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Speaker 1: Do electrons only spin up and down? Or can they

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Speaker 1: spin sideways too? Our cells contain quadrillions of vaults, What

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Speaker 1: on earth do they do?

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Speaker 2: Particles are ripples in quantum fields, So can a field

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Speaker 2: exist without them? If you knock on vaults? What does

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Speaker 2: it do to the mouse immune system?

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Speaker 1: Well, an electron that turns right always turn right? Why

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Speaker 1: is dark chocolate better than whites?

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Speaker 2: Biology? Physics, immunology, forestry. Uugh, you can never really escape chemistry.

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Speaker 1: Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's

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Speaker 1: answers will make it right.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to another Listener Questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's

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Speaker 2: Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 3: Oh.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Wienersmith, and I'm a parasitologist, and I am

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Speaker 1: learning that there's all kinds of biology topics that I

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Speaker 1: just didn't even know existed. And I'm super excited about

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Speaker 1: today's episode.

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Speaker 4: Hi.

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Speaker 2: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I always knew

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Speaker 2: there was lots of biology I didn't know anything about.

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Speaker 1: I guess it's good to know what you don't know.

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Speaker 2: But my question for you today, Kelly, is when was

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Speaker 2: the last time one of your kids asked you a

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Speaker 2: biology question you didn't know the answer to. Oh, not

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Speaker 2: a daily occurrence over there in the Wienersmith household.

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Speaker 1: You know, I can't say my kids care about biology

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Speaker 1: that much. I don't. My daughter has been reading these

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Speaker 1: manga books about like cells biology, and like, we keep

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Speaker 1: buying her manga books on physiology and anatomy. And I

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Speaker 1: remember a couple years ago and I was looking through

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Speaker 1: the biology section at Barnes and Noble, and I saw

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Speaker 1: these manga books and I was like, who is the

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Speaker 1: audience for this? Who wants to read mangas about cell biology?

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Speaker 1: And the answer is ten year old girls. And she

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Speaker 1: is absolutely eating it up. But she was explaining to

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Speaker 1: me how cells come from other cells and blah blah blah.

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Speaker 1: And so I know these days I'm asking her the questions,

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Speaker 1: you know, because maybe she knows more about cell biology

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Speaker 1: than I do, as we'll learn today.

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Speaker 2: That's amazing. I love the idea of educational manca, like

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Speaker 2: manca as a way to teach science. What a great idea.

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Speaker 2: That's fantastic.

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Speaker 1: She is eating it up. What about you? When was

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Speaker 1: the last time your kids asked you a physics question

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Speaker 1: you didn't know the answer to.

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Speaker 2: Oh that happens all the time now because my son

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Speaker 2: is taking physics in high school and his girlfriend is

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Speaker 2: taking epiphysics, and so they come to me with tough

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Speaker 2: physics questions all the time. And I got to sit

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Speaker 2: down with a piece of paper and like, Okay, what's

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Speaker 2: going on. You got a bullet hitting a block attached

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Speaker 2: to a swing, which is the whole thing is tied

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Speaker 2: to a squirrel which is running around a bicycle wheel.

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Speaker 2: I mean, like, these problems are insane.

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Speaker 1: Yikes. Do you usually get the answer?

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Speaker 2: I always do figure it out eventually, you know there's

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Speaker 2: a method to these problems. I kind of like that actually,

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Speaker 2: And when I teach physics here at you See Irvine,

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Speaker 2: I'm often doing problems in front of like a five

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Speaker 2: hundred person class that I've never seen before because I

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Speaker 2: think it's useful for the kids to see me mess

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Speaker 2: up and make mistakes, or like say, I'm gonna try

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Speaker 2: this with energy. Oh no, that doesn't work, let's back up.

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Speaker 2: Or I'll get the wrong answer and then I'll have

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Speaker 2: to try to figure out why, because I think it's

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Speaker 2: useful for them to see somebody figuring out where things

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Speaker 2: went wrong and backing up.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And if I don't know the answer, I

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Speaker 1: never pretend. I'm always like, what do we need to

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Speaker 1: do to figure out what the answer is? We'll start

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Speaker 1: with Wikipedia, but then we got to check it, and

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Speaker 1: so here's how you search Google, scholar and blah blah blah.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, because science is not a list of facts. It's

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Speaker 2: a process for learning, right, and you've got to teach

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Speaker 2: the process exactly. I totally agree.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, our listeners are teaching us a lot with

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Speaker 1: their questions lately. Today I'm excited. I got a question

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Speaker 1: about an organelle that's founded almost all eu caryotic cells,

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Speaker 1: and I was like, what this exists? Then I had

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Speaker 1: never heard of it before.

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Speaker 2: So you went and you bought the manga on this thing,

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Speaker 2: and you learned all about it.

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Speaker 1: Right, it would be a pretty short manga, as we're

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Speaker 1: gonna discover today because actually there's not a lot that

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Speaker 1: we know about this. But you know, maybe manga will

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Speaker 1: be my preferred way of learning about things going forward.

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Speaker 2: Well, one of my favorite ways to learn about the

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Speaker 2: universe is to get asked a question from a listener

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Speaker 2: that I don't know the answer to, which makes me

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Speaker 2: go and dig into it. In detail, and often when

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Speaker 2: people write us questions, which you are all very welcome

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Speaker 2: to do to questions at danielan Kelly dot org. If

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Speaker 2: I do know the answer, all right, right back. But

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Speaker 2: if I don't, I'll delay the answer by saying, hey,

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Speaker 2: let's talk about that on the podcast, which gives me

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Speaker 2: a week or so to do some research and find

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Speaker 2: the answer. So that's what you can be hearing about today,

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Speaker 2: some questions that either I didn't know the answer to immediately,

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Speaker 2: or questions we thought lots of people might want to

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Speaker 2: hear the answer to.

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Speaker 1: I feel like you've given our secret away. But that's fine.

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Speaker 1: It's true. Whenever we get a question, I'm like, oh,

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Speaker 1: we'll do it on the show. That does mean I

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Speaker 1: have no idea.

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Speaker 2: We're sharing the process to Kelly, right, not just the answers.

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Speaker 2: It's all about the process, that's right.

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Speaker 1: That's right. We'll be transparent.

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Speaker 2: So send us your questions to questions at Daniel and

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Speaker 2: Kelly dot org, not Daniel and Kelly dot com. That's

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Speaker 2: a very US couple who we hope are having a

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Speaker 2: very nice wedding.

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Speaker 1: We wish them the best.

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Speaker 2: Congratulations Daniel and Kelly. All right, but aswer your questions,

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Speaker 2: and on today's episode we have some really fun questions

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Speaker 2: about quantum spin, about little bits of the cell, and

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Speaker 2: about quantum fields.

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Speaker 1: Let's do it, all right, Daniel, First, once for you.

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Speaker 2: Our first question is from Bertus, and he's asking a

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Speaker 2: question about the spin of particles, which gives me a

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Speaker 2: great opportunity to try to disentangle a lot of misconceptions

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Speaker 2: about quantum spin. Here's Bert's question.

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Speaker 5: Hey, guys, I know when you measure the spin of

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Speaker 5: an electron you get up or down. What about if

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Speaker 5: the electrons spins perpendicular to the axis of the measurement,

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Speaker 5: is it still only up or down? Anything in between? Thanks?

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Speaker 1: Oh, so this is great. So you and I have

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Speaker 1: had multiple conversations about electron spins and you've mentioned many

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Speaker 1: times that the spin is up or down, but it

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Speaker 1: never occurred to me, Well, why is it bupper down?

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Speaker 1: Why can't it be perpendicular? And I just you know,

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Speaker 1: so explain yourself.

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Speaker 2: Daniel. That's a great question because it makes an opportunity

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Speaker 2: for a nice teaching moment where you can back up

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Speaker 2: and try to untangle a misconception about how electron spin works.

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Speaker 2: And the thing that birds not understanding. Will dig into

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Speaker 2: this in more detail, is that electrons don't like have

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Speaker 2: a spin, and then you measure it along some axis.

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Speaker 2: There really just are two possibilities for the spin. But

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Speaker 2: let's dig into it and first understand, like, what are

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Speaker 2: we talking about when we say quantum spin, right, And

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Speaker 2: Quantum spin is a strange little property of quantum particles

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Speaker 2: that we don't really understand. It's something that we try

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Speaker 2: to describe using our intuition for other stuff, like how

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Speaker 2: things spin in our world, like you see a ball

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Speaker 2: spinning or the Earth is spinning around the sun, and

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Speaker 2: so we try to describe this weird new property and

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Speaker 2: analogy to something we are familiar with, and we're doing

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Speaker 2: this all the time physics, right, Like photons are weird

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Speaker 2: and new, so we describe them as kind of like

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Speaker 2: a particle and kind of like a wave because they

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Speaker 2: have kind of particle eproperties and kind of wavy properties.

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Speaker 2: Quantum spin is something weird and new we've never seen before,

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Speaker 2: but it does have a lot of similarity to the

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Speaker 2: kind of spin we're familiar with, so that's why we

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Speaker 2: call it spin. But it really isn't the same thing, all.

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Speaker 1: Right, Where to start from there in what ways is

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Speaker 1: it similar to what we see?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, great question. The thing that makes us call it

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Speaker 2: spin is that it's similar to spin in that it

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Speaker 2: seems to create magnetic fields. Like when you have a

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Speaker 2: charged particle like an electron, and you move it in

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Speaker 2: a circle, like you have a loop of wire for example,

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Speaker 2: that creates a magnetic field. That's how an electromagnet works.

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Speaker 2: How you can run current through something and create a

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Speaker 2: magnet And that's like the basis of motors and all

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Speaker 2: sorts of stuff. So stuff moving in a circle, charges

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Speaker 2: moving in a circle create magnetic fields. Cool. But then

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Speaker 2: we discovered that little tiny particles also have their own

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Speaker 2: magnetic fields, like electrons. When they're not moving in a circle,

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Speaker 2: they have a little magnetic fields. And we notice this

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Speaker 2: because if you shoot an electron into a magnetic field,

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Speaker 2: it gets deflected either one way or the other way,

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Speaker 2: which means it must have a little magnetic field of

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Speaker 2: its own, and it can't have like a magnetic charge. Right.

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Speaker 2: We talked about on the podcast once how there's no

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Speaker 2: like magnetic charge in the universe. All magnetic fields are

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Speaker 2: created by electric charges moving in a circle. So people thought, well,

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Speaker 2: the electron has an electric charge. Maybe if it's spinning,

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Speaker 2: then that's effectively the same as a charge moving in

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Speaker 2: a circle, and that would create a magnetic field. Like

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Speaker 2: if you took a sphere of metal that had electric

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Speaker 2: charges on it and you spun it, that would create

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Speaker 2: a magnetic field. So an analogy, people are like, well,

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Speaker 2: maybe the electron is spinning. That was the first idea

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Speaker 2: to explain the little magnetic field that particles have.

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Speaker 1: What are they sitting?

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Speaker 2: So then people thought, well, that makes a lot of sense, right,

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Speaker 2: and then they sat down to do the calculation. All right,

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Speaker 2: if an electric is spinning, well, how fast is its

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Speaker 2: surface going, Like what's the speed of the surface of

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Speaker 2: the electron? And then they realized, oh, actually that would

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Speaker 2: be going much faster than the speed of light. So hmm,

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Speaker 2: that doesn't quite work. Plus a lot of people are like,

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Speaker 2: electrons are points. Points can't spin. There's nothing to spin

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Speaker 2: there if it's like really zero volume, so it can't

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Speaker 2: be physically spinning. You shouldn't have the image in your

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Speaker 2: mind of like a tiny little beach ball that's actually spinning.

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Speaker 2: But it's something very related to spin because it does

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Speaker 2: create magnetic fields and it participates in conservation of angular momentum.

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Speaker 2: Like we talk about lots of times on the podcast,

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Speaker 2: how anglar momentum is conserved in the universe. Like, if

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Speaker 2: you have something spinning in space, it will keep spinning

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Speaker 2: until something slows it down. The same way if something

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Speaker 2: is moving in space, it'll keep going until something slows

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Speaker 2: it down. Well, that angular momentum, what you can do

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Speaker 2: is you can turn it into particle spin. You can

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Speaker 2: like sap the spin of some physical object and turn

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Speaker 2: it into particle spin. So particle spin really is a

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Speaker 2: kind of angular momentum because the universe allows you to

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Speaker 2: slosh like orbital angular momentum into quantum spin angular momentum.

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Speaker 2: So it behaves a lot like spin, and it is

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Speaker 2: a kind of angular momentum, which is why we feel

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Speaker 2: justified like calling it a spin. But it's not like

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Speaker 2: a physical spin. It's something fundamentally different.

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Speaker 1: You see what I got? Okay, so it's not spinning.

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Speaker 1: But we need to explain why. When you send an

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Speaker 1: electron at a magnetic field, it goes one way or

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Speaker 1: the other way, and there's only two options. And angular

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Speaker 1: momentum is if you send something off in a certain direction,

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Speaker 1: it just keeps going.

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Speaker 2: That's linear momentum. Angler momentum is if you spin something,

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Speaker 2: it just keeps spinning.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. If you spin something, it just keeps spinning.

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Speaker 1: And I'm still not getting the connection between the angular

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Speaker 1: momentum spin and why the electron goes one way or

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Speaker 1: another way when it hits a magnetic field.

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Speaker 2: So the angular momentum comment is just to convince you

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Speaker 2: that spin is a kind of angular momentum because the

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Speaker 2: universe treats it like that. Like the universe requires that

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Speaker 2: angler momentum is not changed. The amount is the same.

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Speaker 2: Like you can have stuff banging into each other, you

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Speaker 2: can do all sorts of interactions. Whatever anglermentum has to

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Speaker 2: be conserved. The amount before some event is the same

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Speaker 2: as the amount after some event. Cool. But there are

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Speaker 2: different kinds of angular momentum, right, Like you can be

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Speaker 2: spinning in place, you can be running in a circle.

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Speaker 2: All those things are angle momentum, and it can slash

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Speaker 2: back and forth from one kind to the other. And

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Speaker 2: this is just to say that the universe includes particle

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Speaker 2: quantum spin among the possible kinds of angle momentum. So

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Speaker 2: stuff has to be conserved, but it can slash into

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Speaker 2: this category as well. So that tells us the universe

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Speaker 2: considers quantum spin to be a kind of angular momentum

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Speaker 2: when it's doing its accounting, and it requires anglermentum to

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Speaker 2: be the same before and after. Quantum spin is one

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Speaker 2: of the possibilities. So it's like when you put a

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars in your bank account, you expect it to

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Speaker 2: still be there when you come back. Maybe it's moved

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Speaker 2: into checkings, maybe it's moved into savings. Whatever, it's still

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Speaker 2: one thousand dollars. This is saying the universe treats this

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Speaker 2: as the same kind of accounting as it does other

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Speaker 2: things which are legitimate physical spin, like orbits and running

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Speaker 2: in a circle and whatever. The universe treats all these

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Speaker 2: accounts as if it's just dotted lines that are the

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Speaker 2: humans draw between stuff. So that's what makes it say

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Speaker 2: it really is a kind of spin. Now the second bit,

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Speaker 2: it can only go one way or the other. That's

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Speaker 2: the quantum piece, And that's what Burtis is asking about,

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Speaker 2: because when you send electrons into a magnetic field, you

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Speaker 2: don't get a whole spread of outcomes. It's not like, well,

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Speaker 2: if the spin is all the way to the left,

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Speaker 2: it goes one way, and if the spin is all

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Speaker 2: the way to the right, it goes the other way.

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Speaker 2: But you can also get answers in the middle. What

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Speaker 2: they saw when they did these experiments in the nineteen

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Speaker 2: twenties was very clear. They either go left or they

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Speaker 2: go right. There's no electrons that go through the middle

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Speaker 2: and nothing in between. That's what's quantum about the spin.

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Speaker 2: It's either up or it's down. And that's what Birth'

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Speaker 2: question is, like, well, what happens if the spin is perpendicular,

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Speaker 2: which way does it get measured? And that's sort of

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Speaker 2: what Birth's question is.

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Speaker 1: So you've got an electron. You look at the electron

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Speaker 1: before you send it to the magnetic FID. Can you

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Speaker 1: predict if it goes left or right or no? Because

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Speaker 1: you've observed the electron and something collapses and physics is impossible, you.

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Speaker 2: Can predict if you measure it spin. If you measure

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Speaker 2: it spin and the spin is to the left, then

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Speaker 2: you know it's spin is going to be to the left.

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Speaker 2: When it goes to the magnetic field, it's going to

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Speaker 2: go to the left. So yes, you can measure the

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Speaker 2: electron spin beforehand and know it. You can also leave

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Speaker 2: it uncertain and maybe it's left or maybe it's right,

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Speaker 2: and then you'll know when you send it into the

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Speaker 2: magnetic field. That's when the universe decides, Oh, this one's

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Speaker 2: going to be left or this one's going to be right.

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Speaker 2: So yes, you can observe it.

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Speaker 1: But if it's not spinning, how do you know if

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Speaker 1: it's up or down? If you don't send it into

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Speaker 1: the magnetic field and then see what it does.

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Speaker 2: Sending it into a magnetic field is the only way, right.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So if you have like two of these

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Speaker 2: in a row right, and say, for example, you send

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Speaker 2: it through one who goes left, you're like, okay, now

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Speaker 2: I know it's left. You send it through another one

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Speaker 2: of those same devices, it's still going to go left

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Speaker 2: because you're measured it left, it is left.

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Speaker 1: Got it all right? And angular momentum is concerned exactly,

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Speaker 1: always go exactly. Okay, got it? I'm with you. What's

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Speaker 1: the answer that.

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Speaker 2: The answer is that you shouldn't think about the electron

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Speaker 2: is having some true spin direction the way the Earth does.

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Speaker 2: Like the Earth has an axis around which it's spinning right,

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Speaker 2: call it the north pole. And you might ask, look, well,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to measure it spin along this axis. Is

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Speaker 2: it more up or is it more down? And that's

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Speaker 2: going to give you my answer. The electron doesn't have

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Speaker 2: some true spin angle and you're just measuring the projection

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Speaker 2: of that along some axis. There's only two possibilities for it.

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Speaker 2: It's either up or it's down. That's what it means

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Speaker 2: to be quantum, not that there is some true continuous

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Speaker 2: set of values that are hidden from you and you're

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Speaker 2: just getting a discrete answer. It's not like electrical engineering

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Speaker 2: where you have like analog waveforms that you're then digitizing

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Speaker 2: into zeros and ones. It is either zero or it

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Speaker 2: is one, and the in between state is having a

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Speaker 2: probability of being zero and a probability of being one.

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Speaker 2: It's not like there some arrow there that you're projecting

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Speaker 2: along the axis. True spin state can't be perpendicular. It's

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Speaker 2: just not an option. It's either up or it's down,

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Speaker 2: or it's a mixture of those two possibilities.

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Speaker 1: Not a lot of options front.

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Speaker 2: And you might think, Okay, well, I'm just gonna measure

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Speaker 2: the spin state along the X axis, and then i'll

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Speaker 2: measure along the Y axis. Then I'll measure along the

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Speaker 2: Z axis and then I'll sort of know it in

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Speaker 2: three D. The amazing thing is the universe doesn't let

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Speaker 2: you do that because you can't know the spin direction

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Speaker 2: in two axis simultaneously, the same way you can't like

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Speaker 2: no position and momentum simultaneously. The universe prevents you from

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Speaker 2: knowing that it's like undetermined thanks to the uncertainty principle.

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Speaker 2: If you measure the spin along X, you get either

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Speaker 2: up or down, right, left or right. If you then

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Speaker 2: measured along Y, it scrambles it in X. So let's

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Speaker 2: go back to that experiment we talk about. Say you

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Speaker 2: send it through the magnetic field and it goes left.

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Speaker 2: Now you have another set of those magnetic field devices,

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Speaker 2: but you've rotated in ninety degrees, so it's like selecting

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Speaker 2: along a different axis, and now it goes like up

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Speaker 2: or something. So it's gone left and then it's gone up.

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Speaker 2: Now send it through the original device again, and you

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Speaker 2: might think, well, I know it's left right. It was

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Speaker 2: left before. It's got to be left again. But no

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Speaker 2: measuring it along the up down axis has scrambled the

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Speaker 2: left right information, and so now it might go right.

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Speaker 1: So that doesn't sound very conserved, Daniel, what happens.

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Speaker 2: What happens is that the interaction has scrambled the angler momentum,

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Speaker 2: so the machine itself has absorbed some of that angler momentum.

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Speaker 1: Physics is trippy.

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Speaker 2: Physics is trippy. So the bottom line, Bird is that

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Speaker 2: you can't think about the spin of this particle number one.

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Speaker 2: It's a physical spin. It's a quantum weird thing which

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Speaker 2: is similar to spin, but not really exactly the same.

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Speaker 2: And you shouldn't think of it as being like some

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Speaker 2: true vector that you're then projecting into X or y

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Speaker 2: and that has some like true valley that could be perpendicular.

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Speaker 2: It can never be perpendicular. It's either up or down

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Speaker 2: or some mixture of those two. There is nothing in between.

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Speaker 1: All right, Wow, a rare instance where physics has a

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Speaker 1: clear answer. Ooh oo oooh slice. But let's see if

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Speaker 1: it's it's intelligible, all.

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Speaker 2: Right, brut tell us if we clarify that or just

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Speaker 2: confused you.

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Speaker 5: Hey guys, as always, thanks for the great explanation. Love

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Speaker 5: listening to your podcast.

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Speaker 1: All right, So onto something completely different. We got this

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Speaker 1: amazing question from Ryan about an organelle that I didn't

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Speaker 1: even know existed. So let's hear Ryan's question.

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Speaker 3: Hi Kelly, Hi Daniel, Thank you both so much for

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Speaker 3: your wonderful show. I've just become aware of the existence

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Speaker 3: of this cell organelle called the vault. I'm so surprised

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Speaker 3: and fascinated that a structure that's apparently so common in

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Speaker 3: cell biology should be so mysterious to us still, and

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Speaker 3: that it was discovered so recently. Also, what a name

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Speaker 3: for something so mysteriou is the vault? It'd be great

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Speaker 3: if you guys could bring us up to speed on

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Speaker 3: the state of the science and the understanding in relation

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Speaker 3: to this crazy little thing. What do we think therefore,

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Speaker 3: how did they get there? And how did they avoid

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Speaker 3: our detection for so long?

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Daniel. Have you ever heard of

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Speaker 1: the vaults?

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Speaker 2: I've never heard of the vault. I've never heard of

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Speaker 2: a part of the cell that started with the before,

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Speaker 2: like the mitochondria. I guess the nucleus. It seems especially important.

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Speaker 2: But I'm also just not one hundred percent clear on

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Speaker 2: what an organelle is. Is it a miniature piece of

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Speaker 2: the cell in analogy to like how my liver is

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Speaker 2: an organ in my body. It's like a specialized component

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Speaker 2: of my body is an organelle, like a specialized part

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Speaker 2: of the cell that does one particular job.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that's a great definition.

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Speaker 2: So why they call it organelle? Is it like organito

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Speaker 2: or something like that?

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Speaker 1: I think yes, I think it is like organito.

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Speaker 2: I think organito is cuter.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I no, I agree. I don't know who we

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Speaker 1: write to submit these recommendations to, but let's get on

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Speaker 1: that all right.

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Speaker 2: So tell us about the organito called the cell? What

402
00:19:06,520 --> 00:19:08,959
Speaker 2: does it do? Why does nobody know anything about it?

403
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:10,640
Speaker 2: How come I've never heard of it before?

404
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Speaker 1: It's all amazing, Okay, So you find it in u

405
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Speaker 1: caryotic cells. So these are cells specifically that have nuclei

406
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Speaker 1: that have a membrane and like so inside the DNA

407
00:19:19,600 --> 00:19:22,120
Speaker 1: is sort of stored inside these nuclei. So like when

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Speaker 1: we talk about prokaryotic cells, we're talking about bacteria and

409
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Speaker 1: Archaea and just about like everything else is eukaryots. So

410
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Speaker 1: it's like everywhere, and it's bigger than a ribosome. So

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Speaker 1: like I think most of us learned about ribosomes in biology.

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Speaker 2: I don't know if I should be impressed by that,

413
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Speaker 2: because I don't know how big a ribosome is.

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Speaker 1: I don't really have a good like gut intuition for

415
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Speaker 1: how big a ribosome is, but I do know that

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Speaker 1: in cell biology or in biology, I was taught the

417
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Speaker 1: thing that looks like sort of like a big thick squiggle,

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Speaker 1: you write ribosome next to that. The point that I'm

419
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Speaker 1: trying to make is that it is bigger than a

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Speaker 1: thing that we have known has existed for a really

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Speaker 1: long time, and so it's surprising that we didn't also

422
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Speaker 1: know that this existed for a really long time.

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Speaker 2: So not really crazy tiny. It's not like it's hiding

424
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Speaker 2: because it's super small. It's like kind of a big component.

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Speaker 2: It's like not understanding what a toaster is in your kitchen.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, that's right. It's big enough to see and

427
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Speaker 1: there are lots of them. So there's like ten thousand

428
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Speaker 1: in each cell. Whoa, yeah, so in our body you

429
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Speaker 1: might have as many as one hundred and sixty quadrillion

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Speaker 1: vaults in you.

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Speaker 2: What that blows my mind.

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Speaker 1: I know they're huge, and so what they are. So

433
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Speaker 1: it looks like if you've ever been in a cathedral

434
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Speaker 1: and you've looked up at the ceiling. The folks who

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Speaker 1: discovered this organelle felt like the ceilings of a cathedral,

436
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:43,160
Speaker 1: which are sometimes I think called vaults, kind of looked

437
00:20:43,280 --> 00:20:45,639
Speaker 1: like this organelle, but it would be like two of

438
00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:47,280
Speaker 1: them put together. So to me, it kind of looks

439
00:20:47,280 --> 00:20:50,560
Speaker 1: more like a barrel and the inside is empty and

440
00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:54,399
Speaker 1: it's mostly made out of three proteins, and then it

441
00:20:54,440 --> 00:20:57,359
Speaker 1: has a little bit of ribonucleic acid in it, so

442
00:20:57,400 --> 00:20:58,439
Speaker 1: a little bit of RNA.

443
00:20:58,640 --> 00:21:00,400
Speaker 2: So hold on, I have to totally adjust my mental

444
00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:02,280
Speaker 2: picture here because when you said the vault, I was

445
00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:04,679
Speaker 2: thinking of a safe that there's some like deep secret

446
00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:07,520
Speaker 2: about life in the universe stored inside ourselves, and today

447
00:21:07,520 --> 00:21:09,800
Speaker 2: we're gonna crack al Capone's vault or something like that.

448
00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:11,600
Speaker 2: Now you're telling me I have to replace it with

449
00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:13,800
Speaker 2: like the idea like a little capsule. It's like a

450
00:21:13,800 --> 00:21:16,120
Speaker 2: little thing that holds stuff. So it was a little

451
00:21:16,119 --> 00:21:16,960
Speaker 2: bit like a container.

452
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:19,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's empty in the inside. So yes, you're

453
00:21:19,400 --> 00:21:21,480
Speaker 1: your thought. I mean, we are not going to crack

454
00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:23,560
Speaker 1: al capone safe today. That is for a bit of

455
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:26,680
Speaker 1: a spoiler, we have not really cracked the vault yet.

456
00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:28,680
Speaker 2: Let's get Heraldo on the show and maybe you'll help

457
00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:29,080
Speaker 2: us out.

458
00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:34,080
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, let's definitely recommend Heroldo's shows to our listeners.

459
00:21:34,119 --> 00:21:36,639
Speaker 1: All right, So you've got this like compartment. You have

460
00:21:36,760 --> 00:21:40,080
Speaker 1: loads of them, and it was discovered for the first

461
00:21:40,119 --> 00:21:44,320
Speaker 1: time in nineteen eighty six, Wow, by Nancy Kadersha and

462
00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:48,240
Speaker 1: Leonard Rome. And the reason they discovered it was an accident.

463
00:21:48,280 --> 00:21:50,560
Speaker 1: So they were looking at vesicles, which are these little

464
00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:54,040
Speaker 1: things that you find in cells. They're another organito that

465
00:21:54,160 --> 00:21:58,280
Speaker 1: sort of moves things around. And while they were trying

466
00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:01,920
Speaker 1: to like get a bunch of vesicles together for their experiments,

467
00:22:02,040 --> 00:22:05,240
Speaker 1: they looked in their sample and they were like, oh,

468
00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:08,040
Speaker 1: there's all of this like contamination, and it was a

469
00:22:08,119 --> 00:22:11,320
Speaker 1: little bit hard to see, but they were like, okay, well,

470
00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:13,000
Speaker 1: let's try to get the contamination out. And then they

471
00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:15,560
Speaker 1: realized like, oh wait, this isn't contamination, this is something

472
00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:17,639
Speaker 1: else that was in the cell. And they realize the

473
00:22:17,760 --> 00:22:20,680
Speaker 1: reason it had been missed for so long is because

474
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:22,560
Speaker 1: when you're trying to look at the inside of the cell,

475
00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:25,880
Speaker 1: you often put stains inside of a cell that binds

476
00:22:26,040 --> 00:22:31,600
Speaker 1: the RNA, and the vault is only about four percent RNA,

477
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:35,119
Speaker 1: so it's staining, but it's staining in a very like

478
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:38,040
Speaker 1: light and easy to miss way. So a bunch of

479
00:22:38,040 --> 00:22:40,359
Speaker 1: people had been looking at the stuff that stained with

480
00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:43,679
Speaker 1: the RNA, like the vesicles and missing the vaults. So

481
00:22:43,800 --> 00:22:45,959
Speaker 1: this group just got lucky that they happened to like

482
00:22:46,640 --> 00:22:49,360
Speaker 1: get the vaults with the rest of their samples of vesicles,

483
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:52,480
Speaker 1: and that they noticed this like junk in the background.

484
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:54,560
Speaker 2: And they weren't using staining, so they didn't miss the vaults.

485
00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:57,199
Speaker 1: They were using staining, but they looked at the sample

486
00:22:57,280 --> 00:22:59,720
Speaker 1: close enough, and instead of ignoring what looked like junk

487
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:02,320
Speaker 1: in the back background, they were like, wait, that junk

488
00:23:02,359 --> 00:23:04,920
Speaker 1: all has like the same shape and there's a lot

489
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 1: of it. What is that? And then they were like,

490
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: holy crow, a whole new organelle.

491
00:23:09,200 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 2: Wow. I think that says something really powerful about science,

492
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:14,679
Speaker 2: that you know, often what we do is imperfect, and

493
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:17,199
Speaker 2: we tried like the only possible thing first because we

494
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:19,960
Speaker 2: can get some information, but then we sometimes forget that

495
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:22,800
Speaker 2: that's limited or that it's made some assumptions, and we

496
00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:25,800
Speaker 2: don't always go back and like re explore that understand

497
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:27,640
Speaker 2: like what are we missing if this is the only

498
00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:29,600
Speaker 2: thing we're doing. You know, it's sort of like the

499
00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 2: example of like, well this works in mice yeah, yeah,

500
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:33,920
Speaker 2: we can do it in mice, doesn't mean that it's

501
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:37,159
Speaker 2: going to work anywhere else. And we've learned something universal, Right,

502
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 2: it's fascinating to then crack these doors open. What was

503
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 2: that moment like for them? Do you think that they realized, like, wow,

504
00:23:43,520 --> 00:23:45,440
Speaker 2: all of this is actually something fascinating.

505
00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:48,119
Speaker 1: It sounds like they were pretty excited by that moment,

506
00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:50,439
Speaker 1: And yeah, I agree, like what we know about biology

507
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 1: is limited by the tools we have, and sometimes we

508
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:55,840
Speaker 1: don't even realize that our tools are limiting what we

509
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,560
Speaker 1: know about But my sense is they were pretty excited,

510
00:23:58,600 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 1: and they actually had the lab members they all sort

511
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:04,520
Speaker 1: of like pitch different names for what to call it,

512
00:24:04,560 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 1: and they had a little bit of a contest.

513
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 2: Do you have the alternatives? That would be amazing.

514
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:10,400
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find the alternatives.

515
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:12,800
Speaker 2: Organito face wasn't up there.

516
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: Oh man, society has been robbed of that opportunity. But

517
00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:22,200
Speaker 1: the vault is a pretty sweet name.

518
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 2: I think it's very cool, Yes, very dramatic.

519
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so, as I mentioned, it's found in eukaryotic cells,

520
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: and it's found in like very similar ways in all

521
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:33,840
Speaker 1: of these eukaryotic cells. So often when you find something

522
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:36,119
Speaker 1: in biology, and you find it in lots of places,

523
00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 1: and in all of those places it looks exactly the same.

524
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:43,040
Speaker 1: That suggests that evolution is doing something to stabilize it. Like,

525
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:45,600
Speaker 1: this has a really important function. We're not going to

526
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:47,679
Speaker 1: tinker with it because tinkering with it can break it.

527
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: You need this, it can't.

528
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:51,879
Speaker 2: Be broken, and it's common across eu caryots. Means it

529
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 2: provides something really basic. Right. This isn't like, hey, this

530
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 2: makes the wings on a hummingbird really really light. This

531
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:02,160
Speaker 2: is like essential to some foundational part of life. Right.

532
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:07,159
Speaker 1: That was the initial hypothesis, which to me seems totally reasonable.

533
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 1: And there are some places where it's been lost. So

534
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: for example, fruit flies, which are like, you know, a

535
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 1: model that's studied in biology all over the place, and yeast,

536
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 1: which is also studied a lot, they don't have vaults

537
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:21,920
Speaker 1: for reasons we don't understand. So it's got a bit

538
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,960
Speaker 1: of a spotty distribution, but most organisms do have it. Okay,

539
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:26,639
Speaker 1: so what do we think done?

540
00:25:26,560 --> 00:25:29,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us Colleen, crack the vault open for us.

541
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the answer is, actually, we don't know. So

542
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: biology biology, I know, it depends. So one hypothesis is

543
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:45,239
Speaker 1: that it's important for transporting toxic stuff that's in a

544
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:48,240
Speaker 1: cell out of a cell. And the reason we think

545
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:51,639
Speaker 1: that is because there are people who have tumors and

546
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:55,080
Speaker 1: when they've gotten their chemotherapy or there are various drug treatments,

547
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:59,120
Speaker 1: it looks like the vault isn't involved in making those

548
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:01,639
Speaker 1: drugs work less well by shuttling it out of the

549
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: tumor cells. And so the thought was that this vault

550
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: is going around and anytime there's something bad in the cell,

551
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 1: and chemotherapeutic drugs can be pretty toxic, you know, they're

552
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:14,240
Speaker 1: trying to kill cancer cells, the vault would like put

553
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 1: it in the middle of the vault, shuttle it to

554
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: the outside of the cell, and then dump it back

555
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: outside of the cell. But you know, chemotherapeutic drugs were

556
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 1: not like a common part of our evolutionary history and

557
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: they exist not in the rest of the animal kingdom

558
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 1: for the most part. So the idea is that maybe

559
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: anything toxic they move. There's some thought that they're important

560
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:35,680
Speaker 1: for like the immune response, like maybe they could encapsulate

561
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 1: a virus and shuttle that outside of the cell. There

562
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: was an observation that the vault connects to the inside

563
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: structure of the cell. So the cell has like essentially

564
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: what you'd think of as like a lumber structure that

565
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: sort of like holds it up. It's got scaffolding, and

566
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: it was attached to it, and so there was some

567
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: idea that maybe it attaches to that and moves around

568
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 1: the cell and transports things like take it from the

569
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 1: nucleus and bring it to another organelle orgin eto. But

570
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, we don't actually have

571
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: a good answer. And so one of the guys who

572
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:10,520
Speaker 1: helped to discover it, whose last name is Rome, he

573
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 1: joked that actually the purpose of the vault is to

574
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: fund his lab because he had spent fifteen years trying

575
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:22,600
Speaker 1: to figure out a function. And they have some like

576
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,399
Speaker 1: tantalizing associations, but at the end of the day, no

577
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:28,879
Speaker 1: one has been able to pin down this is what

578
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,560
Speaker 1: the vault does, and we're sure and this is his

579
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:32,119
Speaker 1: main function.

580
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:34,400
Speaker 2: Well, help me understand why it's so hard to figure out.

581
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 2: I mean, I understand, like when we're talking about quantum particles,

582
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 2: one of the challenges is that you can never really

583
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 2: zoom in and see them and watch them. But here

584
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 2: we're talking about like kind of big biological things that

585
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 2: you could, in principle see under a microscope. Why can't

586
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 2: we just like watch as sell in action and say, like, oh,

587
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 2: I see what the vault is doing. Like imagine you

588
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 2: come into a city as an alien, You're like, what

589
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 2: are all these male people doing. Oh, they're going from

590
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 2: house to house delivering letters. You'd figure it out by

591
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 2: watching what they're doing. Is that not possible for some

592
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 2: reason or oversimplifying it? Why can't we just watch the

593
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 2: vaults and figure it out?

594
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, So here's my best guess as someone who doesn't

595
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: do cell biology. So a lot of times what's important

596
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 1: is important in the system that it's found. And so

597
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:18,560
Speaker 1: for example, if you're studying this in a mouse, you

598
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 1: can't watch what's happening inside of a mouse cell while

599
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 1: it's still inside of the mouse. And so if you

600
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: really want to understand what it's doing. Often if you

601
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 1: just take a mouse sell out, for example, and you

602
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: put it in a dish, then it can't do a

603
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:33,199
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that it usually does, Like if

604
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: it's involved in the immune system, it's you know, can't

605
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:36,720
Speaker 1: signal with the other cells.

606
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 2: And then native question because to image a mouse sell

607
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 2: you have to remove it from the mouse. You can't

608
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 2: like put a whole mouse under a microscope and say, like,

609
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 2: I'm going to look at this cell on the surface

610
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:46,440
Speaker 2: and see what its vaults are doing.

611
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, So to stain and see what's happening

612
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 1: inside of a cell at that level, I think we

613
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:55,760
Speaker 1: still need to put it under very specialized microscopes and cameras,

614
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 1: and it can't be inside of the mouse while it's happening.

615
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 2: Well, there's your answer. We need to develop technology for

616
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 2: a whole mouse microscope.

617
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: There you go, there, you get right, and then if

618
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 1: we could see that, then maybe we'd have all of

619
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: our answers.

620
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 2: All right, So you've got to take the mouse sell

621
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:11,080
Speaker 2: out do specialized stuff. Then that changes what the cell

622
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 2: is doing, which makes a lot of sense. So we

623
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 2: don't necessarily get a clear picture of the cell in

624
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 2: its actual action.

625
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: And I don't actually have enough experience with imaging to

626
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: know how easy it is to stain things inside of

627
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 1: a cell that are this small and then still watch

628
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: what's happening inside of cells like in live time. It's

629
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 1: possible we might have to indirectly do things like somehow

630
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: make a cell or figure out a cell line that

631
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 1: makes more vaults than another, and then expose those two

632
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 1: different cell lines to chemotherapeutic drugs, and then you can

633
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: say like, Okay, this cell line split the chemo therapeutic

634
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 1: drugs out more than the other cell line, and this

635
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: one had more vaults. And so you know, you're indirectly

636
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what's happening based on the responses

637
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:55,959
Speaker 1: without being able to actually like be in there watching

638
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: everything happening in lifetime.

639
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 2: Wow, So out, what are people doing right now to

640
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 2: study it? What is the room lab writing grants about

641
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 2: right now?

642
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: According to an article that I read that came out

643
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: through the Royal Society, the answer is pretty much funding

644
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: agencies have gotten tired of paying for trying to figure

645
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 1: out what the vault does when they have no answer.

646
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 1: And so doctor Rome, I think, is emeritus now, so

647
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 1: he's retiring and trying to get other people excited about it.

648
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: I'm going to step back really quick and mention some

649
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 1: mouse works. So you wanted to know, like, how do

650
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 1: you study this? So one of the ways that we've

651
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: studied it is we knock out the information needed to

652
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 1: make the proteins in the vaults, and then you look

653
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: to see what happens to the mice that are missing

654
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: these proteins. And this is what I think was the

655
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 1: most interesting when I was doing the research. So when

656
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: you like knock out one of the proteins, maybe tumors

657
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: grow a little bit more in those mice if they

658
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:50,440
Speaker 1: have cancers.

659
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 2: And just to be clear, knocking out means removing the

660
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 2: genetic code so that the cell doesn't know how to

661
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 2: make the vaults anymore.

662
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: Exactly or make a component. So we mentioned at the

663
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: beginning that the als are made out of three main proteins,

664
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 1: So if you're knocking out the code to make those proteins,

665
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: then maybe you'd get a vault that is like you know,

666
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:09,920
Speaker 1: it's like a basket that's missing some of the weaving

667
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 1: because one of those proteins is missing. So it was

668
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: a little bit associated with tumor cell size. There was

669
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 1: another one that was a little bit associated with immune

670
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 1: system functioning, and when you knocked it all out, maybe

671
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: the mice grew a little bit more slowly. But like

672
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:26,880
Speaker 1: you know, the initial prediction was that this must be

673
00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: crucial for life because you see it everywhere and it's

674
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: so conserved by evolution, but you knock it out and

675
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: the animals seem okay, And so what is this doing?

676
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: And so I don't know what the answer is. No

677
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: one does. But you know, I wonder, is there's something

678
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: that we haven't done to these mice in the lab yet, Like,

679
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:45,719
Speaker 1: you know, if you expose them to radiation, do they

680
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 1: all just like die immediately? Is there something that we

681
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: haven't tested yet? And under those conditions vaults are crucial.

682
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: But at the moment you can knock this stuff out

683
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 1: and the animals seem to do okay without them.

684
00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 2: Well, here's the sort of basic evolutionary biology questionesting that

685
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 2: it's conserved, which you must mean it has an important function.

686
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 2: I think the implicit argument is out there in the

687
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 2: wild is probably getting knocked out cosmic rays or random mutations.

688
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:13,880
Speaker 2: And if it didn't serve a function, then those knockout

689
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 2: animals would thrive. But would they necessarily be selected for? Like,

690
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 2: is there an advantage to not making the vault? If

691
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 2: there's no cost to making the vault, can't you just

692
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 2: sort of stick around and hang out as part of

693
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 2: our genetic code?

694
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so let me see if I understand the question. So, first,

695
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:31,719
Speaker 1: I'll note that if you make one hundred and sixty

696
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 1: quadrillion of these, there's probably some cost to making that

697
00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 1: many of them, and there's something we're not understanding. So

698
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: maybe something that I'm about to say is wrong and

699
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 1: we just don't realize it. But if you make that many,

700
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: it seems like there's got to be a cost, and

701
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 1: if they weren't producing some function that was pretty regularly

702
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 1: needed by organisms, you would expect them to not keep

703
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: paying that cost, right, Okay, So for radiation to knock

704
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: the vault out, it would have to mess up cells

705
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: that are inside of the new gleist that code for

706
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: the proteins in the vault. Like, I don't know how

707
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: often that's happening, so I'm not quite sure I'm a

708
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: understanding the radiation part of your question.

709
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 2: I was just wondering if nature has done these experiments

710
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 2: essentially removing the vault from animals through random mutation or

711
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 2: radiation or whatever, and then competed those no vault organisms

712
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 2: against the vault organisms, And I was wondering why, if

713
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 2: there's no benefit to the vault, the no vault organisms,

714
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 2: which must exist also in nature, hadn't outcompeted everybody else.

715
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question, and that might be where

716
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: the vaultless fruit flies and the vaultless yeast came from.

717
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 1: And I think there's plants without vaults. So I think

718
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: an important question for biologists to ask is do we

719
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: actually need these All these organisms can live without them,

720
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 1: and why are the rest of us holding onto them

721
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:48,479
Speaker 1: if they seem so inconsequential. Why are we making one

722
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty quadrillion of these things if we don't

723
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: really need them? And I don't think we know.

724
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 2: And maybe that's why I'm so tired of the evenings,

725
00:33:55,840 --> 00:33:58,000
Speaker 2: right because I spent my day building all these vaults.

726
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Wait, give it a break, body.

727
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: We don't need these things, and they're not even good

728
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:06,840
Speaker 1: when you have cancer. Sometimes you asked what are people

729
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 1: working on now? I did come across a variety of

730
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: papers where people are trying to figure out how to

731
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:14,280
Speaker 1: take advantage of the fact that you have this organelle

732
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: that's empty in the inside, that is maybe able to

733
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 1: move around the cell and deliver things from place to place.

734
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:21,880
Speaker 1: Could you use it as a way to deliver drugs

735
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:24,600
Speaker 1: if you could sort of hijack its use. So folks

736
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: are now trying to figure out if vaults can be

737
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:29,279
Speaker 1: used to our benefit in some way, even though we

738
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 1: don't know what their initial purpose is supposed to be.

739
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:33,439
Speaker 2: I'm imagining like those little capsules that you can send

740
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,360
Speaker 2: through the hydraulic tubes or I guess the air pressure

741
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 2: tubes at banks and stuff like that. That'd be pretty

742
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:39,560
Speaker 2: cool to take advantage of that.

743
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: I loved those so much when I was a kid.

744
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: I'd have my mom pull up a little farther so

745
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 1: that I could be the one to press the button.

746
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: And oh man, it was better in the eighties and

747
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: the nineties. No, it wasn't.

748
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 2: So if we're still discovering essential components of the cell

749
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:56,719
Speaker 2: that make up a significant fraction of its volume, are

750
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 2: there still things that we haven't figured out their discoveries

751
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 2: in the future, like big parts of the cell that

752
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 2: we have never seen. For whatever reason, I.

753
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:05,759
Speaker 1: Feel like there's gotta be Like I have this vague

754
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:07,920
Speaker 1: memory of not that long ago, there was like another

755
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:10,880
Speaker 1: major nerve that was discovered, and I think the idea

756
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: was that we had like mapped out the nerves in rodents,

757
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:15,920
Speaker 1: and so we thought we knew where they all were.

758
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 1: But turns out humans have another one that we had

759
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: sort of missed until recently, and which is not too surprising.

760
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 1: But I do think there's still surprises left to be uncovered.

761
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's what makes biology exciting, right. Not only

762
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 2: is it super relevant, but there's lots of unanswered questions.

763
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: Right. And speaking of unanswered questions, Rian, is this giant

764
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: shrug that we're sending your way sufficient to answer the

765
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 1: question that you sent us?

766
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 3: Let's find out, ah, Kelly, Wow, as far as shrugs go,

767
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:52,120
Speaker 3: that was spectacular. Yes, if you're gonna have a non answer,

768
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 3: it can be a non answer full of so much

769
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:58,480
Speaker 3: interesting information. I think that's even better than knowing what

770
00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 3: it is. What an incredible mystery. We have quadrillions of

771
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 3: these things, and the answer so far is maybe they

772
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 3: don't do much at all.

773
00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 4: Wow.

774
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 3: Wow, that's gonna keep me thinking for ages. Yeah. That's brilliant.

775
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 3: Thanks so much. I knew you guys would make something

776
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:18,760
Speaker 3: great out of this, and I'm so glad I found

777
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 3: something that was new to you as well. I'm definitely

778
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 3: gonna refer to them as organitos from now on too.

779
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 3: That's adorable.

780
00:36:25,920 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 6: Thank you, Okay, we are back and we are answering

781
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:47,719
Speaker 6: questions today from the tiny little things in your cell

782
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:49,880
Speaker 6: to the tinier little things that they.

783
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 2: Are made out of. And now we have a question

784
00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:55,879
Speaker 2: from Kurt about particles and fields and what's possible out

785
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 2: there in the universe.

786
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 4: I know in quantum mechanics there are fields and can

787
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:03,800
Speaker 4: become excited to form particles, like you got the electromagnetic

788
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,720
Speaker 4: field with the photon, the Higgs field with the Higgs boson.

789
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 4: Could there be a quantum field where it's not possible

790
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:12,719
Speaker 4: to form a particle. I've never heard of such a thing,

791
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 4: so was wondering if there always must be at least

792
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:17,720
Speaker 4: one particle for each field. Thanks.

793
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:21,320
Speaker 1: Ah, this is another one of those great questions where

794
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 1: it made me think, oh, yeah, I've heard Daniel say

795
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: stuff over and over again and never thought, oh, well,

796
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 1: what about blah blah blah. So I guess I had

797
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 1: always thought of quantum fields as being sort of like

798
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: a wave, and I guess that makes me think of

799
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:41,760
Speaker 1: the ocean, and ocean waves have ripples. Is a field

800
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: more like a blanket held taut without ripples? Like what

801
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 1: does a field look like?

802
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. And the answer depends on

803
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:52,799
Speaker 2: the temperature. Like in the early universe, when all the

804
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 2: fields were totally filled with energy, a big, frothing mess.

805
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:58,239
Speaker 2: It was more like the ocean, and you wouldn't think

806
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 2: about like individual drops to it didn't really make sense.

807
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 2: But now the universe is old and cold and dilute,

808
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 2: and the energy is mostly spread out, and for most

809
00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 2: of the universe the fields are empty. It's more like

810
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:13,319
Speaker 2: a dried up sea bed with a few droplets on it, right,

811
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:15,799
Speaker 2: And those droplets are what we call particles, And so

812
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 2: it sort of depends a little bit what phase of

813
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,840
Speaker 2: the universe we're talking about. But I want to congratulate

814
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 2: Kurt on asking this question for exactly the reason that

815
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:26,440
Speaker 2: you just mentioned. I think to really understand something, you

816
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 2: have to ask yourself questions about it. You're like, all right,

817
00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 2: you're telling me it works like this, but then what

818
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 2: about this scenario or what about the opposite, or does

819
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 2: this have to be true? And it's that process of

820
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:37,400
Speaker 2: like turning it around in your head and poking it

821
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:40,439
Speaker 2: from all sides that builds that model in your mind

822
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:43,000
Speaker 2: that lets you then manipulate it and then become fluent

823
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:45,920
Speaker 2: in it and that's what doing physics is. So congrats Kurt,

824
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 2: and I want to encourage everybody out there when you

825
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 2: hear an explanation on the show, really try to do that.

826
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:52,799
Speaker 2: Say does this connect with this other understanding or what

827
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 2: are the limitations or in what situations does that break down?

828
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 2: And if it's not connecting in your head right to me,

829
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 2: I will help you sort it out, or.

830
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: We will sort it out for other people, because I

831
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:04,360
Speaker 1: think a lot of times when the listener has a question,

832
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: that's a question that a lot of people have either

833
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: thought or if they didn't think it themselves, when you

834
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:10,920
Speaker 1: say it, they're.

835
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 2: Like, oh yeah, what about yeah exactly.

836
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 1: Which was certainly my response when I read this question.

837
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:17,960
Speaker 2: So let's dig in by reminding ourselves what we mean

838
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 2: when we say particles are ripples and quantum fields? What

839
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:23,959
Speaker 2: is that anyway? And it's sort of a historical tour

840
00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:26,960
Speaker 2: through what we've thought about particles, And check out our

841
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:29,839
Speaker 2: whole episode on what is a particle anyway? The short

842
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 2: answer to which is we're really not sure, but we

843
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 2: have some models for it that are probably wrong. But

844
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 2: you know, his hysics somehow a head of biology, but

845
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 2: still getting nowhere. So intuitively, you might think of a

846
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 2: particle as like a tiny little dot of matter, and

847
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 2: that's what we thought, like one hundred and fifty years

848
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 2: ago discovery the electron. We're like, okay, there's something inside

849
00:39:56,920 --> 00:39:59,359
Speaker 2: matter that has spin and charge and mass and all

850
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:01,719
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff, So start with a little dot

851
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:04,319
Speaker 2: of manner. But then we saw that these things were

852
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 2: actually controlled by wave like mathematics, you know, we saw

853
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 2: interference effects. We're like, it doesn't really make sense to

854
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 2: think of this as a tiny speck. It's really more

855
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 2: like a wave. Then we introduce this quantum wave function,

856
00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 2: which is controlled by the Schrodinger equation and tells particles

857
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:23,880
Speaker 2: where to go essentially, and we have this confusing particle

858
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:26,799
Speaker 2: wave duality, which I think is more misleading than clarifying,

859
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 2: because really it's all about the wave. The particle is

860
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 2: the observation where you see the wave, but the wave

861
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 2: controls everything. It tells you where the particles can go.

862
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 2: Like in relation to quantum smin as we were talking

863
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 2: about earlier, the wave function tells you do you have

864
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,360
Speaker 2: a forty percent probability of going left or sixty percent

865
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 2: probability or a zero percent probability? The wave controls everything.

866
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:49,319
Speaker 2: We discovered like fifty years ago that there was also

867
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 2: sort of an important limitation there, which is it really

868
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 2: only lets you think about one particle, Like you have

869
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 2: an electron flying through space. You can describe the wave

870
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:00,040
Speaker 2: function of it and what's going to happen whatever, And

871
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,359
Speaker 2: it's hard to talk about two electrons or twenty electrons,

872
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 2: and what about electrons that are being created and destroyed constantly.

873
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 2: It's sort of like trying to tell a story about

874
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:12,319
Speaker 2: one electron, but it's really just part of a larger tapestry.

875
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 2: And now you have lots of stories you're trying to

876
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 2: all tell. People found a way to unify all those

877
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 2: individual stories together into a field theory. So rather than

878
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 2: talking about any individual particle, they're like, let's think about

879
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:29,399
Speaker 2: all these different waves as part of one bigger sheet there.

880
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:31,879
Speaker 2: Instead of having this wave over there and that wave

881
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,359
Speaker 2: over here, let's integrate them into being ripples in one

882
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:36,720
Speaker 2: unified field.

883
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:40,279
Speaker 1: So when I'm trying to picture a ripple, should I

884
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: picture a bunch of electrons? And like, you know, so

885
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about like a sine wave even like the amplitude,

886
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:49,759
Speaker 1: is it a bunch of them coming together? To form

887
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:53,520
Speaker 1: an amplitude or is each wave a separate particle? What

888
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 1: constitutes a ripple?

889
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 2: I think the closest description is that each wave is

890
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 2: a separate particle, and art with a classical field theory

891
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 2: like electromagnetism, we say that photons are ripples in electromagnetic fields.

892
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 2: And Maxwell understood this long before we had quantum mechanics,

893
00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:12,840
Speaker 2: and he thought about photons as like, Okay, you have

894
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:16,239
Speaker 2: a ripple propagating through the electromagnetic field. But let's be

895
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 2: clear about what that means, because a lot of people

896
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 2: are imagining something moving like a sign wave, like it

897
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 2: moves up, it moves down, it moves up, it moves down.

898
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 2: That's not what's happening, right. A photon moves in a

899
00:42:26,640 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 2: straight line. What's oscillating is the field. What is a

900
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 2: field anyway? Exactly? A field is a number at every

901
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 2: point in space. So imagine a cube of blank space, right.

902
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 2: All you have in your mind right now is just

903
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 2: a black cube, and then at every point in that space,

904
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:45,399
Speaker 2: put a number. There's a seven here, there's a zero there.

905
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:49,320
Speaker 2: It's mostly zeros, right, So put all zeros in your field,

906
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:51,839
Speaker 2: and put a one in one spot and then how

907
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 2: that one move through the field. That's a ripple in

908
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 2: a field. Right now, you can describe the relationship between

909
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 2: numbers of different points in space using a mathematical function.

910
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 2: So instead of having a one, have like a one

911
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:07,880
Speaker 2: and then a zero, and then a minus one, and

912
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:09,239
Speaker 2: then a zero, and then a one and then a

913
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:11,480
Speaker 2: zero and then a minus one. That's like a sine

914
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 2: wave right now. It's not moving up and down. It's

915
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:17,920
Speaker 2: the values of the field itself that are described by

916
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:21,280
Speaker 2: the mathematical function. So that's the ripple. It moves along

917
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:23,399
Speaker 2: the line like a photon moves in a straight line.

918
00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:25,319
Speaker 2: It doesn't go up and down or side to side

919
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 2: or anything like that. But the values of the field

920
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 2: along that line are changing. And a photon is more

921
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:33,759
Speaker 2: complex than just one number. It's a vector, so at

922
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,359
Speaker 2: every point in space it has a direction as well

923
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 2: as a magnitude. You don't need to understand that in

924
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 2: all of its detail. But the point is the particle

925
00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:43,279
Speaker 2: is a ripple in the values of the field. It's

926
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:45,160
Speaker 2: not physically wiggling through space.

927
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: Got it, all right? I feel like I have a

928
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:48,640
Speaker 1: much better visualization now.

929
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 2: All right, So that's classical electromagnetism and understanding the photon

930
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:54,920
Speaker 2: is a ripple in that field. But what we do

931
00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:58,320
Speaker 2: now are quantum fields. We say, all right, the field

932
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 2: can't just have any value, like at that point in

933
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,320
Speaker 2: space you could have a zero or one, or a

934
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:05,719
Speaker 2: zero point seven, two nine, or a one point four

935
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 2: to twenty seven. There are only certain values allowed. There's

936
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 2: a ladder of possible values, and so you can have

937
00:44:12,200 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 2: like a zero, or you can have a one point seven,

938
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 2: or you can have a three point four, you can

939
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 2: have a fourteen point one. There's a certain set of

940
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:21,120
Speaker 2: values there that are allowed, and those are the ones

941
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 2: that are solutions to the quantum equations. Like quantum equations

942
00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:27,400
Speaker 2: don't have solutions for every value. They have a ladder

943
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 2: and that comes out of the mathematics of quantum field theory,

944
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:33,600
Speaker 2: and it comes from constraints and boundary conditions. And you know,

945
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,360
Speaker 2: we don't have to necessarily get into why quantum field

946
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,239
Speaker 2: equations have only certain values, but they do. And when

947
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,080
Speaker 2: you take a classical field theory and you quantize it,

948
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 2: what that means is you're imposing the mathematics on it

949
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:48,760
Speaker 2: that generate only a certain spectra of solutions. So now

950
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:51,759
Speaker 2: you have your quantum field, and it can either be

951
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:53,960
Speaker 2: zero or it can have the first solution or the

952
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 2: sex and solution or the third solution, and we call

953
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 2: that having zero particles or one particle, or two particles

954
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 2: or three particles. So the number of the step you

955
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 2: are in the latter is the number of particles we

956
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:05,840
Speaker 2: consider in the field.

957
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: Okay, so inside of that box, there's a finite number

958
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 1: of ripples that could happen because there are steps and

959
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 1: you can only take certain steps. And it's a big number.

960
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 2: Not necessarily a finite number. You could have an infinite number,

961
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:21,359
Speaker 2: but they're discrete, right, There's not any possible number could

962
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 2: be a solution. There might be an infinite number of solutions, right,

963
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 2: but there are gaps between the solutions.

964
00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: All right, got it?

965
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:29,840
Speaker 2: And so that's what we say. Like the field is

966
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 2: in state two, that means there are two particles. The

967
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:35,000
Speaker 2: field is in state nineteen, there are nineteen particles there.

968
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 2: So that's what we mean when we say the particle

969
00:45:38,200 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 2: is a ripple in the field. It means that there

970
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:43,000
Speaker 2: are solutions to the field equations, and they're just like

971
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 2: the Schrotinger equation, but they're sort of generalized to describe

972
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:49,080
Speaker 2: more than one potential particle, and they can describe multiple

973
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:52,279
Speaker 2: particles moving through the field, like photons. The electromagnetic field

974
00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 2: can have lots of photons. There are lots of photons

975
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 2: in the universe. There are all ripples in the same field.

976
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:59,960
Speaker 1: Right, What is a particle, It's a state in the field.

977
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 1: So state in the field just tells you how many

978
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 1: particles are in the box, or how many particles are

979
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 1: possible at a particular location in the box.

980
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 2: Yes, so at any particular place in the field, there

981
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 2: are solutions, and those solutions are localized because particles aren't

982
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 2: the whole universe. Some of them are actually bigger than others.

983
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:22,000
Speaker 2: Depends a little bit on their momentum, Like if you

984
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 2: know it's momentum really really well, then it's uncertain over space,

985
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 2: and particles can actually be spread out across really vast

986
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 2: distances in the field. That's a whole other confusing thing.

987
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:34,880
Speaker 2: But essentially you can have particles at different locations, but

988
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 2: at each location you can say I have one particle

989
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:40,320
Speaker 2: or two particles, And some fields can have multiple particles

990
00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 2: in the same place on top of each other, like

991
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 2: you can have nineteen photons in the same place the

992
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 2: field is fine with that. You can't do that for

993
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:49,719
Speaker 2: electrons because electrons are different kind of particle. They're fermions.

994
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 2: They don't like to occupy the same place at the

995
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 2: same time unless they have something else about them that's different,

996
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,720
Speaker 2: like their spin is different or something. So they obeyed

997
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 2: different sort of quantum rules because the field itself is

998
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 2: different and so the solutions come out differently. So some

999
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 2: fields you can only have zero one particles. Other fields

1000
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:09,440
Speaker 2: you can have like as many particles as you want, okay,

1001
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 2: And there's lots of different kinds of fields. Like the

1002
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 2: simplest field is the Higgs field. The Higgs field is

1003
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 2: just a number in space. You might hear described as

1004
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:18,520
Speaker 2: a scaler field. That's what it means. It means just

1005
00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 2: a number. Scaler is a fancy way of saying a number.

1006
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 2: Other fields are spinner fields, which are like numbers, but

1007
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 2: they also have another dimension which can be up or down,

1008
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 2: like electrons we talked about, kind of spin up or

1009
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 2: spin down. There's spinner fields they have two possible numbers there,

1010
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 2: and there's vector fields like photons have three possible numbers.

1011
00:47:37,239 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 2: And there's even more complicated fields that you can have

1012
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 2: a tensor. A tensor is like a vector, but more

1013
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:45,879
Speaker 2: like a matrix, right, So it's like many possible values there,

1014
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:49,720
Speaker 2: So it gives very complex behavior. And if gravity, for example,

1015
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 2: is a quantum field, people think it has to be

1016
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 2: a tensor field, which makes the graviton a very complicated

1017
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,840
Speaker 2: particle with five possible spin states, et cetera.

1018
00:47:58,120 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 1: No wonder, y'all haven't figured that out yet.

1019
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:03,239
Speaker 2: Gravity is hard anyway. Fields can do all sorts of

1020
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 2: really complicated stuff. They can interact. You can get energy

1021
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 2: going from one to another, which is how we describe

1022
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 2: particle interactions. But at the end of the day, when

1023
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:13,440
Speaker 2: we say a particle is a ripple, we mean that

1024
00:48:13,480 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 2: there is a field there with a ladder of solutions,

1025
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:18,280
Speaker 2: and the number of particles is sort of like which

1026
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:20,840
Speaker 2: solution are you on? If you're on the fourth solution

1027
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 2: from the bottom, we say there are four particles there.

1028
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 1: All right, So it sounds to me like in order

1029
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: to have anything that qualifies as a field, there has

1030
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:33,160
Speaker 1: to be some particles there, right. The answer can't be

1031
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: zero in every location.

1032
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question, Kurt asks, and your answer

1033
00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:39,359
Speaker 2: is actually really cool. One I mean, I think Kurt

1034
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 2: is asking if there's a field where you couldn't possibly

1035
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:45,640
Speaker 2: have particles. It's totally possible to have a field that's

1036
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:48,840
Speaker 2: empty of particles, where there's possibilities for particles, you just

1037
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:50,960
Speaker 2: don't have the energy, right, there's just not enough energy

1038
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:54,399
Speaker 2: to make any particles. That's totally possible. I think Kurt's

1039
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:56,520
Speaker 2: asking a different question, which is, could you have a

1040
00:48:56,600 --> 00:48:59,799
Speaker 2: quantum field where no particle is even ever possible, where

1041
00:48:59,880 --> 00:49:02,879
Speaker 2: just can't do that kind of ripple. It's a really

1042
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,920
Speaker 2: interesting question because you might think, like, well, particles are

1043
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:08,440
Speaker 2: a special kind of ripple in these fields, and it

1044
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:10,840
Speaker 2: has to solve the equation, and could you have a

1045
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 2: field whose basic properties prevent there from ever being any

1046
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:17,360
Speaker 2: solution like that? Like are there fields with no solutions

1047
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:20,080
Speaker 2: at all? And it's a really good deep question about

1048
00:49:20,160 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 2: quantum field theory. The answer is basically no, because the

1049
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 2: simplest field you can imagine like the Higgs boson, but

1050
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 2: then even remove all of its interactions, the simplest field

1051
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,399
Speaker 2: has to have some kinetic energy, has to be able

1052
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,719
Speaker 2: to wiggle. That's what fields can do. And as long

1053
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 2: as you have a field that can have kinetic energy,

1054
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:41,320
Speaker 2: and it basically motion, and then you can find quantum solutions.

1055
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 2: So essentially every quantum field, by its nature, has quantized solutions,

1056
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:50,920
Speaker 2: and steps on that ladder are particles, and so essentially

1057
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 2: every possible quantum field has particle solutions to it. Even

1058
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:58,520
Speaker 2: the very simplest scenario, even the most basic, minimalized, bare

1059
00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 2: bones field, would have particles in it.

1060
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:05,280
Speaker 1: What I love about this question is that it seemed

1061
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:08,720
Speaker 1: like it was going to be very simple. Even simple

1062
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 1: questions can be deceptively sort of complicated to really understand

1063
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:15,920
Speaker 1: them completely. But I learned a lot. Let's see if

1064
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 1: Kurt did.

1065
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:18,799
Speaker 4: I also learned a lot. Thank you so much for

1066
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:21,880
Speaker 4: the response. I found it quite interesting and thought provoking.

1067
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:25,839
Speaker 4: I haven't thought about how quantum field theory generalizes from

1068
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 4: the simpler classical field description with Turner's equation, the idea

1069
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 4: that each solution to the field equation corresponds to the

1070
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:37,840
Speaker 4: number of particles. That makes perfect sense. Your answer helped.

1071
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:38,200
Speaker 4: Thank you.

1072
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:48,920
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We

1073
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:51,360
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1074
00:50:51,520 --> 00:50:54,279
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1075
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 2: Extraordinary Universe.

1076
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:59,240
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1077
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:02,239
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1078
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:02,680
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1079
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 2: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

1080
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:09,279
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1081
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:10,960
Speaker 1: Org, or you can find us on social media. We

1082
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Speaker 1: have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on all

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Speaker 1: of those platforms. You can find us at D and

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Speaker 1: K Universe.

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Speaker 2: Don't be shy, write to us