of physics. There's

1144
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:15,520
Speaker 1: lots of jokes you could make there, but it made

1145
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 1: me wonder, you know, like our field's just something we

1146
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: think about or they actually out there. When aliens come

1147
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,399
Speaker 1: and talk to us about their theory of physics, will

1148
00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:26,760
Speaker 1: they have fields in it? Or will they have Schmields

1149
00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: or something totally different?

1150
00:54:28,120 --> 00:54:31,840
Speaker 3: So have you dodged my question or are you saying

1151
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 3: that you're a particle person.

1152
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 2: I'm saying I don't know.

1153
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:37,200
Speaker 1: I used to be a fields person, but now I

1154
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 1: teach the controversy, got it?

1155
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:40,399
Speaker 3: Okay? So when you first said that there were people

1156
00:54:40,440 --> 00:54:43,520
Speaker 3: who reject fields, I thought that was going to get

1157
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 3: us into string theory. Are we going to get to

1158
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 3: string theory too? There's three options. So there's particles, fields,

1159
00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:50,520
Speaker 3: and strings. Is that right?

1160
00:54:51,719 --> 00:54:53,759
Speaker 2: There's more than three options? Unfortunately?

1161
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,840
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's lots of directions to go here. People

1162
00:54:56,880 --> 00:54:59,440
Speaker 1: also wonder, like, well, what are these fields? Are fields

1163
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:02,319
Speaker 1: that bend ra the truth of the universe at the

1164
00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:05,839
Speaker 1: firmament is that the thing that has to exist. And

1165
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 1: it's sort of unsatisfactory because, well, why are there all

1166
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:10,440
Speaker 1: these different fields? Why do we have the electron and

1167
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:12,800
Speaker 1: the muon, which is like a weird heavy version of

1168
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:16,400
Speaker 1: the electron. Why are there these obvious patterns among the

1169
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:19,799
Speaker 1: fields that we can't explain. And one explanation for that

1170
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:22,839
Speaker 1: are strings, to say, well, none of these things are

1171
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:26,440
Speaker 1: what's at the bedrock underneath it all is something else,

1172
00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:30,640
Speaker 1: and strings are this idea that the universe is not

1173
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:33,720
Speaker 1: made out of field to instead these one dimensional bits

1174
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: of matter that can do wavy like stuff. They can wiggle,

1175
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 1: and they can dance, and they can wiggle in various ways.

1176
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 1: And if you're zoom down far enough so you can't

1177
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 1: see the actual string bits themselves, when they wiggle one way,

1178
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 1: it looks like an electron field, and when they wiggle

1179
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: another way, it looks like a muon field, and when

1180
00:55:49,719 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 1: wiggle a third way, it looks like a photon. And

1181
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 1: so all these fields are actually just different wiggles in

1182
00:55:56,080 --> 00:56:00,480
Speaker 1: these strings. This is another beautiful bit of mathematics. Nobody's

1183
00:56:00,520 --> 00:56:03,879
Speaker 1: proven to be true or not, but might represent what's

1184
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:07,440
Speaker 1: going on underneath all of this, right, So maybe particles

1185
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 1: are ripples and fields which are just wiggles in strings.

1186
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:15,919
Speaker 3: So string theory is still a popular contender. I thought

1187
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:19,719
Speaker 3: maybe string theory was waning, but I'm you know, not

1188
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 3: in this field. What's the current state of the string theory.

1189
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: String theory was very popular in the nineties. It seemed

1190
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:26,799
Speaker 1: very exciting. People discovered this math and could do all

1191
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:28,560
Speaker 1: sorts of fun stuff with it. And they've done a

1192
00:56:28,600 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: lot of fun stuff, but they haven't been able to

1193
00:56:30,640 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 1: prove that it's true because they talk about the mathematics

1194
00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:36,000
Speaker 1: of the strings, but nobody can see these strings.

1195
00:56:36,000 --> 00:56:37,280
Speaker 2: The strings are too small.

1196
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:39,920
Speaker 1: In order to see the strings themselves, you'd need like

1197
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:41,880
Speaker 1: a collideer to the size of the solar system, and

1198
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 1: we don't have the funds for that. And so until

1199
00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:47,520
Speaker 1: they make a prediction that we can actually test it,

1200
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:49,959
Speaker 1: say like, oh, string theory, if it's true, we should

1201
00:56:49,960 --> 00:56:52,200
Speaker 1: be able to see this thing, then we don't know

1202
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:54,480
Speaker 1: if it's just mathematics or if it's actually a description

1203
00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 1: of the universe. And so there's been a lot of

1204
00:56:56,840 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 1: people who are negative about string theory for that reason.

1205
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:02,120
Speaker 1: I still think it's exciting, but there are other ideas

1206
00:57:02,120 --> 00:57:04,319
Speaker 1: out there about you know, what the universe could be

1207
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:04,840
Speaker 1: made out of?

1208
00:57:05,239 --> 00:57:05,680
Speaker 3: What else?

1209
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 1: As you were saying earlier, we tend to think about

1210
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: the brain as made out of whatever is the latest

1211
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:13,439
Speaker 1: technology in the same way we try to think about

1212
00:57:13,440 --> 00:57:16,760
Speaker 1: the universe that way. Like the advent of quantum computing

1213
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 1: makes us think about cubits and information And there's a

1214
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:22,919
Speaker 1: whole line of argument that I think we should talk about,

1215
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:26,960
Speaker 1: probably on another episode, about whether the whole universe is

1216
00:57:27,160 --> 00:57:30,720
Speaker 1: just a quantum computer and particles are like patterns and

1217
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 1: the flow of information in this quantum computer. There are

1218
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:36,920
Speaker 1: folks who do these experiments that discover that if you

1219
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:41,200
Speaker 1: build a space time from entangled cubits, that these patterns

1220
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 1: naturally arise, which have properties that align well with.

1221
00:57:44,880 --> 00:57:46,160
Speaker 2: The particles that we see.

1222
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:49,240
Speaker 1: This is all really very speculative stuff, but it's sort

1223
00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:51,919
Speaker 1: of the forefront of current research. People wondering, like, what's

1224
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 1: underneath all this stuff? Maybe it really is even different

1225
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:58,880
Speaker 1: than democratists imagined, or Schrotinger or even Fineman.

1226
00:57:59,080 --> 00:57:59,960
Speaker 3: What is a cubit.

1227
00:58:00,240 --> 00:58:03,000
Speaker 1: A cubit is a quantum analogy to a classical bit,

1228
00:58:03,080 --> 00:58:05,480
Speaker 1: like in your computer. A bit is something that can

1229
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:08,080
Speaker 1: be zero or one. It's like the minimum piece of

1230
00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: information you can have. It's boiled down to just two options,

1231
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,680
Speaker 1: like a switch you can flip. And a normal bit

1232
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:17,360
Speaker 1: is in one state, but a quantum bit has a

1233
00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:19,680
Speaker 1: probability to be in one state or in the other.

1234
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:22,840
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily in one or the other. So it's

1235
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 1: a cubit is a quantum bit. And people wonder if

1236
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 1: fundamentally the universe is made out of cubits that are

1237
00:58:29,440 --> 00:58:32,960
Speaker 1: somehow woven together to make space and time and our reality.

1238
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:34,960
Speaker 1: But we'll dig into that in a whole other episode.

1239
00:58:35,040 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 3: Awesome, all right, So if we tomorrow were to find

1240
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:43,919
Speaker 3: out which one of these explanations was correct, what would

1241
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:47,439
Speaker 3: that change? So that would be satisfying, But where could

1242
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:49,400
Speaker 3: we go from there? That would be even cooler, Like

1243
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:51,040
Speaker 3: what doors would that open up? For us?

1244
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:51,680
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1245
00:58:51,720 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 1: Wow, awesome question. You're basically asking, like, why do we

1246
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:56,640
Speaker 1: care about any of this? So what does it mean

1247
00:58:56,800 --> 00:59:00,200
Speaker 1: for us? For me, it's like really deeply important and

1248
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:03,439
Speaker 1: to understand what is the nature of the universe we're in,

1249
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 1: You know, what is it made out of? If you

1250
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 1: told me the universe starts from these conditions, and everything

1251
00:59:09,920 --> 00:59:12,200
Speaker 1: else follows from that, Like to have a universe, you

1252
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:14,480
Speaker 1: have to have space and time and this little bit

1253
00:59:14,520 --> 00:59:17,840
Speaker 1: of stuff, and then everything else, all the complexity, the blueberries,

1254
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:21,200
Speaker 1: the kittens, the lava, the podcast, all that comes from

1255
00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:23,480
Speaker 1: how that stuff is arranged and interacts.

1256
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 2: And that's cool.

1257
00:59:24,720 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 1: I want to know what is the most fundamental thing,

1258
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:29,320
Speaker 1: because that tells me something deep about the nature of

1259
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 1: the universe. If it's this, then the universe is that

1260
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:34,560
Speaker 1: way in some deep wave. It's that the universe is

1261
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 1: another way, in some deep way, and I just fundamentally

1262
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:40,280
Speaker 1: want to know. It doesn't change how you drink your coffee,

1263
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:43,200
Speaker 1: it doesn't change how you treat people. It doesn't change

1264
00:59:43,200 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 1: what investments you should make. But it changes what it

1265
00:59:45,520 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: means to be alive in this universe in a really

1266
00:59:47,760 --> 00:59:48,439
Speaker 1: important way.

1267
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:51,800
Speaker 2: To me. It's very uncomfortable that we don't know the.

1268
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 1: Answer to the basic question of like, what is the

1269
00:59:55,040 --> 00:59:58,800
Speaker 1: fundamental building block of the universe we live in. It's

1270
00:59:58,920 --> 01:00:02,080
Speaker 1: like being born into a jail and not knowing who

1271
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:04,200
Speaker 1: built it or what's in the outside. It's like, I

1272
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:05,920
Speaker 1: want to break out of this ignorance.

1273
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:09,600
Speaker 3: I found myself personally wanting the answer to be that

1274
01:00:09,640 --> 01:00:12,320
Speaker 3: everything is a field and it's sort of connected in

1275
01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:14,720
Speaker 3: a way that feels like, I don't know, maybe sort

1276
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:16,880
Speaker 3: of like kum bay us sit around a fire sort

1277
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:19,560
Speaker 3: of feeling. But I like that stuff, so anyway, I

1278
01:00:19,600 --> 01:00:21,720
Speaker 3: guess my gut wants that to be the answer. But yes,

1279
01:00:21,760 --> 01:00:23,040
Speaker 3: I think it would be good for us to know

1280
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:25,160
Speaker 3: the answer to this very fundamental question.

1281
01:00:25,320 --> 01:00:27,880
Speaker 1: And I suspect the answer is none of these and

1282
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:31,040
Speaker 1: something even weirder. That's going to be so difficult for

1283
01:00:31,120 --> 01:00:33,520
Speaker 1: us to understand. It's going to be a stretch to

1284
01:00:33,600 --> 01:00:37,080
Speaker 1: even explain in terms of our intuitive language of concepts.

1285
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:39,400
Speaker 1: You know, we're going to have to use kiwis and

1286
01:00:39,400 --> 01:00:41,560
Speaker 1: fields and particles and strings and all sorts of other

1287
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:44,240
Speaker 1: stuff to try to wrap our minds around the way

1288
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:46,800
Speaker 1: that we universe actually works, which has no guarantee that

1289
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: it's even understandable to us.

1290
01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:50,600
Speaker 3: So people are going to be like Democratus thought it

1291
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:52,680
Speaker 3: was sour because it was like little knives, and then

1292
01:00:52,760 --> 01:00:56,040
Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly thought it was like strings and fields.

1293
01:00:56,120 --> 01:00:58,400
Speaker 3: What idiots? So you know, who knows what they'll think

1294
01:00:58,400 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 3: in a hundred or so years.

1295
01:01:00,960 --> 01:01:02,760
Speaker 2: I hope they're laughing at us. In one hundred years,

1296
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:03,480
Speaker 2: that would be awesome.

1297
01:01:03,560 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, progress is good.

1298
01:01:05,000 --> 01:01:07,480
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks everybody for taking this journey with

1299
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:09,960
Speaker 1: us from the ancient misunderstanding of what matter was to

1300
01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 1: our modern misunderstanding of what matter is. And we hope

1301
01:01:13,640 --> 01:01:17,360
Speaker 1: to continue this journey and to slowly chisel away towards

1302
01:01:17,360 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 1: some actual, solid understanding.

1303
01:01:19,800 --> 01:01:30,040
Speaker 3: Have a good week everyone. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe

1304
01:01:30,080 --> 01:01:33,240
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