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What Are Cosmic Rays? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:07
Speaker 1: The universe is chuck filled with crazy stuff, weird, weird stuff.
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Speaker 1: Every time you look out into the universe, every time
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Speaker 1: you build a new telescope, you see something else weird
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Speaker 1: that you don't understand. Things or aliens, things but made
0:23
Speaker 1: by aliens. I mean, there's all You're always finding things
0:26
Speaker 1: that don't make any sense. Usually the procedure is, you know,
0:29
Speaker 1: you see something you don't understand, and then you try
0:32
Speaker 1: to explain it using things you do understand, and you
0:34
Speaker 1: get more and more elaborate explanations. But usually you figure
0:37
Speaker 1: it out or it stands, you know, for decades as
0:40
Speaker 1: an enduring mystery. That's a clue that there's something out
0:43
Speaker 1: there that we don't understand. Its truth is out there.
0:46
Speaker 1: The truth is out there. It's whispering to us, there's
0:49
Speaker 1: something here that's interesting. Hi. I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist.
1:09
Speaker 1: And I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist. Welcome back to
1:12
Speaker 1: our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. Daniel and
1:18
Speaker 1: Jorge have a strange pause in the title of their podcast,
1:23
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge need a Banana stat Daniel and Jorge
1:29
Speaker 1: tried to explain the universe, but they ran out of bananas. Yeah.
1:35
Speaker 1: In this podcast, we try to take things in the
1:37
Speaker 1: universe and explain them to you because the universe is
1:39
Speaker 1: filled with wild, wacky stuff that gives us insight into
1:42
Speaker 1: how the universe works. And so we're trying to take
1:45
Speaker 1: it apart, piece by piece and make sure it makes
1:46
Speaker 1: sense to you. Yeah, all the pieces that we understand
1:50
Speaker 1: and all the pieces that not even physicists understand. And
1:53
Speaker 1: those are the most fun bits, the ones that are mysteries,
1:56
Speaker 1: those that are clues as to the next revolution in physics,
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Speaker 1: the that I hope will lead to a Nobel Prize
2:01
Speaker 1: discovery hopefully by me or my graduate students or not,
2:07
Speaker 1: or year leads to years of frustration and nothing. That's
2:10
Speaker 1: that's research. Or you are a listener, and hey, if
2:13
Speaker 1: you get a Nobel Prize winning idea listening to this podcast,
2:17
Speaker 1: at least give us a little bit of credit. Yes,
2:19
Speaker 1: give us a shout out. At least when you go
2:20
Speaker 1: to Stockholm, you know, nod in a wink. We'll we'll
2:23
Speaker 1: understand you're talking about us. Yeah, just say our our
2:25
Speaker 1: website and then we'll be we'll call it. We'll call
2:28
Speaker 1: it even. But you know that's a joke, but it
2:30
Speaker 1: is true that we're gonna be talking today about a
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Speaker 1: topic which, if somebody could explain it would almost certainly
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Speaker 1: give them a Nobel prize. Anytime you can explain a
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Speaker 1: decades long standing mystery in physics, you know, that's that's
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Speaker 1: worth something. That's right Today on the podcast, we'll be
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Speaker 1: talking about cosmic raise, and not just any cosmic raise,
2:55
Speaker 1: super duper crazy high energy cosmic raise. Is that the
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Speaker 1: official physics for them? Yeah? What is the acronym for
3:03
Speaker 1: that super duper crazy high such as saying that in
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Speaker 1: conferences all the time. That's right, you can you should
3:11
Speaker 1: add some numbers to that though at the end, like
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Speaker 1: three three cosmic rays. Yeah no, but we run out
3:18
Speaker 1: of we run out of prephysics prefixist to even described
3:21
Speaker 1: as a high energy of particles that we see from space. Okay, yeah, yeah,
3:25
Speaker 1: so yeah. The first time I heard the words cosmic
3:27
Speaker 1: rays was actually when I was about nine years old.
3:30
Speaker 1: If you can't believe it. Were you talking to some
3:32
Speaker 1: dude named Ray and he was like, I'm cosmic close close.
3:37
Speaker 1: I was reading, uh, some comics by Stanley, the late
3:41
Speaker 1: Great Stanley. I don't know if you know this, but
3:43
Speaker 1: the Fantastic Four, their origin is tied to this idea
3:48
Speaker 1: of cosmic rays. There's so much overlap between physics and cartoons, right,
3:53
Speaker 1: I mean not just this podcast, but like so much
3:56
Speaker 1: of concepts and physics ends up in cartoons. You know, ray, Asian,
4:00
Speaker 1: cosmic rays, all this stuff. It's just like it's fuel
4:03
Speaker 1: for people's imagination. Yeah, no, I think I think they
4:07
Speaker 1: mean comics in general have always sort of tried to
4:10
Speaker 1: capture the public anxiety and and the public kind of zeitgeist,
4:15
Speaker 1: and to kind of put in saying, cartoonists have been
4:18
Speaker 1: making physicists look bad for I've been making you look
4:21
Speaker 1: cool like superheroes. I can just imagine you, imagine you
4:25
Speaker 1: in spandex. Daniel, Oh wait, Hard rather not um come out?
4:31
Speaker 1: Mike dropped. So yeah. And the Fantastic Four, the they
4:35
Speaker 1: get their superpowers by flying off into space and then
4:38
Speaker 1: getting bombarded by cosmic rays, and then when they land
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Speaker 1: back on Earth they have these amazing superpowers like stretch
4:43
Speaker 1: and getting going visible and turning to a flaming torch.
4:47
Speaker 1: So that's how I know about the cosmic rays. Is
4:49
Speaker 1: that about correct? You know? Do they give you superpowers?
4:53
Speaker 1: I finally totally get I totally recommend you go into
4:56
Speaker 1: into space and bade yourself in consmic race. You'll definitely
4:59
Speaker 1: get super ours. That's accurate. Um. I love how cartoons
5:05
Speaker 1: and comic books especially have been like using concepts in
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Speaker 1: physics that are like weakly understood and then making us
5:11
Speaker 1: look like bad guys. Right, all these it's always like
5:14
Speaker 1: this new technology is going to cause the rise of
5:17
Speaker 1: a crazy villain or you know, but to be honest,
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Speaker 1: in cosmic ray is all these things. But let's be honest, Daniel,
5:24
Speaker 1: Do you know for sure that getting bathed in cosmic
5:27
Speaker 1: rays will not give you superpowers? Do you know that
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Speaker 1: for sure? Um? No, I think if you bathe yourself
5:31
Speaker 1: in cosmic grads, you're very likely to die. Sons listeners,
5:34
Speaker 1: if you're about to board your own private spaceship, don't.
5:37
Speaker 1: So it sounds important for everyone to know what a
5:39
Speaker 1: cosmic ray is. But we were wondering if you out
5:43
Speaker 1: there and knew what it means when you say the
5:45
Speaker 1: words cosmic rays, what are cosmic rays? Yeah? Exactly. So
5:49
Speaker 1: I went around and I asked random people, one of
5:51
Speaker 1: whom is my wife at what is a cosmic ray?
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Speaker 1: Do you know what a cosmic ray is Here's what
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Speaker 1: they had to say. Um, a cosmic ray is a
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Speaker 1: particle that is originating from an unknown part of the universe,
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Speaker 1: and it can go through any kind of matter. So
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Speaker 1: they come pumbling to the Earth and probably reveal interesting
6:13
Speaker 1: secrets about what's going on. And we're trying to figure
6:15
Speaker 1: out how to do that. I heard waves in there somewhere,
6:18
Speaker 1: So maybe cosmic surfers array that comes from the sky
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Speaker 1: that can be seen from a telescope. Oh lord, I
6:28
Speaker 1: feel like I want to say that's like strong radiation
6:31
Speaker 1: from the Sun, but I'm not sure. Yes, I would
6:34
Speaker 1: guess it has to do a solar raise the sun
6:37
Speaker 1: and something related to that. Okay, cosmic raise, they power
6:42
Speaker 1: Superman be funny of your wife was like, wait, how
6:44
Speaker 1: do you know about Ray? She's like, he wasn't here
6:49
Speaker 1: last night. I don't know if you're talking about, but
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Speaker 1: he is cosmic. This podcast just got not safe for
6:58
Speaker 1: work once again. This is what happens when we record
7:01
Speaker 1: at night. Why I tell you it's a little wonky.
7:04
Speaker 1: It's a d j U late night after dark. But
7:10
Speaker 1: most people seem to have heard about cosmic craze, and
7:12
Speaker 1: one fellow even said, oh, yeah, they power Superman. So
7:15
Speaker 1: there's definitely the cosmic grave physics cartooning connection there. Okay,
7:19
Speaker 1: they power Superman? Come on, who is this person? Everyone knows?
7:22
Speaker 1: That's not right? Not everybody knows that. So where's Superman
7:27
Speaker 1: get his power? Does he eat? Does Superman actually eat?
7:29
Speaker 1: Have you seen Superman eat? Um? Superman? No, he doesn't know.
7:33
Speaker 1: He doesn't need to eat. He gets energy from the Sun.
7:36
Speaker 1: The Sun says, those are cosmic rays. Jorge, what? Okay,
7:47
Speaker 1: So let's break it down. So what Daniel is a
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Speaker 1: cosmic ray? A cosmic ray is a particle from space
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Speaker 1: that hits the Earth. Ray is just another name for particle.
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Speaker 1: Cosmic just means it comes from space. So cosmic rays
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Speaker 1: are just space particles space particles. Yeah, but space particles
8:04
Speaker 1: was vetoed by the physics committee that came up with
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Speaker 1: a name for these things, because cosmic rays sounds so
8:09
Speaker 1: much cooler. But was it? Why do they have this name?
8:12
Speaker 1: Were they just named before we knew about particles? Like
8:15
Speaker 1: what's the difference? Like did we confuse raisin particles before? Oh? Yeah, um,
8:20
Speaker 1: you know, we knew about things like X rays and
8:22
Speaker 1: all sorts of other kinds of rays before we understood particles.
8:25
Speaker 1: So yeah, cosmic rays have been have been known about
8:28
Speaker 1: for you know, a hundred years, so we didn't know
8:31
Speaker 1: they were like little bits. Yeah, it's only it's more
8:34
Speaker 1: recently that people understood their particles. But you know, everything
8:37
Speaker 1: that's a particle from space officially could be called the
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Speaker 1: cosmic ray, and that includes photons from the sun. Random
8:43
Speaker 1: dude on the streets, know it's more about Superman than
8:46
Speaker 1: you do. I think they know more about physics than
8:48
Speaker 1: I do, clearly, but I doubt they know more about
8:51
Speaker 1: that person. You should do this. They know more physics
8:54
Speaker 1: and no more cosmics, no more continent boom that qualifies
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Speaker 1: them to take over. Okay, So it just means any
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Speaker 1: kind of energy or particle that's coming front space and
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Speaker 1: hits the Earth. Okay, that's right. Okay, but that's not
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Speaker 1: a very exciting answer. Like photons, You can't just call
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Speaker 1: sunlight cosmic grades. You can, it wouldn't be very exciting.
9:12
Speaker 1: You're right, but the cosmic rays that we're interested in
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Speaker 1: are not the normal, everyday speam of sunlight that comes
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Speaker 1: from the sun right into cosmic grades were interested in
9:20
Speaker 1: are the weird ones. It's not just photons hitting the Earth,
9:24
Speaker 1: it's other kinds of particles, that's right. The Sun produces
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Speaker 1: a huge number of particles, right, not just photons, of course,
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Speaker 1: but neutrinos and protons and heavier stuff and all sorts
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Speaker 1: of stuff. The Sun is spewing stuff out. It's called
9:37
Speaker 1: the solar wind. And we have so many names for
9:40
Speaker 1: the same thing. Right, they're just space particles, but they're
9:43
Speaker 1: cosmic rays. If they're here, they're space wind. If they're
9:45
Speaker 1: there anyway, the Sun spews them all out loud. So
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Speaker 1: so that's that might be an interesting and new idea
9:52
Speaker 1: for people, the fact that the Sun is not just
9:54
Speaker 1: shining light, it's also shining stuff, like it's burping matter. Yeah,
9:59
Speaker 1: I asolutely, because it's you know, it's a huge fusion reactor,
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Speaker 1: and fusion produces a lot of stuff. Yeah, So you
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Speaker 1: get protons, you get heavier elements, you get huge numbers
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Speaker 1: of neutrinos. I mean, we have um a hundred billion
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Speaker 1: neutrinos from the Sun passed through your fingernail every second.
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Speaker 1: So there's a lot of stuff coming from the Sun. Okay,
10:19
Speaker 1: but neutrinos we don't feel, and they go right through
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Speaker 1: us right there. Like that, they're known as ghost particle.
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Speaker 1: That's right. So the reason we're not all constantly getting
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Speaker 1: superpowers from cosmic grades from the Sun is that most
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Speaker 1: of this stuff is we're shielded from most of this stuff.
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Speaker 1: So photons not dangerous neutrinos pass right through us. We haven't.
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Speaker 1: They can't affect us at all. Right, And for those
10:41
Speaker 1: of you interested neutrinos, we have a whole podcast on that.
10:44
Speaker 1: And then the other stuff, the stuff that's more dangerous
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Speaker 1: are charged particles like protons or heavier, heavier nuclei that
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Speaker 1: could really do some damage. These are more dangerous because
10:53
Speaker 1: they're they're in a way bigger and more. They interact
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Speaker 1: with our cells in a very dangerous way, right, that's right. Yeah,
11:01
Speaker 1: if you if a protons shot through you, it would
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Speaker 1: definitely interact with things in you. It could disturb your DNA,
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Speaker 1: it could give you cancer. It's not a good idea
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Speaker 1: to stand in the beam of protons. And there's a
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Speaker 1: huge number of protons coming from the Sun. Now, before
11:13
Speaker 1: you start digging that shelter to protect yourself, um, you
11:16
Speaker 1: already have a shelter, and that shelter is the is twofold.
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Speaker 1: One is the Earth's magnetic field, and the second is
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Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere. Hold on, I have so many questions
11:24
Speaker 1: for you, but before we keep going, let's take a
11:27
Speaker 1: short break. Okay, So the Sun is shooting stuff at us,
11:43
Speaker 1: and it's coming all the way to Earth. So how
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Speaker 1: does the magnetic field protect us? Well, every charged particle
11:51
Speaker 1: that hits the magnetic field bends. Magnetic fields are really
11:54
Speaker 1: good at bending charged particles, and so instead of just
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Speaker 1: slamming right into the Earth, these things get deflected it
12:00
Speaker 1: and sometimes they spiral along and end up at the
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Speaker 1: North Pole. And that's what you that's why you get
12:04
Speaker 1: the Northern lights. You mean the planet Earth has a
12:07
Speaker 1: force field. Yes, we have a force field. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
12:12
Speaker 1: And it's a good thing we do because otherwise we
12:14
Speaker 1: don't have cancer. So we have a massive global anti
12:18
Speaker 1: cancer shield. Wow. Okay, that's pretty crazy impressive stuff like
12:22
Speaker 1: a force like a force field for for real. Said, also,
12:27
Speaker 1: the atmosphere protects us, that's right, because a particle that
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Speaker 1: makes it through the magnetic field and hits the atmosphere
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Speaker 1: is not just going to fly all the way down
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Speaker 1: to Earth because the atmosphere is not transparent to charge
12:36
Speaker 1: particles like a photon can fly through the atmosphere because
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Speaker 1: the atmosphere is mostly neutral particles, and it'll just fly
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Speaker 1: through all the nitrogen and oxygen and and get down
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Speaker 1: to Earth right, get down to the surface. But a
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Speaker 1: charge particle will slam into those things and will interact
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Speaker 1: with them. They'll break up those nuclei. It's sort of
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Speaker 1: like if a rock hits the Earth, right, it rarely
12:55
Speaker 1: gets all the way down to the surface unless it's
12:58
Speaker 1: huge smaller rocks, they do burn up. And that's what
13:00
Speaker 1: we call it's what we see is shooting stars. Oh okay, yeah,
13:05
Speaker 1: so basically every proton is like a super tiny little meteor,
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Speaker 1: a super tiny little shooting star. So most of them
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Speaker 1: don't make it down to the surface. Okay, they interact
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Speaker 1: with the air and the oxygen in our atmosphere before
13:17
Speaker 1: it gets to us. Yeah, And you can think of
13:19
Speaker 1: the atmosphere so like a really big mattress, and it
13:22
Speaker 1: absorbs most of this energy, and so instead of having
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Speaker 1: one particle with a huge amount of energy, it spreads
13:28
Speaker 1: it out, so you get like, you know, billions of particles,
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Speaker 1: each with a small amount of energy, which is much
13:33
Speaker 1: less dangerous because they don't all hit you. It's kind
13:36
Speaker 1: of like an billiards when you start with a like
13:39
Speaker 1: a cluster of balls and you hit the first one,
13:42
Speaker 1: that impact kind of spreads. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't
13:45
Speaker 1: want to get hit by the Cuba, all right. If
13:47
Speaker 1: you get hit by the seven, then you know you're
13:49
Speaker 1: not gonna be You're gonna be an okay shape. Okay.
13:52
Speaker 1: But but it's surprising because the atmosphere is pretty thin,
13:55
Speaker 1: isn't it kind of in comparison to the Earth and
13:57
Speaker 1: to the Sun. It's like a thin layer of us.
14:00
Speaker 1: But that you're saying that feeling naked, feeling naked when
14:03
Speaker 1: when it comes to space now suddenly feeling vulnerable. Oh
14:06
Speaker 1: my god, I need to put something else on. I
14:08
Speaker 1: feel cosmicly. Yeah, the other Earth's atmospheres, you know, um uh,
14:14
Speaker 1: it depends on where you want to call the edge
14:15
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere. But it's not super thick compared to
14:18
Speaker 1: the size of the Earth. That's true, just like the
14:20
Speaker 1: oceans are not that deep compared to the size of
14:21
Speaker 1: the Earth. The Earth is huge, and the atmosphere is
14:23
Speaker 1: a thin layer protecting us from space. Yeah, I mean,
14:26
Speaker 1: it's weird to think air would could be protecting us,
14:28
Speaker 1: you know, it's um Yeah, And you know they go
14:31
Speaker 1: hand in hand because the magnetic field is protecting our atmosphere.
14:35
Speaker 1: If we lost our magnetic field suddenly, then all these
14:38
Speaker 1: the solar wind would blow away our atmosphere. So the
14:42
Speaker 1: so the magnetic field is doing two things. It's being
14:44
Speaker 1: a cool force field and it's kind of also protecting
14:48
Speaker 1: our sun block. Basically exactly exactly, you can think of
14:53
Speaker 1: the atmospheres like the insulation, and the magnetic field is
14:57
Speaker 1: like the you know, the aluminum sheeting on the outside
14:59
Speaker 1: of your house that keeps the cold, cold, uncarrying space away,
15:04
Speaker 1: and let's just hang out and relax safely on the
15:06
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth. So then a cosmic race seems
15:12
Speaker 1: to be like a commonplace thing. But what's kind of
15:14
Speaker 1: interesting about them, you were telling me, is that they
15:17
Speaker 1: vary in energy. Some of them are sort of you
15:20
Speaker 1: never see, but some of them do have a lot
15:23
Speaker 1: of energy. Yeah, So you study cosmic rays and you
15:26
Speaker 1: see a lot of them that don't have that much energy.
15:28
Speaker 1: You know, they're just pumped out by the sun, no
15:30
Speaker 1: big deal. But you keep looking, and you keep looking,
15:32
Speaker 1: and you find more and more that have higher and
15:34
Speaker 1: higher energy, and you and as you look, you just
15:37
Speaker 1: keep finding them at higher and higher energy and the
15:40
Speaker 1: energy they get to is ridiculous. Like we see cosmic
15:44
Speaker 1: rays meaning protons, so individual particles coming from space that
15:48
Speaker 1: have absurd amounts of energy energy that we can't explain
15:51
Speaker 1: through any mechanism. Okay, so let's break it down. So, um,
15:55
Speaker 1: at the lower energies of these protons hitting the Earth,
15:59
Speaker 1: what are the energies of these cosmic rays? So we
16:02
Speaker 1: usually use a unit called electron volt and um it's
16:06
Speaker 1: a sort of a unit using particle physics. I'll break
16:08
Speaker 1: it down for you in a minute. But you know,
16:10
Speaker 1: at the lower energies like ten to the eleven electron volts,
16:13
Speaker 1: tend to the twelve electron volts, These are very common,
16:15
Speaker 1: no big deal put out by the Sun. But things
16:18
Speaker 1: start to get interesting around tend to the eighteen ten,
16:21
Speaker 1: the nineteen ten to the twenty. We even see particles
16:24
Speaker 1: around ten to the twenty one electron volts. So, for
16:27
Speaker 1: those of you who aren't familiar with that unit, ten
16:29
Speaker 1: to the twenty one electron bolts is like more than
16:31
Speaker 1: a hundred jewels, which is as much energy is in
16:34
Speaker 1: a major league fastball. So now you have a tiny
16:38
Speaker 1: little particle with almost no mass. Right, A proton is
16:40
Speaker 1: super tiny. It's got as much energy as an entire
16:43
Speaker 1: fastball thrown as fast as a human can throw it,
16:46
Speaker 1: which would hurt if it hit you right, It certainly would.
16:50
Speaker 1: It certainly would. It would fly right through you and
16:52
Speaker 1: cause all sorts of damage. You probably wouldn't notice it immediately.
16:55
Speaker 1: So if you had to choose between getting hit by
16:58
Speaker 1: a cosmic ray super hi energy cosmo gray, or a
17:00
Speaker 1: major league fastball in the head, I'd probably choose cosmic gray, honestly,
17:04
Speaker 1: because it's tiny and it might not do that much
17:07
Speaker 1: damage as it slams into Is that right. Yeah, yeah,
17:10
Speaker 1: it's just one, and you might get lucky. You might
17:11
Speaker 1: miss everything useful and not cause cancer or something like that.
17:14
Speaker 1: Oh I see yeah, okay, yeah, But these these particles
17:17
Speaker 1: are super high energy, and the thing that's fascinating about
17:20
Speaker 1: them is that we have no understanding with We don't
17:23
Speaker 1: know anything in the universe that can make particles this
17:26
Speaker 1: high energy. Okay, so by energy, do you mean like
17:29
Speaker 1: the particle itself has a lot of energy or it's
17:32
Speaker 1: just going faster. Yeah, that's the same thing. I mean,
17:34
Speaker 1: the particle is a lot of kinetic energy. It's moving
17:36
Speaker 1: super duper fast. It's not like it's hot, it's not
17:40
Speaker 1: like it's vibrating. It's just it's it's really just trucking
17:42
Speaker 1: along at a super high speed. Oh I see. So
17:44
Speaker 1: the Sun is exploding, it's spewing out these protons, and
17:47
Speaker 1: some of them go faster than others. Some of them
17:49
Speaker 1: go faster than others, but some of them go faster
17:52
Speaker 1: than the Sun can make. Right, So these protons we
17:54
Speaker 1: don't think are coming from the Sun. We think they're
17:56
Speaker 1: coming from something else. The Sun cannot make protons this fast.
18:00
Speaker 1: How do we know it can't make them that fast?
18:02
Speaker 1: How do we know it can't make them that fast? Well,
18:03
Speaker 1: they don't seem to be coming from the Sun, right,
18:06
Speaker 1: So we're getting from the back from like the nights.
18:10
Speaker 1: We get them, Yeah, we get them from getting from
18:12
Speaker 1: the actions in space. We're getting shot out from some
18:15
Speaker 1: someplace in the universe we don't even know, right, the
18:18
Speaker 1: cosmic rays aren't aren't just all coming from the Sun.
18:21
Speaker 1: Some of them were getting bombarded by rays from all directions.
18:24
Speaker 1: You're saying that's right, Lots of things in space make
18:27
Speaker 1: cosmic grays, our son other sons, black holes, pulsars, all
18:31
Speaker 1: those crazy things that all shoot out particles, and some
18:34
Speaker 1: of them come to Earth any kind of violent kind
18:37
Speaker 1: of you know, explosion continues. Crashing in the universe is
18:41
Speaker 1: feeling out stuff. That's right, it's making cosmic rays, and
18:44
Speaker 1: some of them land on Earth and their clue right there,
18:46
Speaker 1: clues to what happened, What made this neutrino and what
18:49
Speaker 1: made it come in this direction and go so fast?
18:51
Speaker 1: What made this proton? What made this piece of iron
18:53
Speaker 1: go so fast? Each one carries with it some information
18:56
Speaker 1: about how and where it was born, and that's fascinating
18:59
Speaker 1: because it tells us about places will never get to
19:02
Speaker 1: and things will never see. Right. Okay, so sometimes some
19:05
Speaker 1: of these cosmic rays have a super amount of energy
19:08
Speaker 1: and we don't know where they're coming from. How often
19:09
Speaker 1: are we getting bombarded by these high energy cosmic rays? Yea,
19:13
Speaker 1: the higher the energy, the more the more rare they are.
19:16
Speaker 1: So for example, at ten to the twenty one electron bolts,
19:19
Speaker 1: which is like the highest energy particle anybody's ever seen.
19:23
Speaker 1: You know, we think that those come about one per
19:26
Speaker 1: square kilometer per few hundred years. One per square kilometers,
19:31
Speaker 1: so very rare. Well, you know, the Earth has a
19:33
Speaker 1: lot of square kilometers, So yeah, if you had a
19:36
Speaker 1: square kilometer of cameras looking for these things, you wouldn't
19:39
Speaker 1: would have to wait a long time to observe them.
19:41
Speaker 1: But if you have a big detective you're a lot
19:43
Speaker 1: of square kilometers, then you can see. You know, if
19:45
Speaker 1: you had a few hundred square kilometers, you could see
19:47
Speaker 1: one a year. Okay, so if you're listening to this
19:49
Speaker 1: podcast and you draw one kilometer square around you, you
19:54
Speaker 1: have to wait a hundred years to see one of
19:57
Speaker 1: these high energy particles come down on you. That's right exactly.
20:00
Speaker 1: But and to me, the most interesting thing about these
20:02
Speaker 1: particles is that, um, we have no idea what could
20:05
Speaker 1: be making them. I mean, I've asked after a physicists
20:08
Speaker 1: have said, what's the highest energy particle? You imagine in
20:11
Speaker 1: space anywhere in the universe, use anything you want. And
20:15
Speaker 1: they start with like a supernova, huge explosion, particles going
20:18
Speaker 1: super fast. Then they sling shot the stuff around a
20:20
Speaker 1: black hole. Right then they ride waves from other stars
20:23
Speaker 1: and they can't get close to the kind of particles
20:25
Speaker 1: we see they at most can explain particles that like
20:28
Speaker 1: tend to the seventeen tend of the eighteen, but we
20:31
Speaker 1: see particles a thousand times more energetic than that. Right,
20:35
Speaker 1: it's totally unexplained. There's nothing out there that can make
20:38
Speaker 1: these kind of particles that we know of, which means
20:40
Speaker 1: there's something new out there. It's like you're in the
20:43
Speaker 1: middle of the jungle and you hear some strange animal
20:45
Speaker 1: sound and there's no animal that you know of that
20:48
Speaker 1: makes that sound or could make that sound exactly. And
20:51
Speaker 1: that's right, you see. Yeah, you see tracks in the
20:54
Speaker 1: in the in the in the mud, and you've never
20:56
Speaker 1: seen an animal make that track before. And so that's
20:58
Speaker 1: a clue that there's something out there waiting to be discovered.
21:01
Speaker 1: You know, these are clues that are surfing along on
21:04
Speaker 1: the cosmos, being delivered to Earth and saying there's something interesting,
21:07
Speaker 1: pay attention. Wow. So that's a huge mystery. So but
21:11
Speaker 1: you I'm sure if physicists have ideas like what could
21:13
Speaker 1: these crazy high energy particles be or be coming from?
21:17
Speaker 1: I think it's a fantastic four. Yeah, I think they're
21:20
Speaker 1: form of vengeance. It's Stanley shooting from head. Yeah, exactly,
21:27
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about that some more, but
21:29
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. You know, physicists have ideas,
21:44
Speaker 1: and the ideas are kind of wacky. And one reason
21:46
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we haven't seen that many of
21:49
Speaker 1: these things because they're pretty rare, and so you know,
21:51
Speaker 1: we can't necessarily tell where in the universe they're coming from.
21:54
Speaker 1: You only have a few dozen of these things ever seen,
21:57
Speaker 1: and they don't like all come from the Sun or
21:59
Speaker 1: from one point, and it's ways. But we do have
22:01
Speaker 1: some fun ideas, you know, and one of my favorites,
22:03
Speaker 1: of course, is maybe it's not some thing that's shooting
22:07
Speaker 1: these cosmic rays at us. Maybe it's some one. Right.
22:11
Speaker 1: We'd imagine if if we found all these cosmic rays,
22:14
Speaker 1: and we got more of them somehow, and we could
22:16
Speaker 1: tell if they're all coming from the same location, and
22:19
Speaker 1: that location was like a planet orbiting some nearby star, right,
22:22
Speaker 1: that would be amazing because it would suggest that there's
22:25
Speaker 1: something on that planet capable of shooting particles at an
22:29
Speaker 1: unnatural energy. Right before suggests trying to kill it was
22:33
Speaker 1: like shooting deadly raise at us, Why do you got
22:37
Speaker 1: to go there? Come on? It could be totally benign
22:40
Speaker 1: alien particle physicists. And I'm sure those guys are really cool.
22:43
Speaker 1: I'm sure they make awesome podcasts with alien cartoonists, right,
22:47
Speaker 1: and maybe they're just doing their science and what we're
22:49
Speaker 1: seeing is like the pollution from their enormous Solar system
22:53
Speaker 1: sized collider or something they're doing to understand physics at
22:56
Speaker 1: the most fundamental level. Um. That seems more are possible
23:00
Speaker 1: to you then that they might be shooting at us
23:02
Speaker 1: to kill us. Why would they try to shoot us
23:05
Speaker 1: for so far away? What is the goal of beaming
23:08
Speaker 1: you know, a crazy cosmic death ray all the way
23:11
Speaker 1: across the universe? Or maybe do you think maybe they
23:13
Speaker 1: could be talking to us, like, hey, like this is
23:15
Speaker 1: morse code, like did for sure? For sure, it's a
23:19
Speaker 1: good way to send a message, right, a type beam
23:21
Speaker 1: of particles um and so we could certainly contain some information.
23:24
Speaker 1: So that's one crazy ideas. Maybe it's pollution from an
23:27
Speaker 1: alien particle physics experiment or a message from space or something.
23:30
Speaker 1: That's definitely one idea. What are some other crazy ideas?
23:33
Speaker 1: The least crazy idea is that maybe it's just some
23:35
Speaker 1: new kind of star right, and we've never seen this
23:38
Speaker 1: kind of star before and so we don't understand it.
23:40
Speaker 1: And in some phase of its life it burps out
23:42
Speaker 1: these particles at crazy high energy. But they're coming at
23:45
Speaker 1: a pretty constant rate, aren't they. It would be some
23:48
Speaker 1: sort of like big surprise if there was a sound
23:51
Speaker 1: that was spewing these out at this rate. Yeah, it
23:53
Speaker 1: would be. And because we have one more clue, which
23:56
Speaker 1: is we know they can't be coming from very far
23:58
Speaker 1: away because the universe, while it's transparent to me into
24:02
Speaker 1: you into photons, they can Photons can fly through the
24:05
Speaker 1: universe for billions and billions of light years. The universe
24:08
Speaker 1: is opaque. Two particles at this energy, they can't fly
24:12
Speaker 1: forever through the through the universe. They get slowed down
24:14
Speaker 1: and stopped by the cosmic microwave background, these little leftover
24:18
Speaker 1: photons from the Big Bang. They impede the progress of
24:21
Speaker 1: these particles. I see. It's like, um, the universe is
24:25
Speaker 1: thinker for these particles. So they can't travel this fast
24:27
Speaker 1: that far exactly exactly. And so we're seeing them this fast.
24:31
Speaker 1: That means they came from somewhere pretty close by. Now
24:34
Speaker 1: we're talking close by by cosmic standards, right, not like oh,
24:37
Speaker 1: they come from down the street, or they're coming from Neptune.
24:40
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking it comes from this galaxy or
24:42
Speaker 1: one of the nearby galaxies and a sort of our
24:44
Speaker 1: local group. But they can't be coming from super duper
24:47
Speaker 1: far away, right. It means that whatever it is can't
24:50
Speaker 1: be too far, which means we should be able to
24:52
Speaker 1: see it. Right, So if there is some new kind
24:54
Speaker 1: of star out there that has this weird property, we
24:56
Speaker 1: should be able to spot it. Okay, that's one. That's
24:59
Speaker 1: another idea. Okay, that's the kind of the vanilla idea.
25:02
Speaker 1: That's the vanilla board, crazy, vanilla crazy idea. I know.
25:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure astrophysicists would love to discover a new kind
25:09
Speaker 1: of star that purps out highendgy particles, but I think
25:11
Speaker 1: it would be kind of boring because the other ideas
25:13
Speaker 1: are crazy, like some of there's somebody out there who
25:15
Speaker 1: wrote a paper and there's not a crackpot. This is
25:17
Speaker 1: a guy from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
25:20
Speaker 1: right where Einstein famously worked and many smart people work today.
25:23
Speaker 1: And he said that maybe um super high endry cosmic
25:27
Speaker 1: rays are a clue that there's a glitch in the simulation.
25:31
Speaker 1: What so that that's two things. One is that he's saying, Um,
25:37
Speaker 1: the universe is a simulation, and too, there could be
25:40
Speaker 1: gligen it. Yeah, exactly. And the idea is basically, if
25:43
Speaker 1: the universe is a simulation, then probably whoever is running
25:47
Speaker 1: that simulation has sliced the universe up into big cubes, right,
25:51
Speaker 1: Because when you do a simulation of some piece of matter,
25:53
Speaker 1: you slice it up into pieces and you do each
25:55
Speaker 1: of them in parallel, and that works pretty well unless
25:57
Speaker 1: you have something that's moving super duper fact asked so
26:00
Speaker 1: that it crosses over those cubes like starts in one
26:03
Speaker 1: ends up in the other one, which messes up your
26:05
Speaker 1: calculation because the cube is supposed to contain everything, and
26:09
Speaker 1: so things that are super duper fast could be traversing
26:11
Speaker 1: these cubes and essentially creating glitches. And so he wrote
26:15
Speaker 1: this really fun paper about how if we see discrepancies
26:18
Speaker 1: in the angles that we discover these cosmic rays, that
26:21
Speaker 1: that could be a clue that the universe is a simulation.
26:23
Speaker 1: And he's found the glitch. Wow, And then what so?
26:27
Speaker 1: Or the other possibility, right, is that it could be
26:31
Speaker 1: something entirely new that we never discovered in the universe.
26:35
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some kind of special, some some some something
26:38
Speaker 1: that we've never seen before, right, yeah, exactly, and that
26:41
Speaker 1: would be really fascinating. I think that would be amazing
26:44
Speaker 1: to say, like, oh, there's a new kind of object.
26:45
Speaker 1: It's not a star, it's not a black holes, nebula,
26:48
Speaker 1: it's some new thing, something, something we can't even imagine
26:51
Speaker 1: right now, exactly exactly. So what are scientists doing to
27:01
Speaker 1: study these cosmic rays? Well, what we're doing is Richard
27:03
Speaker 1: trying to collect as many of them as we can,
27:05
Speaker 1: right because that's the number one clue is where they're
27:08
Speaker 1: coming from and what is the energy spectrum? Like, so
27:11
Speaker 1: if we could get enough of them, we could make
27:13
Speaker 1: a map in the sky and say, oh, look they
27:15
Speaker 1: tend to come from the centers of galaxies, or oh
27:18
Speaker 1: look they tend to come from a nearby a black
27:20
Speaker 1: hole or something. We could get a clue just by
27:22
Speaker 1: seeing where they come from. Um. So the number one
27:25
Speaker 1: thing is get as many of them as you can,
27:27
Speaker 1: because right now we only have like, you know, a
27:30
Speaker 1: handful of them. We have tens of these things at
27:32
Speaker 1: the very highest energy, but I mean we're getting them
27:34
Speaker 1: all the time. It's just a question of catching them
27:36
Speaker 1: right and men being able to measure their angle under
27:39
Speaker 1: energy exactly. And they're hitting the earth all the time,
27:42
Speaker 1: but we're not spotting them right. It's like, you know,
27:44
Speaker 1: if something amazing happens, you don't take a picture, well,
27:47
Speaker 1: you don't have the picture right and say it didn't
27:50
Speaker 1: happen pickure, didn't happen exactly. And so we have these
27:53
Speaker 1: really awesome um cosmic ray telescopes. So these things are
27:58
Speaker 1: really big, right, they cover huge amounts, Like there's one
28:00
Speaker 1: in South America called the o G Observatory. It takes
28:04
Speaker 1: up a huge swath of land in Argentina and um,
28:07
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of square kilometers, so they get a
28:09
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of stuff in there. But it's
28:11
Speaker 1: not big enough, right, it's not big enough to collect
28:14
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of these things a year. So we're
28:16
Speaker 1: building another one in Utah. It's called Telescope Array is
28:19
Speaker 1: even bigger. It's awesome, but even still, you know, it's
28:22
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of the Earth. Because you can't cover
28:25
Speaker 1: the whole Earth in particle detectors, right, people will get
28:28
Speaker 1: kind of upset, you just like mowed down all the
28:30
Speaker 1: farms and the cities and covered everything with particle detectors. Oh,
28:34
Speaker 1: I see, these rays are so rare that you need
28:37
Speaker 1: just to cover a lot of area. You can't just
28:39
Speaker 1: sit in one one kilometer square and wait a hundred years.
28:42
Speaker 1: You just have to have a big catcher's globe. Right. Yeah,
28:45
Speaker 1: well you could wait a hundred years, but I don't
28:47
Speaker 1: really want to. And your options are wait a long
28:49
Speaker 1: time or build a bigger detector. And uh so we'd
28:53
Speaker 1: like to know the answer sooner rather than later. But
28:55
Speaker 1: these things are expensive, right, And by bigger you mean
28:58
Speaker 1: not like there's a dish the size of them at
29:01
Speaker 1: the Comma desert. It's like little dishes spread out, that's right.
29:04
Speaker 1: Because what happens when a cosmic ray hits the atmosphere,
29:07
Speaker 1: if you remember we talked about earlier, is it creates
29:10
Speaker 1: a big splash. Right, One particle hits and it creates
29:13
Speaker 1: two particles of lower energy, which turns into four particles
29:16
Speaker 1: of even lower energy. So you start out with one
29:18
Speaker 1: particle super high energy, and you end up with a
29:21
Speaker 1: big flash over the surface of the Earth, lots of
29:23
Speaker 1: particles with a little bit of energy. And that flash
29:27
Speaker 1: is about two kilometers one to two kilometers wide, so
29:29
Speaker 1: it creates this big shower over the surface of the Earth.
29:32
Speaker 1: Um that's that tells you what that particle was and
29:35
Speaker 1: where it came from, what its energy was. And you
29:37
Speaker 1: don't have to see the whole shower. You just have
29:39
Speaker 1: to have it hit a few detectors in order to
29:41
Speaker 1: spot it. So you don't have to cover the whole
29:43
Speaker 1: Earth with particle detectors. That doesn't have to be blanketed,
29:46
Speaker 1: but you need like one every you know, or one
29:50
Speaker 1: every kilometer or something. Right, So you're saying these are
29:52
Speaker 1: really expensive, and the bigger they are, the more expensive
29:54
Speaker 1: to get. But something interesting is that you are involved
29:58
Speaker 1: in this sort of new way to the tet cosmic race, right,
30:01
Speaker 1: like this kind of citizen science initiative. Yeah, my grad
30:05
Speaker 1: students and I were sitting around a few years ago
30:06
Speaker 1: and we thought, is there a better way to do this?
30:09
Speaker 1: And we were all, you know, sitting around playing on
30:10
Speaker 1: our phones than we realized, Hold on a second, this
30:13
Speaker 1: phone I'm holding in my hand is kind of a
30:15
Speaker 1: cosmic ray detector because every phone has a piece of
30:19
Speaker 1: silicon inside of it that's used for the camera. Right,
30:22
Speaker 1: cameras are no longer like film, their digital and digital
30:25
Speaker 1: camera is basically a particle detector. There's a little bit
30:28
Speaker 1: of silicon in there which is sensitive to cosmic rays,
30:32
Speaker 1: and it has a computer in it, and it's connected
30:34
Speaker 1: to the internet, right, and there are zillions of these
30:38
Speaker 1: things all over the world. Right, So we imagine what
30:41
Speaker 1: if when people went to sleep at night, we took
30:45
Speaker 1: over their phones and we used the cameras in their
30:47
Speaker 1: phones to look for particles. Because these things already exist
30:50
Speaker 1: and people are maintaining them, and they don't use their
30:53
Speaker 1: phones at night. And so we thought, let's try to
30:55
Speaker 1: tie all the phones in the world together to make
30:58
Speaker 1: a huge earth size telescope to gather as many of
31:01
Speaker 1: these cosmic rays as we could, like a giant web
31:04
Speaker 1: of mini portable detectors in people's phones. Yeah, exactly, because
31:09
Speaker 1: the amount of money but that's been spent on phones
31:12
Speaker 1: is staggering. I mean, there's like a million Android phones
31:15
Speaker 1: turned on every single day. You know, It's like trillions
31:19
Speaker 1: of dollars have been spent on consumer electronics. And we thought,
31:22
Speaker 1: let's piggyback on that and use some of it for science,
31:24
Speaker 1: because there's no way we're getting the government to build
31:26
Speaker 1: us a trillion dollar particle detector. So and you guys
31:30
Speaker 1: have made this, like, you made an app that you
31:32
Speaker 1: can download to your phone to turn your phone into
31:35
Speaker 1: a cosmic ray detector. That's right. It's called Crayface c
31:39
Speaker 1: R A f I S stands for cosmic rays found
31:42
Speaker 1: in smartphones. And you can go to you can Google
31:45
Speaker 1: that and go to our website and you can download
31:47
Speaker 1: the app and you can be a part of the network.
31:49
Speaker 1: We're growing it slowly because we want to make sure
31:51
Speaker 1: it works, but eventually it could be the largest particle
31:54
Speaker 1: detector in the history of humanity. We could gather all
31:57
Speaker 1: these cosmic rays and maybe even get a clue as
32:00
Speaker 1: where they're coming from and who is sending us crazy messages.
32:04
Speaker 1: You could be deciphering, helping decipher the alien message. That's right.
32:08
Speaker 1: And the message could be We're coming for you. We
32:11
Speaker 1: can't believe you killed stan Lee. Um. It could be
32:16
Speaker 1: hey do you guys want superpowers? Or hey do you
32:18
Speaker 1: have a cup of sugar? Um. So, so people at
32:21
Speaker 1: home listening to this could be part of the scientific
32:23
Speaker 1: Endebt endeavor. Right. That's pretty cool. Yeah, and we thought
32:26
Speaker 1: that would be fun because we don't just want to
32:28
Speaker 1: use your phones computing to do some calculation. We want
32:31
Speaker 1: to actually let you be a part of it, and
32:33
Speaker 1: the plan is that anybody who lets their phone run
32:36
Speaker 1: for long enough and collects enough data can actually be
32:38
Speaker 1: an author on the scientific papers that come out of it,
32:41
Speaker 1: if we ever got to do any science of it,
32:43
Speaker 1: because we want people to feel invested, We want people
32:45
Speaker 1: to feel like they really get to participate in this project.
32:48
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is that with these cosmic rays,
32:51
Speaker 1: really what we need is just more data, Like we
32:53
Speaker 1: don't know where they could be coming from, but we
32:55
Speaker 1: don't have no enough about them to try to decipher
32:58
Speaker 1: it right exactly. It's like we've gotten the first taste
33:02
Speaker 1: of a clue that something interesting is out there, and
33:04
Speaker 1: we need the rest of the clues before we can
33:06
Speaker 1: figure it out because we just don't have enough information. Right.
33:09
Speaker 1: We've seen a few of them, but we'd love to
33:11
Speaker 1: see thousands and millions of them before we have an
33:13
Speaker 1: idea of where they're coming from, what's causing them. We
33:17
Speaker 1: just need more data. So this is such a fascinating
33:20
Speaker 1: thing to me, just the sense, just the idea that
33:22
Speaker 1: there might be something in the universe out there that
33:25
Speaker 1: we still don't know. You know, it's like certain, Yeah,
33:29
Speaker 1: I'm certain. I mean even a cognate craze aside. The
33:31
Speaker 1: universe is filled with crazy stuff, and every decade we
33:34
Speaker 1: discovered new crazier stuff than we could have even ever imagined.
33:38
Speaker 1: So this is fantastic because you're right, it's a concrete clue.
33:41
Speaker 1: It's the universe giving us the direction is weird look
33:43
Speaker 1: to find new crazy stuff. But I'm sure already that
33:46
Speaker 1: there's crazy stuff in the universe we never imagined. Yeah,
33:48
Speaker 1: and we're being bathed in it, right, like we're constantly
33:52
Speaker 1: getting being bombarded by these clues that there's that there's
33:55
Speaker 1: mystery that's right in the universe is sending us these messages,
33:58
Speaker 1: and it's wondering why are these eyes taken so long
34:01
Speaker 1: to figure it out? We're right here, that's right. Yeah,
34:04
Speaker 1: So cosmic rays, these super high your cosmic grades of
34:07
Speaker 1: the mysteries for decades. We've known about these things for
34:09
Speaker 1: decades and we just haven't figured it out yet. Alright,
34:13
Speaker 1: So thanks everyone for listening to the mystery of cosmic rays.
34:18
Speaker 1: So when you look up at the night sky the
34:20
Speaker 1: next time, or even if you walk out during the day.
34:23
Speaker 1: Just remember that you're being bathed in physics mystery. That's right,
34:28
Speaker 1: And if you do figure out the mystery of cosmic rays,
34:30
Speaker 1: please let us know. Give us a tip before you
34:32
Speaker 1: announce the publicy. I'd love to be included before you
34:44
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
34:47
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
34:50
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
34:53
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
34:57
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Orge dot com.