Speaker 1: Daniel, you were wish you'd studied a more practical science.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, I think you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You study? You mean, should I have studied something that
Speaker 1: has actual practical applications that could help people in their
Speaker 1: everyday lives. Yeah, you know, something that saves people's lives
Speaker 1: for example, or you know, or turned lead into gold. Well,
Speaker 1: those are great examples because those are the two things
Speaker 1: that particle physics actually does do. I thought turning lead
Speaker 1: into goal was alchemy, you know, a pseudoscience from hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago. It used to be pseudoscience, but now
Speaker 1: we have made it real science. Particle physics can actually
Speaker 1: do this, but as always there's a catch. Welcome to
Speaker 1: our podcast This is Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radio, in which we look
Speaker 1: all around the universe and try to find fascinating little
Speaker 1: nuggets of intellectual gold, or turn mysterious nuggets of intellectual
Speaker 1: lead into nuggets of understandable intellectual gold. That's right. We
Speaker 1: are podcasts alchemists turning bad jokes into comedy gold. That's right.
Speaker 1: We turned the mysterious into the understandable. Physics can do anything.
Speaker 1: We still haven't figured out teleportation or anti gravity or
Speaker 1: warp drives or um, you know, how to make my
Speaker 1: internet actually go quickly? Still a mystery for me for sure.
Speaker 1: Here at my house. We'll probably figure out teleportation before
Speaker 1: we figure out fast internet at home. Yeah, which one
Speaker 1: is more impossible? I don't know. If I could just
Speaker 1: teleport the data from Netflix to my TV, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: need the Internet. Maybe that is how they do it,
Speaker 1: That's how they should do it. At least somebody over
Speaker 1: at Netflix is pouring a billion dollars into their teleportation
Speaker 1: department right now. So to be on the podcast, we
Speaker 1: are tackling a topic that used to be considered magic
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago. Right, alchemy, This idea that you
Speaker 1: can transmute or transform one element into a totally different element.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that was back in the day when
Speaker 1: they thought that what we consider the elements were the
Speaker 1: fundamental building blocks of the universe. You know, they were like, here,
Speaker 1: we found these things that make up everything, and you
Speaker 1: combine them in different ways to make cool stuff. But
Speaker 1: they seem to be sort of the basic building blocks.
Speaker 1: They hadn't yet broken them up and found the smaller
Speaker 1: bits and so it made sense that people were like, well,
Speaker 1: is it possible to change one kind of thing into
Speaker 1: another kind of thing? Because you know, one kind of
Speaker 1: thing like lead, you can find it not to without
Speaker 1: much difficulty, and it's not that valuable, while other kinds
Speaker 1: of things like tremendously valuable. So it seemed appealing not
Speaker 1: just from the economic point of view, but from the
Speaker 1: sort of deep understanding point of view, like can we
Speaker 1: turn one thing into another kind of thing? To be
Speaker 1: on the burg and we'll be talking about how do
Speaker 1: you make gold? How do you make the shiny golden
Speaker 1: stuff that everybody, every human seems to want for some
Speaker 1: weird and almost arbitrary reasons. That's right, well, that's economics, right,
Speaker 1: it's all arbitrary. And it's not just about how do
Speaker 1: we make gold or how could you make gold? Or
Speaker 1: could you fabricate gold in your garage? But it's like
Speaker 1: how does the universe make gold? Like where does gold
Speaker 1: come from? Right? What was it created during the Big Bang?
Speaker 1: Is it made in the core of the earth. Is
Speaker 1: it all made the lab of somebody somewhere in Europe,
Speaker 1: you know, underground somewhere, or is there some other mysterious
Speaker 1: process How is gold made? Are we going to be
Speaker 1: selling gold making kids at the end of this podcast, Daniel,
Speaker 1: you could probably make a lot of money. Just be
Speaker 1: a box of lead with some instructions that say, Step one,
Speaker 1: race a quadrillion dollars. Step two, build a particle collider. Done,
Speaker 1: we have a particle collider. You just need to apply
Speaker 1: for time at the large age on collider. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll send you a lump of gold and instructions for
Speaker 1: how to get to CERN. Step one, apply fill out
Speaker 1: this application. Yeah, first send us and you'll get these
Speaker 1: incredible items. Technically it would be a real thing like
Speaker 1: it is, actually the steps of how to make gold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you really can. I think it's sort of cool that
Speaker 1: we have understood the way the universe works, the sort
Speaker 1: of elemental understanding, to a point where we do see
Speaker 1: how these things are put together. We can understand them
Speaker 1: from the ground up. You know, how to assemble protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons and what makes something gold and something else.
Speaker 1: Led to the point where we can actually change them
Speaker 1: from one to the other. I mean, it's not economically feasible,
Speaker 1: but we do have the power. We have conquered this
Speaker 1: barrier of the elements Yeah, Well, why do you think
Speaker 1: humans are so fascinated with gold, like, out of all
Speaker 1: the elements? Why? Why? Why is gold too special in
Speaker 1: human culture? I think I have to refer to a
Speaker 1: comment made by my good friend and wise comic, who said,
Speaker 1: humans like sparkly things. That's something my grandma always used
Speaker 1: to say. Why is it every time you say something
Speaker 1: sort of wise, you just attribute it to your grandma?
Speaker 1: She was a wise woman. I think it's just your humility.
Speaker 1: You don't want to come off sounding like you think
Speaker 1: your intelligence you should be this to this fictional grandma.
Speaker 1: I think I just don't want to reveal that I
Speaker 1: have no idea where I got that quote. Let's so
Speaker 1: anonymous becomes Jorge's grandma. Yeah, so people like shiny, sparkly things,
Speaker 1: and that's what gold is. Right. It doesn't staying right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't rust when you make something out of goal.
Speaker 1: It just always stays shining right. That's what's special about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, And the other special thing is that it's rare. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't find a lump of goal under every rock.
Speaker 1: It's not in lots of places, and so because it's
Speaker 1: hard to get, that makes it valuable, right, but it's
Speaker 1: sort of this weird thing. I mean, my kids ask
Speaker 1: me this question, like why is gold cost so much?
Speaker 1: And it really is just you know, something we've all
Speaker 1: decided on. You know, It's this weird thing I never
Speaker 1: really understood about economics, is that the value of something
Speaker 1: is really just what people are willing to pay for it.
Speaker 1: So we all decided that, you know, something else was
Speaker 1: better than gold, and we were willing to pay for it,
Speaker 1: and we would have created this enormous wealth, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the new podcast Daniel and Jorge explain economics. Dane,
Speaker 1: Orge are clueless about economics and pontificate ignorantly. Now, but
Speaker 1: there is something special about gold itself as a metal, right,
Speaker 1: It is shinier than most other elements, right, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't rust, and it's it's easy to make smooth. Right,
Speaker 1: It's something there's something special about it. Yeah, it's malleable
Speaker 1: in this cool way, you know, but it's it's still arbitrary.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's like beauty, right, it's just what
Speaker 1: we decide. We think it's cool, we think it's interesting,
Speaker 1: and we think it looks good and jewelry and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, why is gold so much more valuable than silver.
Speaker 1: You know, it is more rare, and people do like
Speaker 1: it more, but it holds a special place. You know,
Speaker 1: do you think it's somehow related to our evolution to
Speaker 1: sort of like sunlight and you know, shiny light and
Speaker 1: gold that particularly gold color. Oh man, I think that
Speaker 1: whole field of science is bologna. Is like attempt to
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology, like this attempt to say like maybe we
Speaker 1: act this way because it could have been preferential and
Speaker 1: the savannah or something like. I think that you can
Speaker 1: you can explain almost anything using that kind of logic. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: so it's rare on Earth, and that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: Why is it rarer? And how do you how is
Speaker 1: it made? And could we make it here in the
Speaker 1: lab for example? Yeah, exactly, and h you know, if
Speaker 1: you start thinking about like where this stuff comes from,
Speaker 1: you might wonder like how does this stuff all get made?
Speaker 1: You know, how did things begin? You know, did was
Speaker 1: all the stuff in the universe made in the first
Speaker 1: bill a second you know, made during the Big Bang?
Speaker 1: Or would the big bang just make hydrogen and everything
Speaker 1: else gets assembled later? These are really fascinating questions and
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing that really it's just sort
Speaker 1: of the kind of puzzle that scientists can use to
Speaker 1: understand the mechanisms of the universe, Like what's going on
Speaker 1: in the universe. Can we explain how much hydrogen there is,
Speaker 1: and how much iron there is, and how much of
Speaker 1: this there is. It's a huge amount of really specific
Speaker 1: data that helps us understand what's going on in the universe.
Speaker 1: We let's just build models to try to explain what
Speaker 1: we've seen. And because the data is so specific, there's
Speaker 1: so many different elements and we can measure their abundance.
Speaker 1: It gives us a lot of handles for understanding like
Speaker 1: what's going on inside stars and inside other astrophysical objects. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see. It's kind of a question of did all
Speaker 1: the ingredients for the universe that we see around us
Speaker 1: right now? Was that all there from the beginning at
Speaker 1: the Big Bang? You know, that everything that we need
Speaker 1: to make the universe as it is now get created
Speaker 1: in those first few moments, or that the universe get
Speaker 1: created one way and then the ingredients of a change
Speaker 1: over time exactly. And it's just part of this larger
Speaker 1: question of do we understand what's around us? You know,
Speaker 1: we look around us and we see, okay, we've see
Speaker 1: this this stuff. Do we understand how it got there?
Speaker 1: So we try to tell a story, you know, we
Speaker 1: want to make sure that the story makes sense. Do
Speaker 1: we know how the story began? Do we understand why
Speaker 1: went this way not the other way? And so, as
Speaker 1: a part, it's been like a hundred years we've been
Speaker 1: trying to piece this story together to explain why we
Speaker 1: see what, you know, the stuff we see in the universe,
Speaker 1: and where it is. Can we understand it? So it's
Speaker 1: a pretty big question. And so today on the podcast,
Speaker 1: we're talking about one specific thing, which is gold, and
Speaker 1: so we were wondering how many people out there know
Speaker 1: where gold is made or how it's made. I walked
Speaker 1: around the campus you see, Irvine, and I popped this
Speaker 1: question to a bunch of unsuspecting students or whoever else
Speaker 1: would happen to be around campus that day, and I
Speaker 1: asked them where do you think gold is made? So
Speaker 1: before you listen to these answers, think for yourself for
Speaker 1: a moment do you know where gold is made? And
Speaker 1: if you get the r answer right, you get a
Speaker 1: gold star right, or a lead star or a lead
Speaker 1: star and an application form. Well, here's what people had
Speaker 1: to say. Maybe in the sun on another planet, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure won't be in like fusion in the center
Speaker 1: of Yeah, I'm not sure. I would say a big
Speaker 1: bang like in the Earth's crust through collision. Uh. I
Speaker 1: have no idea chemically or physically like whatever happens within
Speaker 1: the core, like gold aliens, like the species after dat,
Speaker 1: it's just naturally rotted and it becomes gold. Alright, A
Speaker 1: lot of interesting answers, and honestly, they all seem kind
Speaker 1: of plausible to me. You know, some people said that
Speaker 1: gold is made inside of the Earth at the core,
Speaker 1: the core of the Earth, or inside of stars or
Speaker 1: the first ones you mentioned. The ones people said maybe
Speaker 1: it was made inside the earth. That puzzled me for
Speaker 1: a bit until somebody said, you know, kind of like diamonds,
Speaker 1: and then I realized, yeah, that's true. Diamonds really are
Speaker 1: made inside the earth. Is the pressure of the Earth
Speaker 1: on carbon the core that that creates these these incredible crystals,
Speaker 1: And so it is plausible to think, like you know,
Speaker 1: jewels and gold, maybe they're just made in high temperature
Speaker 1: reactions inside the Earth. So I understood the line of
Speaker 1: thinking after a bit. Yeah, because it's it's also kind
Speaker 1: of a rare and valuable thing, and maybe people a
Speaker 1: shid rare and valuable with the things taking a long
Speaker 1: time to make an extreme conditions. Yeah, and like many
Speaker 1: plausible ideas, it's totally wrong. No gold start for you, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's get into this idea of gold. What do
Speaker 1: we know about gold? Well, it's shiny and it looks
Speaker 1: good on your finger. Um, But the think the thing
Speaker 1: to understand is that gold is one of the elements, right,
Speaker 1: And the identity of these elements is determined by how
Speaker 1: many protons there are in the nucleus. So remember every
Speaker 1: everything that's elemental is just an atom, right, It's not
Speaker 1: a mixture of different elements. It's it's just an atom,
Speaker 1: and the atom has a nucleus insided and the nucleus
Speaker 1: has protons and neutrons. And the thing that determines the
Speaker 1: identity which element you are? Are you hydrogen, are you helium?
Speaker 1: Are unickel? Are you uranium? Is the number of protons
Speaker 1: in the nucleus, right, Because all these elements they're not
Speaker 1: they're all just variations of the same thing, right, Like
Speaker 1: different combinations of the same thing. Right, used to me
Speaker 1: that we used to think that carbon and oxygen there
Speaker 1: like its own thing in the universe, but actually turned
Speaker 1: out that they're just the same thing, just rearranged differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's more about the numbers. Like, you take
Speaker 1: one proton and one electron, you get hydrogen. Right, you
Speaker 1: add another proton and another electron to balance it out electrically,
Speaker 1: and you get helium. And so it's just the number
Speaker 1: of servings you get, right, that determines which element you are.
Speaker 1: And you're right, it's fascinating that these things aren't fundamental
Speaker 1: but there are just made out of the same things,
Speaker 1: but they're so vastly different. Right, Iron is totally different
Speaker 1: from helium. It's totally different from silicon, from carbon, from oxygen,
Speaker 1: but all these things are made up of the same stuff.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing I blows my mind
Speaker 1: every time I think about it, that the the critical
Speaker 1: identity of these things comes not from what they're made
Speaker 1: out of, but just from the arrangements of the particles
Speaker 1: inside them. Yeah, it's kind of like if you think
Speaker 1: about like your favorite recipe of your favorite kind of food, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's you add a lot of ingredients into it,
Speaker 1: but really at the end, all of those ingredients are
Speaker 1: probably just carbon and hydrogen, right, that's true. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would say the critical issue for baking is whether
Speaker 1: or not includes chocolate. Includes chocolate, it's going to be tasty.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's a question mark. I don't know. Hast chocolate.
Speaker 1: It's golden wins the gold star. And so the thing
Speaker 1: about gold is that it's pretty heavy, right. It has
Speaker 1: a lot of protons in the nucleus. Right, So as
Speaker 1: you add a proton to a nucleus, it gets heavier
Speaker 1: and heavier, and you walk your way up the periodic table.
Speaker 1: And as an aside, did you start with hydrogen? Right?
Speaker 1: You start hydrogen is like the simplest atom is just
Speaker 1: one proton and one electron, That's right, That's the first
Speaker 1: thing you would make. And that's the first thing that
Speaker 1: the universe did make in fact, and still it's what
Speaker 1: most of the universe is. Most of the universe, like
Speaker 1: seventy four percent of the universe is hydrogen. And uh.
Speaker 1: And then then the reason is that it's the simplest thing, right,
Speaker 1: But as you walk your way the periodic table, you
Speaker 1: add a proton, you get more and more complex stuff.
Speaker 1: And this is how we knew that there were gaps
Speaker 1: in the periodic table. Right. We we said, okay, we
Speaker 1: see this element, we see that element, we see the
Speaker 1: other element. We can measure how many protons there are
Speaker 1: in the nucleus of an element, and then we put
Speaker 1: them in place, and then we could tell oh, look
Speaker 1: there's nothing with you know, this number of protons. How
Speaker 1: can we haven't found anything with that number of protons.
Speaker 1: So we go look forward and we try to make
Speaker 1: it or this kind of stuff. It's it's cool that
Speaker 1: the identity of the elements determined just by the number
Speaker 1: of protons. Yeah, until you start with hydrogen, and then
Speaker 1: you add a proton and you get helium, and then
Speaker 1: you add another proton, and it just you go up
Speaker 1: up the list of elements and at some point you
Speaker 1: get to gold. Right, that's right. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: a hundred and some elements that we've discovered or created
Speaker 1: by now, and each one is so different and their
Speaker 1: properties are determined really just by how many protons, which
Speaker 1: determines how many electrons you need to balance it, and
Speaker 1: then how those atoms interact, so like why are some
Speaker 1: of the metallic and some of them are conductors, and
Speaker 1: some of them are really active and some are inactive.
Speaker 1: All of that is determined just by how the electrons
Speaker 1: fill out their orbitals, right, whether they like to interact
Speaker 1: with other atoms or not, And that in turn is
Speaker 1: determined by how many protons are in the nucleus. So
Speaker 1: it's really just proton counting. So you're saying gold is
Speaker 1: really just like a fat hydrogen. It's like a crowd
Speaker 1: of hydrogen. Yeah, it's just a cluster of a hydrogen
Speaker 1: and the kind of right, And but then then that
Speaker 1: really changes its behaviors. It totally changes this behavior. And
Speaker 1: it's the other thing I understand is that it's not
Speaker 1: easy to do, right. It's not that you can just
Speaker 1: very easily take two hydrogen atoms and make helium out
Speaker 1: of them. And the reason is that the nuclei don't
Speaker 1: like to hang out together. The nuclei nucleus of hydrogen
Speaker 1: atom is a proton which is positively charged. So they're
Speaker 1: going to repel each other. And we had a whole
Speaker 1: podcast episode about this recently. How does this happen? And
Speaker 1: you know, they will repel each other unless you force
Speaker 1: them together. You get them close enough together, the strong
Speaker 1: nuclear force takes over and then it attracts the quarks
Speaker 1: inside those proton on to tract each other, and they
Speaker 1: overcome that. We call that the Coolomb barrier because Coolumb
Speaker 1: is the guy who first thought about electromagnetic force electrostatic
Speaker 1: forces that repel each other. Yeah, I hear. He was
Speaker 1: a cool guy. Yeah, but there were some barriers to
Speaker 1: getting to know him. But it's like they snapped together, right,
Speaker 1: Like they repel each other, but at some point they
Speaker 1: get so close that they snapped together and they become
Speaker 1: a different element. Yeah, you can think of it's sort
Speaker 1: of like, um, hiking into a volcano. Right, You're walking
Speaker 1: up the hill and it's getting harder and harder and harder. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: it's steeper, and the sizes are getting steper and steper
Speaker 1: and steeper. It's it's easier to roll down away from
Speaker 1: the center of the volcano, but once you get to
Speaker 1: the top, right, it's very easy to just like fall
Speaker 1: into the center. And so it's sort of that way,
Speaker 1: and then you die a horrible death, right, or you
Speaker 1: fuse beautifully into something new. Right, you rise out of
Speaker 1: the ashes like a phoenix something else than beautiful. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you push them together hard enough, and that's what
Speaker 1: we call fusion. You you get the strong nuclear force
Speaker 1: to take over and it makes a new nucleus, right
Speaker 1: and it and it becomes something totally different. So this
Speaker 1: is alchemy, right, changing one element into another. Turns out
Speaker 1: you just gotta push hard enough, you know, or take
Speaker 1: protons out, and you can change what something is. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's how you make gold. You take hydrogen and
Speaker 1: you just keep building it up and at some point
Speaker 1: you go through all the elements and you get to
Speaker 1: the shiny stuff. Right, that's right. But that's not easy
Speaker 1: to do, right, you. It's really hard to squeeze these
Speaker 1: things together. They don't like to be together, right, It's
Speaker 1: not a configuration they like. So the question really is
Speaker 1: not how do you make gold, but like, where in
Speaker 1: the universe does this happen? How is it even possible?
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into that, and let's start with
Speaker 1: a big bang. But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: All right. We're talking about how to make gold, and
Speaker 1: so we know how to make it, which is you
Speaker 1: you build up hydrogen atom up until you get into
Speaker 1: the different elements and eventually you get to gold. But
Speaker 1: it's a pretty extreme process, like you need a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. That's right, you really do need a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. Um. It's not something that's easy to do. Um.
Speaker 1: And as usual a little with a hard physics question,
Speaker 1: Let's start with the Big Bang, right, because the creator
Speaker 1: of all things. Right, And you might think, well, the
Speaker 1: Big Bang, that was pretty hot and dense, and so
Speaker 1: maybe all that stuff was just made in the very beginning, yeah,
Speaker 1: because everything was compressed, and so I would think maybe
Speaker 1: a lot of gold was made in the Big Bang. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it takes a while to get the gold right,
Speaker 1: and so, and the Big Bang turns out was pretty short.
Speaker 1: You know, there was on a whole lot of time
Speaker 1: there to make stuff. The when the Big Bang started,
Speaker 1: it was really hot and dense. But also remember it
Speaker 1: was expanding really fast, right, that's the bang part of it.
Speaker 1: And so the universe started out really hot and dense,
Speaker 1: but it cooled off pretty quickly. The temperature dropped very rapidly,
Speaker 1: so there was actually only about twenty minutes. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of hilarious to talk about earlier
Speaker 1: universe in terms of like minutes you know, in days
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. It's not like there was an
Speaker 1: Earth on the Sun back then to even create these
Speaker 1: the meanings of these time units. But after about twenty
Speaker 1: minutes after the Big Bang on somebody's watch, the universe
Speaker 1: cooled down so that this kind of fusion wasn't possible anymore.
Speaker 1: So the things that were made in the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: of course, we're fundamental particles, you know, corks and electrons
Speaker 1: and stuff like this, and the corks came together to
Speaker 1: make protons, and the protons electrons found each other to
Speaker 1: make hydrogen, and there was a little bit of time
Speaker 1: left and they could make some helium and a few
Speaker 1: bits of trace elements higher up to like brillium or
Speaker 1: maybe boron and stuff. But really the Big Bang was
Speaker 1: all about making hydrogen and helium. You're saying kind of
Speaker 1: like the party was over before they could make gold.
Speaker 1: They wasted a lot of time dancing, and then they
Speaker 1: ran out of time at the end and they hadn't
Speaker 1: really finished their homework. Yeah, kind of right. That's that's
Speaker 1: what you're saying, is that it was intense in the
Speaker 1: Big Bang, but then by the time that you would
Speaker 1: get to making gold, everything was already spread out and
Speaker 1: cooled off. Yeah, and the thing that blows my mind
Speaker 1: the most is that the story hasn't really changed after
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. Twenty minutes into the universe, the universe was
Speaker 1: seventies five percent hydrogen and twenty five fish percent helium.
Speaker 1: And that's basically the story now. I mean, there's like
Speaker 1: one percent left over that's like other heavier stuff and that,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the bit we're talking about. That's the
Speaker 1: bit to make up me and you and all the
Speaker 1: interesting stuff in the universe that's not hydrogen helium. But
Speaker 1: it's really we're really just playing with the one percent.
Speaker 1: Most of the stuff in the universe is still the
Speaker 1: baryonic matter at least, we're not even talking about dark
Speaker 1: matter and dark energy. We're talking about atomic matter. There's
Speaker 1: still hydrogen and helium, and so all the changes, all
Speaker 1: the kind of visible changes in the universe from you know,
Speaker 1: a crazy cloud of nothing of chaos in two stars
Speaker 1: and planets and galaxies. That that's you. You're saying, that's
Speaker 1: only really the one percent. Yeah, exactly, we are the
Speaker 1: one percent. Well, I don't know how much you know,
Speaker 1: how my cartoons get paid, but you know, I'm more
Speaker 1: in the five five. Okay, so in the Big Bang
Speaker 1: and not a lot of gold was made, you're saying,
Speaker 1: that's right. Basically you get hydrogen helium and then gravity
Speaker 1: takes over. Right, You have these huge clouds of hydrogen
Speaker 1: and um and they're cool and they're neutral, right, So
Speaker 1: electromagnetism is not really doing much anymore. And then gravity
Speaker 1: takes over and it starts to pull this stuff together.
Speaker 1: These big nebula and these gas clouds get clumped together
Speaker 1: by gravity until things get dense enough that they start
Speaker 1: to heat upright, Gravitational pressure pushes on them, and you
Speaker 1: get stars. And so that's what a lot of people said.
Speaker 1: They said that maybe gold is made inside of stars
Speaker 1: because stars are pretty hot and uh, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure and there's a lot of explosives going
Speaker 1: on inside. So is gold made inside of stars? The
Speaker 1: answer is no, Actually, stars are not capable of making
Speaker 1: gold um. And I understand why a lot of people
Speaker 1: thought of that, because I think it's pretty commonly known
Speaker 1: these days that you know, we are all all star dust,
Speaker 1: and that's a really cool concept. You know that the
Speaker 1: stuff that makes us up is not made here or
Speaker 1: not made on Earth, or you know that it was
Speaker 1: made inside a star or somewhere else a long time ago,
Speaker 1: which then blew up. And that that part is true,
Speaker 1: that a lot of the elements that make us up,
Speaker 1: the heavier elements, are made inside of stars. And we'll
Speaker 1: go through it in a little bit of detail. But
Speaker 1: it turns out stars are not capable of making things
Speaker 1: heavier than like nickel or iron. Wait, you're saying Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan lied to us. Is that what you're saying here
Speaker 1: officially on the podcast? Well, no, no, If you're not
Speaker 1: made of gold, then Carl Sagan was correct. If you
Speaker 1: are made of gold, then yeah, so our animatronic gold
Speaker 1: plated AI listeners, you are exempt from Carl Sagan's wisdom. Okay,
Speaker 1: got it, got it. It's good to know, you know,
Speaker 1: just in case I was made out of goal. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't seen you in a few days,
Speaker 1: and maybe you did get replaced by a gold plated
Speaker 1: robot who knows. Okay, So, so you're saying a star
Speaker 1: by itself chugging along doesn't make gold. No, And what's
Speaker 1: happening inside a star is that it's fusing, right, it's
Speaker 1: doing that thing we talked about earlier with pushing the
Speaker 1: hydrogen nuclei together close enough that the strong force takes
Speaker 1: over and it makes helium nucleus. Right, and the key
Speaker 1: thing to understand is that that's not an energy neutral
Speaker 1: um event. What happens when you do that is you
Speaker 1: release energy. There's less energy in a helium nucleus than
Speaker 1: there is in two hydrogen nuclei. So when you form
Speaker 1: the helium nucleus, this energy left over, it releases energy.
Speaker 1: It's like burning, right, That's what burning is. There's less
Speaker 1: energy stored in wood ash than there is in wood,
Speaker 1: which is why when you burn it, energy is released
Speaker 1: as fire. It's kind of like when you take two
Speaker 1: three year olds who are hyperactive and then smash them together.
Speaker 1: Sitting that with an iPad iPad, Suddenly there's a lot
Speaker 1: of leftover energy. That's right. I've never noticed them heating up,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure. But because of conservation of energy that
Speaker 1: that energy does go somewhere. The energy goes to the
Speaker 1: parents or like except the how come parents are always
Speaker 1: napping while their kids are on the iPad? I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how the how the energy flow works. So there's
Speaker 1: a limit to what you can make inside of a star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's the burning of a star. Right, That's
Speaker 1: what makes the star hot is it does this process.
Speaker 1: It releases energy and that allows it to do more. Right,
Speaker 1: and you can do more. You can take the helium nuclei,
Speaker 1: you can fuse them together. And the same thing is
Speaker 1: true that if use two helium nuclei to get something heavier,
Speaker 1: and energy is released, and you can keep doing that
Speaker 1: and keep doing that, and keep doing that, and energy
Speaker 1: keeps being released and you get heavier and heavier stuff
Speaker 1: up to like nickel or up to iron. Right, but
Speaker 1: then it iron, something special happens, right, because iron is
Speaker 1: kind of a special is at a special place in
Speaker 1: the periodic table. Yeah, this is really interesting fact about
Speaker 1: how you put nuclei together. And remember the thing that
Speaker 1: holds a nucleus together is the strong force. Right, There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of protons and the strong forces holding them
Speaker 1: together by linking the corks inside the protons. But once
Speaker 1: you get to iron, there's more energy stored in the
Speaker 1: heavier combinations. So if you want to take two iron
Speaker 1: nuclei and fuse them together to make whatever to iron
Speaker 1: nuclei make, then you need to add energy. Right, you
Speaker 1: need to pour energy into that to make the heavier thing.
Speaker 1: So the result is that you're cooling the star instead
Speaker 1: of burning, right, But it doesn't actually cool it does
Speaker 1: it does absorb some of the energy from the star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if that happened, and it happened a lot, then it
Speaker 1: would cool the star. And so the thing you have
Speaker 1: to understand is that stars are like um, they're like
Speaker 1: a balance, right. They're fusing all the time. They're making
Speaker 1: this heavier stuff and that's releasing energy. But then that
Speaker 1: stuff is also getting blown apart because it's an incredible
Speaker 1: place in there is all these photons. You have photo disintegration.
Speaker 1: So you're like make something heavy and then you blow
Speaker 1: it up because of heavy photons or hitting it. Then
Speaker 1: you make something heavy and you blow it up, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of gradually accumulating heavier and heavier stuff, right,
Speaker 1: But you also got to keep the star burning. If
Speaker 1: the star doesn't stay hot enough, then it collapses. Right.
Speaker 1: Then it's you can no longer support itself from gravity winds.
Speaker 1: So if you start getting too much heavy stuff like
Speaker 1: the iron and the nickel and the stuff that if
Speaker 1: you do fuse it, it it costs you energy. That's the
Speaker 1: death knell of a star. That's when a star starts
Speaker 1: to die. Yeah. So it's like it burns all its fuel,
Speaker 1: it turns it into iron, and then it can't do
Speaker 1: anything with the iron anymore. Exactly to do something with
Speaker 1: the iron take some somebody adding energy, and so that's
Speaker 1: when the star starts to go out. Right, When it's
Speaker 1: fuel is no longer fuel, it's something that requires work
Speaker 1: instead of releasing energy. It's kind of like when you
Speaker 1: when you burn a fire, right, would you throw the
Speaker 1: logs in and eventually the logs turn into ash and
Speaker 1: you can't do anything with that, right, you can't burn
Speaker 1: it anymore, that's right. Yeah, you could do something with
Speaker 1: the ash, but it might require energy to do it, right,
Speaker 1: So you don't have that. It's not a self sustaining
Speaker 1: thing anymore. It's a self extinguishing thing. Yeah, So your
Speaker 1: fire goes out. Yeah, and so your fire goes out,
Speaker 1: and that's what happens. Right, stars burn, they make heavier
Speaker 1: stuff that they can't burn anymore, so they've used up
Speaker 1: their fuel and then they go out and you know,
Speaker 1: they spread that stuff back out into the universe. There's
Speaker 1: the solar wind right, they're spewing particles out from the sun,
Speaker 1: from the star all the time. That spreads them out,
Speaker 1: or they go supernova and you know, they collapse and
Speaker 1: then explode and they spew all their stuff out into
Speaker 1: the universe. And one really cool thing is that then
Speaker 1: that stuff gets gathered back together to make a new star.
Speaker 1: So we've had these cycles of stars. We had original
Speaker 1: first stars that just burned hydrogen and turned into helium,
Speaker 1: and then those blew up, you know, and we had
Speaker 1: different kinds of stars that primarily burned helium and heavier stuff,
Speaker 1: and those blew up, and then we had different kind
Speaker 1: of stars. And so it takes a few cycles of
Speaker 1: stars to even get up to stars capable of making
Speaker 1: things like iron and nickel. Oh, I say, and those
Speaker 1: first stars are no longer even existing, Like, we haven't
Speaker 1: seen any of those first stars and the ones that
Speaker 1: are pure hydrogen. Yeah, the first cycle of stars, the
Speaker 1: original stars, the o G stars, Right, we've we've recently
Speaker 1: thought we might have seen a hint of evidence of them,
Speaker 1: but nobody's ever actually seen them directly. They're so old,
Speaker 1: they happened so long ago, they're very difficult to see.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other interesting podcast about the history of
Speaker 1: stars that we know of nobody has seen. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And the other fascinating fact that so many interesting things
Speaker 1: about this is that most of the really heavy stuff,
Speaker 1: like the iron and the nickel, is made in the
Speaker 1: last few moments of a star's life. Like, those things
Speaker 1: are hard to make. Even though you know it is
Speaker 1: energetically favorable to produce iron, it's a really small effect,
Speaker 1: and so you don't make a lot of it until
Speaker 1: the last few moments. Most of that stuff happens just
Speaker 1: before the supernova, as that the outer bits of the
Speaker 1: star collapsing, those are the perfect times to make iron
Speaker 1: and nickel. So like most of the iron and the
Speaker 1: nickel in the universe was made in the last few moments,
Speaker 1: just before star went supernova. Yeah, and but that's kind
Speaker 1: of the limit, right, yeah, exactly. These stars can't make
Speaker 1: things that are heavier. So for a long time people
Speaker 1: wonder It's like, well, we have this great model of stars.
Speaker 1: We can explain how they made iron, how they made nickel,
Speaker 1: all this stuff, but what about this other stuff we see?
Speaker 1: Because there is stuff in the universe, it's heavier uranium, plutonium, gold,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Where does that come from? Well, let's
Speaker 1: get into that. Let's get into whether supernova are able
Speaker 1: to make these things and whether they can make gold.
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break, alright, so start
Speaker 1: checking along. Can't make gold. I can only sort of
Speaker 1: go up to iron. And that's even only when it
Speaker 1: blows up, right, Yeah, that's right after a few cycles
Speaker 1: and during the blow up. So then how does gold
Speaker 1: get made? It's not in supernova's. It's not in supernova.
Speaker 1: Supernovas are responsible for like the heaviest stuff that stars
Speaker 1: can make, right, And people have done a lot of
Speaker 1: extensive work on this and modeling and trying to understand
Speaker 1: are there weird kinds of supernovas? Are their special circumstances
Speaker 1: under which super dupernovas Meganova's. There actually are things called
Speaker 1: killing novas and hypernovas and stuff like that. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a hell of a Helennova. Hell, that's the California
Speaker 1: version Helenova or HELENNOVAA. It's one of the most dramatic
Speaker 1: events in the universe that's responsible for making gold and
Speaker 1: platinum and all that heavy stuff. And we only recently
Speaker 1: figured out what this is and what happens is not
Speaker 1: the collapse of a single star into like a neutron
Speaker 1: star or something really heavy. It's when two stars collide.
Speaker 1: So sometimes you'll have like two neutron stars that are
Speaker 1: near each other. And remember neutron stars with this really,
Speaker 1: really dense stuff. We had an episode recently about density,
Speaker 1: and you know, like a teaspoon of neutron star weighs
Speaker 1: as much as like a million Eiffel towers. Right, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So already you have this crazy intense environment. Now imagine
Speaker 1: two of those things and they're near each other, and
Speaker 1: they're orbiting each other, and they're pulling each other together,
Speaker 1: and eventually, boom, they collide. They collapse into one object.
Speaker 1: That's how gold is made. That's the only way we know.
Speaker 1: That's the only way we know. The gold and all
Speaker 1: the other stuff heavier than iron is primarily made in
Speaker 1: the collapses of neutron stars. And like, it's a crazy idea, right,
Speaker 1: And for a long time people thought, but neutron star collapses,
Speaker 1: like how often can that happen? Can there really be
Speaker 1: enough of that to make all the gold? But they
Speaker 1: collapse and and they explode out into the universe. Because
Speaker 1: if it collapses, doesn't keep all the goal inside of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they collide, they make gold, and then some a lot
Speaker 1: of it is ejected. Yeah, so they explode, and uh,
Speaker 1: we discover this recently because we saw gravitational waves. These
Speaker 1: things are heavy enough, they're big enough, and they're moving
Speaker 1: fast enough, they're accelerating enough they actually cause gravitational waves,
Speaker 1: these ripples in space and time itself. We had a
Speaker 1: whole podcast episode about that about how we saw like
Speaker 1: black holes merging and neutron star collisions, and we see
Speaker 1: this because they're so heavy that they make these ripples
Speaker 1: in space. Remember, really massive stuff bend space. That's what
Speaker 1: gravity is. And so if you have something like that
Speaker 1: moving really quickly accelerating, then it's gravitational field is wiggling,
Speaker 1: and it's wiggling in a way to send waves through
Speaker 1: space that we can actually detect. Yeah. So, um, so
Speaker 1: that's why gold is so rare. It's that it can
Speaker 1: only be made in these super rare events, which is
Speaker 1: to neutrons ares which just happened to be close enough
Speaker 1: to each other to merge. That's right. The thing that
Speaker 1: it's interesting is that it's not as rare as we
Speaker 1: thought before we turned on Ligo, this gravitational wave detector.
Speaker 1: They turned it on, they knew what it could see,
Speaker 1: but what they didn't know is how often is their
Speaker 1: stuff to see. Like, you build this amazing telescope, you're
Speaker 1: this gravitational wave detector. You're looking out into the universe
Speaker 1: with sort of a new set of eyes for the
Speaker 1: first time. You don't know if it's going to be
Speaker 1: like a big party or total darkness. We just really
Speaker 1: had no idea. And the cool thing is that just
Speaker 1: after they turned it on, boom they saw a gravitational wave,
Speaker 1: and then left. Next week, boom they saw another one.
Speaker 1: So it turns out this stuff happens a little bit
Speaker 1: more often than people were we're thinking. So it's not
Speaker 1: that unlikely to see new dron stars, which is why
Speaker 1: gold is rare, but not like impossible to find or
Speaker 1: anything heavier than gold, right, because anything heavier than gold
Speaker 1: you also need these rare events. Yeah, exactly. All the plutonium,
Speaker 1: all the uranium, all that kind of stuff that's made
Speaker 1: that's heavier than gold was created in this incredible cosm
Speaker 1: collisions of neutron stars. And we know that because we
Speaker 1: saw one recently, So we saw it with a gravitational
Speaker 1: wave detector. We also saw the collision using other telescopes.
Speaker 1: So this is called multi messenger because you see the
Speaker 1: same event with light and with gravitational waves. And then
Speaker 1: we could look at what happened and and look at
Speaker 1: you know, the the emissions of the stuff nearby, and
Speaker 1: we could see that there was gold just afterwards where
Speaker 1: there wasn't gold before. Oh no kidding, It got shiny
Speaker 1: like it twinkled a little extra. All these bracelets were
Speaker 1: made and all these nice rings, you know, stuff I
Speaker 1: think would be really wonderful. Um. Now you could see
Speaker 1: because of the way it absorbs light from behind it
Speaker 1: and the midst light. Gold has a characteristic signature, so
Speaker 1: we could see gold having been made. Pretty awesome. Kind
Speaker 1: of like if you close your eyes and you're listening
Speaker 1: out into the universe, you will hear gold being made
Speaker 1: kind of right like pop pop pop pop um. If
Speaker 1: you close your eyes and listen to the universe, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're gonna hear, um, but yeah there is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the gravitational waves, you hear these
Speaker 1: crazy events that that that the is wear gold and
Speaker 1: heavy stuff is made. So it's not made in the
Speaker 1: Earth's crust, and it's not made in the normal burning
Speaker 1: of stars. It's only made in these special crazy collisions
Speaker 1: of two dead stars. So I feel like that makes
Speaker 1: it even more special than diamonds, you know, like diamonds
Speaker 1: just made here on Earth. But gold, that's that's only
Speaker 1: made in in the uh the marriage of two giants
Speaker 1: neutron stars. No, I think you're right, and I think
Speaker 1: you know, the De Beers Corporation will not be very
Speaker 1: interested in sponsoring this podcast. But diamonds, you're right, they're
Speaker 1: not that special. You know, they're just created by a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure here in the center of the Earth.
Speaker 1: But we are not capable of making gold on Earth.
Speaker 1: There's certainly not nowhere in their solar system are there
Speaker 1: the conditions to make gold, and so it is pretty unusual.
Speaker 1: But you know, but but you said you can make
Speaker 1: that at the large hadron collider. You're right, You're right,
Speaker 1: we can make it at a large hadron collider. So
Speaker 1: naturally produced gold, you know, fusing of lighter stuff. What
Speaker 1: we do with a large agron collider. Actually, as we
Speaker 1: can take gold, we can take lead, which is heavier
Speaker 1: than gold, and we can strip off some of the protons, right,
Speaker 1: you can shoot like neutrons and stuff at it to
Speaker 1: sort of break it apart and take off some of
Speaker 1: the protons to turn some lead into some gold. But
Speaker 1: we can only do it in a really really low levels,
Speaker 1: Like you can't take a block of lead, and you
Speaker 1: need to turn each atom one at a time into gold,
Speaker 1: which is why we cost a quadrillion dollars. I see,
Speaker 1: you make it the other way. You don't fuse it together.
Speaker 1: You strip down lead to make gold. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: pretty much cheating because the lead also was made in
Speaker 1: the collision of neutron stars, right, so we're taking that
Speaker 1: we're just like turning it into gold. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's a very unsatisfying sort of monkey paw answer, right, Like,
Speaker 1: can you make lead into gold? Yes? So Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: didn't lie to us. You did. That's a fairly safe
Speaker 1: assumption in general. Um, but I don't think I've said
Speaker 1: anything incorrect. We can turn lead into gold, it's just
Speaker 1: not the most of the goal that you find is
Speaker 1: not made in the large head on colider, all right,
Speaker 1: So that's pretty pretty cool to know. So the next
Speaker 1: time you see your wedding maybe, or you're pendant or
Speaker 1: something made out of gold out there, you should think
Speaker 1: about that. It wasn't made here on Earth. It wasn't
Speaker 1: made inside of a star. It was made in a giant,
Speaker 1: really cataclysmic, crazy explosion of two giants neutron stars. That's right.
Speaker 1: Two neutron stars gave their lives so that you could
Speaker 1: have that ring with that bracelet and give it to
Speaker 1: your special person. So you know, I think for a
Speaker 1: moment about what they sacrificed and then exploited out into
Speaker 1: space and somehow, some way it made it into here
Speaker 1: and into the Earth and into your finger. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: every atom of gold has a really interesting life story,
Speaker 1: much more interesting than you write. Is existed for a
Speaker 1: long time. Well, I was made in the large hadron colliders.
Speaker 1: You know, that's why you're so shiny and brilliant. No,
Speaker 1: every element you know that that you're made out of
Speaker 1: is pretty stable. They were not made on Earth, they
Speaker 1: were not rearranged on Earth. They've been that element for
Speaker 1: billion of years. They've survived being created inside a star
Speaker 1: or inside the collisions of neutron stars, and they've had
Speaker 1: their personality for billions of years and they're just temporarily
Speaker 1: for this brief moment part of you. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that discussion and learn a little
Speaker 1: bit about where the heavy elements come from. And I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that golden neuggative of intellectual thought. And
Speaker 1: if you want to inject some gold and send it
Speaker 1: to us, send it to me my addresses. That's right.
Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in. And if you have a question
Speaker 1: about our crazy, golden, beautiful, nasty, weird universe, send it
Speaker 1: to us. I have questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Speaker 1: We love your emails. See you next time. All right,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. If you still have a question after
Speaker 1: listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
Speaker 1: at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
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