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Can you communicate with neutrinos? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, are you reading anything good right now? Yeah,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm actually on like a multi year journey of reading
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the Earth Sea books. They're really good. And did you
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: read them with photons? Yeah? I guess that's a very
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: particle physics way of asking if I read it with
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: my eyeballs? And yes, yes I do. I read it
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: with photons that go into my eyeballs. And so are
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: you not a fan of audio books for example? No,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I I do actually like audio books, but yeah, I
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: like to read with my eyeballs and my earballs. And
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: how about Brail. Do you know anyone who can read
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: with their fingerballs? I don't, but I would love to
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: learn it's it seems fascinating. I wonder how different it
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: would be to experience a book with smell or with taste. Well,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: do you remember scratch and sniff? It's been a long
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: time since I read a textbook with scratch and sniff.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I would love to smell outer space because I've heard
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: it smells kind of funky. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I've
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: never eaten a physics book. I am Katie. I am
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the host of a animal biology podcast. And I have
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes nibbled on the corners of a physics textbook, And
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: how does physics taste? Taste kind of like cellulose that
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: has been converted into readable format. Well, maybe you should
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: print it on the surface of a cake, like frosting,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and that would be tastier. In fact, I should make
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: that assigned reading from my next class cake printed textbooks.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I wish you could learn by printing textbook pages on
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a cake and eating it. And welcome to the podcast.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe production of I Heart Radio,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: in which we serve up the entire universe as a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: slice of delicious knowledge. We try to bake all of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the ingredients that make up this amazing cosmos, the quarks,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the gluons, whatever is smaller and underneath, which weaves together
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: to make our incredible reality, all the way up to
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the largest portions of galaxies and superclusters. We love the
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: way it's all come together into this delicious and amazing
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and totally crazy universe, and we love sharing all of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: it with you because we think everybody deserves a delicious
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: bite of the universe. Do physicists like to celebrate discoveries
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: by bringing in like cookies and naming them things after
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the universe, like quais our crunch and so on. You know,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: at certain we often have cakes to celebrate things. You know,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: just finished a big piece of the detector, or wow,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: this multimillion dollar apparatus actually worked, or you know, we
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: started up the exil orator and didn't create a black hole. Yeah,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: let's have a cake. I think maybe it's just part
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: of the European culture, something the wheel in a cake
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: often for these celebrations. I like that. I like that
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: scientists are being motivated with cake, not to start a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: new black hole. It's good, keep the cake coming and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: joking aside. I think there's a real connection between our
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: senses and our knowledge of the universe, because philosophically, everything
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: that we know about the universe, while it might sit
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: in our heads as a sort of theoretical mathematical framework,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: it's all informed by things that we saw or tasted
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: or touched or smelled or nibbled on. Our window to
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the universe is through our senses, and often in science
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: we are using our photons and we are using our ears,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: but we do have more senses to detect the universe,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and we know that the universe out there is more
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: than we do sense. Yeah, it's like every sense we
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: have is a little porthole into the universe, and it
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: varies from person to person like some people have, you know,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: like different kind of senses, are different strengths with different senses,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: but each sense it's like one method of reaching out
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: to the universe and letting it kind of come into
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: your little private world that is your own brain. Yeah,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and we build this little mental model of the universe
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: in our brain that's informed by our senses. But we
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: also know that our senses are not a complete picture
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: of everything that's out there. I mean even just think
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: about the photons that you can see with your eyeballs,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: where you can only see the visible part of the spectrum, right,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: that's why we call it visible. But there are other
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: kinds of photons out there there, ultraviolet photons whose frequency
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: is too high for your eyeballs to see. There are
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: infrared photons whose wavelengths are too long for you to see.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: The universe would look very different if you could see those.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And we as humans have built technological eyeballs that allow
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: us to see out into space and look at the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: universe in these other wavelengths to James Web Space telescope.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Example is in the infrared those pictures you see of
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the James Webb. You couldn't see those with your eyeballs
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: if you went out into space and stared out in
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: those directions, because the photons that are hitting the James
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Web Space telescope would be ignored by your eyeball. So
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: all those pictures are colors shifted. They take the photons
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that land in the telescope and they change their frequencies
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: so that you can see. It's sort of like taking
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: music that only dogs can hear and shifting it into
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a lower spectrum so that the human ear can hear it.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I've been wanting to do that because I know my
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: dog is probably listening to some dog music and not
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: letting me in on it. But when you said the
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: thing about like, you know, we can't see u V,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: of course, that's like for for human beings, our eyes
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: are not naturally capable of seeing UV light, although there
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: are a lot of animals that can see UV light.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: In fact, humans actually seem more like the exception in
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: terms of not being able to see UV. But there
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: are rare cases in which humans can see u V
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and that is when people have eye surgery, and UV
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: light can actually trigger the rods and cones on the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: on our corneas, but it can't get through like the lens.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: And so if you have some kind of surgery where
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: there they are removing that sort of top layer of
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: your lens, it can actually get through your I hit
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the back of your eye. And people can actually see
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: UV light occasionally, like after getting eye surgery, because they'll
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: replace the lens with sort of like an artificial lens
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: that helps you focus on the image, but it is
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: different a different material than our natural biological lenses. And
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: so people can actually see UV and they describe it
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: as this like sort of purply light, but of course
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: they can only describe it using words that exist in
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the English language. That we're made by humans that can't
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: see UV lights, so it's very hard to know what
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: exactly they're seeing, but it is really fascinating. And there's
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: this theory that Monet had because he had a cataracts
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: later in life and he had a sort of rudimentary
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: cataract surgery that he actually saw UV light and that's
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: why some of his later paintings were so violent and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: vibrant with Purple's. Wow, incredible. There are people out there
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: who can see our invisible universe. I would love to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: be able to do that. I have this sense that
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: we are walking around almost blind, that there's so much
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: information out there about the universe that we are not
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: absorbing that doesn't inform our mental models, that leaves us
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: sort of ignorant. I recently read Ed Young's book about
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Animal Senses, and we recently had on the podcast Aria
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Kurshionbaum Zoologists talking about the different kinds of senses that
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: animals have. And I was amazed learning about, for example,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: fish that can directly sense electric fields and birds that
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: can sense magnetic fields with their eyeballs, And I wonder, like,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: what's that like to be able to say it's a
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: magnetic fields. What does it feel like? Yeah? I mean
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it's so interesting. So with fish that can sense electric fields,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: like one of my favorite ones is the elephant nose fish.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing looking fish because it has this long
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: protrusion on its lower jaw that looks like this really
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: long nose. It's not actually a nose, but um it's
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: called a Schnauzen organ, which I love. I just love
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: that name so much. Are you want to take that
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: it's real? I do sometimes wonder because I read these
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: papers and maybe someone just like decided I'm going to
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: start calling it a schnauz a organ starting now, put
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: it in their paper and hopes no one notices. Uh,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: but yeah, this fish is covered in electra receptors. But
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: not only that, it can generate a weak electric field
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: with its tail. With this special electric organ in its tail,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that's like these modified muscle cells, because when our muscle
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: cells act debate, they actually produces very weak electrical pulse,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: which actually some animals can use to detect your movement
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: by sensing your muscles. And when our muscle cells activate,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: there's that that electrical pulse. But this fish is organ
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: creates a stronger electrical pulse, and so it basically forms
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: this like field around itself of weak electric force. And
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: then when that weak electric force hits something like an
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: obstacle or prey or another fish, the schnells and organ
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and other electro receptors on its body receives sort of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: this bounce back information of like this electric field got disturbed.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: There's something over here. And if you think about it,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: it's similar to how bets will be able to sense
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: their environment through um a location where they're sending out
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: instead of an electric field, they're sending out sort of
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: a sonar sound field that bounces back to them and
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: they receive that. It's incredible because when it really comes
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: down to it, things have to bounce into us for
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: us to receive them. And so with humans, with our
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: sight and our smell, and I suppose also touch and hearing,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: things are actually bouncing into us, even though sometimes it
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't feel that way. But the difference is that typically
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: we don't produce a field, so we don't like unlike
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: these fish that produce an electric field or bats that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: produce sort of this sound wave, we typically don't do that.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Where we produce, we don't shoot out photons from our
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: eyes and have them bounce back at us. We just
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: received photons that bounce into our eyes. Some of us
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: are so brilliant that we do glow, actually, Katie, but
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I think that's really fascinating what you brought up about echolocation.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite bits in ed Young's book is
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: when he talks about dolphins that can echolocate. Not only,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: of course, can they navigate, but they can identify objects
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: in echolocation. And he talked about an experiment where dolphins
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: they're shown an object while they're mindfolded, so they can
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: only sense its shape using echolocation, and then the dolphins
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: can recognize the same object on a TV screen using
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: their eyeballs, which tells you that they have like a
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: mental model of this object that they're comparing across different senses. Right,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: It's like somebody gives you a shape and you're not
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: to touch it, and then later you have to identify
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: it just by looking at them. That gives me a
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: little bit of a window and like what it's like
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: to be a dolphin, which is really to me the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: philosophically fascinating question of what it's like to have these
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: other senses, to be able to see the universe in
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: other terms, because so much of what we do in
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: physics is explain the unknown in terms of the known,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: just as you were saying describing the ultra violet in
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: terms of what you do know words for like violet. Right,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: But if we had other senses, if we we had
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: evolved with the ability to detect other kinds of particles
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: neutrinos or dark matter or something else. We might have
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a whole different experience of living in this universe and
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: vocabulary for explaining it and exploring it. It might be
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: uch easier to talk about the nature of the universe
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: if we only had evolved one or two more senses. Dangity.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So biology is the reason physics is hard. That's my
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: main point. I apologize, I guess, yeah, no, it is.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: It is really interesting to think about how different the
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: human experience would be if we did have different senses,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: which could have been very possible given how different the
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: senses are of so many different animals, even ones close
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: to us, like dogs, who are very smell based, but
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: they're they're like our buddies, there are friends, and so
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: we have this sense of like we're very emotionally are
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: are kind of emotional connection to dogs. We can really
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: relate to them, but they have this whole kind of
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: hidden communication of smells that goes far far beyond our ability,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Like we can smell things, but it's so far beyond
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: our ability to distinguish smells. It's sort of like, you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the difference UH envisioned between like an aunt and like
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: a you know, an eagle, and so we'd love to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: understand what it's like to be an aunt or an
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: eagle or a dog. But beyond that, we also wonder
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: what would we like to see the universe in terms
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: of other particles, not just photons and not just phonons,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: not just touching stuff, but to see some of the
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: truly invisible parts of the universe. And we know from
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: our particle physics experiments that there are other particles out
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: there flowing through us and over us right now, rich
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: with information about the universe. We're talking about the almost
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: invisible particle, the neutrino. What would it be like to
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: have a neutrino schnauzen an organ which could detect neutrinos?
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: And I swear I didn't make that up, you know,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that's in the literature. No, I totally just made that.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: From what I know about languages, is like in Italian,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: anything with eno usually means like small, like bambino is
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: like a baby, and you know, newts or like seems
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: to come from neutral. So the name neutrino, to my
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: ears and to my brain means a teeny tiny neutral thing. Yeah,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: that's exactly right. It was actually named by an Italian,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: of course, for it was actually discovered, it was hypothesized
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: and named to be a tiny, little neutral particle. And
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: so today on the podcast, we're gonna be talking about
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: whether we can use those particles to learn more about
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the universe and to actually talk to each other. So
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: on the episode today we'll be asking the question can
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: you communicate with new trinos? And is this new plan
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: going to cost be more money than T mobile? That's right,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: you're now going to have something else to pay your
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: new trino bill every single month. Fortunately, new trinos are everywhere.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: They surround us. They're produced in the Sun. There are
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a hundred billion neutrinos passing through every square centimeter of
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth every second, So that's a
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: hundred billion, two hundred billion, eight more seconds, and there's
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a trillion neutrinos that have passed through your fingernail. And
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: that just gives you a sense of the scale of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: how much we do not see about the universe, how
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: many ways the universe can do stuff that we don't
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: participate in. Because for our ancestors, it just was not
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: an evolutionary advantage to build internal neutrino detectors. And you
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: might think, well, it's too difficult, it's too subtle a
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: thing for evolution to master. But remember that evolution has
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: figured out how to sense the Earth's magnetic field using
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: chemical reactions in the eyeballs of birds, or how the
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: chemistry happens depends on the external magnetic field. So evolution,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: if there's an advantage, is capable of developing very very
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: sensitive detectors to all sorts of weird physical phenomena. I mean,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: even our own eyeballs. The fact we can see we
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: can maybe take for granted. But the fact we can
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: have such a sharp image from being able to have
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a photon hit a protein structure and change its shape
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: that sends a signal to a nerve is incredible. I mean,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: it's that to me. If some alien that had no
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: eyeballs and no vision, like was told that you could
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: sense the world and photons hitting a protein, they'd go like, no,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that's absurd. Yeah. We talked about that in a really
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: fun episode about how the human eye is sensitive to
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: individual photons and not just that you can respond really quickly.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: These little protein machines change configuration when a photon hits
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: them and then they switch back and they're ready for
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: another photon like very soon afterwards, so that not only
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: can you see the world if it's very dim, you
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: can also see very fast moving things. It's a really
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: an incredible piece of technology. So kudos to biology and evolution.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And maybe in another billion years are neutrino Schnelzen's will evolve,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: so we can smell neutrinos in the universe. One can
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: only hope. But until then it's the physicists who are
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: in the lead, because we have detected the existence of
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: these ghostly particles and we have studied them, and they're
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: a fascinating window into the nature of reality because these
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: particles are produced everywhere in the universe, but they hardly
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: ever interact, but they do sort of hold a place
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: in the periodic table of the fundamental particles, the basic
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: organizing system of the universe as we know. It's so
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: far and so now that physics has revealed to us
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the existence of these other particles, naturally the engineers are
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: wondering what are they good for? Can we do something
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: with them? Is it possible to do something with neutrinos
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: that we couldn't do with photons, and so I was
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: wondering if people thought it was possible to use new
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: trinos to communicate, for example, to stream movies while you're
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: deep underground. Perhaps, so I went out there into the
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Internet and tapped our cadre of volunteers who answer these
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: random questions without a chance to prepare, to give you
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a sense for what other people out there are thinking
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: about these questions. And if you'd like to participate for
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: a future episode, please don't be shy. Everybody's welcome. Just
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: right to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: com and I'll set you up. So before you hear
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: these answers, think for a second, what do you think
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: is it possible to communicate with new tri trinos. Here's
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: what everybody had to say. It is possible to send
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: messages with neutrinos. Even saw a movie that everybody was
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: trying to send messages to stock market the fastest possible.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: At the end of the movie that was this is
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: what they this guy was thinking about, to send messages
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: with neotrinos that would go through the curvature of Earth.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: You just go and pass by it and this will
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: get you the fastest message ever from point to point.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: So I think some future tech could develop that could
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: allow us to communicate with neutrinos. But I do remember
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: from a past episode that you mentioned a neutrino could
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: pass through a mile or a light year long break
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: of lead and only half interactions, so even if you
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: could communicate, you might not want to stream with it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I don't even remember what neutrinos are from college or
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: your podcast, so I have no idea. Well, since neutrinos
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: don't interact with other types of matter, I don't think
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: you can use them for communicycation because I think the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: reason why electromagnetic waves can carry and um as supposed
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: to transmit information is that because they can interact with
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know, antennae and stuff. I'm gonna say we
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: can't communicate with neutrinos just based on I guess what
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I would define communication itself as, which I think applies
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: sentience of some kind, like like a knowing exchange of
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: information between at least two different beings. And I don't
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: really see neutrinos a sentience, so I don't really see
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: how they can communicate with us. I'm trying to think
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: of what movie the first respondent mentioned that they saw
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: a movie where someone wanted to send messages as fast
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: as possible. I guess using neutrinos. Yeah, it's interesting because
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: if you want to send messages as fast as possible,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: obviously the speed of light is as fast as possible,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: and photons travel at the speed of light, so you know,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: fiber optics are pretty good. Maybe they have the impression
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: that neutrinos could somehow travel faster than the speed of light,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: or maybe like because neutrinos can go through stuff, right.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Neutrinos can, in fact and go through a lot of
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: mostly because the universe is transparent to them. They don't
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: really interact with this stuff, so they just like fly
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: through it. So maybe even if they're not as fast
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: as the speed of light, they can get through things better,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: so like they won't be blocked by things until you
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: receive them. Oh, that's a good point. If you want
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: to send a message from here to Beijing, for example,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: you could send it through the Earth rather than having
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: to go along the surface of the Earth. That would
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: save you a few nano seconds. Your email arrives first
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: to Beijing before everybody else, your new tree mail. I
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: guess neutron mail. Wasn't that something or was that proton
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, proton mail is still a thing.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's for the super security conscious people. Yeah,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: well they should do neutrino mail. I'd sign up for that.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: You have a lot of emails. You just can't see them.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: You just can't see them so like normal email. So
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: neutrinos are teeny tiny neutral particles that can sort of
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: like like they seem so ethereal. I need a little
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: more help sort of understanding something that's essentially like a
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: tiny ghost. It's really fun to think about neutrinos. They're
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite particles. Let's start with this description
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: used of tiny. What do we mean when we say
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: neutrinos are tiny? Are they like smaller than other particles?
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: If you put a neutrino next to an electron, like
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: which one would be smaller. We don't really have a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: sense for the size of these particles, if you'd like
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to think about them as like tiny little balls of stuff.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: In our theory, we treat them all as point particles.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Corks and electrons and neutrinos really have essentially zero volume
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: in our theory. That's not because we know they have
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: zero volume. We just treat them that way because we
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: don't know what's inside. Realistically, it's probably the case that
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: all of these particles are made of something even smaller
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that we just can't see yet. But it's whatever it is,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: it's so small that we can treat them as if
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: they have no size. But the neutrino is tiny compared
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to the electron and the other particles in sort of
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: another way, not in literal volume, but in mass. The
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: mass these neutrinos is something just above zero. We know
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: it's not zero, but we also know it's very very small.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: There are many orders of magnitude less massive than the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: electron and the corks, so in that sense they are tiny. Wow,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And electrons and corks are pretty tiny as well. So
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: at a certain point of tininess, it's hard for me
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: to even conceive of the tininess of a thing As
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: it gets smaller and smaller. It's kind of like when
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: you try to think of infinity. It's really hard. It's
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: just like when you try to think of something getting
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: so tiny, my brain can't process it well. You can
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: use Italian as a bridge. There. You can say you
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: have tiny and then you have tiny no, or you
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: do Spanish right tinito or or whatever piccolino. People also
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: talk about neutrinos as tiny because they can go through matter,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and I think people have the impression that neutrinos sort
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: of like wiggle their way through the gaps in stuff.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Like if you have a huge sheet of lead, a
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: neutrino can pass right through it, and you might wonder, like,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: how does it get through the lead? Is it's so
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: small that it can like find its way through the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: holes in the lattice? Well, its size there again isn't
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: helping it because technically it's just as small as an electron.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: But if you shot an electron at a wall of lead,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the electron would interact with all the other particles there.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So what happens, For example, when you push against the wall,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: why doesn't your hand go through it. It's not because
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the particles in your hand are too big to get
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: through the wall. It's because the particles in the wall
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: are pushing back against the particles in your hand. The
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: particles in the wall feel the electromagnetic force, and so
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: does your hand. But the neutrino doesn't. It has zero charge.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: That's why it's neutral. So when it hits the wall,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: it ignores the electrons and it ignores the corks. It
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't interact with them using electromagnetism at all. So it's
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: sort of like the way glass is transparent to some photons,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: because those photons don't interact with the atoms in the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: glass because they don't have the right energy level, so
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: they can't interact, and so they just fly right through.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I sometimes I want to be like a neutrino when
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I'm just not really in a good mood and I'm
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: walking through town and like, I love people and I
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: love to say hi to people, but there are days,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: you know, there are days where I want to be
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: a little neutrino just passing through and not interacting with anyone.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And I think that's an interesting handle on this question
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of like what's really out there in the world. You
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: use mostly photons and your sense of touch to get
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: a sense of what's out there, but you're really building
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: a picture of the world that depends on the force
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: that you were talking about electromagnetism. Mostly, if you were
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: to explore the universe like a neutrino that didn't sense that,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: then all that stuff would be invisible to you, and
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: you would have a very different sense of like what
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: is out there in the universe. Neutrinos can interact with stuff,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: they're not completely sterile or inert, but they only interact
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: via the weak force, which is much much weaker than
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: all the other forces. Okay, so what is a weak
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: force then? Right? So we have four fundamental forces in
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the universe that we're aware of. Right, there's the strong force.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Every particle that has what we call color, like corks
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and gluons, interact with the strong force. This is what
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: holds the nucleus together. And electrons and photons don't have
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the strong force. They don't have color. So not every
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: particle out there feels this force. And it's really interesting
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: to me that in our sort of table of particles,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: some of them feel some forces and some of them
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: just don't. And we don't know why. Are like, why
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't the electron feel the strong force? We don't know,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: it just doesn't. Why do we use the term color
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: to describe that the particles that do have the strong
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: force because we like confusing people by reusing words that
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: have other meanings. No, it's an analogy. It's because the
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: strong force is very different from the other forces in
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: that it has three kinds of charges instead of two.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Electromagnetism has positive and negative. The strong force has three
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: kinds of charges, and if you combine them all together
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you get something neutral. And that reminds people sort of
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: how you can combine three different colors to get white.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: And so the sort of mathematical structure of the charges
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: of the strong force is sort of similar to the
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: way we think about color, and so that's what we
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: do in physics a lot. If you're like, oh, this
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: reminds us of this other thing. It's not perfect and
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Orge wouldn't be happy with it, but we're going to
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: use this word anyway. Well, I'm not Orges, but I'm
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: also not happy with it. So here we are. So
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: that was the strong force and electromagnetism. Only things that
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: have electric charge feel electromagnetism. There's sort of a chicken
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: and egg thing, right, We might say, like, why do
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: some particles have charged to feel electromagnetism. That's sort of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: what charge is. We call things charged if they feel electromagnetism.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: If they don't feel it, we call them not charged.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: So in one sense, having charged just means you feel
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic fields and not having charge means you don't. It's
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: not like the same kinds of particles will very about
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: whether they have electromagnetism. It's always specific particles that either
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: do or don't. All electrons have electromagnetism, right, Yes, all
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: electrons have the same charge, which is really interesting and
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: might wonder like why are there not different kinds of electrons,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: And yeah, we don't know. We think they're all just
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: different ripples in the same quantum field for electrons, so
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: in some sense they're all like part of the same
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: universe spanning electron. But there are other particles like neutrons
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and photons that don't have electric charge, so they sort
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: of see the universe differently. And neutrinos are fascinating because
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: they don't have the strong force, so they don't have color,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: they don't interact with gluons. They also don't have electric charge,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: so they don't interact with the electromagnetic force. They only
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: have the weakest of all the forces. Everything else they
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: just idore. And the weak force is something that like
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: all particles kind of have, but it's not as well understood,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: like what is actually going on. Yes, the weak force
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: is fascinating because it's the only force we know of
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: that every single particle in the universe feels, except maybe
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: dark matter. We don't know if dark matter is a
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: particle and what it is exactly, and we don't think
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: it actually feels the weak force. But all the particles
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: that we know about that we've discovered, the w z,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the quarks, the electro on, all of those feel the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: weak force, and so it seems like really important. It's
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: like very universal, but it's also super duper weak. It's
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: like ten thousand times weaker than electromagnetism. So interesting. And
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: that's not the Vanderwals force. That's that's weak of electromagnetism.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Or is Vanderwals force actual weak force? I think the
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Vanderwall's force is just a manifestation of electromagnetism in certain arrangements.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: But hey, you know that's chemistry, So we need to
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: get a chemical expert in here. This isn't a chemistry podcast,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: all right, Well, we want to dive more into the
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: mysteries of the neutrinos and avoid talking about chemistry. But
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. No chemistry allowed. He
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: heard it here first, folks. All right, we're back and
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: we're talking about the mysteries of the universe and specifically,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and we are wondering about neutrinos and if we can
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: use them to see the universe in a different way
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and to build new technology to use them to talk
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: to other humans. So we've talked about how neutrinos they
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: basically can just move through the universe without interruption, not
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: because like they can wiggle through the gaps and say
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: atoms or something, but because they simply do not interact
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: with a lot of the forces in the universe, so
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: they only have the weak force effect on them, which
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I guess, based on its name, I'm going to guess
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: it's not too strong. And so you're putting a lot
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: of faith there in physicist ability to name things accurately.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: You guys did name like a force color uh, without
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: it actually being about being colorful, but some strange you're
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: just trying to confuse us at this point. Yeah, Well,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I think the thing to take away about this question
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: of neutrinos is in the weak force is that what's
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: opaque and what's transparent in the universe is not universal.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: It's not like you have some blob of stuff, and
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: every particle is going to see it as opaque or
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: every particle is going to pass right through it without interacting.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: It depends on the particle and it depends on the energy.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Like when we look out into the universe, even with photons,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: we can see different things in the infrared and in
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the ultra violet because some stuff out there will block
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: photons only of certain energies, so really long wavelength is better,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: and like seeing through dust clouds which would otherwise block things,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: our atmosphere mostly blocks ultra violet, so if you want
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: to UV telescope, it's got to be out there in
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: space because our atmosphere is like a solid wall for
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: ultraviolet photons. So that shows you how even the same
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: particle of different energies will see different objects as transparent
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: meaning they can fly through it, or opaque meaning they're
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: blocked and they interact. So it's really microphysically speaking all
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: about the interactions. And for neutrinos they hardly interact with anything,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: so almost the entire universe is transparent to them. You
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: say they hardily interact with anything, is the only interactions
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: through this very weak force are there? Like specific situations
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: in which the neutrino will actually react to something. It's
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: just through the weak force. And in order for a
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: neutrino to interact, they have to encounter another particle which
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: feels the weak force. Now, every particle does, but imagine
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: you have a sheet of matter in front of you
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and a neutrino is approaching an electron, for example. Is
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: a chance of the neutrino interacting with that electron, but
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: it's really really small. So it's like the universe rolls
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: to die, but it's like a ninety seven million sided
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: die and only one number results in a hit. So
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: how many electronics do you have to go by before
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: on average, you're gonna hit one like million. That's why
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: neutrinos can go through like a light year thick wall
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: of lead and have a fifty percent chance of interacting,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: which means half of them go through and ignore it completely.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Like a light year of lead is not a small
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: amount of material to pass through, right now, that seems
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: a pretty yeah. So these are really the most introverted
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: particles in the universe. Absolutely they are, but there are
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of them out there right They're produced in
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the sun. They are a byproduct of fusion, an enormous
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: amount of the energy produced by the Sun comes out
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: not in photons but in new trinos, and we just
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: mostly ignore it, just like flies right by us. It's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing that makes me wonder why evolution
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: didn't pick up on it, because you know, it took
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: evolution like how many years, like a billion years to
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: figure out how to eat photons, how to grab all
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: this energy which was around, not just to see them, right,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: eyeballs are different from photosynthesis, to capture this energy. Well,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: there's also a huge amount of energy in new trinos.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Imagine if you could eat new trinos, you just like
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: walk around all day and get energy without doing anything.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: You could take naps and fuel up, right, It's like
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: charging your batteries. Yeah, I mean it's It is a
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: funny thing about evolution because it's like evolution doesn't really
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: have a plan. It can't think in these clever ways
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: like an engineer might think we should do something thing
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: like this because it's a good idea. Here's an available
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: resource for us to exploit, whereas evolution just blunders its
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: way into managing to work out. So like if if
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: something some little protein strand manages to survive and copy itself.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: There it is. That's evolution, and that's about it. I
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: get the point that I can't expect the universe to
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: be sitting at its drawing table and thinking what's the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: way that we could figure out to detect neutrinos or
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: to capture their energy. But it just feels like, if
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: there's so much energy out there that's available, if some
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: chemical reaction turns out to be sensitive to it in
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: some subtle way, there'll just be a river of energy
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: that you could tap into. And it's incredible to me
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: that in billions of years, nothing on Earth has evolved
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the ability to capture or interact with neutrinos. Yeah, I mean,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I guess how do we even know that's true? That
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: nothing can detect or use the energy from neutrinos? How
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: do we even detect neutrinos using scientific instruments? Hey, that's
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: a great point. You're right. There could be micro ups
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: out there right now gobbling neutrinos and we don't even
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: know about it. We should have invited them on the
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: podcast to speak up. I mean, we try to always
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: talk about both sides of every issue. No jokes aside
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: that is a really good point, but no spin zone
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: except for the up or down spin um. But you're right,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and it's tricky, right, It's not easy to see neutrinos.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Neutrinos were theorized. The idea for them came about in
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the first half of last century because we saw beta decay,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: we saw radioactive decay, and the energy didn't add up.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: There was like more energy and momentum in the initial
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: state and then in the final state, and we thought
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: that those things were conserved. And so people thought, well,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: either energy and momentum isn't conserved in the universe, which
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: would be weird, or there's something out there, something invisible,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: something little and neutral, that's carrying away this momentum. So
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: it was named before we actually saw it, and then
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: it was so difficult to see because they are so
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: shy that it took decades for people to develop the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: detection technologies to see neutrinos. The basic principle there is
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: to get a huge which vat of some kind of
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: liquid and put it underground so it's shielded so you
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: don't think anything else is going to bump into that liquid.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: And you choose a kind of liquid so that if
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: a neutrino bumps into one of your electrons, it makes
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: like a little flash of light. And then you put
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: an underground for like years, and you count the number
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: of flashes that you see, and you figure out how
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: many flashes you can explain by other stuff like radioactive
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: decay in the rock nearby, or muans that happen to
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: have penetrated, and you convince yourself that you've seen more
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: than can be explained through other sources. And that was
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: basically the discovery of the neutrino. But it took building
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: enormous detectors, like many tons of weird liquid underground, not
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing you expect, you know, some critter
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: crawling along a leaf to be able to develop I
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: know some other weird liquids that you need to use
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: to be able to draw introverted particles out of their shells.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: But that is really interesting. So we know that they exist,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: or at least we guess that they exist due to
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: how they represent at a sort of mathematical conundrum. And
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: then we were able to detect them using these just
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: like a law of large numbers. I guess some of
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: these new trinos are by you know, a very low
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: chance of ever, you know, sort of bonking into anything
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: with the weak force. But then they do occasionally, and
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: so we see that. So I guess how do we
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: go from there to actually being able to reliably detect
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: these because being able to like or or being able
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: to communicate with them. Because it's one thing to be
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: able to buy chance once in a while catch one
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: that bumps into these vats of liquid, and it's an
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: entirely other thing to be able to reliably sort of
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: have this like stream of information that comes from new trinos. Yeah,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: and if folks are interested in more details about how
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the new Trino was discovered, is actually Professor's here at
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: you see Irvine who won the Nobel Prize for it
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a few decades ago. And so we have a whole
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: episode about how the new trino was discovered and the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: clever techniques that were used to see them. So go
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: check that out. But your question is a good one,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: is that how do we actually use this for communication?
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Remember that all communication microphysically is about interactions. It's about particles.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Like you were saying earlier, when you see something, you're
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: receiving particles in your eyeball. When you hear something. You're
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: receiving sound waves, which are just pressure waves in the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic structure of the air. Right, it's air molecules bumping
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: into other air molecules and using their electromagnetic interaction to
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: push on each other. But some people could also think
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: about those just as sound waves, which we sometimes call phonons,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: which you can think of a sort of a quasi particle.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, when you send an email to your
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: friend in China, for example, that gets transmitted digitally, right,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: those are electrical pulses, So in the end, those are
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: also photons. So every kind of communication involves particles, right,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: involves communicating somehow by sending information via particles. And that
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: makes you wonder, now you've discovered a new kind of
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: particle in the world, a new trino that has different
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: capacities and different weaknesses and strengths and other particles, whether
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: it's possible to also send information using this new kind
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: of particle, right, because the like basically for communication, you
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: need something to receive that particle, and once it receives it,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: you need to be able to process that, causing a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: chain reaction in that receptor to like a nerve or two.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: If it's a non biological thing to something that will
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: record it. So if we think about it, those big
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: vats of fluid deep underground, or like a very very rudimentary,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: huge eyeballs that can only detect things in a very
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: simple way, which is like when you actually look at
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: some of our the earlier versions of eyeballs in our
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: more flat worm esk ancestors, it really is like these
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: kinds of things of like, oh, is it there or
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: isn't it there? Did a photon bond into it or
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: didn't it and give us sort of like that very
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: limited amount of information. But yeah, in order for it
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: to actually to be able to communicate better with these neutrinos,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: we need to have more interactions. I would think, Yeah,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: you're right, these vats of liquid underground are basically primitive
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: engineered neutrin no schnauzen. Right, there are a technological version
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: of what biology has so far as we think, maybe
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: failed to develop. And you're right that if you want
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: to send complicated information, you need to be able to
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: detect these things reliably. But fundamentally, the underlying principle is
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: use particles to communicate, and that's the basic building block
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: of it. From there you can build a more complicated things.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Right if you and your friend are using flashlights to
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: flash to each other across the street when your little kids,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you can start out just flashing your flashlights and say look,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I'm here, and then you can develop some code like
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: this kind of flash means this, and that kind of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: flash means that, And then you can develop some alphabet
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: from which you can make almost any kind of communication.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, basically, from there you're inventing the Internet.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Now go back and do it. At the heart of
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: it all is the ability to send and receive particles,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: and so that's sort of the fundamental bit. And listeners
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: out there who are interested in quantum mechanics might be wondering,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: what about quantum entanglement. Isn't it possible to send information
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: using quantum entanglement when you collapse one particle and one
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: part of the universe which collapses another particle somewhere else
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: without sending particles in between. Check out our podcast episode
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: about quantum entanglement and communication. It is possible to entangle
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: particles that are very very far from each other, like
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: maybe if I have an electron and Katie has an electron,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: we can create them in such a way that we
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: know there's spins have to be the opposite. So if
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I look at my electron, I can see, oh, it's
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: spin up. That means Katie's must be spinned down. Or
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: if Katie looks at her electron and says hers, the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: spin up means mine must be spinned down. And there's
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: a weird thing that happens there, which is my electron
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: could be up or down and Katie's could be up
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: or down. And as soon as one of us looks
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: at ours, the other one's collapses. And that happens instantaneously
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: across space. But it can't be used to send any information.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I can't control my electron to make it spin down
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: so to make Katie spin up. And Katie can't even
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: tell whether I've collapsed my electron or not. All she
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: can do is look at hers and see is it
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: up or down? And I can do the same. So
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: kartum entanglement it feels like a way to get around
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: this and send information without sending particles. But actually you
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: can't can't send any information using quantum entanglement. Unfortunately, I see,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: because there's no way to like know that you have
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: like a basketfull of up particles, and then as soon
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: as you look at the entangled particle to see what
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: kind it is, then it's already collapsed the wavelength of
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: the other one, and so there's no no way to
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: then like communicate with the other person with it. I
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: can't change the states of your particles from up or down.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I can make your particles collapse, but there's no way
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: for you to know that I've made your particles collapse.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: When you look at your particle, you don't know if
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: has already been collapsed or if you are collapsing. It unfortunate.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: A lot of folks writing with that idea, they're like,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: what if I have a bunch of particles here, and
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: you have a bunch of particles there, and I collapse, mind,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: and you can see that they're collapsed, and that we
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: can use that at the basis for communication. But there's
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: a flaw there because if I collapse my particle, you
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: can't tell that yours has also been collapsed, even though
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: we think it has been. So it's very tantalizing. But
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: back to neutrinos, you might also wonder, like why would
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: we want to use neutrinos to communicate like photons are
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: pretty good, right, Well, that listener who commented about sending
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: things faster than light is making a good point, because
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: you know, photons are blocked by things. If you want
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: to communicate with China, you do need to go mostly
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: along the surface of the Earth, not through it, whereas
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: neutrinos can go through other kinds of stuff, right. And
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: this is also useful to astronomers because it allows us
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: to see things in the universe that would otherwise be
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: blocked the way we use infrared light to see through
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: dust clouds. Neutrinos can get through stuff which otherwise is
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: totally opaque to all photons, and so being able to
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: see the universe in neutrinos it's like another window into
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the universe. You can see things you otherwise couldn't. One
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: example is that we can see the inside of supernovas.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Supernovas the cataclysmic death of stars. Right, things explode and
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: it's very furious, and it sends out an enormous amount
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: of light. It actually sends out more energy in neutrinos
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: than in photons, and the neutrinos see the star that's
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: exploding as transparent, so neutrinos from the heart of the
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: supernova just fly right out and come to Earth and
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: we can detect them, whereas photons created at the heart
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: of the supernova get reabsorbed by all that other stuff
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: that's part of the supernova exploding, so they can sort
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: of like X ray supernovas to see stuff. So we're
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: actually already using neutrinos to communicate or at least receive
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: information from the universe. Yeah, the universe is using neutrinos
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: to communicate with us at least right it's sending those
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: messages all the time in terms of neutrinos, and we've
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: seen supernovas with neutrinos. You can also see the Sun
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: in new trinos. You should google this. It's super cool.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: You can see the Sun through the Earth. This experiment
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: in Japan's Supercamioconda is another one of these huge vats
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: of liquid. They can see neutrinos and when the Sun
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: is on the other side of the Earth, when it's
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the middle of the night in Japan, they can see
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: neutrinos that come through and interact with the Earth and
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: then hit their detector, so they can see the Sun
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: is still there even though it's nighttime, they can like
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: check to make sure the Sun has not exploded. So
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: that would be a useful technology for birds for when
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: you throw a blanket over their cage, you're like, up,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Sun's gone, must be nighttime. And you know, we're also
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: wondering what's out there in the universe, and we're looking
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: for alien life, for example, mostly in terms of electromagnetic radiation.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: We should also be aware that maybe aliens like to
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: speak in neutrino Maybe they're sending us weird new trino
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: pulses and they're screaming at us, but we just haven't
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: been paying attention. So it's definitely something worth listening to.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Would we know how to send out neutrinos like from
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: our like, say we wanted to send aliens a message,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Could we like shoot out some new trinos or is
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: that something only the Sun has kind of gotten down
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: to a science. That's a great question, and let's dig
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: into whether we can produce messages using new trinos and
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: then read them back. But first let's take another quick break. Okay,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to check for aliens during the break. All Right,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: we're back, and we're wondering if Katie got any new
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: treemail about aliens or from aliens. Yes, yeah, I got
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: a new treat mail that said, great offer. Just send
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: money the horsehead nebula and we will make a transfer
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: to your bank account. And so I've done it. Okay,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: you built a huge catapult, for example, and launched gold
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: coins in datospace, just throwing dollars and coins up at
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: the air, hoping the alien AMers got it. Well, your
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: beams of gold coins are one thing. But on this
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: podcast today, we're talking about creating beams of neutrinos and
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: using that to pass information. You asked a great question
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: just before the break, whether we humanity has the technology
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: to create neutrino beams and use that to encode information.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: The answer is yes, actually we can. We know how
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: to build beams of neutrinos. Yeah, gasps, because like you
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: said earlier, that neutrinos are made in the sun, so
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: it seems like it would be kind of an energy
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: intense process, right, Yeah, if you wanted to rebuild the
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: sun and reverse engineer the sun, that's tricky, and people
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: are doing that right, that's called fusion. But there are
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: other ways to make neutrinos. We do them at particle
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: colliders of course, and so for me National Accelerator Lab,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: which used to be the host of the largest energy
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: collider in the world, the Tevatron, before it got outpaced
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: by the large Hadron collider, but has a place in
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: my heart because it's where I did my pH d thesis.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It's not been converted mostly into a neutrino facility. They
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: build the most intense neutrino beams in the world. And
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: you might wonder like, well, how do you make neutrinos? Well,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: like everything else, we start with the building blocks we have.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: So in this case protons, we shoot them up to
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: really really high energies and we just smash them into rock. Basically,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: seems like you're answered to everything. Particle physicists just just like,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: how do we detect these particles? How do we make particles?
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: We just smash them? Hey, you know, when all you
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: have is a hammer, everything is a nail. And so
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: we try to solve every problem with a particle accelerator.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: And so we smash protons into a carbon target more specifically,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: and that creates a huge spray. So protons are these
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: bound little objects of quarks which have the strong interaction
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: and they smash into carbon, which is also chock full
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: of protons and neutrons. And there's protons and neutrons smash
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: into each other and break open those strong forced bonds
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: and then reform as all sorts of other weird exotic
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: particles made out of those corks, things like pions and chaons.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: These are just rearrangements of the corks that were once
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: inside the protons and neutrons into other higher energy configurations.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: So pions, for example, are like an upcork and an
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: anti upcork. Kons are also two corks, but they sometimes
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: contain a strange cork. And the cool thing about kaons
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: and pions and all this other stuff that's produced is
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: that they are not stable. They decay because they're like
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: higher energy, higher mass, and when they decay they often
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: produce neutrinos. Yeah, and so you didn't have any neutrinos
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: to start with, but you smashed stuff together in outcome neutrinos.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: It's part of this amazing like alchemy that is particle physics. Right.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: You don't need to have the basic ingredients of it.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: You just need to have energy, create the right interactions,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and then sometimes the thing you want to fly out.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: So like if I'm trying to give the talk to
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: a teenage neutrino, I would say, like when a particle decays, uh,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: and they love each other very much. When a particle
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: has had a long, rich life about you know, tending
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the minus six seconds and it's ready to move on,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: then yes, it decays and other stuff, including sometimes a neutrino.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: And so most of the stuff that comes out is
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: this big explosion of stuff we don't want, right It's
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: pions and cans and protons and all sorts of crap
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: that we're not interested in. And so what we do
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: is we try to filter it out. We use magnets
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: to bend any charge particles out of the way that
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: separates the charged and the neutral stuff. We can just
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: send all the charge particles into the rock, for example,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: to absorb it. It's like Looney Tunes like whiley Coyote
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: like drawing a fake road on a on a cliff
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: or something, and although Roadrunner always runs through it, which
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: that Looney Tunes logic of like road Runner can like
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: go pass right through that fake painting of a road,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: whereas while E Coyote smashes into it. That seems like,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: exactly what these physicists are doing. Yeah, exactly. The road
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: runner passes right through everything. Yeah, and the next age
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: is exactly that is to send the neutral part of
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the beam also into rock, and they pass it through
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: two hundred and forty of rock, so that everything else
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: that's neutral that didn't get filtered out by the magnets
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: does get absorbed by the rock because everything else has
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: long interactions or even though it's neutral, like a neutron,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: its components might have electromagnetic interactions, right, and so everything
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: else eventually gets absorbed by the rock except for the neutrinos.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: So you create this spray which is mostly not neutrinos,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: and you filter everything else out and then you get
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: a neutrino beam. So this is just an extremely expensive
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: and huge calendar. But instead of the method of action
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: being the little gaps and the calendar, it's like the
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: types of forces that these particles would interact with, and
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: neutrinos just are like I don't know, I don't care. Yeah,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: you're shielding it from everything else except from the neutrinos,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: and then only the neutrinos fly out. And so you
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: started out with a beam of protons in one direction,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: you end up with a beam of neutrinos. So have
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: we gotten to the point where we can shoot out
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: a beam of neutrinos and then have like a technological
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: receptor organ that then these neutrinos hit and then we
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: detect them. Yeah, so we know how to build new
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: no detectors, various technologies for that supercomioconda in Japan, for example,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: here at Fermulab, they have the Minerva detector, which uses
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: scintillating strips to detect charged particles. And the hope is
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: that a neutrino will bounce into an electron and produce
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: a muon and so this is something that happens very
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: very rarely, but if you have an intense enough beam
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: of neutrinos, it will happen. And so the ideas you
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: can produce neutrinos and then you can also detect them.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: So it seems like you know the basic components of communication,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: because it seems a little bit like a catch twenty
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: two where it's like you the way you filter out
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: all particles except neutrinos is that you're relying on the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: fact that neutrinos really don't interact with much but when
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: you have the receptor for the neutrinos, you're hoping that
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: there's that very small chance that they do actually have
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: that weak force interaction. And so is it a difference
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: in the matter that we're using in the receptor, like
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: is there something different about that fluid, or is it
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: that it's just relying basically on statistics that if you
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: shoot enough of these neutrinos outwards, there are enough of
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: them that are going to make it through this basically
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: neutrino gun, and then there's enough chance that at least
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: some of them are going to hit into the receptor. Yeah,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: you're exactly right, it's the second one. It's statistics. So
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: we think that neutrinos are also interacting in the rock.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: They're passing through hundreds of meters of rock, and some
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: of them are interacting. So imagine like a really bright
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: beam of neutrinos it's passing through the rock and a
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: very tiny fraction that are interacting in the rock. By
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: the time you get to our detector that we hope
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: it also interacts. Inside the detector, we can see those.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: The key is that nothing else is going to survive.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: So you have this intense beam of neutrinos, which mostly
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: ignores the rock, but as a few interactions, and then
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: we capture a few of those interactions in our detector,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: but nothing else can get there. So we're pretty sure
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: when we see something in our detector that it's only
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: because of the neutrinos. So have we ever sent a
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: message with neutrinos? So we I've done it. And it's
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: astonishingly inefficient because you know, we can't see most of
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: the neutrinos. Like, if you send twenty two trillion protons
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: into this beam, then on average you see point eight
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: neutrinos with the detector, right, So twenty two trillion protons
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: make less than one neutrino on average that we see.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Isn't that always the start of a new technology? Is
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: just it's astonishingly inefficient. Yeah, So they actually did this test.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: They were like, well, that's interesting. I wonder if we
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: could use this to send information. The ideas they can
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: like turn the beam on and turn the beam off.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Turn the beam on, turn the beam off, and can
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: you detect that with the detector. Can you tell that
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: somebody upstream is changing the beam And if so, then
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: that's the basis for communication. It's just like two kids
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: with flashlights across the street. Right from there, you can
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: build up something more complicated, but the fundamental basics is
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: can you flip a switch when you're creating the beam
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: and detect that switch being flipped when you're looking at
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: the beam downstream? But you sing that we've done that, right,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: They have done this exactly. The Minerva detector did this
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: experiment a few years ago and they sent a message.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: They wrote the word neutrino in askey code. So it
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: takes two bits zeros and one to send this piece
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: of information, and it took them six minutes to send
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: these bits through two hundred and fifty meters of Earth
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: over a one kilometer distance, and so they've done it.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Like you can look up the data and you can
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: see that the new Trino detector registered a lot more
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: neutrinos when the beam was on than when it wasn't on,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: And so they can use that to define a threshold
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: like oh, this is a one, this is a zero,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: and they were able to do it successfully. You know,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: the rate is like zero point one bits per second,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: which is not good enough to stream the office, you
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: know on your mobile platform, like certain certain Internet providers,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: which I won't mentioned, so I don't get Sue exactly.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: But you know, as you say, it's the first step.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: It's a demonstration of the proof of principle. The rest
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: is up to the engineers. And it's cool. It's done
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: with neutrinos. It's like, ah, but why is it not
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: done faster? I mean, come on, give him a break.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: It's fast, like every individual neutrino is traveling almost at
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: the speed of light. The problem is you can't rely
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: on one neutrino to carry your message because it takes
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: twenty two trillion before you're likely to even see one
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: of them. Like you're doing a statistical, longitudinal study over
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: many years for humans. It's like, you know, I can
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: imagine some alien scientists thinking like using like statistics and
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: human behavior is not super fast because we have to
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: wait for these long statistical models over many years. Except
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: in this case, like the neutrinos are much faster, but
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: still like takes six minutes to get that statistical significance
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: of enough of these neutrinos hitting our big technological eyeball. Yeah,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: and the limit there is the technological eyeball. If we
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: could build that to be more sensitive or larger either one,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: than we could see neutrinos more reliably. We can take
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: as many neutrinos to carry the same bit, the zero
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: or the one, then we could have a higher throughput.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Right now, it's pretty limited. I mean, for example, if
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: you wanted to send all the information on the Internet
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: using this neutrino link, you would take about fifteen billion
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: years to download, which is still longer than the age
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: of the universe. Right, and people are still making up
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: stuff on the Internet, so you're just going to fall
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: behind again, unnamed Internet provider, Am I right? All? Am
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: I right? Fifteen billion years just to send an email.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe you should switch from new tremail back to normal
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: photon mailk. Maybe this is why all my job applications
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: have sent to space have not resulted in any interviews.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: But I think what this shows us is that the
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: universe is more complex than what we can just see
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: with our eyeballs or our earballs or our fingerballs. That
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: there's a lot more going on out there. The universe
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: is sending us all kinds of information that biologically we
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: cannot see, but we are capable using is of discovering
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: that it exists. And maybe also of manipulating it, of
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: using it to talk to each other or maybe to
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: the aliens. Wow, I mean it kind of. It's also
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: like with our initial question about like why didn't we
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: evolve to be able to detect neutrinos, It seems like
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of it is we're just too small. So
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: if there's like a giant alien species out there whose
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: eyes are so big or their sensory organ is so
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: big that they do have a statistical significance of receiving
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: these neutrinos, maybe there's giant aliens who can like detect
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: or consume neutrinos, or maybe they're not that big, but
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: their eyeballs are imagine like humans with eyeballs the size
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: of swimming pools. That would be a cool science fiction novel.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: Somebody out there right that for us? Please? All right,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: and thanks very much Katie for joining us on today's
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: exploration and discovery of the crazy world of neutrinos. Thanks
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: for having me, for putting that mental image in my head.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Alrighty go give your new Trinish now
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: our arrest. Thanks for joining us, Thanks for listening, and
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcast from my
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H