Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions 42: Life, the Universe and Ghosts!
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you believe in ghosts?
- 0:11Speaker 2: You know, I do. Always say that there's plenty we
- 0:14Speaker 2: don't understand about the universe.
- 0:17Speaker 1: What does that mean that it's supernatural?
- 0:19Speaker 2: Well, you know, if we can describe it with physics,
- 0:22Speaker 2: then it's just part of nature. It's just natural.
- 0:25Speaker 1: What could there be physics that exists out there but
- 0:27Speaker 1: that we can't describe?
- 0:28Speaker 2: Hmmm, like some kind of superphysics.
- 0:31Speaker 1: Yeah, does that make you a superphysicist?
- 0:33Speaker 2: I'd gladly take a promotion to a super physicist with
- 0:36Speaker 2: a super salary.
- 0:37Speaker 1: Wait, would that mean that you sort of take off
- 0:39Speaker 1: your glasses and open up your shirt and you're actually
- 0:41Speaker 1: a superhero.
- 0:42Speaker 2: Super Daniel doing superphysics sounds super awesome.
- 1:01Speaker 1: Hi'm Hora mccartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
- 1:05Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
- 1:08Speaker 2: at UC Irvine. But I'm not doing it for the money.
- 1:11Speaker 1: Wait what but you aren't getting paid though to be
- 1:13Speaker 1: a physicist, right?
- 1:14Speaker 2: Well, I mean I'm not like turning down the checks
- 1:16Speaker 2: out of principle or something crazy.
- 1:18Speaker 1: So you are doing it for money, just not for
- 1:21Speaker 1: the money.
- 1:23Speaker 2: I am getting paid do not worry. But all of
- 1:26Speaker 2: my students who graduate with physics PhDs and go off
- 1:29Speaker 2: to work for Google and their competitors are getting paid
- 1:32Speaker 2: a lot more than I am.
- 1:34Speaker 1: But you're still getting a pretty super salary, right though, Right,
- 1:37Speaker 1: I mean, I know what you see professors make. It's
- 1:40Speaker 1: pretty super money. And it's just not the money. It's
- 1:43Speaker 1: more of a generic money.
- 1:44Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more like a money than the money. But
- 1:47Speaker 2: you're right. I've got no complaints. I got a pretty
- 1:49Speaker 2: sweet gig over here, a super gig apparently.
- 1:52Speaker 1: But anyways, Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
- 1:54Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio in.
- 1:56Speaker 2: Which we cash in on our passion and your paswer
- 2:00Speaker 2: for understanding the universe. We hope that the whole universe
- 2:03Speaker 2: can be described in terms of crazy mathematical models that
- 2:07Speaker 2: predict everything that could happen in this universe, and our
- 2:10Speaker 2: job on the podcast is to take those mysterious mathematical
- 2:14Speaker 2: models and explain all of them to you.
- 2:16Speaker 1: Yes, because it is a pretty mysterious and eerie universe
- 2:19Speaker 1: that sometimes seems supernatural, but that somehow a science has
- 2:23Speaker 1: been able to describe so far with models and data
- 2:26Speaker 1: and experiments.
- 2:27Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a fascinating transition where originally we just
- 2:30Speaker 2: have sort of like mythological stories to describe the things
- 2:33Speaker 2: that we see, you know, like lightning and weather, and
- 2:36Speaker 2: later on we find explanations for those things. We can
- 2:39Speaker 2: make sense of them in sort of mechanistic or even
- 2:42Speaker 2: random quantum mechanical processes that describe them to show us
- 2:46Speaker 2: that they're following rules and laws and not just like
- 2:48Speaker 2: the whims of deities. But there's plenty of other stuff
- 2:51Speaker 2: out there in the universe we haven't yet explained, and
- 2:54Speaker 2: so one can wonder will science ever explain them or not?
- 2:58Speaker 1: Wait, are you saying that things like dark matter and
- 3:00Speaker 1: dark energy or our modern mythology, is there a god
- 3:04Speaker 1: of dark matter or god?
- 3:06Speaker 2: Is I really hope that there's physics of dark matter
- 3:08Speaker 2: instead of gods and goddesses of dark matter, because that
- 3:11Speaker 2: would be pretty hard to understand. But so far we
- 3:14Speaker 2: don't have an explanation for these things, right, and so
- 3:17Speaker 2: we just have to like hope that science will one
- 3:19Speaker 2: day figure it out, because we're projecting from all those
- 3:22Speaker 2: times that science has figured things out. But you know,
- 3:25Speaker 2: that's not exactly a guarantee that doesn't mean that science
- 3:28Speaker 2: will always figure things out philosophically. We don't have a
- 3:31Speaker 2: promise that the universe can always be described by our
- 3:35Speaker 2: mathematical stories.
- 3:37Speaker 1: I guess there's a fine line between mythology and methodology.
- 3:41Speaker 2: I don't know. I think this is a pretty bright
- 3:43Speaker 2: line between those two things, even though they do sound
- 3:46Speaker 2: very similar.
- 3:47Speaker 1: What if you do mythology very methodologically, very carefully.
- 3:51Speaker 2: I don't know. That sounds like doing astronomy very astrologically.
- 3:54Speaker 2: It sounds similar, but it's not really the same thing.
- 3:57Speaker 1: Well, maybe you make more money if you were an astrologer.
- 4:00Speaker 2: Oh almost absolutely, that's true.
- 4:02Speaker 1: I hear. They have good benefits.
- 4:04Speaker 2: They just don't have big telescopes. It's the problem.
- 4:07Speaker 1: But anyways, it is a pretty interesting and mysterious universe,
- 4:10Speaker 1: and we still have a lot of questions about it.
- 4:12Speaker 1: It's not just physicists and scientists who ask these questions
- 4:15Speaker 1: about how things are and why things are the way
- 4:18Speaker 1: they are, but it's also every day people going about
- 4:21Speaker 1: their everyday lives asking all the big questions.
- 4:24Speaker 2: That's right. It's not just the job of scientists to
- 4:27Speaker 2: figure out how the universe works. To think about the
- 4:29Speaker 2: ways that science can describe tiny little crawling creatures and
- 4:33Speaker 2: swarming quantum particles or huge swirling black holes. It's the
- 4:37Speaker 2: job of everybody out there to think about how this works,
- 4:40Speaker 2: to apply our human curiosity to the greatest puzzle of
- 4:44Speaker 2: all time.
- 4:44Speaker 1: Wait, did you have to get paid for something to
- 4:46Speaker 1: count as a job? My son makes that distinction all
- 4:49Speaker 1: the time. I like, it's your job to take out
- 4:52Speaker 1: the dishes from the dishwasher, he said, Well, technically, am
- 4:55Speaker 1: I getting paid?
- 4:56Speaker 2: M I think of it more like our role. You know,
- 4:59Speaker 2: some of us do get paid because it's our livelihood.
- 5:01Speaker 2: But for everybody else, your job is to support the
- 5:04Speaker 2: larger endeavor of science just by being curious, just by
- 5:07Speaker 2: wondering how things work and wanting to know the answer.
- 5:11Speaker 2: You know, the institution of science is quite literally powered
- 5:14Speaker 2: by your curiosity. Because you're a curious person and you
- 5:18Speaker 2: think this is a good idea, you elect politicians who
- 5:21Speaker 2: vote to use your taxes to support the institution of science.
- 5:25Speaker 1: That's right, it's your curiosity and also your taxes, some
- 5:29Speaker 1: of your taxes, or a very small fraction of your taxes.
- 5:32Speaker 2: Unfortunately, that's right, your taxes and our facts. Is I suppose.
- 5:37Speaker 1: It's taxtual and factual, and they're vote right, Like how
- 5:40Speaker 1: you vote makes a big difference about how what society
- 5:43Speaker 1: prioritizes and what kind of science and if science gets funded.
- 5:47Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right, Which is one reason why this
- 5:50Speaker 2: podcast's mission is to fan the flames of curiosity, to
- 5:53Speaker 2: share our personal joy and wonder the incredible nature of
- 5:57Speaker 2: the universe and this incredible mystery we all share of
- 6:02Speaker 2: figuring it all out. Yep.
- 6:03Speaker 1: And people are curious and they have questions, and sometimes
- 6:06Speaker 1: on this podcast we like to answer those questions.
- 6:09Speaker 2: We do love to answer your questions. This is not
- 6:12Speaker 2: just a one way medium where you're listening to us talk.
- 6:14Speaker 2: We want to hear from you. We say it all
- 6:17Speaker 2: the time on the podcast, but we mean it. Please
- 6:19Speaker 2: write to us with your questions to questions at Danielandjorge
- 6:23Speaker 2: dot com. We answer all of them because we think
- 6:26Speaker 2: it's important that you have somebody to ask questions of,
- 6:29Speaker 2: somebody you can talk to about your curiosity about the universe.
- 6:33Speaker 1: So to the on the podcast will be tackling listener
- 6:41Speaker 1: questions number forty two, the Answer to life, Liberty and
- 6:44Speaker 1: the pursuit of happiness, Right.
- 6:46Speaker 2: Life, the universe and everything, including maybe the Supernatural.
- 6:50Speaker 1: Whoa a teaser spoiler alert.
- 6:53Speaker 2: I'm just trying to cash in on all those podcasts
- 6:55Speaker 2: that are higher ranked than us and just deal with
- 6:57Speaker 2: like Sasquatch, Bigfoot, and like ancient aliens.
- 7:00Speaker 1: Oh, why haven't we done that the science of Sasquatch.
- 7:04Speaker 2: That would be a very short episode or.
- 7:06Speaker 1: Is that more of an episode because's biology.
- 7:09Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that's a good idea.
- 7:11Speaker 1: But we have some amazing questions here today about the Supernatural,
- 7:15Speaker 1: about neutrinos and neutron stars, and also about how to
- 7:19Speaker 1: make space. This is also life Organization podcast premit, like
- 7:25Speaker 1: how to get yourself organized.
- 7:26Speaker 2: That's right, you can make space in your house by
- 7:28Speaker 2: using neutrino beams that also capture ghosts. We're going to
- 7:32Speaker 2: tie it all.
- 7:32Speaker 1: Together so you only do experiments that really bring you joy.
- 7:36Speaker 1: Doesn't bring joy than you get them out of the left.
- 7:38Speaker 2: Oh man, we do a lot less science in that case.
- 7:41Speaker 1: So let's jump right in. And so a first question
- 7:43Speaker 1: comes from Brendan.
- 7:44Speaker 3: We've all heard stories about ghosts, telekinesis, remote viewing and
- 7:48Speaker 3: things like that, and I was wondering if we can
- 7:51Speaker 3: just assume that those are real for a second. How
- 7:53Speaker 3: could they work? I think it'd be really awesome to
- 7:56Speaker 3: hear your opinions.
- 7:57Speaker 1: Thank you. Interesting question. Brandon seems to be asking, like,
- 8:00Speaker 1: if all these stories about ghosts and esp and being
- 8:05Speaker 1: able to move things with your mind, if they were real,
- 8:07Speaker 1: how would they work from a physics perspective?
- 8:10Speaker 2: Yeah? I love this question because he's not like doubting
- 8:14Speaker 2: these observations. He's doing the science of it. He's like,
- 8:17Speaker 2: all right, let's see if we can construct an explanation,
- 8:21Speaker 2: not some metaphysical supernatural story that violates physics, but let's
- 8:26Speaker 2: see if we can bring it into the fold of science. Right,
- 8:29Speaker 2: Let's see, let's see if we can come up with
- 8:31Speaker 2: a way to explain this stuff without breaking physics.
- 8:34Speaker 1: Yeah, like, if maybe you do see a go someday
- 8:36Speaker 1: it could it be that you're crazy? Or is there
- 8:38Speaker 1: an actual explanation that someone could come up with.
- 8:42Speaker 2: That's right and usual disclaimer we are not offering psychological
- 8:45Speaker 2: advice on this podcast. Do not follow our health advice
- 8:48Speaker 2: in any.
- 8:48Speaker 1: Regards, or financial or career advice apparently, or legal or
- 8:53Speaker 1: any kind of advice. I guess we're just talking science here,
- 8:58Speaker 1: But yeah, let's maybe start with some of the situations
- 9:01Speaker 1: that he mentioned, for example, remote viewing, like if you
- 9:04Speaker 1: could see into the future maybe, or you can see
- 9:07Speaker 1: what's happening on the other side of the world with
- 9:09Speaker 1: your mind, how would that maybe work.
- 9:11Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is pretty awesome. I mean remote viewing.
- 9:14Speaker 2: I had to look this up to see exactly what
- 9:15Speaker 2: it meant. And it's the practice of seeking impressions about
- 9:19Speaker 2: a distant or unseen subject. So imagine, for example, you're
- 9:23Speaker 2: in your house in California and you want to know,
- 9:26Speaker 2: like what's going on in the oval office right now,
- 9:29Speaker 2: You like close your eyes and you concentrate and you
- 9:31Speaker 2: get a vision for what's happening there. Or you want
- 9:34Speaker 2: to know, like what's happening on the surface of the moon,
- 9:37Speaker 2: for example. So remote viewing would allow you to see
- 9:40Speaker 2: something really far away.
- 9:42Speaker 1: Like FaceTime without the iPhone exactly.
- 9:44Speaker 2: And something that's really fascinating about this one idea is
- 9:47Speaker 2: that it's pre technology, right. People have had this idea
- 9:51Speaker 2: of remote viewing for thousands of years, but now because
- 9:54Speaker 2: of technology, it's not really even that special. Like, as
- 9:58Speaker 2: you say, everybody has a device their pocket that you
- 10:00Speaker 2: could use to see what's going on on the other
- 10:02Speaker 2: side of the world. It's not really that complicated. We
- 10:05Speaker 2: have used physics to basically create this ability for almost everybody.
- 10:10Speaker 1: Well, do you think Brendan meant like, right, you can
- 10:12Speaker 1: see things happening right now somewhere else or maybe in
- 10:15Speaker 1: the past, or maybe in the future.
- 10:17Speaker 2: I think Brendan is probably talking about without iPhones, like
- 10:21Speaker 2: just using your mind. Somehow you can gather this information
- 10:24Speaker 2: using something other than the Internet. I think probably that's
- 10:27Speaker 2: what Brendan is imagining, not just facetiming your grandma.
- 10:30Speaker 1: Hmm, Well, I guess you can always use letters, but
- 10:33Speaker 1: they still.
- 10:33Speaker 2: Have mail, right, they do still have mail.
- 10:37Speaker 1: And in fact, your grandma would probably prefer that.
- 10:41Speaker 2: And so physics has some things to say about this, right, Like,
- 10:44Speaker 2: first of all, it would be very hard for it
- 10:45Speaker 2: to be instantaneous, you know, for you to see what's
- 10:48Speaker 2: happening on the other side of the planet, like literally
- 10:50Speaker 2: right now with zero time delay, would require information to
- 10:54Speaker 2: get from there to here with no time gap, and
- 10:58Speaker 2: that would violate relativity. Of course, used one of the
- 11:01Speaker 2: loopholes like warp drives or wormholes.
- 11:03Speaker 1: You mean, like you could open maybe a wormhole between
- 11:06Speaker 1: here and the other side of the world, and then
- 11:08Speaker 1: the information would flow from there to hear faster than
- 11:11Speaker 1: lightwood in regular space.
- 11:13Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, if you opened a wormhole between here and China,
- 11:16Speaker 2: then you could pass information between here and there faster
- 11:18Speaker 2: than an email would get from here to China. And
- 11:21Speaker 2: email travels essentially at the speed of light minus of course,
- 11:24Speaker 2: all the time for switching in computation.
- 11:26Speaker 1: So you're saying it is possible to see things with
- 11:29Speaker 1: your mind that are happening somewhere else, or that happen
- 11:31Speaker 1: a few milliseconds before somewhere else.
- 11:34Speaker 2: Physics doesn't rule that out. You know, you'd have to
- 11:36Speaker 2: create a wormhole, which we don't know how to do,
- 11:38Speaker 2: and we don't know if wormholes are real, and then
- 11:41Speaker 2: that wormhole would have to be stable enough for you
- 11:43Speaker 2: to see that stuff. And to keep wormholes open, you
- 11:45Speaker 2: need some sort of like exotic, negatively charged matter that
- 11:48Speaker 2: we don't know if it exists, and you'd have to
- 11:51Speaker 2: do that somehow, like inside your brain, without also like
- 11:54Speaker 2: liquefying your brain, which seems pretty challenging.
- 11:57Speaker 1: Like somehow your brain, the cells and your brain would
- 12:00Speaker 1: have to be capable of like absorbing these signals and
- 12:03Speaker 1: interpreting them.
- 12:04Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly creating that wormhole, understanding it, and surviving it.
- 12:08Speaker 2: That all seems pretty challenging, but I can't tell you that.
- 12:12Speaker 2: Physics says it's impossible.
- 12:14Speaker 1: All right, So that's a check for the supernatural here.
- 12:18Speaker 1: What about telekinesis, the idea of moving things with your
- 12:22Speaker 1: mind that are far away or maybe not so far away,
- 12:25Speaker 1: but that are not connected to you.
- 12:27Speaker 2: Yeah, telekinesis is also really fascinatingly connected to ideas in physics.
- 12:31Speaker 2: Telekinesis is essentially moving something with your brain, as you said,
- 12:35Speaker 2: And you know, for a long time there was a
- 12:37Speaker 2: puzzle in physics, something called action at a distance, like
- 12:41Speaker 2: if two electrons are separated in space, they can still
- 12:44Speaker 2: push on each other. How does that happen? It was
- 12:46Speaker 2: a big puzzle for a long time, you know, without
- 12:49Speaker 2: actually touching, how do two things push on each other?
- 12:53Speaker 2: And now, of course we have a solution to that.
- 12:55Speaker 2: We know that electrons push on each other using fields
- 12:58Speaker 2: that they create. So around each electron on is a
- 13:00Speaker 2: field and when electron feels the field of the other electron,
- 13:05Speaker 2: or alternatively, you can think about it as them exchanging
- 13:08Speaker 2: virtual photons, which is fundamentally the same so physics has
- 13:11Speaker 2: a way for two things to push and pull on
- 13:14Speaker 2: each other even when they're not touching.
- 13:16Speaker 1: Well, I think in physics, basically everything pulls and pushes
- 13:20Speaker 1: on each other without touching, because nothing really touches in physics, right,
- 13:23Speaker 1: everything is a point particle, which means that they never
- 13:25Speaker 1: really touch.
- 13:26Speaker 2: Well, you can either say nothing really touches, or you
- 13:29Speaker 2: can say that's what touching is. And so you kind
- 13:31Speaker 2: of are touching at a distance because you know nothing
- 13:34Speaker 2: really has these surfaces, I think is what you're trying
- 13:36Speaker 2: to get at when you say they're point particles. There
- 13:39Speaker 2: aren't these like surfaces that touch in there some sort
- 13:41Speaker 2: of like deep tactile force and the end is just
- 13:44Speaker 2: the four fundamental forces and they all operate this way.
- 13:47Speaker 2: So that's sort of what touching is. And my point
- 13:49Speaker 2: is you can do it at a distance, right. You
- 13:52Speaker 2: can pull on something from far away if you can
- 13:54Speaker 2: create the right kinds of fields. So you want to
- 13:56Speaker 2: levitate your coffee from across the room to you, if
- 13:59Speaker 2: you could somehow create the right electromagnetic fields, you could
- 14:03Speaker 2: do that because your coffee is made of charged particles.
- 14:06Speaker 1: Right, Because I guess everything as we don't understanding. In physics,
- 14:09Speaker 1: everything acts at a distance.
- 14:10Speaker 2: Right, Everything acts at a distance?
- 14:12Speaker 1: Yes, so everything is telikinesis. Right, there's no non there's
- 14:16Speaker 1: no regular kinesis in physics. There's only telekinesis.
- 14:19Speaker 2: That makes it sound like everything is just like brains
- 14:22Speaker 2: thinking about stuff. But yes, everything is action at a distance.
- 14:25Speaker 2: In physics, everything is at a distance.
- 14:28Speaker 1: But I guess it would be hard. I wonder to
- 14:30Speaker 1: lift the coffee mug using the electromagnetic force, because the
- 14:34Speaker 1: coffee mug is sort of electrically neutral, right, unless you say,
- 14:37Speaker 1: unless you like supercharge your coffee mug.
- 14:39Speaker 2: Yeah, the coffee mug is typically neutral and you don't
- 14:42Speaker 2: want to have to, like, you know, rub static electricity
- 14:44Speaker 2: on it to move it across the room. But it
- 14:45Speaker 2: is made out of charged particles, and so if you
- 14:48Speaker 2: wove your electromagnetic fields in just the right way, then
- 14:51Speaker 2: I think you could transfer momentum to it.
- 14:53Speaker 1: I guess if maybe, like the coffee mug was a
- 14:55Speaker 1: giant magnet for example, or are you thinking it could
- 14:58Speaker 1: be done in a regular mug.
- 15:00Speaker 2: If we're being crazy here and there's no limit to
- 15:02Speaker 2: your technology, if you could craft the electromagnetic fields in
- 15:05Speaker 2: a way that you like, push the positive particles one
- 15:07Speaker 2: way with one field and push the negative particles with
- 15:10Speaker 2: another field. Then you could move them together across the room.
- 15:13Speaker 1: Wait, what do you mean, like have two kinds of
- 15:15Speaker 1: electromic getty forces?
- 15:17Speaker 2: Positive particles and negative particles are not literally on top
- 15:20Speaker 2: of each other. So if you created an electromagnetic field
- 15:23Speaker 2: that was highly variable in distance, it was like sculpted
- 15:26Speaker 2: to perfectly match the shape of your mug and the
- 15:29Speaker 2: location of all the positive negative they charged particles, then
- 15:32Speaker 2: you could give it a coherent push in the direction
- 15:34Speaker 2: that you wanted.
- 15:35Speaker 1: Whoa Like you could single out the electrons in a
- 15:39Speaker 1: coffee mug and single out the positive charges separately and
- 15:43Speaker 1: somehow shoot a force at each one.
- 15:45Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. We're talking about telekinesis, and your
- 15:47Speaker 2: tone is like, Daniel, you're being unrealistic.
- 15:51Speaker 1: Well, we're trying to go on with a real answer, right, Yeah.
- 15:55Speaker 1: I mean it's theoretically possible. I guess you could single
- 15:58Speaker 1: out the trillions of electrons the mug. But but to
- 16:01Speaker 1: do it with your mind, I wonder if that would
- 16:02Speaker 1: maybe exceed the computational processing of your brain.
- 16:06Speaker 2: Almost certainly, I'm not saying that would be easy. But
- 16:08Speaker 2: I'm just reaching for a way to move your mug
- 16:11Speaker 2: across the room, and I'm thinking technically, theoretically that might
- 16:14Speaker 2: be possible.
- 16:15Speaker 1: It sounds easier to just ask your sug to bring it.
- 16:18Speaker 2: And pay them for it, I hope. But there's another
- 16:20Speaker 2: issue there with your brain, which is if physics says
- 16:23Speaker 2: momentum is conserved, so if you push on an object,
- 16:26Speaker 2: there's an equal and opposite force that pushes back. You know,
- 16:29Speaker 2: like if you fire a rifle, there's a recoil. So
- 16:32Speaker 2: if you're transferring momentum using your brain to the mug,
- 16:35Speaker 2: then this can be some momentum also on your brain. Right,
- 16:38Speaker 2: so your brain pushes on an object, basically that object
- 16:41Speaker 2: is also pushing on your brain, and that could be
- 16:44Speaker 2: quite uncomfortable.
- 16:45Speaker 1: I guess yeah, Like if you want to throw the
- 16:47Speaker 1: mug across the room, then you kind of need you
- 16:49Speaker 1: would feel that forcing with your head. But if I guess,
- 16:51Speaker 1: if you're just moving it like within arm reach on
- 16:54Speaker 1: top of a table, you probably wouldn't feel a huge
- 16:56Speaker 1: amount of force on your brain, would you. I mean,
- 16:58Speaker 1: your brain is pretty heavy too.
- 17:00Speaker 2: But if you're like magneto and you're lifting like a
- 17:02Speaker 2: steam engine or something that's going to liquify your brain.
- 17:06Speaker 1: Also, that is pretty mind blowing if agnito exists. So
- 17:10Speaker 1: that's a rule. Well, okay, now let's get to the
- 17:12Speaker 1: juicy one. What about ghosts.
- 17:14Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I thought about this for a while,
- 17:16Speaker 2: and I guess it depends on what you mean by ghosts.
- 17:19Speaker 2: If ghosts are just like apparitions that appear human like
- 17:23Speaker 2: and make human like noises, then sure than anything could
- 17:27Speaker 2: appear to be human. But if you're talking about like
- 17:29Speaker 2: actual spirits of dead people, like the continuing thought processes
- 17:34Speaker 2: of their brains after their bodies have ceased to live
- 17:36Speaker 2: and maybe even decomposed, it's hard for me to understand
- 17:39Speaker 2: how that's possible. I mean, there is quantum information, and
- 17:42Speaker 2: quantum information is not destroyed, and so technically the quantum
- 17:46Speaker 2: information of those people lives on in the universe. But
- 17:50Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that it's coherent in a way that
- 17:52Speaker 2: could like speak to you and answer questions. Wait, wait,
- 17:55Speaker 2: I feel like there's two things here going on. First
- 17:57Speaker 2: of all, it's like, can things be ghostly like, can
- 18:01Speaker 2: things kind of be in this world but not really
- 18:04Speaker 2: be in this world? Or can things, you know, sort
- 18:06Speaker 2: of appear to you and go through walls and things
- 18:08Speaker 2: like that. And second is can your spirit or your
- 18:10Speaker 2: consciousness or what makes you somehow live on after you
- 18:14Speaker 2: die or be transformed into something that is ghostly? Oh,
- 18:16Speaker 2: I see, well, things being ghostly. Yeah, that's easy because
- 18:19Speaker 2: we basically live in a ghostly world. I mean, surrounding
- 18:22Speaker 2: us are all sorts of particles that are transparent to us,
- 18:26Speaker 2: and we're transparent to them, neutrinos, dark matter, other stuff
- 18:29Speaker 2: we haven't even detected. So there's lots of stuff facing
- 18:33Speaker 2: through our walls and through us and through our lives
- 18:36Speaker 2: all the time that we don't detect. Yeah.
- 18:38Speaker 1: In fact, there's the idea out there that maybe dark
- 18:41Speaker 1: matter is complicated and could be forming structures and maybe
- 18:44Speaker 1: you know, biological things, and maybe even sort of like
- 18:47Speaker 1: sentient dark matter beings kind of living in our universe
- 18:50Speaker 1: but us never knowing they're there.
- 18:52Speaker 2: That's certainly possible. Would you be able to see them
- 18:55Speaker 2: and detect them as ghosts? That's harder for me to
- 18:58Speaker 2: understand the reason these things are ghost it's because they
- 19:00Speaker 2: almost never interact with us, and they do, it wouldn't
- 19:03Speaker 2: be in some sort of coherent way, you'd see like
- 19:06Speaker 2: one particle here in one particle there.
- 19:08Speaker 1: But they do affect our world in some ways, right, Like,
- 19:11Speaker 1: for example, dark matter affects us gravitationally, and neutrinos affects
- 19:16Speaker 1: us through the weak force.
- 19:17Speaker 2: Right, dark matter does affect us gravitationally, but only on
- 19:20Speaker 2: really big scales, Like we can't even detect the effect
- 19:23Speaker 2: of dark matter on our solar system. We have super
- 19:25Speaker 2: high precision measurements of like the orbit of Jupiter, and
- 19:29Speaker 2: we can totally ignore dark matter when we do those
- 19:31Speaker 2: calculations because it's spread so thin and it's so dilute
- 19:35Speaker 2: that it has basically no impact on anything local. So
- 19:38Speaker 2: you're not going to see like a dark matter ghost.
- 19:41Speaker 1: Well sort of, maybe I wonder this is recording nuts here?
- 19:45Speaker 1: Could it dark matter being somehow use their brain to
- 19:48Speaker 1: focus gravitational force onto like particular molecules or atoms or particles,
- 19:54Speaker 1: just like we were moving the mug earlier. Could they
- 19:56Speaker 1: do telekinesis using gravity on us?
- 19:58Speaker 2: Perhaps they could remember the so that gravity is the
- 20:01Speaker 2: weakest force in the universe by a lot. So to
- 20:05Speaker 2: have any sort of gravitational effect on something, you need
- 20:07Speaker 2: a very very large mass and there just isn't that
- 20:10Speaker 2: much dark matter around. Like in the volume of the
- 20:13Speaker 2: Earth is about one squirrel's worth of dark matter, So
- 20:16Speaker 2: one squirrel's worth of gravity is about the biggest impact
- 20:19Speaker 2: dark matter could have on Earth.
- 20:21Speaker 1: So I think you're saying there is ghostly matter in
- 20:23Speaker 1: the universe, matter that exists out there that could be
- 20:26Speaker 1: organized into things. But then if it does exist, it'd
- 20:28Speaker 1: be hard for it to interact with us, and so
- 20:30Speaker 1: it'd be hard for us to ever see it.
- 20:32Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And you certainly wouldn't see it as your
- 20:34Speaker 2: grumpy uncle come back to life to haunt your living room.
- 20:38Speaker 1: But what if I take my grumpy uncle and he's
- 20:42Speaker 1: a billionaire and he puts all his money into downloading
- 20:46Speaker 1: his consciousness or scanning his brain, or creating an AI
- 20:50Speaker 1: that replicates his consciousness, that he uses his money further
- 20:54Speaker 1: to create a neutrino or dark matter version of himself.
- 20:59Speaker 2: Wow, your family's pretty crazy, That's what I gotta say
- 21:02Speaker 2: about that. It's certainly technically possible to do a quantum
- 21:05Speaker 2: copy of your information into some storage medium, and so
- 21:09Speaker 2: in principle, perhaps in the future one could upload yourself
- 21:13Speaker 2: into the cloud. I don't know, about creating a neutrino
- 21:16Speaker 2: version of yourself, though again neutrino is almost impossible to.
- 21:19Speaker 1: Interact with, or maybe like a dark matter version of yourself, but.
- 21:23Speaker 2: We don't even know what dark matter is. If it's
- 21:25Speaker 2: made of particles, how to interact with it? If you
- 21:27Speaker 2: could do anything but gravity. I suppose the computer version
- 21:30Speaker 2: of your grumpy uncle could be hooked up to like
- 21:32Speaker 2: a projector which creates, you know, a holographic image of
- 21:36Speaker 2: your uncle, and in that way could be sort of
- 21:38Speaker 2: like a ghost.
- 21:39Speaker 1: Oh, there you go, a dark matter projector using a
- 21:44Speaker 1: quantum copy of your uncle.
- 21:46Speaker 2: It doesn't even have to be dark matter, just like
- 21:48Speaker 2: a normal matter projector making a hologram.
- 21:51Speaker 1: Right, Oh, yeah, there you go. You don't even need
- 21:53Speaker 1: dark matter.
- 21:55Speaker 2: Yeah. So I suppose in that way a ghost could exist,
- 21:57Speaker 2: a physics ghost.
- 21:58Speaker 1: All right, Well, hopefully I can convin my uncle to
- 22:01Speaker 1: leave the money to me rather than to create a
- 22:04Speaker 1: holograms of himself.
- 22:06Speaker 2: Just send your son over there to do a bunch
- 22:08Speaker 2: of chores and then send them a bill.
- 22:10Speaker 1: There you go. There's always a way in physics. All right,
- 22:12Speaker 1: Let's get into our other questions. We have awesome questions
- 22:15Speaker 1: about neutrinos and neutron stars, and about the nature and
- 22:19Speaker 1: origin of space itself. So we'll dig into those, but
- 22:23Speaker 1: first let's take our quick break. We're answering listening questions
- 22:38Speaker 1: here today, and there is our forty second episode where
- 22:41Speaker 1: we do that forty two is a pretty significant number,
- 22:43Speaker 1: isn't it?
- 22:43Speaker 2: Forty two is a big deal. It's a running joke
- 22:45Speaker 2: in my family since we've read it a Hitchhiker's Guide
- 22:48Speaker 2: in the Galaxy several years ago.
- 22:49Speaker 1: What's the running joke?
- 22:50Speaker 2: I guess we just take special joy in seeing the
- 22:52Speaker 2: number forty two appear all over the place.
- 22:55Speaker 1: It is sort of an interesting number, right, It's six
- 22:57Speaker 1: times seven.
- 22:59Speaker 2: What's interesting about that?
- 23:00Speaker 1: I don't know. It's take an odd number of times
- 23:01Speaker 1: an even number. I don't know.
- 23:03Speaker 2: I do wonder sometimes what made Douglas Addas choose that
- 23:05Speaker 2: number and not, you know, thirty nine or one hundred
- 23:08Speaker 2: and forty one or something else.
- 23:10Speaker 1: Maybe because it's six ninety seven, as.
- 23:15Speaker 2: If that's an answer somehow, like the way you say that,
- 23:18Speaker 2: as if it answers the question.
- 23:19Speaker 1: Isn't it Jackie Robinson's number two?
- 23:21Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 23:21Speaker 2: Could be, I don't know.
- 23:22Speaker 1: Anyways, we're answering questions from listeners because everyone has questions
- 23:26Speaker 1: and we'd like to answer them here on the podcast sometimes.
- 23:29Speaker 1: And so our second question here today is about neutrinos
- 23:32Speaker 1: and neutron stars.
- 23:33Speaker 4: You've mentioned that a neutrino can penetrate a light year
- 23:37Speaker 4: of lead, but how much neutron star matter can a
- 23:41Speaker 4: neutrino penetrate? Could we study a neutron star that is
- 23:46Speaker 4: paired with a main sequence star using the neutrinos from
- 23:50Speaker 4: the main sequence star.
- 23:52Speaker 1: Right, an interesting question here about neutrinos and neutron stars.
- 23:55Speaker 1: There's a lot to unpack here, but basically, neutrinos are ghostly,
- 23:59Speaker 1: as we just talked about earlier, and neutron stars are
- 24:01Speaker 1: super dense, and so I think they're asking what happens
- 24:04Speaker 1: if you put them together.
- 24:05Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really great question, not just because it
- 24:08Speaker 2: seeks to understand, like neutrino's a deeper level, but it's
- 24:11Speaker 2: got an idea in it, right, an idea to help
- 24:13Speaker 2: us probe the interior of neutron stars. We'd love to
- 24:16Speaker 2: know what's going on in these crazy, super dense regions
- 24:20Speaker 2: of space, these hot squeezed relics. At the end of stars,
- 24:25Speaker 2: and so it's a cool idea to imagine like shooting
- 24:27Speaker 2: a beam of neutrinos through it and seeing what happens.
- 24:31Speaker 1: So we talked about what a neutrino is. There are
- 24:33Speaker 1: particles that exist out there in the universe. They get
- 24:36Speaker 1: made by the sound. There's a whole bunch of them
- 24:37Speaker 1: going through us right now. But they don't interact with
- 24:39Speaker 1: things using the electromagnetic force. They seem to only interact
- 24:44Speaker 1: using the weak force, right.
- 24:45Speaker 2: That's right. Neutrinos have no electric charge, and so they
- 24:48Speaker 2: don't interact with photons, and they don't interact at all
- 24:51Speaker 2: using electromagnetism, which is really the strongest force that people
- 24:55Speaker 2: feel in their everyday lives, you know, lightning and magnetism
- 24:59Speaker 2: and the chemical bonds that hold things together. That's all electromagnetism.
- 25:03Speaker 2: Neutrinos only feel the weak force, which is much much
- 25:06Speaker 2: weaker than electromagnetism. And so that's why we often say
- 25:09Speaker 2: that neutrinos can pass through like a wall of lead
- 25:13Speaker 2: that's a light year thick without interacting. And it's not
- 25:16Speaker 2: because they're like wiggling around those lead particles. It's not
- 25:20Speaker 2: because they're super duper small. It's because they just don't
- 25:23Speaker 2: interact very often. Every time a neutrino comes near an
- 25:26Speaker 2: atom like rolls to die. But that die is like
- 25:29Speaker 2: a billion sided dye, and only if it comes up
- 25:32Speaker 2: one number, one specific number does the neutrino interact.
- 25:35Speaker 1: And so I guess the idea is to pair that
- 25:37Speaker 1: idea with the idea of a neutron star. So, now, Daniel,
- 25:40Speaker 1: what is a neutron star.
- 25:42Speaker 2: A neutron star is the endpoint of a big star
- 25:44Speaker 2: that's burned and burned and burned. Remember, most stars start
- 25:47Speaker 2: out as overwhelmingly hydrogen, but gravity squeezes them down and
- 25:51Speaker 2: ignites fusion at their core, which makes heavier and heavier elements.
- 25:55Speaker 2: You take hydrogen mechelium, you squeeze the helium together, you
- 25:58Speaker 2: can make carbon. You can heavier stuff all the way
- 26:01Speaker 2: up to iron if you have a really big, hot star.
- 26:04Speaker 2: But at the end of its life, a star will
- 26:06Speaker 2: implode or explode, depending exactly on the mass that it has,
- 26:09Speaker 2: and usually leave behind a very hot, dense relic the
- 26:12Speaker 2: leftover bits of the fusion that it couldn't burn. And
- 26:15Speaker 2: so a neutron star is an extraordinarily dense object. They
- 26:19Speaker 2: usually have something like the mass of the Sun but
- 26:22Speaker 2: a radius of like ten kilometers. So you're talking about
- 26:25Speaker 2: like taking the Sun and squeezing it down to the
- 26:27Speaker 2: size of Manhattan after putting it in a blender, and
- 26:31Speaker 2: that's a crazy dense object.
- 26:33Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked about how it's basically like the bestest
- 26:36Speaker 1: thing you can get in the universe, almost before you
- 26:38Speaker 1: get a black hole.
- 26:39Speaker 2: Yeah, gravity is trying to squeeze it down even further,
- 26:42Speaker 2: but there's this degeneracy pressure. The quantum effects inside the
- 26:46Speaker 2: neutron star are still able to resist gravity. If you
- 26:49Speaker 2: add a little bit more mass, then the thing will
- 26:51Speaker 2: collapse into a black hole, but it's still resistant. So
- 26:54Speaker 2: it's like the last stronghold against gravity's ultimate victory.
- 26:58Speaker 1: And I think part of the reason is that it
- 27:00Speaker 1: is made out of neutrons, right, so they don't repel
- 27:02Speaker 1: each other electromagnetically. They have no almost no reason not
- 27:07Speaker 1: to just fall into themselves, not to get crushed together.
- 27:10Speaker 2: Except that neutrons are fermions. They're spin one half particles,
- 27:13Speaker 2: which means that like electrons, they can't overlap too much.
- 27:17Speaker 2: They can't be in the same quantum state, so they
- 27:19Speaker 2: resist being pushed together. So that's one way in which
- 27:22Speaker 2: a neutron star is preventing itself from collapsing into a
- 27:26Speaker 2: black hole. There's this degeneracy pressure. The neutrons don't want
- 27:29Speaker 2: to be in the same quantum state.
- 27:31Speaker 1: Right, right, But I think what I meant was, like,
- 27:33Speaker 1: the reason I don't fall to the enter of the
- 27:34Speaker 1: Earth is because my electrons are being repelled by the
- 27:37Speaker 1: electrons of the floor.
- 27:39Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and that's not happening inside neutron.
- 27:41Speaker 1: Stars because it's all neutral.
- 27:43Speaker 2: It's all neutral electromagnetically. But you know, we also don't
- 27:46Speaker 2: think that it's really still neutrons at the core of
- 27:48Speaker 2: neutron stars. We think that the strong force is probably
- 27:51Speaker 2: doing something crazy, something else that you know, the distinction
- 27:55Speaker 2: between the neutrons is blurring, and all the quarks inside
- 27:58Speaker 2: them are really interacting with each other. Episode about what's
- 28:01Speaker 2: going on the heart of neutron stars, But the bottom
- 28:03Speaker 2: line is that we don't know, and it's probably something
- 28:06Speaker 2: super fascinating that would tell us something new about the
- 28:08Speaker 2: way the strong force works and the way that it
- 28:10Speaker 2: competes with gravity. So super interesting, almost like learning about
- 28:14Speaker 2: what's inside a black hole.
- 28:16Speaker 1: Okay, so now the question is we have the the
- 28:19Speaker 1: desest thing in the universe before a black hole, and
- 28:22Speaker 1: we have something that doesn't really like to interact with anything.
- 28:25Speaker 1: What happens if you shoot a nutrino into a neutron star.
- 28:28Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is really a question about transparency. We
- 28:31Speaker 2: recently did an episode all about transparency and photons, and
- 28:35Speaker 2: the short version of that is that it depends on
- 28:37Speaker 2: the interaction. You have to think about it from a
- 28:39Speaker 2: particle physics point of view. Shoot the particle through, is
- 28:41Speaker 2: it going to interact with the stuff? And when you're
- 28:44Speaker 2: talking about transparency for normal materials, like why can light
- 28:48Speaker 2: go through air and why can it go through glass
- 28:51Speaker 2: but it can't go through steel or can't go through
- 28:53Speaker 2: your hand, then again it's depending on those interactions. You're
- 28:56Speaker 2: thinking about whether the photon can be absorbed by the
- 28:59Speaker 2: electrons in your body. Sometimes those electrons can absorb that
- 29:03Speaker 2: photon because there's an energy level available for them to
- 29:06Speaker 2: get to, and sometimes they can't, so the photon just
- 29:08Speaker 2: flies through and ignores the material. So that's why photons
- 29:12Speaker 2: can go through matter. Sometimes if the energy states aren't
- 29:15Speaker 2: arranged in a way that the photon can absorb it.
- 29:18Speaker 2: So now when we think about a neutrino going through
- 29:21Speaker 2: a neutron star, we have to ask similar questions like
- 29:23Speaker 2: how can the neutrino interact with that material and is
- 29:26Speaker 2: there sort of a valid particle physics process that would
- 29:29Speaker 2: allow that to happen.
- 29:31Speaker 1: Well, as far as we know, neutrinos are neutral, so
- 29:34Speaker 1: they don't feel the electromagnetic force, but they do feel
- 29:37Speaker 1: the weak force. Right, do they feel the strong force
- 29:39Speaker 1: as well or only the weak force?
- 29:41Speaker 2: If they have mass, then they feel gravity, and we
- 29:43Speaker 2: do think that they have masks, though we can't measure
- 29:45Speaker 2: it very precisely, but their mass, if they have any,
- 29:48Speaker 2: is very very small, and so gravity is probably almost
- 29:51Speaker 2: irrelevant for neutrinos. So really it just comes down to
- 29:54Speaker 2: the weak force. So if you're a neutrino and you're
- 29:56Speaker 2: approaching a neutron star it's filled with neutrons, then what
- 29:59Speaker 2: you can do is interact with one of the quarks
- 30:02Speaker 2: inside the neutron. For example, you can take a down
- 30:05Speaker 2: quark and you can convert it to an upquark, interacting
- 30:08Speaker 2: with it because those quarks also feel the weak force.
- 30:12Speaker 2: This is called reverse beta decay. Sentially, a neutrino hits
- 30:16Speaker 2: a neutron, turns it into a proton, and then you
- 30:19Speaker 2: can an electron out the other side.
- 30:22Speaker 1: So there is a process for a nutrina to interact
- 30:24Speaker 1: with a quark, is what you're saying exactly.
- 30:27Speaker 2: You can either do this convert a nucleon from a
- 30:29Speaker 2: neutron to a proton, or it could just kick one
- 30:32Speaker 2: of the nucleons. The reason it's got two options is
- 30:35Speaker 2: because there's sort of two versions of the photon for
- 30:38Speaker 2: the weak force. Electromagnetism just has the photon, but the
- 30:41Speaker 2: weak force has the W and the Z, and the
- 30:44Speaker 2: neutrino can use either one. You can either use a
- 30:46Speaker 2: Z to sort of give a kick to one of
- 30:48Speaker 2: the nucleons, or it can use the W to convert
- 30:51Speaker 2: one of the nucleons from a neutron to a proton.
- 30:54Speaker 1: I'm not sure I follow all the mechanics, but I
- 30:55Speaker 1: think what I'm saying is if I shoot a nutrino
- 30:58Speaker 1: into a neutron, start it iss for it to interact
- 31:01Speaker 1: with a quark, in which case it would get stopped
- 31:03Speaker 1: by the quark. Basically right, it'd be like hitting the cork.
- 31:06Speaker 2: It wouldn't necessarily get stopped, but it might get scattered
- 31:09Speaker 2: amount like change direction, or it might even be absorbed
- 31:11Speaker 2: and get converted into an electron.
- 31:13Speaker 1: But it wouldn't go through as the main point.
- 31:16Speaker 2: It might go through. There's a possibility for a neutrino
- 31:18Speaker 2: to interact with these things, but the probability of it
- 31:21Speaker 2: happening depends on a lot of different factors. It still
- 31:24Speaker 2: has to roll that big die and come up with
- 31:25Speaker 2: the right number, but sort of the number of sizes
- 31:28Speaker 2: of that dye depends on a few things. One of
- 31:30Speaker 2: the things that depends on is the energy of the neutrino.
- 31:34Speaker 2: If the neutrino is higher energy, if it's moving faster,
- 31:37Speaker 2: then it has a higher probability to interact with the material.
- 31:41Speaker 2: So a faster moving neutrino is more likely to bump
- 31:44Speaker 2: into one of these nucleons, and a slower moving neutrino
- 31:47Speaker 2: is less likely.
- 31:48Speaker 1: But if it does interact, then it's sort of like
- 31:51Speaker 1: it's it wouldn't count as going through unscathed, right.
- 31:55Speaker 2: That's right. Any interaction doesn't count as going through unscathed.
- 31:58Speaker 2: So it depends on two things. It depends on the
- 32:00Speaker 2: neutrino's energy, and that's actually interesting. It's because of relativity.
- 32:04Speaker 2: If you're moving really really fast, then space in front
- 32:07Speaker 2: of you is looking contracted, which means that you're squeezing
- 32:10Speaker 2: this already very dense neutron star. You're squeezing it down
- 32:13Speaker 2: even further so it looks even denser. So you like
- 32:16Speaker 2: length contract the neutron star into something even smaller, which
- 32:19Speaker 2: makes you have a higher probability of interacting with it.
- 32:22Speaker 2: So higher energy neutrinos, faster neutrinos, have a bigger probability
- 32:27Speaker 2: of being absorbed by the neutron star or being bent
- 32:29Speaker 2: by it.
- 32:30Speaker 1: So the neutron star is super dense. That means that
- 32:33Speaker 1: it basically, as a neutrino's trying to go through it,
- 32:35Speaker 1: there are a lot of possibilities or it's very likely
- 32:38Speaker 1: for it to interact with a quirk, which means it
- 32:41Speaker 1: wouldn't go through necessarily. Have you done the math like
- 32:43Speaker 1: how far can a neutrino penetrate?
- 32:45Speaker 2: So it did sit down to do this calculation, and
- 32:47Speaker 2: it turns out it also really depends very strongly on
- 32:50Speaker 2: the temperature of the neutron star. So neutron stars, remember
- 32:55Speaker 2: there are these degenerate states, which means that like all
- 32:58Speaker 2: the quantum states are filled up, so cold neutron star
- 33:01Speaker 2: has all those neutrons filling up the lowest energy states,
- 33:05Speaker 2: and that's a problem for interaction because if you're coming
- 33:07Speaker 2: through in your neutrino and you're trying to bump into
- 33:10Speaker 2: one of those neutrons, there's sort of no available state
- 33:13Speaker 2: for it to get to. Like the ladder above, it
- 33:15Speaker 2: is all filled, so it can't interact with the neutrino
- 33:18Speaker 2: because there's nowhere for it to go. On a hotter
- 33:20Speaker 2: neutron star, some of those states are not totally filled
- 33:24Speaker 2: because the neutrons are moving around they have higher energy,
- 33:26Speaker 2: so there's open spots in the ladder, and if a
- 33:29Speaker 2: neutrino comes by, it can interact with that neutron because
- 33:32Speaker 2: there's a spot for the neutron to jump up to.
- 33:34Speaker 2: So for hotter neutron stars, they're more likely to interact.
- 33:38Speaker 2: So you have a high energy neutrino hitting a very
- 33:40Speaker 2: hot neutron star than it can interact.
- 33:43Speaker 1: Which means it wouldn't penetrate very.
- 33:45Speaker 2: Much exactly, which is sort of cool because it means
- 33:48Speaker 2: that neutron stars start out opaque to neutrinos and as
- 33:52Speaker 2: they cool, they become transparent, and there's this threshold it
- 33:56Speaker 2: like ten to the ten degrees kelvin, that's like ten
- 34:00Speaker 2: billion kelvin that neutron stars essentially become completely transparent to neutrinos.
- 34:06Speaker 1: Do neutron stars cool?
- 34:08Speaker 2: Neutron stars do cool absolutely, very slowly over time. They're
- 34:12Speaker 2: still radiating out heat. They're not fusing, right, They're not
- 34:14Speaker 2: creating more energy at their cores, but there's still hot
- 34:18Speaker 2: lumps of matter, and hot lumps of matter do radiate
- 34:20Speaker 2: out photons.
- 34:22Speaker 1: I guess maybe another question is, if they are really
- 34:24Speaker 1: close to being black holes, wouldn't they also bend the
- 34:27Speaker 1: space around them and somehow trap neutrinos that way, or
- 34:31Speaker 1: at least bend their path.
- 34:32Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. Neutron stars are definitely dense
- 34:35Speaker 2: enough to have very strong gravitational effects, you know. That's
- 34:38Speaker 2: why they're almost perfectly spherical. Like you try to make
- 34:41Speaker 2: a mountain on the surface of a neutron star, it
- 34:43Speaker 2: will get flattened. The tallest mountain on the surface of
- 34:46Speaker 2: a neutron star is like a millimeter high, so it's
- 34:49Speaker 2: very intense gravity, but there's no event horizon, right, that's
- 34:52Speaker 2: the difference between something that's a black hole and something
- 34:54Speaker 2: that's not so. In principle, photons and even neutrinos created
- 34:58Speaker 2: at the heart of a neutron star can and still
- 35:00Speaker 2: escape because there's no event horizon. But you're right, it
- 35:03Speaker 2: will get distorted, like bent around in lots of different directions.
- 35:06Speaker 1: Right. So, I guess if you shoot neutrino's at entron star,
- 35:09Speaker 1: it would only maybe go through on scathe if you
- 35:13Speaker 1: shoot it at the exact center of the neutron star,
- 35:16Speaker 1: I wonder. And also if it has, as you said,
- 35:19Speaker 1: the right energy to it, and the neutron star is
- 35:22Speaker 1: cool enough, then it will go through. But otherwise it
- 35:24Speaker 1: might get deflected or it might hit one of the
- 35:26Speaker 1: quarks in the star exactly.
- 35:28Speaker 2: And here we've mostly focused on the hot mess that's
- 35:31Speaker 2: at the heart of the neutron star. The densest region,
- 35:33Speaker 2: the crust of the neutron star, like the surface of it,
- 35:36Speaker 2: is not nearly as dense.
- 35:38Speaker 1: All right, Well, I think that's the answer to the
- 35:40Speaker 1: question here. How much can neutrinos penetrate a neutron star.
- 35:43Speaker 1: It sounds like the answer is it depends on the
- 35:46Speaker 1: speed of the neutrino and also the temperature of the
- 35:49Speaker 1: neutron star. But it sounds like if it's the right conditions,
- 35:52Speaker 1: then it wouldn't penetrate very far, or at least it
- 35:54Speaker 1: would maybe get bent for sure, almost definitely by the
- 35:57Speaker 1: gravity of the neutron starm.
- 35:58Speaker 2: Which means something cool, means that Doug is right that
- 36:01Speaker 2: in principle, you could use a beam of neutrinos that's
- 36:05Speaker 2: going through a very hot neutron star to learn something
- 36:08Speaker 2: about what's inside that neutron star based on how those
- 36:12Speaker 2: neutrinos are bent or stopped.
- 36:14Speaker 1: Mmm, like an X ray kind of like you could
- 36:16Speaker 1: shoot some neutrinos at intrustar have a detector in the
- 36:19Speaker 1: back of it, and you can kind of get an
- 36:21Speaker 1: X ray of the neutron star.
- 36:23Speaker 2: Yeah, or if there's a bright star behind the neutron star,
- 36:25Speaker 2: it's already doing that for us, shooting the neutrinos at us.
- 36:29Speaker 2: So we just got to find those and use it
- 36:31Speaker 2: as a way to X ray that neutron star.
- 36:33Speaker 1: Maybe my rich uncle will pay for that detector. We'll see,
- 36:37Speaker 1: we'll see what we can convince him to do. All right,
- 36:39Speaker 1: let's get to our last question here, and it's about
- 36:42Speaker 1: space and how it gets made. So let's dig into that,
- 36:46Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. All right, we're
- 37:01Speaker 1: answering questions from listeners. We've answered awesome questions about ghosts, telekinesis,
- 37:06Speaker 1: the supernatural or I guess how we can make the
- 37:09Speaker 1: supernatural natural? And we've answered questions about Neutrino's and some
- 37:13Speaker 1: of the densest objects in the universe. Now we have
- 37:16Speaker 1: our last question here today, and it comes from a
- 37:19Speaker 1: six year old named James.
- 37:21Speaker 3: Hi.
- 37:21Speaker 1: Daniel, Hi, my name is Change and I just turned six,
- 37:28Speaker 1: and how does space get made? Awesome question? Thank you James,
- 37:33Speaker 1: and happy birthday. Do you think he's getting paid to
- 37:36Speaker 1: be a physicist.
- 37:37Speaker 2: I think he's got a future career ahead.
- 37:39Speaker 1: Of him for sure, getting paid in cereal and ice cream.
- 37:45Speaker 2: I wonder if James's question is why does space exist,
- 37:49Speaker 2: like how did it get made in the beginning originally?
- 37:52Speaker 2: Or if he's asking about how space expands, how we
- 37:55Speaker 2: get more space?
- 37:57Speaker 1: What are the words he used?
- 37:58Speaker 2: He says, I'm wondering about how space gets made.
- 38:00Speaker 1: Well, let's see he used the words I wonder how
- 38:02Speaker 1: space gets made. So it sounds like it's in the
- 38:07Speaker 1: present tense right, like, how are space being made?
- 38:10Speaker 3: Right now?
- 38:10Speaker 2: Yeah? I guess he's sort of asking for a recipe, like, Hey,
- 38:13Speaker 2: I want to make more space? What do I do?
- 38:15Speaker 1: Which I guess is maybe the same question as if
- 38:17Speaker 1: you put in the past ask, which is how did it? Space?
- 38:19Speaker 2: Can be like when you go to somebody's house and
- 38:22Speaker 2: they serve a really delicious dessert and you're like, wow,
- 38:25Speaker 2: how does that pie get made?
- 38:26Speaker 1: That seems like a red question.
- 38:28Speaker 2: Oh, that's very polite. It's saying I want more of
- 38:31Speaker 2: that thing you made.
- 38:32Speaker 1: Well, we could all use a little bit more space,
- 38:34Speaker 1: for sure, especially down here in southern California, where space
- 38:37Speaker 1: set a premium, And the question is a physical one,
- 38:40Speaker 1: I guess about physics, not just like how do you
- 38:41Speaker 1: make more room in your house?
- 38:43Speaker 2: Yeah? I think it's about the nature of space itself. Right,
- 38:45Speaker 2: When you take everything out of the universe, you strip
- 38:48Speaker 2: it of all of its particles and its energy. We're
- 38:51Speaker 2: talking about this stuff that everything is existing in. How
- 38:55Speaker 2: does that itself get made? Yeah?
- 38:57Speaker 1: Or maybe James has a sibling and he's wondering when
- 39:00Speaker 1: he has to stop sharing a room with that something,
- 39:03Speaker 1: how can I get more space?
- 39:04Speaker 2: Well, we're spending a lot of time joking around about
- 39:06Speaker 2: the question and not answering it. And one reason is
- 39:08Speaker 2: that we really just don't have any good answers. You know,
- 39:11Speaker 2: one of the deepest mysteries in modern physics is even
- 39:15Speaker 2: like what is space anyway? We still don't even really understand.
- 39:19Speaker 2: We know that we need to move beyond sort of
- 39:21Speaker 2: ancient notions of space from like Newton that space is
- 39:25Speaker 2: absolute like a backdrop of the universe, but we don't
- 39:28Speaker 2: really have a great idea for what space actually is.
- 39:31Speaker 1: Well, I feel like it's sort of been one of
- 39:33Speaker 1: the biggest mind blowing moments in humanity in the last
- 39:36Speaker 1: one hundred years to realize that the space is being
- 39:39Speaker 1: made right now, Like there's more space today than there
- 39:42Speaker 1: was yesterday in the universe.
- 39:43Speaker 2: Yeah, about one hundred years ago, people thought that the
- 39:45Speaker 2: universe was static. There was just a bunch of stars
- 39:47Speaker 2: hanging out in space, and it was that way, it
- 39:50Speaker 2: had always been that way. Then we learned that the
- 39:52Speaker 2: universe was expanding, and Einstein's general relativity actually accommodates that
- 39:56Speaker 2: very very nicely, even without later confusion about excit expansion
- 40:01Speaker 2: or decelerating expansion. Just the idea that the universe was
- 40:04Speaker 2: expanding at all meant that space itself was increasing, right,
- 40:09Speaker 2: not just stuff moving through space, but actual increase in
- 40:12Speaker 2: the amount of space.
- 40:14Speaker 1: Yeah, space is being made right now, And I guess
- 40:16Speaker 1: the question is, like how do you make space or
- 40:18Speaker 1: like where does space come from?
- 40:19Speaker 2: We don't know the answer to that. We know that
- 40:21Speaker 2: it is happening, and we can describe it mathematically, and
- 40:25Speaker 2: we have some pretty good handles on like when space
- 40:27Speaker 2: will contract and when space will expand, but we don't
- 40:31Speaker 2: know what space is, so we don't have really any
- 40:33Speaker 2: insight into that process itself. We know that the universe
- 40:37Speaker 2: is doing it and a long way breaking some rules
- 40:39Speaker 2: we used to think were fundamental, like when the universe
- 40:42Speaker 2: makes space, it makes a new chunk of space that
- 40:45Speaker 2: comes with new quantum fields which have non zero energy
- 40:48Speaker 2: in them, which means, in principle, is increasing the total
- 40:52Speaker 2: energy of the universe. So making more space involves creating
- 40:56Speaker 2: energy from nothing, which is not something we know how
- 40:59Speaker 2: to do. So yeah, we really don't have any idea
- 41:02Speaker 2: for how this works.
- 41:03Speaker 1: I think you're saying that, like, all we know right
- 41:05Speaker 1: now is that there is some space today there in
- 41:08Speaker 1: between the stars that we can see and tomorrow there's
- 41:11Speaker 1: more space, but there's going to be more space between
- 41:13Speaker 1: those stars. That's kind of how we see it. That's
- 41:16Speaker 1: just what we can observe.
- 41:17Speaker 2: That's what we observe. And it's not like we're totally clueless, right,
- 41:20Speaker 2: General relativity gives us a mathematical description for that expansion.
- 41:25Speaker 2: We can describe it, we can even predict it that,
- 41:27Speaker 2: we can explain the history of it, but like the
- 41:29Speaker 2: deep underlying mechanism of that is not something that we
- 41:33Speaker 2: understand at all, because again, we don't even know what
- 41:35Speaker 2: the thing itself is. We have this sort of high
- 41:38Speaker 2: level mathematical story from Einstein, but we don't understand the
- 41:42Speaker 2: microphysics of it, like how does space come together? What
- 41:45Speaker 2: are the essential bits of it? We don't even know
- 41:47Speaker 2: if space itself is fundamental, Like could you have a
- 41:51Speaker 2: universe without space or is space like a prerequisite a
- 41:55Speaker 2: minimum condition for even having a universe. We don't even
- 41:58Speaker 2: know the answer to that totally basic question about the
- 42:02Speaker 2: nature of space.
- 42:03Speaker 1: You mean, like we don't know what space is in
- 42:05Speaker 1: the first place, right.
- 42:06Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we don't know if you have to
- 42:08Speaker 2: have it, right, maybe there's a place where space.
- 42:10Speaker 1: Isn't now maybe to answer then James's question, like how
- 42:13Speaker 1: does space get made? Like what does that process look like?
- 42:16Speaker 1: I wonder if maybe that's one of the questions he's
- 42:18Speaker 1: wondering about, Like is space being created smoothly sort of
- 42:23Speaker 1: like you know, like a balloon being inflated smoothly, or
- 42:27Speaker 1: does it get created in chunks or in steps?
- 42:30Speaker 2: What do you think another great question I would love
- 42:32Speaker 2: to have the answer to. It depends on whether space
- 42:36Speaker 2: is smooth and continuous or quantum mechanical, like in Einstein's
- 42:40Speaker 2: description of general relativity, space is continuous. Between any two points,
- 42:44Speaker 2: there's an infinite number of steps, and you can continue
- 42:47Speaker 2: to divide those as long as you'd like. Quantum mechanical
- 42:50Speaker 2: views of space say that's not true, that there must
- 42:52Speaker 2: be like space pixels, that everything is discrete. And if
- 42:56Speaker 2: that's true, then as the universe expands, then you pop
- 42:59Speaker 2: out new countable numbers of space pixels, right, like one
- 43:04Speaker 2: more and then one another one. You can't have like
- 43:06Speaker 2: one and a half more space pixels. So whether it's
- 43:09Speaker 2: continuous or discrete depends on whether space is sort of
- 43:12Speaker 2: classical and smooth or quantum mechanical and discrete and we
- 43:16Speaker 2: don't know the answer to that either.
- 43:18Speaker 1: One of their other possibilities for like explaining what we
- 43:21Speaker 1: see out there. Is it possible we're shrinking and space
- 43:24Speaker 1: is the same where we're just shrinking. Just seems like
- 43:27Speaker 1: space is getting bigger.
- 43:28Speaker 2: That's absolutely possible. Remember the expansion of space absolutely yeah.
- 43:32Speaker 1: I was just pulling that out of out of my pocket. There.
- 43:37Speaker 2: The expansion of space is relative. It's a scale factor
- 43:40Speaker 2: we measure as space expands relative to its size in
- 43:43Speaker 2: the past, And it's mathematically equivalent to say space is
- 43:47Speaker 2: expanding and stuff is staying the same size, or space
- 43:51Speaker 2: is staying the same size and everything is shrinking. You
- 43:54Speaker 2: can never tell the difference between those two things because
- 43:57Speaker 2: they would only be different relative to some external ruler
- 44:00Speaker 2: which doesn't exist.
- 44:02Speaker 1: Wait, what does that even mean? Now? I was literally
- 44:05Speaker 1: just making up words, but it sounds like it's a
- 44:07Speaker 1: real possibility. What does that mean? Like we're getting smaller
- 44:12Speaker 1: relative to like, let's say, like us and our sun
- 44:15Speaker 1: here and there's another star in the sky, we're getting smaller.
- 44:18Speaker 1: Would that necessarily make the space between us bigger?
- 44:21Speaker 2: Imagine the expanding universe? Right, this is your usual picture
- 44:25Speaker 2: everything's staying the same size and getting further and further apart.
- 44:27Speaker 2: And we think that's probably infinite. But just imagine like
- 44:30Speaker 2: a chunk of it, and now, instead of allowing that
- 44:33Speaker 2: to get bigger and bigger, try holding it to be
- 44:35Speaker 2: the same size, so as time goes on, you don't
- 44:38Speaker 2: allow it to expand. In order to keep all the
- 44:40Speaker 2: relationships the same. You can instead just squeeze everything down.
- 44:44Speaker 2: So like now you're holding that chunk of space and
- 44:46Speaker 2: you're watching it, and instead of it getting bigger, so
- 44:49Speaker 2: things get further apart, everything just shrinks inside of it,
- 44:52Speaker 2: so it gets smaller and smaller. So then the beings
- 44:55Speaker 2: on those little planets, they measure the distances to be
- 44:58Speaker 2: larger because they're rulers are.
- 45:00Speaker 1: Shrinking, even the ruler between like here and there.
- 45:02Speaker 2: Yes, everything within it shrinks. And so if you don't
- 45:05Speaker 2: have an external metric, if you're not that alien outside,
- 45:08Speaker 2: you know, running the simulation holding that chunk of space,
- 45:11Speaker 2: you can't tell the difference. If you're inside the universe,
- 45:14Speaker 2: you can't tell the difference between stuff shrinking and space
- 45:17Speaker 2: staying the same, or everything staying the same size and
- 45:20Speaker 2: space increasing.
- 45:22Speaker 1: And that would apply even to things like light. Right, Like,
- 45:25Speaker 1: as the universe expands, we see light being stretched DoD,
- 45:28Speaker 1: I mean the light itself. The photons are shrinking, or
- 45:31Speaker 1: the speed of light is shrinking.
- 45:32Speaker 2: Everything stays the same relative to that ruler. But those
- 45:34Speaker 2: rulers are shrinking. So yes, whoa.
- 45:37Speaker 1: And it's time shrinking as well, or time stays the same.
- 45:40Speaker 2: Time stays the same in these pictures, it's space that's shrinking. Whoa.
- 45:44Speaker 1: So maybe space is not being made. They were just
- 45:47Speaker 1: getting you know, shorter with age.
- 45:50Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, if you're shrinking, doesn't that
- 45:52Speaker 2: make more space for you? I mean if you said, hey, Daniel,
- 45:55Speaker 2: I want a bigger house, and then I like shrunk
- 45:57Speaker 2: you in your family down the half size, you'd be like, oh, awesome,
- 46:00Speaker 2: houses down twice as bien.
- 46:01Speaker 1: I think there's a movie with Matt Damon about that
- 46:04Speaker 1: that's been made already. But what's an important distinction, though,
- 46:09Speaker 1: isn't there? Like that means that space is not being made.
- 46:12Speaker 1: It's not sort of a thing that's being created. We're
- 46:15Speaker 1: just drinking.
- 46:16Speaker 2: If according to the people on those planets, they're measuring
- 46:18Speaker 2: greater distances between stuff, then I would say, yes, space
- 46:22Speaker 2: is still being made in both scenarios.
- 46:25Speaker 1: I see, you can make space by vacating it or
- 46:27Speaker 1: by making an addition to your hous is what you're saying.
- 46:30Speaker 2: Yeah, by either increasing the distances or shrinking the rulers.
- 46:33Speaker 2: It's the same thing.
- 46:34Speaker 1: So you're saying, as I get older and my house
- 46:36Speaker 1: is going to get bigger automatically, whereas for my kids
- 46:39Speaker 1: right now, the house is just getting smaller and smaller.
- 46:42Speaker 2: Physics says, yes.
- 46:43Speaker 1: It's a family affairs. What I'm saying, All right, So
- 46:45Speaker 1: I guess the answer for James is that, unfortunately, we
- 46:48Speaker 1: don't really know how space gets made. We just know
- 46:51Speaker 1: that it is being made out there in space, or
- 46:53Speaker 1: at least it seems like it's getting made.
- 46:55Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. We don't understand space. There's all these
- 46:58Speaker 2: fascinating mysteries. And it feels like the kind of thing
- 47:00Speaker 2: where in fifty years or one hundred years, people are
- 47:03Speaker 2: going to look back and be like, oh, my gosh,
- 47:04Speaker 2: the answer was so obvious it was staring them in
- 47:07Speaker 2: the face, but they were so stuck in their old
- 47:09Speaker 2: way of thinking they just couldn't see it.
- 47:11Speaker 1: Just sounds like maybe if James keeps asking questions there's
- 47:15Speaker 1: a lot of space for him to maybe find the
- 47:17Speaker 1: answer to these questions.
- 47:19Speaker 2: There's plenty of space for everybody out there to contribute
- 47:22Speaker 2: knowledge at the forefront of human ignorance.
- 47:24Speaker 1: And hopefully enough money out there to pay them also
- 47:28Speaker 1: in the future. All right, well, thanks to everyone for
- 47:31Speaker 1: sending in their questions. We enjoy answering questions. We hope
- 47:35Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
- 47:46Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
- 47:49Speaker 2: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
- 47:53Speaker 2: from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
- 47:57Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite show.