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Can neutrinos explain why we have matter? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Okay, Orr, Hey, I have a physics game for you.
0:11
Speaker 1: Is that all physics is to you? Daniel game? I
0:14
Speaker 1: thought he took particles in black holes seriously. Well, this
0:17
Speaker 1: is a game about taking things seriously. It's called would
0:20
Speaker 1: you worry? Oh man, I'm worried. Already sounds like a
0:23
Speaker 1: meta game. All right. Would you worry if cern created
0:27
Speaker 1: a black hole? Yes, even after all those times I
0:30
Speaker 1: told you not to worry. I mean, you said it's
0:34
Speaker 1: unlikely that they would create a bad black hole. But
0:38
Speaker 1: if you ask me if I'm concerned that they created
0:40
Speaker 1: a black hole? Yes, all right. Would you worry if
0:43
Speaker 1: we shot a beam of high energy particles through your backyard? Yes? Also, yes,
0:49
Speaker 1: high energy particles can never be good that kids playing
0:52
Speaker 1: in that yard. What if we shot it through the
0:54
Speaker 1: yard is in like underground. They won't come up, and
0:58
Speaker 1: they will not come up. But I'm still a little
0:59
Speaker 1: bit worried because you know, why would you do that?
1:03
Speaker 1: Why not? Hi am or Hey, I'm a cartoonists and
1:20
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
1:23
Speaker 1: particle physicist, and I don't shoot particles at your children,
1:27
Speaker 1: not usually, only if they're in your lawn. Is that
1:29
Speaker 1: what happens only if they're deep deep underground your lawn.
1:33
Speaker 1: You have a little particle shooter in your porch. Well,
1:36
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes particle physicists build accelerators underground. And in
1:41
Speaker 1: the US you own the land all the way to
1:45
Speaker 1: the center of the earth, and so you have to
1:47
Speaker 1: get permission from people to build underneath their land. But
1:50
Speaker 1: in other countries, like in Europe, you only own the
1:53
Speaker 1: earth down to like fifty below your land, so the
1:55
Speaker 1: government can build whatever accelerated they want under your property.
1:59
Speaker 1: What are you telling me that I own my land
2:01
Speaker 1: all the way to the center of earth, that all
2:04
Speaker 1: the way down to the center of the earth. US
2:06
Speaker 1: lands law says that you are the owner of that
2:08
Speaker 1: entire what is it cone or pyramid of Earth? Wow,
2:13
Speaker 1: I should build the biggest bunker humanity has ever seen,
2:17
Speaker 1: very long, very thin bunker with very low gravity near
2:20
Speaker 1: the center, multi tiered pools. You know, be a great apocalypse.
2:26
Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain
2:29
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of Heart Radio in which we
2:32
Speaker 1: take you all the way down to the center of
2:35
Speaker 1: the Earth to understand what's going on underneath your feet
2:38
Speaker 1: are there bunkers down there are particle physicists doing experiments
2:41
Speaker 1: you aren't aware of. And we zoom out to the
2:44
Speaker 1: wider universe to help you understand why we're here, what
2:47
Speaker 1: we're doing, and what the future holds. That's right, all
2:50
Speaker 1: the way to the far corners of the universe, to
2:53
Speaker 1: explore all the things that we can barely see, and
2:56
Speaker 1: we can see and we would that we might one
2:58
Speaker 1: day see. And we also take you down to the
3:00
Speaker 1: very core of you, to your atoms and to your particles,
3:04
Speaker 1: and to all the things that make you who you are.
3:06
Speaker 1: That's right because we think the biggest game in town
3:09
Speaker 1: is trying to understand what the world is made out of.
3:12
Speaker 1: You look around and you have to wonder, why is
3:14
Speaker 1: the world this way and not some other way? One
3:17
Speaker 1: are the basic rules that make everything up? How do
3:20
Speaker 1: they explain the reason why cats are so weird and
3:23
Speaker 1: dogs are so friendly? In the end, it has to
3:25
Speaker 1: all come down to the tiny little particle. That's right,
3:28
Speaker 1: and the even deeper question, why are we made of
3:30
Speaker 1: the particles that were made out of Why aren't we
3:33
Speaker 1: made out of other particles? That's right because scientists have
3:36
Speaker 1: discovered lots of really weird symmetries. We have a certain
3:39
Speaker 1: set of particles, but there are other possible particles out there,
3:43
Speaker 1: particles that you can create in high energy collisions, but
3:46
Speaker 1: you just don't see very often. And some of those
3:48
Speaker 1: particles are weird reflections of the particles we are made
3:52
Speaker 1: out of. We're made out of matter, but it's also
3:55
Speaker 1: possible to create antimatter. Yeah, because we we have the
3:58
Speaker 1: standard model, right Daniel, that explains or that maps out
4:01
Speaker 1: all the particles that we know about, and so there's
4:03
Speaker 1: a big question of whether or not that model is
4:06
Speaker 1: like done, is it wrapped up that all the matter
4:09
Speaker 1: there is? You know, now that we found the Higgs boson,
4:11
Speaker 1: what's left to learn about the particles that make up
4:14
Speaker 1: matter in the universe? But there's still sort of one
4:17
Speaker 1: unanswered question about it, right, That's right. I got more
4:19
Speaker 1: than one unanswered question. I only have one. What is
4:24
Speaker 1: this podcast about? But you're right, there sometimes the perception
4:27
Speaker 1: that because we have the standard Model of physics, and
4:29
Speaker 1: for a long time we said there was one missing piece,
4:32
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, And that's true. We thought that piece
4:35
Speaker 1: existed and it was missing, and then we did find it.
4:38
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that questions are over. We don't
4:41
Speaker 1: just tie a bow on it and walk away and
4:42
Speaker 1: say that's it, we're done. We look at it and
4:45
Speaker 1: we ask questions about it, and we say why is
4:47
Speaker 1: it this way and not some other way. We look
4:50
Speaker 1: at things in our universe that don't have explanations, like
4:53
Speaker 1: why is there so much matter and not antimatter. That's
4:56
Speaker 1: something we can't currently explain using in the complete Standard
5:01
Speaker 1: Model of particle physics. Yeah, it's a very big question
5:04
Speaker 1: that basically determines everything, because the whole universe could have
5:08
Speaker 1: gone the antimatter way, right, Everything could have been made
5:11
Speaker 1: out of anti matter. But somehow, for some reason, everything
5:14
Speaker 1: is made out of matter, not antimatter, and so a
5:17
Speaker 1: big question is whether or not we can explain that
5:20
Speaker 1: with some of the particles that we have, namely the
5:22
Speaker 1: new trino. That's right, one of the least explored areas
5:26
Speaker 1: of the Standard Model are these weird new trinos. You
5:29
Speaker 1: might have heard of them, because the Sun is pumping
5:31
Speaker 1: them out at an incredible rate, and there's like a
5:33
Speaker 1: hundred billion of them passing through your fingernail every second.
5:37
Speaker 1: As we sit here on the surface of the Earth
5:40
Speaker 1: and they can do a bunch of really weird stuff.
5:42
Speaker 1: They come in three different flavors, they turn from one
5:45
Speaker 1: into the other. But their mysteries are only beginning to
5:48
Speaker 1: be cracked, and they could have the answers to some
5:50
Speaker 1: of these really big questions that are still open in
5:53
Speaker 1: particle physics. Yeah, why didn't trinos only come in three flavors?
5:57
Speaker 1: Is it like vanilla, chocolate and strawberry? Can you make
6:00
Speaker 1: neopolitan neutrinos Neopolitan ice cream from Italy? Also, that's where
6:06
Speaker 1: neutrinos were discovered or named at least, so many connections
6:09
Speaker 1: being made today. But you know, if there were only
6:11
Speaker 1: three flavors in the world, would you want them to
6:13
Speaker 1: beat chocolate, manilla, and strawberry? No, because I'm allergic to strawberry.
6:18
Speaker 1: But that's that's probably the only reason. To be honest,
6:21
Speaker 1: be careful what you wish for that man, I would
6:23
Speaker 1: be like chocolate, darker chocolate and super dark chocolate and
6:28
Speaker 1: pure chocolate chocolate. Forget the ice cream part. I just
6:31
Speaker 1: want to block of chocolate. We need cream and ice
6:34
Speaker 1: just just delivery mechanisms. But yeah, we don't know why
6:38
Speaker 1: neutrinos come in three flavors. And in the last twenty
6:41
Speaker 1: years we learned some weird things about neutrinos, like sometimes
6:44
Speaker 1: they're made in one flavor and they can while flying
6:47
Speaker 1: through space turn weirdly into a different flavor, which isn't
6:51
Speaker 1: something other particles can do. They have these really tiny
6:55
Speaker 1: little masses, not zero, they definitely have some masks. They're
6:58
Speaker 1: not like photons, but they're are much smaller than anything
7:02
Speaker 1: else we've ever seen, if a very subtle flavor neutrinos.
7:06
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the question for today is whether or
7:08
Speaker 1: not neutrinos could you know, explain one of the biggest
7:10
Speaker 1: questions in particle physics. And so today on the podcast
7:13
Speaker 1: we'll be answering the question, are neutrinos the reason why
7:21
Speaker 1: we have matter and not antimatter in the universe. That's
7:25
Speaker 1: a big question, Daniel. It's a big question to hang
7:27
Speaker 1: on on one little poor particle, I know, and we
7:30
Speaker 1: often think like, well, neutrinos hardly have any matter to them.
7:33
Speaker 1: I mean, there's almost no mass there, so how can
7:36
Speaker 1: they matter so much? But remember that there are lots
7:39
Speaker 1: of them right There are billions and billions of them
7:42
Speaker 1: in every cubic centimeter of our solar system. So even
7:46
Speaker 1: though there are very few of them, they really add up,
7:48
Speaker 1: you know, they're like votes. Every neutrino counts. Yeah, And
7:52
Speaker 1: right now, there's a big experiment, right Daniel, that's trying
7:54
Speaker 1: to answer this question. And it has a pretty cool name,
7:56
Speaker 1: at least if you're a sci fi fan or a
7:59
Speaker 1: fan of SAND. I'm a fan of science fiction and SAND,
8:02
Speaker 1: so I love this experiment. Because the United States has
8:05
Speaker 1: made a sort of political strategic choice to not try
8:09
Speaker 1: to have the highest energy collider in the world anymore.
8:11
Speaker 1: We've sort of given up and let cern take over instead.
8:15
Speaker 1: The United States communities decided we're going to focus on neutrinos.
8:18
Speaker 1: We think neutrinos are the place to discover the new
8:21
Speaker 1: secrets of the universe. So the biggest particle physics experiment
8:25
Speaker 1: in the United States right now is not a huge
8:28
Speaker 1: collider to smash particles together at the highest energy has
8:31
Speaker 1: ever seen. But instead it's a new trino experiment to
8:34
Speaker 1: try to understand the mysteries of these neutrinos. And it's
8:37
Speaker 1: called Dune d U and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, and
8:43
Speaker 1: it's outside of Chicago Infirmulab. Right, that's right. It actually
8:46
Speaker 1: stretches part of the way across the country. Yes, we'll
8:50
Speaker 1: get into all of that, but it shoots neutrinos from
8:52
Speaker 1: one part of the country through a bunch of backyards
8:55
Speaker 1: to another part of the country. It's pretty amazing, all right. Well,
8:59
Speaker 1: we were wondering how many people out there in the
9:01
Speaker 1: Internet that had heard of this experiment, the dune experiment.
9:05
Speaker 1: And again it's not it has nothing to do with
9:07
Speaker 1: the spice or giant worms. You don't know that they
9:09
Speaker 1: could discover giant worms. They are on the ground, aren't they.
9:14
Speaker 1: Who knows what's out there. You've got to keep an
9:16
Speaker 1: open mind every time you do an experiment. It could
9:18
Speaker 1: be a giant water reservoir down there. But anyways, we're
9:22
Speaker 1: wondering how many people out there had heard of this,
9:23
Speaker 1: So as usual, Daniel went out into the wilds of
9:25
Speaker 1: the Internet to ask this question. So thank you to
9:28
Speaker 1: everybody who volunteered to answer these random questions. If you
9:31
Speaker 1: would like to hear your random speculation on our podcast,
9:35
Speaker 1: please volunteer two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
9:39
Speaker 1: So before you listen to these answers, think about it
9:41
Speaker 1: for a second. Have you heard of the Dune experiment.
9:44
Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. That's another one, unfortunately
9:47
Speaker 1: I have not heard of, unless it's referred to the
9:50
Speaker 1: novels by Frank Herbert. I don't know if this is
9:53
Speaker 1: an acronym, and I'm not sure what the letters stand for.
9:59
Speaker 1: But since I'm in the microbiology field, I'm going to
10:03
Speaker 1: say that it involves testing for some kind of extraterrestrial
10:07
Speaker 1: microbes in sand or soils from other planets. So I
10:13
Speaker 1: don't I'm blank on that one. I live five miles
10:18
Speaker 1: from Fermilab, and I take advantage of their lecture series
10:23
Speaker 1: and things, so I know the Done experiment. Fermilab is
10:26
Speaker 1: shooting streams of neutrinos and anti neutrinos through the Earth
10:34
Speaker 1: to a detector in a mile deep in South Dakota.
10:39
Speaker 1: I no idea what the Done experiments is. Maybe I
10:44
Speaker 1: should know this, but I hope that they will answer everything. Well.
10:50
Speaker 1: I've definitely never heard of the Doune experiments. I hope
10:55
Speaker 1: that they would be looking for a spice to extend
10:59
Speaker 1: human life and make space travel more feasible. So mostly
11:04
Speaker 1: blanks on that one, except for that one person who
11:06
Speaker 1: lives is near it. I guess they're probably pretty aware
11:11
Speaker 1: of it and maybe a little concern. Who knows. They
11:14
Speaker 1: did sound very concerned. They sound more happy with themselves
11:17
Speaker 1: to have heard of it. But I like the one
11:18
Speaker 1: that's suggesting that maybe it was looking for a spice
11:20
Speaker 1: to extend human life. That would probably get more funding
11:24
Speaker 1: more easily. Yeah, let's fund every science fiction novel as
11:28
Speaker 1: a particle physics experiment. There you go, lightsabers and transporter beams.
11:34
Speaker 1: So let's get on at Daniel, send me the money.
11:37
Speaker 1: I'll get started. All right, Well, let's step through this.
11:39
Speaker 1: What is Dune the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. So this
11:42
Speaker 1: is a really awesome new massive experiment. It's being built
11:47
Speaker 1: right now. It's not finished yet, it's gonna be finished
11:49
Speaker 1: in the next five ten years, and it's going to
11:51
Speaker 1: try to unravel some of these mysteries, try to understand
11:54
Speaker 1: the relationship between neutrinos and anti neutrinos and help us
11:58
Speaker 1: understand how they could potentially give us a clue about
12:01
Speaker 1: how antimatter all got disappeared from the universe. And it
12:05
Speaker 1: starts at Fermilab, which is this collider facility outside of Chicago.
12:09
Speaker 1: It's actually where I did my PhD work. It's out
12:12
Speaker 1: in the suburbs of Chicago, near Naperville and Batavia. Interesting
12:16
Speaker 1: and then nothing bad happened to you, at least not
12:18
Speaker 1: if you count of PhD R. Yeah. Well there were
12:21
Speaker 1: some adventures there, but not appropriate for this podcast. Well
12:26
Speaker 1: maybe they are actually. Like, for example, the first year
12:28
Speaker 1: that I worked at Fermilab, it was Halloween and I thought, hey,
12:32
Speaker 1: Fermilab is a cookie place. Probably everybody shows up at
12:35
Speaker 1: work in costume, right, So I showed up a work
12:38
Speaker 1: in a clown costume, the only person in the entire
12:43
Speaker 1: facility to wear a costume to work on Holloway makeup, wig,
12:46
Speaker 1: the whole thing, makeup, wig, the whole thing. That was
12:50
Speaker 1: pretty goofy. And so ten minutes in when I realized
12:53
Speaker 1: nobody else is wearing a costume. You know, I pulled
12:56
Speaker 1: out the bits that I could washed off the makeup,
12:58
Speaker 1: but I was still walking around all day in oversized
13:01
Speaker 1: blue shots. Oh man, did you become famous on campus
13:03
Speaker 1: for that? Infamous? I thought, Really, my academic career had
13:07
Speaker 1: tanked at that point. I would have thought that would
13:10
Speaker 1: he paid attention to you? You think it blend in,
13:14
Speaker 1: but you know, among the khaki shorts and stained T
13:17
Speaker 1: shirts that really did kind of stick out. Well, that
13:19
Speaker 1: sounds like a pretty upprovid story. But um, yeah, so
13:22
Speaker 1: what so you guys start smashing new trinos catching neutrinos,
13:26
Speaker 1: you're looking for a new trinos. What's involved in the experiment. Well,
13:29
Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're making a beam of neutrinos
13:32
Speaker 1: at Fermi Lab and then they're shooting it into a detector.
13:36
Speaker 1: And Fermi Lab used to be the place where you
13:38
Speaker 1: had the highest energy collisions in the world back in
13:41
Speaker 1: two thousand. It was the energy frontier. There were no
13:45
Speaker 1: higher energy collisions, and it was smashing protons and anti
13:48
Speaker 1: protons together. But then it sort of lost the race
13:51
Speaker 1: discern and it's been repurposed and they're taking that beam
13:54
Speaker 1: of protons and they're turning it into a neutrino or
13:57
Speaker 1: an anti neutrino being or you specause if you don't
14:01
Speaker 1: know what's coming out. No, they do both. They have
14:03
Speaker 1: like a knob. They can produce a beam of neutrinos
14:06
Speaker 1: or a beam of anti neutrinas. Yeah, I'm confused because
14:09
Speaker 1: I thought neutrino's words own anti neutrinos. Well, we don't
14:11
Speaker 1: know right, we can produce neutrinos, and we can produce
14:14
Speaker 1: anti neutrinos. We don't know if they're the same particle
14:17
Speaker 1: or not. What I guess, how do you know you're
14:20
Speaker 1: making anti neutrinos. We don't know if they're the same
14:23
Speaker 1: thing as regular neutrinas. Yeah, that's a great question. Well,
14:26
Speaker 1: Typically neutrinos, which are matter, are produced from decays of
14:30
Speaker 1: other matter, and anti neutrinos, which are antimatter, are produced
14:34
Speaker 1: from decays of other antimatter. And in these collisions, we
14:38
Speaker 1: can make both kinds, and we can select for matter
14:41
Speaker 1: or we can select for antimatter, and then we can
14:44
Speaker 1: just sort of let it decay. So the way it
14:46
Speaker 1: works is we smash protons at some target, which makes
14:50
Speaker 1: a big mess. You get lots of crazy particles out
14:53
Speaker 1: pions and kons and all sorts of stuff, and that
14:56
Speaker 1: stuff usually has electric charges. So we can separate using
14:59
Speaker 1: a mac we can say, all right, the positive ones
15:02
Speaker 1: over here and the negative ones over here, So that
15:04
Speaker 1: gives us like mostly matter or mostly antimatter that travels
15:08
Speaker 1: through a long space where the kaons and pyons they
15:12
Speaker 1: all decay into lighter particles like neutrinos that we're looking for,
15:15
Speaker 1: and then also electrons and muons, and the Earth absorbs
15:19
Speaker 1: all of it except for the neutrinos. And so we
15:23
Speaker 1: don't specifically produce neutrinos or anti neutrinos. We produce stuff
15:27
Speaker 1: which turns into neutrinos or stuff which turns into anti neutrinos,
15:31
Speaker 1: and then we just let the Earth filter it all away.
15:34
Speaker 1: And so that's the knob you can dial. You can
15:35
Speaker 1: dial like smash matter or smash antimatter, like we can
15:39
Speaker 1: produce antimatter that well, we can produce antimatter absolutely. You
15:42
Speaker 1: just smash protons into a big heavy block of matter
15:45
Speaker 1: graphite in this case, and you get a huge spray
15:48
Speaker 1: of stuff, both matter and antimatter. I mean a proton
15:52
Speaker 1: smashing into graphite. It starts out with just plus one
15:54
Speaker 1: electric charge right because of the proton. Then you've got
15:57
Speaker 1: a huge bunch of particles. But you can get like
16:00
Speaker 1: plus five hundred electric charge over there and minus four
16:04
Speaker 1: electric charge over here, So you've got a combination of
16:06
Speaker 1: matter antimatter. Oh I see the antimatter has like the
16:10
Speaker 1: negative charge. Yeah. In some cases in the same way,
16:13
Speaker 1: for example, of photon can turn into an electron and oppositron, right,
16:17
Speaker 1: so it can turn into matter and antimatter, and then
16:19
Speaker 1: you could you can separate them and say, oh, give
16:21
Speaker 1: me all the matter or give me all the antimatter.
16:23
Speaker 1: And so that's what you do here. And the super
16:25
Speaker 1: cool thing is that you're not interested in any of
16:27
Speaker 1: it except for the new trinos. So you've got to
16:30
Speaker 1: filter everything out like a sieve where you want to
16:33
Speaker 1: get everything out of the way except for the new trinos.
16:35
Speaker 1: Neutrinos the only thing you basically can't bend or turn
16:39
Speaker 1: or stop. So the way you get everything else out
16:42
Speaker 1: of your beam is you just slam it into the
16:44
Speaker 1: earth and let the earth absorb all of it except
16:48
Speaker 1: for the new trinos. Interesting, so you you produce them
16:52
Speaker 1: at Fermulab, but then you catch them somewhere else, Like
16:55
Speaker 1: you don't catch them right away, that's right. We produce
16:57
Speaker 1: them a Fermulab, and we're interested in how these neutri
17:00
Speaker 1: change over time, like do they turn mule neutrinos into
17:04
Speaker 1: electron neutrinos or into town neutrinos or into anti neutrinos
17:08
Speaker 1: or what do they do? So we've got to get
17:10
Speaker 1: them time to do that, So we want to watch
17:12
Speaker 1: this beam. We take a snapshot of it immediately as
17:16
Speaker 1: soon as it's measured to get a sense for what
17:18
Speaker 1: was in there, and then we take a snapshot that's
17:21
Speaker 1: kilometers away in South Dakota. What. You shoot them in
17:26
Speaker 1: Chicago and you catch them in South Dakota. Yeah, they're
17:30
Speaker 1: made in the cybutse of Chicago. And then they're just
17:32
Speaker 1: aimed through the earth like the Earth curves, and we
17:35
Speaker 1: shoot them in a straight line, sort of under the
17:38
Speaker 1: curve of the Earth. So they come into this mine
17:40
Speaker 1: in South Dakota. What and nobody cares like you can
17:44
Speaker 1: just shoot stuff through the earth like that, You can
17:47
Speaker 1: just shoot stuff under people's property because you know, neutrinos
17:50
Speaker 1: do nothing. You know, you're not gonna give anybody cancer
17:53
Speaker 1: shooting neutrinos under their house, you know, of we know,
17:59
Speaker 1: that's right. It's sort of amazing because usually when you
18:02
Speaker 1: make a beam of particles, you very carefully shoot it
18:05
Speaker 1: through a vacuum because you don't want to lose any
18:07
Speaker 1: of your particles. Like the beam that's at the LHC
18:10
Speaker 1: at the Large Hadron Collider is through a very very
18:12
Speaker 1: low vacuum tube. But here you specifically shooting neutrinos through
18:16
Speaker 1: rock and rubble and all sorts of crazy stuff to
18:19
Speaker 1: get rid of all the other particles. So it's sort
18:22
Speaker 1: of awesome. Wow. All right, let's get into why we're
18:26
Speaker 1: shooting this beam of natrinos to South Dakota and what
18:31
Speaker 1: we're going to learn from them. But first let's take
18:33
Speaker 1: a quick break, all right, Daniel, So about trillion and
18:49
Speaker 1: the natrinas per second are being shot out of Chicago
18:51
Speaker 1: and they're being caught in South Dakota, so that these
18:54
Speaker 1: are going how far underground are these trina's going like
18:57
Speaker 1: underneath me? How far would I be able to catch them?
19:00
Speaker 1: When they hit in South Dakota, they're about a mile
19:02
Speaker 1: underground about halfway through their trip there even further because
19:06
Speaker 1: the courage to the earth piles above them. So they're
19:09
Speaker 1: producing in Chicago and they're just above ground there where
19:12
Speaker 1: they're made, and their shot into the earth, and then
19:14
Speaker 1: they go deeper and deeper and deeper, and then the
19:16
Speaker 1: curvage of the earth sort of curves back towards them.
19:19
Speaker 1: But they end up about a mile underground where there's
19:22
Speaker 1: a mine, an old mine that was used for you know,
19:25
Speaker 1: mining and has now been taken over by particle physics
19:28
Speaker 1: experiments where people want to look for really rare stuff,
19:32
Speaker 1: and they do these experiments underground so that they're not
19:35
Speaker 1: constantly drowned out by the noise from cosmic rays particles
19:38
Speaker 1: from space that would otherwise feel your experiments. And you're
19:42
Speaker 1: telling me earlier that you know I technically on the
19:44
Speaker 1: ground underneath me from my house down to the core
19:48
Speaker 1: of the Earth. So did the US get permission from
19:50
Speaker 1: everyone along the way or did they just did it? Nope,
19:53
Speaker 1: they just did it. They can't build a facility the
20:00
Speaker 1: under your house because you own it, but they can
20:02
Speaker 1: shoot particles through it underground. Really that was a loophole. Yeah,
20:06
Speaker 1: they don't need your permission to send cell phone signals
20:09
Speaker 1: through your house, for example, or radio waves. It's the
20:11
Speaker 1: same deal. I guess did they slip that in under
20:14
Speaker 1: the same regulations like that the FTC approved this experiment. SEC.
20:22
Speaker 1: I don't know if SEC or the SC or the
20:24
Speaker 1: POC or anything approved this, but they're doing it. And
20:27
Speaker 1: you know, remember the neutrinos, they hardly ever interact like
20:30
Speaker 1: they'll go through a light year of lead and have
20:32
Speaker 1: a fifty percent chance of interacting so there are trillions
20:36
Speaker 1: of neutrinos produced per second, but only a handful of
20:38
Speaker 1: them are seen, and it takes a really really specialized,
20:42
Speaker 1: very sensitive detector to see any of them. All right,
20:45
Speaker 1: So tell us about that. What's on the other side
20:47
Speaker 1: in South Dakota in that mind, is it like a
20:50
Speaker 1: big detector or a little detector? What's there? It's ridiculously
20:53
Speaker 1: big detector, right, because to see neutrinos you have to
20:59
Speaker 1: have something very very quiet, because neutrinos are really shy.
21:02
Speaker 1: They hardly ever interact with the detector and they're very light.
21:05
Speaker 1: So when they do interact, all they do is they
21:07
Speaker 1: like bounce off a nucleus, maybe kick off an electron
21:11
Speaker 1: or so. But that happens all the time. Like if
21:13
Speaker 1: you just look for electrons being kicked off of nuclei,
21:16
Speaker 1: you would see it all the time around you from
21:18
Speaker 1: cosmic rays and from other processes. So to see it
21:21
Speaker 1: from neutrinos, you have to get a very quiet environment
21:24
Speaker 1: where nothing else is happening, and then listen for these
21:27
Speaker 1: little buzzes from the electrons, and you want to see
21:31
Speaker 1: it as often as you can, so you get a
21:33
Speaker 1: really big volume. So what they have is like basically
21:37
Speaker 1: a big bath a very cold liquid. They use liquid argon.
21:41
Speaker 1: Argon is a noble gas that doesn't interact very much.
21:44
Speaker 1: It's very quiet, and if you chill it down to
21:47
Speaker 1: like minus a hundred and eighties six celsius, it turns
21:51
Speaker 1: into a liquid. And they have these enormous containers of
21:55
Speaker 1: this liquid argon just sitting there waiting for neutrinos to
21:58
Speaker 1: fly through them. Interesting and when they flies through, do
22:00
Speaker 1: they create like a ping or like an image because
22:03
Speaker 1: they used to measure these with images, right like you
22:05
Speaker 1: might see the trail of bubbles that the particles mad.
22:08
Speaker 1: But I'm guessing these don't use that. These use are
22:11
Speaker 1: very cool new technology. Older neutrino experiments like the ones
22:14
Speaker 1: in Japan may have seen those. They're like a huge
22:17
Speaker 1: cylinder of water surrounded essentially by cameras, photo multiplier tubes,
22:22
Speaker 1: and those used charenk Off light, Like a neutrino comes
22:25
Speaker 1: in and turns into a mule on which gives off
22:27
Speaker 1: this cone of light that's then image on the side
22:29
Speaker 1: of the detector. These are even fancier because there's an
22:33
Speaker 1: electric field that's put through the liquid argon, so when
22:36
Speaker 1: autrino comes in, it actually can kick off a bunch
22:39
Speaker 1: of electrons, and you can get the whole trail of
22:41
Speaker 1: the neutrino. You can get like a track of the
22:43
Speaker 1: neutrino because you can pull off those electrons from deep
22:47
Speaker 1: inside this detector. The electric field like sucks out any
22:50
Speaker 1: of these electrons and registers of them sort of on
22:53
Speaker 1: the side. So it's like single electrons, single electrons exactly,
22:59
Speaker 1: And so it has to be very quiet and very clean,
23:02
Speaker 1: but it also has to be really big, and so
23:04
Speaker 1: experimentally that's a big challenge, right, Like, you can build
23:07
Speaker 1: something small that performs really well, but to scale it
23:09
Speaker 1: up is really difficult. And these tanks have ten kilo
23:14
Speaker 1: tons of liquid ar gone, Like, these are not small devices. Well,
23:19
Speaker 1: I guess my question is why shoot them through the earth.
23:21
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that you know, kind of corrupt signal or you know,
23:25
Speaker 1: damp in the signal. Why not shoot them kind of
23:27
Speaker 1: straight into a detector. Well they do that also, so
23:30
Speaker 1: they have detector immediately after the neutrinos are produced to
23:34
Speaker 1: sort of sample the beam. They're like, well, what did
23:36
Speaker 1: we make? Do we make mostly electron neutrinos? Do we
23:39
Speaker 1: make mostly mule neutrinos? Etcetera. But then you also want
23:42
Speaker 1: to see them change, And that's really the question we're asking.
23:45
Speaker 1: It's like, do we understand how neutrinos change from one
23:48
Speaker 1: kind into another? That's the thing that's going to help
23:51
Speaker 1: us connect to this question of antimatter and the deeper
23:54
Speaker 1: questions of the universe, and even you know, maybe understand
23:57
Speaker 1: some things about exploding stars in far Way Galaxy. The
24:01
Speaker 1: key is to understand how the neutrinas change from when
24:04
Speaker 1: they're created to further down the road. So you want
24:07
Speaker 1: to sort of corrupt them. You want them to interact,
24:10
Speaker 1: to change in flight, to do the things they're going
24:12
Speaker 1: to do, the weird stuff they can do, so then
24:14
Speaker 1: you can catch them having done it down the roof.
24:17
Speaker 1: But w don't you want a clear line aside? Why
24:19
Speaker 1: would you want it to go through rock? Wouldn't that,
24:22
Speaker 1: you know, give you a lot of things that could
24:23
Speaker 1: have happened or unexplained phenomenon along the way. Well, if
24:27
Speaker 1: you discover that somebody's, for example, build a bunker all
24:29
Speaker 1: the way down to the central of the Earth, that
24:31
Speaker 1: could really like corrupt your measurements with all their cascading
24:34
Speaker 1: pools and demando plantations and stuff. Yeah, what if a
24:37
Speaker 1: giant sandworm like wat's right into the beam. The first
24:42
Speaker 1: thing is you want all that earth there to filter
24:45
Speaker 1: out all the other particles. You need to get rid
24:47
Speaker 1: of all the muans and the chaons and all the
24:49
Speaker 1: other stuff, so you have a pure neutrina beams, So
24:51
Speaker 1: you need the earth there for that also. But then
24:53
Speaker 1: you want it to interact, and you might be thinking, well,
24:56
Speaker 1: usually particle physicists they like things to be simple, like
24:59
Speaker 1: let's interacted with a block of graphite or a perfect
25:02
Speaker 1: cube of argone or something. Right, and rock and dustin
25:06
Speaker 1: rebels seems sort of messy, But we're not very sensitive
25:08
Speaker 1: to the details of like is it, you know, marble
25:11
Speaker 1: or is it graphite or is it dense or is
25:13
Speaker 1: it loose? Because we're integrating over like hundred miles of stuff,
25:18
Speaker 1: and so we're not very sensitive to like exactly what
25:21
Speaker 1: happens where We're not going to get like a picture
25:23
Speaker 1: of the center of the Earth. We just want to
25:25
Speaker 1: the neutrinos to do something and have to pass through
25:29
Speaker 1: matter in order that. All right, Well, I guess the
25:32
Speaker 1: question is what are we going to learn from this experiment?
25:34
Speaker 1: And how does this how do you relate in neutrinos
25:36
Speaker 1: to matter and antimatter because I guess, you know, you
25:39
Speaker 1: hear the word neutrino, you think they're neutral, they don't care,
25:42
Speaker 1: but maybe they do care, and maybe they had a
25:45
Speaker 1: lot to do with the fact that we have matter. Yeah, well,
25:47
Speaker 1: this this deep question, right, like why is there matter
25:50
Speaker 1: not antimatter? And we think that in the beginning of
25:53
Speaker 1: the universe. We suspect that matter and antimatter were made
25:57
Speaker 1: at the same rate. We don't know why would be
25:59
Speaker 1: anything different, And that's just an assumption, like we could
26:02
Speaker 1: be at the very beginning of the universe there was
26:04
Speaker 1: just more matter made than antimatter for some weird, other
26:07
Speaker 1: deep reason we don't understand. But we assume, because we
26:10
Speaker 1: like to make simple assumptions, that it was made in
26:12
Speaker 1: a symmetric way, and that something exists that can turn
26:16
Speaker 1: matter into antimatter. There's some process, something that prefers to
26:20
Speaker 1: create matter over antimatter, because I guess in the equations
26:23
Speaker 1: that we have now, there's nothing in them that says, oh,
26:26
Speaker 1: obviously matter is more likely to be made. There's nothing
26:29
Speaker 1: like the equations. They're totally equal, just opposite, They're not
26:34
Speaker 1: equal like for a long time we thought they're totally equal.
26:36
Speaker 1: Obviously things have to be symmetric, and there's this principle
26:40
Speaker 1: charge conservation that says, if you see a process in nature,
26:44
Speaker 1: you should be able to flip all the charges, all
26:46
Speaker 1: the particles at up particles and see exactly the same
26:48
Speaker 1: thing happen. It should be exactly the same. But then
26:51
Speaker 1: we discovered that didn't actually hold true, that's not really true,
26:55
Speaker 1: that there are some asymmetry. Interesting for example, the weak
26:59
Speaker 1: nuclear for breaks this rule, and especially when you combine
27:02
Speaker 1: it with this other rule about putting things in the mirror,
27:05
Speaker 1: so together it's called CP violation, charge and parity. You
27:10
Speaker 1: flip the charges of something and you put it in
27:12
Speaker 1: the mirror, you should see the same effect, but you don't.
27:15
Speaker 1: Often we have a whole podcast episode digging into discovery
27:19
Speaker 1: CP violation. But this CP violation, it does give you
27:22
Speaker 1: a reason to have more matter than antimatter, but not
27:25
Speaker 1: nearly enough. It explains it by like one percent of it.
27:29
Speaker 1: So there are some asymmetries. The equation do predict that
27:33
Speaker 1: you get more matter than antimatter, but it's not big
27:36
Speaker 1: enough to explain what we see. Interesting, what does that
27:38
Speaker 1: mean like the violation means that it's one percent more
27:43
Speaker 1: likely to get matter than antimatter from like a random,
27:46
Speaker 1: you know, explosion of energy. We've calculated how much I
27:49
Speaker 1: balance you need between matter and antimatter in order to
27:53
Speaker 1: get the universe that we have now. Right, if they're
27:55
Speaker 1: exactly matched, then you get no matter left or antimatter
27:59
Speaker 1: left over in the universe because they all annihilate into nothing.
28:02
Speaker 1: You need some process which will create matter more often
28:05
Speaker 1: than antimatter in order to get extra matter left over.
28:08
Speaker 1: So when all the annihilation happens, you have matter, which
28:10
Speaker 1: is the universe that we have now. And so we've calculated,
28:13
Speaker 1: like how much of that do you need to happen?
28:16
Speaker 1: And we can explain about one percent of that process.
28:19
Speaker 1: So it's not like any given particle has a one
28:21
Speaker 1: percent chance of turning into antimatter. But we're looking for,
28:25
Speaker 1: you know, a way a channel for this to happen,
28:27
Speaker 1: and we found a few, but they're really small. They've
28:30
Speaker 1: explained just like one percent of what we need to
28:32
Speaker 1: explain the universe we see, So there's a big missing process.
28:37
Speaker 1: Something out there really prefers turning antimatter into matter rather
28:40
Speaker 1: than matter into antimatter and we don't know what it is,
28:43
Speaker 1: and maybe it's new trina. Well, so then the idea
28:49
Speaker 1: is that like matter turns into antimatter, but not symmetrically.
28:54
Speaker 1: That is that kind of what you just said, Yeah, exactly.
28:56
Speaker 1: So you have these processes where matter can turn into
28:58
Speaker 1: antimatter and antimateric and turn into matter. Most of the
29:01
Speaker 1: time it's symmetrics. So stuff just slashes back and forth
29:04
Speaker 1: and you don't overall change the balance. But there are
29:07
Speaker 1: a few things that preferentially produce matter that prefer to
29:10
Speaker 1: go from antimatter to matter, and we've seen and then
29:13
Speaker 1: they don't go back as easily, I guess exactly. They
29:15
Speaker 1: don't go back as easily so that you don't get
29:17
Speaker 1: an equalibrium and gradually build up an excess of matter.
29:21
Speaker 1: But they don't explain what we've seen. You need more processes.
29:24
Speaker 1: We're looking for the rest of them. We've seen CP violation,
29:28
Speaker 1: these processes that produce more matter than antimatter. We've seen
29:31
Speaker 1: it in chaons, we've seen it in b masons. But
29:33
Speaker 1: those are very very small. They're like not big enough.
29:37
Speaker 1: It's like we're panting for gold and we know there's
29:39
Speaker 1: a lot of gold in the stream, but we just
29:41
Speaker 1: keep getting dust, and we know that there are big
29:43
Speaker 1: nuggets out there, all right, And so is the picture
29:46
Speaker 1: then that you know, we had the Big Bang and
29:48
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of both matter and antimatter got made equally.
29:52
Speaker 1: But then over time somehow everything flipped over to matter.
29:55
Speaker 1: Is that kind of the what we're looking for. That's
29:57
Speaker 1: the scenario we're trying to figure out. Yeah, and not
30:00
Speaker 1: everything flipped over to matter, just like some fraction of
30:02
Speaker 1: it flipped over to matter, and then you had more
30:05
Speaker 1: matter than antimatter. But you know, the anti matter all
30:07
Speaker 1: annihilated with matter. But since you had more matter than antimatter,
30:11
Speaker 1: some matter was left over, all right, And that's where
30:15
Speaker 1: we came from. That's us. We are the matter that's
30:18
Speaker 1: still here. All right. Well, let's get into then how
30:20
Speaker 1: neutrinos could explain this in balance and also what it
30:24
Speaker 1: means for astrophysics. But first let's take another quick break,
30:40
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel, So how would neutrinos explain the fact
30:44
Speaker 1: that we have more matter than antimatter? Well, there's so
30:46
Speaker 1: many open questions about neutrinos and antimatter, like, for example,
30:51
Speaker 1: as you said earlier, we don't even know if neutrinos
30:53
Speaker 1: are their own anti particle, or if there are two
30:56
Speaker 1: different particles there, Like is a neutrino and anti neutrino different.
31:01
Speaker 1: It's so hard to tell because neutrinos hardly ever interact.
31:05
Speaker 1: Like for a neutral particle, what does it mean to
31:07
Speaker 1: have an antiparticle. It's like they're both charged zero right
31:11
Speaker 1: electric charge neuero, But they and neutrins have other charges
31:13
Speaker 1: right exactly in terms of the quantum charge exactly. Neutrinos,
31:17
Speaker 1: like every other particle, have charges for every single force.
31:20
Speaker 1: You have a charge for the electromagnetism, you have a
31:22
Speaker 1: charge for the strong force, and you have a charge
31:25
Speaker 1: for the weak force. And sometimes those charges are zero,
31:27
Speaker 1: like the electron is a minus one charge for electromagnetism
31:31
Speaker 1: but has no strong charge. We call that color. But neutrinos,
31:35
Speaker 1: the only charge they have is for the weak force,
31:38
Speaker 1: and so the antiparticle would have the anti charge. But
31:41
Speaker 1: the weak force is so weak that's very difficult to study,
31:45
Speaker 1: and that's what makes these experiments so difficult. And Dune
31:48
Speaker 1: doesn't measure neutrinos turning into anti neutrinos directly. Instead, what
31:53
Speaker 1: it does is ask whether muon neutrinos turned into electron
31:56
Speaker 1: neutrinos the same way that anti muan neutrinos like to
32:00
Speaker 1: turn into anti electron neutrinos. So it flips the whole
32:03
Speaker 1: process and measures the antimatter version of it. These effects
32:07
Speaker 1: are very subtle. You can't like look at one particle
32:10
Speaker 1: and see what's happening and to build it up over time.
32:13
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of experiments before you can actually
32:15
Speaker 1: see these effects because it's the weak force. Because it's
32:18
Speaker 1: the weak force. What is the weak force charge called,
32:20
Speaker 1: It's called the weak hypercharge. Okay, so then neutrinos have
32:24
Speaker 1: a charge, a weak hypercharge. And so if there are
32:27
Speaker 1: anti neutrinos, then what are you saying those would be
32:30
Speaker 1: flipped or those would not be flipped, or we don't know.
32:32
Speaker 1: We don't know. If they are their own antiparticle, they
32:34
Speaker 1: wouldn't be flipped. If they aren't. If there is a
32:37
Speaker 1: separate anti neutrino, then it would be flipped. And what
32:40
Speaker 1: we're interested in is how do neutrinos turn into anti
32:43
Speaker 1: neutrinos and back If there's a big asymmetry there, if
32:47
Speaker 1: anti neutrinos like to turn into neutrinos more than neutrinos
32:52
Speaker 1: like to turn into anti neutrinos, if they even are
32:54
Speaker 1: as every particles confused, You're you're asking, like, could an
33:01
Speaker 1: anti neutrino trend too neutrino? If and and I turned
33:04
Speaker 1: neutrino is not the same as a neutrino. There's so
33:06
Speaker 1: many things we don't understand about this. It's like a
33:08
Speaker 1: big black box. We don't know what's going on inside.
33:12
Speaker 1: And because we don't know what's going on inside, it
33:14
Speaker 1: gives us a lot of options for things that could explain,
33:17
Speaker 1: like if they are not the same, so matter and
33:20
Speaker 1: antimatter are not the same for neutrinos, and anti neutrinos
33:24
Speaker 1: like to turn into neutrinos more than neutrinos like to
33:27
Speaker 1: turn into anti neutrinos. That could account for why we
33:32
Speaker 1: have more matter than anti matter. It could have been
33:34
Speaker 1: essentially that a bunch of neutrinos are being made and
33:37
Speaker 1: then neutrinos can turn into other kinds of matter, like
33:40
Speaker 1: a neutrino can turn into an electron and a w
33:43
Speaker 1: boson what so like we could have come from neutrinos. Yeah, absolutely.
33:47
Speaker 1: Some of our particles certainly did come from neutrinos. I
33:50
Speaker 1: always thought there was a little italianan, just a little
33:53
Speaker 1: bit one percent your your j All right, Well, I
33:59
Speaker 1: guess what I don't standard is, you know, does have
34:01
Speaker 1: hypercharge for the week fours? You know, why can't I
34:05
Speaker 1: just flip that charge and call it an anti neutrino,
34:07
Speaker 1: Like it's possible. Why would you think that flipping the
34:10
Speaker 1: hypercharge would make it the same thing. Well, we don't
34:13
Speaker 1: know necessarily what the universe thinks about this symmetry. We
34:17
Speaker 1: don't know that the opposite particle can exist. Why is
34:21
Speaker 1: there an opposite to the electron. It's not like you're
34:24
Speaker 1: allowed to demand that every opposite particle exists, Like we
34:27
Speaker 1: see the opposite particle for the electron, and for the
34:30
Speaker 1: proton and for quarks, but we don't know why they exist.
34:34
Speaker 1: So it's not like we can claim that every particle
34:37
Speaker 1: should have its antiparticle. And we're doing these experiments to
34:40
Speaker 1: try to figure out, Like we do a whole different
34:42
Speaker 1: set of experiments called neutrino lists double beated decays, where
34:46
Speaker 1: they try to see neutrinos and anti neutrinos annihilating or not.
34:50
Speaker 1: So I guess you're asking, like, if I make neutrinos
34:53
Speaker 1: from antimatter, doesn't make the same neutrinos as regular matter
34:58
Speaker 1: or does it make like the one with the hard
35:00
Speaker 1: flipped exactly? Can we tell any difference? And that's why
35:03
Speaker 1: they do this experiment in two modes where they produced
35:05
Speaker 1: neutrinos and then they look to see what happens, and
35:08
Speaker 1: then they produce anti neutrinos and they look to see
35:10
Speaker 1: what happens. And one thing they're curious about is do
35:13
Speaker 1: they see any difference. Do neutrinos and anti neutrinos turn
35:17
Speaker 1: into different stuff as they fly through the Earth or
35:20
Speaker 1: do they act exactly the same way. And the exciting
35:23
Speaker 1: thing is that there were some experiments done in Japan
35:26
Speaker 1: that saw a hint, that saw a clue that suggested
35:29
Speaker 1: maybe there was a difference. Really, what did they see.
35:32
Speaker 1: They saw that neutrinos do like being a matter, not antimatter. Yeah,
35:35
Speaker 1: they saw a hint of exactly this, and they weren't
35:38
Speaker 1: powerful enough to really detect it. It It was just like
35:40
Speaker 1: a little glimmer, or it could have been a fluctuation.
35:43
Speaker 1: But this is a sort of similar experiment in Japan
35:46
Speaker 1: where they produced neutrinos in a collider and then they
35:49
Speaker 1: send it underground to this other experiment, which which originally
35:52
Speaker 1: was looking for neutrinos from the sun, but now they're
35:55
Speaker 1: piling neutrinos into it through the Japanese bedrock. And that
36:00
Speaker 1: experiment where they have a big heavy water container surrounded
36:03
Speaker 1: by by cameras looking for flashes from the neutrinos turning
36:07
Speaker 1: into muans or electrons or whatever. And they saw a
36:10
Speaker 1: hint and it was not significant, like they didn't have
36:13
Speaker 1: enough data to really say they found it, but they
36:15
Speaker 1: had enough data to suggest that it might be real.
36:17
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of motivation you need when you're
36:20
Speaker 1: spending you know, a billion dollars on an underground experiment
36:23
Speaker 1: in South Dakota. All right, So if we find that
36:27
Speaker 1: neutrinos like matter more than antimatter, or becoming matter more
36:31
Speaker 1: than antimatter, then that would explain the whole universe, right,
36:35
Speaker 1: It totally could, because there are so many matrinos in
36:37
Speaker 1: the universe that might explain why because we have more
36:41
Speaker 1: matter than antimatter. That's right, because it all came from
36:43
Speaker 1: neutrinos who would like more matter than antimatter, that's right,
36:46
Speaker 1: and the other particles would like to make matter versus antimatter.
36:48
Speaker 1: The kons and the bees, they just do it a
36:50
Speaker 1: tidy a little bit. It could be the neutrinos do
36:53
Speaker 1: it a lot, like all the time, like they really
36:56
Speaker 1: heavily prefer making matter versus antimatter. So it could be
36:59
Speaker 1: a mass of effect. It's exciting because we really just
37:02
Speaker 1: don't know, like we don't know what the answer is
37:04
Speaker 1: going to be. It could be a very small effect
37:06
Speaker 1: and explain nothing. It could be zero, it could be huge.
37:10
Speaker 1: You could be like, what these things are all turning
37:12
Speaker 1: into neutrinos all the time, and anti neutrinos aren't even
37:15
Speaker 1: really a thing. So it's exciting for us as particle
37:18
Speaker 1: physicists when we don't know the answer. It's much less
37:20
Speaker 1: exciting when like the theorists tell us, here's the Higgs boson.
37:24
Speaker 1: We know what it looks like, go find it. We
37:26
Speaker 1: know what to do, and we didn't do it. It's
37:27
Speaker 1: like box checking, you know. Oh man, So when the
37:30
Speaker 1: Higgs post found, you're like, I hate it when you're
37:32
Speaker 1: right out of principle, I will not support this. Well,
37:37
Speaker 1: you know, there was a lot of drama and political
37:39
Speaker 1: intrigue and uncertainty in the quest for the Higgs boson,
37:42
Speaker 1: which will dig into soon in an episode, but a
37:45
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, it's would have been more exciting to
37:48
Speaker 1: not see the Higgs and to see something else crazy,
37:51
Speaker 1: which made the theorist go, what So as an experimentalist,
37:55
Speaker 1: it's more fun to discover something unexpected. So it's nice
37:58
Speaker 1: here when we don't know the answer and we've got
38:00
Speaker 1: to go and measure it, because to me, that's the excitement, right,
38:03
Speaker 1: That's what's interesting about being an experimentalist. You're exploring the universe,
38:07
Speaker 1: you're asking you questions, and you don't always know what
38:09
Speaker 1: the answer is going to be interesting. All right, Well,
38:11
Speaker 1: let's take this conspiracy theory to the next level. Dannual
38:14
Speaker 1: and as could neutrinas even be responsible for dark matter?
38:18
Speaker 1: How do you tie those two together? Well, you know
38:20
Speaker 1: that dark matter is something that's out there. It's massive,
38:24
Speaker 1: there's a huge amount of it. It's like an explanation
38:27
Speaker 1: for all the gravity that we see out there that
38:30
Speaker 1: we can't explain. Otherwise, there's no mass that can explain
38:33
Speaker 1: all the gravity that we see. So naturally, people thought
38:36
Speaker 1: for a long time well, what if it's just a
38:39
Speaker 1: bunch of neutrinos, Like we know they're neutrinos everywhere, we
38:42
Speaker 1: can hardly see them. They're basically dark, and there's a
38:45
Speaker 1: lot of them. What if there's just like a huge,
38:48
Speaker 1: ridiculous amount of neutrinos and that would be enough to
38:51
Speaker 1: explain the dark matter, right, or not just a lot
38:53
Speaker 1: of netrinas, but maybe like really really massive netrinas. Yeah,
38:57
Speaker 1: So originally people thought, what if it's just a lot
38:59
Speaker 1: of the vanilla neutrinos, the strawberry neutrinos, the ones we're
39:02
Speaker 1: familiar with, right, But they ruled that out because neutrinos
39:06
Speaker 1: are very very light and move away too fast, and
39:09
Speaker 1: so they can't explain all the structure we see in
39:11
Speaker 1: the universe. To see how galaxies formed and stars get
39:14
Speaker 1: pulled together, we need the gravity from dark matter to
39:17
Speaker 1: be sort of slow moving. It can't be zooming everywhere
39:20
Speaker 1: in the universe, or we just would have spread everything out.
39:22
Speaker 1: So we know that if it is a neutrino, that
39:25
Speaker 1: has to be a new kind of neutrino, like a weird,
39:28
Speaker 1: new heavy neutrino, like very massive neutrino, like pure chocolate neutrinos,
39:34
Speaker 1: like just the chunk of chocolate. Are you saying that
39:36
Speaker 1: chocolate are not a good weight loss technique. If so,
39:38
Speaker 1: then I'm in trouble over here. I'm saying dark matter
39:40
Speaker 1: could be dark chocolate new theory. What are you doing, Daniel,
39:45
Speaker 1: I'm just eating dark chocolate to get an ideas for
39:47
Speaker 1: a dark matter, right, it's it's research, filling myself up
39:50
Speaker 1: with the potential hypothesis. There you go, that's right, it's
39:54
Speaker 1: intellectual food. So yeah, it could be that there's a
39:57
Speaker 1: new kind of neutrino, like a fourth mind of neutrino.
40:01
Speaker 1: We currently know about electron mule and town intrinos, but
40:05
Speaker 1: there could be another kind out, a heavy one that
40:08
Speaker 1: we don't even know about. We don't know about as
40:10
Speaker 1: we haven't seen and there are a few other places
40:12
Speaker 1: in physics where we've seen hints that suggests maybe there
40:16
Speaker 1: is one, but they're not conclusive. Like there was an
40:19
Speaker 1: experiment in Los Almos, actually my hometown, that saw neutrinos
40:23
Speaker 1: sort of disappearing in a way that we couldn't explain,
40:26
Speaker 1: and they explained it in terms of a weird new
40:29
Speaker 1: sterile neutrino that it's really hard to make, and it's
40:32
Speaker 1: very heavy, and very occasionally neutrinos sort of disappear into
40:36
Speaker 1: that sector. Interesting. And so an experiment like this, like
40:40
Speaker 1: Dune that very precisely makes a huge number of neutrinos
40:43
Speaker 1: and studies them and their antimatter. If Starren neutrinos are
40:47
Speaker 1: a thing and are possible, then they could see some
40:49
Speaker 1: of these neutrinos sort of disappearing into the dark sector,
40:52
Speaker 1: you know, because they can count the number of neutrinos
40:55
Speaker 1: they expect to see, and if they see too few,
40:57
Speaker 1: then they might be evidence that these things are turning
41:00
Speaker 1: into something else, something invisible to them. Interesting. It's basically
41:04
Speaker 1: like a really fancy and upgraded neutrino gun. Yes, it's
41:08
Speaker 1: a neutrino gun and a neutrino camera, and they point
41:11
Speaker 1: the gun at the camera and it's the more powerful
41:13
Speaker 1: gun than anybody's ever built and a more sensitive camera
41:16
Speaker 1: than anybody's ever built. And so we're gonna get a
41:18
Speaker 1: new window into neutrinos. And another cool thing is that
41:22
Speaker 1: we're not the only people who have built neutrino guns.
41:25
Speaker 1: Like it turns out that the universe is filled with
41:27
Speaker 1: neutrino guns and this new power maybe and this new
41:32
Speaker 1: powerful neutrino camera will let us see neutrinos produced by
41:36
Speaker 1: other sources, not just you know, conspiracy theories in Chicago. Interesting,
41:41
Speaker 1: So the same camera under South Dakota a mile down
41:44
Speaker 1: could see neutrino bursts from other things in the universe,
41:48
Speaker 1: like like supernova as you were telling me, Yeah, supernovas
41:51
Speaker 1: are these amazing events where an entire star collapses and
41:54
Speaker 1: then explodes, and we really want to understand how that happens,
41:57
Speaker 1: and do they turn into black holes and how often
42:00
Speaker 1: and you know, the details, the blow by blow of
42:03
Speaker 1: what happens in those events, and there's a lot of
42:05
Speaker 1: mystery because we can't see them very directly. They're very
42:08
Speaker 1: far away. And one big problem is that they're complicated,
42:12
Speaker 1: and so like light is produced in the first moments
42:14
Speaker 1: of the supernova, but then it gets reabsorbed, so you
42:16
Speaker 1: don't see it, and it takes a while for the
42:19
Speaker 1: light to sort of like make it out through the
42:21
Speaker 1: shock wave before it comes to us. But neutrinos are
42:25
Speaker 1: a great way to see supernovas because supernovas make a
42:28
Speaker 1: huge number of them, and they're not reabsorbed by the supernova.
42:32
Speaker 1: They come right through. They shoot right out from the
42:35
Speaker 1: heart of that event, that crazy cosmic collapse, and tell
42:39
Speaker 1: us about the very first few moments of what's happening
42:42
Speaker 1: in the supernova. We can use this neutrino camera basically
42:46
Speaker 1: to take pictures of the insides of supernovas well. Do
42:49
Speaker 1: you have to like point it to the supernova? We're
42:52
Speaker 1: not pointing this ten kill a ton of liquid argne
42:54
Speaker 1: at anything, dude, That's what I was asking, Like, I
42:58
Speaker 1: guess it's it easier to move Earth then, Like, do
43:00
Speaker 1: you you rotate the Earth in a different way or
43:02
Speaker 1: what he did? Yeah, we've got a nob over here.
43:04
Speaker 1: We can just turn the Earth anyway. We like, it's
43:06
Speaker 1: in a pivot, right, I'm sure. Yeah. When you're late
43:09
Speaker 1: with a deadline, you're just like, could you just stop
43:10
Speaker 1: the Earth at please? You don't do anything like that.
43:14
Speaker 1: You just sort of like, look, what you do is
43:15
Speaker 1: you turn off the neutrino gun at Fermi Lab and
43:18
Speaker 1: you just let the experiment be quiet. So basically, any
43:21
Speaker 1: time the beam is not on, you can use it
43:23
Speaker 1: to observe the universe and you can't point it at anything.
43:27
Speaker 1: But we think that these sources come from everywhere, and
43:29
Speaker 1: we're shielded by a mile of rock that prevents anything
43:33
Speaker 1: but neutrinos from getting down through the earth to this camera.
43:37
Speaker 1: And so you just you know, basically point your camera
43:40
Speaker 1: up at the sky, straight up and see what you see.
43:42
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it sounds like neutrinos could hold the
43:45
Speaker 1: key to the universe somehow, and conveniently that's where a
43:49
Speaker 1: lot of our funding is going in physics in the US.
43:51
Speaker 1: But when it's this experiment gonna go online, Daniel, Well,
43:54
Speaker 1: they're building it now and they hope to have the
43:56
Speaker 1: first part of it done in four has ever built
44:00
Speaker 1: one this big or this complicated before. So they built
44:03
Speaker 1: like a mini version of proto version, which worked well.
44:06
Speaker 1: But they think the first full scale piece will be
44:08
Speaker 1: done in and the whole thing will be complete, and
44:13
Speaker 1: then you have to run it for a few years.
44:14
Speaker 1: So like we might be looking at an answer in
44:16
Speaker 1: like and it's an exciting place to look, mostly because
44:21
Speaker 1: it's a hard place to look. And that's also the
44:23
Speaker 1: reason why it's still a place to look. You know,
44:26
Speaker 1: we look for obvious answers. We do the easiest things first.
44:29
Speaker 1: Neutrinos are the hardest things to study and that's why
44:32
Speaker 1: they still have these mysteries because they're sort of shrouded,
44:35
Speaker 1: and so we had to up our game and like
44:37
Speaker 1: figure out ways to see them and to study this deep, dark,
44:41
Speaker 1: hidden sector of the standard model to see if it
44:43
Speaker 1: has any of the secrets, any of the answer to
44:46
Speaker 1: these open questions. Now, I guess my question is, even
44:48
Speaker 1: neutrinos turned out to be the key to the matter
44:50
Speaker 1: and antimatter mystery, which means that they're not neutral, do
44:54
Speaker 1: you have to rename them, Daniel, Well, they could, because
44:57
Speaker 1: they're not neutral anymore. They're still neutral from the point
45:00
Speaker 1: of the electromagnet to them. But you're right, they're not
45:02
Speaker 1: totally neutral. I mean, they do even have mass, which
45:05
Speaker 1: gives them an effect, a gravitational charge. But neutrina is
45:08
Speaker 1: such a cute word that if we're going to rename
45:11
Speaker 1: any of the particles, it's not it's got a special
45:15
Speaker 1: place in your heart. How about the spice, We could
45:17
Speaker 1: call it the spice, the chocolate spice, chocolate spice ones.
45:21
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. And maybe
45:24
Speaker 1: as you look up and imagine those trillings and neutrinos
45:27
Speaker 1: going through you right now, maybe they have the key
45:29
Speaker 1: to understanding why we're here and why the universe is
45:32
Speaker 1: the way it is. That's right, and we're always interested
45:35
Speaker 1: in exploring something we have not yet looked at, because
45:38
Speaker 1: under every rock we haven't turned over could be the
45:41
Speaker 1: answer to an open question in physics, or it could
45:43
Speaker 1: be something else, something new, something totally unexpected. The history
45:47
Speaker 1: of science is filled with people building an experiment to
45:50
Speaker 1: answer one question, but accidentally stumbling over the answer to
45:53
Speaker 1: a totally different question they might not have even known
45:56
Speaker 1: to ask. Either way, it's fun and we learned a
46:00
Speaker 1: lot about as right, and it gives the US particle
46:02
Speaker 1: physics community something to do, because you don't want them
46:06
Speaker 1: pointing any other kinds of particle guns at anybody else's backyard.
46:10
Speaker 1: That's right, Your children are safe, all right. Well, thanks
46:13
Speaker 1: for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
46:24
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and JORGEG Explain the Universe is
46:27
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast for
46:30
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
46:34
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.