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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you have an electric car, right, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: drive a Nissan Leaf these days, and last time I

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Speaker 1: had a Chevy bolt, so you bolted from the bolt

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Speaker 1: and to turn over a new leaf, I left it behind. Now,

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Speaker 1: how much does it cost to charge up with one

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Speaker 1: of those electric cars? Well, that's kind of a charged question,

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Speaker 1: but usually less than ten dollars. Actually, oh wow, you

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Speaker 1: only charge you ten bucks to charge your car? You

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Speaker 1: go to one of those charging stations. No, I usually

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Speaker 1: charge it at home where I'm in charge. You can

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Speaker 1: charge ten bucks to charge your car where you're in charge,

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Speaker 1: and charge it on my credit card. You should charge them.

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Speaker 1: I'm positive that won't work. Hi'm for Hammo cartoonists and

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

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Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I

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Speaker 1: actually do sell charges back to the electric company. Nice

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Speaker 1: solar panels. I do have solar panels, but unfortunately the

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Speaker 1: electrons I produced don't end up in my car. They

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Speaker 1: have to go back to the company and then I

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Speaker 1: buy fresh electrons from them. I don't have one of

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Speaker 1: those massive home batteries yet. Yeah, you don't want old electrons?

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Speaker 1: The cool kind of stale, right. The thing, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I've had some really vintage electrons created during the Big Bang,

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Speaker 1: and they were pretty tasty. Aren't all electrons created in

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Speaker 1: the Big Bang? Some of them might have been, but

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Speaker 1: also electrons are being created all the time, and so

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Speaker 1: some electrons might be very, very fresh, and some of

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Speaker 1: them might have had many, many lives before you. Do

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Speaker 1: you have like an electron summerlier that tells you the

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Speaker 1: vintage of electrons? And how do you taste electrons? Do

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Speaker 1: you just stick your tongue in the electrical outlet or what?

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Speaker 1: What advice are we giving the public here? That's a

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Speaker 1: shocking suggestion, Jorge, sticking your tongue in the outlet. I'm

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Speaker 1: positive that's not a good idea. But it is an

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Speaker 1: interesting philosophical question of whether you could taste the age

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Speaker 1: of an electron or even somehow tell its age. We

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Speaker 1: don't think so, because they're quantum particles, so they're all identical.

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Speaker 1: Every electron is the same as every other electron, and

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Speaker 1: so there's no way to tell if an electron is

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Speaker 1: fourteen billion years old or fourteen billiseconds old. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: would be kind of rude. To ask anyways, But welcome

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Speaker 1: to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio, in which we try to be positive

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Speaker 1: about all the charged questions there are about the age

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Speaker 1: of the universe, how big it's been getting, and what

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Speaker 1: it's been eating. We like to think about everything involved

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Speaker 1: in understanding the universe, from the deep nature of the

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Speaker 1: fabric of space itself, all the way up to the

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Speaker 1: shape and size of the universe, and everything fascinating in between.

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Speaker 1: We want to tickle the curiosity that we know is

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Speaker 1: inside your mind and make you wonder at this marvelous universe.

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Speaker 1: Why is it this way and not some other way.

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Speaker 1: That's right because it is an electrifying universe, full of

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Speaker 1: amazing things happening in it, things coming together, things being

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Speaker 1: pushed apart, And we like to zap all of that

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Speaker 1: knowledge into your brain so that you get a small buzz.

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Speaker 1: And the electricity is one of the oldest topics that

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Speaker 1: humans have been thinking about. After all, it's obviously out

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Speaker 1: there in the world. You don't need a superconducting super

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Speaker 1: collider in order to study electricity and magnetism. You just

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Speaker 1: need to watch a rainstorm and look at lightning or

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Speaker 1: zap yourself as you walk across a carpet. So humans

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Speaker 1: have been aware of this strange phenomena of electricity for

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Speaker 1: a long long time. And wait, wait, wait, wait, they

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Speaker 1: had electricity back in the steam age. How did they

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Speaker 1: power their light bulbs? You know, almost all electrical generations

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Speaker 1: still uses steam. It's incredible how versatile the steam engine

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Speaker 1: really is. That what the electrons are always wet. I

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Speaker 1: don't know what's going on with the plumbing in your

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Speaker 1: house that your electrons are wet. But that does not

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Speaker 1: sound like a good combination. You know, not so much

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Speaker 1: wet as steamy. I get steamy electron. Well, electricity has

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Speaker 1: been something that's been tickling the minds of humans and

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Speaker 1: physicists and proto physicists for a long long time, you know,

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Speaker 1: watching a rainstorm and wondering like wow, what is that crazy?

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Speaker 1: Zapping all the way up to Benjamin Franklin trying to understand,

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Speaker 1: like what's going on. It's been something we've been working

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Speaker 1: on for a long time. We've made a lot of progress,

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Speaker 1: and yet there's still really basic questions about how it works.

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Speaker 1: You know, the origin of the word electricity, Like I

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Speaker 1: wonder when humans started to think of electricity as electricity

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Speaker 1: because I imagine, you know, for millions of years we

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Speaker 1: saw lightning, but we didn't think it was anything different

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Speaker 1: other than light or you know, strips of light. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think there's a long history of crazy ideas to

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Speaker 1: explain what we see out there, and it wasn't until

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Speaker 1: a few hundred years ago that people trying to be

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Speaker 1: sort of systematic about it and come up with like

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Speaker 1: something you could describe as a theory to explain what

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Speaker 1: was going on. You know, before that we had basically

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Speaker 1: mythology zoos throwing lightning bolts and this kind of stuff.

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Speaker 1: I see, so Zoos was the first electric company. I

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Speaker 1: wonder if zeus charge for lightning bolts, right, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: They are pretty spectacular to look at. But anyways, electricity

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Speaker 1: is one of those old subjects that humans have been

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Speaker 1: thinking about and wondering about, and apparently it's still something

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Speaker 1: that we wonder about today. That's right. We have graduated

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Speaker 1: from thinking about electricity as the product of an angry

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Speaker 1: god to thinking about it as a strange, invisible fluid

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Speaker 1: that flows through matter, to modern ideas that electricity is

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Speaker 1: carried by tiny, little discrete charged particles, each of which

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Speaker 1: carry this strange quantum label of electric charge. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: sound like we've progressed much there from saying electricity is

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Speaker 1: something that God throws down from the sky to something

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Speaker 1: that little tiny particles have. Well, maybe emotionally we've progressed.

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Speaker 1: You know, we don't think electrons are angry as Zeus was.

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Speaker 1: So you know, maybe it's just a calmer theory of

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Speaker 1: the universe, or maybe you just don't know if your

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Speaker 1: electrons are mad at you. It could be, especially if

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Speaker 1: you ask them their age. But that means that all

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Speaker 1: electrons in the universe would have to be mad at you.

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Speaker 1: That's like a whole universe filled with screaming, mad electrons.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of terrifying. Maybe it's only the ones that

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Speaker 1: you use for your car. They don't like where you're going.

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Speaker 1: The ones we put to work, Yeah, exactly, just because

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Speaker 1: you don't want to walk, Daniel, even if I'm walking,

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Speaker 1: that uses electrons. Right, there's electrons in everything. Anytime you

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Speaker 1: do some work, that's going to be electrons involved. So

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Speaker 1: that's why the electron labor union is so powerful. I

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Speaker 1: wonder how they hold together. But there is a lot

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Speaker 1: we don't understand about the universe. And it's kind of

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Speaker 1: surprising to think about the idea that there are things

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Speaker 1: we don't understand about electricity. I feel like the electricity

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Speaker 1: is something that we use every day. I mean, we're

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Speaker 1: using it right now to record this, and also everyone

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Speaker 1: is using this to listen to this podcast, and yet

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Speaker 1: there are things we still don't know about it. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: you don't actually have to understand the universe in order

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Speaker 1: to use it, right. You took advantage of gravity holding

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Speaker 1: you under the earth surface long before anybody had any

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Speaker 1: understanding of gravity, and even four hundreds of years when

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Speaker 1: we had a pretty deep misunderstanding of gravity. So it's

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Speaker 1: just sort of part of the process of science to

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Speaker 1: develop these descriptions of what we see, try to explain them,

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Speaker 1: and then refine them as time goes on. There will

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Speaker 1: always be open questions things we don't understand. What I

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Speaker 1: hope that listeners appreciate is that some of these questions,

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Speaker 1: some of these things we still don't understand, are really

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Speaker 1: pretty basic and have to do fundamentally with the nature

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Speaker 1: of electricity. What is it anyway? Yeah, And so today

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Speaker 1: on the program, we'll be tackling Could there be particles

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Speaker 1: with different electric charges? That's right. We know about a

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Speaker 1: few different kinds of particles with a few different kinds

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Speaker 1: of electric charges. But the curious person always wonders, like, well,

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Speaker 1: why is that? It? Is there more on the list?

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Speaker 1: Is the universe capable of doing other things? And it

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Speaker 1: just isn't? Or are there other particles out there with

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Speaker 1: really weird electric charges? Yeah? I guess when we say

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Speaker 1: different electric charges, we mean different charges than the electron, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: could there be a particle out there with a charge

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Speaker 1: that's not the same as the electron? Yeah, we actually

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Speaker 1: do have a few examples of that, right, Like quarks

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Speaker 1: have strange charges like two thirds and minus one third,

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Speaker 1: and the electron is this charge negative one. But it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to think about, like could there be particle with

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Speaker 1: charges of like one millionth or one billionth or like

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Speaker 1: pi or other strange numbers. There seems to be like

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Speaker 1: a pattern to the electric charges, or they seem to

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Speaker 1: prefer these sort of discrete units, But we don't really

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Speaker 1: understand why that is. Oh, I mean we're asking today

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Speaker 1: whether you can have a particle with like point zero

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Speaker 1: zero zero one of the charge of the electron. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: is that possible to do those particles exist? What would

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Speaker 1: it mean for the universe if they did or they didn't?

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Speaker 1: But you said that, we know about particles that have

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Speaker 1: one third of the charge of the electron. That's a

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Speaker 1: quart or some of the courts. That's right, Some of

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Speaker 1: the quarks have charged one third, and some of the

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Speaker 1: quirks have charged two third. Basically, every particle we've ever

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Speaker 1: seen either has zero charge or some multiple of one

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Speaker 1: third of the electrons charge. Nicee. So today we're asking

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Speaker 1: if you can go smaller than that? Could there be

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Speaker 1: particles with less than a third of the electron charge? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: One fifth, one ninth, one billionth even are there limits?

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Speaker 1: Is there a rule that prevents a particle from having

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Speaker 1: some super tiny electric charge but not zero? And I

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Speaker 1: assume that's not a question with a small answer, and

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Speaker 1: maybe even answer that will shock us. That's right, it's

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Speaker 1: a small question with big consequences for the philosophy of

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Speaker 1: electric charges. Was usual. We were wondering how many people

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Speaker 1: out there had thought about this question or wondered whether

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Speaker 1: particles can have tiny electric charges. Thank you very much

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Speaker 1: to our list of volunteers who answer these questions for

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Speaker 1: everybody else's enjoyment and education. If you would like to

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Speaker 1: contribute to your voice to this segment, please don't be shy.

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Speaker 1: We don't describe. We let everybody participate. Right to me

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Speaker 1: to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think

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Speaker 1: about it for a second. Have you heard or think

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Speaker 1: that electron can have tiny electric charges? Here's what people

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Speaker 1: had to say. Yep, why not. I will accept particles

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Speaker 1: of any coolure. I'm sure there's no discriminating against fractional

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Speaker 1: electric charges. I would guess that particles with fractional electrical

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Speaker 1: charges would be possible, given that in chemistry they have certeometry,

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Speaker 1: and so it maybe does not real out the fact

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Speaker 1: that this could be the same for sometime a particles.

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Speaker 1: I have heard health spin as a quantum property, but

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Speaker 1: never health electrical charge. So I will say no, But

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Speaker 1: since you are asking it, maybe yes, my guess would

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Speaker 1: be probably. I'm sure there's a law physics it says no,

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Speaker 1: you have to be a plus or minus or no charge.

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Speaker 1: But I don't see why you couldn't have a fractional charge.

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Speaker 1: I suppose, so, yeah, I think that is the case. Today.

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Speaker 1: I think we have quarks with like one third charge

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Speaker 1: or two thirds charge, And I think the actual charge

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Speaker 1: of an electron is some crazy fractional number and we've

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Speaker 1: just chosen to assign it the value of one for convenience.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that's possible. Well, isn't charges caused

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Speaker 1: by particles like electrons considered particles? Am I getting that wrong?

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Speaker 1: I'm guessing no. Well, I'm going to walk into the

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Speaker 1: obvious trap here and say that I think no particles

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Speaker 1: cannot have tiny fractional electric charges. I think that an

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Speaker 1: electric charge is either present, positive or negative or absent,

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Speaker 1: and is an indivisible quality. I'm hoping, of course, that,

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Speaker 1: true to the nature of this podcast, this obvious trap

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Speaker 1: will turn out by the end of the podcast to

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Speaker 1: have been an a double bluff and vindicate mind ignorance.

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Speaker 1: All right, A lot of people said yes, because, of course,

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Speaker 1: maybe we asked the question wrong. I think that most

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Speaker 1: people don't even imagine the existence of like particles with

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Speaker 1: one millions of the electric charge. Yeah, that's not something

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Speaker 1: nice they open night usually wondering about. I mean, maybe

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Speaker 1: one thousands, but not a million. There's some limit there.

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Speaker 1: You're like, one thousands is reasonable. One millions. This crazy. Yeah, yes,

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Speaker 1: that is what I think about at night. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: a way to explore the universe is just to try

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Speaker 1: to be creative, to think about, like what assumptions are

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Speaker 1: we making because we've only seen certain examples, what conclusions

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Speaker 1: are we drawing because we've only seen a subset of

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Speaker 1: what the universe can actually do. So sometimes it takes

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Speaker 1: a little bit of creativity to like break out of

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Speaker 1: the box we've been living in and wonder what could

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Speaker 1: be outside that box. Sometimes we don't even realize the

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Speaker 1: boxes that we are in. So I love this question

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Speaker 1: precisely because a lot of people are like, huh, that's interesting.

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Speaker 1: I never even consider that there could be other kinds

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Speaker 1: of particles with weird electric charges in them. And that's

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Speaker 1: what makes it exciting, because that's the best moment in physics,

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Speaker 1: when we realize we've been overlooking something and maybe it

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Speaker 1: shows us something new about the real universe out there.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if maybe what we're asking here really is like,

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Speaker 1: are there maybe particles with weird electric charges that we

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Speaker 1: didn't know how weird electric charges? Is that kind of

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Speaker 1: what we're asking, like, maybe there are things there are

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Speaker 1: particles out there which just haven't seen them or known

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Speaker 1: about them, that actually have these weird charges we just

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Speaker 1: haven't noticed. Yeah, exactly. One possibility is that there's a

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Speaker 1: new kind of particle out there with weird electric charges

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Speaker 1: we just haven't noticed yet. The other possibility is that

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Speaker 1: maybe some of the particles we do know don't actually

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Speaker 1: have zero electric charge, they have very very very very

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Speaker 1: small electric charges. All right, well, let's jump into this topic, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with the basics. What is an electric charge? Well,

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Speaker 1: we don't really know. All thanks for joining us. See

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Speaker 1: you next time. It's fun to joke about that, because

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Speaker 1: that really is the answer. We don't actually know what

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Speaker 1: an electric charge is physically. It's part of our description

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Speaker 1: of what we see happen in the universe. So we

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Speaker 1: notice that some particles that accelerated if you put them

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Speaker 1: in an electric field, and other particles don't. Right, And

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Speaker 1: we even have an equation that describes it. Right. Force

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Speaker 1: is equal to charge times the field strength. So if

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Speaker 1: a particle is accelerated when you put it in an

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Speaker 1: electric field, we say that particle has charge. If a

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Speaker 1: particle ignores the electric field, we say the particle has

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Speaker 1: no charge. And the bigger the charge of the particle,

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Speaker 1: the greater the force that it feels. But it's just

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Speaker 1: sort of like our description of what we see. We

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Speaker 1: put this into our mathematical story about the universe. That

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean we know like what it is, right, But

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Speaker 1: it's even more confusing than that, because it's kind of like,

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Speaker 1: how do you define an electric field? Isn't an electric

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Speaker 1: field defined as how the or this change on a

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Speaker 1: particle that has charge? Yeah, exactly right. We say the

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Speaker 1: fields are generated by charged particles. We don't ever even

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Speaker 1: see the fields themselves, right, you can't observe a field.

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Speaker 1: The only thing you can observe is the field pushing

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Speaker 1: on particles. So if you want to get down to

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Speaker 1: the nitty gritty, what do we actually see is that

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Speaker 1: some particles push on each other, and we have this

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Speaker 1: intermediate thing we call a field, which allows particles that

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Speaker 1: are far away from each other to push on each other.

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Speaker 1: But fundamentally, we say, some particles push on each other

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Speaker 1: and some particles pull on each other, and the charges

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Speaker 1: in the fields. It's just sort of like our mathematical

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Speaker 1: story of what's happening there that to describe what we see.

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Speaker 1: So maybe you would define a charge more accurately. As

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Speaker 1: you know, if you have an electron here and an

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Speaker 1: electron there, they're going to push against each other, and

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Speaker 1: that push sort of depends on this thing that you

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Speaker 1: call a charge. Yeah, you can put a label on

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Speaker 1: every kind of particle and that label tells you how

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Speaker 1: to predict whether the particle will be pushed by another

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Speaker 1: particle or it's field equivalently, and that works, and it

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Speaker 1: works really, really really well. It works incredibly well. It's

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Speaker 1: one of the best tested theories we have in physics.

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Speaker 1: We can do pages and pages of calculations to predict

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Speaker 1: how electrons will push on each other and how they

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Speaker 1: will shoot photons at each other, and we can do

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Speaker 1: experiments to test those predictions, and the experiment and the

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Speaker 1: prediction agree to like eight or nine decimal places. It's

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Speaker 1: really extraordinary how accurate it is. And so you look

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Speaker 1: at that theory and you're like, hm, well, if it's

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Speaker 1: so accurate, maybe it's really describing what happens in the universe.

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Speaker 1: Maybe this thing we invented, this idea of charge, is

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Speaker 1: a property of the particle itself, not just part of

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Speaker 1: our story about the particle. Right, it's sort of like

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Speaker 1: mass is for gravity, Right Like, if you have two

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Speaker 1: particles out there in space, they're going to attract each

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Speaker 1: other depending on this thing about them called mass, And

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Speaker 1: that's kind of the same for charge, right Like, if

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Speaker 1: you have two particles, they're going to either attract each

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Speaker 1: other or repel each other by a certain amount, pending

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Speaker 1: on whether they have this thing called charge. Yes, excellent, exactly,

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Speaker 1: And in particle physics we generalize this concept of charge.

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Speaker 1: Do not just refer to electromagnetism, as you say. You

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Speaker 1: can think about gravity in terms of gravitational charges or masses,

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Speaker 1: and you can think about the strong force in terms

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Speaker 1: of strong nuclear charges on quarks. Those are even more

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Speaker 1: complicated because instead of having two values like plus or minus,

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Speaker 1: have three values red, green, and blue. The weak force

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Speaker 1: also has a kind of charge that we call weak hypercharge.

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Speaker 1: So in a more general sense, charge tells you whether

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Speaker 1: a particle feels a force. Like the electron has an

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Speaker 1: electric charge, but it has no strong nuclear charge. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't feel the strong nuclear force. A quark has both

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Speaker 1: an electric charge and a strong nuclear charge, and so

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Speaker 1: it feels both forces. So really, charge in general is

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Speaker 1: a label about saying whether or not a particle feels

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Speaker 1: that force, and it's something philosophically we like attached to

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Speaker 1: the particle. We say, this is a property of this particle.

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Speaker 1: The electron has the charge physically, I don't really know

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Speaker 1: what that means, like where in the electron is it.

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Speaker 1: It's just sort of this like ineffable quantum label we

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Speaker 1: attached to it. We don't really know where it comes from,

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Speaker 1: like what generates the actual charge itself? Well, I think

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Speaker 1: in quantum theory and correct me if I'm wrong. But

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Speaker 1: it also because it sort of has to do whether

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Speaker 1: a particle interacts with certain quantum fields or done right,

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Speaker 1: Like maybe that's another way to define it. If the

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Speaker 1: electron doesn't interact with the strong force field, then it

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Speaker 1: just doesn't have a strong charge. Yeah, I think that's

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Speaker 1: another way of saying the same thing. You can think

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Speaker 1: about all these quantum pictures of the world either in

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Speaker 1: terms of particles that are pushing on each other or

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Speaker 1: in terms of fields, because remember, these particles are actually

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Speaker 1: just little wiggles in quantum fields, and those fields can

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Speaker 1: sometimes talk to each other. So, for example, the electromagnetic

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Speaker 1: field for which the photon is a particle can interact

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Speaker 1: with or talk to any field that has charges. So

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Speaker 1: the electron field of which the electron is the wiggle

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Speaker 1: is the particle, right, that will interact with the electromagnetic field,

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Speaker 1: and so will the field of the w boson because

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Speaker 1: it has electric charge. So as you say, the fields

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Speaker 1: that interact with a certain force, we say their particles

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Speaker 1: have that charge, and the fields that don't, we say

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Speaker 1: the particles don't have that charge. So, for example, the

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Speaker 1: neutrino field, neutrinos have no electric charge. Neutrino fields and

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic fields totally ignore each other. Right, So then maybe

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Speaker 1: you can define charges being like whether or not auto

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Speaker 1: particle interacts with the electromagnetic field. Yeah, for the electric charge,

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Speaker 1: And in terms of like particle theory, they often talk

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Speaker 1: about it as coupling. The electric charge is the way

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Speaker 1: that the photon field couples to the electron field. How

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Speaker 1: those two fields sort of like let energy slide back

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Speaker 1: and forth between them. I feel like we're getting a

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Speaker 1: little steaming out there. Are we back to talking about

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Speaker 1: steamia not steaming a not safe for workway? You know,

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Speaker 1: we're just talking about connections. We're just talking about energy

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Speaker 1: sliding from one kind of feel to the other. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: what sounds like we kind of have a definition of

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Speaker 1: what charge is. We just don't know where it comes

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Speaker 1: from kind of right, That's the thing, like, we don't

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Speaker 1: know why some particles interact with the electropicnet feels and

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Speaker 1: why some don't. That's right. We have a very effective

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Speaker 1: description of it, but we don't know why some particles

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Speaker 1: have it, what the rules are for what charges you

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Speaker 1: are allowed to have, and where it comes from at all. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess some particles just have that spark and others

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Speaker 1: some particles just have a positive attitude. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: let's get into a little bit of the history of

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Speaker 1: this idea of an electric charge. Where did it come from?

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Speaker 1: How did humans start to figure this out? And then

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Speaker 1: let's get into the bigger question of whether electrons or

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Speaker 1: things with electrical charge can have tiny, almost imperceptible charges.

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Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break or I we're

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Speaker 1: talking about charges, and we're charging ahead here with this topic,

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Speaker 1: talking about whether electrons or charged particles that have the

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Speaker 1: fuel electricity can have electrical charges that maybe have been

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Speaker 1: escaping our notice for thousands of years. So Daniel, maybe

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Speaker 1: step us through here a little bit on the history

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Speaker 1: of charges. When did we start noticing that some things

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Speaker 1: have electrical charge? So we certainly had noticed the properties

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Speaker 1: of electricity for a long long time, right, static electricity

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Speaker 1: and lightning, these are things everybody was aware of, and

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Speaker 1: until around the mid seventeen hundreds, the idea to explain

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Speaker 1: these things was dominated by concepts like effluvium or this

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Speaker 1: basically this two fluid theory of electricity and magnetism. It

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Speaker 1: was like this invisible fluid that flowed through objects, two

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Speaker 1: different kinds of invisible liquids flowing through objects, one positive,

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Speaker 1: one negative, that could cancel each other out right, Because

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Speaker 1: as you said, I imagine that this is something we've

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Speaker 1: noticed for maybe hundreds of thousands of years. Imagine, you know,

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Speaker 1: even caveman would get you know, static electricity in their

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Speaker 1: hair would stand up right, But for them it was

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Speaker 1: probably just you know, magic, or they had no way

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Speaker 1: to grant that there would be a reason for that exactly.

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Speaker 1: And the process of science is want to try and

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Speaker 1: develop like an explanation for these things. How can we

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Speaker 1: unify different phenomena that we see, the static electricity in

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Speaker 1: your hair and the lightning in the sky, Which of

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Speaker 1: these things are related and which of these are totally

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Speaker 1: different phenomena. So that's the process of physics, right sorting

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Speaker 1: out all the phenomena we see and trying to coalesce them,

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Speaker 1: boil them down into a few simple explanations, and try

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Speaker 1: to find the relationship between those to give, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: a single description of everything that's happening. And so this

417
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Speaker 1: really is an ancient process. It's a great example of

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Speaker 1: the whole process of physics of trying to coalesce many

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Speaker 1: different things down into one explanation. But I think you're

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Speaker 1: saying that maybe we did have sort of some idea

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Speaker 1: that it was something that flowed between things, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was sort of considered to be a liquid. We

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Speaker 1: didn't have the idea of particles yet. It wasn't until

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Speaker 1: you know, the late eighteen hundreds when J. J. Thompson

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Speaker 1: discovered the electron that we thought of it is like

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Speaker 1: isolated to a little particle. It was sort of more

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Speaker 1: similar to early concepts of heat. You know, this liquid

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Speaker 1: that flowed between things. And it's really fascinating because the

429
00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:26,800
Speaker 1: original idea was of two liquids, one positive and one negative,

430
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 1: which could flow between things, and they could cancel each

431
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 1: other out. It was mostly trying to explain like electrical

432
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:35,560
Speaker 1: attraction and repulsion and that theory. You know, it sounds

433
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 1: right because we know that there are protons and there

434
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:41,359
Speaker 1: are electrons, which is actually not quite right because the

435
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: protons don't really flow. Right. What happens with electricity in objects,

436
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: It say it's the electrons that are moving. And so

437
00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:51,200
Speaker 1: it was actually in the mid seventeen hundreds with Ben Franklin,

438
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: came up with the one fluid theory of electricity. Basically,

439
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:59,160
Speaker 1: there's just one kind of thing that's moving around. Now

440
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: we know, of course those are electrons, and that's a

441
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:05,040
Speaker 1: more accurate description of what's actually happening, but it sort

442
00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:08,399
Speaker 1: of ignores the protons and the positive charge. So it's

443
00:24:08,440 --> 00:24:11,199
Speaker 1: sort of fascinating from that point of view. Historically, I

444
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:14,000
Speaker 1: think you're saying that maybe like our early ideas about

445
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:16,359
Speaker 1: electricity was that it was sort of like a fluid.

446
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:19,040
Speaker 1: I guess I'm sort of like magical fluid in a way,

447
00:24:19,280 --> 00:24:22,400
Speaker 1: and that maybe at first we thought there were positive

448
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: fluids negative fluids, but more actually, when you see electricity

449
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 1: on an everyday basis, it's usually the negative electric charges

450
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 1: that are flowing around exactly in immaterial it's the electrons

451
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: that are moving. The protons are usually in the crystal

452
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:39,040
Speaker 1: and can't really move very well. The nuclei don't flow,

453
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: so it really is the electrons that are moving. And

454
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin did all these experiments with cloths and glass rods,

455
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: and of course his famous experiments with lightning. He's one

456
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:50,480
Speaker 1: of the first people to try to explain all these

457
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:53,560
Speaker 1: things in terms of a single phenomena. Did he use

458
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 1: hundred dollars bills? Also? He was all about the Benjamin's

459
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: for sure. But then it was in the late eighteen

460
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: hundreds that J. Thompson did his experiments with cathode ray

461
00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:05,760
Speaker 1: tubes and he showed that there were these tiny little

462
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 1: dots of matter that carried charge with them. He showed

463
00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:11,919
Speaker 1: they could be deflected by electric fields. We have a

464
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:14,880
Speaker 1: whole episode about the discovery of the electron which want

465
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:16,959
Speaker 1: to dig into the details of that one. But it

466
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:19,479
Speaker 1: was a really interesting moment because he showed where the

467
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 1: charge was. It went from being like this weird invisible

468
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:27,119
Speaker 1: not quite magic but imperceptible fluid, to being isolated to

469
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: these little bits. There was something out there that was

470
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:33,120
Speaker 1: carrying these charges. We'd like identified a little bit of matter.

471
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:35,760
Speaker 1: It had mass and it had electric charge to it,

472
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: So that made it like concrete in a new way.

473
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: So wait, he could actually see individual electrons. How do

474
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: you see an electron? Well, he couldn't see an individual electron,

475
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: but he could see them land on a screen in

476
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: his cathode ray You know, cathode ray tube is basically

477
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: the way TVs used to work. They have a little

478
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: gun of electrons that would shoot at the screen, and

479
00:25:54,320 --> 00:25:56,360
Speaker 1: you would have fields that bend them, so they would

480
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: shoot at different places at the screen it would scan across.

481
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:02,160
Speaker 1: And that's not very different from his original setup where

482
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: he had a little hot bit of metal that boiled

483
00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:07,679
Speaker 1: off electrons and then they were accelerated by a field

484
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,439
Speaker 1: and then bent by another field. So what he showed

485
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: was that you could bend their path using fields, which

486
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:17,200
Speaker 1: meant that they were carrying the charge, and he could

487
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 1: change where they landed by changing those fields. A really

488
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:23,080
Speaker 1: clever set of experiments. Right, But I wonder if he

489
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 1: thought maybe there were just droplets of this fluid right,

490
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,919
Speaker 1: Like he maybe didn't think of them as particles necessarily,

491
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,640
Speaker 1: did he? Because the quantum idea wasn't around yet, that's right.

492
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: But he actually is the one who came up with

493
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,360
Speaker 1: this concept that these things were all isolated on these

494
00:26:37,359 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: tiny little dots. He didn't use the word particle. He

495
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 1: invented this other word called the corpuscule, which he hoped

496
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:45,679
Speaker 1: was going to take off and that we'd all be

497
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: corpuscular physicists by now. But fortunately that name was dropped

498
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 1: later by other people. But he definitely identified these things

499
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: as tiny little dots with mass and with charge bundled

500
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,880
Speaker 1: together into the same physical location. It's really the first

501
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 1: moment where we started putting these labels on tiny dots

502
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:06,080
Speaker 1: of matter, sort of the invention of the concept of

503
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 1: a particle. There. Did he call it an electron or

504
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 1: when did the name come into use? He definitely called

505
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:16,439
Speaker 1: them corpuscules. The name electron came later, which I don't know.

506
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: I'd prefer the word electron two corpuscule. It's really amountable.

507
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:22,280
Speaker 1: And it was Milliken a few decades later who did

508
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: his famous oil drop experiments where he showed that the

509
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: charge is discreete that you couldn't have like one and

510
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:31,200
Speaker 1: a half charges or two point seven charges but you

511
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 1: could have like one, two, or three these very precise

512
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:37,479
Speaker 1: experiments that were balancing various forces and showing that they

513
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:40,199
Speaker 1: were integer quantities of them. So at that point we

514
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: knew that charge was a thing, that it was attached

515
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: to these tiny little particles, and that their charges were discrete.

516
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:48,480
Speaker 1: You didn't have like some particles running around with one

517
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 1: point two seven charges and other ones with zero point

518
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: eight nine. You either had one electron or two electrons

519
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: or three electrons. You know, this is around the same

520
00:27:57,160 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: time that quantum mechanics was being developed, when we had

521
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:03,119
Speaker 1: the understanding that light was packets of photons. You couldn't

522
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:05,120
Speaker 1: have like one point two of them. So the whole

523
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:10,399
Speaker 1: idea of discretization was sort of taking over physics. Sounds indiscreet,

524
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 1: but I guess my question is how did Milliken figure

525
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: this out? I mean, you're talking about the early nineteen hundreds.

526
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: How did they have experiments that can measure things down

527
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: to the one electron level? This is a really hard

528
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: experiment to do. He took little drops of oil and

529
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:28,120
Speaker 1: he sprayed them out of a little sprayer, which basically

530
00:28:28,200 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 1: strips them of some electrons, which basically ionizes them, and

531
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:35,200
Speaker 1: so now they have electric charge, and let them fall

532
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: through this little chamber until they reached terminal velocity, and

533
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:41,560
Speaker 1: then he turned on electric field to try to make

534
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: them levitate, and by tweaking the electric field, he could

535
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 1: find exactly the right force he needed to balance the

536
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:52,400
Speaker 1: downward going velocity. You could make these particles float. Essentially,

537
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: and what he noticed was needed a certain field or

538
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: like twice that field or three times that field, which

539
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 1: he hypothesized told him like how much each drop had

540
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: been ionized. So essentially he was measuring like how much

541
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: electric force you needed to levitate these drops, and he

542
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 1: noticed that it always came intoger quantities, So he wasn't

543
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: studying individual electrons. You couldn't see individual electrons, but he

544
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:17,959
Speaker 1: was studying the overall electric charge of these little drops

545
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 1: of oil. But that sort of only works if the

546
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: each drop is the size of one electron, right, Like

547
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: if you have a whole cluster of things with electrons,

548
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:29,360
Speaker 1: would you still notice that kind of discrete electric field. Yeah,

549
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 1: you can have a whole oil drop. But what he's

550
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:35,280
Speaker 1: measuring is the ionization of that drop, like essentially, how

551
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: many non neutral particles are in that drop, Because that's

552
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:40,840
Speaker 1: what's going to affect the force that the drop feels

553
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: when you put it in an electric field. So he

554
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: was noticing that you could ionize these drops by one unit,

555
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 1: or two units, or seven units, but not by three

556
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: point two units. Interesting. All right, well, I think that's

557
00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 1: kind of the general history of electrons, right, And that's

558
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: where the idea of the electron took off, right as

559
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: a discrete thing. And then the rest is history. The

560
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: rest is history. And now we regularly produce electrons and

561
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,160
Speaker 1: ar collider and study them in gory detail. In the

562
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: mid nineteen fifties, we had quantum electrodynamics, this theory of

563
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: photons and electrons as oscillating quantum fields, which is basically

564
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 1: the modern story of electromagnetism. All right, well, let's get

565
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,520
Speaker 1: to our question of whether electrons or other particles can

566
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: have charges that are smaller than one third of the

567
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: charge of an electron. I guess, Daniel, why are we

568
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: asking this question? Or I guess what do we know

569
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: about charge in general? So what we know is that

570
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 1: electrons have charged minus one, which is just something we assigned, right,

571
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: We could have given electrons any charge. It's really just

572
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:43,480
Speaker 1: totally arbitrary, and that protons have the opposite charge. Protons,

573
00:30:43,480 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: of course, are made of quarks, and those quarks have

574
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: the weirdest charges we know. They have charges like plus

575
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: or minus two thirds or plus or minus one third.

576
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: There are also particles out there neutrinos that have charged zero.

577
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: So all the fundamental particles that we know about have

578
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:04,280
Speaker 1: charges zero one thirds, two thirds, or like the electron,

579
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: they have effectively charge one. These units are arbitrary, but

580
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 1: everything seems to have a charge that a multiple of

581
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: one third of the electric charge. That seems to be

582
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: the minimum charge out there. Of the zero, of course,

583
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 1: which you can consider still a multiple of one third.

584
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 1: There's no particles out there that we've seen that have

585
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: charged like two sevenths or fourteen ninety firsts or you know,

586
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: pie times the electron. I guess, just to be clear,

587
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,720
Speaker 1: there's only four particles that we know about that have

588
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 1: electric charge. Is that true? Well, there are the four

589
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: kinds of fermions, right, electrons, neutrinos, of quarks, and down quirks.

590
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: There are also the other generations like the charm, the top,

591
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 1: the muon the towel. Those all have the same electric

592
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: charges as the base particles. So yeah, there are four

593
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 1: kinds of fermions, and each one has a different charge. Right,

594
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: So I guess what I mean is that we haven't

595
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: found any other particles other than these four and their

596
00:31:57,040 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: generational cousins that have electric charge, right that we The

597
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: only other particle with electric charge is the W. The

598
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: W is one of the first particles of the weak force,

599
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: and interestingly, it also has electric chart. So there's two

600
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: of those. There's the W plus and the W minus,

601
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:15,240
Speaker 1: So those sub charges plus one and minus one. Those

602
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:17,720
Speaker 1: are the only other charge particles out there. The other

603
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: particles like the Higgs boson and the photon and the

604
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: gluon and the z boson, all of those have zero

605
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: electric charge. Wait, the W particle also has electric chart,

606
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: and it's exactly the same as the electron. It's exactly

607
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 1: the same or opposite of the electron. And that's important

608
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 1: because the W and the electron interact with each other.

609
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: For example, a W can decay to an electron and

610
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: a neutrino, and that conserves electric charge. You start out

611
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 1: with charge minus one, you end up with an electron

612
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 1: with charge minus one and a neutrino with charge zero.

613
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 1: So electric chart starts at minus one ends at minus one.

614
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:55,080
Speaker 1: It's conserved. That's something else really fascinating that we know

615
00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: about electric charge is that it can't be created or destroyed.

616
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 1: It's always conserved in the universe. Now, is that a

617
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 1: cool incidence that the W happens to have the exact

618
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 1: same charges the electron? I don't think we know the

619
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: answer to that. But if it didn't have exactly the

620
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: same charges the electron, then it wouldn't be able to

621
00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 1: interact with the electron. Like the W had a charge

622
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: of one point two, then it couldn't decay to an

623
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 1: electron and a neutrino because charge is conserved. And so

624
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:23,800
Speaker 1: basically it would mean that it couldn't interact with our

625
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 1: kind of matter, and then it wouldn't participate in anything

626
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: that we knew about, And so it might exist in

627
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: the universe but not be something we could see or

628
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 1: interact with. Right, And so the fact that the W

629
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:38,719
Speaker 1: has the same charge as the electron is what allows

630
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 1: it to participate in our part of the universe, and

631
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:44,719
Speaker 1: so that's the reason we know about it. So it

632
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: might be that there are particles out there with weird

633
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: charges that don't interact in the same way as our particles,

634
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what people are looking for. M I see.

635
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: That's I think this gets into kind of the heart

636
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: of what we're asking here today and why maybe we

637
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: may have observed other particles that have different terms. Because

638
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 1: I know we talked about before, how the idea that

639
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: the proton has exactly the opposite charge of an electron.

640
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: It's sort of a coincidence in the universe, and if

641
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 1: that was any different, we wouldn't have all those things

642
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:16,799
Speaker 1: we have today like us. That's right. It's sort of

643
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:19,600
Speaker 1: explained and sort of not explained. Right, It's not explained

644
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: in the sense that, in principle it could have been

645
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:24,520
Speaker 1: something else. Right. It could have been that the quarks

646
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:27,359
Speaker 1: don't have exactly one third and two thirds the charge

647
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: of the electron, so when you put them together you

648
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: get a proton that's not exactly the opposite charge of

649
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,960
Speaker 1: the electron. That could work in physics, but it's explained

650
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 1: in the sense that that universe would be so different

651
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,879
Speaker 1: from ours that it's sort of impossible to even imagine

652
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:43,839
Speaker 1: what that would be like. Would be very different from

653
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,440
Speaker 1: the universe we experience. So to have a universe like ours,

654
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: requires that balance. That doesn't mean we know why that

655
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: balance exists, right, So it's a really fascinating question philosophically. Yeah,

656
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's get into this question of whether

657
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: charges can be different than the ones from the electron,

658
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: and specifically much smaller than one third the charge of

659
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 1: an electron, Like maybe there are particles out there with

660
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: that kind of charge, we just haven't seen them. So

661
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 1: let's get into that question. But first, let's take another

662
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, we're talking about charges in the universe,

663
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 1: and Daniel were saying that, you know, the electron has

664
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:33,719
Speaker 1: a charge of negative one because that's what we gave it,

665
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: and we know that the proton, which is made out

666
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: of quarks, has an overall charge of plus one, and

667
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,279
Speaker 1: the fact that they're exactly the opposite is sort of

668
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,359
Speaker 1: the reason that we can't have atoms and things like that. Right,

669
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 1: if it was any different, what would happen If it

670
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: was any different, then you couldn't get neutral hydrogen, for example. Right,

671
00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:53,439
Speaker 1: there was this moment in the universe very early on,

672
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 1: when electrons and protons cooled down. They slowed down enough

673
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: that their mutual electrical attraction action could make them warm

674
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 1: neutral hydrogen, and the universe suddenly became transparent. Right, this

675
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 1: is the moment when the cosmic microwave background radiation was

676
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:13,480
Speaker 1: created and flew through the universe. And neutral hydrogen is

677
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 1: essential for basically the formation of the whole universe. It's

678
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:19,600
Speaker 1: basically what makes up the universe, neutral hydrogen. Wait, wait,

679
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:22,360
Speaker 1: why is that important? I guess if let's say the

680
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:25,719
Speaker 1: proton had like one point one the charge of an

681
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:29,280
Speaker 1: electron plus one point one, you would still get hydrogen,

682
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:31,640
Speaker 1: but the hydrogen would just have an overall charge of

683
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 1: plus point one, wouldn't it. Yeah, you could get hydrogen,

684
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:37,440
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be neutral hydrogen. And I think that has

685
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: a lot of downstream effects for how chemistry happens and

686
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: how life is formed and everything else that we rely on.

687
00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:49,280
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm not an expert on chemistry and biochemistry.

688
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 1: But you could still have a universe way with suns

689
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: and planets and stuff, couldn't you. You could have a universe.

690
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: And I imagine that fusion could still happen because fusion

691
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,879
Speaker 1: fundamentally is really just a process between proton You don't

692
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:04,360
Speaker 1: really need the electrons. Like inside the heart of stars,

693
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: protons are anyway ionized to you don't really have the

694
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:09,959
Speaker 1: electrons around when you do fusion, So you can still

695
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:13,359
Speaker 1: have fusion if protons don't have exactly the opposite charge

696
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: of electrons, so you can still have light in the universe. Right,

697
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: that's good. Remember that electromagnetism is much stronger than gravity,

698
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: So for gravity to take over and to tug things

699
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:28,360
Speaker 1: together into dense objects probably requires everything to be electrically neutral.

700
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:31,080
Speaker 1: Nothing is electrically neutral, and everything is repelling each other.

701
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:34,600
Speaker 1: Gravity might not be able to overcome that and form

702
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:37,719
Speaker 1: dense objects like planets and stars and ice cream. Well,

703
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's true. One you could still form them,

704
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: they would just maybe be different proportions of the different elements, right,

705
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 1: Like you know, if hydrogen was like plus point one,

706
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: then maybe you could have other materials that are like

707
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 1: negative point eight, and then you could have you know,

708
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 1: two of these and one of these. Yeah, it might

709
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:58,480
Speaker 1: be possible to still form neutral objects. But for that

710
00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 1: to work, then the charge can't just be arbitrary. They

711
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 1: have to be like some rational fraction of each other.

712
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:08,040
Speaker 1: You know, the proton is charged pi and the electrons

713
00:38:08,080 --> 00:38:11,880
Speaker 1: charged negative one, then no, arrangement of protons and electrons

714
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:14,640
Speaker 1: will give you a neutral object. It's just impossible. But

715
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:16,719
Speaker 1: if they are a rational fraction of each other, if

716
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: the proton is like five fourths or nine eighths or something,

717
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:22,279
Speaker 1: then yeah, you can have a certain relationship. You can

718
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: make weird atoms out of eight protons and nine electrons

719
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 1: or something like that, Right, And I wonder if that

720
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: would be okay, right, Like, like we can have molecules

721
00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: in our body that have an overall charge, right, we

722
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: certainly could, Like a molecule in our body can lose

723
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: an electron in one of its atoms and it would

724
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 1: still be a molecule. Like maybe I wonder if biology

725
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: or nature needs neutral particles. I know that a lot

726
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:48,279
Speaker 1: of our biological processes rely on charges, right, Like our

727
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: entire nervous system is basically electrically charged and uses ions.

728
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 1: So probably things like that could function. But I think

729
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: the whole structure of the universe would be very different

730
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: if you had these different kind of chemicals. But even

731
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 1: this is relying on an assumption, right, It's an assuming

732
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 1: that you could still build something neutral so that gravity

733
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:09,280
Speaker 1: could take over. If instead charges could have any value,

734
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 1: then there's no guarantee you could put particles together to

735
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: make things that are neutral. And I think that's one

736
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: of the deepest questions, like why are these particles rational

737
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 1: fractions of each other's charge one third, two thirds, five

738
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 1: fourths even, you know, these kinds of things instead of

739
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 1: zero point eight seven two or irrational numbers. Yeah, I

740
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 1: guess that's the main question we're asking today, is like,

741
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: why can't that be because as far as we know,

742
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: the particles that we do know about have these multiple

743
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:39,320
Speaker 1: charges of each other. Right, that's kind of the idea exactly.

744
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:42,480
Speaker 1: And so if you ask theoretical physics, like what prevents

745
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 1: us from having particles with charge zero point oh one

746
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: or zero point one seven nine two, or you know,

747
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: just keep going, and the answer is nothing, like there

748
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: is no theoretical prohibition against it. But that's mostly because

749
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 1: we don't really understand where charge comes from and how

750
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: these labels get us signed, and so we haven't invented

751
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:04,360
Speaker 1: rules that say you can't do it. We just haven't

752
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 1: seen any particles like that in the universe. Right. And

753
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: the weird thing I guess is that you know, an electron,

754
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 1: it comes from the electric quantum field and a quark

755
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 1: comes from the quantum quark field, and yet they seem

756
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:21,279
Speaker 1: to have charges that are kind of multiples of each other.

757
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 1: That's the weird thing too about the universe, right, Yeah,

758
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:26,239
Speaker 1: that is definitely a weird thing because as far as

759
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: we know, those fields are not that closely related, Like

760
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:32,759
Speaker 1: there are similarities there between the electron, the neutrino, and

761
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,840
Speaker 1: the quarks are either paired together in similar ways, Like

762
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 1: the W for example, can decay to an electron and

763
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,400
Speaker 1: a neutrino. It can also decay to a pair of

764
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:44,760
Speaker 1: quarks because that pair of quarks have a charge difference

765
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:48,959
Speaker 1: of plus or minus one. So there's definitely relationships between them,

766
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 1: but we don't really understand all those relationships. What this

767
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:55,440
Speaker 1: suggests is that there's some deeper relationship between the electron

768
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: and the quarks than we even understand. Like maybe the

769
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 1: electron and the quarks are all made out of some

770
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 1: tinier little particle, and some arrangement of those little tiny particles,

771
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 1: which each have their own electric charge, is what gives

772
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: you the electron with charge one or the quark with

773
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:12,840
Speaker 1: charge minus one third, the same way that like atoms

774
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:14,960
Speaker 1: are built out of the same building blocks and you

775
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:17,720
Speaker 1: get all sorts of different behavior and overall charges and whatever.

776
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 1: Maybe electrons and quarks and neutrinos are all built out

777
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 1: of the same tiny little building blocks, and that would

778
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 1: explain all the relationships between them, including this strangely fortuitous

779
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:33,640
Speaker 1: relationship of their electric charges. Maybe there are puscals out

780
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:38,360
Speaker 1: there in the universe, and maybe you are corpuscular particle,

781
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:43,680
Speaker 1: I mean, opuscular physicist. It's so much fun to say.

782
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:46,839
Speaker 1: But there are theories out there about these so called

783
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 1: milly charged particles, particles that have really really tiny electric charges.

784
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 1: We're talking about things down to like a thousands or

785
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 1: less of the charge of the electron, and there are

786
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 1: experiments out there searching for them as well. Well. I

787
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: feel like there's maybe two possibilities, right, Like, there's a

788
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:06,280
Speaker 1: possibility that there is a whole new kind of particle

789
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 1: that we don't know about that has a charge that's

790
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 1: one thousands of the electron or you know, a point

791
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:17,120
Speaker 1: nine to infinity charge. That's one possibility, is that you

792
00:42:17,160 --> 00:42:18,760
Speaker 1: have a whole new kind of particle that we hadn't

793
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: seen before. And then there's the other possibility. Then maybe

794
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:25,560
Speaker 1: there are electrons out there with one point one electrical charge.

795
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 1: So which which one are we talking about here? We're

796
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 1: talking about both of those possibilities, but we're also talking

797
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: about a third possibility. Maybe there's another kind of particle

798
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 1: out there. They call it a para electron, and it's

799
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 1: got plus or minus para charge. So like some whole

800
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: new kind of charge the way we were talking about,

801
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: like the strong force has its own charge. Now I'm

802
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:49,239
Speaker 1: badge in a new force with a new charge and

803
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 1: a new particle with that force, and it has its

804
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:53,880
Speaker 1: own new particle, like the photon. So you have a

805
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: para electron with its para charge and its para photon. If, however,

806
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:01,879
Speaker 1: that new photon and the paraphoton talk to each other

807
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 1: a little bit, if they mix a little bit, that

808
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: can exchange information a tiny bit, then that para electron

809
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 1: would look to us as if it had a tiny

810
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 1: electric charge. So it would really have its own parrot

811
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: charge of plus or minus one, but we would see

812
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,439
Speaker 1: it as having a tiny electric charge because we would

813
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,080
Speaker 1: only capture a little bit of it through this photon

814
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:28,239
Speaker 1: para photon mixing. Wait, I don't get it. So we're

815
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 1: imagining a whole new particle a whole new kind of force,

816
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 1: and you're saying that maybe that new fours leaks a

817
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 1: little bit or interacts a little bit with ours in

818
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 1: that it's its own force. But it's sort of to us,

819
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 1: it looks like it's like it overlaps with the electromagnetic

820
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: forces that we're saying a little bit. Yeah, you've got

821
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 1: it exactly, that's exactly right. So it has the same

822
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 1: strength as electromagnetism, but we mostly can't see it. So

823
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 1: we see it as if it was a tiny little

824
00:43:56,120 --> 00:44:00,399
Speaker 1: version of electromagnetism, like electrons with a tiny charge. Now,

825
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:03,360
Speaker 1: why do you need this whole setup to imagine a

826
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:06,760
Speaker 1: particle with point o one charge? Can I just imagine

827
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 1: a particle with point on one charge? You can? Theorists

828
00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 1: don't like that. I was reading some papers about that,

829
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:17,480
Speaker 1: and theorists always just dismissed that possibility as not very esthetic.

830
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:20,040
Speaker 1: I think that they want a reason why a particle

831
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:23,239
Speaker 1: would have some arbitrary, tiny little chart rather than just

832
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: like putting the number in by hand. You know, often

833
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: theoretical physicists don't like to add parameters to the universe

834
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:32,759
Speaker 1: that don't have an explanation, and so they look for

835
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:35,040
Speaker 1: a reason why it would have to be this way,

836
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:38,400
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit more indirect. But theoretical physicists

837
00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: preferred like sits better in their minds for reasons. Honestly,

838
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 1: I don't totally understand. I see they prefer to think

839
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:48,640
Speaker 1: about it coming up with a whole new fours in

840
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:51,319
Speaker 1: a whole new particle that has a little bit of

841
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:54,960
Speaker 1: coupling with the electromagnetic force, rather than just coming up

842
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:56,839
Speaker 1: with a whole new particle that has a little bit

843
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: of an electromagnetic Yeah, that's exactly right, you know. And

844
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 1: a lot of things that happen in theoretical physics are

845
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:07,840
Speaker 1: guided by a sense of aesthetics, like what would be

846
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:11,040
Speaker 1: a pretty way for this to work mathematically? What would

847
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:14,080
Speaker 1: give us a beautiful description of the universe? And that

848
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: in the end is subjective, you know. We like to

849
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:19,279
Speaker 1: think about science as objective and based in fact and

850
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:23,239
Speaker 1: making progress in lockstep as we approach the truth. But

851
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:25,360
Speaker 1: a lot of it really is also a search for

852
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 1: beauty and elegance in the universe, and that's kind of controversial.

853
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:32,399
Speaker 1: There are some folks out there who think that's misguided.

854
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: The universe doesn't have to be beautiful and other folks

855
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: that think that the search for elegance and beauty in

856
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:40,839
Speaker 1: our theoretical description of the universe has led to great discoveries.

857
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: So it's a very controversial approach, but anyway, it's part

858
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:47,359
Speaker 1: of the literature of milli charged particles. Now, you said

859
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 1: this is one kind of possible millicharged particle, having this

860
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:53,799
Speaker 1: whole new particle with whole new force. But then they're

861
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: the other two that I mentioned, which is like, maybe

862
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 1: there are particles with just a little tiny bit of

863
00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:01,400
Speaker 1: electric charge, or maybe like the electrons we know sometimes

864
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: have a little bit or a little bit more or

865
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: less electric charge. And you're saying we're looking for all

866
00:46:06,239 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 1: of these things, or just we're only looking for the

867
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,320
Speaker 1: new force, new particle model, we're looking for all these things.

868
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 1: Is a lot of different experiments searching for these things.

869
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:17,319
Speaker 1: Some people are looking for these para electrons. Other people

870
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 1: are looking to see if maybe the neutrino doesn't have

871
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: zero charge, maybe it has a tiny, tiny, tiny charge. Remember,

872
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 1: whenever we measure something in physics, it's never exact right.

873
00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:31,560
Speaker 1: You can't measure something to be exactly zero. You know,

874
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:33,399
Speaker 1: we've just set a limit on it, you can say, well,

875
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:35,839
Speaker 1: if neutrinos had a charge, it would be less than

876
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: some tiny value, or we would have seen it. So

877
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:40,440
Speaker 1: people are trying to like nail that down. Is it

878
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 1: possible that the neutrino might have a tiny little charge.

879
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:47,759
Speaker 1: There's a whole broad set of experiments looking for these things. No,

880
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:49,919
Speaker 1: I guess, maybe walk us through how do you even

881
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,280
Speaker 1: look for these things? So first of all, to discover

882
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:54,839
Speaker 1: one of these particles, you have to see it by itself.

883
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,400
Speaker 1: You need to isolate it and demonstrate that it really

884
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: has its own electric charge, sort of like the way

885
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:03,359
Speaker 1: we have seen quarks inside the proton. Right, you can say, oh,

886
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:05,839
Speaker 1: maybe quarks have a charge two thirds, but until you

887
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 1: see them operating on their own, you can't really say

888
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 1: that you have found it. And so we try to

889
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,240
Speaker 1: do this in accelerators. For example, we smash protons together

890
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 1: and we see new stuff that comes out. And everything

891
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: that's created in the accelerator is immersed in a magnetic

892
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: field that bends its path. So electrons fly out of

893
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: the collision and they curve, and how much they curve

894
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 1: depends on their charge. So one thing you can do

895
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:33,319
Speaker 1: pretty easily is look for particles that bend weirdly in

896
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 1: your magnetic field because they have a tiny electric charge,

897
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: they'll bend a tiny little bit. If they have some

898
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: huge electric charge, they'll bend a lot. And so that's

899
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:43,799
Speaker 1: one quick thing that you can do is just like

900
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:48,400
Speaker 1: look for weirdly bending particles created in accelerators. But I

901
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 1: guess the hard thing is, like we mentioned earlier, is

902
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: that the universe is quantum, right, Like, if something has

903
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:57,880
Speaker 1: point o one electric charge, that doesn't mean it's going

904
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:00,879
Speaker 1: to interact with something that has one electric charge, right

905
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:03,839
Speaker 1: Like the universe only likes to make exchange. It if

906
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 1: you have exact change, that's right, But some of those

907
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:10,040
Speaker 1: interactions are still allowed. Like if you have a particle

908
00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: flying by with zero point zero one electric charge, it

909
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:16,800
Speaker 1: can radiate a photon that doesn't violate conservation of charge,

910
00:48:16,920 --> 00:48:19,520
Speaker 1: and then that photon can knock off an electron in

911
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 1: your material can it can it generate a photon, but

912
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:25,839
Speaker 1: they aren't photons also quantized. Photons are quantized, but they're

913
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:29,320
Speaker 1: not electrically charged. So an electron can generate a photon

914
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: or this para electron could also generate a photon, wouldn't

915
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: break any of the rules. Yes, you have to quantize them.

916
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: You have to generate one electron or two electrons. But

917
00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: having a tiny electric charge doesn't prevent you from generating

918
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 1: an integer number of photons. But they would have to

919
00:48:44,239 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 1: be really tiny photons, right like point or one of

920
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: a photon. Kind of Now, you would still generate one photon,

921
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: you just have a smaller probability of generating photons. So

922
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: particles with smaller electric charge generate basically fewer photons, so

923
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 1: they ionize material less. This is actually another way people

924
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: are looking for these things. It might be that we

925
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: are generating these millicharged particles in our accelerators, but we're

926
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:10,320
Speaker 1: not seeing them because they just don't leave a trace

927
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 1: in our detectors, which mostly require particles to ionize the

928
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: material to knock things out of the way as they

929
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 1: fly through with their electric charge. So some folks have

930
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:24,440
Speaker 1: set up dedicated experiments far away from the collider, like

931
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 1: near the collider, but through like meters and meters of rock.

932
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,720
Speaker 1: They stead of special detectors, hoping that a millicharged particle

933
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:34,840
Speaker 1: will fly all the way through that rock, not ionize

934
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:37,720
Speaker 1: anything because of it's low electric charge, and then suddenly

935
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:41,720
Speaker 1: decay in their detector, and nothing else basically could survive

936
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,160
Speaker 1: all of that rock. So if they see something there,

937
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:47,320
Speaker 1: they'll be pretty convinced they see something that can survive

938
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:51,080
Speaker 1: all that rock and also decay into photons, and so

939
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 1: probably a particle with very low electric charge. I feel

940
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:58,279
Speaker 1: like this gets a little bit into the idea that

941
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:01,680
Speaker 1: maybe charge is really or of a probability which we

942
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 1: probably can't deep too deep into, but maybe talk to

943
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: us a little about the other ways that we're looking

944
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: for these particles. Another way to look for these things

945
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:12,239
Speaker 1: is in cosmic rays. A lot of discoveries have been

946
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: made just by looking at the particles that come from

947
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:18,760
Speaker 1: space because they smash into our atmosphere and are basically

948
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 1: like little particle collisions that can produce all sorts of

949
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 1: crazy stuff and so muans, for example, we're discovered by

950
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 1: looking at particles coming from the upper atmosphere. And if

951
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:30,840
Speaker 1: you use a cloud chamber, this is just a chamber

952
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 1: where the air is super saturated with water, so charge

953
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:37,279
Speaker 1: particles flying through it will tend to create droplets, so

954
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 1: you can see the path of particles. You might have

955
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:41,880
Speaker 1: seen one in a museum sometime. You can see muons

956
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:45,280
Speaker 1: flying through it. Well, the drop density, like how many

957
00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 1: drops you make per centimeter, for example, depends on the

958
00:50:48,640 --> 00:50:51,960
Speaker 1: charge because it depends on how often you're shooting out photons.

959
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:54,359
Speaker 1: And so if you saw a particle flying through there

960
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: with very low drop density, that would tell you that

961
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:00,799
Speaker 1: you have a particle with low electric charge. So people

962
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:03,759
Speaker 1: are using cloud chambers to study cosmic rays and see

963
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 1: if they can spot some of these very low electrically

964
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:10,279
Speaker 1: charged particles cool and how else are we looking for these?

965
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:13,160
Speaker 1: There's really fun experiments that are basically the successors of

966
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 1: Milican's oil job experiment. They're taking a blob of matter

967
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,319
Speaker 1: and they're looking to see if there's basically the kind

968
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:21,120
Speaker 1: of atom that you were talking about earlier somewhere inside

969
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:24,239
Speaker 1: this blob of matter. Like imagine some other particle with

970
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:29,000
Speaker 1: a tiny charge orbiting a proton right bound to the nucleus,

971
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 1: making some new kind of atom. And if it's also

972
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:35,400
Speaker 1: very massive, if this low charged particle has a high mass,

973
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: it would be like bound to the nucleus and very

974
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: very close to the nucleus. So people are looking for

975
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:45,319
Speaker 1: this like weird kind of stuff embedded in matter, and

976
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:47,440
Speaker 1: they theorize that it might have been formed early in

977
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:50,320
Speaker 1: the universe. But because these things would be very heavy,

978
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:53,319
Speaker 1: they were on Earth, they might have sunk down through

979
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:55,719
Speaker 1: the Earth's crust and all have pooled up near the

980
00:51:55,760 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 1: center of the Earth. So you can't just like scoop

981
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:00,320
Speaker 1: up a chunk of dirt and look for these weird

982
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 1: objects inside of them because they probably aren't any So

983
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:06,600
Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're looking for asteroids. They take

984
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:09,359
Speaker 1: like a slice of an asteroid and they see if

985
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 1: they can find these weirdly charged heavy objects inside an

986
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: asteroid slice. And they use an experiment similar to Milligans.

987
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: It's called a leavetometer, where they have like a blob

988
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:24,800
Speaker 1: of the stuff magnetically suspended in this oscillating an eclectric field,

989
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 1: and they watch the motion of it to see if

990
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:29,480
Speaker 1: they can detect something which can't be explained by an

991
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: integer number of charges, very similar to the oil job experiment.

992
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 1: Like maybe there is this kind of new kind of

993
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:38,880
Speaker 1: material here on Earth. Is that what you're saying with

994
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 1: the new forest and the new particles, is that what

995
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: you're looking for, You're looking for like regular asteroid rocks

996
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:48,720
Speaker 1: that somehow have this new kind of matter somehow stuck

997
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, exactly, maybe deep within it there's one

998
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:53,279
Speaker 1: of these things. And they can try to figure out

999
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 1: if a huge blob of matter has one or maybe

1000
00:52:56,200 --> 00:52:59,520
Speaker 1: two of these things by oscillating in an electric field

1001
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:02,280
Speaker 1: and seeing it behaves strangely. It's a lot of details

1002
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:04,760
Speaker 1: there we don't have time to get into, but the

1003
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:06,600
Speaker 1: basic version is that you can take a chunk of

1004
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:09,719
Speaker 1: matter and study its behavior in electric fields to see

1005
00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:12,440
Speaker 1: if it has any of these new weird atoms in

1006
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 1: it that might have milli charged particles within them. So

1007
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 1: you're you're basically looking for a new kind of matter, right, yeah,

1008
00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 1: exactly that we had never seen before. And you're wondering,

1009
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's in this rock or this rock,

1010
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:26,239
Speaker 1: or how about that rock? Is it in this rock? No?

1011
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 1: How about there? Yeah that's exactly right, And that seems crazy,

1012
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,400
Speaker 1: but you know, it could be that it's everywhere, that

1013
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 1: it's in all the rocks, and so might as well check.

1014
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:37,759
Speaker 1: And so what they can do is they can say, look, oh,

1015
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:40,160
Speaker 1: well we didn't find it, and so maybe it's just rare,

1016
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:42,400
Speaker 1: and that they can do bigger and bigger experiments and

1017
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: check more and more rocks. You know, but imagine the

1018
00:53:45,480 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: universe where they're in every rock and nobody bothered to check. Right,

1019
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: What a crazy discovery that would be. All right, well,

1020
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:56,439
Speaker 1: good luck finding this magical kind of matter in every

1021
00:53:56,520 --> 00:54:00,279
Speaker 1: rock out there in the universe. I guess we give

1022
00:54:00,360 --> 00:54:02,560
Speaker 1: us a sense of you know, why we're looking for

1023
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 1: this stuff. I mean, it sounds kind of impossible because

1024
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 1: we haven't seen it doesn't need to affect the rest

1025
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:09,919
Speaker 1: of the universe in any strong way, otherwise we would

1026
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:12,440
Speaker 1: have discovered this new kind of matter. Are we just

1027
00:54:12,480 --> 00:54:14,839
Speaker 1: trying to check the box that it doesn't exist. We're

1028
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 1: trying to check the box that it doesn't exist, but

1029
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:18,960
Speaker 1: also we're trying to get a little bit of an

1030
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: answer to the question like why is there charge? And

1031
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: why does it have these properties? Why does it all

1032
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:26,839
Speaker 1: seem to come in these rational fractions of each other.

1033
00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 1: It's just not something that we understand, and so if

1034
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:32,240
Speaker 1: we could find this thing, it would be a huge clue.

1035
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:34,360
Speaker 1: Tell us, Oh, that's not a rule in the universe.

1036
00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:36,920
Speaker 1: It's not required to have that. That's just the examples

1037
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:39,640
Speaker 1: you happen to discover early on. You know, there's lots

1038
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 1: of times in the universe when we drew big conclusions

1039
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:46,800
Speaker 1: based on incomplete information. All of Newtonian physics, for example,

1040
00:54:47,280 --> 00:54:50,000
Speaker 1: is based on not ever seeing things go really fast

1041
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:53,280
Speaker 1: or not ever seeing space get bent really really hard.

1042
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: So we want to be careful not to jump to

1043
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:58,040
Speaker 1: conclusions based on the small amount of information we have.

1044
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: We want to check and see if it's possible well

1045
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:02,480
Speaker 1: to do other things, and that'll tell us like, oh,

1046
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,399
Speaker 1: this is a rule in the universe, or Nope, that's

1047
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:06,239
Speaker 1: not a rule in the universe. Don't worry about it.

1048
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:09,560
Speaker 1: I feel that this idea wouldn't really help you, right,

1049
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:11,320
Speaker 1: Like if there is a new kind of matter with

1050
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:15,280
Speaker 1: its own force and its own particle and field and everything,

1051
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,719
Speaker 1: and that only sort of tinggently interacts with our that

1052
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 1: only looks like it has a small electric charge, that

1053
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:23,920
Speaker 1: still wouldn't help you understand why electrical charges are the

1054
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 1: way they are, right, It would just open up a

1055
00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: new question, like why does it only interact a little

1056
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:31,120
Speaker 1: bit with this new magical field. But if that other

1057
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: field exists and it does interact with the photon, that

1058
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,640
Speaker 1: means it has some connection to charge itself, and so

1059
00:55:37,719 --> 00:55:40,360
Speaker 1: it would shed some light on the nature of charge.

1060
00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:43,000
Speaker 1: But yeah, absolutely would opened up a whole bunch of

1061
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:47,240
Speaker 1: other questions. All right, well, stay tuned, and in the meantime,

1062
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 1: I guess keep driving those electric cards because it's putting

1063
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:53,879
Speaker 1: those electrons to work. And don't overcharge your credit card.

1064
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:56,120
Speaker 1: All right. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us,

1065
00:55:56,880 --> 00:56:06,880
Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that

1066
00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:10,840
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1067
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 1: For more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1068
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:18,720
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.