Speaker 1: Hey, hey, you have strong opinions about naming things, didn't you.
Speaker 1: I just don't like kids when things are named in
Speaker 1: a very confusing way, or where the name actually confuses
Speaker 1: you instead of making things clear. All right, Well, then
Speaker 1: I have a bit of a personal question. How did
Speaker 1: you pick the names of your kids? Not through physics,
Speaker 1: for sure, that's definitely did not. There's not one called strange,
Speaker 1: one called charm. They're both strange and charming, for sure.
Speaker 1: That's a linear superposition. There is physics there. They are
Speaker 1: definitely quantum and delete for sure. Our son was named
Speaker 1: my wife had had a dream, and that's how she
Speaker 1: came up with the name for our son. She just
Speaker 1: came up with the name in the dream. And my
Speaker 1: daughter is named after a Jane Austen character. Wow. Alright,
Speaker 1: so both bired by mental realms outside of the physical world.
Speaker 1: I am more handmake cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm a connoisseur
Speaker 1: of all jokes physicals ee, strong electric and even weak
Speaker 1: ones and banana forces. Of course, that's right, And of
Speaker 1: course the mysterious banana field that feels the universe and
Speaker 1: it is mostly concentrated around Jorge's head, and together we
Speaker 1: are co authors on books and other projects. But this
Speaker 1: is our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio, in which we take you
Speaker 1: on a tour of all the weird, crazy, amazing stuff
Speaker 1: in the universe and try to explain it to you.
Speaker 1: So you go away going, wow, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I never understood that before. All these strong and amazing
Speaker 1: things and even the weak but significant things in the
Speaker 1: universe that maybe every once you know about. That's right.
Speaker 1: It's a forceful exposition of all the fascinating things about
Speaker 1: the universe. Oh man, now you're just forcing it. I
Speaker 1: think that's right. Well, you know, my my joke, force
Speaker 1: is pretty weak. But forces themselves are sort of a
Speaker 1: weird thing. It's like, forces are something that physicists you've
Speaker 1: even had a hard time grappling with over the centuries. Well,
Speaker 1: it's something that's really intuitive. I think. You know, as
Speaker 1: a little kid, even as a baby, you sort of
Speaker 1: get the idea of force, right, Thanks pushing you, thanks
Speaker 1: pulling you, gravity, pushing you down. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: your intuition is misleading. I think most people think of
Speaker 1: a force as something as a push, right, something that's
Speaker 1: touching you. Somebody comes up to you, pushes you over,
Speaker 1: you fall over, you move your role or whatever. So
Speaker 1: I think most people think of forces as touching. The
Speaker 1: really weird thing about forces is when they can act
Speaker 1: without touching, right, When they can, like when you see
Speaker 1: a mad levitating, it seems almost like magic, right, because
Speaker 1: this this, these two things are acting on each other
Speaker 1: without actually touching each other. Yeah, it's weird. And so
Speaker 1: today we'll be talking about one particular force out of
Speaker 1: all the forces out there in the universe, one that
Speaker 1: is maybe not the strongest one, but that led to
Speaker 1: some amazing discoveries. Right, that's right. It's not the most
Speaker 1: powerful force, but it did give us some amazing hints
Speaker 1: into the way the universe works. So it's weekly powered,
Speaker 1: but plays a strong role in the sort of overarching
Speaker 1: drama that is physics. Yep, it's a four sets inside everyone, right,
Speaker 1: it's inside of me, inside of you, inside of everyone
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast. That's right. It's everywhere in the universe,
Speaker 1: and it plays an important role in how we live
Speaker 1: and how we die and how we power ourselves. So
Speaker 1: to be on the podcast, we'll be talking about the
Speaker 1: weak fours? Weak fours? Are you just trying to add
Speaker 1: some drama to it because it needs some panash? It
Speaker 1: was a little anti climatic. Did you say I thought
Speaker 1: you might go with weak nuclear force because nuclear gives
Speaker 1: it some sort of like edge of mysteriousness. Right, the
Speaker 1: weak quantum? No of the week? Black holes pilate on.
Speaker 1: Let's just give him multiple hyvingated names the week, true, Guadalajara,
Speaker 1: Montre exactly. Um, that would be a lot more fun. No,
Speaker 1: the weak force is really amazing, it's fascinating. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of the four fundamental forces in nature. Right, there's
Speaker 1: only four of them? Yeah, well, spoiler alert turns out
Speaker 1: there's three. You eliminated one like Pluto just got deep declassified. No. No,
Speaker 1: that's the goal of physics, right, is to not have
Speaker 1: four forces. We don't want to say, hey, here's how
Speaker 1: the universe works. There are four totally weird, separate rules
Speaker 1: about things, how things can push and pulling each other.
Speaker 1: We we think, we hope, we want to explain the
Speaker 1: universe in terms of one force. So the story of
Speaker 1: physics so far is look around you see all the
Speaker 1: weird thing that's happening in the universe and try to
Speaker 1: describe them all in terms of the smallest number of things,
Speaker 1: the smallest number of forces. So yeah, the goal is
Speaker 1: to sort of take things off the list and describe
Speaker 1: everything in terms of just one thing. So you're saying,
Speaker 1: there used to be only four forces in the universe,
Speaker 1: and then phasics killed one of them and or married
Speaker 1: two of them, and now there are only three fundamental
Speaker 1: forces in the universe. Yeah, well, this the drama is
Speaker 1: even more because we suspect that in the first few
Speaker 1: moments after the Big Bang there was just one force,
Speaker 1: but then as the universe cooled, we think they've broke
Speaker 1: up into all these different forces. And what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do now is sort of re run that backwards
Speaker 1: and understand, like, can we bring these things together. Can
Speaker 1: we understand these things in terms of one big picture?
Speaker 1: How do we bring marry these things back together? You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a it's like a universal divorce early on,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to bring the couples back together and
Speaker 1: show them how they can work together. You're trying to
Speaker 1: bring the band back together. Basically, it's like the Beatles
Speaker 1: broke up, and you know, we enjoyed their individual work.
Speaker 1: But come on, guys, yeah, that's a great analogy. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: you like to just describe the Beatles instead of having
Speaker 1: to describe all four members of the Beatles? Right, That's
Speaker 1: exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to show
Speaker 1: you that, you know, the drums are not interesting on
Speaker 1: their own, They're just part of a larger harmony. Right.
Speaker 1: They make much more sense when you understand them in
Speaker 1: terms of the guitar parts and the vocals which come
Speaker 1: together to make this amazing beautiful music. Right. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: physics of the Beatles, that will be the next exactly.
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna show you how Paul and John
Speaker 1: were actually the same person. Spoiler alert, they were the
Speaker 1: same person. That's right. And ringoes an alien. Everybody knows
Speaker 1: ringos an alien, right, all right? So the week nuclear
Speaker 1: force and so that's uh, it's not the most popular force.
Speaker 1: You know, most people know electromagnetism and gravity. Right. It
Speaker 1: is part of the forces, isn't it. Yeah, maybe it is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the ringo of forces. It's sort of overlooked,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, dismissed, but in the end fundamentally
Speaker 1: important to making things work. Just like Ringo, you kept
Speaker 1: going to the harmony together exactly without the beats together,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have a good song, That's right. Who ever
Speaker 1: heard a good pop song without without without a drum line,
Speaker 1: without Ringo? All right? So we were wondering it is
Speaker 1: kind of the lesser known maybe of the forces, and
Speaker 1: so we were wondering how many people out there knew
Speaker 1: what the weak force was. Yeah, and this is one
Speaker 1: of the times when I really had no idea what
Speaker 1: to expect. Had everybody heard of the weak force and
Speaker 1: they We're going to spout off some interesting physics about it,
Speaker 1: or are they going to get a bunch of blank stairs?
Speaker 1: So I was pretty curious, and so as usual, Daniel
Speaker 1: went out into the street and as random strangers if
Speaker 1: they knew what the weak force was. And so before
Speaker 1: you listen to these answers, think a little bit yourself.
Speaker 1: If someone approached you on the street and wearing sandals
Speaker 1: and supporting a beard, if they asked you randomly what
Speaker 1: the weak force, You're given away my disguise, man, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to wear a completely different disguise when
Speaker 1: they'll throw them off. They like, you can't be Daniel,
Speaker 1: I can I can't seat your toes. So if you
Speaker 1: were asked this question, you would you know the answer
Speaker 1: to it. Here's what people had to say. Yeah, has
Speaker 1: kind of governs radioactive to ka most particle stuff. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm not heard of the weak nuclear force. Have
Speaker 1: you heard of the strong nuclear force, the medium nuclear force,
Speaker 1: the super weak nuclear force? I made most of those,
Speaker 1: though we nuclear force not as well, but I've heard
Speaker 1: of it. I'm not sure. No, I've not heard of that. No,
Speaker 1: the m R I am measures in a clear force,
Speaker 1: and then you can know that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: four main types of forces in physics, not just in physics,
Speaker 1: in the universe right in the universe. Sure, it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's a kind of part to strong nuclear force.
Speaker 1: Why do we have it? What is it important? Or
Speaker 1: what does it do? Has something to do with how
Speaker 1: adams are together? I don't know exactly alright, So not
Speaker 1: a lot of yeses. I got a lot of blank
Speaker 1: looks on this one, that's for sure. Well, some people
Speaker 1: most people said no, they've never heard of it. But
Speaker 1: somebody actually said that it's related to the radioactive radio
Speaker 1: activity radioactive decay, Yeah exactly, and somebody even understood it
Speaker 1: was like connected to particle physics experiments we do in Geneva.
Speaker 1: So a hundred bonus points to that because your office
Speaker 1: made another physics professor that was me with disguising my
Speaker 1: own voice, asking myself a questions. Spoiler alert. They're all
Speaker 1: you always every episode. I'm just amazing and impressions right now,
Speaker 1: you know what one of my UM career goals is, please,
Speaker 1: speaking of which is um? Do you ever read The Onion?
Speaker 1: They have this fantastic people in the street section with
Speaker 1: ask people ridiculous questions and every week they have the
Speaker 1: same four pictures and they just give them made up
Speaker 1: names and jobs, you know, bone crusher or like you
Speaker 1: keyboard tester or something. My career goal is to get
Speaker 1: my face is used on the Onion. Is one of
Speaker 1: those people on the street saying something dumb. But I've
Speaker 1: actually written to the Onions several times volunteering, but never
Speaker 1: heard back. Please use my picture exactly, please make fun
Speaker 1: of me. Every week? Do they write back or they
Speaker 1: just ignored it? No? No, Unlike other Internet celebrities, they
Speaker 1: did not respond to my cold call. We'll keep trying, Daniel,
Speaker 1: there's always hope, all right, I will. So, yeah, somebody,
Speaker 1: most people didn't know what it was, and so it
Speaker 1: would Did that surprised you. I mean, it's not something
Speaker 1: that is usually covered in you know, high school physics.
Speaker 1: Even it didn't surprise me because it is a bit esoteric.
Speaker 1: And also it's not something people experience. You know, people
Speaker 1: experience gravity, they all know what it is. They have
Speaker 1: to understand it, they have an intuitive sense of it.
Speaker 1: People experience electricity, right, We've all been shocked by static electricity.
Speaker 1: People experience magnets, right. But people don't interact with the
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force very much. You don't really see its
Speaker 1: conto quince is directly. You can't tell the difference between
Speaker 1: it and something else the way you can tell the
Speaker 1: difference between gravity and magnetism. Right. Yeah, Well, there's very
Speaker 1: a couple of things about it. First of all, it's
Speaker 1: a force, and second it's weak. That's right, It's really
Speaker 1: really weak, like compared to electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force,
Speaker 1: it just is not very effective. And and one way
Speaker 1: to understand that is to think about how particles interact, right,
Speaker 1: like when you touch something or when you bounce against something,
Speaker 1: that's all done with particles. That's particles pushing against each
Speaker 1: other or interacting with each other. I mean, the particles
Speaker 1: in my finger are interacting with the particles in the
Speaker 1: table and so that and they're pushing against each other,
Speaker 1: that's right. And that's mostly using electromagnetism because it has
Speaker 1: to do with the bonds and the electrons holding the
Speaker 1: atoms tightly together and making this like you know, chain
Speaker 1: link fence of atoms that your finger can't pass through.
Speaker 1: But there are other particles, right, And that's because all
Speaker 1: the particles in your finger and all the particles in
Speaker 1: the table feel electromagnetism, but they're our particles that don't
Speaker 1: feel electromagnetism, like this mysterious particle called the neutrino. The
Speaker 1: neutrino doesn't feel electromagnetism, and it doesn't feel a strong force,
Speaker 1: and it has almost no mass or it hardly feels
Speaker 1: any gravity. The only way it interacts is through the
Speaker 1: weak force, and so it's a good lens for figuring
Speaker 1: out like how weak is the weak force? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a whole podcast episode about neutrinos. And we sort
Speaker 1: of talked about how, you know, the forces are sort
Speaker 1: of like social media channels. You know, there's Twitter, there's Facebook,
Speaker 1: there's Instagram that you can interact with people, but some
Speaker 1: people don't use some of the don't use Instagram, where
Speaker 1: they only use Twitter, or they only or they or
Speaker 1: they use all three. And neutrinos are like that, they
Speaker 1: only subscribe to this one very lightly used social media
Speaker 1: channel and so they hardly interact with the friends that
Speaker 1: it's the friends store of media channel, the original And
Speaker 1: so that's why neutrino can pass right through you, and
Speaker 1: a neutrino can pass right through the Earth right. We
Speaker 1: do these experiments where we look at neutrinos from the
Speaker 1: Sun and we use the entire Earth as an instrument
Speaker 1: to try to get the neutrinos to interact, but most
Speaker 1: of them fly right through the entire Earth without interacting.
Speaker 1: And if you had to say, like how thick a
Speaker 1: wall would I have to build to block neutrinos, Well,
Speaker 1: neutrinos can fly through a light year of lead and
Speaker 1: have a fifty percent chance I'm getting through. So I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's hard to even fathom, like how big
Speaker 1: a wall you would have to build to effectively block neutrinos.
Speaker 1: And the reason is that the weak force is so
Speaker 1: weak that every time the neutrino near something, it rolls
Speaker 1: a die and the dye has to come up just
Speaker 1: right for it to interact. Most of the time it
Speaker 1: just ignores it. Oh wait, so all right, so we're
Speaker 1: getting into what is the weak force, and you're saying
Speaker 1: that it is super weak, and you're saying that it's weak,
Speaker 1: not because it's just the weak force, but it's it's
Speaker 1: just less likely to interact with you. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: weak means, right, that it has a smaller chance to interact.
Speaker 1: Right that you shoot these two things against each other
Speaker 1: and will less often have an interaction. But when they
Speaker 1: do interact, the force that you actually feel is also
Speaker 1: weak or not. Oh, I see what you mean. No,
Speaker 1: the magnitude of the force is not effected. It's how
Speaker 1: often it happens. It's how likely it is to happen
Speaker 1: when it interacts with the nucleus. For example, it bounces
Speaker 1: off and goes in the other direction. It's not like
Speaker 1: just slightly deflected. It's just that it doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 1: It passes right through most of the nuclei without doing
Speaker 1: anything and just ignores the last. But in terms of magnitude,
Speaker 1: like when it does interact, it is as strong as
Speaker 1: the other forces. Yeah, that's a really good question. I
Speaker 1: never really thought about it that way. It's just a
Speaker 1: question of whether it interacts. The strength of the force
Speaker 1: reheally determines whether it's interacting, and so for example, you know,
Speaker 1: the strong force is really really strong. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of energy in that interaction, and so it's going to
Speaker 1: interact with everything else that feels it. Electromagnetism is a
Speaker 1: powerful force, and that means that it's going to interact
Speaker 1: almost all the time, and so you get lots of
Speaker 1: particles contributing. But if you're like going to measure it
Speaker 1: per particle, I think I think it's just another way
Speaker 1: of saying the same thing. I think. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the strength of the force between them is another way
Speaker 1: of saying how likely are they to interact or not
Speaker 1: the other Fascinating about the weak force. One another reason
Speaker 1: to think about why it's weak is that it doesn't
Speaker 1: interact over a very long range, like electromagnetism to electrons
Speaker 1: that are like a thousand miles away from each other,
Speaker 1: they can feel each other and they feel each other's
Speaker 1: electric fields. Right that electromagnetism extends infinitely far the weak force.
Speaker 1: Another way to think about why it's weak is that
Speaker 1: it only interacts with things very very near it, right,
Speaker 1: Like you have to be really close to the neutrino
Speaker 1: to interact with it. Is that true? Like to electrons,
Speaker 1: even though even if there are millions of light years apart,
Speaker 1: they'll still feel each other. Absolutely, You feel the electric
Speaker 1: field from electrons in Alpha Centauri or the Andromeda galaxy
Speaker 1: or halfway across the universe. Absolutely? Is that why I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm being pulled apart? No, that it's like
Speaker 1: maybe the only scientific connection between astronomy and astrology, Like,
Speaker 1: are you affected by the movements of the planets? Well, maybe,
Speaker 1: but it's really negligible. And I also remember that it's
Speaker 1: time delayed. You know, if you if there are electrons
Speaker 1: and Alpha Centauri and somebody wiggles them, you don't see
Speaker 1: those wiggles until until the information comes here, which takes
Speaker 1: you know, which travels at the speed of light, so
Speaker 1: it takes a long time. But you're saying the weak
Speaker 1: Newark force doesn't have that long range, like at some
Speaker 1: point two particles that feel it don't affect each other
Speaker 1: with the weak force. That's right. The range of the
Speaker 1: force is really tiny. It's like the diameter of a proton, right,
Speaker 1: So these particles have to be really close together. It's
Speaker 1: just another way of thinking about whether these two things
Speaker 1: will interact. I think about it's sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine you're throwing two baseballs at each other, right, They're
Speaker 1: less likely to interact than if you're throwing two basketballs
Speaker 1: at each other, or two um or some really enormous ball,
Speaker 1: some like enormous yoga bouncy yoga ball at each other, right,
Speaker 1: And so the side this is what we call cross
Speaker 1: section in physics, because the cross section of those balls
Speaker 1: tells you how likely they are to hit each other.
Speaker 1: Balls with a really small cross section, like if you're throwing,
Speaker 1: you know, pebbles at each other, it's much harder for
Speaker 1: them to hit. And so the range of this force
Speaker 1: tells you basically the cross section of their interaction. And
Speaker 1: so the weak force is a really small range, which
Speaker 1: makes it less likely to interact. When they interact that
Speaker 1: you know, they still bounce off each other, like anything else,
Speaker 1: just less likely to happen. So what happens when you
Speaker 1: get further away? Does the force just drops off? Or
Speaker 1: you know, like I've heard that at some point the
Speaker 1: weak force doesn't travel far because the particles decay or
Speaker 1: they don't last far far out enough. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: really fascinating way to think about it. Um. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: weak force, it just is negligible beyond a certain distance,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's basically zero. And another way to
Speaker 1: answer the question why is the weak force weak? I
Speaker 1: mean one way to say, as well, it just has
Speaker 1: a number associated with it, and that number is smaller
Speaker 1: than the number associated with electromagnetism or you know, the
Speaker 1: strong force, And then of course you can ask why.
Speaker 1: But one way to explain that is to think about
Speaker 1: it in terms of the particles that transmit these forces. Right,
Speaker 1: we think about like the photon. The photon is the
Speaker 1: thing that transmits electromagnetism. Right, what do we mean by that, Well,
Speaker 1: we have this sort of picture that like two electrons
Speaker 1: coming near each other, one of them can shoot off
Speaker 1: a photon to hit the other electron and push it away,
Speaker 1: And that's like how electrons repel via a photon, and
Speaker 1: we we use that same sort of picture for all
Speaker 1: the forces. Actually, but the particles that are associated with
Speaker 1: the weak force, they are not massless like the photon.
Speaker 1: Is the reason electromagnetism extends so far is because the
Speaker 1: photon is massless. It zooms away the speed of light
Speaker 1: and it doesn't decay. Right, Photons can go forever, But
Speaker 1: the weak force has these really heavy particles. They're really
Speaker 1: really heavy, and so they don't go very far before
Speaker 1: they basically decays. Like if I was trying to hit
Speaker 1: you with a bowling ball and my range would be limited. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or if you, like you know, had taped a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff together very loosely and then try to throw
Speaker 1: it at me and it exploded in mid air before
Speaker 1: it got to me, like throwing the sandball. At some
Speaker 1: point it might break up a standball exactly. It's like
Speaker 1: throwing a sandball. You know, you're not really getting get
Speaker 1: hit by the full force of the sandball unless you're
Speaker 1: really close. And that's that's fascinating. Like these particles, these
Speaker 1: particles that mediate the weak force bosons, why are they
Speaker 1: so heavy and the and the photon is masseless. That's
Speaker 1: like one of the deep questions in physics over the
Speaker 1: last few decades. And that's why the photon can go
Speaker 1: to infinity because it's massless and it just keeps going
Speaker 1: right exactly. That's why electromagnetism is powerful, and that's why
Speaker 1: it's range is infinite, and the weak force is very
Speaker 1: weak because the things that carry it are very fat
Speaker 1: and slow. You know. It's like, you know, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to send letters ups drivers are super super faster
Speaker 1: driving Lamborghinis, right, and uh, instead you sent it via
Speaker 1: I don't know, um u s mail and they're driving,
Speaker 1: you know, a big, heavy slow bus or something. Um
Speaker 1: your letters is not going to get there is fast
Speaker 1: or might not even get there. So the thing that
Speaker 1: carries the messages, the information of the weak force, is
Speaker 1: big and heavy weeks and that that's what makes the
Speaker 1: blame the messenger. And the fascinating thing is that that's
Speaker 1: really only relevant um sort of late in the universe.
Speaker 1: That's relevant when everyone there isn't a whole lot of energy,
Speaker 1: because the mass these particles makes a difference when everything
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of energy. But if everything was
Speaker 1: really hot and dense and and zooming around, then it
Speaker 1: wouldn't really matter what the mass of these particles was, right,
Speaker 1: they have a little bit of mass or not they
Speaker 1: had a lot of energy, wouldn't make any difference. And
Speaker 1: that's why we think back from the beginning of the universe,
Speaker 1: electromagnetism and the weak force had the same strength because
Speaker 1: everything we're just closer together and interacting the same way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those particles, the ones that carry the weak force,
Speaker 1: just had enough energy to get further. The fact that
Speaker 1: they had mass didn't really matter because they had so
Speaker 1: much energy it was negligible. All right, So that's the
Speaker 1: weak force. Now we know it's a force, and we
Speaker 1: know why it's weak, and so let's get into what's
Speaker 1: interesting about the weak force? Why is it weak? Um?
Speaker 1: What's weird about it? Why do we have it? And
Speaker 1: how did it help us discover the Higgs Boson? But
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right, Hey, Daniel,
Speaker 1: do you think the weak force knows that it's called
Speaker 1: the weak force? You know what? I think its agents
Speaker 1: have been working for quite a while to get a
Speaker 1: name change. Yeah, I think it needs a pr overhaul
Speaker 1: for sure. Should be called Would you like to be
Speaker 1: called doctor Week or Daniel weak or I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone Master of the Week Fource experts still worked out
Speaker 1: for John Week that franchise exactly force then exactly Well,
Speaker 1: you know, what would you have called the weak force? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about it. Much about it. You
Speaker 1: should listen to this podcast to explain it to you.
Speaker 1: It's really good. Well, all I know is that it's
Speaker 1: weak and that it's a force. But you know, is
Speaker 1: there what do we know about it that might give
Speaker 1: it some identity? Like what's special about? What are you
Speaker 1: special about it? It's pretty weird. It can do some
Speaker 1: things that other forces can't do. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: messes with your mind. A lot of the things that
Speaker 1: we thought we knew about the universe, that we just
Speaker 1: assumed were fundamentally true about the universe, the weak force
Speaker 1: just sort of breaks those rules and shrugs and moves on.
Speaker 1: And so it's a great window into like what is
Speaker 1: the sort of the limitation? What can forces do in
Speaker 1: the universe. It turns out they can do a lot
Speaker 1: of things that we thought were impossible. And that's what
Speaker 1: the weak force can do. Yeah, that's what the weak
Speaker 1: force can do. For example, the weak force can change
Speaker 1: cork flavors. We had a whole podcast episode about cork flavors.
Speaker 1: And for those of you are thinking, what what's the
Speaker 1: cork and how does it have flavors? We're not talking
Speaker 1: about European yogurt snacks. There are flavors snacks called cork.
Speaker 1: We're talking about fundamental particles. Yeah, and so this the
Speaker 1: weak force can change the flavor of a cork, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Electromagnetism can't do that, right, you have you have a
Speaker 1: charm cork. It can't give off a photon and then
Speaker 1: become an up cork. That doesn't happen, right, But if
Speaker 1: the charm interacts using the weak force, you can give
Speaker 1: off one of the particles that it transmits, and if
Speaker 1: it can become for example, a down cork or a
Speaker 1: strange cork can become an up cork, right, or top
Speaker 1: cork can become a bottom cork or a down cork, right,
Speaker 1: And so it can actually change these flavors, and other
Speaker 1: other forces are not allowed to do that well. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of a big deal because if I change
Speaker 1: all the flavors in the courts inside of your atoms,
Speaker 1: you'd be in trouble. Right, Well, I think I'd be
Speaker 1: even tasting charming and strange, but uh or more charming
Speaker 1: and more strangers. Yeah, well, you know this. You think
Speaker 1: of its sort of like a ladder. There's the lowest
Speaker 1: energy ones, the lowest mass ones. Those are the upcork
Speaker 1: and the down cork, and if you have the heavier corks,
Speaker 1: then that they tend to decay down the ladder. Things
Speaker 1: in the universe tend to be the lowest energy state,
Speaker 1: the lowest mass particles. So if you have the heavier
Speaker 1: particles like the top, then it uses the weak force
Speaker 1: to sort of step down that ladder, down to the
Speaker 1: up and the down and I and you and banana
Speaker 1: you've ever eaten are made up of just upcorks and
Speaker 1: down corks and of course electronics. But it also changes.
Speaker 1: It can change the upquorks and down corks back into
Speaker 1: each other. And that's actually what we call radioactive beta decay.
Speaker 1: That's how you change, for example, a neutron into a
Speaker 1: proton is by changing is by going back and forth
Speaker 1: between upquorks and down corks, because that's the difference between
Speaker 1: neutrons and protons. It's just one up versus one down.
Speaker 1: So it's weird because it can really mess with the
Speaker 1: identity of matter. Right Like, if if all my quorks
Speaker 1: change identities, I would probably blow up, right, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to stay together, right Like, if all my
Speaker 1: protons turned into neutrons, you know, goodbye hore. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: protons don't turn into neutrons, right. Protons are stable, which
Speaker 1: is a whole other fascinating thing, like can protons live
Speaker 1: for the whole life of the universe or do they
Speaker 1: eventually decay? Currently we think that protons live for like
Speaker 1: zillions of years, but neutrons don't. Neutrons will eventually turn
Speaker 1: into protons, and that's fascinating. And that's what the that's
Speaker 1: what the weak nuclear force does, and only the weak
Speaker 1: force can do that. Okay, that's weird. Um, so maybe
Speaker 1: I would call it a weird force. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The flavor force A force seems a little the tasty force.
Speaker 1: You know. The particles that it uses are also weird.
Speaker 1: Like we said, the electromagnetism has the photon, right, and
Speaker 1: that's how it transmits information. And the weak force is
Speaker 1: more complicated. It has three particles that transmit its forces.
Speaker 1: Has this particle we call the z boson and then
Speaker 1: it has the W plus and the W minus and
Speaker 1: we call them plus and minus because those particles themselves
Speaker 1: have electric charge. So it's the particles of one force
Speaker 1: feel the forces of another force. So affect the weak
Speaker 1: force using a magnet is kind of what you're saying, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Or the particles that transmit the weak force can shoot
Speaker 1: off photons, right, they interact with each other using electromagnetism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was a big clue. We'll talk about that later,
Speaker 1: that there's a deep, deep connection between the weak force
Speaker 1: and electromagnetism. It's kind of like it would be cool,
Speaker 1: like if, for example, you can affect gravity using electromagnetism, right,
Speaker 1: Like that would be crazy. Then you can yeah, right exactly,
Speaker 1: you could like make a magnet which turned off gravity
Speaker 1: or so that would be cool. And you know, we
Speaker 1: hope one day in the far future to have a
Speaker 1: unified understanding of all the forces, take gravity, turn into
Speaker 1: a quantum mechanical theory, which we haven't done yet and
Speaker 1: have no clue how to do, and then somehow unify
Speaker 1: it with the other forces and show that show that
Speaker 1: there's they're all just part of the same larger force.
Speaker 1: In that case, then maybe you could do what you
Speaker 1: just said is use one part of the force to
Speaker 1: balance another part of the force and affected. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you just invented an anti gravity machine right here, right,
Speaker 1: A should kick one what one half of a Nobel
Speaker 1: prize then, or let's go with were equal. That's probably
Speaker 1: the chances that I will get one. Um, I think
Speaker 1: that's probably accurate. Yeah, alright, so well let's get into
Speaker 1: Now we know what it is, we know what it's
Speaker 1: kind of weird. Wait, but wait, there's more. There's even
Speaker 1: a weirder thing about that. I thought it was weak,
Speaker 1: but there's more. All right, it's weak, but it's got
Speaker 1: a long backstory. Right. It's one of these superhero characters
Speaker 1: with like a really deep interesting connection. It was affected
Speaker 1: in its childhood and it's carrying all that back. Black
Speaker 1: Widow's not a lot of superpowers, but you're like, what
Speaker 1: is going on with her? Oh? You mean Black Wood
Speaker 1: of the superhero not the actual Spider. Yeah exactly. She
Speaker 1: she looks good in leather and she can really kick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she has all the this mysterious Russian spy backstory.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. She's intimidating. Now the one of the weirdest things.
Speaker 1: But the weak force is that it breaks what we
Speaker 1: thought was a fundamental symmetry in the universe, and that
Speaker 1: is that we we think that it shouldn't make a
Speaker 1: difference sort of how you draw your X, Y and
Speaker 1: Z axes. Like, if you have to draw, you draw
Speaker 1: an X axis and Y axis, you put them in
Speaker 1: ninety degrees with each other. Right, then you're gonna draw
Speaker 1: Z access you want to put it in ninety degrees.
Speaker 1: But then there's a question do you draw it like
Speaker 1: sort of up above the X Y axis or down
Speaker 1: below right? And the difference is what we call handedness.
Speaker 1: Is it a left handed system or a right handed system.
Speaker 1: It's really just arbitrary, and so because most of us
Speaker 1: are right handed, we tend to draw those things the
Speaker 1: way you would have the first three fingers on your
Speaker 1: right hand point, so we call them right handed coordinates.
Speaker 1: It's kind of related to mirrors, right like you think
Speaker 1: that physics should work the same on one side of
Speaker 1: the mirror or in the reflection of the mirror exactly,
Speaker 1: because if you take a right handed coordinate system and
Speaker 1: you look in the mirror, then it looks left handed,
Speaker 1: and so for a long time people thought, well, that's
Speaker 1: just a thing we made up. It's just like human
Speaker 1: it's not fundamental or physical, right, And so they said, well,
Speaker 1: physics shouldn't matter. They should the physics shouldn't depend on
Speaker 1: whether things are right handed or left handed. So they
Speaker 1: made this assumption. They said, well, we assume that any
Speaker 1: experiment you do, if you watch the experiment in the mirror,
Speaker 1: you should also be able to do that mirror experiment, right,
Speaker 1: that the laws of physics should work the same here
Speaker 1: as they do in in the mirror. Right, So, like
Speaker 1: you do some experiment you watch in the mirror, you
Speaker 1: should you should be able to do that same experiment,
Speaker 1: or our laws of physics should still govern what's happening
Speaker 1: in the mirror. But you're saying the week four is
Speaker 1: totally doesn't care. Yeah, And this is one of the
Speaker 1: great stories of physics is that nobody checked for a
Speaker 1: long long time, Like they checked the electromagnetism be up,
Speaker 1: it's true. They checked the strong force e up, it's true.
Speaker 1: And they thought, well, this is just so fundamental and obvious,
Speaker 1: like we don't need to check it. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like you know, do you check that the sun doesn't
Speaker 1: like come out and middle of the night. No, you
Speaker 1: just they don't get up in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night and check if the sun is sneaking sneaking around, right?
Speaker 1: You just you checked at at sunset, you check at
Speaker 1: its sun at sunrise, and you assume what else is happening? Right?
Speaker 1: So people thought, well, the weak force is really hard
Speaker 1: to test, so we'll just assume that it also respects
Speaker 1: the symmetry called parody. And then in the fifties some
Speaker 1: theorists realized nobody has actually ever checked this, so maybe
Speaker 1: somebody should. And this is a great story about a
Speaker 1: physicist at Columbia. She was planning to go on vacation
Speaker 1: with her husband for Christmas, and she said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I can't go on vacation. I can't relax without knowing
Speaker 1: the answer to this deep question. Sounds like a physicist exactly.
Speaker 1: So her husband went on vacation by himself and she
Speaker 1: stayed back and she did these experiments where she demonstrated.
Speaker 1: She asked the question, would the weak force look the
Speaker 1: same in the mirror? And she said, up, this really
Speaker 1: complicated but but very clever experiment. And it's difficult to
Speaker 1: describe with the audio, so I encourage everybody to check
Speaker 1: out or hey, your video on on this experiment, which
Speaker 1: you can find by googling at the short version together
Speaker 1: Daniel don't remember we made it with the Derek Mueller
Speaker 1: of veritassium. If you look up. Yeah, it's a great video.
Speaker 1: It's a great video. It's called do particles respect time symmetry?
Speaker 1: Or do particles go backwards in time? In that video
Speaker 1: you can see that the weak force doesn't work the
Speaker 1: same in the mirror. In fact, in the mirror it
Speaker 1: works exactly the opposite. So not only does it not
Speaker 1: like respect this basic symmetry we assume was a true
Speaker 1: thing about the universe, it violates it almost. So it's weak,
Speaker 1: but it's like the rebel force, yeah, which means that
Speaker 1: like our universe is, you know, has a handedness. It's
Speaker 1: not like it could have been this or it could
Speaker 1: have been that. It is one way right. And anytime
Speaker 1: you see a kind of thing like that in physics,
Speaker 1: where it's like an arbitrary choice between two things you
Speaker 1: expected to be balanced or even or symmetric, and then
Speaker 1: it's not, that's a clue that tells you something happened
Speaker 1: when the universe was being cooked up, that it went
Speaker 1: this way and not that way. What is that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It makes you realize that the universe maybe it doesn't
Speaker 1: have laws, or the laws you thought real to universe
Speaker 1: are not always true exactly. It makes you wonder is
Speaker 1: there a deeper understanding in which it had to be
Speaker 1: this way? Right? Is it just arbitrary and random and
Speaker 1: we live in a multiverse and it's one of a
Speaker 1: bazillion and there's no reason for it. I don't like
Speaker 1: that idea. I think it's a clue that there's something
Speaker 1: deeper going on. There's another way to think about the
Speaker 1: way the universe works that requires it to be this
Speaker 1: this thing that's weird to us. And and those are
Speaker 1: the moments of insight. That's when when your intuition is
Speaker 1: confronted by reality and you realize, here's a clue that
Speaker 1: reality is quite different from my intuition. Those are learning moments, right, No, definitely,
Speaker 1: I have a lot more respect now for the week
Speaker 1: for us. I mean, it's so weird and breaks all
Speaker 1: these laws. I feel like you just upgraded it from
Speaker 1: Ringo to George Harrison, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: there you go. So, now we should be called the
Speaker 1: well respected, well respected will light interesting, you should speak
Speaker 1: with a stuffy British accent. Well, let's get into now
Speaker 1: whether we even need the weak force or why is
Speaker 1: it important? But first let's take a quick break. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into why we need the weak fource? Do
Speaker 1: we even need it? Like, well, there's two questions, I
Speaker 1: think practically, So practically, first of all, what would happen
Speaker 1: if we didn't have the weak fource? We still be here?
Speaker 1: And the second why is it important to physics? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a fun hypothetical question, like if you deleted
Speaker 1: a law of physics, what would happen? Right? Well, obviously
Speaker 1: everything would be different. Um you know, yeah, well you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have radioactive decay, right For example, you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: beta decay. The weak force is important to making things
Speaker 1: happen in the center of suns and the structure of
Speaker 1: the atom is partially controlled by the weak force, and
Speaker 1: so everything would be different if we took it out.
Speaker 1: If we eliminated Ringo Star from the Beatles, what would
Speaker 1: happen to my atoms? Like would I just dissolve? Would
Speaker 1: I explode? Would I feel just a little heavier or
Speaker 1: what would happen, Well, it depends. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: starting from the beginning of the universe never having the
Speaker 1: weak force, or having the current universe and then just
Speaker 1: turning it off. Let's do the second one first, So
Speaker 1: clip the switch, the weak force just quit goes away.
Speaker 1: What happens the first caveat is it's impossible. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense for reasons we'll talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1: Because it turns out the weak force is just entangled
Speaker 1: with everything else and you can't get rid of it
Speaker 1: right the way. You can't just fire your drummer, um,
Speaker 1: and the universe wouldn't make any sense if you did that.
Speaker 1: But say you just turn that off somehow, somehow you're
Speaker 1: able to get to the control penalty universe and turn
Speaker 1: off the weak force. What would happen. I don't think
Speaker 1: you would feel it immediately? Um. I think we would
Speaker 1: never interact with new trinos again. Right, New trinos would
Speaker 1: just become invisible, becoming decoupled with them. But yeah, no
Speaker 1: big laws whenever they feeling. New trinos would be harder
Speaker 1: to run nuclear reactors right, and fission wouldn't work the
Speaker 1: same way, So we'd have to re engineer all of that.
Speaker 1: But again, you know, um, not everybody is a big
Speaker 1: fan of nuclear power. The structure the atom would be
Speaker 1: a little bit different, right, I mean, it certainly plays
Speaker 1: a role in how the nucleus is held together and
Speaker 1: how it gets broken up. So that's a good deep question.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the answer of how it changes structure
Speaker 1: the atom, but mostly I think you could just totally
Speaker 1: ignore the neutrinos that were already mostly ignoring all right, So, um,
Speaker 1: so then what's the other answer that if we started
Speaker 1: off the universe without the weak force, would we end
Speaker 1: up in the same spot. Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I think I have to deflect that question because I
Speaker 1: don't think the universe makes any sense without the weak force.
Speaker 1: And the reason is that it turns out the weak
Speaker 1: force is not its own thing. It's not like a
Speaker 1: completely separate thing that we're like right now, we don't
Speaker 1: understand any connection between gravity and electromagnetism. They seem like
Speaker 1: totally different phenomena with no relationship. Turns out the weak
Speaker 1: force is not its own thing. It's actually part of electromagnetism,
Speaker 1: or said more correctly, the weak force and ectro magnetism
Speaker 1: are part of one larger force. I've heard that before,
Speaker 1: that the weak force and the electromagnetic force are actually
Speaker 1: just one. What does that mean, Like they're they're actually
Speaker 1: the same particles, but they behave differently or they're all
Speaker 1: like different flavors of the same particles. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: It means that they're all different parts of the same thing.
Speaker 1: They're they're all like different sides of the same coin.
Speaker 1: And I think a more intuitive analogy to help you
Speaker 1: get there is to think about electricity and magnetism. Like
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago, people thought electricity, Oh, that's the
Speaker 1: thing that zaps you. Magnetism that's the thing that lets
Speaker 1: magnets fly or magnets work, right, And I thought they
Speaker 1: were totally separate. And it wasn't until Maxwell wrote down
Speaker 1: Maxwell's equations and he realized, Hold on a second, the
Speaker 1: laws that government electricity and the laws that governed magnetism
Speaker 1: are basically the same thing when you write them down mathematically.
Speaker 1: And you know, magnets can create currents and currents can
Speaker 1: create magnets. So it turns out that there's just one force, electromagnetism.
Speaker 1: And we had artificially set operated into two. We were
Speaker 1: just categorizing the different parts of it separately and had
Speaker 1: recognized that it makes much more sense when they're connected.
Speaker 1: So we said, okay, let's just call this one force electromagnetism. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's like the same force. It just sometimes acts
Speaker 1: to create currents inside of wires and sometimes it acts
Speaker 1: to repel magnets apart, but it's the same thing. You're
Speaker 1: just one guy. Sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're grumpy, right, Like,
Speaker 1: are you a different person when you're grumpy? I mean,
Speaker 1: some people might say so, but I know deep down
Speaker 1: you're you're really the same person. And so it makes
Speaker 1: much more sense to say, oh, this is different sides
Speaker 1: of somebody's personality. This is two different aspects of the
Speaker 1: same thing sometimes like different feelings of it or different
Speaker 1: behaviors of it. Yeah, exactly. And what we've discovered is
Speaker 1: that the photon and the w and the z bosons
Speaker 1: are all just parts of one force that we called
Speaker 1: the electroweak force. And you notice what happened there is
Speaker 1: that we merged electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism than we
Speaker 1: added the weak force, and like magnetism just kind of
Speaker 1: got squeezed out. It should have been called like electromagnetic
Speaker 1: weak force or something like your weak magnetic force or
Speaker 1: magneto weak force, right, electricity, electromagnetic That's how I would
Speaker 1: have maybe count it. But so you're saying then that
Speaker 1: electrons and W, the W and the z bosons, they're
Speaker 1: all those are different, but they're all carriers of the
Speaker 1: same force. Yeah, there's one larger, more complex force, and
Speaker 1: we call it electroweak. And it has four carriers, the photon,
Speaker 1: the two ws, and the z and has four carriers
Speaker 1: to it. Does the weak force have like charge, you
Speaker 1: know how we talked about electromagnetism has charge, and the
Speaker 1: strong force has color color, and and the weak force
Speaker 1: has its own thing. It's called weak hypercharge, which is
Speaker 1: like a contradictory branding a great name, I know, super awesome,
Speaker 1: not that awesome charge, it's kind of confusing. Has weak hypercharge.
Speaker 1: And then together the combined electroweak force has something called
Speaker 1: weak isospin, which is not has nothing to do with spin.
Speaker 1: So it's a big mess, and it comes from a
Speaker 1: historical naming accident. Really, the main lesson is just that
Speaker 1: they can be described by sort of the same what
Speaker 1: is it terms and the equations of the universe kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, exactly, they have. The mathematics is very similar,
Speaker 1: and in fact um when people were looking at that,
Speaker 1: they noticed, like, these things are so similar, But why
Speaker 1: is the photon have no mass and these other particles
Speaker 1: have a lot of mass? Right, Like, that's why electricity
Speaker 1: and magnetisms seem so different from the rest of the force,
Speaker 1: because this one particle, the photon, has no mass, but
Speaker 1: the other ones have a lot of mass. So that
Speaker 1: was a big puzzle like fifty years ago, and that's
Speaker 1: the puzzle that inspired Higgs himself to think up the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. Said well, maybe there's this other particle out there,
Speaker 1: this other field, and it's interacting with these bosons and
Speaker 1: it's giving them mass. He came up with a really
Speaker 1: clever mathematical way to make that happen, to give mass
Speaker 1: to just these particles and not to the photon. So
Speaker 1: I think the conclusion of all it is then, is
Speaker 1: that the weak force. It's there. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the conjoint twin of electromagnetism, right, it's not its own thing,
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, exactly, And it's not very consequential in
Speaker 1: the universe, meaning that you can take it away, but
Speaker 1: we wouldn't instantly feel it. But it's sort of necessary, right,
Speaker 1: It's part of the universe, and in fact, it kind
Speaker 1: of gave us a lot of clues about the universe,
Speaker 1: including the Higgs boson. That's right, and you can sort
Speaker 1: of blame it on the Higgs, right. The Higgs is
Speaker 1: the reason that the W and di z have so
Speaker 1: much mass, and that's why it's so weak. So if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for the Higgs holding it down, the weak
Speaker 1: force would have had a much different career arc. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should call it the I hate the Higgs force exactly.
Speaker 1: Probably it's a mental state than the weak force. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like, you know, many Nobel prizes have been
Speaker 1: won along the route to understanding this, Understanding that electricity
Speaker 1: and magnetism are together with the weak force, understanding the
Speaker 1: Higgs mechanism, all this stuff. These are a lot of
Speaker 1: really important ideas, were all really complex. Mathematical machinery was
Speaker 1: developed just to understand this, and it's really beautiful when
Speaker 1: you learn that because it shows you how the structure
Speaker 1: these theories really are deeply mathematical. Now, how much mathematics
Speaker 1: really reveals the way the universe works. All right, something
Speaker 1: on a note of beauty. That's pretty cool. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: for those of you interested in learning more about it,
Speaker 1: or encourage you to get a little bit into the
Speaker 1: group theory because it connects for you the symmetry of
Speaker 1: these things with the idea of particles carrying these forces
Speaker 1: and why it has to be that way. It's really
Speaker 1: deep and fascinating and we should dive into it on
Speaker 1: another podcast episode. All right, Thanks for joining us. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. We'll see you next time. Thanks
Speaker 1: for tuning in, and I hope it wasn't a weak episode.
Speaker 1: I had a forceful impact on you. If you still
Speaker 1: have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
Speaker 1: drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio from more podcast from
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