Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Can you see an electron or other tiny particles?

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Can you see an electron or other tiny particles? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, we're here. I want to play a new game
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I invented. It's a free association particle physics game. You
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: might qualified doing need a physics degree? No, no, you
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: might actually be the most qualified person ever. Really, that's
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the first time I hear those words ever. But but
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I'm game. How do How does it work? All right?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: It goes like this. I say a particle, and then
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: you describe your mental image. You've been doing this for
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: a while, translating science into visual art, and so I'm
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: curious what goes on in the mind of a comic
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: way Now I say the name of a particle. But
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: all right, I'm game. Hit hit me. Okay, alright, um, Proton, Proton.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I see the color blue, like a little little sphere
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: that has a soft blue glow. All right, well, then
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: let's go to the other side. What about electron? Electron?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I see something kind of jumpy, kind of electric like
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: it has little like electricity bolts coming out of it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: All right, what about the squiggly on Okay, I see uh,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I see Brian green somehow and being kind of squiggly
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and shaky. Alright, well, let me try you and Daniel.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: If I say the word quark. What do you see?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: You're like grant money. If you say the word quirk.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I think of a bowl filled with glue and these
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: little particles swimming around inside of it like edible. Yeah,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: that's my lunch, basically a bowl of glue. No, because
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: you know, the quarks are inside of proton. They're held
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: together by this seeding mass of gluons. This this frothing
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: foam of gluons, and so I can't think of quarks
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: except being surrounded by gluons. Hi am or hand make
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I have no idea how
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: to draw a particle. And speaking of were not having
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: no idea. We are the co authors of the book
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: We Have No Idea, A Guide to the Unknown Universe,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and the host of this podcast you're listening to, Daniel
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: That's right, our podcast in which we zoom around the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: universe and find interesting, weird stuff to think about, to
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: imagine and try to bring clear images into your mind.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: A very strange weird stuff that's happening out there. Yeah,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: we talked about not just seeing weird stuff, but we
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: wonder how can we see all this weird stuff that's
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: out there in the universe. That's right, because part of
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: understanding the universe is building in your mind sort of
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a mental model, like what's going on in the center
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: of the sun, how does this really work? And where
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: is the dark matter? Every time you want to understand something,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: in some sense, you're building sort of a mental model
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: that you want to look at. And we're so, where
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: do those mental models come from? And how do we
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: form these images in our heads? And how do we
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: know they're true? Right? Like, how do we know that
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: what we imagine is happening is actually happening. That's right,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And this is especially relevant for things that are not
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: just super duper huge that are out there in the universe,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: but things that are super duper tiny, like electrons, like protons.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: What do they actually look like? And when I do
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: particle physics, I think about these things visually. I think
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: geometrically in my mind to think about the relationship of
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: these particles. But what do they actually look like? They
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: look like little little balls, don't they They don't look
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: like little balls. We know that little balls are just
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: sort of the mental model we have in our head.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: It's part of the sort of analogy we make. We say,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: we like to think of this in terms of something
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: that we know, something we're familiar with, and so it's
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: very easy to do. But then, of course sometimes these
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: things don't act like balls, that act like waves, right,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and so then you have to like, what do they
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: really look like? Can you see them? That's right? And
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: so on the podcast today, we'll be asking a very
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: deep question. We'll be asking the question what does an
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: electron look like? Or can you see an electron or
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: other small particles? That's right? If you were aunt Man
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and you got minsculed down to the quantum realm, what
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: would that actually look like? You know? Frankly, I was
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: pretty impressed with the creative visuals in that movie for
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the quantum Realm. I thought it was like crazy and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: psychotic in this way they sort of evoked the weirdness
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics without trying to be too specific. What
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: do you think of that? He didn't scoff at their
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: depiction of an electron or electron clouds and stuff like that.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: I will be honest, I was prepared to scoff I
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: had a scoff all loaded up and ready to deliver.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: It was at the tip of your the tip of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: your tongue, tip of my scoffer. But I was impressed,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: and so I withheld my scoffing. I thought, you know,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: what somebody really thought about Somebody must have like talked
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: to a physic cyst and try to imagine. And I
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of real science there in imaging
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: um scientific ideas. You know, take what a scientist is
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: describing as a mathematical description of the universe and try
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: to translate it into human thought. And you know, uh,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: there is really a lot of art there, and it's
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: an important part of science. I mean, if you think
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: about it, we're all made out of particles and electrons
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: and quarks and protons, um. But what do these things
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: actually look like? I mean, we know what they look
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: like when you stack them together, but if you were
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: to actually blow them up, or if you're where to
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: shrink down like ad Man down to that level, what
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: would what would you see? What would your brain register? Right?
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: That's the question? Yeah, exactly. And when we do particle physics,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: we're seeking to understand the universe at its lowest level,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: we're going to take it apart. When what is it
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: made out of? You know? Is it all the way
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: down to strings? And when we talk about building the
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: universe out of these little vibrating strings, everybody gets an
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: image in their head. Right immediately I think of this
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: a little loop is sort of like fuzzy little loop
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: that's shaking around. And so it's very natural, I think,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: for humans to think of ideas and mathematical models and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: physical explanations in terms of mental images. And so today
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: we wanted to explore, like, what can we say about
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: what these things look like? How do you see an
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: individual particle? Because in the end at particle physics experiments
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: we're talking about electrons, and me wants as if we
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: have seen them. So we want to pull back the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: curtain and show you what we can see and what
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: we actually are just imagining. Well, my question when I
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: see that ant and movie is you know, he shrinks
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: down to the size of an atom or an electron, Right,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what happens in the movie, right, But
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: how does so what is he made out of at
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: that level smaller atoms and molecules? Do you know what
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, because he still looks like ant man. So
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: what are his clothes made out of? He's made out
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of pin particles, right, that's a great question. Like he
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: starts out made out of electrons and part of and
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: other particles, right, and he shrinks down and he's the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: size of an electron. But you're right, then have his
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: electrons got shrunk down to smaller electrons? Like? Does that
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: make sense? Or maybe he just gotten compressed so he
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: has the same number of particles but they're you know,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: just a shorter distance. Because when he's small, doesn't he's
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: supposed to have the same strength and the same like
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: mass and weight as his larger version of himself. Oh,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I see, he's just condensed. Yeah, he's like super dense man.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: That's that's what they should have been called. Man. Wait,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: but then doesn't he also get big? But he gets big?
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: If that would be true, then he would be like
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: super light and fluffy man. Right, I'm not sure that.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure the physics is really holding together. They're sorry, aunt, man,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: you just ruined the movie for me. Thanks. I have
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the feeling you're able to suspend disbelief and enjoy these
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: movies even if the physics is totally bologny. Am I wrong?
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: You mean, do I have a scoff ready when I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: watch movies? Or do you We've been talking for long
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: enough that you have a sort of a mental Daniel
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: in your mind that says, Daniel would think this is crazy.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: That's a little bit I have to say, and I'm
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: not super happy about that. I'm so sorry. I feel
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: like I have to watch every week with you now.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I wish I could go back in time. Daniel. Well,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the mental Daniel in your head says, that's impossible. Well,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: that's actually one of my parenting goals is that my
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: kids have a little mental version of me in their
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: head that says, what would my dad say about this decision?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: And at that point, you know, I'm sort of done.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not needed anymore. Yeah, it sounds like a great
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: conversation your kids will have with their therapists later on. Alright,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: So that's the question today, is what does the world
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: look like at the sort of quantum particle level. If
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: we could see an electron, an individual electron, what will
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: we see and how could we see it? Right? Yeah, exactly?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And how are we seeing it? Because we we aren't
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: getting sort of pictures of that in science right now.
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  Speaker 1: And not only are we claiming to say we saw
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: an electron go this way, and we saw you and
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: go that way, we're claiming stay ments about the particles
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: they came from, things like the Higgs boson that last
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: a very brief moments in time. And so not only
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: are we claiming to have seen you know, electrons and muans,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: which is sort of everyday particles, we're claiming they have
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: seen weird, exotic stuff. So we'll dig into exactly what
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: we mean when we say we saw the Higgs boson,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And I guess it's kind of a philosophical question, right,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: like can you actually see one of these particles without
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: touching it or without interacting with it? You can? Can
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: you really like spy on a higgs boson or spy
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: and a cork? And would it still get a restraining
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: order if you there? Now? I think that's one of
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the really interesting deep questions is are these things just
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: mental models, Are these just ideas we have in our
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: head calculational tools we use to predict future experiments, or
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: are these things really there? Right? And that's why we
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: want to see them, because it gives us a sense
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: that things are really there, right, Um, And you know,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I'm actually an expert in this area. You're a nice
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: bread being there. I think. I think I'm pretty good
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: there too, physically at least. No, I'm an expert in
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: pontificating ignorantly about the philosophy of physics. You're a professional
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: physical pontificator. No. I was actually given the title of
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: professor of philosophy. Oh right, right, that's right, that that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: you do have as part of your job. That is
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: one of your job titles. You're a professor in the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: philosophy department. Yeah. I just showed up at a bunch
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of philosophy seminars for a while, and then eventually somebody said, hey,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: who are you. What you're doing coming to all of
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: our seminars, And then I told him maybe I'm a
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: particle physicist. I'm interested in the philosophy philosophical imvocations of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: the research. And they were like cool, and then they
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: gave me a joint appointment. Apparently that's all it takes
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: to become a philosopher. Did they even check your ide
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: where they're just like, hey, you look, you look kind
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: of like a physicist. I think I do come in.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I think I do look kind of like a physicist
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: and maybe a tiny little bit like a philosopher as
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: I get older and more scruffy physics philosopher, or maybe
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I just look look more like a homeless person. I
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: don't know either one. You're qualified to be a philosophy professor,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: or there's some quantum superposition between physicist, philosopher and homeless person.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm going for three, you know, something to aim for? Yeah, well,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: if this podcast doesn't work out, I might just be
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: that's right, if we end up in something everyone else
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and get suited out of all our money. But I
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: was curious what people think about when we talk about
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: seeing particle and how do we see them? And so
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I walked around campus at you See Irvine and I
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: asked people. I said, how can you see tiny particles?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: How do they do that at particle physics experiments? So
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: those of you listening think about it for a second.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: If somebody asked you on the street, how can you
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: see a particle? What would you answer? Here's what people
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: had to say. I think we have to use like
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: lens and stuff to use the light, like Prince principle
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: of light and princible of the lens, so that we
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: can use like we can manify the small stuff. This
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: is bigger in chemistry. You can literally see it through
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: spectroscopy or like atoms and space micro or atoms like microscopes,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: electron microscope. So it depends on the particle size. Well,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: electron microscopes, I guess get too pretty small. But beyond that,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It's you know, they have devices that
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: can sense tiny particulates in air or gas. It was
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a microscope, I hope. I don't know magnifying glass either.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: One microscope, very powerful device. I believe they use something
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: called scintillators, which are kind of like really dense interactive slabs.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: All Right, it seems that everyone's pretty much said, how
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: do you look at small things? The answer most people
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: gave was a microscope. Yeah, And that's not a terrible
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: answer because microscopes are good at seeing really small things,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and everybody has that experience, and so I think people
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: just imagine, like, well, if I have a little toy
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: microscope at home that I can use to look at
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: bugs in a lab, that a powerful microscope they can
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: use to look at individual cells. Surely you can just
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: make microscopes more and more powerful and see smaller and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: smaller things. I think there's just sort of extrapolate bigger, right. Well,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: I thought it was funny that the answer to how
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: do you look at small things is using a device
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: for looking at small things. Obviously I use my small
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: things looking at device andator. I mean that's what the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: microscope means, right, microscope like looking at small things? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I think that's pretty common. I mean you could level
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of the same criticism at physics. You know,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: what is dark matter? It's something that's dark and we
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: think it has matter, and that's about all we know
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: about it. So sometimes you just sort of like encapsulate
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: our ignorance or are to the totality of our knowledge
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: in a cool sounding name which is totally sketchy and
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: or genius if you think splash cutting edge science. Exactly.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's dig into it. Let's talk about
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: what a microscope is, how it works, and what it
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: can actually see. What is the limit of microscopy. The
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: key you seem to understand there is that a microscope
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: is using light. Right, The way that you usually look
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: at things is that you use light right, photons hit
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: your eye then make an image in the back of
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: your retina. Your brain turns that into however you want
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: to interpret it. Right, So if you're just looking at
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: something macroscopic, you know, your hand or a ball or
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: or whatever, a homeless physics professor or something, then the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: image just forms in the back of your eye. Right.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: So microscope is just a fancy device to sort of
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: gather the light from really small things and make that
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: image on the back of your eye. You basically want
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to cut out all the lights coming from other things
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: in the universe and just have the light that's coming
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: from the small thing you're trying to look at be
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the one that hits your eye exactly. And you have
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to remember that the back of your eye has a resolution, right,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: has these cones and rods and uses a form an image.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: If you have something really small and all of its
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: photons hit like the same rod or the same cone,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: then any detail inside of it is just gonna get lost.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: It's just gonna look like a dot, right, like one
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: pixel in your eye. But if instead you have these
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: lenses which spread the light out, so this tiny little
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: thing now forms an image that covers the entire back
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of your eye. Then you can tell the difference between
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: one side of it another of the green parts and
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the red parts. Right, So it's about spreading the same
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: light from this from this tiny thing over a larger
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: area on your eye so that you can resolve the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: differences you can see different parts of it. I thought
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: it was interesting the way you said that. You basically
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: have to you're looking at things a light that you
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: have to bump off of the thing you're trying to
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: look at, right, like, you have to shadow it with photons,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and then you from the ones that bounce around. That's
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: how you tell what's there. Yes, exactly right. Remember that
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: things don't emit light unless they're like, you know, a
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: light bulb or a sun or whatever. If you're looking
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: at a sample of something saying you've gathered some you know,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: cells from the inside of your mouth, or you picked
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: up some dirt from the ground and you want to
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: see it, it's not glowing. The only way you see
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: it is when it reflects lights. You need a light
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: source like a light bulb, shoots photons at it, and
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: then those photons bounce off and come to your eye,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and you know, different things have different colors, and so
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: they reflect different kinds of lights, and that's why things
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: look green or blue or whatever. And so regular microscopes
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: work with light, and they work with lenses, right, like
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: little pieces of glass that are curved in just the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: right way to kind of gather all those photons and
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: kind of focus in or spread them in the right way. Right, yes, exactly,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and so it's all this reflected light, and then they
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: spread them out so that the thing you want to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: look at occupy sort of the back of your eye,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and and you're looking at just that, and you know
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: that you can have a pretty weak one, like a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: magnifying glass does, that you can have a more powerful one.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: My wife has really powerful microscopes in her labs because
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: she looks at individual cells and tries to look at
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: individual viruses. And so you might imagine, I can just
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: build a bigger one and a bigger one, and I
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: can build one the sides of a football stadium, and
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: that'll let me see an electron. Right, what's the current
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: limit for optical microscopes or light based microscopes. The limit
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: is that light itself sort of has a size. It's
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: not that photons are particles that you can measure with
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a ruler or anything. Remember, photons are sort of wiggles, right.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: We think of them as these waves, and the waves
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: have a wavelength, and the wavelength is like how long
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it takes them to wiggle up and then wiggle back down.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: And different frequencies of light correspond to different wavelengths, right,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: So high frequencies means short wavelengths. High frequency just means
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: they wiggle more often, right, So they have shorter wavelengths
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and longer wavelengths like radio waves have a low frequency.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And the thing is that light has a frequency, right,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: And that's sort of like the size of the light.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And you can't really see anything that has a that's
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: smaller than the wavelength of light that you're using. Um,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I guess my question is why not? I think the
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: best way to think about it is that you're using
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: light as a probe. You're like shooting photons at something
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: and you're seeing how it bounces off, right. And but
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: instead of light, which is hard to sort of visualized,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: imagine you're like poking at it with a stick. Right.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: If you had like a really wide stick, then you
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't really be able to tell small differences and stuff.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Whereas if you had a really narrow stick, like with
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a real point to it, you can really tell the edge.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Like a record player works. Record player works. This has
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: a tiny little needle and it goes through the ridges
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: on the record and tells you, like what those little
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: bumps are. Imagine if instead of having a tiny needle,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: you just use like your finger and you couldn't tell,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: like how many little bumps are there. You couldn't get
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: that information out. So what you need is a small
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: little probe to bounce off of to see the tiny
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: little differences so that you see so that the light
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: is actually affected by the thing that you're trying to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: look at, you know what I mean, Like if yes,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: and then it's affected only by that because if you
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: have if your light is too large a wavelength, then
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: things smaller than that are going to affect the light,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: but also the things next to it will, right Like
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: if the thing you're trying to look at is ten
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: nimes and your light has five hundred nimes, then the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: light's going to bounce off the fifty things fifty nime
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: things next to each other, and it's gonna give you
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: sort of an average over those If you want to
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: see things that are really really small, then you need
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: a probe that's that size so it doesn't bounce off
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: it and it's fifty neighbors right, all right, So I
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: get that you need a really short wave length of
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: light to look at really small things exactly. I guess
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: My question is why is that a limitation? Like, couldn't
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: we just make light smaller and smaller and smaller? Also,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: just like super high freuency light, Yes, you can with
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: visible light the and microscopy, the limit is about two nimes.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: And the reason is that above that the light has
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: such high frequency that it has such high energy that
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't bounce off anymore. Instead, it becomes X rays, it
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: becomes gamma rays, and they just go right through. And
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: so there's no limit to the energy you can have
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: of light. But eventually you're just you're building like a
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: laser and you're just zapping these things instead of you know,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: probing them. Oh, I see, at some point you shrink
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the wavelength down, but that also increases its energy, and
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: so they start to ignore the thing you're trying to
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: look at. Is that kind of what's going on? Yeah,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that's one part of it. The other part of it
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: is the lenses, right, we need lenses to bend this light.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: The ability of lenses to work depends on the frequency
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of light, and the higher the frequency, the harder it is.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: And so like, there aren't lenses that can bend X
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: rays or gamma rays very well. And that's the basic
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: principle of the microscope is you're using this lens to
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: expand to bend the light to take a small image
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: and make it large, and you can't really do that
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: anymore as the light gets very very high frequency. At
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: some point, the light starts to ignore your lenses, is
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: what you're saying, Not just the thing you're trying to
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: look at, but just your ability to like focus them, Yes, exactly,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: your ability to focus it and make the image degrades
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: very quickly as the photons get to very high energy.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Plus now you're shooting deadly radiation at whatever it is.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: You mean, it kills the things you're trying to look at. Two. Yeah,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I mean X rays you know, are damaging, ionizing radiation,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and they're great for seeing through things, right, but they're
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: not great for reflecting off of stuff. But I mean,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: if we're trying to look at things that don't really die, right,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: like an electron or a proton, or you know, a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: small piece of rock. Does it really matter if you're
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: shooting it with X rays? Man, all particles matter. Well,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: you know, we we could do without the neutrinos probably, right,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: while the neutrinos lobby is going to be knocking on
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: your door. Uh no, you're right, and we and we
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: can do that, right. We can probe individual particles by
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: shooting X rays at them and shooting gamma rays at them, certainly,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: but you know, are you forming an image in that case? Right?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: You're shooting individual particles at these particles and they're bouncing off,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: but you're not really forming an image in the same way.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: It's not really my cross copy anymore because you're not
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: focusing that image, you know, distorting and focusing that image
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to make something that you can visually see. Yeah, you
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: can use gamma rays and X rays to probe stuff.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Or could you make like special lenses, maybe not made
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: out of glass that it gets ignored by X rays,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: but you know, can you make a special lens made
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: out of something that X rays don't ignore. They're working
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: on that, and you know people are doing that for example,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to develop X ray lasers. That's one of the challenges.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: But it's very difficult to get any sort of material
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that will bend X rays or gamma rays. All right,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of the limitations of tradition microscopes
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: that use light. Yeah, exactly, it's down to about two nimes.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: It's sort of the smallest thing you can see with
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a light based microscope. But of course, um one of
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the wonders of particle physics is that we think of
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: everything and that's a particle also is sort of a wave.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: So we can talk about the wavelength of particles like electrons,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and you can ask, oh, could we instead of using light,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: instead of bouncing light off of stuff, could we bounce
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: something else off of it's something with a smaller wavelength.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: So people have this idea of decades ago, and they said,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: what about electrons. Let's get into that idea of a wavelescope?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Is that how you would call it, maybe electroscope, a
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: particularscope scope? Somebody copyright that quick Yeah, but first let's
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right. We're talking about microscopes
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and probing the smallest things in the universe, and so
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: we talked about how the optical regular microscopes that we're
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: all used to from physics in high school have a
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: limitation of about two d and fifty nanometers. That's the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: smallest thing we can see with those, which to me
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: sounds pretty small, but maybe for particles that's really big. Yeah,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Like you want to see an individual molecule, right, or
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you want to look at some complicated thing and see
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: like what, how do the bonds work? Right? You want
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: to zoom down and look at a single hydrogen atom, right,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: They're much smaller than two And so of course I
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: want to see things that are released some all. I'm
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a particle physicist. I want to be aunt Man and
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: zoomed down to the quantum realm and see how the
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: universe works. And so I'm definitely interested in ultra microscopy. Right.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: And so instead of using light, something else that we
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: can do is we can use and use electrons to
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: see something. And so the idea behind using electrons is
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: that just like when you use light, Right, when you
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: use light for a microscope, you shine a light bulb
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: on something and then you're looking at the light that
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: comes off of it to make your image. It's the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: same with electrons. We shoot a beam of electrons it's something,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: and then we see how the electrons bounce off, and
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: then we use that to reconstruct an image. It's not
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: a direct image. It's not like the electrons hit your
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: eye and then make an image in your eye. They
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: go into a computer and the computer says, Okay, this
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: electron bounced off at that angle, which means is something
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: here that looks like that these electrons were there bounced
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: off that angle and sort of sort of uses it
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: to reconstruct, um, what the electrons must have bounced off of. Okay,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: So the idea is that electrons are smaller than photons.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Is that is that the idea? Or you can get
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: an electron to have a smaller wavelength than a photon. Yes, exactly.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Electrons can have smaller wavelength than photons because they have
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: um they have more mass and so that ends up
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: giving them a smaller wavelength. Oh I see, and also
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: they don't kill the thing you're trying to look at, right,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: that's kind of part of the idea. That's right. And
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: there's actually different kinds of elect on microscopes. There's the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: ones with the electrons go bounce off of it, which
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: is very similar to light based microscopes. There's also other
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: electron microscopes with electrons do go through the material, the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: transmission electron microscopes, but the basic idea is the same,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: is that the wavelength of the electron is small enough
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that you're sensitive to tiny features. Right. It's it's the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: tip of that stick that you're using to sort of
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: drag across the surface of something to see like where
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: are the bumps, And then you you have to catch
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the electrons and kind of tell what's happening to them. Yes,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: you have to catch the electrons or you have no
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: idea what happened to them, right, So you need like
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: a little particle beam. You shoot electrons at something and
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: then you have to catch the electrons, and from the
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: angle of the electrons you can tell what happened. It's
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, imagine that you're in the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: dark and you're I don't know, and there's a wall
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: in front of you. You want to know what the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: shape of it is, so you throw tennis balls at it, right,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: and if the tennis balls are dark, tennis balls obviously
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: exactly glow with electrons. Um. Yeah, I carry I carry
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: glow that our tennis balls with me at all times,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: just in case I end up in this situation, just
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: in case there there's a power outage. To throw tennis
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: balls to the wall and if they bounce up, you
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: know that the wall has a certain angle to it.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: And if they bounce right, then you know the wall
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: has a certain angle to it, and you know, and
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: if it says out the exactly your wife, then you
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: found your kids, you know. And if you're really careful
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: about it, and you're throwing these tennis balls at different
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: parts of the wall and measuring the angles they bounce out,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: then you can build a mental image of what the
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: wall looks like without seeing using light. Right, that's exactly
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the idea. And you know, the smaller the ball that
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: you throw the wall, the more you can resolve really
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: small features on the wall. And that's why we want
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: to use small wavelengths. But you have to be really
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: good at throwing these tennis balls right and measuring where
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: they're going, yes, exactly. You have to be very accurate
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: about shooting them, and you have to be very good
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: at catching them, and then you need a computer to
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: put that all together and to make an image for
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: your brain and it's pretty cool because we've been able
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to look at single molecules right with these electrons on microscopes. Yeah, exactly.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, they made an image of a
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: single molecule. And when I first saw that, I thought, wow,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Like I've had an image in my head of what
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: a molecule looks like. You know, it's got a bunch
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: of particles zooming around whatever. But here's like a picture.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: You know. It's like you think you know what Saturn
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: looks like. And then we fly a probe by and
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: you get actual pictures from Saturn. Right, that's much more satisfying.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: And to see like a picture of an atom than
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: your imagination, yes, exactly, to go from imagination to reality.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: That's a transformational moment in science. And so that's what
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: did it look like? Um? Did it look like? Paul Rudd?
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: There was some would be a shocker. It looks like
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a man, Oh my god, he's been here. Yeah, and
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: he wrote s os right helped me. Finally somebody can
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: see me. I'm stuck down here. I'm slack down here
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: with Michelle Peiffer. Go away. Actually I'm fine. Um no,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: it looks sort of like what you would imagine, you know,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: you can see the electrons orbiting the nucleus, but you
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: can see that stuff is there. You know, it gives
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: you the idea that it's real, that it's not just
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: a mental calculation. That's it's pretty fascinating. And then a
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: few years later they were able to image a single
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: hydrogen atom. Right, that's just a proton with an electron
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: around it. It um It's pretty impressive. And these days
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: electron microscopes can get you down to half of a
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: N animator. So light based microscopes are two animators. Electron
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: microscopes down to half a N animator, So that's a
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: big difference. To mean, that's kind of weird because it's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: kind of like you're saying, hey, I saw this glue
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: in the dark tennis ball that was sitting there, and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: then I asked you, how do you know it was there?
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: And then you say, well, I throw a bunch of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: glue in the dark tennis balls at it, and that's
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: how I know there is a glue in the dark
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: tennis ball there. Do you know what I mean? Isn't
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: that weird? It is kind of weird, and if you
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: want to be really strict about it, philosophically, then yeah,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: you're not really seeing it. You're inferring its existence from
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: you know, probing it, and you're building a mental model. Right.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: But that's sort of the same with everything, Like how
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: do you know that there's a watermelon in front of you?
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I see it? Well do you see it?
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Or do you see the photon that bounced off of it?
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: And then your brain built a mental model in the end,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: it's really the same. Oh I see you're saying that
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the watermelon itself didn't hit your eyeball hopefully not hopefully
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: notice you know, looking in the dark with the watermelon
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: throwing it around. Uh, you never see the thing you're
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: trying to see, you know. I mean like you never
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: directly touch the thing that you're trying to see. You
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: just touched things that touched it. Yeah, So you can
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: either say you never really see anything, or you can
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: say that's what seeing is, right, interacting with the universe
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: and building a mental model of what you think is
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: out there. And so from that perspective, seeing with light
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and seeing with electrons it's really the same. I mean,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: it's maybe more layers of indirection, but they're both indirect
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: at the same level. Well, you know what my grandmother
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: always used to say, I'm prepared for some Joree grandma
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: wisdom hit me. So he said, you know that seeing
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: is believing that seeing can be whatever you define it
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, exactly. And I think that seeing plays
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: a big role in making people believe something because it's
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: it's such an overwhelming amount of data. It really affects
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the way you think about things. It's it's such a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: dramatically important part of how we build this model of
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: where we are in the universe. And so I think
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of people don't believe something unless they can
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: see it. For example, I was listening to the Bologny
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: documentary on Netflix about Bob Lazarre and UFOs, and like,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: he claims to have seen these things, but if I
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: don't see them, I can't believe what he's saying. It
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: has to be repeatable, right, like checkable. Yeah, Well, especially
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: for something really crazy, like I found an alien spacecraft.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: It uses anti gravity propulsion. You know, extraordinary claims require
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: extraordinary evidence. And you know I wouldn't believe those claims
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: from Stephen Hawking if I couldn't see the ship myself.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: So I'm certainly I canna believe it from some random dude. Well,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: all right, so that's electron microscopes. We can shoot electrons
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and things and by measure aring how they get deflected
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: or bounce back, then you can look at some pretty
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: small things because electrons are smaller than light. That's the
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: idea where you can get electrons down smaller too, smaller
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: sizes and exactly. Okay, so now we get into the
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: weirder stuff, right, like, how can we see an electron itself? Right?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: How can we see the tennis balls themselves? So how
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: do we know what the tennis balls actually look like?
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, So now, Daniel,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: how do we see an electron? Because we our best
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: technology sort of is in microscope, is to use electrons
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: to look at things. But how can we see something
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: as small as an electron itself? Yeah? That's really tricky,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: and I think the most honest answer is that you
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: can't really. If you could somehow isolate one electron in
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: trap and you could balance electrons off of it so
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: you could tell that it was there, but you know,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: you can't really use tennis balls to see tennis balls.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can tell that it's it's there, but
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: you can't like see it to resolve features that are
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: that are smaller than it. Right, you want to know
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: more than it was there. You want to see, you know,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: what does this side of it look like? What does
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: that side of it look like? And so you can't
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: do that with this. It looks like Paul Rudd also
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: exactly is it getting wrinkles or is it getting botox?
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: You know, um, what are the features of it? So
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you can't use an electron to see an electron in
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: any detail? Can you use something smaller? Can you like,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: can we shoot quarks at it? Are quark smaller than electrons?
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Or you know, little strings? Can we shoot little strings
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: at it? All these particles are microscopic. They're basically point particles.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: What we can do is we can shoot other particles
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: at them, but we can't really resolve any features. You know,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: you could shoot super high energy particles at them, and
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: you can try to get a sense for like where
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: is the charge distribution, But you're not really going to
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: get a satisfying image out of these things. And in
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the end, all you can do is really detect that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: it's there. So I don't think you can see and
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: you can resolve any features. All you can do is
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: make a statement about its existence. Oh, I see, we
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: can't touch it, or we can't poke at it the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: same way that we poke at other things because we
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: don't have anything to poke it with. That's right. And
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: if you poked it with another electron, with another particle,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: all you would do is say that it's there. You
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: can't really see anything smaller than that particle. It could
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: be that there's things inside the electron. Right, imagine that
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the electron is not fundamental, it's not a point particle,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: but it's made of smaller particles. Okay, how would you
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: tell s? Quickly? On? Yes, quickly? On exactly? How would
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: you tell what? You would have to take super duper
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: high energy particles and shoot them at the electron and
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: then try to see like a variation in the response,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Like if I shoot them at the top of the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: electron or the middle of the electron or this part
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: of electron, do I get different responses? And this is
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: for example, how we discovered that the atom has a nucleus. Right,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: we shot high energy particles at gold atom and we saw, Oh,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: if you go right in the center, boom, they bounce back,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: and if you miss the center, then they don't bounce back,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: so we could tell if there was something there in
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the center. So what you need for that is really
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: really high energy particles, so they have really short wavelengths,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and we've done that kind of stuff. We shot really
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: high energy electrons at each other um and we've never
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: seen anything inside the electron. So as far as we
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: can tell, we haven't been able to resolve any features
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: inside the electron, not yet. At least. It's like taking
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: a little box and shaking it to try to figure
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: out what's inside of it, but you can't open the box. Yeah, yeah,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And so all we need is, you know,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: a hundred billion dollars to build a really big accelerator
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: so we can shoot these things at each other with
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: even more energy and maybe start to figure out where
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the stuff is inside the electron. Oh man, Daniel, is
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: this what this has all been about? You're just trying
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: to ask me for money. Just take out your check
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: book and write a bunch of zeros. I mean, how
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: hard is it? Sure it's easy, I'll do it here,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: hold on, I don't never the check will go through.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: But I can definitely write you a check. You might
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: have to wait to cash it, but here you go.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: That's right, I don't have the cash flow right now.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: But and in the end, that's what we're doing with
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: particle colliders, is that we're just shooting higher and higher
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: energy particles at each other to try to see inside them.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: And that's how we found out what's inside the proton. Right.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: We saw that if you shoot the protons at each
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: other with that high enough energy, or actually if you
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: shoot high energy electrons at protons, then sometimes they bounce
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: back with a lot of energy and sometimes they go through.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: And that's how we found that there were quarks inside
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the protons. We could see these little spots inside the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: protons where the electrons are more likely to bounce off
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and interact. So that's how we discovered quarks from the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: way that it behaves when you shooted it, not from
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: what you measure of the things that you shoot at it,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: which is how it's sort of like what happens if
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I shoot at it and some weird things happen, and
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: from that you can tell what was inside the box. Yeah,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: we shoot like super duper tiny high energy tennis balls
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: at these protons and sometimes they bounce back and sometimes
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: they go through, and that tells us you know, where
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the stuff is inside the proton, and that sort of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: gives us an image. Is sort of like X raying
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the proton. I guess you could say, so, does that
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: mean that we can exceed the limit of half a
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: nanometer that you mentioned before as being the limit that's
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the limit for electron microscopy for like seeing samples. But
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: if you use particle colliders, then yeah, you can get
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: smaller than that. But you know, it's it's not as
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: clear that you're seeing. I mean, you're not like you
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: can't take an individual proton and scan it and send
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: a bunch of electrons at it. Right, this is a
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: one off experiment, one electron against one proton, and then
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: you do it again and you build up a sort
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: of statistical model for what's going on inside the proton.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: But you can't take one proton and like, you know,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: zoom a bunch of electrons at it and get an
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: image of it in the same way that you can,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: for example, a hydrogen atom or molecule. Oh, I see,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: you can't look like if I had a special electron
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to look at that, that would be impossible. Yeah,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you basically just get one look. But you can sort
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: look at electrons in general to maybe see what's inside
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of them. But like if I gave
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: you a special electron, said hey, this electron came from Mars,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: can you check it out? You would not be able
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: to tell me anything about it. I could, you know,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: probe it once. Basically, it's sort of like it's a
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: destructive technique. Here's this really special electron, Daniel, do you
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: tell me what it looks like? Sure, it looks like this.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Where is it? I'd be like, well, first sign this waiver,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I promise you won't sue me. Yeah, exactly. Um,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: But you know, there are lots of things that we
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: started at the large hage On collider that we can't
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: see directly, and yet we claim they exist. So maybe
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: before we wrap up we should dig into that a
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: little bit. All of this has been kind of seeing
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: things that we already know about. But you guys had
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the collider are trying to look for things that you
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: don't even know what they look like. If you could
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: even look at them, that's right, And to make it
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: even crazier these particles is that we think exist, they
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: don't last very long. So for example, every time we
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: make a Higgs boson, it lives a very brief, happy
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: life for about ten to the minus twenty three seconds, right,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: So these things, it's not like we make a pile
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: of Higgs bosons and then they have a bowl of
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: them and we're like, okay, what are these things? Like?
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Each one lives for just the briefest, briefest moment. Not
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: only do you not know what they look like, but
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: they barely exist at all exactly. And what happens is
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: they exist briefly and then they turn into other particles,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: particles that were familiar with photons or electrons or muans
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: or something. And then we have a big camera essentially
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: that tracks the passage to those particles, like we these
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: electrons or muans or whatever. As they fly out from
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: the point of the collision, they leave these little traces
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: in our detectors, in little scintillators or trackers or calorimeters,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: are all sorts of stuff. They give us a clue
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: about the direction that these particles came out of. So
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: we don't see the Higgs boson itself. We just see
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the particles it turned into. And even those we don't
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: see those particles themselves. We see we see sort of
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the trace they left in our detectors. You know that
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: they were there, but you don't actually know what they
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: look like. Like the Higgs boson could look like Paul Rodd,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: which just would never know, that's right. Um, we can
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: just see the sort of their footprints, and so it's
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: sort of like I don't know, arriving at like a
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: big fight scene and you see like footprints running off
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: in every direction, and then you try to imagine, like
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: what happened. You know, somebody ran away this way and
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: this blood stains this direction, someone fighting with Kenna Reeves
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: and it was Jorge versus Paul. What happened? But we
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: can use that to tell like, oh, this was an
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: electron and had this energy, and that was a muan
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: had this energy in this direction, and we can use
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: that with a bunch of physics arguments to reconstruct what
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: we think happened in the collision and whether or not
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: a Higgs boson existed briefly. And so in the end,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: it's all sort of indirect and it's all statistical and
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: We have no idea what a Higgs boson looks like,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: but we're pretty sure it was there just to maybe
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: recap here and start to wrap up. We it seems
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: like we kind of have a like a progression, right Like,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: if you want to see things with your actual eyeballs,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: the limit of that is about two hundred and fifty nanometers,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: right Like, if you use lenses and optical microscopes, and
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: if you want to actually want to see the photons
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: hit your eyeball, that's about the limit, right, yeah, exactly.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: But if you want to be a little bit more indirect,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: you can use electron mics with microscopes and you don't
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: actually see the electrons, but you maybe see the image
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that comes from the electrons hitting some sort of sensor,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: And that one gets you down to about half an animeter.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: And then if you want to spend a couple of
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: billion dollars and be more sort of removed from the
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: thing you're looking at, then you have to get into
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: particle colliders and and those maybe you don't have a limit.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: There's no limit except for money. Right. You can build
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: a particle collider the size of the Solar system and
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: see things down to like ten to the minus twenty
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: ten of the minus twenty five um. As far as
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: we know, there's no limit until you get to like
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: the plank length, like what we think is the smallest
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: spatial resolution of the universe itself. But that would require
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: like jillions of dollars a very special microscope. That's right,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: And so everybody, get get at your checkbooks and support science.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: No just kidding, Tell your congress people or your members
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: of government that all this stuff is worth the money
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: because we want to know what the universe looks like.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: We want to tear it apart at the smallest scale
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: and build an image in our minds of what's going on.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Just focus on all those tax dollars and making into science.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: That's right, alright, So thanks for tuning in everyone. That's
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the answer to the question can you see an electron?
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: And what's the smallest thing that we can see? And
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: does it look like Paul Rudd? Now we know that
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: we may never know possibly, all right, Well, thanks for
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: tuning in. We hope you enjoyed that and hope you
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: got some clarity into seeing things at the very smallest
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: of levels. See you next time if you still have
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: a question after listening to all these explanations. Please drop
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at Feedback
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio from More podcast from my
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.