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Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, how are the mountains in Panama?

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Speaker 2: They are wet and hot and beautiful.

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Speaker 1: Wet and hot in the best possible way.

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Speaker 2: That's right, the safest for work sounds plasma?

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Speaker 1: Are they like tall mountains? Is Panama famous for having

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Speaker 1: tall mountains?

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Speaker 3: Uh?

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Speaker 2: Sort of. We're a pretty small country, but there is

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Speaker 2: a pretty large volcano there. It's about twelve thousand feet.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, that sounds pretty impressive coming from like the

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Speaker 1: Danish point of view.

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Speaker 2: Are you from Denmark?

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Speaker 1: My wife's family is from Denmark and we all speak Danish.

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Speaker 2: And do they have mountains there?

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Speaker 1: You know? They think they have mountains. But the highest

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Speaker 1: point in Denmark is like five hundred feet above sea level, But.

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Speaker 2: The rest of the country is like two thousand feet

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Speaker 2: below sea level, isn't it. So it's a pretty big

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Speaker 2: mountain relatively.

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Speaker 1: No, that's the Netherlands. Denmark is mostly above sea level,

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Speaker 1: oh right, which makes it very flat and very nice

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Speaker 1: to ride bikes around.

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Speaker 2: What's the biggest mountain in Denmark?

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Speaker 1: They call it Himmelbeard, which literally means the mountain of Heaven.

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Speaker 2: WHOA, how big is it?

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Speaker 1: It's like five hundred feet above sea level?

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Speaker 2: I think the hill I live on is bigger than

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Speaker 2: five hundred feet? Does I mean I live in heaven?

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Speaker 1: You live in Danish Heaven.

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Speaker 2: I live in California Heaven Valhalla. I am Horhembi cartoonists

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Speaker 2: and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.

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Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor

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Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I love mountains in the summer.

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Speaker 2: Oh not in the spring or fall.

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Speaker 1: Definitely not in the winter. Spring and fall can be acceptable.

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Speaker 2: Now do you like to look at mountains? Do you

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Speaker 2: like to climb mountains? Do you like to dig under mountains?

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Speaker 2: How do you like to position yourself relative to a

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Speaker 2: large rock?

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Speaker 1: I like to be in the mountains in the summer.

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Speaker 1: It's beautiful and the fresh air and hiking and the

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Speaker 1: views and all that stuff. In the winter, I prefer

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Speaker 1: to be far away from the mountains, though I do

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Speaker 1: enjoy looking at them, you know, out of the window

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Speaker 1: of an airplane.

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Speaker 2: But doesn't that require you to get out of your couch?

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Speaker 2: Isn't that the problem here?

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Speaker 1: I have no problems getting off my couch in the summer.

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Speaker 1: I love going to Aspen, and I love the Rockies.

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Speaker 1: But man, in the winter that is just not fit

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Speaker 1: for human habitation.

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Speaker 2: I see, so nine months a year we can find

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Speaker 2: you in a couch. Three months a year you're open

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Speaker 2: a mountain.

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Speaker 1: It's a pretty good life. That's my personal valhalla.

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Speaker 2: That's right, it's called tenure. You just disappear into a mountain.

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Speaker 1: When you get ten year in the University of California,

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Speaker 1: they actually give you a couch, not a mountain. Not

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Speaker 1: a mountain. No, there's a lot more couches to go

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Speaker 1: around than mountains.

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Speaker 2: Just a mountain of paperwork. But anyways, welcome to our podcast,

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Speaker 2: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeart Radio.

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Speaker 1: In which we climb the mountain of mysteries that we

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Speaker 1: have about the way the universe works. We want to

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Speaker 1: take everything apart and understand how it all interacts, how

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Speaker 1: those little particles push and pull on each other, how

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Speaker 1: they dance together to make the reality that we're aware of,

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Speaker 1: and how they build themselves up into mountains and planets

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Speaker 1: and solar systems and galaxies and the entire universe that

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Speaker 1: we one day hope to understand and explain to you.

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Speaker 2: That's right. We stand on the shoulders of giants to

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Speaker 2: get a better view of the entire cosmos, hopefully getting

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Speaker 2: a little bit closer to the stars and what makes

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Speaker 2: them turn, what makes them shine, what makes them explode,

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Speaker 2: and what will happen to them in the far off future.

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Speaker 1: One of the most incredible things about physics is that

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Speaker 1: those questions about the stars and the questions under our

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Speaker 1: feet can often be very closely related. They might even

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Speaker 1: be the same. The same laws of physics that tell

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Speaker 1: us how the stars move and how they orbit each

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Speaker 1: other and how the universe develops should be applicable to

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Speaker 1: the rocks and the bananas and the white chocolate and

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Speaker 1: everything else that we find around.

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Speaker 2: Us, Especially if you live on the side. That would

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Speaker 2: be the same physics, right.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Solar Newton probably had that realization a lot

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Speaker 1: earlier than ours.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was probably sweating the details of living

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Speaker 2: on the Sun.

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Speaker 1: My favorite model of how the Sun works is actually

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Speaker 1: Gary Larson's model.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what did he say about the Sun?

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Speaker 1: Well, he has this awesome far side cartoon where it's

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Speaker 1: just like a sweaty guy inside the Sun and he's

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Speaker 1: got a big lever that says rise or set.

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Speaker 2: I think he had the green biology, not astrophysics.

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Speaker 1: No, obviously that makes no sense because if you're inside

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Speaker 1: the sun, what do you do to rise and set? Right?

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Speaker 2: That's your quibble with the cartoon, is like the direction

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Speaker 2: of up and down, not the person living inside the

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Speaker 2: sun pulling a lever.

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Speaker 1: No, you'd need one lever for every planet. Right, how

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Speaker 1: do you rise over Jupiter and set over the Moon?

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Speaker 1: And yes, that's my quibble with the science of the

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Speaker 1: far side.

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Speaker 2: Maybe he was pulling the Earth lever.

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Speaker 1: I think there's a lot going on in that cartoon.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, it's God layers.

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Speaker 2: But speaking of layers, there are many layers to the Earth.

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Speaker 2: Some of them go pretty high, which gives us a

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Speaker 2: view of everything that surrounds us and makes us all

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Speaker 2: ask questions about how things work in the universe.

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Speaker 1: It's just part of being a curious human in the

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Speaker 1: world to wonder how everything works, to look for explanations,

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Speaker 1: to try to tell stories about the universe that makes

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Speaker 1: sense to us. That's what we try to do with

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Speaker 1: the cutting edge of science. That's what we do here

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Speaker 1: on the podcast, and that's what we want you to

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Speaker 1: do when you are going about your lives. I want

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Speaker 1: you all to think like physicists and wonder how does

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Speaker 1: that work work? Do I really understand how these two

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Speaker 1: ideas come together?

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Speaker 2: And do I really want to climb that mountain in

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Speaker 2: the winter?

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Speaker 1: No, No, I want to take a helicopter to the top.

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Speaker 1: That's what I want.

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Speaker 2: I do. Like mountains in the winter, that's the one

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Speaker 2: you can ski and snowboard.

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Speaker 1: You see that, Like those are good things I don't understand. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're super fun.

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Speaker 2: What's not to like about strapping some planks on your

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Speaker 2: feet and then jumping down a mountain?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cold, it's expensive, it's dangerous. What couldn't you love?

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Speaker 2: The thrill, the fun, the outdoor activity of it.

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Speaker 1: I get that on the four or five every day

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Speaker 1: around here.

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Speaker 2: Well there you go. Should just take the four or

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Speaker 2: five to the top of the mountain. But anyways, people

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Speaker 2: do have questions. We all have questions about the universe,

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Speaker 2: about how things work around us, and sometimes we answer

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Speaker 2: those questions on this podcast.

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Speaker 1: We encourage you to think deeply about the nature of

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Speaker 1: the universe and to write to us when you are

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Speaker 1: confused or you want inside. We answer all of our

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Speaker 1: listener emails. Please send your questions to Questions at Danielanjorge

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Speaker 1: dot com.

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Speaker 2: So today on the podcast we'll be tackling listener questions

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Speaker 2: number forty six, Couch Surfing Edition.

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure nobody who's asking these questions has visited

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Speaker 1: the Sun.

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Speaker 2: For example, Well, how do you know, Daniel? Do you

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Speaker 2: know all of our listeners? I don't know all of

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Speaker 2: our listeners and their travel experiences.

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Speaker 1: But I know that nobody has visited the Sun, So

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Speaker 1: that rules out everybody, including our listeners.

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Speaker 2: How do you know, Daniel? Or how do you know

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Speaker 2: there aren't any aliens listening to the podcast?

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Speaker 4: Oh?

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Speaker 1: Are we doing that kind of podcast today? Dream skettic condition?

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Speaker 1: How do you know, Daniel? How do you know? How

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Speaker 1: do you know I'm even Daniel today? If you're going

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Speaker 1: to be really scotch.

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Speaker 2: That's right. How do I know you're not the alien?

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Speaker 1: Hmmm? Or I could be my brother Chimoon and you

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Speaker 1: know that my mother can't tell us apart on the

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Speaker 1: phone still after fifty years.

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Speaker 2: Oh boy, are we getting into the dynamics of you

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Speaker 2: and your brother again?

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Speaker 1: Let's answer some listener questions.

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Speaker 2: Yes, let's get back on track here. Our listeners have

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Speaker 2: questions and sometimes we answer them here on the podcast,

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Speaker 2: and today we have three pretty awesome questions. One of

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Speaker 2: them is about the biggest mountain possible, the other one

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Speaker 2: is about the Higgs field, and the third one is

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Speaker 2: about time and can it go faster or slower depending

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Speaker 2: on where you are. So let's jump right in. Our

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Speaker 2: first question comes from Nicholas.

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Speaker 3: Hello, gentlemen, this is Nicholas from Sweden. Is there a

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Speaker 3: limit on how high a mountain can be come on Earth?

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Speaker 3: Before Phystix limits it? When the base of the mountain

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Speaker 3: grow larger and larger, does the curvature of the Earth

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Speaker 3: affects the height?

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Speaker 1: Mm?

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Speaker 2: Awesome question from Nicholas. Now do you think Nicholas knows

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Speaker 2: the difference of where Vikings come from in Scandinavia?

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure Nicholas has a good grasp on his

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Speaker 1: own history. I guess.

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Speaker 2: Did the Swedish countess Vikings? I think I've been there

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Speaker 2: and I think I did see a Viking ship there right.

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Speaker 1: Yes, the Danes, the Swedes, and the Norwegians all have

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Speaker 1: Viking ancestry. The Fins are different. They're Nordic but not Scandinavian.

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Speaker 2: But did they have Vikings too?

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure some people who live in Finland

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Speaker 1: today have Viking ancestry the way people who live in

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Speaker 1: like Sardinia have Viking ancestry because the Vikings went everywhere

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Speaker 1: and did horrible things to local people. But the Viking

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Speaker 1: culture itself is more Scandinavian. Now, where does thor come

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Speaker 1: into this?

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Speaker 2: Was thor? Technically Swedish, Danish or Finnish.

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Speaker 1: Thor is part of Scandinavian folklore. So yeah, that would

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Speaker 1: be Danish, Swedish, Norwegian.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad we cleared that up on our podcast

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Speaker 2: Scandinavian Culture and three and Mythology.

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Speaker 1: And those countries all speak very similar languages, like if

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Speaker 1: you speak Danish, you can understand no Region. If you

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Speaker 1: speak Swedish, you can understand Norwegian. If you speak Swedish

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Speaker 1: you can understand Norwegion. Norwegians say they can't understand Danish,

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Speaker 1: but we know they can. But a big difference between

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Speaker 1: these countries is that Norway and Sweden have mountains. Denmark

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Speaker 1: doesn't really have any.

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Speaker 2: But anyways, back to physics on our question. Nicholas from

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Speaker 2: Sweden has a question about how high a mountain can

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Speaker 2: be on Earth before there are physical limitations to it,

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Speaker 2: like Is there no limit to how big a mountain

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Speaker 2: can be? Or is there a point of which the

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Speaker 2: mountain just can grow?

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Speaker 1: This is a really fun question. I love this question

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Speaker 1: because there's lots of different ways you can answer it.

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Speaker 1: You can answer it like a physicist, or you could

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Speaker 1: try to answer it like a geologist, and it shows

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Speaker 1: you how different sciences think about different things, and how

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Speaker 1: all science is like about building models that kind of

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Speaker 1: apply to the real world and have limitations.

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Speaker 2: Wait, do you get different answers if you answer it

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Speaker 2: as different scientists or do you come to the same conclusion.

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Speaker 2: I would hope the same answer.

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Speaker 1: You tell very different stories and you sometimes get roughly

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Speaker 1: the same answer.

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Speaker 2: Oh boy, this is going to depend on the definition

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Speaker 2: of a mountain now, or like the definition of height

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Speaker 2: or size.

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Speaker 1: Like all of science, it's going to depend on what

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Speaker 1: you include in your description and what you don't. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, if we're going to take a physics point

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Speaker 1: of view, the physicist in me says, let's just think

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Speaker 1: about a mountain and like a big cone of rock,

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Speaker 1: and let's ask what's the tallest pile of rocks with

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Speaker 1: the biggest cone you can build where the top doesn't

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Speaker 1: have so much pressure that it like crushes the bottom.

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Speaker 1: Think of it like building a skyscraper.

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Speaker 5: Hmmm.

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Speaker 2: You're saying that if I just pile a bunch of

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Speaker 2: rocks or dirt, at some point the weight of it

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Speaker 2: is going to be so much that something's going to

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Speaker 2: happen to the bottom of it.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. Rock is not infinitely strong, right. You make a

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Speaker 1: super tall tower of rock, and the pressure on the

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Speaker 1: bottom rock is going to be so great that it's

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Speaker 1: going to start to flow. It doesn't have to melt,

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Speaker 1: it's not necessarily going to become liquid, but it will

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Speaker 1: start to flow because the pressure is so great. This

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Speaker 1: actually happens already inside the Earth and the sort of

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Speaker 1: upper layers of the Earth. The rock is not melted,

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Speaker 1: it's not liquid, but it does still flow because of

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Speaker 1: incredible pressure. So all materials have something called compressive strength

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Speaker 1: that if you push on it hard enough, it will

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Speaker 1: flow or crumble.

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Speaker 2: Right, But that assumes it has somewhere to flow, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that's right. Like, if it can flow, it can be

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Speaker 2: pretty almost infinitely compressible.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. In this case, though, if you're building a mountain,

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Speaker 1: then what's going to happen is that your mountain's base

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Speaker 1: is going to flow and it's not going to get taller.

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Speaker 1: So as you add rocks to the top, you're going

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Speaker 1: to be adding pressure on the bottom, and the bottom

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Speaker 1: is going to flow and spread out. So there's a

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Speaker 1: sort of physics model there that can help you calculate,

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Speaker 1: like what is the tallest pile of rocks you can

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Speaker 1: make without the base spreading out from underneath you?

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Speaker 2: Right, I guess maybe it does maybe come down to

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Speaker 2: the definition of a mountain, which is like a pile

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Speaker 2: of rocks above some arbitrary level that you pick to

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Speaker 2: be the base of the mountain.

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Speaker 1: And so if you define a mountain like that, you

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Speaker 1: have a flat plane, you start by piling rocks and

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Speaker 1: you build those up and build those up. Then it's

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Speaker 1: a pretty simple model. And the answer you get for

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Speaker 1: like what is the tallest pile of rocks you can build,

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Speaker 1: depends on just a couple of things. It depends on

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Speaker 1: the gravity, because the more gravity there is, the more

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Speaker 1: pressure there's going to be on the bottom. Right, in

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Speaker 1: a no gravity environment, there's no pressure. In a higher

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Speaker 1: gravity environment is more pressure. And it also depends on

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Speaker 1: the compressive strength of the material, Like if you build

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Speaker 1: it out of titanium or you build it out of popcorn,

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Speaker 1: you're going to get a different height mountain. But just

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Speaker 1: really those two numbers are all that it depends on.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think there's something in civil engineering where there's

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Speaker 2: sort of like a maximum angle that you can pile

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Speaker 2: a bunch of rocks or a bunch of dust or

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Speaker 2: a bunch of powder. And so I think what you're

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Speaker 2: saying is that at some point, if you just start

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Speaker 2: piling rocks, at some point the bottom rocks are going

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Speaker 2: to float outwards to the sides, right, exactly, And that's

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Speaker 2: kind of why like a pile of rocks it looks

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Speaker 2: like triangle basically.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's exactly right.

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Speaker 2: And the more stuff you put into it, the more

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Speaker 2: the more it's just gonna basically fall off to the

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Speaker 2: side and roll down the side of the mountain.

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Speaker 1: And this is a very simplistic model, right, or ignoring

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Speaker 1: everything happening under the surface of the thing that formed

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Speaker 1: the mountain. Right, Nobody actually builds mountains this way, starting

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Speaker 1: with a pile of rocks and adding them one at

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Speaker 1: a time. But in this simplistic model, you can plug

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Speaker 1: in the numbers and say how tall could you make

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Speaker 1: a mountain out of granite? For example, if you had

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Speaker 1: the gravitational force of the Earth, and the answer you

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Speaker 1: get is about twenty two kilometers high, which you know

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Speaker 1: for a physics model is pretty good, Like it's order

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Speaker 1: of magnitude the right answer.

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Speaker 2: Interesting. I mean, you plugged in the numbers and you

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Speaker 2: got twenty two kilometers, But what does your model say

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Speaker 2: happens after twenty two kilometers.

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Speaker 1: After twenty two kilometers, then as you add rocks on top,

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Speaker 1: the bottom breaks down and it spreads out, So it

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Speaker 1: basically max is out at twenty two kilometers.

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Speaker 2: Like, you add another rock and the base gets wider.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So you can get a higher volume to

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Speaker 1: your mountain, but you can't get a taller mountain.

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Speaker 2: Oh I see, So the more rocks you add, the

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Speaker 2: just the wider with.

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Speaker 1: Yet yeah, you get a fatter mountain. Exactly.

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Speaker 2: But this again, this depends on a totally flat world, right.

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Speaker 1: Yes, it depends on a totally flat world. And it

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Speaker 1: also ignores the way we know that mountains are made. Right.

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Speaker 1: In reality, mountains are not made by people piling rocks

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Speaker 1: on top of a flat plane. They're made by tectonic plates.

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Speaker 1: Slamming into each other with certain forests and certain speed,

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Speaker 1: and then one of them subducting under the other, forcing

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Speaker 1: it up to create those mountain ranges, like the tallest

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Speaker 1: mountains on Earth, Everest come from the Indian plates slimming

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Speaker 1: into the Asian plate and creating the Himalayas.

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Speaker 2: M but pushing the rocks.

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Speaker 1: Up, pushing some of the rock up exactly. And for

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Speaker 1: a long time in geology there's been a debate about

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Speaker 1: what limits the height of mountains, some people arguing that

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Speaker 1: it's the pressure from the tectonic plates, and other people

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Speaker 1: arguing that no, it's actually erosion, because you know, weather

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Speaker 1: and water and rivers and wind and all that stuff

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Speaker 1: breaks down mountain eventually. So for a long time people

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Speaker 1: were arguing about which of the two factors controls the

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Speaker 1: height of mountains.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's also in geology buoyancy, right, And at some

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Speaker 2: point when you pile an of rocks, it starts to

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Speaker 2: sink into the earth.

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Speaker 1: That's true. But here you have two plates pushing on

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Speaker 1: top of each other. So one plate is being pushed

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Speaker 1: up by the other plate, one is sinking down, and

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Speaker 1: one is getting pushed up. Right, So I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: that buoyancy is a factor. I just read a paper

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Speaker 1: in Nature that came out last year that showed that

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Speaker 1: the height of mountains around the Earth is totally correlated

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Speaker 1: with the pressure between the plates. Like you can measure

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Speaker 1: the forces along the two plates, and they show that

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Speaker 1: the greater the pressure between the two plates, the taller

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Speaker 1: the mountains, which suggests that actually erosion is basically irrelevant

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Speaker 1: and the only thing that determines the heights of mountains

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Speaker 1: on Earth is how hard these plates are slamming into

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Speaker 1: each other or or me.

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Speaker 2: That's the biggest factor though, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the overwhelming factor to within their arabars. And

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Speaker 1: that means that if you've wanted a taller mountain, you need,

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Speaker 1: like in to zoom faster along the surface of the

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Speaker 1: Earth before it slammed into China, because it would apply

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Speaker 1: a greater pressure and make taller Himalayas. Right.

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Speaker 2: But once you form a mountain, I think another limiting

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Speaker 2: factor is, like I said, the buoyancy of it, right,

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Speaker 2: because the rocks inside the Earth are sort of soft

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Speaker 2: in a geological scale, and so that at some point

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Speaker 2: the mountain is going to sink into the Earth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that in reality, there's lots of things

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Speaker 1: that all contribute but me and we can never model

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Speaker 1: all the processes that control these things, so we try

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Speaker 1: to just isolate, like what is the dominant factor. Then

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Speaker 1: this Nature paper claims that it's the force between these

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Speaker 1: two mountains, and that's really cool because it makes you

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Speaker 1: think about like what might have happened earlier on Earth,

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Speaker 1: Like when the Earth was hotter than the convection cells

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Speaker 1: within the Earth were probably cycling faster, which might have

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Speaker 1: meant plate tectonics were pushing things together harder, which might

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Speaker 1: mean that there were taller mountains on Earth earlier.

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Speaker 2: On right, right, But I guess this is I think

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Speaker 2: you're talking about the origin of mountains, and like here

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Speaker 2: on Earth, this is how mountains were formed. Maybe they're

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Speaker 2: correlated to the pressure between the tectonic plates, but I

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Speaker 2: think Nicholas's question is like, what's the biggest one you

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Speaker 2: can form?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, good point, And there I guess physics says twenty

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Speaker 1: two kilometers is the tallest mountain you could make on

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Speaker 1: Earth without the base of it flowing out from under you.

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Speaker 1: And as you say, they're also buoyancy effects, So I

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Speaker 1: would guess somewhere around that number around twenty kilometers.

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Speaker 2: And then he also had a bit of a question

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Speaker 2: here about the curvature of the Earth. How does that

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Speaker 2: affect your calculation, because your calculation assumes a totally flat earth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but on these scales, even a mountain is pretty

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Speaker 1: small compared to the curvature of the Earth. So your

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Speaker 1: mountain would have to be like, really really huge before

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Speaker 1: the curvature affected it. So I think that in every

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Speaker 1: case we can basically ignore the curvature.

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Speaker 2: Well, I guess maybe the question is what would happen,

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Speaker 2: Like if I took the Moon or maybe a whole

404
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Speaker 2: other planet, I pulvarized it in the rocks, and I

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Speaker 2: just started pouring those rocks in one place on Earth.

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Speaker 2: It would at first start to make a mountain. And

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Speaker 2: then at about twenty you're seeing out of about twenty

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Speaker 2: two cols, the more rocks I pour into, the more

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Speaker 2: it's just going to flow to the sides.

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Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah exactly.

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Speaker 2: And then and then what's going to happen is the

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Speaker 2: Earth gonna end up kind of oblong shape like a

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Speaker 2: cone head.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, eventually it would grow wide enough that

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Speaker 1: it just becomes a feature of the Earth, right, because

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Speaker 1: the Earth varies and radius by more than twenty kilometers.

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Speaker 2: All right, well, I guess that's the general answer for

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Speaker 2: Nicholas Daniels says that Quartant's model, the biggest mountain that

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Speaker 2: you can get on Earth would be about twenty two

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Speaker 2: kilometers above sea level.

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Speaker 1: But that's a simple physics model. It ignores lots of stuff.

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Speaker 1: So before you submit a pitch to the US government

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Speaker 1: to build the world's tallest mountain, please get a more

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Speaker 1: accurate model.

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Speaker 2: All right, thanks Nicholas for that question. So let's get

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Speaker 2: to our other questions here about the Higgs field and

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Speaker 2: the flow of time. So we'll dig into those, but

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Speaker 2: first let's take a quick break. All right, we're answering

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Speaker 2: listener questions here today, and our next question comes from Martin.

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Speaker 4: Back in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, it was believed

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Speaker 4: that there was an ether that which permeated the universe. This,

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Speaker 4: of course, has now been disproved. However, fast forward many

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Speaker 4: years and scientists have shown that there is a Higgs

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Speaker 4: Boson field. Although not exactly the same, they do seem

435
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Speaker 4: to be quite similar. My question is, are there other

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Speaker 4: theories in the past that were disproved but are actually

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Speaker 4: similar to theories or proofs that we believe to be

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Speaker 4: true today.

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Speaker 2: All right, great question here, going a little bit back

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Speaker 2: in history about our ideas if what the universe was

441
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Speaker 2: made out of. We used to have this idea of

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Speaker 2: the ether in our classmers.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the ether was an idea which was popular

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Speaker 1: for quite a while to try to explain the mystery

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Speaker 1: of what is light wiggling through? We understood sound waves

446
00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:04,000
Speaker 1: were wiggles in air, and there were other kinds of waves,

447
00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:06,639
Speaker 1: and there were waves in the ocean, and the idea

448
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:08,720
Speaker 1: that light was a wave raised the question of like

449
00:20:08,800 --> 00:20:11,680
Speaker 1: what is light wiggling through? And so for a long

450
00:20:11,720 --> 00:20:14,240
Speaker 1: time people imagine that space wasn't actually empty, it was

451
00:20:14,280 --> 00:20:17,880
Speaker 1: filled with something the ether that light was propagating.

452
00:20:17,280 --> 00:20:20,280
Speaker 2: Through, sort of like you know, we have air around

453
00:20:20,359 --> 00:20:23,320
Speaker 2: us here on the surface of Earth, and sound waves

454
00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:27,000
Speaker 2: are really just you know, pressure waves through air.

455
00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:30,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right, And the speed of those waves

456
00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:33,760
Speaker 1: is relative to the air that's the medium. And so

457
00:20:33,840 --> 00:20:35,879
Speaker 1: you can like catch up to a sound wave and

458
00:20:35,960 --> 00:20:39,000
Speaker 1: move with it, for example, as it moves through the medium.

459
00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:41,680
Speaker 2: And so there was this idea that maybe light worked

460
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:44,159
Speaker 2: the same way as sound like maybe light is a

461
00:20:44,200 --> 00:20:47,159
Speaker 2: wave that is being spread by something that's all around us.

462
00:20:47,320 --> 00:20:51,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And this was like a universized idea that

463
00:20:51,560 --> 00:20:53,800
Speaker 1: all of space was filled with this stuff we hadn't

464
00:20:53,800 --> 00:20:57,119
Speaker 1: ever discovered before, and then later the idea was discarded,

465
00:20:57,240 --> 00:20:59,800
Speaker 1: and ever since then, this idea of an ether is

466
00:20:59,840 --> 00:21:02,720
Speaker 1: so mocked in popular science a lot. You know, anytime

467
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:05,360
Speaker 1: you suggest anything that fills the universe, people are like, wow,

468
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:07,680
Speaker 1: well that sounds like the ether revisited. Ha ha ha,

469
00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:09,000
Speaker 1: we know how all that worked out.

470
00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:11,440
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I didn't know if this is it since

471
00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:12,320
Speaker 2: we're so snarky.

472
00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:16,080
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's an element to Martin's question, which

473
00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:18,720
Speaker 1: is like, is this idea of a Higgs field which

474
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:22,159
Speaker 1: fills the universe? Is that just the ether revisited? You know,

475
00:21:22,280 --> 00:21:25,440
Speaker 1: like should we be concerned about inventing ideas of stuff

476
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:27,800
Speaker 1: filling the universe because that didn't work out well for.

477
00:21:27,800 --> 00:21:31,520
Speaker 2: Us once, But then later you sort of build quantum theory,

478
00:21:31,600 --> 00:21:34,520
Speaker 2: which sort of relies on an idea that's very similar

479
00:21:34,560 --> 00:21:35,879
Speaker 2: to either, right, quantum field.

480
00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:37,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, So to put a pin in the story of

481
00:21:37,960 --> 00:21:41,040
Speaker 1: the ether, the reason we didn't believe the ether exists

482
00:21:41,080 --> 00:21:43,320
Speaker 1: is because light doesn't move through space the way sound

483
00:21:43,359 --> 00:21:46,240
Speaker 1: moves through waves. Right. Sound moves at a constant speed

484
00:21:46,280 --> 00:21:49,359
Speaker 1: relative to its medium, but light moves at a constant

485
00:21:49,400 --> 00:21:53,280
Speaker 1: speed relative to any observer. So the Michaelson morally experiment

486
00:21:53,359 --> 00:21:56,359
Speaker 1: showed that like can't be moving through the ether because

487
00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:58,440
Speaker 1: as we move through the ether, we measure light to

488
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:00,920
Speaker 1: always have the same speed. It turns out that light

489
00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:05,760
Speaker 1: just propagates through space actually to propagation through these quantum fields.

490
00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:07,560
Speaker 1: So as you say we have this sort of like

491
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 1: new updated version of the ether, instead of imagining the

492
00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:13,920
Speaker 1: universe is filled with stuff as a medium for light

493
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,840
Speaker 1: to propagate through, we say that light propagates through space

494
00:22:16,880 --> 00:22:21,520
Speaker 1: itself as fluctuations in those quantum fields. But importantly, and

495
00:22:21,560 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 1: this is the big difference, those fields don't have a

496
00:22:24,359 --> 00:22:28,000
Speaker 1: frame of reference like air does, so you can't catch

497
00:22:28,080 --> 00:22:30,520
Speaker 1: up to a photon. Photons are always moving at the

498
00:22:30,520 --> 00:22:32,600
Speaker 1: speed of light relative to the observer.

499
00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:35,680
Speaker 2: I wonder if you're sort of getting up to our

500
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:39,440
Speaker 2: limits of knowledge, because you're talking sort of about relating

501
00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:44,200
Speaker 2: relativity right and relative istic speeds to quantum theory and

502
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:48,600
Speaker 2: quantum fields, which the physicists actually been able to relate

503
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:48,920
Speaker 2: the two.

504
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:52,640
Speaker 1: So physicists cannot relate to general relativity, which is about

505
00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:56,080
Speaker 1: the curvature space and gravity, to quantum fields. But we

506
00:22:56,160 --> 00:23:00,399
Speaker 1: have successfully married special relativity things moving really really fast

507
00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: and even at the speed of light to quantum fields.

508
00:23:03,560 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 1: And so quantum field theory is fully special relativistic and

509
00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:11,040
Speaker 1: incorporates speed of light transmission and particles moving at the

510
00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 1: speed of light, all that stuff. So we have a

511
00:23:13,400 --> 00:23:18,040
Speaker 1: very robust theory that unifies quantum mechanics and special relativity.

512
00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 2: Meaning that these ideas that you can go faster than

513
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 2: the speed of light, that's built into quantum physics.

514
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:26,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's built into quantum physics exactly. And quantum physics

515
00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:29,120
Speaker 1: tells us this fascinating picture of the universe, which sounds

516
00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:32,320
Speaker 1: kind of familiar, like hm, the universe actually isn't empty

517
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:35,360
Speaker 1: out there. Space is filled with all of these quantum fields.

518
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:38,080
Speaker 1: There's lots of them. There's the Higgs field, but is

519
00:23:38,119 --> 00:23:41,600
Speaker 1: also the electromagnetic field and the electron field, and all

520
00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:44,639
Speaker 1: the quark fields and maybe fields for dark matter, we

521
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 1: don't know. But space is filled with all of these

522
00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:51,119
Speaker 1: weird quantum fields that are sort of reminiscent of the

523
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:53,760
Speaker 1: ether in the sense that like, oh, space isn't empty,

524
00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:55,320
Speaker 1: there's stuff out there happening.

525
00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:58,280
Speaker 2: And so I think Martin's question here is like, you know,

526
00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:00,199
Speaker 2: we used to it. Now you're sort of seems can

527
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 2: make fun of people who believed in the ether, but

528
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:05,159
Speaker 2: at the same time, now you believe that there is

529
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:08,240
Speaker 2: something sort of like the ether that you call quantum fields.

530
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:10,199
Speaker 2: And so I think his question is like, are there

531
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:14,080
Speaker 2: other examples of that? Like are there things we thought

532
00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:18,120
Speaker 2: was right but then disproved but then later it turned

533
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:19,680
Speaker 2: out to be Well, it's sort of like this.

534
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, and it reminds us to

535
00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:24,680
Speaker 1: be humble, right that things that we like chuckle at today,

536
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:27,200
Speaker 1: in the future people might be like, actually that was

537
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: a good idea, and you should have pursued that a

538
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:30,160
Speaker 1: little bit more.

539
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:32,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like maybe you'll try skiing one day and like it,

540
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:34,320
Speaker 2: and you'd be like, oh my god, I should have

541
00:24:34,359 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 2: been doing this for years.

542
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe I'll learn how to ski at the speed

543
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:38,400
Speaker 1: of light. That'd be awesome.

544
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, need it would take no time to

545
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:45,920
Speaker 2: do it, so see, like you would suffer very little.

546
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:50,879
Speaker 1: Perfect another really great story about the dismissal and then

547
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:54,760
Speaker 1: resurgence of a big idea is also connected to relativity.

548
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,159
Speaker 1: But this is general relativity, and it's the idea of

549
00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:00,280
Speaker 1: the cosmological constant. You know. Einstein, when he he was

550
00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 1: developing his theory of the universe, how space is curved

551
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,360
Speaker 1: and how gravity's actually just the motion of stuff through

552
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,680
Speaker 1: that curved space instead of a force. He put together

553
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 1: his theory of space time and he looked at it

554
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:14,560
Speaker 1: and he realized, hold on a second, if this is true,

555
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:16,440
Speaker 1: the universe has a bunch of mass in it, Why

556
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:19,479
Speaker 1: isn't the universe just collapsing. Why isn't the space getting

557
00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:22,119
Speaker 1: curved in a way that everything just rushes together and

558
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: collapses the universe. And he looked out in the universe

559
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: and he thought the universe was static. He thought all

560
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:30,560
Speaker 1: the stars just sat out there in space forever. So

561
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:33,720
Speaker 1: he added a fudge factor, a cosmological constant, to the

562
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 1: equations of general relativity to balance out the effects of

563
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: mass and hang everything sort of on balance in place.

564
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 2: He just made that up, like he's like, oh, this

565
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 2: is weird. I'll just add a number here. Yeah.

566
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:47,959
Speaker 1: It turns out if you add a number, you avoid

567
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:51,640
Speaker 1: this disastrous prediction of the equations, and only a few

568
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 1: years later he realized that that was sort of silly

569
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:55,119
Speaker 1: and unnecessary.

570
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 2: Wait, what do you mean? He realized that he didn't

571
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 2: need that constant or did other people? I think you

572
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:01,520
Speaker 2: didn't need it.

573
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:03,679
Speaker 1: No, he realized that we didn't need that constant, and

574
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: he actually called it like a huge blunder later in life.

575
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 2: Wouldn't didn't need it? Like, what was this mistake?

576
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 1: Well, he was trying to describe a static universe, the

577
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: universe where nothing is happening. There's no expansion, there's certainly

578
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: no acceleration. And this is kind of a crazy theory anyway,

579
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: because it predicts a universe sort of like balanced on

580
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,520
Speaker 1: a knife edge, you know, a little bit more matter

581
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 1: and things would collapse, a little bit more cosmological constant

582
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,399
Speaker 1: and things would expand. So it wasn't really anyway a

583
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: great description of the universe as we saw it. And

584
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: then a few years later Hubble discovered that it anyway

585
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,160
Speaker 1: wasn't the universe we were living in, the universe wasn't static.

586
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:41,760
Speaker 1: It was expanding, right, there was this positive expansion of

587
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:44,919
Speaker 1: the universe. So Einstein figures, oh, well, you don't need

588
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:48,159
Speaker 1: the cosmological constant to balance the mass. You just have

589
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: this positive expansion already the universe somehow began with this expansion,

590
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 1: and the mass isn't enough to overcome that. And so

591
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: that was Einstein's picture of the universe to accommodate what

592
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: Hubble and lots of other people, of course, discovered that

593
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: the universe was already expanding.

594
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 2: And so if you find out that the universe is expanding,

595
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 2: then you don't need that fudge factor. You can just

596
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 2: explain it without it.

597
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the universe is expanding, then without that fudge factor,

598
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:16,639
Speaker 1: you have two options. Either we'll never collapse because the

599
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 1: expansion is so fast, or we just haven't collapsed yet

600
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:23,600
Speaker 1: because enough time hasn't passed for gravity pull everything back together.

601
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:26,320
Speaker 1: So that was sort of Einstein's new picture, and he

602
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:28,240
Speaker 1: got rid of the cosmological constancy.

603
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 2: He was like dope, he.

604
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: Was like, oh, I didn't need that. That was a mistake.

605
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: But then decades later it resurfaced and now it's a

606
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 1: crucial part of our understanding of the universe.

607
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 2: What do you mean what changed?

608
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 1: Well, in two thousand we discovered that the universe isn't

609
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: just expanding, it's expanding, and accelerating. The expansion is happening

610
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: faster and faster every year. Remember Einstein's description of what

611
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: was happening is, all right, there's some expansion, but it's

612
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 1: slowing down because of gravity, and either it's going to

613
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: peter out and turn around to come back to a crunch,

614
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: or it's just going to sort of drift out gradually forever.

615
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:02,880
Speaker 1: But then we discovered this expansion isn't slowing down, it's

616
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:05,479
Speaker 1: speeding up. And in order to make that happen, what

617
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 1: do you need? You've got to put back in the

618
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:10,159
Speaker 1: cosmological constant to make that acceleration happen.

619
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 2: What So, without the fudge factor, then you just get

620
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 2: a universe that's evenly expanding.

621
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:17,400
Speaker 1: Without it, you get a universe whose acceleration is either

622
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: zero or negative. You need the cosmological constant to have

623
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,880
Speaker 1: positive acceleration to the expansion. And that's not to say

624
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: we understand why that's happening. It's just like, can we

625
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: even use the equations to describe what we see? And

626
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:33,439
Speaker 1: to do that we need Einstein's fudge factor to return.

627
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 2: And is that the official name of it, Einstein's fudge factor?

628
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 1: Eff. No, the much fancier name of the cosmological constant.

629
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: But the cosmological constant just a number we put into

630
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:47,719
Speaker 1: the equations to describe the universe. Can we have no

631
00:28:47,920 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: explanation for it, no mechanism that can describe it or

632
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 1: predict it. Our attempts actually to calculate what the cosmological

633
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 1: concept might be from the quantum fields that fill space

634
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 1: give an answer that are off by ten to the

635
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 1: one hundred. So we're nowhere near understanding why this constant

636
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:05,360
Speaker 1: has its number.

637
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 2: Interesting, So that's kind of another modern day version of

638
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 2: the either Are there any other concepts like that? In physics?

639
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: They're all over the place. Another famous one is string theory.

640
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: String theory actually originated as an attempt to describe how

641
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:24,160
Speaker 1: quarks interact. Now we describe quark interactions using the strong force,

642
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: and we have a really nice theory of it called

643
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: quantum chromodynamics, which explains the fields involved and the gluons

644
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: and all that complicated stuff we've talked about on the podcast.

645
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: But originally, in like the fifties and sixties, people were

646
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: trying to use string theory to describe the strong interaction,

647
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 1: but it didn't really work very well. And in nineteen

648
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,800
Speaker 1: seventy three when we discover the jpe side particle, which

649
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 1: is a bound state of two quarks. That was really

650
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:52,240
Speaker 1: triumph for this other idea, this quantum chromo dynamics theory

651
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: of the strong interactions. So people abandoned string theory. They

652
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 1: were like a string theory total failure. Couldn't explain the

653
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 1: strong interactions. And then about fifteen year years later, people realized, oh, actually,

654
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: there are things you can do to string theory to

655
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 1: make it to be able to describe not just the

656
00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:09,280
Speaker 1: strong interaction, but every kind of interaction, maybe even gravity.

657
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: And then you had the string theory revolutions of the

658
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, and now string theory is everywhere. It's

659
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: like the best candidate for our theory of everything.

660
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 2: So it failed to describe one little thing. But then

661
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 2: people figured out it can describe lots of other things,

662
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 2: but doesn't it still fail to describe the one thing

663
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:25,680
Speaker 2: that it had failed to describe before.

664
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 1: One of the challenges of string theory is that there's

665
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:31,480
Speaker 1: lots and lots of string theories, and so they thought

666
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: initially that there was a basic problem with string theory

667
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 1: that it couldn't describe the strong interactions. But that's because

668
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 1: they hadn't yet considered like the right string theory, and

669
00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: so other people found ways to put constraints on the

670
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: strings and add bells and whistles to them that allowed

671
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 1: them to describe accurately the strong force and all the

672
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: other stuff. The problem is, of course, we don't know

673
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: which string theory is the right one, and we can't

674
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:56,400
Speaker 1: test it. So it's not like string theory is proven,

675
00:30:56,800 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: but it's definitely a deep area of research where it

676
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: was once abandoned.

677
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:04,280
Speaker 2: Right. It's exciting, it's maybe because of its potential, but

678
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 2: we don't really know if it's true, which was sort

679
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:08,400
Speaker 2: of Martin's question, like is there something we thought wasn't

680
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 2: true but now we think it's true.

681
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair. We definitely don't know that string theory

682
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,960
Speaker 1: is true, but it's no longer on the dust benef theories.

683
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:17,080
Speaker 3: All right.

684
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 2: Sounds like physics is constantly changing, right, And things that

685
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 2: ideas that we thought were working we would start out

686
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 2: to work, and things we thought work some things don't work.

687
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 2: It's a process.

688
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: It's definitely a process, and we're constantly mining the past.

689
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: If you look at the history of physics, there are

690
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,760
Speaker 1: lots of scenarios where like nothing happens for forty years

691
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: and then somebody reads an old paper and they're like,

692
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:41,959
Speaker 1: hold on a second, this is a great idea. How

693
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 1: come nobody's doing this? And sometimes ideas just need their moment,

694
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:47,160
Speaker 1: the right person to read them at the right time

695
00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: and connect them with current thinking. So we're constantly digging

696
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 1: into our own past to look for good ideas that

697
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:53,360
Speaker 1: we've ignored.

698
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 2: Make physics sound kind of fashionable and fickle.

699
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 1: Absolutely, remember, physics, like all science, is of the people,

700
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 1: by the people, for the people. It's not like methodical

701
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 1: or consistent in the way that it explores all ideas.

702
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 1: It's just like, what are people into, what are they

703
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: thinking about? What ideas do they have? What inspires them?

704
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 1: It's a creative process.

705
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 2: What's trendy?

706
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:13,479
Speaker 4: Now?

707
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 2: Would you spell fickle with a pH then or fashionable

708
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 2: with a pH?

709
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: Sh Ion, you're in charge of the names, so I

710
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: defer to you. Good, thank you, I'll take that title.

711
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's get to our last question here

712
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 2: of the day, which is about the flow of time

713
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 2: and universal symmetry. So let's dig into that. But first

714
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 2: let's take another quick break. Right, We're answering listener questions.

715
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 2: And our second question was whether there are a lot

716
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 2: of concepts in physics that we thought weren't true, but

717
00:32:56,920 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 2: then we realize we're true or sort of true. And

718
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 2: it sounds like there are, oh, absolutely, and it sounds

719
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 2: like physics is always changing. And so that was the

720
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 2: answer for that. But now we have our third question

721
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:08,960
Speaker 2: of the day, which is about time.

722
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 5: Hell hold, I'm looking for a place in the universe.

723
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 5: Will time go way faster related to the out and

724
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,360
Speaker 5: envelopment of this place? Is there a place like that?

725
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,640
Speaker 5: What can make this place real? I thought maybe some

726
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 5: gravitational a different speeds effect can cause it. What did

727
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 5: you say? Thank you here? Nadav from Israel?

728
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 2: All right, interesting question. I'm not one hundred percent sure

729
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,960
Speaker 2: I understand it, but it sounds like they're asking, can

730
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 2: you somehow make time go faster?

731
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:39,719
Speaker 1: And think he wants like a box he can step

732
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 1: in where things will go much much faster than when

733
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: he steps out. Less time will have passed on the

734
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: outside than on the inside.

735
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 2: More time. I think, like I think what he's may

736
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 2: be referring to is that, you know, a lot of

737
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 2: the ideas we have about time is that they're about

738
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:57,479
Speaker 2: slowing down time, right, Like if you go close to

739
00:33:57,480 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 2: the speed of lighter really fast and time will slow

740
00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 2: down for you, or if you go near a black hole,

741
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 2: time will slow down for you. I wonder if he's asking,

742
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 2: you know, is there some sort of effect in physics

743
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 2: that will do the opposite and make time go faster.

744
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll go faster for the people like in the box, right,

745
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:15,840
Speaker 1: so that people step in the box, they're in the

746
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: box for a year in our time, and they come

747
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: out and one hundred years is past for them. That's

748
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: what he wants, right.

749
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 2: Right, right, so time moves more, time has gone by

750
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:24,920
Speaker 2: for them, they're older.

751
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:28,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, time has flowed faster inside the box and outside

752
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: the box.

753
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:28,960
Speaker 4: Right.

754
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a good question, and you're right that this

755
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: is not something that's easy to assemble in physics, not

756
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:37,160
Speaker 1: something we naturally see, but we should dig into like

757
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: why that works and how that works. But I do

758
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,839
Speaker 1: have an idea for an adove, though I think it's

759
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 1: probably impractical.

760
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 2: Hmmmm, Well, in practicality has never stopped physicists, So why

761
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 2: start now?

762
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: Exactly all right.

763
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:53,040
Speaker 2: So we're looking for a way to accelerate time, maybe

764
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 2: like if you wanted to age your wine faster, you

765
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 2: could stick it in this box and it would get

766
00:34:57,520 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 2: older faster. Or if you want to grow your vegetables faster,

767
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:01,920
Speaker 2: I guess it's one they used for it.

768
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:05,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Or chemical reactions could happen faster. You could

769
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: like make new fossil fuels in the blink of an

770
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 1: eye rather than waiting one hundred million years.

771
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. If you want to like warn jeans,

772
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:15,359
Speaker 2: but you didn't want to wait and be fashiona willed

773
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:17,600
Speaker 2: with a pH you could use this machine.

774
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or you could roast to Thanksgiving turkey in a

775
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 1: minute right instead of hours.

776
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:26,239
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is the actual killer app for

777
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 2: this fast slow organic food.

778
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: There you go. Physics saves Thanksgiving.

779
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. All right, So what's your idea

780
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 2: for making this happen? So first of all, why is

781
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,360
Speaker 2: it that we can only usually slow down time in

782
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 2: the universe.

783
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,839
Speaker 1: Well, there's two different kinds of ways to change how

784
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 1: time flows. One of them is based on speed velocity,

785
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:50,080
Speaker 1: and that one's symmetric. And then then one of them

786
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 1: is based on gravity and a curvature of space, and

787
00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: that one is asymmetric. So the velocity one is the

788
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: one people mostly think about. This is like, if you

789
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 1: see a clock moving past you really fast, you're going

790
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 1: to see it ticking slower than your clock. Right. So

791
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: Jorges in a spaceship, he's flying by the earth, he

792
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 1: is a clock. I'm watching his clock from the earth,

793
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 1: comparing it to my clock, and I see Jorgey's clock

794
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:15,800
Speaker 1: is ticking slower. So Hoory's time is passing slower than mine.

795
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 2: Right, It's going slow for everybody, which is weird.

796
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:21,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's symmetric. You might think, well, if Daniel

797
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:23,960
Speaker 1: is seeing Jorges clock going slower, doesn't that mean Jorge

798
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: is seeing Daniel's clock going faster. The answer is no,

799
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: because Jorge also sees Daniel moving fast. Like if you're

800
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 1: in the spaceship, from your perspective, that Earth is flying

801
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:35,320
Speaker 1: by you at high speed, and the same rule applies

802
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 1: moving clocks run slow. You see my clock moving fast,

803
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 1: so you see my clock ticking slower. So I see

804
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 1: your time moving slow. You see my time moving slow.

805
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:47,319
Speaker 1: Nobody sees anybody's time moving quickly. And that's the whole

806
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:50,839
Speaker 1: puzzle of special relativity and the twin paradox which we've

807
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 1: dug into other times on the episode, But that doesn't

808
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 1: give you any way to speed up time.

809
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 2: Well, maybe let's dig into it a little bit. So

810
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 2: that's just how it looks to the two of us.

811
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,239
Speaker 2: For each of us as we pass by each other,

812
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 2: but at some point, if we wanted to meet up again,

813
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 2: one of us has to turn around, and for that person,

814
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 2: time is going to move slower or faster.

815
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:13,360
Speaker 1: Right, So, if you decide to turn your spaceship around

816
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: and come back to Earth so we can compare our

817
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: clocks like right on top of each other, without any

818
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,360
Speaker 1: velocity relative to each other, then the rules of special

819
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 1: relativity don't really apply anymore because when you turned around,

820
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:28,319
Speaker 1: you accelerated, and this simple description of special relativity only

821
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:31,479
Speaker 1: applies to things moving at constant velocity. When you turn around,

822
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: that's acceleration. But you're right that something interesting happens when

823
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 1: you turn around. When you turn around, you see time

824
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,880
Speaker 1: jump forward for me, so so far you've seen my

825
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: time be slow. When you turn around as you turn around,

826
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:47,440
Speaker 1: that acceleration has this effect that you see my time

827
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:50,480
Speaker 1: jump forward, so that when you come back to Earth,

828
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: our times are very similar to each other.

829
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 2: Right, But like we're saying there's something called the twins paradogs,

830
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 2: which is like, if you take two twins and you

831
00:37:57,320 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 2: send one of them to the next star system, going

832
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 2: at almost a suit of light, and then they come back,

833
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:04,319
Speaker 2: one of the twins will have aged faster than the other.

834
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: That's right. So the one that takes that trip, that

835
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: goes down in the spaceship, accelerates, turns around, comes back

836
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: will be younger than the twin that stayed on Earth.

837
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:13,960
Speaker 2: So like yeah, so like if you want to slow

838
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 2: down time for yourself, you would hop in a.

839
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,239
Speaker 1: Spaceship and go away, right, Yeah, that's right.

840
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:25,160
Speaker 2: So to make time move faster, wouldn't stick everybody else

841
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 2: in the spaceship, send it off and then have it

842
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 2: come back, and then I will have age more. I guess.

843
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:34,399
Speaker 2: Maybe the question is like why is it so one

844
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 2: directional or is it one directional? Like what's the difference

845
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 2: Twin A and Twin B.

846
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:41,760
Speaker 1: The difference is acceleration. While velocity is totally relative. Doesn't

847
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:44,839
Speaker 1: matter who's doing the moving, It just matters what you measure, right,

848
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,720
Speaker 1: there's no absolute frame of reference. Acceleration is not relative.

849
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: So there is a difference between the twin that goes

850
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,920
Speaker 1: out in the spaceship and turns around, that's acceleration, and

851
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:57,360
Speaker 1: the one that just states on Earth and doesn't accelerate.

852
00:38:57,719 --> 00:38:59,760
Speaker 1: So the effects of the flow of time are different

853
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 1: on those two twins. That's why they're no longer symmetric.

854
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:04,240
Speaker 1: And in case where they're just passing each other in space,

855
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:06,640
Speaker 1: they both see the other one's time as going slowly,

856
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,800
Speaker 1: and that's perfectly symmetric because they just have relative velocity.

857
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:13,319
Speaker 1: Nobody's accelerating. One of them turns around, then they're accelerating.

858
00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:16,200
Speaker 1: That makes one twin very different from the other twin

859
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 1: from a physics point of view, and that's why they

860
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: have different outcomes. And that actually is an idea there

861
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:23,959
Speaker 1: is like, well, if you accelerate, then you see time

862
00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 1: jump forward for everybody else, and so that's actually a

863
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:29,320
Speaker 1: way to accelerate the passage of time for the rest

864
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:30,439
Speaker 1: of the universe, right.

865
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 2: Right, That's what I mean. It's like, accelerate, send everybody

866
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 2: else on Earth and on a space ship and have

867
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 2: it come back. That's a little bit logistically hard mmm.

868
00:39:37,840 --> 00:39:41,040
Speaker 1: And it connects nicely with the other time dilation because,

869
00:39:41,160 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 1: as we've talked about in the podcast before, acceleration is

870
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,879
Speaker 1: just like another way to see curvature in space. From

871
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:49,799
Speaker 1: a general relativistic point of view, acceleration and curvature are

872
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: basically the same. You can even like create an event

873
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:54,720
Speaker 1: horizon with acceleration. Remember we talked once on the podcast

874
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 1: about how you can like outpace a beam of light

875
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: if you're constantly accelerating. And so this next with the

876
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: other kind of time dilation we can talk about, and

877
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:08,319
Speaker 1: that's absolute time dilation due to curvature. If you see

878
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: a clock near a black hole, for example, you will

879
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,279
Speaker 1: see its time going slower. But if somebody's at that

880
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: clock and they're looking back at you and you're far

881
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:18,359
Speaker 1: away from the black hole, they don't see your time

882
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:21,400
Speaker 1: going slower. They see your time going faster, in the

883
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,319
Speaker 1: same way that like the twin that's accelerating sees time

884
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,439
Speaker 1: moving faster for everybody. A twin near a black hole

885
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,759
Speaker 1: will see time moving faster for everybody else outside in

886
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:35,360
Speaker 1: the universe. So this is asymmetric time dilation because curvature

887
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: is not relative. Curvature is absolute, just like acceleration is.

888
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 1: It's really the same thing.

889
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 2: So like, for example, if you wanted to make time

890
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:46,640
Speaker 2: go faster for yourself. You might go off into orbit, right,

891
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 2: because the Earth is also creating some curvature, and time

892
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 2: is moving slower for things closer to the center of

893
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 2: the Earth.

894
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 1: Right, that's right. If you're further away from the Earth,

895
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:56,960
Speaker 1: then your time will be moving faster.

896
00:40:57,280 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 2: So like a way to age your genes faster or

897
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 2: your water line is to send it into space or

898
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:04,280
Speaker 2: to send it far away from the Earth.

899
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So if you're hosting Thanksgiving, you should

900
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:09,399
Speaker 1: host it near a black hole, so you can send

901
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: the turkey away from the black hole so that its

902
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 1: time can move faster while it's cooking.

903
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 2: Right, Right, But I guess what I'm saying is you

904
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 2: don't need it the black hole. You could just do

905
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:18,319
Speaker 2: it here on Earth.

906
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:20,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, And it's a pretty small effect because

907
00:41:20,719 --> 00:41:23,759
Speaker 1: the Earth doesn't have really dramatic curvature. Right. But the

908
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 1: big picture we're sort of stumbling towards here is that

909
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: for time to go faster, you need a place with

910
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 1: less curvature. And so if you want everywhere in the

911
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: universe to pass time slower than like your box, you

912
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: basically need everywhere in the universe to be near a

913
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:42,320
Speaker 1: black hole or be near high curvature except for your box.

914
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 1: So like my very impractical idea is similar to your

915
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:48,760
Speaker 1: impractical idea. Yours was make everybody in the universe accelerate

916
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 1: except for the turkey or whatever mine is. Fill the

917
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 1: universe with black holes except for where the turkey is,

918
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:58,359
Speaker 1: and then time will pass faster for the turkey than

919
00:41:58,400 --> 00:41:59,360
Speaker 1: everybody else.

920
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 2: Right, right, or shoot it with a turkey gun into

921
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:06,879
Speaker 2: the sky, although you won't get that much of an advantage.

922
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:09,320
Speaker 2: But I think maybe to answer the question of our listener,

923
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:11,839
Speaker 2: the answer is sort of like yes, sort of like

924
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 2: if you want time to go faster than how it

925
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 2: does here on the surface of Earth, then you can

926
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 2: do it by putting it in a box and sending

927
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:20,799
Speaker 2: it off into space for a while. Right, time will

928
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 2: move inside that box faster for a little bit.

929
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, the same way that time near a black hole

930
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:27,840
Speaker 1: moves more slowly. Time near the surface of the Earth

931
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 1: moves more slowly than it does out in deep space.

932
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,839
Speaker 1: So basically our time is already slowed down a little bit,

933
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 1: and you could take advantage of that by launching something

934
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: into deep space where that effect isn't happening, and its

935
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 1: time will go faster.

936
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 2: Right, right, So if you want it to just age

937
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 2: faster than everybody on the surface of Earth, that's doable.

938
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 2: But I think maybe the question he had was, can

939
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:51,879
Speaker 2: you accelerate time where there's no curvature, or where there's

940
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 2: no black holes or a planet like at the baseline

941
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 2: speed of time in the universe? Maybe out there, whether

942
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 2: you're nowhere near anything massive, can you make time go

943
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 2: faster than that?

944
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,720
Speaker 1: We certainly don't know the answer to that question. Current

945
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 1: physics would say it's impossible, But we also know the

946
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: current physics doesn't really understand what time is or what

947
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:14,400
Speaker 1: space is, whether they're fundamental or whether they bubble up

948
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:16,880
Speaker 1: from something deeper or like a theory of quantum gravity,

949
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:20,279
Speaker 1: like maybe string theory. So we don't really understand what

950
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: time is. So if I said absolutely not, then in

951
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:25,919
Speaker 1: fifty years somebody would be like, Haha, that guy didn't

952
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 1: know what he was talking about.

953
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:29,680
Speaker 2: Right, And we know how snarchy physicists can be. They

954
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:30,920
Speaker 2: would totally laugh at you.

955
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: Oh man, they're the worst. They go on these ski

956
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:37,240
Speaker 1: trips and they laugh at each other over hot coco.

957
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 2: It's terror, right, They're like that Daniel doesn't know what

958
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:40,720
Speaker 2: he's missing.

959
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:46,360
Speaker 1: So current physics doesn't have a solution for you, Nadav,

960
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: unless you want to fill the universe with black holes,

961
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: or launch things into space.

962
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 2: Right, or accelerate everybody else. Although it made me think,

963
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 2: like with the twins paradogs, right, mm hmm, I send

964
00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 2: the twin out into space, they come back. They have

965
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:04,440
Speaker 2: a slower but to the twin that h slower, the

966
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 2: other twin h faster. So what's the difference between the two.

967
00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:09,759
Speaker 1: The difference is that one of them accelerated and the

968
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:10,399
Speaker 1: other one didn't.

969
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:12,799
Speaker 2: But they both accelerated relative to each other. The same.

970
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: Acceleration is not relative. Acceleration is absolute. They can both

971
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: hold accelerometers and they can both tell which one is

972
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: doing the acceleration. They are not the same. Acceleration is

973
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,280
Speaker 1: absolute in the universe and velocity is relative.

974
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:29,240
Speaker 2: I see, like by visual site, they will both think

975
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,480
Speaker 2: they were both accelerating, but only one of them will

976
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 2: really be accelerating.

977
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're just measuring the relative distance between them,

978
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: then you can't tell. But if you have an accelerometer,

979
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:41,160
Speaker 1: you can tell which one has had a force applied

980
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: to them. Mmm. I see, it's a weird universe.

981
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I guess in the meantime, the best

982
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 2: advice we can give is to just buy an air

983
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 2: fryer or deep fryer for your turkey. That will definitely

984
00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:53,840
Speaker 2: cook it faster.

985
00:44:54,040 --> 00:44:56,479
Speaker 1: Oh I see, I thought by air fiument, a fryer

986
00:44:56,520 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 1: which launches it up into the air like hind of

987
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 1: the atmosphere where the less.

988
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 2: Oh there you go. Yeah, and then bake it with

989
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 2: baked with cosmic rays, so it'll be not just crispy,

990
00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 2: but also maybe mildly radioactive.

991
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, look for that in the daniel Le Jorge merch store,

992
00:45:11,760 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 1: the skyfriar.

993
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:16,879
Speaker 2: That's right, perfect for relatives you don't like that.

994
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: Much, relatives you want to fry with relativity.

995
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I think that answers that question, which

996
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 2: is that physicists are not quite sure if you can

997
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 2: accelerate time. So far, we can only think of ways

998
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:31,879
Speaker 2: to slow down time.

999
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, very impractical ways to speed it up, involving black

1000
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: holes and spaceships.

1001
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 2: Right, but even there, you'd have to like fill the

1002
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 2: universe with black holes except where you are.

1003
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:43,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an engineering problem.

1004
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's a big problem for everybody. If you

1005
00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:50,480
Speaker 2: did that, we would all suffer everyone at the Thanksgiving table.

1006
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:52,760
Speaker 2: All right, well, thanks again to all of our listeners

1007
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 2: for sending in their questions. It's always fun to answer

1008
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 2: them here on the podcast and to see how curiosity

1009
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:01,560
Speaker 2: works for every and what kinds of things people are

1010
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 2: thinking about and wondering about.

1011
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: So engage your curiosity, ask questions about the universe, and

1012
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 1: if you get a good one and write it to

1013
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: us questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.

1014
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:13,360
Speaker 2: That's right, call that lever that says ask the question.

1015
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:16,319
Speaker 2: All right. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us.

1016
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:17,839
Speaker 2: See you next time.

1017
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity. Come find us on social

1018
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:30,240
Speaker 1: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, This, Org, Insta,

1019
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,800
Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel

1020
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:37,240
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1021
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:42,719
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1022
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:45,240
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.