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Is the Universe pixelated? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, have you heard of the Zenos paradox? Yeah?
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Is that the one where you can't get to where
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: because you keep going half the distance and then half
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: that distance and half that distance. Yeah. It's kind of
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: like this thought experiment where you say, all right, I'm
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: trying to get home, so I'm gonna get to half
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of the distance to my home, and then you stop
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and you say, all right, now I'm gonna get half
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of the distance to my home. And so you go
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: another half of that and you say, now I'm going
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to go half of the distance to my home, and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you do that half, and so the question is will
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: you ever get home? I mean, it sounds like you
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: would always get there because you're always going half of
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: what's left, but you might never get there, right, And
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it raises an interesting question, right, because if you can
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: cut a mile and a half and then cut that
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: in a half to a quarter mile, and cut that
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in half to an eighth of a mile, can you
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: keep cutting it to infinitely small distances? Like are those
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: distances even meaningful on a physics point of view? Or
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: is there a shortest possible distance in the universe? Afterwards,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Zeno has to actually take that step right, So physics
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: could be like Zeno's paradox, more like Zeno's paradk Not,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: that's right, Zino's paradox unraveled. I am and I'm Daniel,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: where we take the universe, cut it in half, and
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: then cut it in half again, and cut it in
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: half again and again until it's small enough for everybody
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: to understand and happily digest. This is Daniel Jorges podcast paradox.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: And unlike that paradox, this will actually end at some
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: point in about thirty thirty five minutes, that's right. Not
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: if you listen to half the podcast and then half
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: was left, and then half of what's left right, infinitely
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: slicing the podcast, you can enjoy it forever. Yeah, at
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: some point you'll be like, but that's right, we'll be
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: listening to one unit of laughter. But that's sort of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the question we want to talk about today. Can you
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: slice up space into smaller and smaller pieces? Can you
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: divide it into short and short distances? Or is space
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: pixelated like a video game? That's right? Or your latest iPhone.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: You look around you and it seems like the universe
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: is continuous and smooth, right, But it might be that
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the universe is actually pixelated. That you can be here,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: or then Jason pixelby, you can't be in between, that
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: there's the shortest possible distance to the universe. So not
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the stuff is pixelated, but the actual like the universe itself,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the space in it is like a video game. It's pixelated.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: It's not continuous and infinite resolution exactly. And it's a
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: perfect analogy to the stuff. Right. In particle physics, we
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: love to take things apart. We say your body is
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: made of molecules, and those molecules are made of atoms,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and those atoms are made of smaller particles, and those
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: little particles get down to corks and leptons. We're looking
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: for the tiniest particle, the base particle out of which
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: everything is built. But in a completely parallel track, we
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: can ask the same questions about space. Is a mile
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: built out of half miles, which just built out of
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: quarter miles, which eventually is built out of the smallest unit,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: or can you infinitely divide it? So this is a
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: mind blowing question, And so we were curious what you
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: thought the answer was, do you think the universe is pixelated? Yeah?
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So I went around. I asked a random selection of
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: UC Irvine undergraduates who were not put off by a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: weird physics professor holding a mic in their face, and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: ask them this question, do you think the universe is pixelated?
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Here's what they had to say. This quantized basically as
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the atoms cannot be. I mean, of course they're made
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: by subatomic particles. But I think after that, like it
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: can be continuous. I think this spread to do it.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's like I can ask him to like,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: you reach smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: but you never get to like a finite like this
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: is the smallest thing. Um. I think it would probably
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: get smaller and smaller forever. I really don't know about this.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: This is a tough lue. It's a topic. What's your
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: best guess? What do you think the job cuts say? Really?
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: You know this one is really beyond my understanding of
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: this whole ward right now? Yeah, all right to People
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: were kind of skeptical about this. There's a whole spectrum
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of answers. I mean some people are like, no, you
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: can chop things down infinitely far. Other people like no,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics says everything is quantized and therefore there must
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: be pixels. And other people are like, wow, I have
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: no idea, what are you talking about? And I totally
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: regret agreeing to answer your questions. It's like, I've never
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: heard these two words at the same time, universe and pixels.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, and it is a weird question,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: you know. But the pixels is a perfect analogy because,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: like if you have a modern iPhone and you look
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: at the screen, it seems like the pictures are fluid,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: they're smooth, or you can't see the pixels because they
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: have this retin a display. It gives the illusion that
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: it's completely smooth. But it's kind of interesting because if
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: you look at an old phone, like just from five
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to ten years ago, it looks horribly pixelated, that's right.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: It looks crunchy and chunky, and you're you you think,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: how could I ever have seen this and thought that
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: this was anything of quality? That's right. And you know,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: even um old fashioned photographs, the ones that are analoged,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: not digital, ones that use chemistry, those in effect have
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: pixels as well. They're just so small that you can't
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: see them, because you know, the development process is a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: chemical process and so it's based on you know, molecules
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and drops of fluid and whatever. It's just the pixels
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: are so small. So if the pixels are small enough
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: that you can't see them, it gives you the illusion
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: that it's perfectly continuous and that you could, you know,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: zoom in forever and see more and more details, you know,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: like on that on those cop shows, whether they like
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: enhance the image and it can just like zoom in
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: forever and read the time on somebody's watch or something
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: right right, or get like a face match. Yeah, but
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: in a real picture, there's a limit to the information
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: that's been captured. And if you look from far away,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: it looks like you could zoom in forever. But at
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: some point, as you start zooming in, you notice the pixels.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: And so that's the question we were wondering about today, like, sure,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: space seems continuous around us, but is it possible that
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: if we zoomed in far enough, the pixels could appear
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: at some point? Yeah, So that's kind of related to
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the question of space itself, Like we know stuff is
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: made that a little bit, But is space itself also
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: pixelated like an iPhone screen or an old photograph. Yeah,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and this question is newly fascinating because we're only recently
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: learning what space is, right, Like the question of is
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: space pixelated is a reasonable question in parallel to is
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: matter quantized and made out of the smallest particles, because
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: we've recently realized that space really is thing. Also, it's
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: not just like emptiness. Those of you are out there
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: saying this is silly. Space is nothing and so of
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: course you could be anywhere in it and you can
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: divide it infinitely. We've recently realized this space is not nothing.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Before we thought it was nothing, just the absence of anything.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: But actually it's not right. It's almost like a medium,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: or like what the ocean is to fish. Yeah, exactly,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: it's a thing. It has dynamical properties. Right. We know
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: that it's not nothing because you can do things that
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: nothing can't do. Right. For example, space can expand that's
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: what dark energy is. And for those of you whose
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: minds were just blown about the meaning of the phrase
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: space can expand, go off and listen to our dark
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: energy episode where we talk all about that and space
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: can wiggle, right, like things in space can expand and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: contract with these wiggles as gravitational waves passed through them.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: And you know, those of you interested in that, go
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: off and listen to our gravitational waves episode. And we
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: also know that space can bend, right, that's what general
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: relativity tells us, and tells us that gravity is not
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a force, but in that it's a bending of space.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: So space definitely is a thing. It has properties, and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: we've only just recently discovered that it's a thing and
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: begun to investigate it. And so it's a very reasonable
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: question to ask, is space pixelated like we think matter
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: might be, Like what is it made out of it?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Or what's it like? Really? You know, it's not nothing,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: So if it's something, it's like space is some famous celebrity,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: you know, right, what space like? You know on the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: weekend out? Is it egotistical? It seems egotistical, you know,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it seems so into itself. What spaces favorite color? Black? Black?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Space color? That one? I think we know that's a
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: settled question in science. No, I think it's important to
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: think about this question, like what is the smallest unit
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of space? Right? What is space built out of? Um?
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And I think the analogy to you know, understanding what
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: matter is built out of? Works? They're like, is space
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: built out of the little bits? Right? These pixels? And
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: then the next question if you discover space is built
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that it pixels is what are those pixels made out of?
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: It could be that those pixels are made out of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: something smaller and deeper that's nothing like space, So that
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: space itself is an emergent phenomenon, not a fundamental thing
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: in our universe. That's something that arises, you know, like
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: wetness or economics, you know, so not something that's built
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: in at the very beginning of the universe, but something
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: that comes out of how things interact. Well, let's take
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: this approach. So let's assume that space is pixel ated. Okay,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: what is the space pixel mean or feel like or
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: look like? Or what would it do to things? Yeah? Well,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: what would it would mean is that you can't be
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: just anywhere you want in space, you know, just like
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Zeno the beginning of this episode. It would mean that
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: at some point, if you're small enough or you can
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: zoom down enough, it would mean that you have to
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: make a choice. Are you at location end or location
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: N plus one? Right? It would mean the space is
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: discrete the way integers are, instead of being continuous the
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: way real numbers are. Right, there's an infant the number
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: of numbers. For example, between one and two, there's one,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: one point five, one point two, seven, eight four, and
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: you can always squeeze more numbers in there. It's an
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: infinite amount of numbers between one and two if you're
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: talking about real numbers, a continuous line of numbers. But
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: for integers, like there's just one and there's two, there's
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: no more integers in between. Space could be like that
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: where you're like, I'm at this spot, and if I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: want to take a step, there's the shortest distance I
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: can step, and so you have to go to two.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you were on your iPhone
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: you were animating one pixel dot black dot on a
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: white background. This dot can't just be anywhere on the screen.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: It has to move from one box to the next box.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: That's right. It can't like cross over the boundary. You
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: can't be halfway between one pixel and another because then
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: each pixel would have to be half white and half black,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: which they can't be. Right at pixel is the basic
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: unity either on or it's off, So like, if you
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: look at the iPhone from a distance, this dot would
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: look like it's moving smoothly across the screen, but really
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: it's taking a little jumps between squares, right, Like it's
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: in square ones at this moment, and then it's suddenly
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: in the next ware, and then suddenly it's in the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: next player. You're saying that maybe, like I'm not really
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: moving continuously through space. Maybe I'm just kind of like
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: jumping from one box to the next exactly. And the
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: illusion of smoothness, the way you feel of it that
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: you are moving smoothly, is your brain stitching that together.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: And it's easy to do because the pixels, if they exist,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: would be super duper tiny. But they only have to
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: be smaller than we can notice. You know. For example,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: if you slow down a movie, it's nothing but a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: bunch of still images, right, and if you watch them
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: fast enough the key is faster than your eye can
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: register the differences, then it appears to be an infinitely
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: smooth sequence. It seems like you're watching something in real life.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Slow down of course, and you can see, oh, it's
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: just a bunch of still images. In the same way
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: space might be discreete We just haven't noticed, but that
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: if you get small enough, you realize that these nodes.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like you can't get off halfway between
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: subway stations, right, might be the space is like that
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: that every location in spaces like a subway stop. You
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: don't want to get off the train halfway between pasions
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and get stuck in the tunnel. Right. You can't write
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the universe forbids it Right, But if you're the pixel
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: like in the in the screen, the pixel isn't really moving.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: You just turn it off in one square and you
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: turn it on them the next square, so it sort
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: of disappears and it appears. Yes, are you gonna ask
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: if that's really like teleportation? Yeah? Right, Like does that
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: mean as I'm moving through space, I'm actually like disappearing
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: here and appearing in the next spot. Yeah, I guess
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it does, you know? I guess it means that you
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: zapp from one spot to the other without going in
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: between them, right, And so that really is a kind
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of teleportation. I hadn't thought of that before. It's sort
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: of awesome. Um. In the same way, like if time
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: is quantized, then you know you're sort of slicing your
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: way through time. In the same way. That's fascinating. Yeah,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: so we're if space is pixelated, that we're all teleporting
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: right now, all the time, only you move, only if
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: you moved. Oh my god, we just invented teleportation right
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: here live on the podcast. Amazing. Get the legal team
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: on the patent please, will you? And there goes your
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: physics professorship right out the door right there. That's right. Boom,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I'm officially a crackpot. Well, let's take a quick break
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: before we go on. Okay, so that's what it means
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: for the universe to be pixelated, that we're all just
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: kind of trapped in an iPhone screen. Then we can't
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: really move anywhere. We have to move within these boxes.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: That's right. But if it is, it's a really fancy,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: super modern iPhone because the pixels would be super duper tiny, right,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: it has an awesome graphics processor. What would you call
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: it the iPhone you It would be like a quantum display.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: That's right, iPhone verse, Tim Cook, give us a call.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: That's right. Somebody put a trademark on man. We need
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: like a constant legal team standing by just to you know,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: get down all the great ideas we come up with.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: On the fly. So how could we tell if we
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: are in a pixelated universe or not? Yeah, well that's
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: hard because to see that we are in a pixelated universe,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and we'd have to see the pixels, right, So we
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: have to zoom in somehow far enough to be able
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: to see them, and of course so far we haven't.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: So far everything seems continuous. We don't notice discontinuities in
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the way things move um, and we also have no
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: idea how big these pixels are. Right, so far, we
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: have explored space and matter using high energy particle colliders,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and that's let us probe down to about ten to
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the minus twenty meters. That's zero point than twenty zeros
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: in a one. I mean, that's a tiny little distance.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what the prefixes for that. It's
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: some super tiny distance. We've studied space down about that
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: distance using particle colliders where we smash these tiny particles
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: together and use the probe tons so like look inside
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the other protons, and that lets us study space. So
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: we know that if there are space pixels, they have
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: to be smaller than that, right, you meaning at the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: large Hadron collider, you can poke things at that distance,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: meaning you can tell if things matched together within that
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: small of a distance apart. Right, Yeah, Essentially, our current
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: theory assumes a space is continuous, and our current theory
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't break down down to ten of the minus twenty,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and so we would notice some deviation. Something would be different,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: The calculations would be wrong if space became pixelated and
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: at a level let that we didn't expect. And so
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: so far we're pretty sure spaces seems continuous down to
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: ten to the minus twenty. So the pixels, if they exist,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: have to be really small, right. But I wonder, you know,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: if there's a philosophical limit there, you know, in the
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: sense that like, do you think Super Mario, if he's
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: in the video game and he's a pixelated character, could
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: he tell that the world was pixelated? You know, because
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: he's pixelated and he thinks in pixelated thought? Could he
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: not things pixelated thoughts? Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I think, in terms of thought units, here's a three
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: pixel unit thought. I think that's an interesting question. If
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the pixels they we lived in a universe where the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: pixels were fairly large in comparison to our bodies. Yeah,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's hard to imagine that realistically
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: because it would mean there's a pretty strong limit on
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: how complex our bodies could be. I mean, if your
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: body was made out of pixels that were like six
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: centimeters across, then you could just couldn't be very complicated
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: if you were a meat or tall. In order to
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: have enough complication to have an interesting mind, you know,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: you need a huge, complicated brain. So the brain would
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: have to be enormous compared to the size of the pixels.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So I think it's pretty hard to have complex enough
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: life to ask that question um and still be small
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: compared to the size of the pixels. So if super
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Mario is an idiot, then yeah, he'd probably be pretty
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: close to the size of the pixels. But then he's
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: not gonna be asking the question why am I pixels? Well,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: his intelligence would be pixelated, so he probably have zero units.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And then if he takes a mushroom, is that going
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: to grow too? That's just you know, I always wondered
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: about those mushrooms, you know, does that change the way
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: he thinks? Like what is going on with those mustions?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: But where do I get something? He doesn't actually get
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: bigger at just his pixels in his mind. That's right.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Then the other question is, you know, would he even
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: think to ask the question if pixels were obviously the universe,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't ask why is the universe pixelated? You would
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: just be one of the basic assumptions that you accept
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: day to day, you know. And that's one of the
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: things I find fascinating about physics is that we keep
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: unraveling basic assumptions about the universe that we didn't even
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: really think to question, you know, the questions like is
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: time the same for everybody? Right? Of course we used
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to think, of course, it was like time is time
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: in a clock here and a clock there are the same,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: And now we know it's not. Time is relative and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: depends on your speed and all sorts of weird stuff.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: So physics is helping us peel back the universe and
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: figure out where are perceptions have led to biases in
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: the way we view the universe, and so why that's
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: why this space pixelization is just like another one on
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the list. It might be eventually, physics shows us that
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: space is different than the way we always imagine, you know,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: that's made up of these little units. So I think
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: what you're saying is that as far as we know,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: we look at the world around us and the complexity
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: of it, it's such that we're pretty sure that it's
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: not pixelated up to a certain scale, which is tend
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to the minus twenty. Yeah, we certainly do. And if
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: we were close to the pixel scale, it would limit
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: how much complexity we could have in our universe. Right
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: If if the pixels were a centimeter across, then our
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: one meter scale life couldn't be very complex at all. Right, Right,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Like what kind of interesting thing could you build out
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: of actual real sized legos? Right, you can't make a
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: machine that's very complicated. You know, you want to see
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: these rich effects that you see when you put the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: world around you. Yeah, yeah, Okay. So what makes scientists
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: even think that the universe could be pixelated? I think
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: they were just hanging out in the sevenies and smoking
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: too much weed and they were like, man, though, it's
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it's not like um. Some people might think, Oh, it
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: comes from the idea that the universe is a simulation,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: and if it's a simulation, then of course it's pixelated,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: because computers in the outside the universe are pixelated. Now,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: it comes from a deeper place becomes from noticing that
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics seems to work really well. Right, Quantum mechanics
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: has described everything we know except for gravity, and it
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: seems to be a fundamental description of the universe that
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: everything is quantized. You know, packets of light, for example,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: can't have an arbitrary amount of energy, they can only
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: have certain units of energy. Matter itself is made out
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: of particles, which are little quantized bits of stuff. Right,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: So it seems like, for for a reason we don't understand,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the universe is quantized, and quantized of course, just means
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: little units of stuff, and so it's very natural to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: imagine that space also might be quantized. The space also,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: instead of being infinitely divisible, might also be it out
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of pieces. Because the universe seems to like quantum mechanics.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So you're saying that, like the stuff that we see
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: around us does have smallest bits, like there is a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: lego piece of matter. You can't split an electron really
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: like you can have half an electron or a quarter
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: of electron. So maybe that says something about the universe
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: as a whole, like maybe everything is just kind of blocking.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: That's right, it would make sense, it would it would
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: feel natural and it would feel coherent with what we
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: think about modern physics if space was also quantized. And
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: then there's you know, there's some technical reasons, like there
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: are some theories physics which just don't work if you
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: get small enough. What do you mean, you know, some
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: theories of quantum mechanics and the way it describes interactions
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: below a certain distance that you just start to get infinities.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Like you you know, how does the theory of physics work? Well,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: it's a it's something that predicts an experiment, right, say,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: I think this is going to happen. What is my
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: theory of electromagnetism tell me? And so you can do
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: some calculation. It tells you the actron is gonna turn
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: left and go at this angle. But sometimes the theories
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: break and they give you numbers that make no sense,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: like oh, the electron is gonna turn and it's gonna
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: go to infinite angle or have infinite energy. So there's
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: some theories and it's a bit too technical to get
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: into that break down at really really small scales um
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and they just start to give infinities. And so some
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: of those problems are solved if you have the smallest distance,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: because then you don't have to go to those smallest scales, right,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And this especially is a problem when people try to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: describe gravity using quantum mechanics. It comes up with all
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: sorts of crazy problems. And one solution to that is
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: to say, well, what if there is the shortest distance,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: then we don't have to think about doing these calculations
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: down to infinitely small distances. Right, So nothing can happen
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: at such a small scale. So in theory, the theory
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't break down. It's just nothing can happen at that scale.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: So why you can worry about it. Yeah, it's like
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: a clue. It's saying, oh, this theory doesn't work. It
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: can't describe universe where there's infinitely small distances something. Then
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the idea is, well, maybe the theory is wrong, or
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: maybe the universe doesn't have infinitely small distances, in which
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: case the theory works. There's lots of fun ways to
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: make your theory work, and one of them is just
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: to imagine that the places where it breaks are the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: places where it's not physical, where it's not actually describing
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: what's happening. Well, this is a perfect point to take
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: a break. Well, this is interesting. So there's apparently a
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: number that physicists think might be the pixel of the universe. Like,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: there's like a concrete number they think might tell you
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: what the pixelation the resolution of the universe is, right
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit, I mean I think that's overstating it.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: There is a number which we think might have something
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: to do with the pixelization of the universe. But the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: argument is pretty weak. All right, I'll walk you through it,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: but you'll be unimpressed with how strong argument is. Alright,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: just trying to manage your expectations a little bit, right,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: all right, I'll make them pixel size. There you go, Yeah,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I go from one unit of expectation. Here's the argument.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: The argument is, we've noticed there are some fundamental constants
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: in the universe, like the speed of light, and that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: has units meters per second, right, And that's just a number,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and we measure it, and it's a parameter of the universe.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: We don't know why it's this and why it's that,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: and of course we have a whole podcast episode about that,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: but it is a number. And there are other units
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: we've noticed, like the strength of gravity, right, it's called
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: big G. The gravitational constant appears in Newton's formula, and uh,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and the plank constant, the one that appears
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: in quantum mechanics. It tells you how um, well, you
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: can know two numbers at the same time. So there's
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: all these basic units that we've measured and we've discovered,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and we think they reveal something about the universe. We
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: think they tell us something about why the universe is
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: this way not that way, and we don't know where
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: they come from. They're kind of like the pie or
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: you know, just the number that exists in the universe. Yeah, well,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: pies an especially fascinating one because it's unit lists, right,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: so it's pure in some sense. But these numbers have units,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: you know, they're like jewels per second or meters per
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: second or whatever. And so we think they tell us
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: something about why the universe is this size or has
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: this or you can go this fast, or you know,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: it's some sort of like ratio between two things. Yes, exactly.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: They fix the relationship between things like the speed of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: light fixes the relationship between distance and time. Right, it's
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: meters per second, So I see that the speed of
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: light is like a universal physics number. Yes exactly, And
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: so there's other numbers like these in physics theories. Yeah,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: there's a few that we've discovered along the way, and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: we think they're deep and fundamental, and you know, some
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: future theory of physics might reveal why they are the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: way they are, but currently they're just numbers, and we
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: imagine that they could have been set to something else,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and that's a whole other discussion. Here's the thing you
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: can do, though, is that you can manipulate these numbers.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: You can multiply them by each other until you get
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a number that has units of distance. So you multiply
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: um planks constant and you have the gravitational constant the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: speed of light squared. You can cancel out all the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: units until you get a number that has just units
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: of distance. Okay, so what is that number. Well, they
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: call it the plank length because it has planks constant
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: in it, and it's a number. And the number is
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: ten to the minus thirty five meters. That's zero point
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: thirty five zeros and then a one. So that's a tiny,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: tiny number. And because it comes from these simple basic units,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: we imagine it has special meaning. We imagine that it's
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a clue that it tells us something about the way
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the universe works. And because it's just units of distance,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: we like to think that it tells us something about
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the fundamental nature of distance in the universe, that does it?
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, who knows. It's just a bunch of numbers
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: we multiplied together, you know, and we thought those numbers
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: were important, but maybe they're not. It's kind of like
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: if you take the smallest things and the fastest things,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you know, and you know, like the the smallest bit
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of matter and the going up the fastest possible speed,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and you know, what would be the smallest distance that
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: it could go. That's kind of what it is to
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: mix all of these numbers together. Right, Yeah, it's it's
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: not that much smarter an argument than that great I
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: feelt like that was an insult. I don't say that
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: to insult physics, right, Like, it's not a great argument.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: But it's the first thing you do, right, it's unit analysis.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Say well, if we have no clue, what can we do. Well,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: let's command these numbers and maybe that will give us
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a clue. So it's not no physicist are out there
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: saying this is definitely the fundamental unit of the distance.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: It just says, if there is one, it might be
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: around this number. I mean, within a factor of a
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: hundred or a thousand would be a pretty still a
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: pretty good clue, right, tend to the negative thirty five,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: which sounds really small. It is really small. It is
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: really small, but it's kind of it's not small comparative infinity,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Like the number Pi,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: you can take decimals out to thirty five thirty five
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: million decimals. Yeah, but you're saying maybe the universe only
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: goes up to thirty five decimals. Yeah, that's right. It's
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: a lot bigger than you know, ten to the minus
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: one hundred, or ten of the minus one thousand, or
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: ten of the minus ten thousand, Right, these are much
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: much smaller numbers. Um. The thing is, it's also much
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: smaller than the thing we've seen. Remember we studied space
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: down about ten to the minus twenty, So that means
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: that we are a factor ten to the fifteen away
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: from seeing these pixels, if in fact they exist, and
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: if they're at that scale. Yeah, I mean, just for
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: a sense of scale, like the solar system is ten
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to the fifteen meters across, I believe, so if you
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: could only see things, you know, down to ten to
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the fifteen meters, you'd be missing a lot of interesting detail,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Like you'd miss Earth and life and planets and stuff
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: and us. What a tragedy, I know. How could you
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: study the universe without seeing the most important and best
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: looking two dudes in it? Right? Like if you were
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a giant decisive a galaxy and you had an iPhone
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the size of you know, the Milky Way, and the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: biggest pixel in it was the sizeable solar system, there
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: would be a lot you'd be missing exactly. So between
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: where we've seen at tend of the minus twenty meters
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: and how far things might go attend to the minus
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: thirty five ms, they would be a huge amount of
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: complexity and richness down there that we're totally ignorant of.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Little tiny pixel people think asking these same questions, it
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: could be a little pixelated alien going Mario, hold on,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever heard your time. That's pretty good,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and we just lost all of our Italian listeners. Um,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the Italian listeners please write in and comment at Jorge's
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: accent at Daniel and Jorge dot comn Jorgel fans, the
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: whole Country dot Com. Okay, well, um, let's get some
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: perspective here. What what do you think would mean for
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: us and our understanding of ourselves or universe if we
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: found out that the universe is pixelated? It would be
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a really deep inside just into the very nature of
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the universe. You know, to know that number tells you
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: something about the scale at which the universe was built. Right,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Everything in the universe happens from its basic elements. So
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: we have fascinating structure, you know, galaxies and superclusters and
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: all that stuff, but all that arises from the interactions
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: of smaller pieces, you know, particles and electrons. Everything is
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: determined by what happens at the smallest scale, right, So
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: everything in the universe comes out of these basic elements.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: So to learn how big the smallest unit is tells
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: you how the universe was constructed. And in the end,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: what is science and physics about other than this goal
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: of trying to deprogram the universe or look at the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: source code or figure out how this thing is organized.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And so that would be pretty pretty awesome, but you
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: know it would actually just be a first step. Yeah, no,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: it's it's you just made me realize it would really
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: kind of blow your mind to just have this sense
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: that the universe has a structure, right, that it's somehow
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: feels built, you know, like there's a scaffolding to the universe. Yeah,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: like a graph paper, right, And then you have to
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: ask questions like who made the graph paper and why
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: that size? Right? Why is it ten of THEUS and
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: not ten of the minus five or ten of the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: mines thirty meters? Right? What does that mean? There's like
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: a clue there about the very structure of the universe.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Is it a random number and it generated arbitrarily when
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: all the multiverses were created? Or does it give you
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a clue somehow about something deep about the universe. On
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the other hand, you know, we talked about like galaxy
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: is just being emergent phenomenon, right, there a really cool thing,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: but they're just formed out of smaller bits and their
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: complex behavior arises into this thing called a galaxy. A
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: lot of people think these days that space itself could
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: be an emergent phenomenon, Okay, that these pixels of space
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: could be built out of something smaller that are not
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: that's not space. So space is not space, is what
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you're saying space is actually you know, A and B
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: or a combination of Yeah, yeah, the way like you know,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: cookies are not their ingredients, right, you mix them together,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: you bake them, you get a cookie. But if you
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: start with flour and utter and sugar and none of
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: those things are cookies, right, So cookies an emergent phenomena
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: in your kitchen. They're not a fundament you know what
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, unless you buy a lot of cookies and
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: that's all you buy, in which case they are the
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: fundamental pixel of your kitchen. Like, there's even some hidden
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: forces inside of space, is what you're saying, right, Like
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: there's something yes, yeah, And there's some pretty cool theories
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: about that. Like there's one that's called them quantum loop theory,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: and it builds space out of these tiny little loops.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: It says, maybe the fundamental unit of location in the
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: universe is not space, it's something else. It's these little
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: tiny loops, and those would be quantized of course, quantum
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: loop gravity. And out of those the way those things
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: are connected, space is formed. And that can tell you
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: all sorts of things, like well, maybe that tells you
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: why there's a maximum speed to how fast information can
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: travel through space because it's how fast these loops can
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: talk to each other. Like space is not like a space,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: is not like a jelly or like a space. It's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: more like a mesh or like a weed. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: or a really complicated subway system and connected by these
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: other forces. And so you hear people eminent um science
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: communicated saying things like maybe space emerges from the quantum foam, right,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: and like I was to hear that, and I think,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: what does that even mean? Man um And that's what
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: it means. It means that it's not a basic element
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: of the universe, but that it comes out of the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: interaction of smaller stuff, right the way cookies come out
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: of ingredients. Because I'm walking down the street, what's actually
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: happened is that all of my electrons and protons and
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: cords are actually like moving around in this mesh, this
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: invisible mesh that is the universe. No, no, no, I
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: think it's even it's a trickier to think about than that,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: because you can't think of these elements of this mesh
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: as bits of space. They're not right, You can't move
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: from one to the other. Somehow space arises from that
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: This whole concept of location and motion through it could
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: be an emergent phenomenon, right, and the one that doesn't
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: have any meaning below that distance. So you're not moving
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: through the mesh somehow, you know, information is propagating through
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the measure, the mess is interacting with itself in some way.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: But this notion of moving comes out of your assumption that,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: like space is fundamental, and we have to rethink that
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: if space is not fundamental, meaning like a super Mario
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: moving around the screen in your TV, it's not actually moving.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: He's just like a table of data in some program
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: that doesn't doesn't look like space. It's just numbers related
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: to each other exactly. That's the perfect way to think
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: about it. What makes those pixels right, not smaller pixels? Right?
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: It's some calculation inside the iPhone and is a little
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: bit of technology there that lights that up, and you
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: know it's not motion, So it's something totally different underneath.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: And so it could be the universe is made out
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: of things that this gradation is granularity of space. These
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: grains are made out of something totally new and alien
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: to us, and discovering them could peel back a layer
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: and reveal something really deep about the universe and so
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: you know, past the joint man, because we're we're getting
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: pretty deep here. So what do you think or hey,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: do you think space is pixelated? Or you think this
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: is just a crazy idea? You know, intuitively, it seems implausible, right,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Like space seems so smooth, and like we said before,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: it would mean that we're always sort of teleporting from
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: one spot to the other. But you know, like you said,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: who knows, right, we used to think matter was perfectly smooth,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: but it turned out not to be. So it sounds
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: like modern physics has uprooted you from all of your
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: beliefs about the way the world works. Huh. You know
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: you now have skepticism about everything. Yeah, are you even there, Daniel?
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Um No. I think that's a healthy attitude, you know,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: um And I think it's hard to hold that in
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: your head. I mean, on one hand, you go around
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: your daily life, you drive your car, you buy coffee,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: you do all these things without thinking about the way
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: the world is working underneath you. And then sometimes I'm
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: just struck breathless by realizing the credible complexity of things
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: that are happening invisibly around us. Um And you know,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: that things might be totally different from the way we imagined.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It's hard to hold that in your head a lot,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: which is why it's nice sometimes to just read a
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: magazine and you a cup of coffee because it's breathtaking.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: You know. It's disorienting the way learning that we're tiny
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: specs on a little mode of dust and a huge
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: universe is um but it's also fun. Well, I hope
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that you guys out there listening also maybe see the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: world a little bit differently. All right, thanks very much
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: for listening, and enjoy the rest of your day. If
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: you still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Nine