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Speaker 1: Hey Katie, how do your particles feel today?

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Speaker 4: I guess it depends on which particle you ask?

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Speaker 1: All right, well, let's start with your protons. How are

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Speaker 1: they feeling this morning?

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Speaker 4: They're feeling pretty positive.

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Speaker 1: And your electrons any negativity there?

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Speaker 4: Well, I would say they're all charged up.

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Speaker 1: And what about those neutrons. We don't want to overlook them?

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Speaker 1: How are they doing there?

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Speaker 4: Come see, come saw?

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Speaker 1: All right, well, let's see if this podcast can get

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Speaker 1: them excited.

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Speaker 4: Well, I'm excited even if my neutrons are kind of

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Speaker 4: just meth.

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Speaker 1: Hello. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle of physicists and a

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Speaker 1: professor at UC Irvine, and I contain multitudes of.

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Speaker 4: Particles, and I am Katie Golden. I host the podcast

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Speaker 4: Creature feature about animals and my particles. I think I've

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Speaker 4: got at least ten of them.

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Speaker 1: You know, really, your podcast is also about particles, since

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Speaker 1: all animals are also made of particles.

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Speaker 4: That's right, So who's the physicist.

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Speaker 1: Now, we're all physicists. That's the point. Every podcast is

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Speaker 1: really about particles, even those true crime podcasts, even the

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Speaker 1: bigfoot podcasts, even those paranormal esp podcasts that consistently outrank

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Speaker 1: ours in the natural science category. But welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explain the universe in which we treat

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Speaker 1: the entire universe as a crazy swarm of particles. Particles

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Speaker 1: that are mysterious, particles that are weird, particles that follow

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Speaker 1: very strange quantum rules, but particles that do follow rules

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Speaker 1: in the end, rules that we think we can understand,

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Speaker 1: that we can digest, that we can explain to you.

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Speaker 1: On this podcast, we hope to wrap our minds around

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Speaker 1: everything in the universe, break it down to its tiny

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Speaker 1: little particles, and feed them to you one by one.

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Speaker 1: My co host and friend, Jorge cham can't be here today,

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Speaker 1: but we are very lucky to have our regular co host, Katie.

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Speaker 1: Katie thanks a lot for joining us.

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Speaker 4: Of course, I am ready to learn about particles, because

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Speaker 4: you know, they seem important given that I need them

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Speaker 4: in me to make.

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Speaker 1: Me, me, to make you you. Indeed, but you know

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Speaker 1: what is the unus of you diving right into the

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Speaker 1: philosophical questions at the heart of particle physics. One thing

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Speaker 1: we have learned recently about particles and the universe is

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Speaker 1: that we all seem to be made up of the

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Speaker 1: same kinds of particles. I'm made of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

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Speaker 1: You're made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. What's the difference?

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Speaker 1: Are there Katie particles and Daniel particles? No, it turns

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Speaker 1: out that the only difference between Daniel and Katie fundamentally,

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Speaker 1: or between an apple and a banana, or between kittens

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Speaker 1: and lava, is how those particles are put together. You

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Speaker 1: take that same basic set of building blocks, and you

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Speaker 1: can make anything.

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Speaker 4: You're blowing my mind. So if we sort of melted

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Speaker 4: down Katie and Daniel into just the particles and then

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Speaker 4: rearranged all the Katie particles into Daniel particle like the

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Speaker 4: Daniel blueprints, then that would just create a Daniel, even

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Speaker 4: though those were originally my particles.

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Speaker 1: That's exactly right. It seems like our universe follows the

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Speaker 1: same principles as legos, that the same basic building blocks

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Speaker 1: can be used to make anything. Right, if your little

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Speaker 1: brother used your legos to make a huge dinosaur, and

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Speaker 1: then you smashed it and used it to build a

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Speaker 1: pirate boat. You could reuse those dinosaur legos to make

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Speaker 1: your pirate ship now here. Of course, I have to

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Speaker 1: quibble with the fundamental flaw of Lego toys. The original

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Speaker 1: Legos were just the basic building blocks, and I love

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Speaker 1: that simplicity that I had no bias to them. You

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Speaker 1: really could use them to make anything. These fancy new

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Speaker 1: modern Legos, you know, they come with stuff printed on

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Speaker 1: the sides or specific shapes, right, so they sort of

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Speaker 1: like predetermine what you have to build. I'm talking about

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Speaker 1: the true original Legos.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I usually just built the tallest tower I could make

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Speaker 4: out of my Legos, and then usually put a bunch

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Speaker 4: of guys on it, so it's like just this big

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Speaker 4: tower of babel. I don't know what that says about me,

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Speaker 4: but yeah, I agree, Although I do like that modern

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Speaker 4: legos do have different kinds of Legos. Like it started out,

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Speaker 4: I think, with just the one Lego block unit, but

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Speaker 4: now you have all sorts of different types of Legos.

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Speaker 4: You have like the sort of og blocks, but you

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Speaker 4: also have these long, skinny ones. You have ones that

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Speaker 4: can rotate. You have like connector legos, But is that

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Speaker 4: at all similar to how the universe works?

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Speaker 1: Seems to be very similar to how the universe works. Now,

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Speaker 1: I'm made of protons and neutrons and electrons, and so

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Speaker 1: are you, and so is basically everything that you've ever eaten,

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Speaker 1: everything you've ever tripped over, everything you've ever thrown at

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Speaker 1: your sibling. They're all made of the same ingredients. And

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Speaker 1: if you look at the periodic table, you can see

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Speaker 1: that that's true, right, Every element on the periodic table

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Speaker 1: is just made of protons, neutrons, and electrons arranged in

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Speaker 1: different numbers. You start with one proton and electron, you

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Speaker 1: have hydrogen. You add in another proton, you get helium.

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Speaker 1: Keep adding protons, do you get different elements? You're just

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Speaker 1: adding more of the same basic building blocks, but you

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Speaker 1: make fundamentally different elements. But those different elements are not

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Speaker 1: really fundamentally different. The only difference between carbon and neon,

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Speaker 1: or between lead and gold is the number of protons

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Speaker 1: inside those nucleis. So really you can build anything with

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Speaker 1: the same basic building blocks.

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Speaker 4: It's so hard to wrap my head around that. So

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Speaker 4: you know, just like it's just a it seems that

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Speaker 4: it's a numbers game, because like usually with legos, if

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Speaker 4: you just have like five legos, it doesn't suddenly turn

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Speaker 4: into from like you know, a sugar, into like gold

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Speaker 4: or something like that. But with these on the atomic levels,

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Speaker 4: when you change just the number of these these tiny particles,

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Speaker 4: it turns from you know, something that if you eat

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Speaker 4: nothing would happen to you, to something if you eat

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Speaker 4: it it would be bad and drive you crazy, like

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Speaker 4: eating lead versus drinking air. I guess we don't really

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Speaker 4: drink air, but you get the idea.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. It might seem like a small difference. You

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Speaker 1: just adding a proton, what's the big deal, but it

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Speaker 1: completely changes its emergent behavior. All these characteristics that we're

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Speaker 1: familiar with, the way metals are shiny and conduct electricity,

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Speaker 1: the way some of these elements are float around and

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Speaker 1: ignore the other ones that are not very active. All

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Speaker 1: of those properties are determined by how many protons and

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Speaker 1: how many electrons there are in each atom, and so

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Speaker 1: like the fact that metals are metallic and conductive comes

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Speaker 1: from the fact that their electron shells are not filled,

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Speaker 1: which is determined by the number of protons inside the nucleus.

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Speaker 1: So it's not just an irrelevant detail. It's a totally

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Speaker 1: determining fact, but it's fascinating they're all made out of

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Speaker 1: the same bits. The other fascinating thing to me is

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Speaker 1: that we're all made out of roughly the same ratios

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Speaker 1: of bits. Like any given atom has basically a one

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Speaker 1: to one to one proton to neutron to electron ratio.

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Speaker 1: So lead has more protons than hydrogen, but it also

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Speaker 1: has more neutrons and also has more electrons. That means

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Speaker 1: that not only are we all made out of the

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Speaker 1: same three basic building blocks, but we're made out of

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Speaker 1: them in the same proportions. It's not like Kidi has

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Speaker 1: more electrons and Daniel has more protons, right, where the

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Speaker 1: same building blocks in the same proportions just range differently.

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Speaker 4: So you mentioned that the number of protons sort of

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Speaker 4: changes the element and the number of electrons. This kind

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Speaker 4: of changes the characteristic of these elements, But you didn't

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Speaker 4: mention neutrons too much, being sort of the determinant of

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Speaker 4: what these elements are. Why are neutrons different in terms

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Speaker 4: of protons and electrons.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good point, and neutrons are sadly often overlooked,

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Speaker 1: which is why we are dedicating almost our entire podcast

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Speaker 1: today to talking about these mysterious, funny particles. But you're

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Speaker 1: right that neutrons don't really determine as much the identity

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Speaker 1: of the atom, and that's because they are electrically neutral.

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Speaker 1: Like if you add another proton to the atom, then

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Speaker 1: in order to make it electrically neutral, you have to

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Speaker 1: add another electron in orbit around it, and that really

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Speaker 1: changes the chemical properties. It changes how this thing interacts,

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Speaker 1: whether or not it's electron orbitals are filled, or whether

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Speaker 1: it's got an opening that very strongly affects the behavior

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Speaker 1: of the atom. You add another neutron, then you don't

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Speaker 1: need to add another electron. So you can add neutrons,

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Speaker 1: no big deal. You can't just add neutrons anytime you

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Speaker 1: like to any atom. It does make them heavier, and

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Speaker 1: it makes these other versions of the elements. These are

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Speaker 1: called isotopes. So for example, you can have hydrogen, which

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Speaker 1: is just a proton, but you can also have deuterium,

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Speaker 1: which is a proton and a neutron. So you put

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Speaker 1: those together inside the nucleus you have an electron around it.

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Speaker 1: It's still called hydrogen, but it's like a heavy version

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Speaker 1: of hydrogen. For example, if you put that together into

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Speaker 1: H two O, but instead of the hydrogen, you have

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Speaker 1: this heavy version of hydrogen with a neutron also in

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Speaker 1: the nucleus, then you get what's called heavy water, which

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Speaker 1: we sometimes use in nuclear experiments. Right, So it does

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Speaker 1: change a little bit sort of the flavor of the

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Speaker 1: element to add neutrons or to take them away, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't change its fundamental identity, which is determined by

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Speaker 1: the charged objects, the proton and the electron.

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Speaker 4: So that's really interesting to me. Why is the neutron

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Speaker 4: involved at all in the atomic structure if it's just

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Speaker 4: kind of this It seems like this neutral fluff particle

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Speaker 4: just this like dead weight. But is that really true.

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Speaker 1: No, the neutrons often overlook but it does play a

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Speaker 1: vital role in keeping the nucleus together. We're going to

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Speaker 1: dig into it a bit more on the podcast, but

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Speaker 1: very briefly, think about how the nucleus stays together. Right,

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Speaker 1: If you have the nucleus of an atom that has

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Speaker 1: like twenty five protons in it, those things are all

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Speaker 1: positively charged, why don't they just like bust apart?

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Speaker 6: You know?

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Speaker 1: Why don't they repel each other? Because they all have

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Speaker 1: the same positive charge. The answer is that the nucleus

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Speaker 1: is held together by the strong force, which is much

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Speaker 1: more powerful than electromagnetism, and neutrons, even though they are

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Speaker 1: neutral electromagnetically, they do involve the strong force. Turns out,

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Speaker 1: the nucleus is a bit of a delicate puzzle keeping

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Speaker 1: those protons from flying apart. You need the neutrons. It's

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a spacer, and so it's easier

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Speaker 1: to make stable nuclei if you include the neutrons.

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Speaker 4: I see, So without the neutrons, the protons would not

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Speaker 4: be able to stand each other's present. I know people

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Speaker 4: like that and like in group dynamics, that kind of

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Speaker 4: keep the piece. So that's that is really interesting. So

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Speaker 4: I guess without neutrons we wouldn't exist, we would not

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Speaker 4: be held together. But it's odd to me though, that

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Speaker 4: that neutrons have. It seems like they're fundamentally different from

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Speaker 4: like a proton or an election because they don't have

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Speaker 4: this charge. So you know, how did that even really happen?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, these are deep questions about the universe, like

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Speaker 1: why do we have neutrons anyway? Right, it's just sort

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Speaker 1: of how the universe coalesces. Remember, we go back to

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Speaker 1: the very early part of the universe where everything is

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Speaker 1: just energy, and the universe then expands and cools, and

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Speaker 1: as it cools, it sort of like crystallizes into lower

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Speaker 1: energy states. Things sort of like come together and form

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Speaker 1: stable particles. And by looking around in the universe and

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Speaker 1: seeing sort of what was made, we can tell sort

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Speaker 1: of like what the options were. We don't know like

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Speaker 1: why it's possible to build neutrons necessarily, but we see

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Speaker 1: that a lot of them sort of emerged from the

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Speaker 1: chaos of the early universe. And that's another really fascinating

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Speaker 1: aspect of these particles is their age. Like protons, we

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Speaker 1: think that protons probably live forever. Like you make a proton,

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Speaker 1: you can just hang out forever and stick around till

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Speaker 1: the end of time. Same with an electron. Electron is stable.

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Speaker 1: You have an electron sitting in empty space, it will

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Speaker 1: just stay an electron for a billion years, maybe a

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Speaker 1: trillion years, a quadrillion years. And what that means is

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Speaker 1: that the protons and electrons inside your body were probably

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Speaker 1: made during the Big Bang, So you are made of

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Speaker 1: ancient multitudes.

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Speaker 4: I mean, you know, thank you for that. Thank you

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Speaker 4: for calling me old. So neutrons weren't necessarily made during

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Speaker 4: the Big Bang, you're saying.

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Speaker 1: So neutrons were also made during the Big Bang, right

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Speaker 1: as the universe cooled. We got protons, we got electrons,

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Speaker 1: we've got neutrons. But there's a difference between protons, electrons,

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Speaker 1: and neutrons that goes beyond just their electric charge. Neutrons

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Speaker 1: don't seem to last forever the same way that protons

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Speaker 1: and electrons do. In fact, they don't last very long

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Speaker 1: at all. So that makes them fundamentally weird and different.

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Speaker 1: And by studying the details of how long the neutron

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Speaker 1: lives and what it turns into, we might get some

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Speaker 1: clues to these questions about like why are there neutrons

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Speaker 1: after all? What's going on inside the neutrons? Are they

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Speaker 1: irrelevant little particles? Or are they the most important clue

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Speaker 1: we have to the nature of the universe.

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Speaker 4: So yeah, now I'm really curious, like what does it

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Speaker 4: mean for a neutron to be alive? And then how

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Speaker 4: does it die? And how long does that process take?

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Speaker 1: And so today on the podcast, we'll be answering the

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Speaker 1: question how long does a neutron live? All Right, Katie,

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Speaker 1: and you've already called me out. I see for using

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Speaker 1: the word live in the title, because are neutrons alive

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Speaker 1: after all? And you know, as a particle physicist, I

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Speaker 1: think about these particles as sort of having a lifetime.

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Speaker 1: But you're right, neutrons are not alive, nor are they

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Speaker 1: dead in any sort of biological sense.

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Speaker 4: I mean, if you corner a biologist and try to

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Speaker 4: get them to answer the question what is life, They're

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Speaker 4: going to start sweating and giving you a really complex answer.

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Speaker 4: So it's not a simple question, but no, I get it.

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Speaker 4: So it's like a neutron does not always remain a

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Speaker 4: neutron in the sense that it does not stay the

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Speaker 4: same forever, and so that could be seen as it,

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Speaker 4: you know, essentially decaying or dying.

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Speaker 1: Right Exactly, When we talk about particle lifetimes, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about how long the particle exists before it turns into

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Speaker 1: something else. So some particles in the universe are stable,

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Speaker 1: like electrons and protons and the quarks that make up

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Speaker 1: those protons and photons. For example, you can create a

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Speaker 1: photon with a flashlight, shoot it out into space, and

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Speaker 1: it might fly for billions or trillions of years. Some

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Speaker 1: of the photons received by your eyeballs when you look

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Speaker 1: up at night have been crawling across the universe for

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Speaker 1: billions of years. It's incredible how long they have survived.

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Speaker 1: So some particles sort of live forever. And again we're

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Speaker 1: using live in a sort of anthropomorphic biological analogy to life.

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Speaker 1: Really we just mean exist, but other particles don't. Other

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Speaker 1: particles are not stable, and the neutron is one of those.

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Speaker 4: That's really interesting. So yeah, I didn't really think of

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Speaker 4: neutrons as being an impermanent thing. When I think about

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Speaker 4: the building blocks of life, I mean, I picture them

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Speaker 4: as these like little permanent spheres that you know, make

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Speaker 4: everything and just stay the same. And you know that

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Speaker 4: is just this kind of like solid foundation to everything.

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Speaker 4: But now you're shaking that all up.

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Speaker 1: What if I told you that one of your legos

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Speaker 1: a specific kind of lego, if you didn't use it,

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Speaker 1: it would just like evaporate or turn into other kinds

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Speaker 1: of legos.

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Speaker 4: That sounds like an excuse a little brother would give

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Speaker 4: when you steal in all my legos.

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Speaker 1: All right, but it's not a family therapy podcast, at

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Speaker 1: least not yet. So I was curious if other people

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Speaker 1: had thought about the lifetime of the neutron, if people

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Speaker 1: were aware that neutrons don't live forever, and how long

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Speaker 1: they thought it might live. So I went out there

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Speaker 1: to archadria of Internet volunteers who are willing to answer

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Speaker 1: hard physics questions without any opportunity to prepare themselves. Thank

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Speaker 1: you very much, and if you would like to join

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Speaker 1: this hardy group then please they'll be shy. Write to

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Speaker 1: me too. Questions at daniel Aandjorge dot com. So think

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Speaker 1: about it for a moment. Do you know how long

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Speaker 1: a neutron lives? Here's what people had to say.

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Speaker 7: I guess my guests would be that it would live

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Speaker 7: indefinitely until some other force overpowers the forces that hold

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Speaker 7: it together.

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Speaker 8: The neron lives like a free neotron. Shouldn't be that alone.

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Speaker 8: But I don't want probably not more than a few minutes.

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Speaker 9: I think that actually this is something that's really confused

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Speaker 9: me as I've started to look into and try to

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Speaker 9: understand particle physics and quantum physics and everything, and I

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Speaker 9: think that possibly it's just an instant. Yeah, neutrons, just

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Speaker 9: like a lot of particles, just exist for an instant.

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Speaker 9: On the other hand, it could be they could last

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Speaker 9: for my entire lifetime, so yeah, it could be a

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Speaker 9: long time as well.

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Speaker 10: Well. Neutrons make up part of atomic nuclei, so they

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Speaker 10: live for at least as long as the longest lived elements,

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Speaker 10: so at least a few million years. But I think

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Speaker 10: universe scales tend to be quite extreme, so I guess

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Speaker 10: since they don't live for only fractions of a millisecond,

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Speaker 10: I'm going to guess they live for billions of years.

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Speaker 11: I don't know if a neutron lives forever, and I

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Speaker 11: think the answer to that question is we don't know

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Speaker 11: if neutrons live forever. I know that proton decay is

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Speaker 11: still actively being studied and debated, and I don't think

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Speaker 11: a neutron would be much different. And as of now,

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Speaker 11: I believe we do not know how long they live

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Speaker 11: or if they decay away.

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Speaker 5: I know that protons decay into neutrons because they emit

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Speaker 5: a positron, so one can wonder whether neutrons can also

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Speaker 5: emit an electron and in a SINCETI kate into protons,

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Speaker 5: but this process doesn't happen, So while a proton has

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Speaker 5: a lifetime of I don't know, if the order of

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Speaker 5: a few seconds a neutron, I know it's a number

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Speaker 5: of years, and I think it's the amount of time

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Speaker 5: is comparable to the age of the universe something like that.

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Speaker 4: I really like the answer, probably just an instant, or

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Speaker 4: maybe my entire lifetime, because even though that seems funny,

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Speaker 4: like how could you compare an instant to an entire lifetime,

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Speaker 4: how could you be so equivocal? On the universal scale,

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Speaker 4: those are almost the same in a certain way, right,

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Speaker 4: Like when you look at the entire lifetime of the universe,

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Speaker 4: an instant in one human life time are not that

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Speaker 4: different exactly.

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Speaker 1: And that's the incredible thing about all of these numbers

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Speaker 1: in physics that when you're talking about how long something lives,

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Speaker 1: it could be some crazy, tiny, tiny number ten to

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Speaker 1: the minus twenty seconds, or it could be cosmic the

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Speaker 1: scale of the lifetime of the universe, right, which is like,

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Speaker 1: you know, six tillions of seconds, and so it's hard

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Speaker 1: to know, like on that huge scale where to put

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Speaker 1: these numbers, And so if you don't have any information,

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Speaker 1: then you're right, His entire lifetime does feel sort of

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Speaker 1: like an instant. And that's one of my favorite things

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Speaker 1: about physics that it may think about these cosmic sweeps

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Speaker 1: of time and recognize the fact that something that might

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Speaker 1: take our entire lifetime is basically meaningless on the timescale

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Speaker 1: of the universe.

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Speaker 4: Well, way to make me feel both old and small.

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Speaker 4: So in terms of neutrons, like it is interesting, like

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Speaker 4: if they live like a human lifetime, that makes me

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Speaker 4: feel a little less alone, or if they live like

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Speaker 4: an instant, that almost makes me feel sorry for them.

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Speaker 4: It's really hard not to anthropomorphize something once we're talking

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Speaker 4: about how long it lasts, as if the neutron particularly cares.

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Speaker 4: But I guess I want to know, like what is

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Speaker 4: a neutron? Should I feel sorry for it?

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Speaker 1: Well, I'm not going to tell you how to feel

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Speaker 1: about the particles, but I'm happy to tell you how

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Speaker 1: they're put together and what they mean. And so in

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Speaker 1: the case of a neutron, we've been talking about it

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Speaker 1: as if it was a particle in itself, like atoms

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Speaker 1: we said are made out of protons and neutrons and

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Speaker 1: the nucleus surrounded by electrons. And that's true, but we

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Speaker 1: can also drill one step deeper to understand what is

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Speaker 1: the neutron itself made out of now. In the case

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Speaker 1: of some fundamental particles like the electron, we don't know

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Speaker 1: if they're actually fundamental or made out of even smaller,

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Speaker 1: little lego building blocks. So far, the electron just looks

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Speaker 1: like it's only made out of itself, but that might

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Speaker 1: just be because we haven't zoomed in far enough. We

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Speaker 1: don't have colliders capable of blowing up electrons and seeing

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Speaker 1: what's inside them. In the case of protons and neutrons,

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Speaker 1: we actually have been able to break them up and

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Speaker 1: see what's inside. For about the last fifty years or so,

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Speaker 1: we have had colliders capable of smashing these particles and

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Speaker 1: showing us what they are made out of. And fascinatingly,

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Speaker 1: the proton and the neutron are made out of the

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Speaker 1: same two building blocks, upquarks and down quarks. So these

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Speaker 1: are two funny little particles. They have weird fractional electric

435
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:23,600
Speaker 1: charges which allows them to get added up to make

436
00:23:23,640 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: a neutron or a proton. So, for example, a neutron

437
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:30,919
Speaker 1: is an upquark which is charged two thirds, and then

438
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:35,240
Speaker 1: two down quarks, each of which are charged minus one third.

439
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: So neutron is an up down down. It's three of

440
00:23:39,119 --> 00:23:42,400
Speaker 1: these quarks put together and you get zero electric charge.

441
00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 4: So physicists, when you're asked what's up cork, do you

442
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:51,119
Speaker 4: just say not much, what's up cork with you? Or

443
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:53,399
Speaker 4: do you have an actual answer to what's an up quark?

444
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 4: And I guess what's a down cork?

445
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:57,239
Speaker 1: I don't know what's up is down, what's down is up?

446
00:23:57,280 --> 00:23:59,640
Speaker 1: Sometimes in physics, you know, as I always say, I'm

447
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 1: knocking to be held responsible for the names of these particles.

448
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:04,920
Speaker 1: But you know, there are some reasons why we call

449
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:08,040
Speaker 1: them upquarks and down quarks. They are organized together by

450
00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:11,159
Speaker 1: the weak force into this pair, this up and down

451
00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:14,080
Speaker 1: pair that get linked together by the w boson, which

452
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in just a minute. But

453
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 1: actually in the nucleus, the upcarks and down quarks are

454
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:20,840
Speaker 1: not held together by the weak force. They're held together

455
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:24,919
Speaker 1: by the strong force. So quarks have electric charges, but

456
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: that's not what's holding them together. Like you think about

457
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:30,320
Speaker 1: the way molecules are held together, they're held together because

458
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:33,120
Speaker 1: of the electric charges. These electrons are like whizzing around

459
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,560
Speaker 1: and making these ionic bonds or covalent bonds. The electric

460
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: charges are basically irrelevant. Once you get inside the proton

461
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: and the neutron, because there's a much more powerful force

462
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:46,440
Speaker 1: at play, and that's these strong nuclear force, which totally

463
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: overwhelms the electromagnetic force, and it's able to hold all

464
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,160
Speaker 1: of these particles together. And the strong nuclear force does

465
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:55,199
Speaker 1: that by using luons. So your mental picture of a

466
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: neutron shouldn't be like three little lego pieces clicked neatly

467
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:01,919
Speaker 1: together and that's it. Instead, it's more like three tiny

468
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:05,639
Speaker 1: little dots surrounded by a swarm of these gluons that

469
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:08,320
Speaker 1: are holding it together. So it's more like a bag

470
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 1: of gluons with three hard dots in it.

471
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:14,920
Speaker 4: So, oh my gosh, so gluons. It's just this sort

472
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:19,640
Speaker 4: of like swarm of these things that hold together the

473
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,119
Speaker 4: upquarks and down corks. So like, the more we split

474
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:25,680
Speaker 4: things apart and try to think about like the even

475
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 4: smaller thing that holds the smaller things together, it gets

476
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:31,879
Speaker 4: really difficult for my brain not to start hurting. But

477
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 4: all right, so do we know like how many gluons

478
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 4: are in a neutron or is it just kind of

479
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:42,639
Speaker 4: this mass of stuff that we know holds together of

480
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 4: quarks and down corks. But we can't necessarily quantify how

481
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:47,400
Speaker 4: many of these things there are.

482
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:50,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a great question because probably you're wanting

483
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:52,680
Speaker 1: to put together a model of what's going on inside

484
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:55,120
Speaker 1: the neutron that has like a basic recipe, and those

485
00:25:55,119 --> 00:25:57,639
Speaker 1: things click together to make a neutron way like pieces

486
00:25:57,640 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 1: of a jigsaw puzzle get clicked together to make a

487
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 1: bigger picture. Right, But that's not really the way we

488
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:06,040
Speaker 1: think about these gluons. Luons in this case are force particles.

489
00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 1: They're not matter particles. What that means is that they

490
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 1: don't really exist in the same way that the matter

491
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:14,440
Speaker 1: particles do. They exist as a representation of the force

492
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: between the matter particles. So you have the upquark and

493
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:20,439
Speaker 1: the two down quarks. They're sitting there and they're pulling

494
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:23,239
Speaker 1: on each other, the strong forces holding them together. How

495
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 1: do you think about that force, Well, there's a few

496
00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:27,399
Speaker 1: different ways of doing it. One is to think about

497
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: them exchanging particles like zooming gluons back together. That's how

498
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 1: they hold themselves together. And you can use that same

499
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: strategy to think about how other particles talk to each other,

500
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 1: Like what happens when two electrons push against each other

501
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:42,399
Speaker 1: because they have the same electric charge. How does that

502
00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: actually work microscopically, Well, you can think of them as

503
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: shooting photons towards each other because photons are the force

504
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 1: particle for the electromagnetic force. So inside the neutron, these

505
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 1: quarks are holding onto each other by shooting gluons at

506
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:58,920
Speaker 1: each other. That's one way of thinking about how the

507
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 1: forces are working inside the neutron. There's another way of

508
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: thinking about it, which doesn't use this sort of like

509
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: virtual particles, these gluons sipping back and forth. You just

510
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,360
Speaker 1: think about fields. Like if you're more comfortable thinking about

511
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:13,200
Speaker 1: an electron being surrounded by its electric field, the way

512
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:16,120
Speaker 1: that it pushes on other electrons is that its electric

513
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: field pushes on it, then you can think about the

514
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: interior of the neutron that same way as having three

515
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:24,200
Speaker 1: quarks each surrounded by a field from the strong force,

516
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: and those fields are tugging on each other. Those are

517
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:29,679
Speaker 1: gluonic fields. You can think about them as either like

518
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:33,399
Speaker 1: huge tower or virtual gluons which appear and disappear very quickly,

519
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: or you can think about them in terms of fields.

520
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:39,040
Speaker 1: They are two equivalent mental pictures for the same fundamental

521
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:41,640
Speaker 1: process that's going on, but you can't really like count

522
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,200
Speaker 1: the number of gluons because they're not particles that exist

523
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: in the same way as the quarks.

524
00:27:46,119 --> 00:27:49,760
Speaker 4: So, okay, in my recipe that I'm writing for home

525
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 4: baked neutrons, I'm just gonna put down a pinch.

526
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:55,200
Speaker 1: Of gluons exactly.

527
00:27:55,320 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 4: So you said that these are strong, strong force holding

528
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 4: this neutron together. But we were just talking about how

529
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 4: maybe these neutrons break apart. So how would they break

530
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:11,679
Speaker 4: apart if you have these really strong forces holding them together?

531
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: Great question, and it reveals something about the way I

532
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: think a lot of people think about particles and their decay.

533
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: What happens when a particle decays? Is it breaking apart?

534
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 1: Are you taking its pieces and they're reassembling them to

535
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 1: build something else? Right, Well, what's happening when a neutron

536
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 1: decays is not actually that it's breaking apart at all.

537
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: It's that one piece of its internal structure, one of

538
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 1: those quarks, changes its nature. So remember that a neutron

539
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:41,479
Speaker 1: is up, down, down right, two down quarks and an upcork. Well,

540
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: what happens if one of those down quarks changes its

541
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: flavor and becomes an upcark, Then you have two upcarks

542
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: and a down instead of two down quarks and an up. Now,

543
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: remember that upquarks are charged plus two thirds and a

544
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 1: down cork is charged minus one third. So now you

545
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: have plus two third us two third minus one third

546
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 1: gives you a charge of plus one. That's a proton.

547
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 1: So what happens when a neutron decays is that one

548
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:11,840
Speaker 1: of its down quarks converts into an upcork, and the

549
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 1: neutron becomes a proton. So it doesn't break apart. It

550
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 1: flips from being a neutron to being a proton.

551
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 4: That's amazing. So it's less of a death of a

552
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 4: particle and more of a transformation of a particle. Do

553
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 4: we have any idea of why a down cork would

554
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 4: become upqork?

555
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: Yeah? Like, you know, why does a down cork decide

556
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: it wants to be an upquirk one day? You know,

557
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 1: like why isn't it just happy being an upquirk? It's

558
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:40,959
Speaker 1: a great question, and it's a really deep question. It's

559
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: like why does any particle decay? You know, why do

560
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 1: muons just hang out and be muons? Why do they

561
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 1: decay to electrons and a couple of neutrinos? Why does

562
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: anything decay, and the reason is that the universe is

563
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 1: constantly getting colder and spreading out. Entropy and statistical mechanics

564
00:29:57,200 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: tells us that the universe doesn't like to have energy

565
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: localized in a little spot. It likes for it to

566
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: spread out. Sort of fascinating and quantum mechanical, the universe

567
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:09,680
Speaker 1: likes to occupy multiple quantum states instead of being focused

568
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 1: on a single quantum state. What that means essentially is

569
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:16,960
Speaker 1: that any particle will always decay into a lower mass particle.

570
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: If it's possible for you to take a step down

571
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 1: the mass ladder to break up into smaller particles with

572
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: less mass than you, always will. The universe is constant pressure.

573
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: It's the same as if you have like a hot

574
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:31,560
Speaker 1: object sitting on a surface. It's going to spread its

575
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 1: energy out to the neighboring stuff the same way you

576
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: have a very high mass particle. It wants to break

577
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: up into lower mass particles. And it turns out that

578
00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 1: the neutron is heavier than the proton just by a

579
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: little bit, and so the neutron can do this. It

580
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: can take a step down into a lower energy configuration.

581
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 1: So the neutron is a higher energy state, which means

582
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 1: it has a little bit more mass and it decays

583
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: down into a proton, and it does this by flipping

584
00:30:57,080 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: one of the down quarks into an upcoork.

585
00:30:59,280 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 4: So with my friend actually big to neutron, it's kind

586
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 4: of like a hot soufla, and then if I leave

587
00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 4: that out, it's going to cool down and then collapse

588
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 4: into a proton. I got it. Oh, speaking of soufla,

589
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:13,239
Speaker 4: I did leave one out, So we're going to need

590
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 4: to take a quick break while I go check on that.

591
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 4: I'm sure it's fine, and then we hopefully will come

592
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 4: back and I'll still have my neutrons SUFLA intact, and

593
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 4: we'll continue talking about how long do these neutrons live?

594
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 4: How do I resuscitate my neutrouns southfl So we'll be

595
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 4: right back.

596
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,239
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Speaker 1: ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty

650
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to

651
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and

652
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,759
Speaker 1: drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most

653
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,960
Speaker 1: dairy farms reuse water up to four times. The same

654
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:37,120
Speaker 1: water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and

655
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:40,760
Speaker 1: irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases?

656
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,799
Speaker 1: Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from

657
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 1: maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and

658
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:49,479
Speaker 1: electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice

659
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:51,400
Speaker 1: of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that

660
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,120
Speaker 1: dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the

661
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense dairy

662
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 1: products we love with less of an impact. Visit us

663
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:03,280
Speaker 1: dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.

664
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:15,360
Speaker 4: Okay, so bad news is that my soufla did collapse.

665
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 4: The good news is, I guess it's now a proton,

666
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 4: so all isn't lost.

667
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: That's always the backup plan for your neutrons. Sooothfla turns

668
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:25,720
Speaker 1: out charge it up to a proton.

669
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 4: Sooothfla, Like you know, a soufla that collapses is still

670
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:33,439
Speaker 4: gonna taste pretty good. So a neutron that decays into

671
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 4: a proton is still a particle. It'll still build things

672
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 4: like delicious souflas.

673
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:42,439
Speaker 1: Mm hmm exactly. And so we were talking about how

674
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: neutrons decay and how they turn into protons, and people

675
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: might be wondering, like what's going on with the electric charges?

676
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 1: Like can you just turn a down quark which is

677
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:56,800
Speaker 1: charged minus a third into an upcork, which is charged

678
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: plus two thirds? Like charge doesn't just come for fruit.

679
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: You can't just like create charge. How do you just

680
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: convert a neutron into a plus one charge proton? Right?

681
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:08,280
Speaker 1: The answer is that the universe does do the accounting

682
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 1: quite carefully. And when a downcore converts into an upcork,

683
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: it also emits a W particle.

684
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 4: Okay, now you're just making up particles. What's a W particle?

685
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 1: So a W particle is the force particle for the

686
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force. Right, we got all these different forces.

687
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: We have electromagnetism, we have a strong force, we have

688
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: the weak force. Each one we think of as carried

689
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:35,839
Speaker 1: by a particle. So photons carry the electromagnetic force, gluons

690
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:40,280
Speaker 1: carry these strong force. W particles carry the weak nuclear force.

691
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:43,439
Speaker 1: The week nuclear force is like the weirdest, strangest, most

692
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:46,799
Speaker 1: amazing force there is. It's not very powerful, but it

693
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of really strange stuff. And we

694
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 1: have a couple of podcast episodes dedicated just to understanding

695
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:55,520
Speaker 1: the weak force and parity violation and all that crazy stuff.

696
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:57,840
Speaker 1: But in this case, the weak force is here to

697
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:01,080
Speaker 1: help balance the books. When a downcore becomes an upcork,

698
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: that sort of costs one electric charge if gone from

699
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:06,960
Speaker 1: a neutron to a proton, So to balance the books,

700
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:09,799
Speaker 1: you also need to create something with negative charge. The

701
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: amazing thing about these W particles is that they do

702
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:15,759
Speaker 1: have charge, So the W can have a positive or

703
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,479
Speaker 1: a negative charge. So in this case you emit a

704
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 1: W minus which balances the charges. So have you gone

705
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: from a neutron to a proton and a W minus.

706
00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 1: So the proton is plus one, the W minus is

707
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: minus one. That all adds up to zero. The W

708
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,280
Speaker 1: minus itself doesn't live for very long and it turns

709
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,800
Speaker 1: into an electron and an anti neutrino.

710
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:39,279
Speaker 4: Okay, so an electron does have a negative charge, so

711
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 4: it still retains that negative charge. What is an anti neutrino?

712
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, an anti neutrino is one of these little ghostly particles.

713
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 1: So you and I are made of protons and neutrons

714
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: and electrons which are made of upquorks and down quarks.

715
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 1: But there's this other particle, this neutrino, which exists in

716
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: the universe and can be made, and the Sun is

717
00:37:57,560 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: pumping out like bajillions of them every second. But they're

718
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:04,800
Speaker 1: very strange little particles because they don't appear normally inside matter,

719
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: Like I am not made out of neutrinos and you

720
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: are not made out of neutrinos in any way. But

721
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 1: it's something that the universe can exist. It's like a

722
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 1: lego building block that's never used in making anything bigger

723
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:18,920
Speaker 1: or larger. It's just sort of like floating around in

724
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: the universe.

725
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:22,799
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember those lego blocks. They're usually like these

726
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 4: like weirdly shaped, clear little ones, and they would just

727
00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:29,879
Speaker 4: kind of not be used in anything, get quickly lost.

728
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: Or eaten exactly. And neutrinos are strange because they're very

729
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:36,600
Speaker 1: very low mass. They're almost massless, but not entirely, and

730
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 1: they also hardly interact. They don't have any electric charge,

731
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,239
Speaker 1: they don't have the strong force, so they basically just

732
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 1: fly through everything. So a neutrino when it's produced can

733
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:47,759
Speaker 1: fly through like a star without blinking an eye. To

734
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: a neutrino, the whole universe is transparent, and so that

735
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:53,879
Speaker 1: just sort of like flies out. And so to summarize them,

736
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: when a neutron decays, it turns into a proton, an electron,

737
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,720
Speaker 1: and then an anti neutrino, and so that's what happens

738
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:01,840
Speaker 1: when a neutron decays.

739
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 4: That's spooky. So neutron does kind of create a ghost

740
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 4: when it decays, scientifically speaking.

741
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 1: Exactly, and we should also be clear about what we

742
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 1: mean about neutron decay because people might be wondering, like,

743
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 1: does that mean that the neutrons that are in my

744
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: body right now are going to like break up, like

745
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: they don't last for long? Like, am I dying because

746
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:24,200
Speaker 1: my neutrons are decaying?

747
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:24,839
Speaker 3: Yeah?

748
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 4: I want to know if I will spontaneously turn into

749
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 4: a pile of protons, electrons and ghost particles in my

750
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 4: best interest to know.

751
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 1: And that's one of the really fascinating mysteries about neutron

752
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 1: decay is that neutrons do decay, but only sort of

753
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:42,319
Speaker 1: like when they are on their own, floating out in

754
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:46,000
Speaker 1: the universe. When a neutron is inside a nucleus, when

755
00:39:46,040 --> 00:39:48,359
Speaker 1: it's hanging out with other protons, when it and its

756
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 1: proton brethren have built something larger, then it can last forever.

757
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: You know, you have a stable nucleus like iron, right,

758
00:39:55,160 --> 00:39:57,399
Speaker 1: iron can live forever. We think if you have an

759
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: iron atom sitting alone in the universe, it's made of

760
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 1: protons and neutrons and electrons, it can sit there, we

761
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: think forever. We think it's stable, if it's not perturbed,

762
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:08,800
Speaker 1: it will just hang out until the end of time.

763
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,359
Speaker 1: That includes the neutrons inside the iron right, they're there.

764
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:17,160
Speaker 1: They're neutrons. They will hang out forever. Their down quarks

765
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 1: are not going to flip into upquarks, turning them into protons.

766
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 4: This is like the ultimate zip block bag techniques. So

767
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 4: keeping neutrons fresh forever, I love that technology for my strawberries.

768
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 4: They're so good, but they go bad so fast.

769
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: Exactly. So, the neutrons in your body are in atoms,

770
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: and so they are likely to last as long as

771
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: those atoms last. But if you take a neutron out

772
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:42,960
Speaker 1: of the atom and you have it by itself hanging

773
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:45,279
Speaker 1: out in free space, now we can talk about the

774
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: lifetime of that neutron. What does it do when it's

775
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 1: left alone. Well, a neutrons sitting there in empty space

776
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: lasts till the end of time or will it decay?

777
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: So if you put like a proton and then a

778
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: neutron and electron, you have them just hanging out in

779
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 1: free space and you just wait. The proton will last forever,

780
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: we think, the electron will last forever, we think, but

781
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:08,320
Speaker 1: the neutron will not. The neutron by itself will decay.

782
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: One of those down quarks will flip. That's the actual

783
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 1: sound it makes. And it'll turn into a proton electron

784
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:16,880
Speaker 1: and an anti neutrino. So when we talk about the

785
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 1: neutron lifetime, we're talking about the isolated neutron, not a

786
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: neutron that's inside the nucleus.

787
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 4: So when it's inside the nucleus, what is that zip

788
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:27,240
Speaker 4: blog effect that is keeping it from decaying.

789
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, and there's a lot of

790
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:32,879
Speaker 1: mysteries there because we don't really understand very well how

791
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,440
Speaker 1: the strong force works. We talked about it briefly a

792
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 1: little earlier. But when protons and neutrons are locked together

793
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: inside a nucleus, it's not like you just have these

794
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:44,840
Speaker 1: particles and they're stuck together like legos. They're also talking

795
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,520
Speaker 1: to each other because remember a proton and a neutron,

796
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:51,799
Speaker 1: they're not just linked together quarks. They're little bags of gluons.

797
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:54,800
Speaker 1: When you get a proton or a neutron close enough together,

798
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: then their gluons talk to each other. Those bags leak

799
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: a little bit. They're not totally set from each other,

800
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 1: and really they sort of like weave themselves into a

801
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: larger mosaic. You might wonder inside a heavy hydrogen atom,

802
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:10,320
Speaker 1: where you have not just a proton, but a proton

803
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:13,560
Speaker 1: and a neutron. What's making the proton and neutron stick

804
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: to each other? Right, The proton is positively charged, the

805
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: neutron is negatively charged. Why do they stick together at all?

806
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: Why don't they just float apart? The answer is their gluons.

807
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: You get them that close together, then the gluons inside

808
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:28,720
Speaker 1: each other's bags talk to each other and they click

809
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: together into sort of a larger object which is not

810
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: really anymore just an isolated proton, not really anymore isolated neutrons,

811
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 1: but this combined object that has these linkages together.

812
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:42,920
Speaker 4: So is that why when you keep adding neutrons to

813
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 4: an atom that it becomes maybe less stable because you

814
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 4: start to weaken those gluon forces.

815
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:52,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can make it less stable or more stable. Right.

816
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 1: The way that you organize the protons and the neutrons

817
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:58,640
Speaker 1: inside the nucleus totally determined whether something is stable or not.

818
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:01,840
Speaker 1: We have a fun podcast about the islands of stability

819
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: and how heavy you can make something and keep it stable.

820
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 1: We don't know the answer to that because the strong

821
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: force is very difficult to do calculations with, Like we

822
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: can't sit down with pencil and paper and solve the

823
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics of the nucleus the way we can with

824
00:43:16,239 --> 00:43:19,240
Speaker 1: the hydrogen atom. Folks who have done physics in college

825
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: have done like the shorten your equation for the hydrogen atom.

826
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: When we know those equations, we can solve them. We

827
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 1: can find the states of the electron. We don't know

828
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:29,399
Speaker 1: how to do those calculations for the strong force because

829
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:33,440
Speaker 1: it's much more powerful and much more sensitive to tiny details,

830
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:35,960
Speaker 1: so we don't actually know like the answer to those.

831
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 1: We can't do it with pencil and paper. We have

832
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:41,320
Speaker 1: massive computers trying to do those calculations, but it's really challenging.

833
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: So mostly it's experimental. We try to like build heavier

834
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: stuff and see if we can keep it together. People

835
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: shoot like neutrons at atoms and see like ooh, can

836
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 1: I get one to stick in there and make something

837
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 1: which lasts longer. So it's a whole area of research

838
00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: how to weave protons and neutrons together into stable objects.

839
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: But we think that they organize themselves in terms of

840
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:04,319
Speaker 1: these shells. It's this nuclear shell model that tells you

841
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 1: how to build protons and neutrons together into a stable

842
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:11,440
Speaker 1: nucleus sort of analogous to the way electrons organize themselves

843
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: in shells on the outside of the atom. It's really fascinating.

844
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 4: So I am feeling more and more like a physicist

845
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 4: based on my childhood because I would try to just

846
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 4: build the biggest thing out of legos and then kind

847
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 4: of hold it up and see if it could sustain

848
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,280
Speaker 4: itself where if it would fall apart. And it sounds

849
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:28,839
Speaker 4: like that's what you guys are doing, just with more

850
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 4: expensive equipment. But yeah, so that is interesting. You are

851
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 4: saying that, like maybe they arrange themselves into shells. When

852
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 4: you're talking about shells, I'm assuming this is not like

853
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 4: a mollusc shell or something. So what is a shell

854
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 4: in terms of particle physics.

855
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 1: Yes, when we talk about shells, we think of like

856
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:51,320
Speaker 1: spheres and other arrangements. We think that the protons and

857
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: neutrons inside the nucleus have somehow found stable ways to

858
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:58,760
Speaker 1: organize themselves into these little mosaics. Instead of thinking about

859
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 1: them really as protons and neutrons anymore, we really should

860
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: think about them as components of this fabric, this nuclear fabric,

861
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 1: which likes to weave itself together. And the incredible thing

862
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,799
Speaker 1: is that it's stable like in many configurations, even for

863
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:15,399
Speaker 1: very very heavy elements, these things are quite stable. Again,

864
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: we don't really understand it. And so there's two different

865
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: communities of physicists here. The ones I like to make

866
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:23,680
Speaker 1: really big blobs of protons and neutrons and understand like

867
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:25,879
Speaker 1: how are they working together? And then there's the folks

868
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,400
Speaker 1: who just want to like dig inside one neutron and say, well,

869
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:31,720
Speaker 1: let's just study the neutron by itself. Let's zoom inside

870
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 1: the neutron and see if we can understand what makes

871
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: that quirk flip from one to the other, How often

872
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:39,919
Speaker 1: does that happen, how long does it take, and what

873
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: does that mean about the neutron. So you've got like

874
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:45,839
Speaker 1: the nuclear physicists who's studying like huge blobs of neutrons

875
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 1: and protons inside the nucleus, and they have us particle

876
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:51,360
Speaker 1: physicists looking to break it apart and see what's inside.

877
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 4: That's really interesting. So now that we have isolated the neutron,

878
00:45:56,480 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 4: it's we've broken apart that atom. It's outside vulnerable. Now

879
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:01,840
Speaker 4: what happens?

880
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 1: So now we can see how long it takes to

881
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 1: pop into a proton and electron and a nutrito. And

882
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:10,439
Speaker 1: so this is a really interesting question, just like how

883
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,040
Speaker 1: long does it take? Remember, protons will live for trillions

884
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 1: of years. There's two amazing things about the neutron lifetime

885
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: how long a neutron will survive on its own. First

886
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:23,320
Speaker 1: is that it's very short. It's like fifteen minutes. The

887
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:26,040
Speaker 1: neutron does not last very long. The verson is that

888
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: it's basically instantaneous on a cosmic timescale. That's right, you know,

889
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:34,279
Speaker 1: neutrons last for like fifteen minutes. It's nothing, you know, cosmically,

890
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: You make a neutron, you leave it there, you go

891
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 1: to get a coffee, and you come back it's gone.

892
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: You know.

893
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 4: That's kind of sad to me. I don't know why. Again,

894
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 4: I'm like attributing emotions to these things in the universe that,

895
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,120
Speaker 4: as far as I know, don't feel emotions. But it does.

896
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 4: It seems very disconcerting that something as fundamental as a

897
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 4: neutron lasts about as long as it takes for my

898
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 4: soup to cool down.

899
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. So if you want to build something out of neutrons,

900
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: and you make yourself a big pile of neutrons, you

901
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 1: better get to work. No time for a coffee, break,

902
00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: you know, before you get started, like you get to

903
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 1: use them or lose them. The other fascinating thing about

904
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,799
Speaker 1: the neutron lifetime is we don't actually know what it is.

905
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: We've tried to measure it, and we have two very

906
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:20,439
Speaker 1: different ways of measuring the neutron lifetime, like two very

907
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:25,000
Speaker 1: different experimental setups, and they get different results. Like one

908
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 1: group put a bunch of them in a bottle and

909
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: wait to see how many they have, like ten minutes later,

910
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 1: and they get an answer of like fourteen minutes and

911
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:36,279
Speaker 1: thirty nine seconds. And other folks use a beam of

912
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:39,399
Speaker 1: neutrons and count how many protons come out, and they

913
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,960
Speaker 1: get a different answer. They get fourteen minutes and forty

914
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 1: eight seconds, So there's like a nine second difference. So

915
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 1: we don't even actually know.

916
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 4: Well, I see what the problem is. Probably one group

917
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:54,080
Speaker 4: is using one mississippis and the other group is using

918
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 4: one potato two potato.

919
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: You have solved this mystery. It has befuddled physicists for

920
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: decades and you have figured it out. Katie. Wow, thank

921
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: you so much your contributions to particle physics.

922
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 4: So you're welcome everyone for me solving this physics problem. Though,

923
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:13,759
Speaker 4: when we get back, I'm sure Daniel will make some

924
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:16,720
Speaker 4: kind of argument that no, it's not as simple as

925
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 4: one Mississippi or one potato. But you know, I'll let

926
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:22,440
Speaker 4: them have a short break to work that one out,

927
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:24,920
Speaker 4: because I think my argument is pretty air tight.

928
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth,

929
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:34,400
Speaker 1: or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably

930
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:38,480
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931
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,120
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932
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:45,440
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933
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,080
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934
00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:50,440
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935
00:48:50,520 --> 00:48:54,719
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936
00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:58,360
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937
00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:01,800
Speaker 1: The same water cools the milk clean's equipment, washes the barn,

938
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,600
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939
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:08,640
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940
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941
00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:14,319
Speaker 1: electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice

942
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943
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:18,960
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944
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:22,800
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945
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946
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947
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967
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974
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:08,800
Speaker 4: Okay, and so we're back and we've got this. Two

975
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:13,760
Speaker 4: teams of I would assume, very smart, very professional scientists,

976
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:17,399
Speaker 4: but they're coming to slightly different answers on how long

977
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 4: it takes for a neutron to decay. One group fourteen

978
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:25,360
Speaker 4: minutes thirty nine seconds, the other group fourteen minutes and

979
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,359
Speaker 4: forty eight seconds. So what the heck is going wrong?

980
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 4: Is one group just wrong?

981
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 1: We don't know. It's really fascinating to have watched this

982
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 1: series of experiments over a couple of decades. You know,

983
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 1: whenever you do something in physics, you try to do

984
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:41,400
Speaker 1: it a couple of ways because it's easy to make mistakes.

985
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 1: You're doing something hard, you're making assumptions, you're doing the

986
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 1: best you can, but it's very easy for mistakes to

987
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:49,360
Speaker 1: creep in. So it's great practice to have two different

988
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:52,880
Speaker 1: groups of people doing it two different ways, making different mistakes.

989
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:54,880
Speaker 1: In the end, we're supposed to be measuring the same

990
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 1: thing about the universe. The neutron should just have a

991
00:51:57,520 --> 00:51:59,440
Speaker 1: certain lifetime and we should be able to measure it

992
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:01,719
Speaker 1: and get the same answer. And if we don't, that

993
00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 1: means that one of our assumptions is wrong, where somebody's

994
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 1: making a mistake, or there's something deeper going on. Right,

995
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 1: something is happening in one of these experiments that we

996
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 1: don't understand, which could be like a clue as to

997
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: how the universe works. So originally these two groups made

998
00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 1: these measurements and they didn't get the same answer, but

999
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,920
Speaker 1: nobody was worried because their error bars were pretty large.

1000
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: You know, the difference was like eight or nine seconds,

1001
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 1: but the uncertainty was like thirty seconds. So people thought, oh,

1002
00:52:26,040 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: we'll just keep working and maybe the numbers will creep

1003
00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:31,800
Speaker 1: together as they get more precise. The opposite has happened.

1004
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:35,480
Speaker 1: Both groups have been working hard to reduce those uncertainties,

1005
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:38,240
Speaker 1: you know, figure out the sources of error and potential

1006
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:41,479
Speaker 1: bias in their experiments, shaving them off, calibrating them, cross

1007
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:43,759
Speaker 1: checking them. And as the uncertainties have decreased, and now

1008
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:46,200
Speaker 1: those uncertainties are like less than a second or two,

1009
00:52:46,719 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 1: the size of the difference between the two experiments has

1010
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:51,799
Speaker 1: stayed the same. In fact, it's even crept up a

1011
00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:54,320
Speaker 1: little bit, from like eight to almost ten seconds.

1012
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 4: Okay, so we have Team Bottle, I'm going to say,

1013
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 4: and then Team Beam. So what are these teams doing?

1014
00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:06,400
Speaker 4: Because they have very different methods going on here, which

1015
00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:10,319
Speaker 4: that may somewhat explain why they're getting different results. So

1016
00:53:10,400 --> 00:53:12,880
Speaker 4: first let's go over like Team Bottle. What is Team

1017
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 4: Bottle doing just you know, shaking up some neutrons in

1018
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 4: a bottle, seeing what happens to them.

1019
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:20,840
Speaker 1: That's basically it. Yeah, they have a neutron source. This

1020
00:53:20,880 --> 00:53:23,359
Speaker 1: is actually at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where I grew up.

1021
00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 1: I wasn't involved in this experiment. It's a huge facility.

1022
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 4: There as far as you know. Anyways, go on, I

1023
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:31,360
Speaker 4: may have been.

1024
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:34,680
Speaker 1: Unwittingly roped into this experiment. Now they have a bunch

1025
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:37,480
Speaker 1: of neutrons there and basically they put them in a bottle.

1026
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:40,120
Speaker 1: They get them ultra cold, so they're not moving very fast,

1027
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:42,040
Speaker 1: and neutrons are a bit hard to store because they

1028
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:45,280
Speaker 1: don't have electric charts. You can't like use magnetic fields

1029
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 1: or electric fields to control them. You have to use gravity,

1030
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 1: and you get them cold, so they slow down and

1031
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:53,040
Speaker 1: let them just like fall into this container. They call

1032
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: it the bathtub. And basically they just collect a bunch

1033
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: of neutrons. They very carefully count how many introns they

1034
00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: start with, and then they measure them neutrons in their bottle.

1035
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:03,359
Speaker 1: And then they come back ten minutes later and measured again.

1036
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 1: And they come back ten minutes later they measure it again,

1037
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 1: and that's the essence of the experiment, is like, if

1038
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:09,879
Speaker 1: you think something doesn't last very long, put a bunch

1039
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:11,680
Speaker 1: of them in a bottle, count how many you have.

1040
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 1: Come back later and count them again. So it's very

1041
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 1: simple experiment in that way.

1042
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 4: So you've got this ice cold bottle of delicious neutrons. Man,

1043
00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 4: that makes me thirsty. And so they would measure these

1044
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:26,320
Speaker 4: and they would find that they are sort of disappearing

1045
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:28,839
Speaker 4: at a certain rate, and that is how they got

1046
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:31,880
Speaker 4: at fourteen minutes and thirty nine seconds exactly.

1047
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:34,240
Speaker 1: And the important thing to understand is that the neutron

1048
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: lifetime doesn't mean that every neutron has a clock in

1049
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 1: it and it expires exactly after fourteen minutes and thirty

1050
00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:43,719
Speaker 1: nine seconds. It's an exponential decay. Every neutron has a

1051
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:47,400
Speaker 1: probability to decay at any moment. And if some fraction

1052
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:49,840
Speaker 1: of your neutrons will decay and shorter time and a

1053
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:53,040
Speaker 1: fraction of the neutrons will last longer, just like radioactive decay.

1054
00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 1: It's the same fundamental process. The fact that is that

1055
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:59,760
Speaker 1: process protons turning into neutrons, which drives also radioactive decay.

1056
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,480
Speaker 1: You don't like watch one neutron, just ask how long

1057
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 1: did it live. You have a whole population of neutrons,

1058
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:07,719
Speaker 1: and you count how many you have over time, and

1059
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 1: you fit that to a function and exponential decay, and

1060
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:13,240
Speaker 1: you measure sort of the parameter the slope of that function.

1061
00:55:13,560 --> 00:55:16,239
Speaker 1: So it's a bit more than just watching one neutron decay.

1062
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 1: That's why you have a population of them. So they

1063
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:20,680
Speaker 1: have these in a little bathtub, and then every once

1064
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:22,239
Speaker 1: in a while they try to count all of them.

1065
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:24,840
Speaker 1: They push them against this counter which is covered in

1066
00:55:24,880 --> 00:55:27,680
Speaker 1: boron and zinc, and that makes the neutrons give off

1067
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:29,640
Speaker 1: a little flash of light, and they count how many

1068
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:32,040
Speaker 1: flashes of light they saw, and that tells them how

1069
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:33,439
Speaker 1: many neutrons they have left.

1070
00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:36,200
Speaker 4: I see. So these two experiments would be like two

1071
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:41,279
Speaker 4: groups of alien scientists measuring the average life span of

1072
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:43,920
Speaker 4: a human. Like, sure, our life spans are going to differ,

1073
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 4: but they're not going to differ by like hundreds of years.

1074
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:49,680
Speaker 4: They're going to differ by a matter of a few years.

1075
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:52,759
Speaker 4: And so you should, in theory, even if these two

1076
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:57,319
Speaker 4: alien scientists groups have different methods of measuring our life span,

1077
00:55:57,400 --> 00:55:59,920
Speaker 4: they should, in theory, be able to both come up

1078
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:03,279
Speaker 4: with the same average lifespan. But in this case they're not.

1079
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:05,720
Speaker 4: So then what is what is team Beam doing.

1080
00:56:05,840 --> 00:56:08,480
Speaker 1: The Team Beam is taking the opposite approach, whereas Team

1081
00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:11,120
Speaker 1: Bottle is saying, let's count how many neutrons we still

1082
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 1: have left, Team Beam is asking how many neutrons disappear.

1083
00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 1: So they have a beam of neutrons that they create,

1084
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:20,800
Speaker 1: and they count how many protons are created within these beams,

1085
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:24,320
Speaker 1: because remember a neutron decays and it decays into a proton,

1086
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:27,880
Speaker 1: So to count how many neutrons have disappeared, they count

1087
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:30,720
Speaker 1: how many protons are created. And so instead of counting

1088
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:33,359
Speaker 1: how many neutrons they still have, like the bottle guys

1089
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 1: are doing, they're counting how many neutrons have left the room.

1090
00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 1: So in the analogy you were talking about with human lifetime,

1091
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:42,400
Speaker 1: instead of counting how many humans do we still have left,

1092
00:56:42,520 --> 00:56:43,760
Speaker 1: they're counting graves.

1093
00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:46,800
Speaker 4: I see. I mean it makes me wonder. And again

1094
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:51,240
Speaker 4: this is probably you know, me strolling in without having

1095
00:56:51,719 --> 00:56:54,719
Speaker 4: done the rigorous testing that team Beam has done. But like,

1096
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:58,920
Speaker 4: could there be like some infiltration of protons, like protons

1097
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:02,440
Speaker 4: coming from so mother source that is messing with their results.

1098
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:05,120
Speaker 1: Absolutely, that's the kind of thing that they've been thinking

1099
00:57:05,120 --> 00:57:07,440
Speaker 1: about for like the last twenty years. So you're right,

1100
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,000
Speaker 1: it's something to be worried about. But they're very careful.

1101
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,560
Speaker 1: They shield their experiments that magnetic fields to prevent anything

1102
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:16,560
Speaker 1: from creeping in, and they filter these protons out using

1103
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 1: magnetic fields and very careful to only count the protons

1104
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: that they think come from their beam. So each experiment

1105
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:25,200
Speaker 1: has like a long list of ways that they can

1106
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:27,840
Speaker 1: get it wrong. And over the last ten years they've

1107
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,040
Speaker 1: been like going down that list and thinking, how can

1108
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:32,720
Speaker 1: we check this, How do we really know this is true?

1109
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:35,480
Speaker 1: Can we do this another way just to verify, just

1110
00:57:35,520 --> 00:57:38,160
Speaker 1: like as a sanity check, maybe this something going wrong here.

1111
00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 1: And they've gone down that list and nobody's found any

1112
00:57:40,880 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 1: basic mistakes, and as a result, they've been able to

1113
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:46,640
Speaker 1: shave down their uncertainty because now they have like multiple

1114
00:57:46,640 --> 00:57:49,520
Speaker 1: ways of doing every step of their experiment to convince

1115
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 1: themselves that their number is correct. So we still have

1116
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:56,240
Speaker 1: team Bottle and Team Beam doing very careful work. Nobody

1117
00:57:56,240 --> 00:57:58,400
Speaker 1: has an idea for what might be different where the

1118
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 1: mistake could be still getting different answers.

1119
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:05,760
Speaker 4: Well, So bringing it back to the aliens observing Earth analogy,

1120
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:09,080
Speaker 4: I mean, I wonder if maybe there could like these

1121
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 4: teams could be doing everything perfectly and executing the experiments perfectly,

1122
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 4: still getting the different results, but not because they made

1123
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:19,960
Speaker 4: an error, but because there's something else going on. So,

1124
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:24,800
Speaker 4: for instance, maybe if Team Alien one is just counting

1125
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:27,560
Speaker 4: the number of humans left after a certain amount of

1126
00:58:27,560 --> 00:58:31,240
Speaker 4: time and average getting the lifespan average from that, they

1127
00:58:31,800 --> 00:58:35,720
Speaker 4: may not be taking into account like new berths or something.

1128
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:40,120
Speaker 4: And then for Team Alien just measuring the graves. You

1129
00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 4: know what if you have a grave that has like

1130
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 4: more than one person in it, So could there be

1131
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 4: something going on where these these you know, let's not

1132
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:52,480
Speaker 4: blame the groups of scientists or the intern or the janitor.

1133
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:56,800
Speaker 4: Nobody's doing anything wrong. But they are actually correct. But

1134
00:58:57,080 --> 00:59:00,440
Speaker 4: just because their method of measurement is different, there is

1135
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:04,200
Speaker 4: some mysterious mechanism going on that is creating that difference.

1136
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:07,200
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, that is sort of the hope, right. The

1137
00:59:07,240 --> 00:59:09,600
Speaker 1: boring answer is like, oh, it turns out the cable

1138
00:59:09,640 --> 00:59:12,040
Speaker 1: wasn't plugged in right, or this temperature was set to

1139
00:59:12,080 --> 00:59:14,840
Speaker 1: the wrong number, and like, you know, from an experimental

1140
00:59:14,840 --> 00:59:16,760
Speaker 1: point of view, that would be satisfied to figure it out,

1141
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 1: but more exciting would be as if it reveals that

1142
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:21,680
Speaker 1: one of the assumptions that are made that suggest that

1143
00:59:21,720 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: these two experiments should be getting the same answer are

1144
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 1: fundamentally wrong. So people have been very creative about this,

1145
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:30,680
Speaker 1: and there is one cool idea floating out there that

1146
00:59:30,760 --> 00:59:34,320
Speaker 1: maybe when the neutron decays, it doesn't always decay into

1147
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:38,320
Speaker 1: a proton. Maybe sometimes it decays into something else like

1148
00:59:38,520 --> 00:59:41,560
Speaker 1: dark matter. Some tiny fraction of the time the neutron

1149
00:59:41,600 --> 00:59:44,840
Speaker 1: turns into dark matter, and that would explain this difference

1150
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 1: because remember that the beam folks, they won't see it

1151
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:51,320
Speaker 1: if the neutron decays into something else. They only count

1152
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:53,600
Speaker 1: the number of times the neutron decays into a proton

1153
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:56,640
Speaker 1: because they assume it always decays into a proton. Now

1154
00:59:56,640 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 1: the bottle folks, they will see that neutron disappear because

1155
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: they're counting the newtonrons themselves. So if the neutrons sometimes

1156
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:05,640
Speaker 1: decay into something which is not a proton, then these

1157
01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 1: two groups will get different numbers. So there's this fun

1158
01:00:08,800 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 1: idea out there about how maybe neutrons will sometimes decay

1159
01:00:11,720 --> 01:00:14,240
Speaker 1: into dark matter instead of into protons.

1160
01:00:14,480 --> 01:00:17,800
Speaker 4: That is really cool. I love that when in science,

1161
01:00:17,880 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 4: like if you get an unexpected result or something that

1162
01:00:21,400 --> 01:00:23,720
Speaker 4: seems like a mistake, it could actually lead you to

1163
01:00:23,760 --> 01:00:26,800
Speaker 4: an even bigger, even more interesting discovery.

1164
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:29,000
Speaker 1: And there's so many times in the history of science

1165
01:00:29,000 --> 01:00:31,200
Speaker 1: when you do that. When people do experiments, they think

1166
01:00:31,320 --> 01:00:34,240
Speaker 1: just like wrapping up everything, tying up the loose ends.

1167
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:36,040
Speaker 1: We pretty sure we understand what we're going to see,

1168
01:00:36,160 --> 01:00:38,640
Speaker 1: and then there's a discrepancy, and it's persistent and it

1169
01:00:38,680 --> 01:00:41,680
Speaker 1: won't go away, and sometimes you tug on that thread

1170
01:00:41,760 --> 01:00:44,600
Speaker 1: and it unravels like everything we thought we knew about

1171
01:00:44,600 --> 01:00:47,520
Speaker 1: the universe. You know, the whole discovery of quantum mechanics

1172
01:00:47,760 --> 01:00:49,800
Speaker 1: was from people like, hmm, that's weird. You don't really

1173
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 1: understand what's going on with the photoelectric effect. So these

1174
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:55,840
Speaker 1: little discrepancies are very important. They're very powerful ways to

1175
01:00:55,920 --> 01:00:59,320
Speaker 1: test your assumptions and to maybe get a clue that

1176
01:00:59,320 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 1: there's something you going on in the universe we don't know.

1177
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:04,120
Speaker 1: And the dark matter idea is just sort of like

1178
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:08,360
Speaker 1: a category of possibilities. The specific theory that was bounced

1179
01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 1: around for a few years about the neutrons decay into

1180
01:01:10,360 --> 01:01:12,880
Speaker 1: dark matter doesn't look like it works. They made this

1181
01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:16,040
Speaker 1: very specific prediction that it would decay into a new state,

1182
01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:18,240
Speaker 1: and then that state would decay into dark matter, and

1183
01:01:18,320 --> 01:01:20,240
Speaker 1: along the way it would make a tiny little flash

1184
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:23,040
Speaker 1: of very specific light. And so the bottle folks looked

1185
01:01:23,040 --> 01:01:24,840
Speaker 1: for this flash of light, but they didn't see it,

1186
01:01:24,920 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that it's wrong. There might be

1187
01:01:26,680 --> 01:01:30,120
Speaker 1: some other explanation in the same vein the neutrons could

1188
01:01:30,160 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 1: be turning into something else. We don't expect the new

1189
01:01:32,440 --> 01:01:34,960
Speaker 1: kind of dark matter, or even something else weirder.

1190
01:01:35,240 --> 01:01:38,720
Speaker 4: So are they looking into new experiments that they could

1191
01:01:38,760 --> 01:01:41,680
Speaker 4: potentially do to sort of find out what's going on

1192
01:01:41,760 --> 01:01:42,440
Speaker 4: here exactly.

1193
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: They're trying to develop like a third way to measure

1194
01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 1: the neutron lifetime, because that'll give us a handle. It's

1195
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 1: like a vote, right, we develop a third totally independent

1196
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:52,280
Speaker 1: way with different assumptions than either of the first two,

1197
01:01:52,360 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: it'll tell us which of those first two is correct

1198
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:57,600
Speaker 1: and which one is not actually measuring the neutron lifetime

1199
01:01:57,600 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 1: the way we thought it was. So a third way

1200
01:01:59,440 --> 01:02:02,840
Speaker 1: to measure this is actually in space, because one way

1201
01:02:02,840 --> 01:02:07,120
Speaker 1: to make neutrons is to smash protons against the Earth's atmosphere,

1202
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:09,760
Speaker 1: which happens all the time out there in space, because

1203
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 1: space is filled with high energy cosmic raseed protons from

1204
01:02:13,240 --> 01:02:15,640
Speaker 1: the scenter of the galaxy or from other Solar systems

1205
01:02:15,960 --> 01:02:20,280
Speaker 1: smashing into Earth's atmosphere, creating these showers of particles, including neutrons.

1206
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:22,920
Speaker 1: Now most of these neutrons then like rain down on

1207
01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:26,160
Speaker 1: the Earth's surface, and as they do, because they're by themselves,

1208
01:02:26,200 --> 01:02:30,360
Speaker 1: they're not inside atomic nuclei, they turn into protons. So

1209
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:32,760
Speaker 1: if you can count like the number of neutrons created

1210
01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:34,680
Speaker 1: at the edge of the atmosphere with a number of

1211
01:02:34,720 --> 01:02:38,120
Speaker 1: protons you then see raining down, you can get a

1212
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:40,920
Speaker 1: sense for how many of those neutrons have converted from

1213
01:02:41,040 --> 01:02:43,960
Speaker 1: neutrons into protons. And that's a way to measure the

1214
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:46,480
Speaker 1: neutron lifetime. It's a bit tricky, it's more complicated, which

1215
01:02:46,520 --> 01:02:48,520
Speaker 1: is why it wasn't like the first option or the

1216
01:02:48,600 --> 01:02:51,200
Speaker 1: second option. But now we need a third option and

1217
01:02:51,240 --> 01:02:53,160
Speaker 1: we need to figure this out. And so people are

1218
01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:56,040
Speaker 1: even talking about like building probes that can orbit Venus

1219
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:59,160
Speaker 1: because Venus might have the perfect atmosphere to do this

1220
01:02:59,400 --> 01:03:02,000
Speaker 1: kind of experiment because it's got so much CO two

1221
01:03:02,040 --> 01:03:02,360
Speaker 1: in it.

1222
01:03:02,480 --> 01:03:07,760
Speaker 4: So it's using a whole planet as a test tube exactly.

1223
01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:11,160
Speaker 1: Particle physicists are not content to just do experiments in

1224
01:03:11,200 --> 01:03:13,920
Speaker 1: one tiny little lab. We want to use the whole

1225
01:03:14,080 --> 01:03:15,480
Speaker 1: universe as our experiment.

1226
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:18,480
Speaker 4: I see, you're just trying to use your research budget

1227
01:03:18,560 --> 01:03:21,720
Speaker 4: for travel. I get it exact.

1228
01:03:22,040 --> 01:03:24,520
Speaker 1: What's this first class ticket to Venus, Daniel, can you

1229
01:03:24,560 --> 01:03:29,360
Speaker 1: explain this charge? But this is something that's really important,

1230
01:03:29,360 --> 01:03:31,680
Speaker 1: you know, not just because we want to understand what's

1231
01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:33,960
Speaker 1: inside the neutron and how does it work and is

1232
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:36,720
Speaker 1: the neutron turning into something else. The neutron lifetime is

1233
01:03:36,720 --> 01:03:40,200
Speaker 1: a really important component of our universe. You know, in

1234
01:03:40,240 --> 01:03:42,920
Speaker 1: the early universe, neutrons were made, as we talked about,

1235
01:03:43,160 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 1: but if they didn't last for long enough, they couldn't

1236
01:03:45,200 --> 01:03:48,160
Speaker 1: get served up into atomic nuclei. So the length of

1237
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:52,200
Speaker 1: the neutron lifetime sort of determines how many isotopes are made,

1238
01:03:52,520 --> 01:03:55,160
Speaker 1: how much helium is made, and so it's important to

1239
01:03:55,160 --> 01:03:57,880
Speaker 1: get this number right. You know. They determines like the

1240
01:03:57,960 --> 01:04:01,520
Speaker 1: hydrogen to helium ratio it's made during the Big Bang.

1241
01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:05,280
Speaker 1: It also determines like how long stars will live, because

1242
01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:08,360
Speaker 1: the more helium you get, the smaller and heavier the

1243
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:10,880
Speaker 1: stars are that are made which don't burn as long.

1244
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:13,680
Speaker 1: So this is like a fundamental ingredient to the early

1245
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:16,640
Speaker 1: universe calculations. It's something we really need to understand.

1246
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:20,040
Speaker 4: So even a discrepancy of a few seconds is very

1247
01:04:20,080 --> 01:04:23,280
Speaker 4: important to determine what is causing that and what the

1248
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:24,040
Speaker 4: answer is.

1249
01:04:24,000 --> 01:04:26,280
Speaker 1: To this right, And it goes to really deep questions

1250
01:04:26,320 --> 01:04:29,080
Speaker 1: in particle physics about the strong force. You know, this

1251
01:04:29,160 --> 01:04:32,240
Speaker 1: is something that we can't sit down and predict very confidently.

1252
01:04:32,560 --> 01:04:35,160
Speaker 1: It takes massive calculations to try to get a sense

1253
01:04:35,440 --> 01:04:37,680
Speaker 1: for how quirks talk to each other because the forces

1254
01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:40,160
Speaker 1: are so strong and so difficult to calculate with. It's

1255
01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:43,440
Speaker 1: something physicists called non perturbative, which means that we can't

1256
01:04:43,480 --> 01:04:46,600
Speaker 1: make many of our typical assumptions and simplifications when we

1257
01:04:46,640 --> 01:04:49,920
Speaker 1: do these calculations. So this is a great laboratory to

1258
01:04:50,040 --> 01:04:52,560
Speaker 1: force the universe to teach us something about how the

1259
01:04:52,640 --> 01:04:55,240
Speaker 1: strong force actually works, to force it to like tell

1260
01:04:55,320 --> 01:04:58,600
Speaker 1: us here's how this happens. Here's the result of this calculation.

1261
01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:00,600
Speaker 1: So it's a really powerful way to try to get

1262
01:05:00,640 --> 01:05:03,720
Speaker 1: some inside how these little particles are talking to each other.

1263
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:06,560
Speaker 1: And in the end, I got neutrons and you got neutrons.

1264
01:05:06,600 --> 01:05:08,120
Speaker 1: So this should be important to all of us.

1265
01:05:08,320 --> 01:05:11,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is interesting. It's such a humble particle that

1266
01:05:11,320 --> 01:05:14,360
Speaker 4: you think of this. It's like neutral doesn't seem to

1267
01:05:15,160 --> 01:05:17,400
Speaker 4: have such a big role to play, but really it's

1268
01:05:17,600 --> 01:05:21,360
Speaker 4: so important to not only to keep us together apparently,

1269
01:05:21,440 --> 01:05:22,919
Speaker 4: like I don't want to fall apart into a bunch

1270
01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:26,560
Speaker 4: of protons and w minuses and then which turns into

1271
01:05:26,560 --> 01:05:29,320
Speaker 4: ghost particles and electrons. So I want to stay me

1272
01:05:29,520 --> 01:05:32,160
Speaker 4: for as long as possible, but also just it seems

1273
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:35,600
Speaker 4: like it's really important to understand them, to understand the universe.

1274
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:38,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's an enduring mystery. We're going to stay

1275
01:05:38,520 --> 01:05:40,680
Speaker 1: tuned to figure out what's going on with these neutrons,

1276
01:05:40,760 --> 01:05:43,479
Speaker 1: how long they live, and whether Team Bottle or Team

1277
01:05:43,560 --> 01:05:44,680
Speaker 1: Beam got it right.

1278
01:05:44,960 --> 01:05:47,760
Speaker 4: This is exciting. I want to print shirts Team Bottle,

1279
01:05:47,800 --> 01:05:50,240
Speaker 4: Team Beam and see where the dilay.

1280
01:05:50,400 --> 01:05:52,960
Speaker 1: Thank you everybody for joining us on this journey, the

1281
01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:57,080
Speaker 1: journey inside our atoms and your atoms and the universe's atoms,

1282
01:05:57,240 --> 01:06:00,480
Speaker 1: where tiny little clocks determine the fate of neutral and

1283
01:06:00,480 --> 01:06:03,200
Speaker 1: the fate of stars. And thanks very much Katie for

1284
01:06:03,280 --> 01:06:05,920
Speaker 1: joining us on this very particular podcast.

1285
01:06:06,160 --> 01:06:07,120
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.

1286
01:06:07,040 --> 01:06:16,240
Speaker 1: And good luck with your neutrons Souflet tune in next time. Everybody,

1287
01:06:19,080 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain

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Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

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Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a

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Speaker 1: piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking

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Speaker 1: about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy

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Speaker 1: industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to

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Speaker 1: find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and

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Speaker 1: drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is US dairy tackling

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Speaker 1: greenhouse gas? Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the

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Speaker 1: methane from maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns,

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Speaker 1: learn more.

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Speaker 14: The all electric Chevy Equinoxy EV combines everything you need

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Speaker 14: when you're ready to go EV starting at thirty four

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Speaker 14: nine ninety five. That twenty twenty five equinox evlt gives

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Speaker 14: you an impressive balance of all electric range, safety features

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Speaker 14: for peace of mind, and effortless technology, including the seventeen

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Speaker 14: your love. The Chevy Equinox EV is the fund to

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Speaker 14: drive all electric SUV that gives you what you need

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Speaker 14: to do exactly what you want. The manufacturer suggested retail

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Speaker 12: This episode is brought to you by FX Is the

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Speaker 12: Old Man.

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Speaker 1: The hit show returns starring Jeff Bridges and John Letsgow.

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Speaker 14: to date to recover his daughter after she's kidnapped.

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Speaker 1: The stakes get higher and more secrets are uncovered. FX

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Speaker 1: on Hulu