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The Greatest Illusion in Physics: Why Matter Feels Solid · The Last Observer: Science and Beyond

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Take a second wherever you are right now, and just
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: focus entirely on your immediate physical reality, Like seriously, yeah.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Just completely tune into what your body is feeling.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Right, So, maybe you're leaning back in a chair and
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you could feel that solid support against your spine, or
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe you're gripping the steering wheel of a car,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: or just.
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  Speaker 2: Holding a warm ceramic cup of coffee, feeling the heat
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: radiant into your palm.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly, or maybe you just notice the floor pressing up
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: against the soles of your shoes. It all feels undeniably solid, right,
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  Speaker 1: It feels rigid and well above all else, it feels
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  Speaker 1: incredibly real.
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  Speaker 2: It does. I mean, your nervous system is constantly transmitting
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  Speaker 2: this cohesive narrative that the universe is made of tangible,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: impenetrable stuff.
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  Speaker 1: But physics dictates this staggering paradox. That coffee cup, the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: steering wheel of the floor, you are all almost entirely
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  Speaker 1: composed of empty space.
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  Speaker 2: It's wild to think about the atoms that construct every
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: single object in your life are just astonishingly hollow.
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  Speaker 1: It really is like the ultimate disconnect between human intuition
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  Speaker 1: and physical reality.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, we navigate this macroscopic world that feels completely solid,
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  Speaker 2: Yet according to our best scientific models, nearly everything around
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: you is a void, and.
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  Speaker 1: That includes the biological machinery of your own body.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, The actual mass of the universe is concentrated
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  Speaker 2: in centers so incredibly tiny that it forces a total
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  Speaker 2: re evaluation of what everyday experiences actually.
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  Speaker 1: Are, right, Because the immediate practical question that arises for
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: anyone hearing this is, well, if matter is almost entirely
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  Speaker 1: empty space, why on earth can't my hand pass straight
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: through this desk in front of me?
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  Speaker 2: That is the million dollar question.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Like, if I am basically a walking vacuum and the
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  Speaker 1: desk is a stationary vacuum, why do they violently crash
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  Speaker 1: into each other?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah? Why don't they just go straight through one another?
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  Speaker 1: Exactly? So that's our mission today. We're going to unravel
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the deeply counterintuitive nature of physical reality, you know, traveling
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  Speaker 1: from the MASc Co illusion of touch all the way
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  Speaker 1: down into the strange mathematical rules of quantum mechanics.
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  Speaker 2: The rules that actually govern the universe.
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  Speaker 1: Right, and you know, my mind immediately goes to a
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  Speaker 1: sort of technological analogy here.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
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  Speaker 1: It feels like we are wandering through a beautifully rendered,
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  Speaker 1: ultra realistic hologram right interacting with the geometry, but we
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  Speaker 1: are totally unaware of the empty, invisible code operating just
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  Speaker 1: beneath the surface.
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  Speaker 2: That's a fun way to look at it. The technological
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  Speaker 2: interface is a really useful starting point, though you know
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: it has its limits. Sure, Like in a simulation or
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: a hologram, the code is abstract, it's information processed by
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: a localized machine somewhere a computer. But in our physical reality,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the quote unquote code is the literal architecture of space,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: time and fundamental fields.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So it's baked into the universe itself exactly.
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  Speaker 2: But the core concept of your analogy, that you are
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  Speaker 2: experiencing the rendered result and not the underlying mechanics is
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: spot on awesome. And to understand how we even realize
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: there was a mechanical layer beneath our intuition, we really
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: have to look at the historical evolution of how humans
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: thought about.
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  Speaker 1: Matter, because for what thousands of years, the absolute intellectual
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  Speaker 1: consensus was that matter was just a continuous substance.
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  Speaker 2: Right across almost all cultures.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, meaning if you take a block of iron and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you just keep chopping it in half forever, you just
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: get infinitely smaller, perfectly solid pieces of iron.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly, a rock felt solid because it was fundamentally composed
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: of continuous rock material, like.
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  Speaker 1: From its surface all the way down to whatever its
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  Speaker 1: core was.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, wood, iron, water, flesh. They were all categorized as
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  Speaker 2: fundamentally different simply because they possess different intrinsic qualities of
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  Speaker 2: this continuous substance.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Like Aristotle champion this whole idea.
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  Speaker 2: He did, and it makes perfect sense honestly because it
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  Speaker 2: perfectly aligns with our sensory input.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, there is absolutely no evolutionary advantage for like
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: a hominid on the savannah to look at a rock
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  Speaker 1: and perceive a buzzing hive of subatomic probability.
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  Speaker 2: That you only need to know if the rock is
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  Speaker 2: heavy enough to break a.
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  Speaker 1: Nut or if the wood is structurally sound enough to
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  Speaker 1: build a fire. Evolution optimizes for survival, you know, not
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  Speaker 1: for a PhD in subatomic physics.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, if you are running from a predator, you don't
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  Speaker 2: care about the molecular density of the tree you were climbing.
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  Speaker 1: You just care that the branch holds your weight. Without
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: snapping precisely.
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  Speaker 2: So it's totally logical that early humans and scientists for
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  Speaker 2: centuries operated on the assumption that stuff is just made
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  Speaker 2: of continuous stuff.
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  Speaker 1: But what about the Greeks. Didn't they come up with
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  Speaker 1: the atom?
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  Speaker 2: Well? Yes, even when you look at the ancient Greek
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: philosopher Democritus, who is often credited with first proposing the
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  Speaker 2: concept of atoms roughly twenty four hundred years ago, it
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  Speaker 2: wasn't a scientific theory in the modern sense.
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  Speaker 1: It was more of a philosophical deduction, right, yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 2: He argued that if you kept cutting an object, you
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  Speaker 2: must eventually reach a fundamental in divisible building.
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  Speaker 1: Block, which she called atomos right.
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  Speaker 2: Meaning uncutable. But crucially, Democritus still assumed these foundational blocks
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  Speaker 2: were solid, little chunks of matter. Oh really, Yeah, he
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  Speaker 2: thought iron atoms had little hooks that locked them together,
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  Speaker 2: and water atoms were smooth and slippery.
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  Speaker 1: So even the guy who invented the atom still thought
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  Speaker 1: it was just a microscopic piece of lego.
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  Speaker 2: Pretty much. The paradigm of the solid chunk remained unbroken
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  Speaker 2: until the late eighteen nineties. Oh that long, Yeah, that's
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  Speaker 2: when the continuous substance theory really fractured, and it was
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  Speaker 2: thanks to JJ Thompson.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, what did he do.
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  Speaker 2: He was experimenting with cathode ray tubes, which is basically
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: shooting electrical currents through glass tubes sucked completely empty of air, right,
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  Speaker 2: And he discovered that the rays were composed of tiny
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  Speaker 2: negatively charged particles that were about two thousand times lighter
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  Speaker 2: than a hydrogen atom.
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  Speaker 1: And we now call those electrons exactly, and that completely
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  Speaker 1: ruins the indivisible solid chunk idea, right, because if there
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  Speaker 1: are tiny negative pieces tearing off the atom, the atom
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  Speaker 1: itself has to have an internal structure, it has components.
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  Speaker 2: It was a massive crisis for atomic theory. You suddenly
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  Speaker 2: have these tiny negative charges, but atoms as a whole
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  Speaker 2: are electrically neutral.
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  Speaker 1: So the math doesn't add up, right.
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  Speaker 2: Where is the positive charge coming from? To balance it out?
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  Speaker 2: Thompson had to invent a completely new theoretical model that
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  Speaker 2: accounted for these electrons.
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  Speaker 1: And this is the famous plum pudding model, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: That's the one. Thompson hypothesized that the atom was a
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  Speaker 2: continuous spherical field of positive charge, a sort of positively
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  Speaker 2: charged fluid or dough, okay, and the negatively charged electrons
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  Speaker 2: were just suspended throughout it, like raisins stuck inside a
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  Speaker 2: dense English pudding.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, let me try to modernize that, because I don't
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  Speaker 1: know anyone who eats plum pudding anymore. Fair enough, it
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  Speaker 1: sounds perfectly like a chocolate chip cookie.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: The dough itself is the positive charge. It's the structure,
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  Speaker 1: the bulk of the mass, right. Yeah, and the chocolate
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  Speaker 1: chips are the tiny negative electrons just baked into it,
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  Speaker 1: scattered around, but totally locked inside that continuous solid dough.
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  Speaker 2: The chocolate chip cookie captures the general geometry they are
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  Speaker 2: going for. Yeah, but we do have to be careful
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  Speaker 2: with the structural implication there. Oh so well, a big
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  Speaker 2: cookie is rigid. Thompson's model was closer to a frictionless,
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  Speaker 2: positively charged fluid where the electrons were held in equilibrium
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  Speaker 2: by electrostatic forces.
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  Speaker 1: Oh I see, so less crunchy, more gooey.
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  Speaker 2: Right, But the key takeaway from your analogy totally holds.
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  Speaker 2: Scientists believe the atom was a continuous volume filled with
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  Speaker 2: matter and charge.
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  Speaker 1: So there's still no concept of empty space inside the atom,
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  Speaker 1: none at all.
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  Speaker 2: It was a completely filled sphere, and that was the
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  Speaker 2: reigning champion of physics for roughly a decade.
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  Speaker 1: Right up until the exact moment someone actually decided to
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  Speaker 1: test the kookie dough. Yes, which brings us to nineteen
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  Speaker 1: oh nine and the experiment that essentially accidentally broke reality.
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  Speaker 2: Ernest Rutherford, who was actually a former student of Thompson's,
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  Speaker 2: was working at the University of Manchester, Okay, and he
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  Speaker 2: directed two of his researchers, Hans Geiger, who later invented
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  Speaker 2: the Geiger counter.
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  Speaker 1: By the way, oh wow, that Geiger.
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  Speaker 2: The very same, and an undergraduate named Ernest Marsden. He
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  Speaker 2: directed them to test the plum pudding model.
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  Speaker 1: So how they do it?
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  Speaker 2: Their setup was conceptually simple but practically agonizing. They took
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  Speaker 2: a tiny sample of radium, which naturally emits alpha particles.
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  Speaker 1: And alpha particles are essentially the core of a helium atom,
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  Speaker 1: right to protons to neutrons exactly.
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  Speaker 2: But you know, they didn't know the exact structure back then.
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  Speaker 2: They just knew they were heavy, positively charged and moving
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  Speaker 2: very fast, right, So they were firing a beam of
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  Speaker 2: these heavy positively charged alpha projectiles at an incredibly thin
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  Speaker 2: sheet of gold foil.
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  Speaker 1: How thin are we talking?
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  Speaker 2: Hammered down to a thickness of just a few hundred
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  Speaker 2: atoms essentially translucent.
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  Speaker 1: Wow?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Now, according to the plum pudding or your chocolate
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  Speaker 2: chip cookie model, what should happen when you shoot a tiny,
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  Speaker 2: fast moving heavy particle through a relatively soft, continuous sphere
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  Speaker 2: of positive fluid.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it should just punch straight through. I mean, maybe
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  Speaker 1: it slows down a tiny bit, or maybe it deflects
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  Speaker 1: a fraction of a degree because the positive charge of
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  Speaker 1: the alpha particle interacts with the positive dough. But fundamentally,
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  Speaker 1: it should just fly right out the other.
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  Speaker 2: Side, like a bullet through a cloud of smoke exacts.
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  Speaker 2: That was the mathematical prediction, and for the overwhelming majority
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  Speaker 2: of the alpha particles, that is exactly what happened. They
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  Speaker 2: sailed straight through the gold foil, triggering tiny microscopic flashes
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  Speaker 2: of light when they hit a zinc sulfide screen placed
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  Speaker 2: behind it.
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  Speaker 1: But there was an anomaly, right.
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  Speaker 2: A massive one. The thing that shattered classical physics was
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  Speaker 2: that a tiny, tiny fraction of these particles, maybe one
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  Speaker 2: in twenty thousand, didn't just deflect slightly.
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  Speaker 1: What do they do?
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  Speaker 2: They deflected at extreme angles. Some bounced perfectly backwards, striking
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  Speaker 2: the screen on the same side as the radium source.
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  Speaker 1: Wait, I have to push back here, or at least
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  Speaker 1: ask for some clarity on the sheer logistics of doing
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  Speaker 1: this in nineteen oh nine.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild to think about.
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  Speaker 1: Like, if you are dealing with invisible alpha particles and
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  Speaker 1: a gold foil that is barely a few atoms thick,
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  Speaker 1: how on earth do you even track a ricochet. They
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  Speaker 1: don't have digital sensors, they don't have particle accelerators with
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  Speaker 1: massive computer readouts.
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  Speaker 2: The logistics were absolutely brutal. As I mentioned, they used
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  Speaker 2: a small viewing screen coated with zinc sulfide. When an
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  Speaker 2: alpha particle struck the zinc sulfide, it produced a localized
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  Speaker 2: microscopic flash of light called a scintillation.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so a tiny spark.
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  Speaker 2: Basically, so, Geiger and Marsden had to sit in a
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  Speaker 2: pitch black laboratory, sometimes for thirty minutes just to let
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  Speaker 2: their eyes adjust to the darkness.
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  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
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  Speaker 2: And then they would stare through a microscope for hours,
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  Speaker 2: literally counting these faint, fleeting flashes of light one by one,
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  Speaker 2: manually recording the angle of every single flash.
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  Speaker 1: That is just phenomenal dedication to the scientific method. Just
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: sitting in a pitch black room waiting for a literal
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  Speaker 1: flash of insight, It's incredible.
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  Speaker 2: And when they realized they were seeing flashes appearing behind
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  Speaker 2: the gold foil indicating the particles had bounced straight back,
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  Speaker 2: the shock was profound.
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  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
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  Speaker 2: Rutherford spent over a year just trying to make the
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  Speaker 2: mathematics work. He later famously remarked that the result was
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  Speaker 2: quite the most incredible event that had ever happened to
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  Speaker 2: him in his life. Really, yeah, he said. It was
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  Speaker 2: almost as incredible as if you fired a fifteen inch
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  Speaker 2: navel shell at a piece of tissue paper and it
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  Speaker 2: came back and hit.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: You a fifteen inch cannonball bouncing off tissue paper. Yeah,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: because the gold foil was supposed to be the tissue paper,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: you know, that soft, continuous, easily penetrable cookie dough.
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  Speaker 2: Precisely, Rutherford realized that the continuous dough model was dead.
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  Speaker 2: The only physically possible way a heavy, incredibly fast moving
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: alpha particle could reverse its momentum and bounce backward is
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: if it struck something massively dense and incredibly small.
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  Speaker 1: Right, it hit a brick wall inside the other at.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly the positive charge, and almost all of the mass
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: of the atom couldn't be spread out like a fluid.
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  Speaker 2: It had to be concentrated into an impossibly tiny, ultra
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  Speaker 2: dense center, which is the nucleus in nucleus. But the
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  Speaker 2: realization that came with the nucleus was arguably more terrifying.
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  Speaker 1: Wise terrifying because.
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  Speaker 2: Remember nineteen nine and ninety nine out of twenty thousand
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  Speaker 2: particle sailed straight through the foil without hitting anything.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Because if the mass is all concentrated in the center,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: and the vast majority of the bullets are missing the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: center completely.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Then it meant that everything surrounding that tiny nucleus, the
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: entirety of the volume that we consider the atom, was
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: completely profoundly empty. Rutherford proved the nucleus existed, but in
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: doing so, he revealed that the universe was a void.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: We have to talk about the sheer scale of this emptiness,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: because the human brain is notoriously terrible at comprehending numbers
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: at this level.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: When we say an atom is mostly empty space, what
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: are the actual dimensions we're talking about here?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: The scale is almost impossible to visualize without an architectural anchor.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Let's enlarge a single atom so we can actually look
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  Speaker 2: at it. Ok Let's blow it up until its tiny,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: ultra dense nucleus becomes the size of a standard glass marble.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I've got the marble.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Now take that marble and place it right on the
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: fifty yard line of an enormous, enclosed sports stadium.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, I've got the marble sitting on the turf in
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the exact center of this massive stadium. Where is the
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: rest of the atom? Like, where are the electrons?
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: The electrons which define the outer boundary The actual size
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: of the atom would be orbiting out at the very
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: farthest edges of the stadium walls, up in the highest
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: nosebleed seats circling the entire structure.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And between the marble on the fifty yard line and
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the electrons at the top of the stadium.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Walls, absolutely nothing, a sheer vacuum that is insane. When
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: you run the actual mathematics of atomic radii versus nuclear radii,
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  Speaker 2: you find that more than ninety nine point nine percent
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  Speaker 2: of an atom's volume is entirely empty space.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Let me just do some quick rhetorical math for you listening,
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  Speaker 1: because this is the specific statistic that always completely short
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: circuits my brain.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: If you took every single human being alive on Earth
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: right now, all eight billion of us, and you somehow
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: manage to squeeze out all the empty space from inside
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: our atoms, leaving only the actual physical mass of the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: nuclei and the electrons packed tightly together. Yeah, the entire
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: human race would fit into the volume of a single.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Sugar cube, and that sugar cube would weigh hundreds of millions.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Of tons, which is just hard to even picture.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Because mass is just intensely concentrated energy localized in those
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: infinitesimally small points. It's a beautifully terrifying fact.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Every chair you sit on, every mountain you see, the oceans,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: the planets, and your own biological tissues, they are all
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: constructed from these astonishingly hollow structures.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: You are quite literally a walking, breathing collection of vul
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: you are, which immediately demands an explanation for our daily reality.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, if we are made of ninety nine point
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: nine percent empty space, and the earth beneath this is
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: made of ninety nine point nine percent empty space. Why
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't the human body or the planet itself simply collapse
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: into a tiny, dense, sugar cube sized dot. What is
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: actually keeping the stadium walls up?
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: That is the crucial question, and it plagued physicists in
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the nineteen tens and twenties. I got because to answer it,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: we have to kill off another deeply ingrained myth about
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: how atoms work. The reason matter doesn't collapse inwards starts
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: with the electrons. But we have to understand what an
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: electron actually is doing.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, I think I know exactly what myth you're targeting here.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Whenever you go to a high school science fair, or
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: you know, look at a corporate logo for a tech company,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: there's always that one specific drawing of the atom.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know the one.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: It's a tight little cluster of red and blue balls
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: in the center, and then there are these perfect intersecting
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: elliptical hula hoops around.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: It, the classic rings, right.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And on those hula hoops are little yellow dots, the
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: electrons riding along the tracks like tiny planets orbiting a
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: central sun.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: The classical solar system model. It's often associated with the
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: early bore other for diagrams.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks so neat.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: It is a beautiful, intuitive, perfectly clean image, and it
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: is completely fundamentally wrong.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Wrong, how wrong.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Quantum mechanics had to replace that picture completely because if
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: electrons actually behaved like tiny planets on precise orbital paths,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: atoms would self destruct in a fraction of a second.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Wait, why planets done self destruct? The Earth orbits the Sun?
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Just fine? Why can't electron orbit in nucleus?
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Because of classical electrodynamics, specifically a rule described by the
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Larmer formula.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, lay it on me.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Unlike the Earth, which is electrically neutral, an electron carries
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: a negative charge, and the laws of physics state that
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: any time a charge particle accelerates and moving in a
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: circle is a constant state of acceleration because you're constantly
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: changing direction, it must radiate energy in the form of
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: electromagnetic waves. Exactly. So, if an electron were zooming around
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: the nucleus like a planet, it would constantly be bleeding
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: off energy.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Oh I see, and as it loses energy, it loses speed,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and its orbit would decay.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, within one hundred millionth of a second. The electron
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: would lose all its kinetic energy and death spiral directly
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: into the positively charged nucleus. Wow, every atom in the
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: universe would collapse instantly. The solar system model guarantees the
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: destruction of reality.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: So the hula hoops are a total lie. The electrons
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: cannot be little dots on a track. They cannot what
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: is actually happening out there in the nosebleed seats of
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: our stadium.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Then this is where we cross the threshold into quantum mechanics,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: specifically the work of Irwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: The uncertainty principle.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Guy, that's him. In the quantum realm. Particles do not
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: possess precise physical paths or definite trajectories. Okay, thanks to
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, we know it is fundamentally impossible to
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: know both the exact position and the exact momentum of
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: an electron simultaneously.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: We can't pinpoint them.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Right, So they do not exist as little dots zooming
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: along tracks. They exist as three dimensional probability distributions, which
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: we call orbitals.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: See this is where the physics always gets so incredibly
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: hard to visualize. It's not a planet. It's a cloud
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: of like math, it is a.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Wave of probability. Think of it as a snared out
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: region of space where the electron is most likely to
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: be found if you were to interact with it.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: So it's everywhere in that region sort of.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: The electron is not rapidly moving around inside this cloud.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: The cloud is the electron until an interaction forces it
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: to adopt a specific position. Oh wow, these quantum clouds,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: these probability density functions surround the nucleus in complex, beautiful geometries, spheres, dumbbells,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: clover leafs, and these clouds would actually create the effective
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: functional size of the atom.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me try and updated analogy on you, because
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I really want to bridge this gap between a cloud
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: of probability and a physical boundary. Go ahead, instead of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: orbiting planets. Is it more like the blades of a
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: ceiling fan.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: How do you mean?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Well, if the fans turned off, you just see three
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: thin blades and a lot of empty space. Could easily
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: toss a tennis ball up through the gaps. True, but
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: if you turn the fan on to its absolute highest speed,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: those blades blur together into a disc the fan is
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: still mostly empty space. But the rapid movement, the high
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: probability of a blade being anywhere in that circle at
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: a given millisecond, means it effectively acts like a solid barrier. Right,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it blocks your hand from passing through. Does that capture it.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: It's a very common analogy, and it's excellent for visualizing
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: the effect of a barrier, but we have to be
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: careful not to take it too literally.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, where does it break down?
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: The limitation of the fan blade analogy is that the
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: fan one blade is still a distinct physical object moving
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: through space over time. If you had a fast enough camera,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: you could freeze the fan blade in one exact spot.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: In quantum mechanics, the electron isn't moving so fast that
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: it blurs. Its actual existential state is smeared out. It
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: is in a superposition of possible locations, so.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: It's not moving really fast. It's just sort of everywhere
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: in the cloud.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: All at once, exactly until it interacts with something. But
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: the functional outcome is exactly what your fan blade analogy suggests.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: The probability distribution creates a functional barrier. The cloud gives
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: the atom its volume and its structural boundaries.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: But wait, if the edges of atoms are just blurry
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: probabilistic math clouds, how does probability create the feeling of
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: a hard ceramic coffee cup? What is actually happening physically
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: when the cloud of my hand meets the cloud of
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the desk?
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: To understand that, we have to completely deconstruct the biological
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: and physical act of placing your hand on a table.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Sense driven by your nervous system screams that the atoms
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: and the skin of your hand are physically colliding with
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the atoms making up the wood of the table.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Right, that is the fundamental definition of a touch. Right,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: two pieces of matter making physical contact. Surface A strikes
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: surface B.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: But the reality of quantum mechanics is that they never
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: truly touch, never, never. Long Long before the dense nuclei
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: of your hands atoms could ever get close to the
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: dense nuclei of the table's atoms, the outer electron clouds
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: of both surfaces begin to overlap and interact. Okay, and
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: this introduces us to the first mechanism of solidity, governed
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: by one of nature's four fundamental forces, the electromagnetic force.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, electromagnetism. Now we are getting into fields.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, quantum electrodynamics. Specifically, the electromagnetic force governs electricity, magnetism, chemistry, light,
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: and nearly every macroscopic interaction between atoms. Okay, now, what
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: is the charge of the electron clouds that form the
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: outer boundary of your atoms?
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: They are entire negative, right, And.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: A fundamental rule of electromagnetism is that while opposite charges attract,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: like charges repel.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see where this is going.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: So you have a massive overlapping system of negatively charged
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: electron clouds on the surface of your skin, and you
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: are forcing it toward a massive system of negatively charged
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: electron clouds on the surface of the desk.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: But wait, if the electron is just a probability cloud,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: how does it have a defined negative charge that can
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: repel my hand? Doesn't the charge smear out too? It
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: seems like a smeared out charge would be too weak
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: to stop my hand.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: That is an excellent pushback. The charge is smeared out,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: But remember the total charge of the electron is conserved
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: within that cloud. Okay, As you push your hand closer
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: to the desk, the wave functions the probability clouds of
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: your hand and the desk begin to overlap. What happens
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: then as they overlap, the local density of negative charge
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: increases dramatically in that tiny space. The physical mechanism of
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: repulsion here is actually the exchange of virtual photons between
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: the electron field photons. Yeah, as the clouds overlap, they
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: exchange these force carrying particles at an exponential rate, creating
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: a localized electrostatic repulsion that spikes incredibly fast.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So they absolutely hate each other.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: They violently reject each other. As your hand gets closer
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: to the table, those negatively charged fields fiercely resist further compression.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: It's like an invisible force field pushing back.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly the closer you force them together, the more extraordinarily
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: powerful that repulsion becomes.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, so when I push my hand down on the
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: desk and I feel that hard, unyielding wood, I am
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: not actually feeling the solid matter of the desk. No,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: you're not, then what am I feeling?
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: What is happening is that your nervous system is detecting
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the incredibly strong electromagnetic force field of the desk pushing
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: back against the force field of your hand.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Seriously.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, that pressure deforms the cells in your skin, which
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: triggers electrical signals in your nerves, which travel up your
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: arm to your brain.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: And my brain just translates that.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Your brain interprets this in visible electrostatic resistance, this failure
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: of the two force fields to compress as the physical
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: sensation of touch.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Wait a second, Yeah, if our atoms never truly physically
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: merge or collide, if it's just force fields repelling each other,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: does this mean I am technically never touching anything? That's right, Like,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: as I sit in this chair, am I perpetually levitating
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a microscopic fraction of a millimeter above the seat via
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: magnetic levitation.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: From a strictly physical, subatomic standpoint, yes, you are hovering.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: The electrons in your clothing and body and the electrons
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: in the fabric of the chair are engaged in an
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: intense electromagnetic standoff. You have never actually touched a single
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: object in your entire life, at least not in the
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: way you intuitively think of touching as physical collision.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: That is deeply unsettling but fascinating.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: The sensation of solidity is entirely real. I mean you
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: can't just walk through the wall. But it is not
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: produced by objects physically striking one another. It emerges from
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: the fierce electromagnetic fields interacting in that microscopic gap.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: My mind is officially spinning. But let me challenge this,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: because electromagnetism is a known force, and forces can be overcome.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: If I take two strong refrigerator magnets and I turn
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: them so the negative poles face each other, they repel.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: But if I push hard enough, if I put enough
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: muscle into it, I can force them together. I can
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: make them touch.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: You can.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: So what is stopping the quantum clouds of my hand
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: from just piling up on top of the desk's clouds?
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: If I apply enough pressure, why can't I just squeeze
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the fields together?
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: That brings us to the ultimate bouncer at the club
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: of reality. Okay, electromagnetism explains the initial pushback. Yes, but
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: there is a much deeper, much stricter, structural rule in
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: the universe that prevents these quantum clouds from simply collapsing
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: into one another when extreme pressure is applied.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: A deeper rule than fundamental forces like beyond electromagnetism.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is not a worse in the traditional sense
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: of particles pulling or pushing. It is a fundamental mathematical
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: law of the universe.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Where did we figure this out?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: It was discovered in nineteen twenty five by a brilliant,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: notoriously ruthless Austrian physicist named Wolfgang Poly.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, what is it called?
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: It is known as the Poly exclusion principle.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, we need to spend some serious time here. What
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: exactly did Wolfgang Poly figure out in nineteen twenty five
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: that dictates the structure of reality?
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Polly discovered a profound rule governing the behavior of a
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: specific class of particles called fermions formions. Yeah, every particle
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: in the universe is categorized by a property called spin,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: which is essentially its intrinsic angular momentum. Particles with half
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: integer spin like one, half or three halves are called fermions. Electrons, protons,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: and neutrons are all fermions.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Poly's principle dictates that no two identical fomions can occupy
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: exactly the same quantum state within a quantum system simultaneously.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I'm going to need you to unpack quantum state. What
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: does it mean for two electrons to occupy the same state.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Think of a quantum state as a highly specific mathematical
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: identity for an electron within an atom. It's defined by
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: a set of quantum numbers, its principle energy level, its
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: orbital angular momentum, its magnetic projection, and its spin direction,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: which can only be up or downright. Pouly's principle mathematically
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: proves that you cannot have two electrons in an atom
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: that share the exact same set of four quantum numbers.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: So no two electrons can have the same identity. But
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: why is there a physical reason or is it just math?
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: It comes down to the mathematics of wave functions. When
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: you describe a system of fermions, their total wave function
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: must be what we call antisymmetric.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Antisymmetric, it means if you.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Take two electrons and mathematically swap their positions, the entire
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: wave function must flip its mathematical sign from positive to
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: negative or vice versa.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, tracking with you. If they swap the sign flips.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Now, imagine those two electrons are in the exact same
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: quantum state. If you swap them, the system shouldn't change
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: because they are identical, right, But the rule of fermions
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: demands the sign must flip. What is the only mathematical
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: value that equals its own negative zero?
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Negative zero is just zero.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the wave function collapses to zero. A zero wave
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: function means the probability of that state existing is absolute zero.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: It is mathematically forbidden by the architecture of the universe.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: So it's not just a physical pushing force like gravity
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: pulling you down or a magnet pushing you away. It's
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a structural limit of reality.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly, as you force atoms closer and closer together, you
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: are trying to squeeze more electrons into a smaller localized volume.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: But because of the poly exclusion principle, all the low
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: energy quantum states are already occupied. To compress them further,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: you'd have to force electrons into higher and higher energy states,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: which requires an immense input of energy. The electrons violently
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: resist this confinement.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: It sounds a bit like, uh, trying to find a
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: parking spot in a crowded lot.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's run with that.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Would say, electromagnetism is like having two cars with huge
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: magnets strapped to their bumpers pushing each other away. That's
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: a physical force. You know you can overcome it if
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: you have a big enough ention, right. But the paly
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: exclusion principle is different. It's not just that the cars
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: are magnetically pushing each other away. It's as if the
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: fundamental laws of reality simply forbid two cars from physically
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: existing in the exact same parking space at the exact
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: same moment. I like this, The universe just looks at
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the geometry of the situation and says, no error.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: No, the state space is full. That analogy works well
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: to describe what physicists call phase space. Electromagnetism is the
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: magnetic bumpers, but poly exclusion is the strict limit on
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: the number of available parking spaces in a given area
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: with a given speed limit. Okay, when you try to
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: compress atoms, the electrons resist this compression fiercely because there
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: are no available states left. This resistance reduces an incredibly
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: strong outward pushing phenomenon called quantum degeneracy pressure.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Quantum degeneracy pressure, it sounds like a weapon from a
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: sci fi novel.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute bedrock of our physical reality. Without
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: the poly exclusion principle, all electrons would just fall into
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: the lowest possible energy state.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Well would happened?
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Then they would all crowd into the orbital closest to
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: the nucleus. Chemistry, which relies on the complex outer shells
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: of electrons interacting, would not exist. Wow, Atoms would just
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: be tiny inert dots. Solid objects would no longer possess
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: stable structures. Ordinary matter would lose its volume entirely and
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: collapse into a bizarre, hyperdense soup.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's summarize the eiter edges. Here. The electrons
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: are out at the edges of the stadium, fighting tooth
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and nail to stay apart from one another.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: They are exchanging virtual photons to repel each other electromagnetically,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: and they are backed up by the absolute mathematical veto
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: of the poly exclusion principle. That's right, But wait a minute.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: This brings up a massive glaring contradiction. Oh, if everything
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: is pushing away from everything else, what is happening back
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: at the fifty yard line?
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Ah, you are looking at the marble now.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, the nucleus is packed densely with protons, and protons
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: are positively charged. They are based entirely on the laws
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: of electromagnetism. You just explained, like charges repel, those protons
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: should be violently repelling each other. They should, in fact,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: since they are so incredibly close together in the nucleus,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the electrostatic repulsion should be essentially infinite. The nuclear should
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: instantly detonate. Atoms shouldn't be able to exist.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: You have just identified the exact crisis that physicists idechi
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Upaua and others faced in the nineteen thirties. The nucleus
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: is a bomb that refuses to explode exactly. The electromagnetic
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: repulsion between two protons packed that tightly together is about
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: twenty to thirty pounds of force.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like a lot.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: It might not sound like much, but for a subatomic particle,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: it results in an acceleration that is nearly incomprehensible. The
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: nucleus should blow itself apart in a fraction of a.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Picosecond, So why don't they detonate? What is overriding electromagnetism.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Nature requires a completely different mechanism to hold the core together.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: To overcome the fierce electromagnetic repulsion, the universe employs the
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: third of the four fundamental forces, the strong nuclear.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Force, the strong nuclear force. Is this basically the universe's
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: ultimate super glue.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: It is, but it operates under profoundly bizarre rules. The
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: strong force binds quarks together to form protons and neutrons
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: through the exchange of particles called gluons. Gluons, Okay, but
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: what is holding the protons and neutrons together in the
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: nucleus is actually the residual strong force, often mediated by
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: exchanging particles called pions. Now, as the name suggests, it
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: is extraordinarily powerful, roughly one hundred and thirty seven times
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: stronger than electromagnetism. It easily clamps the repelling protons together. However,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: there is a catch.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: There's always a catch in quantmica.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Always. The catch is its range, which is dictated by
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: the mass of the particles it exchanges. Unlike electromagnetism, which
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: is mediated by massless photons and therefore has an infinite range,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the residual strong force only operates over mine bogglingly tiny distances.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Oh tighty, we.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Are talking about one to three femtometers, which is a
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: quadrillionth of a meter.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Good grief.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: If protons are practically touching, the strong force binds them
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: with unimaginable tyrannical strength. But if they move even a
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: fraction of femtometer apart, the strong force drops off exponentially,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: practically to zero, and the electromagnetic force instantly takes over,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: blowing them apart.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see, it's like microscopic velcrow.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Velcrow.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you press two pieces of velcrow firmly together,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: they're incredibly strong. You can hang heavy equipment from them.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: But they only work if the hooks and loops are
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: physically entangled at a near zero distance. Okay, I see
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: if you pull the two pieces of velcro even a
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: millimeter apart, the holding power doesn't just weaken, it drops
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: to absolutely zero's completely useless at a distance.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: The velcro analogy is actually brilliant for visualizing a concept
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: in quantum chromodynamics called asymptotic freedom, though that usually applies
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: to the quarks inside the protons. Oh but yes, for
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: the residual force holding the nucleus together, velcro works perfectly.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: The strong force is the velcro holding the marble together,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: and electromagnetism is a highly compressed steel spring trying.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: To push it apart, and the strong force winds.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: The strong force winds but only at that extremely intimate distance.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Without that specific balance, the universe would just be a
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: sea of isolated, repelling hydrogen protons. There would be no carbon,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: no oxygen, no DNA, no life.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: So let's look at the incredible architectural balance we have here.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: We have the strong force acting as velcrow, holding the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: dense center marble together against the explosive spring of electromagnetism.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: We have the electron clouds out in the stadium seats
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: creating a functional boundary. And we have the poly exclusion
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: prints acting is the ultimate mathematical parking bouncer, keeping the
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: boundaries of different atoms apart.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: A delicate balance.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: These tiny, invisible rules are dictating the stability of the
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: entire universe. But what happens when nature decides to test
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: those rules?
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: It tests what happens when the universe applies ultimate crushing
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: gravitational force to try and break the poly bouncer. Does
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the parking lot ever run out of space?
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: To answer that, we have to take a journey out
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: of your living room, far away from the coffee cup
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: and out into the extreme conditions of the cosmos.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Our field trip.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: We have to look at environments where normal macroscopic matter
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: is pushed far beyond the limits of earthly physics. Let's
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: look at the graveyard of stars, specifically a white dwarf.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, setting the scene here, we are deep in space
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: looking at the glowing remnant of a dead star, roughly
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: the mass of our Sun, but compressed into the size of.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: The Earth exactly inside a white dwarf. Fusion has stopped.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: There is no more outward thermal pressure to fake gravity.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Gravity is now squeezing the matter viciously, trying to collapse
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: the star down into a single point. This gravitational force
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: easily effortlessly overcomes the normal electromagnetic repulsion between the electron clouds.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: The atoms are crushed, the stadium walls collapse inward.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: So the magnetic bumpers on the cars completely fail. The
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: virtual photons aren't enough.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: They fail entirely. The electrons are stripped from their nuclei,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: creating a dense plasma. But gravity still has to fight
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Wolfgang poly. As the matter is crushed closer and closer together,
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: the electrons are forced into tighter and tighter confines. The
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: low energy quantum parking spaces fill up because of the
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: poll inclusion principle, the electrons violently refuse to occupy the
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: same state, so they're forced into higher and higher momentum states,
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: buzzing around at significant fractions of the speed of light.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And this creates that quantum degeneracy pressure you mentioned earlier.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, specifically electron degeneracy pressure. A physicist name supermanyan chunder
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Saker calculated this while on a boat journey from India
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: to England in nineteen thirty.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Wow, just doing that math on a boat.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Brilliant mind. He realized that this purely quantum mechanical pressure,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: born directly from the mathematical law that identical fermions cannot
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: share a state, is the only thing pushing back against
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: the crushing weight of gravity.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: So it holds the collapse.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: It halts the collapse. An entire star weighing as much
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: as the Sun, is held up purely by a mathematical
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: rule preventing electrons from overlapping.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Hold on, let me just process this. Are you telling
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: me that the exact same invisible quantum rule that is
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: currently preventing my hand from passing through this desk is
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: the very same mathematical rule holding up the immense crushing
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: weight of dead stars deep in space.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: It is the exact same underlying principle. The universe scales
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: its rules beautifully. That is just awe inspiring, but chundersacer
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: also calculated a limit nature can push even harder. What
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: happens if the dying star is heavier? What happens if
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: it's more than one one point four times the mass
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: of our Sun?
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know what happens at that point.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Gravity is so strong that even electron degeneracy pressure fails.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: The electrons would have to move faster than the speed
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: of light to find an empty quantum state, which is impossible.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: The bouncer gets overwhelmed, the parking lot structurally collapses.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: What happens then, Welcome to a neutron star. Here, gravity
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: is so unimaginably dominant that it forces the electrons to
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: overcome their quantum resistance through a process called electron capture
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: or inverse beta decay. The electrons are literally crushed into
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: the protons.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: The negative and positive just merge.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, they merge, emitting a neutrino and combine to form neutrons.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: The entire star, which might be twice the mass of
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: our Sun, collapses from the sides of the Earth down
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: to a sphere roughly twelve miles.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Across twelve miles an entire star.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: It becomes essentially one gigantic macroscopic atomic nucleus made almost
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: entirely of neutrons, creating the densest form of matter in
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: the visible universe. A single teaspoon of neutrons star material
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: would weigh billions of tons on Earth.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Billions of tons and a teaspoon.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: And yet, even in this extreme, unimaginable hellscape, quantum mechanics
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: has not given up the fight.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: What's left to fight?
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Well, neutrons are also fermions. They also possess half integer
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: spin vivoor. They also obey the poly exclusion principle.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, so they create their own.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Pressure exactly, They create neutron degeneracy, pressure governed by the
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Tolman Oppenheimer Volkov limit, which stops the star from collapsing further.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, but what if gravity beats that too.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: If gravity manages to beat that pressure, if the star
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: is even heavier, the core collapses infinitely into a singularity
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: a black hole, and our current understanding of physics completely
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: breaks down.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: But until that absolute breaking point, it is the microscopic
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: abstract mathematical rules of quantum mechanics, fighting gravity, holding up
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: the structural integrity of the cosmos.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: So from the cosmic apocalyptic scale of dyeing neutron stars,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: let's bring it all the way back down to human
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: biology and well the coffee.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: Cup back to the living room.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: We exist in a universe governed by these intense microscopic
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: quantum rules, probabilities, wave functions, empty space force fields, mathematical
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: parking spaces. How on Earth did human consciousness evolve in
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: this reality yet remain completely and utterly blind to it
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: in our daily lives? Great question like why doesn't the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: world feel like a buzzing sea of probability and localized
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: force fields.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: It comes down to the brain's masterful capacity for translation
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: and compression. As we discussed earlier, our senses did not
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: evolve to act as electron microscopes or particle detectors. They
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: evolved to maximize evolutionary fitness.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: They evolve to help us survive and reproduce.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Precisely, if a predator is chasing you, you don't need
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: to calculate the probability distribution of the electrons in the
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: rock you were about to trip over.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: No you definitely don't.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Computing the quantum wave functions of your environment would require
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: an immense amount of cognitive energy and take far too long.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: You would be eaten before you finish the math.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that math takes a while.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: You just need to know the rock is a barrier
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: and you need to avoid it. Your brain does not
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: display raw wave functions or electromagnetic fields to your consciousness.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: It constructs useful, highly compressed, actionable perceptions. It generates internal
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: feelings like solid, soft, heavy, rough, or smooth.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: So it's summarizing the data. It's curating reality.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: For me exactly. These sensory experiences summarize unimaginably complex trillions
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: of particles deep microscopic interactions into simple binary sensations that
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: allow for rapid life saving decision.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: From an evolutionary perspective, this is a remarkably efficient system
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: fitness beats truth, But from a physics perspective, it acts
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: as a localized veil hiding the astonishing reality underneath.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Let's use an analogy to really ground this concept of
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: the brain hiding reality. It sounds perfectly analogous to a
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: computer's desktop interface. I like where this is going when
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I look at my computer screen right now, I see
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: little blee folders, a trash can, maybe a document icon.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: The colors, the shapes, the shadows, they aren't real physical
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: objects inside the computer. If I take a hammer and
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: smash the monitor open, I'm not going to find a
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: tiny physical trash can filled with tiny pieces of paper.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Right you will just find circuitry, silicon, copper, and glass.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The icons on the screen are just a graphical illusion.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: They are a user interface designed to be useful, allowing
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: me to interact with the machine without having to understand
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: or manually code the millions of complex voltage changes, the
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: binary ones and zeros operating underneath on the hard drive exactly.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Human perception is exactly the same. The feeling of a
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: solid wooden desk is just the desktop icon. It's the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: evolutionary user interface hiding the millions of interacting quantum fields
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: operating in the hardware underneath.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: That is an incredible powerful way to look at it,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: and it perfectly aligns with modern theories of cognitive science.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: The feeling of solidity is the brain's user interface.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you think.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: About it, touch isn't the only sense that does this.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: The brain does this with everything. Vision works similarly. Really, yeah,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: color doesn't actually exist as an intrinsic physical property of
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: objects in the universe.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Wait, what are you telling me? The red coffee cup
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: isn't actually red.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Not in the physical sense.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: No.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: Objects merely absorb and reflects certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation light.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: A red cup absorbs all visible wavelengths except those around
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: seven hundred nanometers which bounce off. Okay, your eyes capture
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: these specific wavelengths, and your brain's visual cortex converts those
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: frequencies into the subjective internal experience of red.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: The universe isn't colored, It's just filled with invisible electromagnetic
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: radiation of varying frequencies. Your brain paints the picture.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, what about sound?
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Sound follows the exact same pattern. Sound isn't an eye
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: object traveling through the room. It's just kinetic energy air
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: molecules bumping into each other in longitudinal waves, creating localized
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: pressure changes.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: My ears pick that up.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Your ear drums detect those pressure changes, and your brain
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: creates the internal subjective experience we call music or a
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: voice or a crash.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: This is wild.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: Touch is no different invisible electromagnetic field interactions are translated
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: into the conscious feeling of solidity.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: So our everyday reality is not false. It's just a
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: highly compressed interpretation.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, the desk is real, your hand is real. The
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: electromagnetic interaction between them is very real. You cannot wish
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: your hand through the desk.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: But the nature of the reality is fundamentally different from
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: the interface your brain presents to you.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, this brings me to a massive lingering question, perhaps
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: the deepest one we've hit today. If our brains are
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: expertly filtering out the truth, and if an atom is
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: ninety nine nine percent empty space, what is actually happening
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: in all that empty space we can't feel or see,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: you know, the vast emptiness between the marble and the
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: fifty yard line and the stadium seats. If it's not
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: continuous matter, is it just a perfect, dead, completely silent vacuum.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: This is where we confront the final and perhaps most
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: mind bending misconception in modern physics.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Lait On me.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: We need to leave classical quantum mechanics and look at
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: quantum field theory, the idea that the empty space inside
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: an atom, or the vacuum of deep space itself is
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: truly empty, is completely misleading.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: So what appears to be a void is actually what it.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Is, an active, bustling, chaotic stage. According to quantum field theory,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: the universe is not made of isolated particles moving through
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: an empty void. Instead, space is filled with continuous, fluctuating
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: quantum fields.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, fluctuating fields.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: There is an electron field, an upquark field, a down
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: quark field, an electromagnetic field. These fields permeate everything, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: What we perceive as a particle like an electron is
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: actually just a localized vibration and excitation in its respective
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: underlying field.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, like a wave on the surface of an ocean.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: The wave isn't a separate object from the ocean. It's
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: just a localized energy spike in.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: The water exactly. And here's where it gets strange. Even
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: when there are no permanent particles around, Even in a
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: perfect vacuum, these fields are never perfectly still.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: They aren't.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: No, they act like harmonic oscillators. Because of the Heisenberg
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: uncertainty principle, which applies to energy and time just as
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: it does to position and momentum, a field can never
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: have exactly zero energy.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: There is always something there.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: There is always a minimum baseline zero point energy. The
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: field's constantly ripple and fluctuating activity.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Like what if there are no permanent particles there? What
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: is actually happening in the vacuum?
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: These fluctuations cause what we call virtual particles to briefly
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: bubble into existence, interact with each other, and then annihilate
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: and disappear back into the field almost.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Instantly, just popping in and out.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, the vacuum of space itself possesses measurable physical properties.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: It has energy, it exerts tension.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Wait, I am going to petition to officially rename empty
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: space to a crowded, invisible ocean.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: It fits.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: But wait, how can something, even a virtual particle, seemingly
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: appear out of absolute nowhere and vanish without breaking the
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: most fundamental rules of reality, like the conservation of energy.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: You can't just get something from nothing.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: You are getting something from nothing. You are borrowing it
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: from the underlying field. Because of the energy time uncertainty principle,
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: the universe allows a system to borrow a small amount
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: of energy to create a pair of virtual particles, usually
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: a particle and its antimatter equivalent like an electron and
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: a positron, as long as they annihilate each other and
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: return the energy to the field within an infinitesimally small
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: fraction of a second. The more energy they borrow, the
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: faster they.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Have to return it, so it's a super fast lun.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: It happens so fast that it doesn't violate the macroscopic
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: laws of energy conservation, but it fundamentally changes our understanding
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: of the microscopic world.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Is this just a mathematical trick or can we actually
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: prove that space is boiling with these virtual particles?
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: We can absolutely prove it. In nineteen forty eight, physicist
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Hendrick Casimir proposed an experiment which was later successfully performed.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: What was the experiment.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: If you take two completely uncharged, perfectly conducting metallic plates
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: and place them in a perfect vacuum mere nanometers apart,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: something astonishing happens. Because the space between the plates is
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: so tiny, it restricts the wavelengths of the virtual particles
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: that can pop into existence.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: There.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Only small waves can fit between the plates, while virtual
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: particles of all wavelengths are bubbling into existence on the
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: outside of the.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Plates, So there are more virtual particles hitting the outside
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: of the plates than the inside.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and this difference in vacuum fluctuations creates a measurable
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: physical pressure that pushes the two plates together.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: This is called the Casimir effect. It proves that there
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: is no such thing as nothing. The vacuum of space
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: is a boiling soup of potentiality. It is an active,
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: vibrating stage upon which every particle in your body is
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: continuously interacting. The empty space in the atom is an
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: empty It is alive with quantum fields.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's just take a step back and look at
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the magnificent, almost terrifying picture we've just painted over the
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: last hour.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: It's a lot to take in.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: We started with the sheer physical density of a ceramic
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: coffee cup and the wood of a desk. We drilled
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: down past Aristotle's continuous matter, past JJ Thompson's plum pudding,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: straight into Rutherford's tiny, ultra dense nucleus. We expanded out
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: into the vast, stadium sized emptiness of the atom, only
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: to realize that the boundary of reality is defined by
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: probability clouds governed by the fierce electromagnetic push of virtual photons. Yes,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: we discovered the ultimate mathematical bancer, the poly exclusion principle
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: keeping the structure of reality from collapsing into a black hole,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: and the microscopic velcrow, the strong force holding the nuclear core.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Together beautifully summarized, and.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Finally we realize that our brains are just running a
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: slick evolutionary desktop interface over a boiling, bustling ocean of
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: vibrating quantum fields.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: It really is a profound realization. The desk, your phone,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: your own hands all consist of vast regions of apparent emptiness,
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: perfectly structured by invisible forces, wave functions, and mathematical laws. Yeah,
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: reality is not an illusion. The force you feel when
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: you knock on wood is absolutely real. The table is real,
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: But the fundamental mechanism of that reality is entirely different
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: from what our macroscopic senses.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: Suggests, completely different.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: The universe constructs solidity from field interactions, probabilities, and exclusion principles,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: not from physical contact. It is a reality built on
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: invisible mathematical rules rather than miniature hard spheres colliding like
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: billiard balls.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you the listener, with a final
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: lingering thought. Tom all over. Today we've established that touch
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: color and sound are merely evolutionary shortcuts. They are a
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: survival interface, specifically evolved to hide the true, bizarre, buzzing,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics of reality. So ask yourself, what other completely obvious,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: undeniable parts of your everyday human experience might just be
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: illusions built by the brain to help you survive. Think
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: about it. Could the very linear flow of time itself,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: moving smoothly from past to future, or the concept of
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: temperature simply be the next layers of the biological interface
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: waiting to be unplugged. What else is the desktop hiding?
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Take a look around your room one more time. Look
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: at the walls, the floor, the chair holding your weight,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Take a sip of that coffee, and just appreciate the sheer, impossible,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: invisible architecture holding it all together.