WEBVTT - Is it possible to have a two-dimensional object? 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:11.400 Hey, Daniel, you used to live in Chicago, right, Yeah, 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:14.080 I did when I was working at the accelerator at Fermulab. 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.560 Does that mean you're like Chicago style pizza? Oh my god, 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.279 that is not pizza. That's like a castle roll, that's 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:23.520 like a mara neara swimming pool. I mean it's delicious, 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.560 of course, but it's not actually pizza is our tough 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.200 words for a Chicago style pizza. Does that mean you 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.680 prefer it in pizza like New York style pizza? Oh? Yeah, absolutely, 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.120 like the thinner the better, really like health it. I 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.040 don't know if it was possible. I guess I need 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.360 a two dimensional slice of pizza. Well that's convenient. Then 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:43.519 you can eat all the pizza you like and in 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:46.559 the end you have eaten nothing. What about the toppings? 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.440 Do you like to the toppings too? Maybe that's why 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:51.920 people in New York or so thin. They have no death, 0:00:54.480 --> 0:01:12.319 they're so shallow. Hi am or handmade cartoonist and the 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.080 creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.319 and I really do have strong opinions about pizza. Really yes, 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.640 strong penis about particles, about physics and about pizza and 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.720 dessert and big goods. You have a lot of strong opinions, Daniel, 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:29.600 I am particular about pizza, and yes, big goods the 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:31.520 things I enjoy. I know what I like, and I 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:34.959 do love thin New York or Italian style pizza, but 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.200 also a nice big slab of Chicago style whatever you 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:41.960 call it is also delicious whatever. And you don't even 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:43.959 want to call it a pizza. I don't know. It's 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:46.000 just a totally different kind of food. I mean, the 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:48.800 only thing they have in common are carbs, cheese, and 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:51.560 tomato sauce. Yeah, that's a pizza. Does that mean that 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:54.120 you know? Pasta with tomato sauce and parmesan on top 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:56.880 is also a pizza and a calzone is just a 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:02.440 close pizza. That's a pizza taca. But welcome to our podcast. 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.880 Daniel and Joorhead apparently talk about pizza and explain the 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.839 universe in production of I Heart Radio, a podcast which 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.440 we record just before lunch if you can't tell, and 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.280 we usually talk about all the crazy things out there 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.720 in the universe, the amazing ways that matter conform, the 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:21.040 weird things that they can do, from really really big 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.720 stuff like entire galaxies and clusters of galaxies down to 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.480 really strange little objects, what those tiny little dancing particles 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.120 can make when they set their minds to it. That's right, because, 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.240 let's face it, we're all hungry, hungry for knowledge in 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.040 this world. You all want to know what everything is 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:39.120 made out of, how it all works, and how it's 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.280 all put together, and how it all makes sense if 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.399 it does. That's right. I would like to order two 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:46.800 slices of truth for lunch. Please you have a Nobel 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.120 price there on top. Please just shaved Nobel prize on top. 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:52.919 That sounds pretty good. Yeah, you know, like gold shavings, 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.800 something that's edible. Right, you can also do that with 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:57.960 a Nobel price. You know, just adds a little bit 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:02.079 of intellectual richness to the smartest pizza ever. Yeah. We 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:04.680 like to talk about all the amazing things in the universe, 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:07.640 all of the crazy stars and galaxies and black holes 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.440 and neutron stars out there, and also all of the 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.360 little tiny parkles that make us up who we are 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.240 and that pizza that you had for lunch. And we 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:18.680 also like to think about the way the world is 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:22.080 and why isn't it another way? Something I like to 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:24.120 think about a lot when I was younger, and even 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:28.000 still today. Are the number of dimensions of space, you know, 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.640 the way that we can move three D? And what 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:32.560 it would be like to be a four dimensional being 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.000 or to be a two dimensional being in a three 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:38.040 dimensional world. These kind of mental exercises were fun for 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:39.880 me and made me wonder like, why do we live 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:41.840 in a three dimensional world? What would it be like 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.360 to live in a universe with a different number of dimensions? Wow, 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:47.480 that's what you wondered about as a kid. I was 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.000 wondering like how does Superman fly? And how strong is 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.520 Spider Man's web? You know, you're wondering about the dimensions 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:56.440 of the universe. I was. I mean that this is 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:58.680 not six year old Daniel, this is probably fourteen year 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:00.760 old Daniel, But yeah, I was thinking about that stuff. 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:03.960 What if Superman was two dimensions? How many dimensions are 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.600 there too Spider Man's web? After all? So yeah, I 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:08.840 think these questions are super fun and they go to 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.480 the heart of a really basic question, which is why 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.600 is our universe the way that it is? So that's 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.200 why it's fun to explore these different kinds of objects 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.200 and different kinds of geometries. And I remember thinking, what 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:22.520 if there are other parts of the universe in which 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.000 there are four or five dimensions of space? What if 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.720 we are like trapped in a three dimensional subset of 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.720 the universe. Yeah, oh, man, I think fourteen year old 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:34.039 Jorge was definitely not wondering about physics. He's probably wondering 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:37.160 about things we can't mention in this podcast. But yeah, 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:39.920 this idea of dimensions is pretty mind blowing. I mean, 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:42.599 it's not something we think about every day, right. We're 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.400 also used to living in this world with three dimensions, 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.680 you know, up, down, left, right, front and back, and 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:50.840 it's kind of hard to wrap your head around or 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:55.080 even imagine more dimensions or even less dimensions. Yeah, it 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.760 really is hard to because we are so used to this. 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:00.440 But this is something we're doing in physics all the time, 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:03.120 is wondering if the way we think about the world 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.040 is just based in our experience and maybe therefore not universal, 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.240 not representative. Right. We don't want to imagine the whole 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:12.560 universe is just the way that we have experienced it. 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:15.000 We want to break out of those intellectual chains. We 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:17.560 want to be surprised, We want to discover that the 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.520 universe is totally different. And that's why science is such 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.200 an amazing tool, because it lets us put aside our 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.520 biases and chip away at the truth. Yeah, we want 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.400 to free our minds. That we do. We want to 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:31.440 blow all of our minds. Yeah. Is it kind of 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:33.640 like fish? You know, they live in the water their 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:35.800 whole lives. They probably think the whole universe is made 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.240 out of water, and you know there's nothing but water. Yeah, precisely, 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:42.280 because they've never experienced anything else, and so how could 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.760 they possibly extrapolate? And it's only when they see weird 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.279 things like the water seems to have an edge, I 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.160 wonder what's beyond it? When they start asking those questions 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:53.719 about other parts of the universe, do they expand their 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.760 minds and understand like the true nature of the universe. 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.560 And we've done this lots of times as humans, discovering 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.760 the univers pretty different from the one that our ancestors 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.240 thought it was, which means there are probably crazy discoveries 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:08.440 ahead where in two hundred years people will look back 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:10.960 and think, I can't believe they used to think X, 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:13.120 Y Z, whatever it is we're thinking now. Yeah, I 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:16.280 wonder if fish go fishing for ideas Also, I wonder 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.320 if they play Go Fish or if they have another 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:20.320 game called Go Human or something. And when are the 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:24.200 New York style pizza. Now that's a mind blowing multidimensional 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.080 question right there. Well, you can't eat Chicago pizza without 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:29.160 a knife and fork, and they don't have hands, So 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:31.320 I think that's answered. You can put on shovies, and 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:33.960 then that brings it all around to the fish idea. 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:37.520 But getting back to our dimensional question, it is weird 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:41.599 to think about the world universe having more than three dimensions, 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:44.240 and so this is something that physicists actually consider, and 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:46.880 some of them even think there are not just four 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.480 or five dimensions. There's a whole bunch of dimensions out there. 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.880 That's right. Even physicists that don't like anchovies think about 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.960 the world is having eleven or twenties six dimensions. Some 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:01.040 of these theories that unify gravity and wanted mechanics, things 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.440 like string theory, which might be candidate for a theory 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.360 of everything. These work best if there are more dimensions 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.320 of space and time for the forces and these strings 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.600 to sort of wiggle in. The mathematics prefers eleven or 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:17.840 twenty six dimensions, which is pretty hard to get your 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.400 mind around, like where are those dimensions? How do you 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.920 move in those dimensions? Why do we only experience three 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.480 if there are eleven or twenty six? Yeah, and equally 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:28.280 as mind blowing is to think it's sort of in 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:30.600 the other direction, right to think about what if the 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.760 world had less dimensions in three or what if there 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.160 are things out there that are a less than three 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.680 dimensionals in their being. That's a super fun idea. And 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:42.200 there's this whole class of theories that suggests that maybe 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:46.200 the entire three D universe is actually just a hologram 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.360 of a two dimensional universe, meaning that we are actually 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.120 two dimensional beings. We're gonna do a whole podcast episode 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:54.920 about the holographic universe later on. But that's a really 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:57.720 powerful idea actually in string theory, that lets people do 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.760 calculations that otherwise would be impossible. I feel like this 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:03.720 podcast is kind of two dimensional, Daniel, because you know, 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:05.840 we don't go very deep here, No, we have to 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:08.080 pick one topic to go deep on, but we're always 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:10.280 touching on other things, and I'm always like, oh, remember 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:12.239 that time we talked about this, Or that's an idea 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.280 for another episode, or this is fascinating but the digression 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.400 would take another forty five minutes, so let's save it 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.280 for a whole other episode. I see what you're saying. 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:22.600 Every other podcast is one dimensional. We are two dimensional. 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.520 We're like the world's first two D podcast. I don't know, 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.560 maybe we're zero dimensional. I can't even tell. What does 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.120 it mean to have a dimensionality and audio? I guess 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:33.880 we're in stereos that's two D maybe. But anyway, so 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:36.960 today we're gonna explore this question. On the other side 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:40.200 is wondering what could there be and are there things 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:42.920 that are less than three dimensions? Yeah, because it's fun 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:44.840 to think about what it would be like to be 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:47.400 in a four dimensional world. If you were a three 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:49.960 D person in a four dimensional world, we talked about 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.040 that on a podcast recently, you could disappear from inside 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:55.160 of prison and appear on the outside of it by 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.440 moving in the direction of that fourth dimension. So it's 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:00.320 also fun to think about, like, well, do we have 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.400 objects in our world which are two dimensional which don't 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.880 see this third dimension where we could do these crazy 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.400 tricks on them. Yeah, So today on the podcast, we'll 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:18.920 be asking the question can an object be two dimensional? Now, Daniel, 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:21.560 is that too like the number two, or like, are 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:24.360 you asking if something can have too many dimensions? Yeah? 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:26.000 My wife says that to me all the time. Man, 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:30.120 you are too dimensional. Stop being so dimensional. Yeah. I 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:31.920 think he's starting to tell you you need to go 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.880 in a diet. Maybe she's like, you have too many dimensions. 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.400 You need to stop eating so much at New York 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:39.640 style pizza. Yeah, I suppose. I suppose I need you 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.199 to have some fractional dimensions. So this is a kind 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:44.599 of a crazy question. Question is can an object the 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:49.400 two dimensional, like the object itself only exists in two dimensions, 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.160 or you know, maybe it exists in a subset of 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:56.040 our dimensions, or does it mean that it's just like 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:58.360 super thin. Yeah, I think the answer is yes to 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:01.160 all of those. We exist in three dimensions, and so 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:04.800 every object you look at exists in three dimensions. Every 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.800 piece of food you've eaten, everything you've tripped over, everything 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:10.560 you've looked at exists in three dimensions because it's in 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:13.000 this three D space. And it's hard to imagine an 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.960 object having four dimensions in our three D space. But 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.680 why can't it? Objects have two dimensions be essentially only 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:22.679 X and y and have no height right to be 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.319 a super thin slice. Is that possible to have a 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:30.200 lower dimensional object in our universe? Yeah, so this is 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.080 a kind of a mind blowing question. And so as 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:35.199 usual we were wondering how many people out there had 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:37.720 thought about this question and whether or not they have 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:42.040 an answer to this strange and um multidimensional or a 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:44.880 dual dimensional quarry. So, as usual Daniel went out there 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.160 into the wilds of the internet to ask people can 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:51.560 an object be two dimensional? Thanks again to our willing volunteers. 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.400 And if you would like to answer some questions about 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:57.720 tricky topics and here your speculation on the podcast, please 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:00.880 write to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.040 It's what people had to say. I don't really think 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.600 that an object can be two dimensionals in a three 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.920 dimensional space that we live in. But if I think 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.160 about it, what is a volume of an object? It 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.080 is the space between the particles and not the particles themselves. 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:19.760 So if the particles somehow could form a perfectly flat 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.000 sheet so that they only extent in the extent y 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.640 axis but they don't go into the Z direction, that 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:29.400 theoretically maybe we could call an object like this to 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:33.439 be a two dimensional object. I suppose an object technically 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.959 can't be two dimensional because as songs have volume and 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.440 or there for three dimensional. But I think there are 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:44.800 um situations where, for instance, if you have one layer 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.280 of graphine it is so thin that it is treated 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.680 as if it's two dimensional. Then I am not sure 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:57.360 about this, but I think um with the modesty in 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:01.000 a conjecture, because with the conform of fuel theory, you 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.240 treat a three dimensional object, for instance a black hole 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:11.920 by looking only at its UM like surface or surface 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:17.079 area UM by translating it from the strength theories of 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:21.760 the cf G, you almost treated as if it's two dimensional. 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.000 I think, um, that might be an example. Alright, some 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:29.480 skepticism here, and none of these two said, yes, something 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.840 can be too D. We got rejected exactly, and you 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.280 had a third answer also, but no one didn't make 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:36.800 the cut. Is that a two D three D joke 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:42.880 joke out of this flat topic that I'm impressed by 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:44.679 the depth of your sense of humor? All right, So 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:46.680 none of the answers seem to think you can have 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:48.560 it to the object. One of them said that because 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:51.160 adams have volume, and the other one said because we 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.160 live in a three D space. So let's get into 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.240 these strange conundrums. So Daniel, first of all, what would 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.000 you say, is it to D object? How would you define? 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.040 As usual? The definition is going to be critical is 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:06.040 to exactly what we mean by two D object. But 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:10.080 let's start like, really theoretically, in an idealized sense, I 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:13.240 think the world is having three dimensions, in the sense 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:16.840 that there's three extensions, right, three coordinates. You need to 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:20.520 define your location in space, and so you can think 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:24.120 of an object having like one dimension is aligned two dimensions, 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:26.800 would be a square and any height on that square 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:29.880 would make it a cube. I would make it three dimensions. 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.200 So a two D object would be something that had 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.840 no measurement in the third dimension, that it's location in 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.080 the third dimension had only one edge, not two edges, 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.480 doesn't have like a start and an end. It's start 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.040 and end are exactly the same location. So it's you know, 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:50.080 it would be essentially infinitely flat sheet of paper for example. 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:52.320 You see, So it's an object, it has to be 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:56.920 like a physical thing in our world that really only exists, 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:00.160 like it only takes up space in one direction. Like 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:02.200 you said, it's invisible if you look at it kind 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.000 of on the side. Yeah, because it can't exist in 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.040 the third dimension. That means that if you measured its height, 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.000 the top of it and the bottom of it would 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:14.000 be exactly the same number. Right, there's no height to 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.160 it at all, because anything more than zero would mean 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:19.200 there's an extent in that third dimension, and then it's 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.560 just pretty thin, not exactly fin that. We're looking for 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.560 something which really has zero height in that third dimension, 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:27.880 but it needs to exist in our space so we 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.320 can interact with it. You can see it from the side, 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:33.480 for example. That's the question, can an object like that exist? 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.000 An object on which you were a person and you 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.280 were walking around, you wouldn't even notice that there was 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.000 a third dimension because you would only exist on that 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:43.600 too D space, you know, basically flat land. Yeah, and 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.800 my cartoonists and so, you know, making things two days. 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.320 It's kind of my jam. But I think it's also 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:52.240 pretty cool to think about, like what happens if you 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:55.640 have multiple of these infinitely flat objects, Like if you 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.320 stuck in a whole bunch of them together, they would 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.560 still be flat, they would still have zero height. Yeah, 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:05.240 because any number of times zero is zero. So you 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.920 can eat an infinite number of slices of two D 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:11.520 pizza and you've eaten zero volume of pizza. You won't 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:14.960 even grow in one dimension like your belt size dimension 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.000 no is zero volume right, So that means essentially you 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.160 can't have a two D slice of pizza. Can you 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:22.160 taste it? Though? Maybe you can taste it like if 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:25.440 it hits your tongue? You know, is that possible? Thin? 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.600 Have we invented the perfect two D diet? Two D 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.680 Quantum Diet by Daniel? Download the app mat we will 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:36.320 sputter a layer of pizza two D pizza onto your tongue. Yeah, 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:38.200 because you can't pick it up right? Well, I guess 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.440 the question is is it possible at all to have 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:43.640 an object that is like that, that is infinitely thin? 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.000 Are there loss of physics that would prevent it? Or 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.960 is it theoretically possible? So I still have three answers 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:51.560 to that, you know, yes, a no, and then maybe 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:54.960 so starting with a yes. You know that everything in 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.680 our world is built out of particles and particles in 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.120 our model, how many dimensions do they have? Well, we 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.760 think of them as points. There are point particles. We 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.720 don't know if the electron has any substructure in it, 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.560 so we treat it as if it doesn't. We consider 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.720 it to be a dot, essentially an infinitely small dot. 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.240 That means it's zero dimensional so in our theory, and 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.160 electron takes up no volume. So if you can have 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.520 a zero D particle, you can make a one D 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:26.280 object by having two of them, and then the line 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:28.800 between them is a one D object, and four of 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.040 them are actually just three of them make a plane 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:35.160 that in principle is a two dimensional object. So that's 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.520 sort of the yes answer on the theoretical idea. Like 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:42.480 if I took one atom or like one quirk right, 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:44.800 and I lined it up with like a hundred other 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.240 quarts in the same line, that would technically be an 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:50.840 object by our regular definition, but it would have only 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:55.040 one dimension technically exactly if you believe that particles are 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:57.680 zero dimensional, and you know, I don't really know if 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.200 that really flies, because particles are an excitation in a 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:06.119 quantum field and they're localized, so probably not exactly zero dimensional. 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:09.040 But if you start from a zero dimensional particle, then yes, 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:11.960 a line of them is a one dimensional object. I 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.359 guess the problem is that you know particles are point objects, 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.600 but they have kind of a three D presence. Yes, 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:20.920 they do have a three D presence, because how would 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.040 you build that one D line of quarks. The way 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:27.080 that you connect things is through their forces, right. The 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.879 reason that an atom is an atom is because of 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:33.199 the forces that bind the electron to the proton, and 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:35.800 those forces, as you say, have a three D presence. 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:38.520 And if you have a pile of hydrogen, for example, 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:40.639 the reason it's not just all in one spot is 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.640 that those atoms repel each other, and so there are 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.159 forces between them that give an object volume, and that 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:51.160 volume is then three dimensional because the forces are three dimensional, right, 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:53.800 But I guess even those forces could fall on that line. 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:56.119 Like let's say you empty out the universe. The universe 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:59.080 is empty and you only have two quarks. That's technically 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:01.439 to the object, that's a two D object, But it 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:03.720 fails the other test, like could you stack another one 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.760 on top of it exactly and get zero height? If 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:08.719 you bring another one next to it, it would not 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:11.119 want to be exactly on top of it, And so 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:13.760 really it's a three D object. It's just sort of 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:16.320 like a very thin tube. All right, That was your 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:18.919 yes answer? What's your maybe answer? So The yes answer 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.199 was start from zer D particles, you can The no 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.520 answer was zer y particles really have three D forces, 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:28.439 So no, The maybe answer is remember that our world 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:32.280 is quantum mechanical, and so in some sense you don't 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:37.679 have to have infinite thinness to be minimal thinness. Right, 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:41.280 our universe has a minimal length. So now imagine an 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.359 object which is normal in one dimension and in the 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:47.000 second dimension, but in the third dimension it has the 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:51.560 minimal length like the just one space pixel essentially wide, 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:55.400 that you might consider to be a two dimensional object. Oh, 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.440 I see, by like the definition of space in the universe, 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:03.640 if something is thinner than the quantum minimum distance, then 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:07.359 you you kind of have to say it's flat, perfectly flat, right, 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.960 because you can't resolve that it's any thinner. You couldn't 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.600 have a thinner object except for in your mind as 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:17.000 a geometer imagining perfect to D objects. But in our 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.600 universe things you could build, you couldn't have a thinner object. 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.800 So you should crown that to be either the thinnest 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.639 three dimensional object possible or a two D object. And 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:29.320 we'll talk about it a little bit later, but there 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.200 are some objects like that in our universe that follow 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:36.680 the math for two D objects. Interesting, it gets complicated. 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.200 We'll have to go deep. We'll have to have tried 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:42.359 to avoid being shallow. All right, well, let's get it 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:46.359 into whether or not there are theoretically to the objects 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:48.320 out there and whether or not they exist in the 0:19:48.400 --> 0:20:03.960 real world. At first, let's take a quick break. Alright, 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.320 we're talking about to the objects, Daniel, And now this 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:08.399 is a podcast. Does that mean that listeners have to 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:12.040 put on like two d your phone, like a red 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.040 and a blue one. Would that help? Well, they're hearing 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:15.760 the answers in two d right, one from me and 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.840 one from you. I guess, yeah, dude, two dudes, just 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.200 two dads or dudes. So technically it is a to 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:25.960 D podcast, that's right. And sometimes we agree with each 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:29.480 other and sometimes we don't. Sometimes I'm negative, sometimes we 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:33.359 cancel out. It's all a math problem. Hopefully there's constructive 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:35.639 interference in the explanation to mention. All right, you just 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:38.320 went too deep there. I guess one question you can 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.359 ask is whether or not you can theoretically have to 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:44.280 the objects. And as I understand that the physics does 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.520 allow for theoretical to the objects, yea theoretical to D 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:50.359 objects are not a problem. But we talked before about 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.520 this idea of the universe as a hologram. Is there 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:57.080 a really powerful idea, and it shows that all the 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:01.439 information in a three dimensional space can actually be encoded 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:04.879 on the surface of that space. You know, take like 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:08.040 a sphere and imagine all the stuff inside of it, 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.240 all the physics that's going on inside that sphere might 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:14.480 actually just be encoded on the surface of that sphere. 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:17.880 And that's a really powerful idea because it helps people 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.000 do some calculations, like there's two totally different kinds of 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.000 theories that have different dimensions, and this links them together. 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.240 It's really important results for string theory. But also it's 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.640 really cool for thinking about black holes, like what's inside 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.159 a black hole? And is it possible that all the 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:36.679 information inside a black hole is actually just embedded on 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:39.560 the surface of the event horizon. Yeah, we had a 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:41.800 whole podcast about whether or not the universe is a 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:45.679 hologram imprinted on the surface of a black hole. And 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:47.760 you know, as a cartoonist, I'm a big believer in 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.200 that you can capture whole worlds in a sheet of paper. 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:54.040 You know, it's my whole philosophy of life. But I 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:56.440 guess the question is, you know, it's cool that you 0:21:56.480 --> 0:21:58.879 can maybe project the whole three D world into a 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:01.360 two D surface, like for example of a black hole, 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:03.760 But don't you lose information like in a cartoon, I 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:08.159 don't know what's standing behind my cartoon characters, Like, wouldn't 0:22:08.200 --> 0:22:11.600 that information get lost? Yeah? So there's three spatial dimensions 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.840 in the universe and then two spatial dimensions on the surface, 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:17.600 But there are quantum fields on that two dimensional surface, 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:20.520 and those fields can encode all sorts of information. Like 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:23.760 a field can have multiple dimensions. It can be a 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:27.119 vector field. For example, at every point in space, a 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:29.399 field can have more than one number. You can have 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:32.159 an entire vector, which is three numbers, or five numbers 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:34.440 or ten numbers. So you could have lots of information 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:37.200 sort of packed into every unit of space. So even 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:41.119 though the space has fewer dimensions, the fields in that 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:44.840 space could have more information sort of per unit of space, 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:46.800 so you end up with the same amount of information. 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:52.040 You mean, you're cheat. It comes down to the definitions. 0:22:53.119 --> 0:22:54.920 I mean, it's it's kind of like you just stacking 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:57.239 pixels on top of each other, kind of right. It's 0:22:57.320 --> 0:22:59.679 kind of like in a three D movie that you 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:01.159 when you go to the theater, it's like it's the 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:03.520 same screen, but it's giving you twice the amount of 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:06.520 information in the same image. Yeah, and it's just another 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.280 way to mathematically express things. And this concept invented by 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:12.879 one Maldasena is called a D S c F T 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:15.520 because it shows us how one set of theories a 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:18.399 d S which means anti disit or space, which is 0:23:18.440 --> 0:23:22.280 what gravity works in, is really equivalent to these conformal 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:25.040 field theories which operate in two dimensional space. And so 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:27.520 you're right, it's a trick, but it's also it's a 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:30.320 cool trick because it shows us that two totally different 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:32.800 fields are actually have been doing the same thing the 0:23:32.840 --> 0:23:36.640 whole time. That three D movies are really just movies, right, 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:39.600 And so the days and maybe our entire universe that 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:43.119 we think is three D is actually only two D. 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:45.840 Like maybe we're all living on the surface of a 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.840 black hole or something. Yeah, maybe our universe actually is 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:51.359 only two dimensions, and we have this experience of a 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:54.639 third dimension because of the richness of the quantum fields 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:58.040 gives the illusion of a third dimension. That's the hologram. Right, 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:00.560 So that's a fun idea, and it helps think about 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:03.600 how to solve black holes and construct string theories, and 0:24:03.840 --> 0:24:06.239 goes to fund philosophical arguments about like, well, what does 0:24:06.280 --> 0:24:08.520 it really mean to have three dimensions or two plus 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:11.480 one illusory dimensions? But you know, if that's the case, 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:14.639 that would mean that fundamentally the whole universe really is 0:24:14.720 --> 0:24:17.760 two D. Yeah, we're all inside a comic book, right, 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:20.240 It's like everything in the universe is a two D 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:23.320 object in that case, right, Yeah, And the comic book 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:25.840 is really an excellent example because what do you do 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:27.800 when you look at the comic book is you don't 0:24:27.840 --> 0:24:30.359 just examine the two D surface of the paper. You 0:24:30.359 --> 0:24:32.399 imagine a whole rich world in your mind. You know, 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:35.639 a well drawn comic creates into the mind of the 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:39.199 reader this whole three dimensional model. And that's exactly what 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:41.560 we're talking about here, is having enough information on a 0:24:41.600 --> 0:24:45.119 two D surface to project out into a fully realized 0:24:45.160 --> 0:24:48.280 three D world. Well, I called DIBs and being Superman 0:24:48.359 --> 0:24:51.159 in this comic book, all right, I called DIBs on 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:53.840 all those super thin slices of pizza in your comic book. 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:56.320 Have at it. I'd rather fly than although if you're 0:24:56.359 --> 0:24:59.000 flying a comic book, you're you're really not going anywhere. 0:24:59.240 --> 0:25:01.600 Does that count as exercise? When Superman flies? Does he 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:04.520 burning calories? Does his fit bit counter? Well? I think 0:25:04.560 --> 0:25:07.040 he can't fly if he doesn't get enough sun, So 0:25:07.119 --> 0:25:09.840 technically I guess he is expending energy. Is that right? 0:25:09.880 --> 0:25:11.480 He can't fly but it doesn't get enough sun. Does 0:25:11.480 --> 0:25:14.840 he photosynthesize? Yeah? Don't you know anything about Superman, Daniel, 0:25:14.880 --> 0:25:18.640 about the physics of Superman? Apparently I don't. He gets 0:25:18.640 --> 0:25:21.280 his power from the yellow sun. Where so he's basically 0:25:21.280 --> 0:25:26.120 a plan basically a super solar cell. Yeah, solar battery. 0:25:26.560 --> 0:25:29.400 All right, Well, so that's one kind of two dimensional object. 0:25:29.560 --> 0:25:32.320 Is this idea that the whole world is universe is 0:25:32.359 --> 0:25:34.560 two dimensional? But there are all some ways in which 0:25:34.600 --> 0:25:36.880 the theory says that you can't have kind of two 0:25:36.880 --> 0:25:39.959 dimensional things in our three D world, right, Yeah, And 0:25:40.080 --> 0:25:43.680 earlier we were talking about building things which are the 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:47.399 thinnest they could possibly be in a quantum universe. Idea 0:25:47.440 --> 0:25:50.639 there is that the universe we don't think is infinitely dividable. 0:25:50.760 --> 0:25:52.560 We don't think you can take a mile and cut 0:25:52.640 --> 0:25:54.679 in half and then cut it half again, and cutn't 0:25:54.680 --> 0:25:57.440 half again, and keep doing that forever. We think that 0:25:57.600 --> 0:26:01.560 probably there's a smallest unit of distance, below which it 0:26:01.600 --> 0:26:04.600 doesn't make any sense to talk about distance, because there's 0:26:04.640 --> 0:26:07.639 no measure that's smaller than that. It's like pixels on 0:26:07.680 --> 0:26:10.760 the screen. And so the idea is, if the universe 0:26:10.880 --> 0:26:14.240 is quantized, if there's a minimum distance, then like a 0:26:14.440 --> 0:26:18.040 sheet of something, which is the thinnest possible sheet, might 0:26:18.040 --> 0:26:21.680 effectively be a two D material. The problem is that 0:26:21.720 --> 0:26:24.760 we think that distance, if it exists, is probably really 0:26:24.800 --> 0:26:28.760 really small, like ten to the minus thirty five, and 0:26:28.840 --> 0:26:32.199 we're certainly not capable of making anything or observing anything 0:26:32.240 --> 0:26:36.280 that thin today. But quantum mechanics has other implications. You know, 0:26:36.320 --> 0:26:40.080 quantum mechanics limits how particles can move. Another idea, which 0:26:40.119 --> 0:26:42.520 has been around for several decades, is to make something 0:26:42.560 --> 0:26:45.600 that's so thin that it's thinner than the wavelength of 0:26:45.640 --> 0:26:49.119 the electrons, so that the electrons in that object are 0:26:49.200 --> 0:26:52.600 essentially trapped to only move in two dimensions because the 0:26:52.680 --> 0:26:55.400 thing they're stuck in doesn't allow them to get excited 0:26:55.520 --> 0:26:57.720 or move in that third dimension. I see, I feel 0:26:57.720 --> 0:26:59.960 like there's two ideas here. One is making things small 0:27:00.000 --> 0:27:04.000 holler than the smallest resolution of the universe, and the 0:27:04.040 --> 0:27:07.960 other one is making things smaller than the electron wave length. 0:27:08.600 --> 0:27:10.720 So which one are Are they the same or which 0:27:10.760 --> 0:27:12.720 one are you talking about here? They're not the same. 0:27:13.040 --> 0:27:15.919 One is very fundamental like to the nature of space 0:27:15.920 --> 0:27:17.760 and time, and just sort of to get you thinking 0:27:17.760 --> 0:27:21.000 about how the universe really is quantized. How there's like 0:27:21.400 --> 0:27:25.119 units of thinness, and the thinnest unit for space is 0:27:25.160 --> 0:27:28.000 really really really thin, but the thinnest unifer an electron, 0:27:28.160 --> 0:27:30.439 is much much larger, and something that's really kind of 0:27:30.440 --> 0:27:34.359 achievable because an electron has an extent in space which 0:27:34.440 --> 0:27:37.439 is much more significant. So you know, can you build 0:27:37.480 --> 0:27:40.480 something which makes it so that electrons can only move 0:27:40.600 --> 0:27:43.159 in two dimensions? That could be much much bigger than 0:27:43.200 --> 0:27:46.160 the fundamental unit of space. I mean imagine, for example, 0:27:46.320 --> 0:27:49.480 taking two sheets of glass and putting ping pong balls 0:27:49.520 --> 0:27:51.760 between them, and the ping pong balls can move between 0:27:51.760 --> 0:27:54.000 the sheets of glass, but they can't move up and 0:27:54.080 --> 0:27:56.520 down at all. If you could build a material like 0:27:56.560 --> 0:27:59.560 that where the electrons only move in two dimensions, then 0:27:59.560 --> 0:28:02.120 you might cansider that to be a two dimensional material. 0:28:02.440 --> 0:28:05.439 I guess the hard question is what is the object? Like, 0:28:05.480 --> 0:28:08.919 are the electrons the object or the thin sheet is 0:28:08.960 --> 0:28:12.320 the object? Because the sheet itself isn't made out of 0:28:12.560 --> 0:28:15.200 multiple layers of atoms. Are you talking about making something 0:28:15.240 --> 0:28:17.920 that's just one layer of atoms? So the basic idea 0:28:17.960 --> 0:28:20.440 is to make something which is a single layer of atoms. 0:28:20.560 --> 0:28:22.200 It's a lot like what we were talking about earlier. 0:28:22.240 --> 0:28:24.399 We take a single cork and you line it up 0:28:24.400 --> 0:28:26.800 and you make a sheet of corks. If you could 0:28:26.800 --> 0:28:29.439 get these things which bind together and to make a 0:28:29.520 --> 0:28:32.320 single layer of atoms, like a material that's just one 0:28:32.520 --> 0:28:37.080 atomic layer thick, then the electrons in that material would 0:28:37.119 --> 0:28:39.800 move as if they were in a two dimensional world. 0:28:40.040 --> 0:28:42.040 I see. So then you're saying like kind of like 0:28:42.160 --> 0:28:45.720 that collection of electrons is then sort of a two 0:28:45.800 --> 0:28:49.440 D object because it can't really, you know, move in 0:28:49.600 --> 0:28:52.520 any other dimension except the one on the surface. Yeah, 0:28:52.680 --> 0:28:54.560 because there's no room for them to move, like ping 0:28:54.640 --> 0:28:57.959 pong balls trapped between two sheets of glass. Electrons are 0:28:58.000 --> 0:29:01.239 bound to the atoms, and if there's no layer up 0:29:01.320 --> 0:29:03.800 or layer down for them to go, then they're sort 0:29:03.800 --> 0:29:06.400 of trapped on that sheet. So that's pretty cool. Is 0:29:06.440 --> 0:29:08.480 it hard to make something like that, like to make 0:29:08.680 --> 0:29:11.440 a sheet that's only one atom thick. It turns out 0:29:11.440 --> 0:29:14.480 it's surprisingly easy and you probably make them all the 0:29:14.520 --> 0:29:17.880 time when you draw cartoons. Really, are you saying my 0:29:17.920 --> 0:29:23.000 ideas have no no? It turns out that you make them. 0:29:23.040 --> 0:29:25.960 Every time you sharpen a pencil. You make a two 0:29:25.960 --> 0:29:30.000 dimensional material. Because carbon is a really amazing object, and 0:29:30.040 --> 0:29:32.480 you can form all sorts of really crazy stuff. And 0:29:32.480 --> 0:29:35.560 it is possible to make sheets of carbon that are 0:29:35.640 --> 0:29:38.240 just one atom thick. And one way to do it 0:29:38.280 --> 0:29:41.560 is to break off pieces of basically graphite, which is 0:29:41.640 --> 0:29:44.840 pencil lead. And graphite is so brittle that basically every 0:29:44.840 --> 0:29:46.880 time you write on a surface of paper or you 0:29:46.920 --> 0:29:50.560 sharpen your pencil, you are generating these sheets of graphine 0:29:50.760 --> 0:29:53.400 just things. So like carbon kind of likes to do that, right, 0:29:53.400 --> 0:29:56.440 like it, It kind of likes to arrange itself in 0:29:56.800 --> 0:29:59.640 little sheets and not like cubes or clusters. It likes 0:29:59.640 --> 0:30:01.160 to do all sorts of things, and so you have 0:30:01.280 --> 0:30:03.960 to get it to do this. But graphite exactly is 0:30:04.040 --> 0:30:06.200 very brittle, and so it's not that hard to like 0:30:06.360 --> 0:30:09.960 peel off layers of it to make these two dimensional 0:30:10.160 --> 0:30:13.240 sheets of carbon. And so I thought this was super interesting, 0:30:13.400 --> 0:30:15.840 and I went to ask a friend of mine, who's 0:30:15.840 --> 0:30:18.560 actually a professor here at u C Irvine, is this 0:30:18.600 --> 0:30:21.240 is possible, what it really means, and what she thinks 0:30:21.320 --> 0:30:24.720 about two dimensional materials? Nice? Who did you talk to? So? 0:30:24.760 --> 0:30:27.760 I talked to a young assistant professor named Judy Rohani. 0:30:28.040 --> 0:30:30.480 She's very friendly. She's from Hungary and she just came 0:30:30.480 --> 0:30:32.400 to u C I about a year and a half ago, 0:30:32.480 --> 0:30:35.240 and she arrived during the pandemic, which means she's never 0:30:35.280 --> 0:30:38.680 really gone to experience the campus life here. Wow. And 0:30:38.760 --> 0:30:41.080 so she works on these two de materials, right. She 0:30:41.160 --> 0:30:44.040 makes these flat sheets of carbon and then she puts 0:30:44.040 --> 0:30:46.520 electrons in them, and then the electrons sort of move 0:30:46.600 --> 0:30:50.080 around in this one dimensional world. Yeah. She's actually a theorist, 0:30:50.080 --> 0:30:52.480 so she mostly like writes papers about them and thinks 0:30:52.520 --> 0:30:55.280 about them rather than actually building these things. But yeah, 0:30:55.360 --> 0:30:57.840 she's a pretty deep understanding of how they work. All right. 0:30:57.920 --> 0:30:59.760 So you asked her to talk to us about some 0:30:59.800 --> 0:31:02.680 of the materials. Yeah. I asked her if she thought 0:31:02.680 --> 0:31:05.600 two dimensional materials were possible and what it meant for 0:31:05.640 --> 0:31:08.040 an object to be two dimensional? All right? Here is 0:31:08.040 --> 0:31:10.920 what Professor Roney had to say, So, you know what, 0:31:11.000 --> 0:31:14.680 like for theories, anything is possible, right because I just 0:31:15.080 --> 0:31:17.320 take a TI to come on and then say like, well, 0:31:17.360 --> 0:31:21.200 I just considered something that has two spatial demensions dimensions 0:31:21.240 --> 0:31:24.080 instead of three, and that will give me some kind 0:31:24.080 --> 0:31:27.800 of confinement. So you know, my mobile particles for examples, 0:31:28.000 --> 0:31:31.600 like electrons, they can only move in two dimensions, but 0:31:31.680 --> 0:31:34.760 not in the third dimension. And then then it comes 0:31:34.800 --> 0:31:36.400 like real life, you know, like I have a real 0:31:36.480 --> 0:31:41.360 chunk of material that definitely has extensions in all three dimensions, right, 0:31:41.400 --> 0:31:44.000 So that's very different. It's like I guess if you 0:31:44.080 --> 0:31:48.120 ask this question like fifteen years ago, I was just like, yeah, 0:31:48.160 --> 0:31:52.200 today is very theoretical. There is no such thing as 0:31:52.200 --> 0:31:54.640 a two de material, right because why would it not 0:31:55.160 --> 0:31:59.160 like fold up like that, you know, why wouldn't stay 0:31:59.160 --> 0:32:01.720 like straight as a sheet of paper or something, or 0:32:01.960 --> 0:32:04.360 how could it exist, like what would stabilize anything like that? 0:32:04.400 --> 0:32:06.720 And now it turns out that that there are actually 0:32:06.720 --> 0:32:10.000 two dimensional materials, and then what those are kind of 0:32:10.720 --> 0:32:13.040 like if you imagine that you have a material that 0:32:13.200 --> 0:32:17.520 is say like one automn thick or maybe maybe still 0:32:17.880 --> 0:32:20.440 it's a better way to say, or maybe just a 0:32:20.480 --> 0:32:23.160 few atoms in, like maybe two or three atoms in, 0:32:23.440 --> 0:32:26.280 and that's that's actually possible to create these materials. So 0:32:26.360 --> 0:32:30.120 actually kind of bail them off from their three dimensional 0:32:30.600 --> 0:32:35.160 let's say modern material or different types of materials. They 0:32:35.160 --> 0:32:38.600 really exist and people are doing different kinds of experiments 0:32:38.640 --> 0:32:41.920 and so it's not just you know, theoretical dream anymore. 0:32:42.040 --> 0:32:45.800 It's actually an existing thing, which is very exciting because 0:32:45.840 --> 0:32:49.480 they do have a lot of dissimilarities to see the 0:32:49.560 --> 0:32:53.560 action three D models or materials. All right, I like it, 0:32:53.600 --> 0:32:57.480 As she said, for a theorist, anything is possible. I 0:32:57.480 --> 0:33:00.080 think I really tells you something about this field. This 0:33:00.160 --> 0:33:03.200 is an idea which came about like in the forties 0:33:03.240 --> 0:33:06.040 and fifties. People were wondering is this really possible? They 0:33:06.040 --> 0:33:09.240 were thinking about it and theorizing about it, and only recently, 0:33:09.240 --> 0:33:12.840 only like twenty years ago, did this actually become realizable. 0:33:13.080 --> 0:33:14.960 So this is something it's sort of like the black 0:33:15.000 --> 0:33:18.880 holes for condensed matter physics. They're wondering, mathematically, we figured 0:33:18.880 --> 0:33:21.640 this out, but could anybody actually make this thing in 0:33:21.680 --> 0:33:24.200 real life? So I think we're sort of living in 0:33:24.240 --> 0:33:26.440 the science fiction future for a lot of these condensed 0:33:26.520 --> 0:33:29.600 matter physicists. That's pretty cool. And she says that, you know, 0:33:29.720 --> 0:33:33.320 if you do confine electrons into one of these thin materials, 0:33:33.320 --> 0:33:35.520 they do sort of actually kind of move like in 0:33:35.520 --> 0:33:37.520 a two D world. Yeah, and it makes the thing 0:33:37.680 --> 0:33:40.360 really really different. And that's what's really interesting. If that 0:33:40.400 --> 0:33:41.720 if you take a whole loaf of bread and you 0:33:41.760 --> 0:33:44.080 cut in half, you have half a loaf of bread. Right, 0:33:44.160 --> 0:33:47.120 But at some point if you take really really thin slices, 0:33:47.440 --> 0:33:51.240 it stops being bread and it starts turning into something else. Right, 0:33:51.280 --> 0:33:55.800 it turns into toast that's totally different bread or biscotti. 0:33:55.840 --> 0:33:57.880 It turns into biscotty. You know, you have to pay 0:33:57.920 --> 0:34:01.400 like a few bucks more starbucks, get put tomato, sauce 0:34:01.440 --> 0:34:03.560 and cheese on, and poor he will call it a pizza. 0:34:03.880 --> 0:34:06.560 But I think it's really cool that you take something 0:34:06.600 --> 0:34:08.720 and you make a thin enough slice that it basically 0:34:08.760 --> 0:34:11.320 turns into something else. Like imagine taking a loaf of 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:13.680 bread and making it such a thin slice that you 0:34:13.719 --> 0:34:15.719 get a slice of ham, you know, or it turns 0:34:15.760 --> 0:34:18.759 into cheese or something. That's basically what's happening here. You 0:34:18.840 --> 0:34:21.520 take graphite, which is you know, this like thing inside 0:34:21.560 --> 0:34:24.279 pencil lead and you take such a thin slice off 0:34:24.280 --> 0:34:27.520 of it that it comes off with completely different properties, 0:34:27.760 --> 0:34:31.400 totally different sort of mechanical strength and electrical properties and 0:34:31.400 --> 0:34:34.560 all that stuff. Wow, that sounds like delicious magic right there. 0:34:35.120 --> 0:34:38.239 All right, so those are theoretical to the objects, and 0:34:38.320 --> 0:34:41.799 so now let's get into real to the objects. Are 0:34:42.040 --> 0:34:46.120 any of these actually realizable in our world? And maybe 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:48.160 they're all around this, So let's get into that. But 0:34:48.200 --> 0:35:03.480 first let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel, we're 0:35:03.480 --> 0:35:07.399 talking about real life to the objects. Now we talked 0:35:07.400 --> 0:35:09.480 about in theory. It could be that we're all in 0:35:09.520 --> 0:35:12.600 the to the world, or maybe you can make electrons 0:35:12.680 --> 0:35:15.160 behave like they're in two dimensionals. But in the real 0:35:15.200 --> 0:35:17.359 world that we live in, at least that the one 0:35:17.400 --> 0:35:20.239 that seems like it's three dimensions, can you have to 0:35:20.440 --> 0:35:22.680 the objects? So you sort of can, I mean it's 0:35:22.680 --> 0:35:26.160 a little bit cheating. They're not technically two dimensions because 0:35:26.160 --> 0:35:29.480 the materials themselves do have a height. But the mathematics 0:35:29.520 --> 0:35:32.160 on these materials is the same as if they were 0:35:32.200 --> 0:35:36.080 two dimensions. Like if the world was two dimensional, mathematics 0:35:36.080 --> 0:35:39.200 and physics especially would be different. For example, we know 0:35:39.239 --> 0:35:41.600 that if you shine a light, then the strength of 0:35:41.600 --> 0:35:45.480 that light decreases like one over the distance squared. That's 0:35:45.520 --> 0:35:48.200 one of the distance squared. Because our universe is in 0:35:48.400 --> 0:35:51.839 three dimensions. The same amount of light spread over the 0:35:51.880 --> 0:35:54.320 surface of a sphere, and the surface of a sphere 0:35:54.360 --> 0:35:58.160 goes like the radius squared. So there's things like that 0:35:58.200 --> 0:36:02.200 where mathematical relationships tell you about the dimensionality of the 0:36:02.239 --> 0:36:04.840 world you're living in. And when we study the behavior 0:36:04.920 --> 0:36:07.240 on some of these physical materials we're gonna be talking about, 0:36:07.520 --> 0:36:10.399 we see the mathematical relationships you expect from a two 0:36:10.400 --> 0:36:13.799 dimensional world, not a three dimensional world. I see. So 0:36:13.840 --> 0:36:16.719 there are like three D objects that behave or you know, 0:36:16.920 --> 0:36:20.120 follow the rules of a two dimensional universe, Yes, exactly. 0:36:20.120 --> 0:36:21.920 And so in the sense if you're following the math 0:36:21.960 --> 0:36:24.279 of a two dimensional world, are you really a two 0:36:24.360 --> 0:36:28.160 D object? Interesting like if you do live in a cartoon? 0:36:28.520 --> 0:36:32.200 Are you really real? If you cosplay enough a cartoon, 0:36:32.320 --> 0:36:35.160 are you really in that cartoon? No judging, no judging. 0:36:36.760 --> 0:36:38.479 So to step us through, what are some of these 0:36:38.560 --> 0:36:41.040 real life to the objects or three the objects that 0:36:41.120 --> 0:36:43.160 behave like to the objects, So one of them is 0:36:43.239 --> 0:36:46.959 looking at the surface of liquid helium, liquid Helium, of course, 0:36:47.040 --> 0:36:49.160 is helium that's super duper duper cold so that it 0:36:49.280 --> 0:36:52.840 turns into a liquid, and if you drop electrons onto 0:36:52.920 --> 0:36:55.600 liquid helium, then they like to stick to the surface. 0:36:56.000 --> 0:36:58.759 Like liquid helium is this really weird surface tension, and 0:36:58.840 --> 0:37:01.120 electrons like to stick to the surface, but they're free 0:37:01.160 --> 0:37:04.160 to slide along it because liquid helium is super fluid, 0:37:04.239 --> 0:37:06.959 so electrons can slide along it really easily, but they're 0:37:06.960 --> 0:37:09.440 stuck on the surface. And of course the surface of 0:37:09.440 --> 0:37:12.799 an object is two dimensional, and so these electrons are 0:37:12.840 --> 0:37:15.560 confined to the surface, but they can slide around. So 0:37:15.600 --> 0:37:18.160 it's really a lot like those ping pong balls stuck 0:37:18.200 --> 0:37:21.279 between two glass planes. And so this is something people 0:37:21.320 --> 0:37:24.120 can actually build. And they call this a two dimensional 0:37:24.160 --> 0:37:27.440 electron gas, not a gas, because it's like something you 0:37:27.440 --> 0:37:29.680 can breathe. But these are just sort of like idealized 0:37:29.719 --> 0:37:34.080 particles bouncing around and moving, and it follows the laws 0:37:34.120 --> 0:37:37.520 of thermodynamics in two dimensions. It's almost like just having 0:37:37.600 --> 0:37:39.759 things on balls on the table, right like it they're 0:37:39.760 --> 0:37:41.920 just sitting on the surface of the ping pong table 0:37:42.320 --> 0:37:45.120 and they sort of roll around, but they can't just 0:37:45.200 --> 0:37:47.799 jump off, right, But if they bounced into each other, 0:37:48.080 --> 0:37:50.799 then they would sometimes leave the surface. You can get 0:37:50.800 --> 0:37:53.480 that sort of excitation in the third dimension. But if 0:37:53.520 --> 0:37:55.520 they're trapped, if there really are confined you have like 0:37:55.560 --> 0:37:58.239 a layer of glass over your ping pong table, then 0:37:58.280 --> 0:38:00.000 they really are trapped in there, and the only way 0:38:00.120 --> 0:38:01.839 they can move is in two dimensions. And I see, 0:38:01.880 --> 0:38:04.520 so the electrons are sort of stuck to the surface 0:38:04.560 --> 0:38:06.880 of the liquid helium. Yeah, it's some weird chemistry thing 0:38:07.400 --> 0:38:09.680 where they are stuck to the service of the liquid helium. 0:38:09.760 --> 0:38:11.799 And like how you say it's some weird chemistry thing 0:38:12.120 --> 0:38:14.520 and you don't have a good answer. That means I 0:38:14.560 --> 0:38:17.240 don't understand it. I'm not a chemist. All the chemistry 0:38:17.280 --> 0:38:20.480 is some weird chemistry thing to be all right. So 0:38:20.560 --> 0:38:23.120 that's one kind of two D pseudo object. What are 0:38:23.160 --> 0:38:25.520 some other kinds? The most interesting, and I think the 0:38:25.560 --> 0:38:29.680 most exciting is this thing called graph being graphing is 0:38:29.719 --> 0:38:33.560 a two D sheet of carbon atoms that assemble themselves 0:38:33.560 --> 0:38:36.200 into an object. You know that carbon can make lots 0:38:36.200 --> 0:38:38.840 of different things. It can make diamond, you can make graphite, 0:38:38.880 --> 0:38:41.319 which is basically coal, but it can also make all 0:38:41.360 --> 0:38:43.920 sorts of other things. And I love carbon and all 0:38:43.960 --> 0:38:46.200 of its forms, because it really makes a point which 0:38:46.239 --> 0:38:48.759 I think is really deeply true about the universe, which 0:38:48.800 --> 0:38:50.920 is that the nature of an object is not about 0:38:50.920 --> 0:38:53.040 what it's made out of, but about how those things 0:38:53.080 --> 0:38:55.480 are put together. So you can put the same carbon 0:38:55.520 --> 0:38:57.840 atoms together to make a diamond or a lump of coal, 0:38:58.040 --> 0:38:59.759 and that really tells you that it's really just some 0:39:00.000 --> 0:39:02.320 out how you build the thing, and there's a really 0:39:02.360 --> 0:39:04.880 weird and unique way that you can build it to 0:39:04.960 --> 0:39:08.399 make this single atomic layer of carbon atoms, and they 0:39:08.400 --> 0:39:11.440 call that graphene. Yeah, and that was the Nobel Prize 0:39:11.520 --> 0:39:13.799 maybe like ten or fifteen years ago, right where they 0:39:13.840 --> 0:39:18.800 discovered it by using scotch tape on a pencil lead shavings. Yeah, 0:39:18.840 --> 0:39:21.240 in two thousand and ten. They won the Nobel Prize 0:39:21.280 --> 0:39:24.440 for an experiment they published in two thousand four. And 0:39:24.480 --> 0:39:27.200 these are two folks in the UK that, as you say, 0:39:27.400 --> 0:39:30.640 you scotch tape, they took like pieces of graphite and 0:39:30.640 --> 0:39:32.840 they realized that if you get scotch tape on the 0:39:32.840 --> 0:39:35.600 graphite and you pull it away, you get thinner pieces 0:39:35.600 --> 0:39:38.799 of graphite, sometimes very very thin. And then they would 0:39:38.920 --> 0:39:41.560 pride these pieces of scotch tape open, and they would 0:39:41.560 --> 0:39:44.120 do it again and again and again until they got 0:39:44.520 --> 0:39:48.560 mono layers of graphite, which they called graphine. Right, it's 0:39:48.600 --> 0:39:52.799 like you create like a sheet of single carbon atoms. Yeah, 0:39:52.880 --> 0:39:55.439 a sheet of single carbon atoms. Now in your mind 0:39:55.440 --> 0:39:57.799 you might be imagining like that they're rolling out some 0:39:57.960 --> 0:40:00.800 huge roll of this stuff that's like ten by ten meters. 0:40:00.920 --> 0:40:02.680 What they were able to do in their first paper 0:40:02.920 --> 0:40:06.640 were pieces of graphing that were ten microns in size. 0:40:06.880 --> 0:40:09.000 That's still pretty big. I mean it's like, you know, 0:40:09.080 --> 0:40:12.759 maybe a couple of hundred adams in each side. Absolutely, 0:40:13.000 --> 0:40:15.680 so it's pretty impressive. And they had some bigger pieces 0:40:15.680 --> 0:40:17.560 that you could see by I they weren't actually down 0:40:17.600 --> 0:40:20.680 to one atomic layer. There were like several atomic layers. 0:40:20.920 --> 0:40:23.840 This is not a very precise method. You know, scotch 0:40:23.920 --> 0:40:26.400 tape on pencil shavings essentially, I mean, it's not like 0:40:26.480 --> 0:40:28.560 duct tape. If you used duct tape, then then you're 0:40:28.560 --> 0:40:31.239 really doing real physics. I would guess that every Experimental 0:40:31.239 --> 0:40:34.279 physics Nobel Prize since duct tape was invented has had 0:40:34.360 --> 0:40:37.399 duct tapes somewhere in their experience. That Mr Duck should 0:40:37.560 --> 0:40:41.080 get his own prize in engineering somewhere. But it also 0:40:41.160 --> 0:40:44.760 means that we've probably all been generating sheets of graphing 0:40:44.960 --> 0:40:47.880 every time we've used pencils, because this stuff really is 0:40:47.920 --> 0:40:50.520 so riddle. You get these little sheets of graphing, these 0:40:50.520 --> 0:40:54.120 two dimensional materials falling off of your pencils. Yeah, and 0:40:54.160 --> 0:40:57.440 graphing is interesting because it's not just like flat, almost 0:40:57.480 --> 0:41:00.960 two dimensional, but it has some pretty using properties. Right. 0:41:01.160 --> 0:41:05.040 It's really an incredibly different kind of stuff than graphite. 0:41:05.280 --> 0:41:08.000 You know, graphite, this stuff in your pencil not very strong, right, 0:41:08.000 --> 0:41:09.920 You wouldn't want to build like a sheet of armor 0:41:10.239 --> 0:41:13.960 out of this stuff. But graphene is two hundred times 0:41:13.960 --> 0:41:17.600 stronger than steel by weight, and it's like a sheet 0:41:17.600 --> 0:41:20.080 of it is a thousand times lighter than a sheet 0:41:20.120 --> 0:41:21.840 of paper. What does that mean? Stronger? Like, if you 0:41:21.920 --> 0:41:23.719 pull in it or try to poke through it, it 0:41:23.719 --> 0:41:26.560 will be stronger than if you made it out of steel. 0:41:27.200 --> 0:41:29.360 You can support the weight, so you can hang something 0:41:29.400 --> 0:41:31.840 from it, for example, or build things out of it. 0:41:31.840 --> 0:41:34.799 It's stronger than steel. You could, for example, make a 0:41:34.960 --> 0:41:38.200 hammock that's so thin it would be invisible, and the 0:41:38.320 --> 0:41:40.800 cat could sit on the hammock and be like floating 0:41:40.840 --> 0:41:44.120 in air cool and it also has interesting electrical properties. Right, 0:41:44.160 --> 0:41:46.720 It's really an incredible material because it has the most 0:41:46.880 --> 0:41:50.680 electrical and thermal conductivity of any material we know about 0:41:50.960 --> 0:41:55.319 at room temperature. So it's like the strongest, lightest, most 0:41:55.360 --> 0:42:00.120 electrically conductive, most thermally conductive material basically we've ever discovered it. 0:42:00.320 --> 0:42:02.319 Now is the idea then to make like computer chips 0:42:02.320 --> 0:42:06.480 out of it, Like instead of using silicon and you know, 0:42:06.560 --> 0:42:09.279 doping in and printing it, you could maybe draw it 0:42:09.440 --> 0:42:12.799 using graphing. That was the original idea because we know 0:42:12.920 --> 0:42:15.480 that chips need to get smaller and smaller for computers 0:42:15.480 --> 0:42:17.920 to get faster and faster. But we're sort of approaching 0:42:17.960 --> 0:42:21.879 the limit of what semiconductors can do, and it's really 0:42:21.880 --> 0:42:25.240 hard to imagine making things that are smaller out of metal. 0:42:25.520 --> 0:42:29.360 So these guys achieved creating a material which is electrically 0:42:29.360 --> 0:42:32.640 conductive and so can be used to form these chips 0:42:32.719 --> 0:42:35.680 and is super duper narrow. So that's exactly what people 0:42:35.680 --> 0:42:38.920 are working on applications of graphing to do electronics and 0:42:38.920 --> 0:42:42.239 computer chips, but also construction, you know, making things out 0:42:42.239 --> 0:42:44.239 of this new kind of material, Right, like you can 0:42:44.239 --> 0:42:48.080 maybe stack these sheets and make super strong body armor 0:42:48.160 --> 0:42:51.160 basically or anything, right the house. Yeah, and you get 0:42:51.200 --> 0:42:53.640 really weird properties, like you can make sheets of graphing, 0:42:53.680 --> 0:42:56.319 but there are also other kinds of materials you can 0:42:56.360 --> 0:42:59.240 now make model layers of and you take one sheet 0:42:59.239 --> 0:43:01.480 of graphing as sheet of something else, and you can 0:43:01.520 --> 0:43:04.520 make these weird structures they're called hetero structures that now 0:43:04.640 --> 0:43:08.160 have other really strange properties. And so because these are 0:43:08.200 --> 0:43:10.520 weird two D materials, you can stack them together to 0:43:10.600 --> 0:43:14.200 make three D sort of like designer materials. You can 0:43:14.239 --> 0:43:17.200 make materials that are totally different from anything we've been 0:43:17.200 --> 0:43:19.319 able to make before. So it's opened up this whole 0:43:19.360 --> 0:43:23.480 new field of like engineering new kinds of materials. So 0:43:23.520 --> 0:43:24.840 you can build a house and then you can let 0:43:24.880 --> 0:43:26.680 your kids draw in it with a pencil and it'd 0:43:26.719 --> 0:43:31.640 be totally acceptable. Right, You're like, I have nothing, I 0:43:31.680 --> 0:43:35.239 have nothing for that. All right, that's a cartoonist dream house, 0:43:35.280 --> 0:43:37.000 it sounds like to me. All right. So then you 0:43:37.000 --> 0:43:41.440 can also make these two D materials using quasi particles, 0:43:41.480 --> 0:43:43.759 which I know we talked about before, but maybe we 0:43:43.800 --> 0:43:47.720 didn't talk about the two dimensionality of them. Yeah, quasi particles. Remember, 0:43:47.920 --> 0:43:49.920 our things are not particles in the way that we 0:43:49.960 --> 0:43:53.360 think about them, but mathematically they follow the same rules 0:43:53.400 --> 0:43:55.799 as particles. And so the way I think about it 0:43:55.840 --> 0:43:58.720 is like, well, a particle is a little excited blob 0:43:58.760 --> 0:44:01.440 of energy and a quantum field. You can also have 0:44:01.480 --> 0:44:04.399 excited blobs of energy and other stuff that stays sort 0:44:04.400 --> 0:44:07.640 of localized and moves around, and so sort of follows 0:44:07.640 --> 0:44:10.960 the same math that we use to consider particles. And 0:44:11.000 --> 0:44:13.359 the kind of thing you can deposit energy into is 0:44:13.400 --> 0:44:16.360 like a sheet of plasma. You know. Plasma is this 0:44:16.520 --> 0:44:19.600 fourth state of matter where you heat up stuff hot 0:44:19.719 --> 0:44:22.040 enough that the electrons go free, and you have this 0:44:22.160 --> 0:44:25.839 basically gas of charged particles. Like what's in the sun 0:44:26.239 --> 0:44:29.800 is plasma or what's in your fluorescent light tumbe is plasma. 0:44:29.880 --> 0:44:32.839 Plasma because it's charged and has lots of really strong 0:44:32.880 --> 0:44:36.520 electromagnetic forces, and so sometimes it forms these sheets, you know, 0:44:36.520 --> 0:44:38.759 it's like separates into sheets, a positive sheet in a 0:44:38.800 --> 0:44:43.040 negative sheet, and those sheets can have excited states. Sometimes 0:44:43.080 --> 0:44:46.440 like ripples go through those sheets and they act like particles. 0:44:46.680 --> 0:44:50.000 So that's a quasi particle that's called an en eon. Yeah, 0:44:50.040 --> 0:44:52.480 and I know what's kind of exciting about these materials 0:44:52.600 --> 0:44:56.080 is their application in things like quantum computers, right, and 0:44:56.200 --> 0:44:59.000 encryption and making things that are sort of full proof 0:44:59.040 --> 0:45:03.799 against quantum decoherence. There are certainly applications in quantum computers 0:45:03.840 --> 0:45:06.520 for some quasi particles. I think that for me, the 0:45:06.560 --> 0:45:09.640 exciting thing about them is that they follow rules of 0:45:09.680 --> 0:45:12.840 a different universe. They follow the rules of a two 0:45:12.880 --> 0:45:16.520 dimensional universe, like the mathematical rules the things we're talking 0:45:16.560 --> 0:45:18.400 about very early in the top of the program, like 0:45:18.600 --> 0:45:20.759 why is our universe three D and not four D? 0:45:20.840 --> 0:45:22.640 And what would it be like? We can sort of 0:45:22.680 --> 0:45:25.200 see what a two D universe really would be like, 0:45:25.520 --> 0:45:27.359 and we have the math to describe it. But now 0:45:27.360 --> 0:45:29.520 we actually get to see the physics of it, and 0:45:29.560 --> 0:45:31.320 you might wonder, like, well, what would it do D 0:45:31.480 --> 0:45:34.000 universe be? Like? How could that be different? You know, 0:45:34.040 --> 0:45:37.880 in a two dimensional universe there's a different relationship, for example, right, 0:45:37.920 --> 0:45:41.279 between energy and velocity. Like in our universe energy is 0:45:41.320 --> 0:45:44.560 one half MV squared, right, there's a V squared there, 0:45:44.960 --> 0:45:47.400 But in a two dimensional universe it's not V squared. 0:45:47.480 --> 0:45:50.879 There's a linear relationship between energy and velocity. So that's 0:45:50.880 --> 0:45:53.560 the kind of mathematical difference. You get like different kind 0:45:53.600 --> 0:45:56.840 of physics in these two d universes, and so you 0:45:56.840 --> 0:46:00.440 can see that happening in these examples. And it's especially 0:46:00.520 --> 0:46:04.719 weird for an eons is that they follow different spin statistics. 0:46:05.280 --> 0:46:08.160 Like we have particles in our universe that are either 0:46:08.239 --> 0:46:12.360 fermions or bosons, and fermions don't like to exist in 0:46:12.440 --> 0:46:15.399 the same quantum state, whereas bosons are happy to hang 0:46:15.440 --> 0:46:18.840 out in the same quantum state. Well, anyons can be 0:46:19.080 --> 0:46:23.480 somewhere between fermions and bosons. They're not like fermions exactly, 0:46:23.520 --> 0:46:26.320 They're not like boson's exactly. They're like has sort of 0:46:26.360 --> 0:46:29.839 like fractional in between states. Cool, you'd have to start 0:46:29.840 --> 0:46:33.520 a whole new field called cartoon physics basically, right, Like 0:46:33.560 --> 0:46:35.839 it's a whole new and different, whole new ball game, 0:46:36.000 --> 0:46:38.080 whole new comic book. It's a whole new ball game 0:46:38.120 --> 0:46:40.280 and a whole new way to like explore the universe 0:46:40.440 --> 0:46:43.319 and see weird stuff and to get surprised. Well, it 0:46:43.360 --> 0:46:46.520 sounds pretty cool. It sounds like to the objects are 0:46:46.560 --> 0:46:49.759 not just as possible and theoretical, but they're also right 0:46:49.800 --> 0:46:52.000 here in our universe. You can make them. You can 0:46:52.239 --> 0:46:54.680 create them, you can sandwich them, you can make pizzas 0:46:54.719 --> 0:46:57.960 out of them, put entovies on them, and so that 0:46:58.080 --> 0:47:00.879 opens things up to a lot of interesting new math 0:47:01.000 --> 0:47:03.719 and maybe a whole bunch of new materials. And so 0:47:03.840 --> 0:47:07.200 to have the last word, we'll bring back Professor Rohani 0:47:07.480 --> 0:47:09.279 to tell us a little bit about the future of 0:47:09.320 --> 0:47:12.840 these new and exciting materials. Oh. I think there is 0:47:12.880 --> 0:47:15.680 a lot of research already in experiment even as you 0:47:15.800 --> 0:47:19.040 see I I and a lot of researching different two 0:47:19.040 --> 0:47:22.560 dimensional materials. Graphin is not the only one. There are 0:47:22.880 --> 0:47:28.000 materials so cood, wonderbos materials, and these are layer materials 0:47:28.000 --> 0:47:31.400 that you can imagine as very similar to the graphite 0:47:31.719 --> 0:47:33.799 of which you can peel off the grappin, so you 0:47:33.840 --> 0:47:37.239 have very weakly connected layers and that you can just 0:47:37.360 --> 0:47:41.120 build the layers of these materials. And what people can 0:47:41.120 --> 0:47:44.160 do with them is kind of engineer the band structure 0:47:44.239 --> 0:47:48.120 and therefore together with that engineer physical properties of material 0:47:48.440 --> 0:47:51.800 and create new type of material with completely new physical 0:47:51.800 --> 0:47:54.799 properties just by putting these layers on top of each other, 0:47:55.280 --> 0:47:59.399 like making making a sandwich or something of them. They're 0:47:59.400 --> 0:48:03.680 doing ex ments are using orso graphine and hexagonal born 0:48:03.760 --> 0:48:07.759 n trade and other condropost materials. And I think the 0:48:07.920 --> 0:48:11.400 transition method that could janites I can pronounce that the 0:48:11.560 --> 0:48:15.960 perfectly yes, that you can use to build these different 0:48:16.040 --> 0:48:18.799 kind of so called hetero structures when you just leave 0:48:18.800 --> 0:48:22.239 your you know, these different two dimensional materials on top 0:48:22.280 --> 0:48:25.520 of each other and then create new types of materials 0:48:25.600 --> 0:48:30.080 and you know, examine, how do I change the physical properties? 0:48:30.120 --> 0:48:33.560 Can I make a superconductor or can I make out 0:48:33.560 --> 0:48:35.800 of you know, like I have graphine, which is insanely 0:48:35.800 --> 0:48:38.400 good conductor, but if I leave you and maybe the 0:48:38.520 --> 0:48:42.239 becompany insulator and so on. So you know, all of 0:48:42.280 --> 0:48:44.520 discussions and I think it's very nice because it's kind 0:48:44.520 --> 0:48:49.000 of playground and you can build so many things with 0:48:49.120 --> 0:48:51.719 this and not just you know, I kind of try 0:48:51.760 --> 0:48:55.960 to engineer and make functional materials that you can then 0:48:56.160 --> 0:48:59.200 use in applications for you know, the semi conductor business, 0:48:59.239 --> 0:49:01.440 which is huge, right, so you can just make you know, 0:49:01.600 --> 0:49:05.200 faster for more efficient chips and stuff like that, but 0:49:05.320 --> 0:49:09.279 also completely new technologies. And I think a lot of 0:49:09.320 --> 0:49:11.560 research has already put in the in the past I 0:49:11.560 --> 0:49:15.280 think ten fifteen years. So you can take bread slices 0:49:15.320 --> 0:49:18.480 and slices and then rebuild it in different slices to 0:49:18.560 --> 0:49:21.560 make whatever you like, to make all sorts of new stuff. Yeah, 0:49:22.239 --> 0:49:25.880 synthetic materials. Yeah. Like think you take a slice of 0:49:25.880 --> 0:49:28.360 bread which is not a bread anymore. It is completely different, 0:49:28.440 --> 0:49:30.000 and then you put some ham on it, and it's 0:49:30.040 --> 0:49:32.799 not a sandwich. Is just something entirely different. You know, 0:49:32.840 --> 0:49:35.200 it's likely So it's insane. All right. That was a 0:49:35.239 --> 0:49:39.160 deep dive into some to the ideas. Sounds like the 0:49:39.200 --> 0:49:42.000 future is bright for these two D objects. Yeah, and 0:49:42.000 --> 0:49:46.040 people are just now thinking about even crazier ideas, like mathematically, 0:49:46.280 --> 0:49:48.880 can you have a one D object? Can you construct 0:49:48.880 --> 0:49:51.480 an object that's just a string of atoms that are 0:49:51.520 --> 0:49:54.480 somehow bound together? What would be the properties of that 0:49:54.560 --> 0:49:56.520 kind of thing? How could you make it? Could you 0:49:56.600 --> 0:49:59.680 like take graphine and somehow like slice it off using 0:49:59.719 --> 0:50:02.719 two the Scotch tape to make one D strings? Is 0:50:02.760 --> 0:50:05.799 that the next Nobel Prize? Oh? Man, I feel like 0:50:05.800 --> 0:50:07.560 you should take it easy and just maybe go one 0:50:07.600 --> 0:50:10.439 and a half D first, you know what I mean? 0:50:10.520 --> 0:50:14.120 Like that's crazy. Hey, Well, my wife says I'm too dimensional, 0:50:14.200 --> 0:50:17.040 so I gotta mechanic go on a diet exactly. But 0:50:17.120 --> 0:50:19.279 until then we can have fun thinking about these things, 0:50:19.600 --> 0:50:22.360 wondering what the math is like in a one dimensional universe, 0:50:22.520 --> 0:50:24.799 and maybe one day somebody will build a one D 0:50:25.000 --> 0:50:28.120 object and we can actually see how electrons move along 0:50:28.160 --> 0:50:30.399 it in one dimension. You just you have to look 0:50:30.400 --> 0:50:31.640 at it from the side. You can't look at it 0:50:31.719 --> 0:50:33.560 hit on. All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. 0:50:34.239 --> 0:50:45.240 Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening, 0:50:45.239 --> 0:50:48.000 and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is 0:50:48.040 --> 0:50:51.520 a production of I Heart Radio or more podcast from 0:50:51.520 --> 0:50:55.279 my heart Radio. Visit the I Heart Radio Apple Apple Podcasts, 0:50:55.400 --> 0:51:02.040 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.