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Speaker 1: Hey, we're here. I want to play a new game

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Speaker 1: I invented. It's a free association particle physics game. You

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Speaker 1: might qualified doing need a physics degree? No, no, you

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Speaker 1: might actually be the most qualified person ever. Really, that's

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Speaker 1: the first time I hear those words ever. But but

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Speaker 1: I'm game. How do How does it work? All right?

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Speaker 1: It goes like this. I say a particle, and then

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Speaker 1: you describe your mental image. You've been doing this for

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Speaker 1: a while, translating science into visual art, and so I'm

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Speaker 1: curious what goes on in the mind of a comic

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Speaker 1: way Now I say the name of a particle. But

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Speaker 1: all right, I'm game. Hit hit me. Okay, alright, um, Proton, Proton.

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Speaker 1: I see the color blue, like a little little sphere

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Speaker 1: that has a soft blue glow. All right, well, then

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Speaker 1: let's go to the other side. What about electron? Electron?

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Speaker 1: I see something kind of jumpy, kind of electric like

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Speaker 1: it has little like electricity bolts coming out of it.

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Speaker 1: All right, what about the squiggly on Okay, I see uh,

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Speaker 1: I see Brian green somehow and being kind of squiggly

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Speaker 1: and shaky. Alright, well, let me try you and Daniel.

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Speaker 1: If I say the word quark. What do you see?

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Speaker 1: You're like grant money. If you say the word quirk.

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Speaker 1: I think of a bowl filled with glue and these

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Speaker 1: little particles swimming around inside of it like edible. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's my lunch, basically a bowl of glue. No, because

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Speaker 1: you know, the quarks are inside of proton. They're held

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Speaker 1: together by this seeding mass of gluons. This this frothing

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Speaker 1: foam of gluons, and so I can't think of quarks

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Speaker 1: except being surrounded by gluons. Hi am or hand make

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

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Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I have no idea how

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Speaker 1: to draw a particle. And speaking of were not having

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Speaker 1: no idea. We are the co authors of the book

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Speaker 1: We Have No Idea, A Guide to the Unknown Universe,

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Speaker 1: and the host of this podcast you're listening to, Daniel

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Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: That's right, our podcast in which we zoom around the

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Speaker 1: universe and find interesting, weird stuff to think about, to

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Speaker 1: imagine and try to bring clear images into your mind.

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Speaker 1: A very strange weird stuff that's happening out there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we talked about not just seeing weird stuff, but we

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Speaker 1: wonder how can we see all this weird stuff that's

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Speaker 1: out there in the universe. That's right, because part of

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Speaker 1: understanding the universe is building in your mind sort of

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Speaker 1: a mental model, like what's going on in the center

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Speaker 1: of the sun, how does this really work? And where

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Speaker 1: is the dark matter? Every time you want to understand something,

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Speaker 1: in some sense, you're building sort of a mental model

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Speaker 1: that you want to look at. And we're so, where

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Speaker 1: do those mental models come from? And how do we

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Speaker 1: form these images in our heads? And how do we

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Speaker 1: know they're true? Right? Like, how do we know that

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Speaker 1: what we imagine is happening is actually happening. That's right,

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Speaker 1: And this is especially relevant for things that are not

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Speaker 1: just super duper huge that are out there in the universe,

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Speaker 1: but things that are super duper tiny, like electrons, like protons.

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Speaker 1: What do they actually look like? And when I do

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Speaker 1: particle physics, I think about these things visually. I think

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Speaker 1: geometrically in my mind to think about the relationship of

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Speaker 1: these particles. But what do they actually look like? They

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Speaker 1: look like little little balls, don't they They don't look

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Speaker 1: like little balls. We know that little balls are just

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Speaker 1: sort of the mental model we have in our head.

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Speaker 1: It's part of the sort of analogy we make. We say,

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Speaker 1: we like to think of this in terms of something

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Speaker 1: that we know, something we're familiar with, and so it's

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Speaker 1: very easy to do. But then, of course sometimes these

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Speaker 1: things don't act like balls, that act like waves, right,

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Speaker 1: and so then you have to like, what do they

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Speaker 1: really look like? Can you see them? That's right? And

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Speaker 1: so on the podcast today, we'll be asking a very

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Speaker 1: deep question. We'll be asking the question what does an

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Speaker 1: electron look like? Or can you see an electron or

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Speaker 1: other small particles? That's right? If you were aunt Man

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Speaker 1: and you got minsculed down to the quantum realm, what

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Speaker 1: would that actually look like? You know? Frankly, I was

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Speaker 1: pretty impressed with the creative visuals in that movie for

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Speaker 1: the quantum Realm. I thought it was like crazy and

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Speaker 1: psychotic in this way they sort of evoked the weirdness

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Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics without trying to be too specific. What

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Speaker 1: do you think of that? He didn't scoff at their

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Speaker 1: depiction of an electron or electron clouds and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: I will be honest, I was prepared to scoff I

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Speaker 1: had a scoff all loaded up and ready to deliver.

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Speaker 1: It was at the tip of your the tip of

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Speaker 1: your tongue, tip of my scoffer. But I was impressed,

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Speaker 1: and so I withheld my scoffing. I thought, you know,

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Speaker 1: what somebody really thought about Somebody must have like talked

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Speaker 1: to a physic cyst and try to imagine. And I

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Speaker 1: think there's a lot of real science there in imaging

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Speaker 1: um scientific ideas. You know, take what a scientist is

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Speaker 1: describing as a mathematical description of the universe and try

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Speaker 1: to translate it into human thought. And you know, uh,

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Speaker 1: there is really a lot of art there, and it's

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Speaker 1: an important part of science. I mean, if you think

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Speaker 1: about it, we're all made out of particles and electrons

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Speaker 1: and quarks and protons, um. But what do these things

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Speaker 1: actually look like? I mean, we know what they look

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Speaker 1: like when you stack them together, but if you were

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Speaker 1: to actually blow them up, or if you're where to

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Speaker 1: shrink down like ad Man down to that level, what

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Speaker 1: would what would you see? What would your brain register? Right?

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Speaker 1: That's the question? Yeah, exactly. And when we do particle physics,

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Speaker 1: we're seeking to understand the universe at its lowest level,

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Speaker 1: we're going to take it apart. When what is it

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Speaker 1: made out of? You know? Is it all the way

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Speaker 1: down to strings? And when we talk about building the

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Speaker 1: universe out of these little vibrating strings, everybody gets an

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Speaker 1: image in their head. Right immediately I think of this

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Speaker 1: a little loop is sort of like fuzzy little loop

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Speaker 1: that's shaking around. And so it's very natural, I think,

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Speaker 1: for humans to think of ideas and mathematical models and

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Speaker 1: physical explanations in terms of mental images. And so today

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Speaker 1: we wanted to explore, like, what can we say about

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Speaker 1: what these things look like? How do you see an

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Speaker 1: individual particle? Because in the end at particle physics experiments

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Speaker 1: we're talking about electrons, and me wants as if we

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Speaker 1: have seen them. So we want to pull back the

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Speaker 1: curtain and show you what we can see and what

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Speaker 1: we actually are just imagining. Well, my question when I

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Speaker 1: see that ant and movie is you know, he shrinks

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Speaker 1: down to the size of an atom or an electron, Right,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of what happens in the movie, right, But

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Speaker 1: how does so what is he made out of at

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Speaker 1: that level smaller atoms and molecules? Do you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean, because he still looks like ant man. So

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Speaker 1: what are his clothes made out of? He's made out

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Speaker 1: of pin particles, right, that's a great question. Like he

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Speaker 1: starts out made out of electrons and part of and

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Speaker 1: other particles, right, and he shrinks down and he's the

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Speaker 1: size of an electron. But you're right, then have his

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Speaker 1: electrons got shrunk down to smaller electrons? Like? Does that

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Speaker 1: make sense? Or maybe he just gotten compressed so he

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Speaker 1: has the same number of particles but they're you know,

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Speaker 1: just a shorter distance. Because when he's small, doesn't he's

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Speaker 1: supposed to have the same strength and the same like

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Speaker 1: mass and weight as his larger version of himself. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I see, he's just condensed. Yeah, he's like super dense man.

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Speaker 1: That's that's what they should have been called. Man. Wait,

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Speaker 1: but then doesn't he also get big? But he gets big?

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Speaker 1: If that would be true, then he would be like

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Speaker 1: super light and fluffy man. Right, I'm not sure that.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure the physics is really holding together. They're sorry, aunt, man,

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Speaker 1: you just ruined the movie for me. Thanks. I have

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Speaker 1: the feeling you're able to suspend disbelief and enjoy these

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Speaker 1: movies even if the physics is totally bologny. Am I wrong?

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Speaker 1: You mean, do I have a scoff ready when I

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Speaker 1: watch movies? Or do you We've been talking for long

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Speaker 1: enough that you have a sort of a mental Daniel

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Speaker 1: in your mind that says, Daniel would think this is crazy.

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Speaker 1: That's a little bit I have to say, and I'm

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Speaker 1: not super happy about that. I'm so sorry. I feel

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Speaker 1: like I have to watch every week with you now.

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Speaker 1: I wish I could go back in time. Daniel. Well,

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Speaker 1: the mental Daniel in your head says, that's impossible. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's actually one of my parenting goals is that my

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Speaker 1: kids have a little mental version of me in their

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Speaker 1: head that says, what would my dad say about this decision?

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Speaker 1: And at that point, you know, I'm sort of done.

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Speaker 1: I'm not needed anymore. Yeah, it sounds like a great

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Speaker 1: conversation your kids will have with their therapists later on. Alright,

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Speaker 1: So that's the question today, is what does the world

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Speaker 1: look like at the sort of quantum particle level. If

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Speaker 1: we could see an electron, an individual electron, what will

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Speaker 1: we see and how could we see it? Right? Yeah, exactly?

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Speaker 1: And how are we seeing it? Because we we aren't

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Speaker 1: getting sort of pictures of that in science right now.

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Speaker 1: And not only are we claiming to say we saw

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Speaker 1: an electron go this way, and we saw you and

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Speaker 1: go that way, we're claiming stay ments about the particles

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Speaker 1: they came from, things like the Higgs boson that last

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Speaker 1: a very brief moments in time. And so not only

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Speaker 1: are we claiming to have seen you know, electrons and muans,

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Speaker 1: which is sort of everyday particles, we're claiming they have

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Speaker 1: seen weird, exotic stuff. So we'll dig into exactly what

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Speaker 1: we mean when we say we saw the Higgs boson,

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Speaker 1: And I guess it's kind of a philosophical question, right,

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Speaker 1: like can you actually see one of these particles without

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Speaker 1: touching it or without interacting with it? You can? Can

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Speaker 1: you really like spy on a higgs boson or spy

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Speaker 1: and a cork? And would it still get a restraining

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Speaker 1: order if you there? Now? I think that's one of

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Speaker 1: the really interesting deep questions is are these things just

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Speaker 1: mental models, Are these just ideas we have in our

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Speaker 1: head calculational tools we use to predict future experiments, or

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Speaker 1: are these things really there? Right? And that's why we

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Speaker 1: want to see them, because it gives us a sense

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Speaker 1: that things are really there, right, Um, And you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm actually an expert in this area. You're a nice

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Speaker 1: bread being there. I think. I think I'm pretty good

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Speaker 1: there too, physically at least. No, I'm an expert in

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Speaker 1: pontificating ignorantly about the philosophy of physics. You're a professional

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Speaker 1: physical pontificator. No. I was actually given the title of

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Speaker 1: professor of philosophy. Oh right, right, that's right, that that

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Speaker 1: you do have as part of your job. That is

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Speaker 1: one of your job titles. You're a professor in the

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Speaker 1: philosophy department. Yeah. I just showed up at a bunch

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Speaker 1: of philosophy seminars for a while, and then eventually somebody said, hey,

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Speaker 1: who are you. What you're doing coming to all of

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Speaker 1: our seminars, And then I told him maybe I'm a

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Speaker 1: particle physicist. I'm interested in the philosophy philosophical imvocations of

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Speaker 1: the research. And they were like cool, and then they

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Speaker 1: gave me a joint appointment. Apparently that's all it takes

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Speaker 1: to become a philosopher. Did they even check your ide

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Speaker 1: where they're just like, hey, you look, you look kind

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Speaker 1: of like a physicist. I think I do come in.

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Speaker 1: I think I do look kind of like a physicist

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Speaker 1: and maybe a tiny little bit like a philosopher as

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Speaker 1: I get older and more scruffy physics philosopher, or maybe

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Speaker 1: I just look look more like a homeless person. I

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Speaker 1: don't know either one. You're qualified to be a philosophy professor,

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Speaker 1: or there's some quantum superposition between physicist, philosopher and homeless person.

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Speaker 1: And I'm going for three, you know, something to aim for? Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: if this podcast doesn't work out, I might just be

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Speaker 1: that's right, if we end up in something everyone else

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Speaker 1: and get suited out of all our money. But I

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Speaker 1: was curious what people think about when we talk about

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Speaker 1: seeing particle and how do we see them? And so

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Speaker 1: I walked around campus at you See Irvine and I

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Speaker 1: asked people. I said, how can you see tiny particles?

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Speaker 1: How do they do that at particle physics experiments? So

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Speaker 1: those of you listening think about it for a second.

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Speaker 1: If somebody asked you on the street, how can you

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Speaker 1: see a particle? What would you answer? Here's what people

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Speaker 1: had to say. I think we have to use like

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Speaker 1: lens and stuff to use the light, like Prince principle

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Speaker 1: of light and princible of the lens, so that we

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Speaker 1: can use like we can manify the small stuff. This

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Speaker 1: is bigger in chemistry. You can literally see it through

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Speaker 1: spectroscopy or like atoms and space micro or atoms like microscopes,

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Speaker 1: electron microscope. So it depends on the particle size. Well,

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Speaker 1: electron microscopes, I guess get too pretty small. But beyond that,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It's you know, they have devices that

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Speaker 1: can sense tiny particulates in air or gas. It was

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Speaker 1: a microscope, I hope. I don't know magnifying glass either.

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Speaker 1: One microscope, very powerful device. I believe they use something

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Speaker 1: called scintillators, which are kind of like really dense interactive slabs.

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Speaker 1: All Right, it seems that everyone's pretty much said, how

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Speaker 1: do you look at small things? The answer most people

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Speaker 1: gave was a microscope. Yeah, And that's not a terrible

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Speaker 1: answer because microscopes are good at seeing really small things,

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Speaker 1: and everybody has that experience, and so I think people

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Speaker 1: just imagine, like, well, if I have a little toy

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Speaker 1: microscope at home that I can use to look at

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Speaker 1: bugs in a lab, that a powerful microscope they can

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Speaker 1: use to look at individual cells. Surely you can just

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Speaker 1: make microscopes more and more powerful and see smaller and

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Speaker 1: smaller things. I think there's just sort of extrapolate bigger, right. Well,

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Speaker 1: I thought it was funny that the answer to how

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Speaker 1: do you look at small things is using a device

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Speaker 1: for looking at small things. Obviously I use my small

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Speaker 1: things looking at device andator. I mean that's what the

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Speaker 1: microscope means, right, microscope like looking at small things? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um,

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Speaker 1: I think that's pretty common. I mean you could level

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Speaker 1: a lot of the same criticism at physics. You know,

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Speaker 1: what is dark matter? It's something that's dark and we

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Speaker 1: think it has matter, and that's about all we know

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Speaker 1: about it. So sometimes you just sort of like encapsulate

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Speaker 1: our ignorance or are to the totality of our knowledge

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Speaker 1: in a cool sounding name which is totally sketchy and

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Speaker 1: or genius if you think splash cutting edge science. Exactly.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's dig into it. Let's talk about

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Speaker 1: what a microscope is, how it works, and what it

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Speaker 1: can actually see. What is the limit of microscopy. The

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Speaker 1: key you seem to understand there is that a microscope

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Speaker 1: is using light. Right, The way that you usually look

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Speaker 1: at things is that you use light right, photons hit

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Speaker 1: your eye then make an image in the back of

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Speaker 1: your retina. Your brain turns that into however you want

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Speaker 1: to interpret it. Right, So if you're just looking at

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Speaker 1: something macroscopic, you know, your hand or a ball or

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Speaker 1: or whatever, a homeless physics professor or something, then the

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Speaker 1: image just forms in the back of your eye. Right.

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Speaker 1: So microscope is just a fancy device to sort of

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Speaker 1: gather the light from really small things and make that

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Speaker 1: image on the back of your eye. You basically want

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Speaker 1: to cut out all the lights coming from other things

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Speaker 1: in the universe and just have the light that's coming

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Speaker 1: from the small thing you're trying to look at be

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Speaker 1: the one that hits your eye exactly. And you have

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Speaker 1: to remember that the back of your eye has a resolution, right,

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Speaker 1: has these cones and rods and uses a form an image.

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Speaker 1: If you have something really small and all of its

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Speaker 1: photons hit like the same rod or the same cone,

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Speaker 1: then any detail inside of it is just gonna get lost.

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Speaker 1: It's just gonna look like a dot, right, like one

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Speaker 1: pixel in your eye. But if instead you have these

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Speaker 1: lenses which spread the light out, so this tiny little

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Speaker 1: thing now forms an image that covers the entire back

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Speaker 1: of your eye. Then you can tell the difference between

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Speaker 1: one side of it another of the green parts and

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Speaker 1: the red parts. Right, So it's about spreading the same

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Speaker 1: light from this from this tiny thing over a larger

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Speaker 1: area on your eye so that you can resolve the

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Speaker 1: differences you can see different parts of it. I thought

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Speaker 1: it was interesting the way you said that. You basically

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Speaker 1: have to you're looking at things a light that you

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Speaker 1: have to bump off of the thing you're trying to

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Speaker 1: look at, right, like, you have to shadow it with photons,

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Speaker 1: and then you from the ones that bounce around. That's

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Speaker 1: how you tell what's there. Yes, exactly right. Remember that

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Speaker 1: things don't emit light unless they're like, you know, a

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Speaker 1: light bulb or a sun or whatever. If you're looking

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Speaker 1: at a sample of something saying you've gathered some you know,

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Speaker 1: cells from the inside of your mouth, or you picked

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Speaker 1: up some dirt from the ground and you want to

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Speaker 1: see it, it's not glowing. The only way you see

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Speaker 1: it is when it reflects lights. You need a light

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Speaker 1: source like a light bulb, shoots photons at it, and

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Speaker 1: then those photons bounce off and come to your eye,

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Speaker 1: and you know, different things have different colors, and so

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Speaker 1: they reflect different kinds of lights, and that's why things

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Speaker 1: look green or blue or whatever. And so regular microscopes

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Speaker 1: work with light, and they work with lenses, right, like

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Speaker 1: little pieces of glass that are curved in just the

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Speaker 1: right way to kind of gather all those photons and

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Speaker 1: kind of focus in or spread them in the right way. Right, yes, exactly,

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Speaker 1: and so it's all this reflected light, and then they

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Speaker 1: spread them out so that the thing you want to

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Speaker 1: look at occupy sort of the back of your eye,

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Speaker 1: and and you're looking at just that, and you know

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Speaker 1: that you can have a pretty weak one, like a

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Speaker 1: magnifying glass does, that you can have a more powerful one.

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Speaker 1: My wife has really powerful microscopes in her labs because

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Speaker 1: she looks at individual cells and tries to look at

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Speaker 1: individual viruses. And so you might imagine, I can just

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Speaker 1: build a bigger one and a bigger one, and I

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Speaker 1: can build one the sides of a football stadium, and

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Speaker 1: that'll let me see an electron. Right, what's the current

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Speaker 1: limit for optical microscopes or light based microscopes. The limit

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Speaker 1: is that light itself sort of has a size. It's

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Speaker 1: not that photons are particles that you can measure with

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Speaker 1: a ruler or anything. Remember, photons are sort of wiggles, right.

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Speaker 1: We think of them as these waves, and the waves

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Speaker 1: have a wavelength, and the wavelength is like how long

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Speaker 1: it takes them to wiggle up and then wiggle back down.

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Speaker 1: And different frequencies of light correspond to different wavelengths, right,

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Speaker 1: So high frequencies means short wavelengths. High frequency just means

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Speaker 1: they wiggle more often, right, So they have shorter wavelengths

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Speaker 1: and longer wavelengths like radio waves have a low frequency.

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Speaker 1: And the thing is that light has a frequency, right,

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Speaker 1: And that's sort of like the size of the light.

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Speaker 1: And you can't really see anything that has a that's

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Speaker 1: smaller than the wavelength of light that you're using. Um,

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Speaker 1: I guess my question is why not? I think the

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Speaker 1: best way to think about it is that you're using

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Speaker 1: light as a probe. You're like shooting photons at something

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Speaker 1: and you're seeing how it bounces off, right. And but

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Speaker 1: instead of light, which is hard to sort of visualized,

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Speaker 1: imagine you're like poking at it with a stick. Right.

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Speaker 1: If you had like a really wide stick, then you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't really be able to tell small differences and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Whereas if you had a really narrow stick, like with

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Speaker 1: a real point to it, you can really tell the edge.

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Speaker 1: Like a record player works. Record player works. This has

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Speaker 1: a tiny little needle and it goes through the ridges

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Speaker 1: on the record and tells you, like what those little

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Speaker 1: bumps are. Imagine if instead of having a tiny needle,

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Speaker 1: you just use like your finger and you couldn't tell,

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Speaker 1: like how many little bumps are there. You couldn't get

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Speaker 1: that information out. So what you need is a small

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Speaker 1: little probe to bounce off of to see the tiny

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Speaker 1: little differences so that you see so that the light

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Speaker 1: is actually affected by the thing that you're trying to

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Speaker 1: look at, you know what I mean, Like if yes,

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Speaker 1: and then it's affected only by that because if you

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Speaker 1: have if your light is too large a wavelength, then

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Speaker 1: things smaller than that are going to affect the light,

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Speaker 1: but also the things next to it will, right Like

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Speaker 1: if the thing you're trying to look at is ten

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Speaker 1: nimes and your light has five hundred nimes, then the

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Speaker 1: light's going to bounce off the fifty things fifty nime

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Speaker 1: things next to each other, and it's gonna give you

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Speaker 1: sort of an average over those If you want to

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Speaker 1: see things that are really really small, then you need

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Speaker 1: a probe that's that size so it doesn't bounce off

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Speaker 1: it and it's fifty neighbors right, all right, So I

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Speaker 1: get that you need a really short wave length of

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Speaker 1: light to look at really small things exactly. I guess

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Speaker 1: My question is why is that a limitation? Like, couldn't

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Speaker 1: we just make light smaller and smaller and smaller? Also,

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Speaker 1: just like super high freuency light, Yes, you can with

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Speaker 1: visible light the and microscopy, the limit is about two nimes.

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Speaker 1: And the reason is that above that the light has

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Speaker 1: such high frequency that it has such high energy that

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Speaker 1: doesn't bounce off anymore. Instead, it becomes X rays, it

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Speaker 1: becomes gamma rays, and they just go right through. And

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Speaker 1: so there's no limit to the energy you can have

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Speaker 1: of light. But eventually you're just you're building like a

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Speaker 1: laser and you're just zapping these things instead of you know,

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Speaker 1: probing them. Oh, I see, at some point you shrink

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Speaker 1: the wavelength down, but that also increases its energy, and

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Speaker 1: so they start to ignore the thing you're trying to

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Speaker 1: look at. Is that kind of what's going on? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's one part of it. The other part of it

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Speaker 1: is the lenses, right, we need lenses to bend this light.

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Speaker 1: The ability of lenses to work depends on the frequency

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Speaker 1: of light, and the higher the frequency, the harder it is.

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Speaker 1: And so like, there aren't lenses that can bend X

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Speaker 1: rays or gamma rays very well. And that's the basic

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Speaker 1: principle of the microscope is you're using this lens to

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Speaker 1: expand to bend the light to take a small image

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Speaker 1: and make it large, and you can't really do that

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Speaker 1: anymore as the light gets very very high frequency. At

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Speaker 1: some point, the light starts to ignore your lenses, is

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Speaker 1: what you're saying, Not just the thing you're trying to

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Speaker 1: look at, but just your ability to like focus them, Yes, exactly,

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Speaker 1: your ability to focus it and make the image degrades

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Speaker 1: very quickly as the photons get to very high energy.

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Speaker 1: Plus now you're shooting deadly radiation at whatever it is.

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Speaker 1: You mean, it kills the things you're trying to look at. Two. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean X rays you know, are damaging, ionizing radiation,

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Speaker 1: and they're great for seeing through things, right, but they're

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Speaker 1: not great for reflecting off of stuff. But I mean,

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Speaker 1: if we're trying to look at things that don't really die, right,

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Speaker 1: like an electron or a proton, or you know, a

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Speaker 1: small piece of rock. Does it really matter if you're

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Speaker 1: shooting it with X rays? Man, all particles matter. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, we we could do without the neutrinos probably, right,

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Speaker 1: while the neutrinos lobby is going to be knocking on

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Speaker 1: your door. Uh no, you're right, and we and we

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Speaker 1: can do that, right. We can probe individual particles by

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Speaker 1: shooting X rays at them and shooting gamma rays at them, certainly,

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Speaker 1: but you know, are you forming an image in that case? Right?

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Speaker 1: You're shooting individual particles at these particles and they're bouncing off,

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Speaker 1: but you're not really forming an image in the same way.

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00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:28,719
Speaker 1: It's not really my cross copy anymore because you're not

428
00:21:28,800 --> 00:21:32,240
Speaker 1: focusing that image, you know, distorting and focusing that image

429
00:21:32,320 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 1: to make something that you can visually see. Yeah, you

430
00:21:34,600 --> 00:21:37,040
Speaker 1: can use gamma rays and X rays to probe stuff.

431
00:21:37,119 --> 00:21:39,480
Speaker 1: Or could you make like special lenses, maybe not made

432
00:21:39,480 --> 00:21:42,240
Speaker 1: out of glass that it gets ignored by X rays,

433
00:21:42,280 --> 00:21:44,000
Speaker 1: but you know, can you make a special lens made

434
00:21:44,040 --> 00:21:46,920
Speaker 1: out of something that X rays don't ignore. They're working

435
00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:49,560
Speaker 1: on that, and you know people are doing that for example,

436
00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:52,240
Speaker 1: to develop X ray lasers. That's one of the challenges.

437
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:54,439
Speaker 1: But it's very difficult to get any sort of material

438
00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:56,640
Speaker 1: that will bend X rays or gamma rays. All right,

439
00:21:56,680 --> 00:22:00,800
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of the limitations of tradition microscopes

440
00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:05,040
Speaker 1: that use light. Yeah, exactly, it's down to about two nimes.

441
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:07,040
Speaker 1: It's sort of the smallest thing you can see with

442
00:22:07,119 --> 00:22:10,919
Speaker 1: a light based microscope. But of course, um one of

443
00:22:10,920 --> 00:22:13,159
Speaker 1: the wonders of particle physics is that we think of

444
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:16,119
Speaker 1: everything and that's a particle also is sort of a wave.

445
00:22:16,400 --> 00:22:20,200
Speaker 1: So we can talk about the wavelength of particles like electrons,

446
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:23,200
Speaker 1: and you can ask, oh, could we instead of using light,

447
00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:25,439
Speaker 1: instead of bouncing light off of stuff, could we bounce

448
00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:28,440
Speaker 1: something else off of it's something with a smaller wavelength.

449
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:31,120
Speaker 1: So people have this idea of decades ago, and they said,

450
00:22:31,359 --> 00:22:35,240
Speaker 1: what about electrons. Let's get into that idea of a wavelescope?

451
00:22:35,280 --> 00:22:39,080
Speaker 1: Is that how you would call it, maybe electroscope, a

452
00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:46,040
Speaker 1: particularscope scope? Somebody copyright that quick Yeah, but first let's

453
00:22:46,280 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right. We're talking about microscopes

454
00:23:01,800 --> 00:23:06,040
Speaker 1: and probing the smallest things in the universe, and so

455
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 1: we talked about how the optical regular microscopes that we're

456
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 1: all used to from physics in high school have a

457
00:23:13,320 --> 00:23:16,639
Speaker 1: limitation of about two d and fifty nanometers. That's the

458
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:19,600
Speaker 1: smallest thing we can see with those, which to me

459
00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:23,520
Speaker 1: sounds pretty small, but maybe for particles that's really big. Yeah,

460
00:23:23,560 --> 00:23:25,879
Speaker 1: Like you want to see an individual molecule, right, or

461
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:28,680
Speaker 1: you want to look at some complicated thing and see

462
00:23:28,720 --> 00:23:31,120
Speaker 1: like what, how do the bonds work? Right? You want

463
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:33,439
Speaker 1: to zoom down and look at a single hydrogen atom, right,

464
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:37,800
Speaker 1: They're much smaller than two And so of course I

465
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 1: want to see things that are released some all. I'm

466
00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:41,359
Speaker 1: a particle physicist. I want to be aunt Man and

467
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:43,240
Speaker 1: zoomed down to the quantum realm and see how the

468
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:47,480
Speaker 1: universe works. And so I'm definitely interested in ultra microscopy. Right.

469
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:50,879
Speaker 1: And so instead of using light, something else that we

470
00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 1: can do is we can use and use electrons to

471
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:56,480
Speaker 1: see something. And so the idea behind using electrons is

472
00:23:56,520 --> 00:23:59,720
Speaker 1: that just like when you use light, Right, when you

473
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:01,840
Speaker 1: use light for a microscope, you shine a light bulb

474
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:04,159
Speaker 1: on something and then you're looking at the light that

475
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: comes off of it to make your image. It's the

476
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: same with electrons. We shoot a beam of electrons it's something,

477
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:12,399
Speaker 1: and then we see how the electrons bounce off, and

478
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:14,439
Speaker 1: then we use that to reconstruct an image. It's not

479
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:16,679
Speaker 1: a direct image. It's not like the electrons hit your

480
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 1: eye and then make an image in your eye. They

481
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 1: go into a computer and the computer says, Okay, this

482
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:24,240
Speaker 1: electron bounced off at that angle, which means is something

483
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:27,439
Speaker 1: here that looks like that these electrons were there bounced

484
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:29,679
Speaker 1: off that angle and sort of sort of uses it

485
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:33,639
Speaker 1: to reconstruct, um, what the electrons must have bounced off of. Okay,

486
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:37,159
Speaker 1: So the idea is that electrons are smaller than photons.

487
00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 1: Is that is that the idea? Or you can get

488
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 1: an electron to have a smaller wavelength than a photon. Yes, exactly.

489
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:47,639
Speaker 1: Electrons can have smaller wavelength than photons because they have

490
00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: um they have more mass and so that ends up

491
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: giving them a smaller wavelength. Oh I see, and also

492
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 1: they don't kill the thing you're trying to look at, right,

493
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 1: that's kind of part of the idea. That's right. And

494
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,439
Speaker 1: there's actually different kinds of elect on microscopes. There's the

495
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,080
Speaker 1: ones with the electrons go bounce off of it, which

496
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:07,120
Speaker 1: is very similar to light based microscopes. There's also other

497
00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 1: electron microscopes with electrons do go through the material, the

498
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 1: transmission electron microscopes, but the basic idea is the same,

499
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 1: is that the wavelength of the electron is small enough

500
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: that you're sensitive to tiny features. Right. It's it's the

501
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 1: tip of that stick that you're using to sort of

502
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 1: drag across the surface of something to see like where

503
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 1: are the bumps, And then you you have to catch

504
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:30,560
Speaker 1: the electrons and kind of tell what's happening to them. Yes,

505
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: you have to catch the electrons or you have no

506
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 1: idea what happened to them, right, So you need like

507
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: a little particle beam. You shoot electrons at something and

508
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: then you have to catch the electrons, and from the

509
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 1: angle of the electrons you can tell what happened. It's

510
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, imagine that you're in the

511
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: dark and you're I don't know, and there's a wall

512
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:48,919
Speaker 1: in front of you. You want to know what the

513
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:51,439
Speaker 1: shape of it is, so you throw tennis balls at it, right,

514
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:54,680
Speaker 1: and if the tennis balls are dark, tennis balls obviously

515
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,600
Speaker 1: exactly glow with electrons. Um. Yeah, I carry I carry

516
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:01,520
Speaker 1: glow that our tennis balls with me at all times,

517
00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: just in case I end up in this situation, just

518
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: in case there there's a power outage. To throw tennis

519
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: balls to the wall and if they bounce up, you

520
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: know that the wall has a certain angle to it.

521
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:11,920
Speaker 1: And if they bounce right, then you know the wall

522
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:14,199
Speaker 1: has a certain angle to it, and you know, and

523
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,399
Speaker 1: if it says out the exactly your wife, then you

524
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,199
Speaker 1: found your kids, you know. And if you're really careful

525
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:22,119
Speaker 1: about it, and you're throwing these tennis balls at different

526
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: parts of the wall and measuring the angles they bounce out,

527
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:27,240
Speaker 1: then you can build a mental image of what the

528
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 1: wall looks like without seeing using light. Right, that's exactly

529
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: the idea. And you know, the smaller the ball that

530
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 1: you throw the wall, the more you can resolve really

531
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: small features on the wall. And that's why we want

532
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:41,720
Speaker 1: to use small wavelengths. But you have to be really

533
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:44,920
Speaker 1: good at throwing these tennis balls right and measuring where

534
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: they're going, yes, exactly. You have to be very accurate

535
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:50,320
Speaker 1: about shooting them, and you have to be very good

536
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:52,679
Speaker 1: at catching them, and then you need a computer to

537
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: put that all together and to make an image for

538
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:56,879
Speaker 1: your brain and it's pretty cool because we've been able

539
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:01,960
Speaker 1: to look at single molecules right with these electrons on microscopes. Yeah, exactly.

540
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, they made an image of a

541
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 1: single molecule. And when I first saw that, I thought, wow,

542
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: Like I've had an image in my head of what

543
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:12,680
Speaker 1: a molecule looks like. You know, it's got a bunch

544
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:15,440
Speaker 1: of particles zooming around whatever. But here's like a picture.

545
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,360
Speaker 1: You know. It's like you think you know what Saturn

546
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:20,240
Speaker 1: looks like. And then we fly a probe by and

547
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: you get actual pictures from Saturn. Right, that's much more satisfying.

548
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:26,719
Speaker 1: And to see like a picture of an atom than

549
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: your imagination, yes, exactly, to go from imagination to reality.

550
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 1: That's a transformational moment in science. And so that's what

551
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:36,440
Speaker 1: did it look like? Um? Did it look like? Paul Rudd?

552
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: There was some would be a shocker. It looks like

553
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 1: a man, Oh my god, he's been here. Yeah, and

554
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 1: he wrote s os right helped me. Finally somebody can

555
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 1: see me. I'm stuck down here. I'm slack down here

556
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: with Michelle Peiffer. Go away. Actually I'm fine. Um no,

557
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: it looks sort of like what you would imagine, you know,

558
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: you can see the electrons orbiting the nucleus, but you

559
00:27:57,880 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: can see that stuff is there. You know, it gives

560
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: you the idea that it's real, that it's not just

561
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:05,399
Speaker 1: a mental calculation. That's it's pretty fascinating. And then a

562
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,959
Speaker 1: few years later they were able to image a single

563
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: hydrogen atom. Right, that's just a proton with an electron

564
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: around it. It um It's pretty impressive. And these days

565
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 1: electron microscopes can get you down to half of a

566
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: N animator. So light based microscopes are two animators. Electron

567
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: microscopes down to half a N animator, So that's a

568
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:26,360
Speaker 1: big difference. To mean, that's kind of weird because it's

569
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:29,440
Speaker 1: kind of like you're saying, hey, I saw this glue

570
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:31,480
Speaker 1: in the dark tennis ball that was sitting there, and

571
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 1: then I asked you, how do you know it was there?

572
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 1: And then you say, well, I throw a bunch of

573
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 1: glue in the dark tennis balls at it, and that's

574
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:37,640
Speaker 1: how I know there is a glue in the dark

575
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: tennis ball there. Do you know what I mean? Isn't

576
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 1: that weird? It is kind of weird, and if you

577
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 1: want to be really strict about it, philosophically, then yeah,

578
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: you're not really seeing it. You're inferring its existence from

579
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: you know, probing it, and you're building a mental model. Right.

580
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: But that's sort of the same with everything, Like how

581
00:28:57,800 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: do you know that there's a watermelon in front of you?

582
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I see it? Well do you see it?

583
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 1: Or do you see the photon that bounced off of it?

584
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 1: And then your brain built a mental model in the end,

585
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: it's really the same. Oh I see you're saying that

586
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: the watermelon itself didn't hit your eyeball hopefully not hopefully

587
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: notice you know, looking in the dark with the watermelon

588
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 1: throwing it around. Uh, you never see the thing you're

589
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:24,760
Speaker 1: trying to see, you know. I mean like you never

590
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: directly touch the thing that you're trying to see. You

591
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: just touched things that touched it. Yeah, So you can

592
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 1: either say you never really see anything, or you can

593
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:37,320
Speaker 1: say that's what seeing is, right, interacting with the universe

594
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 1: and building a mental model of what you think is

595
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: out there. And so from that perspective, seeing with light

596
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: and seeing with electrons it's really the same. I mean,

597
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: it's maybe more layers of indirection, but they're both indirect

598
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: at the same level. Well, you know what my grandmother

599
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: always used to say, I'm prepared for some Joree grandma

600
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 1: wisdom hit me. So he said, you know that seeing

601
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: is believing that seeing can be whatever you define it

602
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:04,480
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, exactly. And I think that seeing plays

603
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: a big role in making people believe something because it's

604
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: it's such an overwhelming amount of data. It really affects

605
00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 1: the way you think about things. It's it's such a

606
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 1: dramatically important part of how we build this model of

607
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: where we are in the universe. And so I think

608
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't believe something unless they can

609
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 1: see it. For example, I was listening to the Bologny

610
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:29,479
Speaker 1: documentary on Netflix about Bob Lazarre and UFOs, and like,

611
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,320
Speaker 1: he claims to have seen these things, but if I

612
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: don't see them, I can't believe what he's saying. It

613
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 1: has to be repeatable, right, like checkable. Yeah, Well, especially

614
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: for something really crazy, like I found an alien spacecraft.

615
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: It uses anti gravity propulsion. You know, extraordinary claims require

616
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: extraordinary evidence. And you know I wouldn't believe those claims

617
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 1: from Stephen Hawking if I couldn't see the ship myself.

618
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: So I'm certainly I canna believe it from some random dude. Well,

619
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: all right, so that's electron microscopes. We can shoot electrons

620
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: and things and by measure aring how they get deflected

621
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: or bounce back, then you can look at some pretty

622
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: small things because electrons are smaller than light. That's the

623
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: idea where you can get electrons down smaller too, smaller

624
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: sizes and exactly. Okay, so now we get into the

625
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: weirder stuff, right, like, how can we see an electron itself? Right?

626
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: How can we see the tennis balls themselves? So how

627
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: do we know what the tennis balls actually look like?

628
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, So now, Daniel,

629
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: how do we see an electron? Because we our best

630
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: technology sort of is in microscope, is to use electrons

631
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 1: to look at things. But how can we see something

632
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:53,160
Speaker 1: as small as an electron itself? Yeah? That's really tricky,

633
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 1: and I think the most honest answer is that you

634
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:59,840
Speaker 1: can't really. If you could somehow isolate one electron in

635
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: trap and you could balance electrons off of it so

636
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 1: you could tell that it was there, but you know,

637
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: you can't really use tennis balls to see tennis balls.

638
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 1: I mean, you can tell that it's it's there, but

639
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: you can't like see it to resolve features that are

640
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: that are smaller than it. Right, you want to know

641
00:32:15,280 --> 00:32:18,160
Speaker 1: more than it was there. You want to see, you know,

642
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:19,959
Speaker 1: what does this side of it look like? What does

643
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: that side of it look like? And so you can't

644
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: do that with this. It looks like Paul Rudd also

645
00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: exactly is it getting wrinkles or is it getting botox?

646
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:30,959
Speaker 1: You know, um, what are the features of it? So

647
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: you can't use an electron to see an electron in

648
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: any detail? Can you use something smaller? Can you like,

649
00:32:36,480 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: can we shoot quarks at it? Are quark smaller than electrons?

650
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: Or you know, little strings? Can we shoot little strings

651
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 1: at it? All these particles are microscopic. They're basically point particles.

652
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: What we can do is we can shoot other particles

653
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 1: at them, but we can't really resolve any features. You know,

654
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 1: you could shoot super high energy particles at them, and

655
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: you can try to get a sense for like where

656
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 1: is the charge distribution, But you're not really going to

657
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: get a satisfying image out of these things. And in

658
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: the end, all you can do is really detect that

659
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:05,240
Speaker 1: it's there. So I don't think you can see and

660
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 1: you can resolve any features. All you can do is

661
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 1: make a statement about its existence. Oh, I see, we

662
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 1: can't touch it, or we can't poke at it the

663
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:15,080
Speaker 1: same way that we poke at other things because we

664
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: don't have anything to poke it with. That's right. And

665
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 1: if you poked it with another electron, with another particle,

666
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: all you would do is say that it's there. You

667
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: can't really see anything smaller than that particle. It could

668
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: be that there's things inside the electron. Right, imagine that

669
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: the electron is not fundamental, it's not a point particle,

670
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 1: but it's made of smaller particles. Okay, how would you

671
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: tell s? Quickly? On? Yes, quickly? On exactly? How would

672
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:39,240
Speaker 1: you tell what? You would have to take super duper

673
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:43,040
Speaker 1: high energy particles and shoot them at the electron and

674
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:46,360
Speaker 1: then try to see like a variation in the response,

675
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 1: Like if I shoot them at the top of the

676
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,280
Speaker 1: electron or the middle of the electron or this part

677
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:53,360
Speaker 1: of electron, do I get different responses? And this is

678
00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 1: for example, how we discovered that the atom has a nucleus. Right,

679
00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: we shot high energy particles at gold atom and we saw, Oh,

680
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: if you go right in the center, boom, they bounce back,

681
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: and if you miss the center, then they don't bounce back,

682
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 1: so we could tell if there was something there in

683
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:09,880
Speaker 1: the center. So what you need for that is really

684
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 1: really high energy particles, so they have really short wavelengths,

685
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:15,239
Speaker 1: and we've done that kind of stuff. We shot really

686
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,319
Speaker 1: high energy electrons at each other um and we've never

687
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: seen anything inside the electron. So as far as we

688
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:23,280
Speaker 1: can tell, we haven't been able to resolve any features

689
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,160
Speaker 1: inside the electron, not yet. At least. It's like taking

690
00:34:26,200 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 1: a little box and shaking it to try to figure

691
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:31,479
Speaker 1: out what's inside of it, but you can't open the box. Yeah, yeah,

692
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And so all we need is, you know,

693
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 1: a hundred billion dollars to build a really big accelerator

694
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 1: so we can shoot these things at each other with

695
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 1: even more energy and maybe start to figure out where

696
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:46,759
Speaker 1: the stuff is inside the electron. Oh man, Daniel, is

697
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: this what this has all been about? You're just trying

698
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 1: to ask me for money. Just take out your check

699
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:54,759
Speaker 1: book and write a bunch of zeros. I mean, how

700
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: hard is it? Sure it's easy, I'll do it here,

701
00:34:57,640 --> 00:34:59,839
Speaker 1: hold on, I don't never the check will go through.

702
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,000
Speaker 1: But I can definitely write you a check. You might

703
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 1: have to wait to cash it, but here you go.

704
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 1: That's right, I don't have the cash flow right now.

705
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 1: But and in the end, that's what we're doing with

706
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:13,800
Speaker 1: particle colliders, is that we're just shooting higher and higher

707
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:16,480
Speaker 1: energy particles at each other to try to see inside them.

708
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: And that's how we found out what's inside the proton. Right.

709
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:21,879
Speaker 1: We saw that if you shoot the protons at each

710
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,840
Speaker 1: other with that high enough energy, or actually if you

711
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 1: shoot high energy electrons at protons, then sometimes they bounce

712
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 1: back with a lot of energy and sometimes they go through.

713
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:33,800
Speaker 1: And that's how we found that there were quarks inside

714
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: the protons. We could see these little spots inside the

715
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,759
Speaker 1: protons where the electrons are more likely to bounce off

716
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 1: and interact. So that's how we discovered quarks from the

717
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:45,120
Speaker 1: way that it behaves when you shooted it, not from

718
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: what you measure of the things that you shoot at it,

719
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 1: which is how it's sort of like what happens if

720
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 1: I shoot at it and some weird things happen, and

721
00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 1: from that you can tell what was inside the box. Yeah,

722
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: we shoot like super duper tiny high energy tennis balls

723
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,280
Speaker 1: at these protons and sometimes they bounce back and sometimes

724
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:04,880
Speaker 1: they go through, and that tells us you know, where

725
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,360
Speaker 1: the stuff is inside the proton, and that sort of

726
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 1: gives us an image. Is sort of like X raying

727
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:11,319
Speaker 1: the proton. I guess you could say, so, does that

728
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:13,960
Speaker 1: mean that we can exceed the limit of half a

729
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 1: nanometer that you mentioned before as being the limit that's

730
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: the limit for electron microscopy for like seeing samples. But

731
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 1: if you use particle colliders, then yeah, you can get

732
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:26,600
Speaker 1: smaller than that. But you know, it's it's not as

733
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 1: clear that you're seeing. I mean, you're not like you

734
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:32,399
Speaker 1: can't take an individual proton and scan it and send

735
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of electrons at it. Right, this is a

736
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 1: one off experiment, one electron against one proton, and then

737
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: you do it again and you build up a sort

738
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 1: of statistical model for what's going on inside the proton.

739
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: But you can't take one proton and like, you know,

740
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:47,799
Speaker 1: zoom a bunch of electrons at it and get an

741
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: image of it in the same way that you can,

742
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:52,359
Speaker 1: for example, a hydrogen atom or molecule. Oh, I see,

743
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: you can't look like if I had a special electron

744
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 1: that I wanted to look at that, that would be impossible. Yeah,

745
00:36:57,760 --> 00:36:59,919
Speaker 1: you basically just get one look. But you can sort

746
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:04,400
Speaker 1: look at electrons in general to maybe see what's inside

747
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of them. But like if I gave

748
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: you a special electron, said hey, this electron came from Mars,

749
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 1: can you check it out? You would not be able

750
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 1: to tell me anything about it. I could, you know,

751
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: probe it once. Basically, it's sort of like it's a

752
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:23,279
Speaker 1: destructive technique. Here's this really special electron, Daniel, do you

753
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 1: tell me what it looks like? Sure, it looks like this.

754
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:28,280
Speaker 1: Where is it? I'd be like, well, first sign this waiver,

755
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:33,759
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I promise you won't sue me. Yeah, exactly. Um,

756
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: But you know, there are lots of things that we

757
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 1: started at the large hage On collider that we can't

758
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,040
Speaker 1: see directly, and yet we claim they exist. So maybe

759
00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: before we wrap up we should dig into that a

760
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: little bit. All of this has been kind of seeing

761
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 1: things that we already know about. But you guys had

762
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:53,640
Speaker 1: the collider are trying to look for things that you

763
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: don't even know what they look like. If you could

764
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:57,799
Speaker 1: even look at them, that's right, And to make it

765
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: even crazier these particles is that we think exist, they

766
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 1: don't last very long. So for example, every time we

767
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:07,360
Speaker 1: make a Higgs boson, it lives a very brief, happy

768
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:11,719
Speaker 1: life for about ten to the minus twenty three seconds, right,

769
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: So these things, it's not like we make a pile

770
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:15,279
Speaker 1: of Higgs bosons and then they have a bowl of

771
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: them and we're like, okay, what are these things? Like?

772
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 1: Each one lives for just the briefest, briefest moment. Not

773
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: only do you not know what they look like, but

774
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: they barely exist at all exactly. And what happens is

775
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 1: they exist briefly and then they turn into other particles,

776
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:32,400
Speaker 1: particles that were familiar with photons or electrons or muans

777
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 1: or something. And then we have a big camera essentially

778
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:39,359
Speaker 1: that tracks the passage to those particles, like we these

779
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: electrons or muans or whatever. As they fly out from

780
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:44,720
Speaker 1: the point of the collision, they leave these little traces

781
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: in our detectors, in little scintillators or trackers or calorimeters,

782
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 1: are all sorts of stuff. They give us a clue

783
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:53,319
Speaker 1: about the direction that these particles came out of. So

784
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 1: we don't see the Higgs boson itself. We just see

785
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 1: the particles it turned into. And even those we don't

786
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: see those particles themselves. We see we see sort of

787
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,360
Speaker 1: the trace they left in our detectors. You know that

788
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:06,120
Speaker 1: they were there, but you don't actually know what they

789
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 1: look like. Like the Higgs boson could look like Paul Rodd,

790
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 1: which just would never know, that's right. Um, we can

791
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 1: just see the sort of their footprints, and so it's

792
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: sort of like I don't know, arriving at like a

793
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: big fight scene and you see like footprints running off

794
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:21,920
Speaker 1: in every direction, and then you try to imagine, like

795
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: what happened. You know, somebody ran away this way and

796
00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: this blood stains this direction, someone fighting with Kenna Reeves

797
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,920
Speaker 1: and it was Jorge versus Paul. What happened? But we

798
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:34,719
Speaker 1: can use that to tell like, oh, this was an

799
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 1: electron and had this energy, and that was a muan

800
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: had this energy in this direction, and we can use

801
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 1: that with a bunch of physics arguments to reconstruct what

802
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:45,040
Speaker 1: we think happened in the collision and whether or not

803
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:47,839
Speaker 1: a Higgs boson existed briefly. And so in the end,

804
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 1: it's all sort of indirect and it's all statistical and

805
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:52,680
Speaker 1: We have no idea what a Higgs boson looks like,

806
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:55,239
Speaker 1: but we're pretty sure it was there just to maybe

807
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,840
Speaker 1: recap here and start to wrap up. We it seems

808
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 1: like we kind of have a like a progression, right Like,

809
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 1: if you want to see things with your actual eyeballs,

810
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: the limit of that is about two hundred and fifty nanometers,

811
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,960
Speaker 1: right Like, if you use lenses and optical microscopes, and

812
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 1: if you want to actually want to see the photons

813
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:16,800
Speaker 1: hit your eyeball, that's about the limit, right, yeah, exactly.

814
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: But if you want to be a little bit more indirect,

815
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:23,279
Speaker 1: you can use electron mics with microscopes and you don't

816
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 1: actually see the electrons, but you maybe see the image

817
00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: that comes from the electrons hitting some sort of sensor,

818
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 1: And that one gets you down to about half an animeter.

819
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: And then if you want to spend a couple of

820
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: billion dollars and be more sort of removed from the

821
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 1: thing you're looking at, then you have to get into

822
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: particle colliders and and those maybe you don't have a limit.

823
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: There's no limit except for money. Right. You can build

824
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:48,399
Speaker 1: a particle collider the size of the Solar system and

825
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: see things down to like ten to the minus twenty

826
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,839
Speaker 1: ten of the minus twenty five um. As far as

827
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:55,719
Speaker 1: we know, there's no limit until you get to like

828
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 1: the plank length, like what we think is the smallest

829
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:01,720
Speaker 1: spatial resolution of the universe itself. But that would require

830
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 1: like jillions of dollars a very special microscope. That's right,

831
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: And so everybody, get get at your checkbooks and support science.

832
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: No just kidding, Tell your congress people or your members

833
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:14,959
Speaker 1: of government that all this stuff is worth the money

834
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: because we want to know what the universe looks like.

835
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:19,520
Speaker 1: We want to tear it apart at the smallest scale

836
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: and build an image in our minds of what's going on.

837
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:26,240
Speaker 1: Just focus on all those tax dollars and making into science.

838
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:31,399
Speaker 1: That's right, alright, So thanks for tuning in everyone. That's

839
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 1: the answer to the question can you see an electron?

840
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,920
Speaker 1: And what's the smallest thing that we can see? And

841
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,799
Speaker 1: does it look like Paul Rudd? Now we know that

842
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: we may never know possibly, all right, Well, thanks for

843
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 1: tuning in. We hope you enjoyed that and hope you

844
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 1: got some clarity into seeing things at the very smallest

845
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:59,279
Speaker 1: of levels. See you next time if you still have

846
00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:02,720
Speaker 1: a question after listening to all these explanations. Please drop

847
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 1: us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You

848
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:08,280
Speaker 1: can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel

849
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 1: and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at Feedback

850
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and

851
00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:17,920
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a

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Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio from More podcast from my

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Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.