Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions #7

Transcript

Listener Questions #7 · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: What if another universe shared our Big Bang? Why do
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: figs have a waspy tang?
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Could the Higgs make the Big Bang? Relte? Why is
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: dark chocolate so much better than white?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Biology? Physics, archaeology, forestry, and today fortunately no chemistry.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Whatever question keeps you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: answer will make it all right.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Welcome to another Listener's Questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Extraordinary Universe. Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I'm a parasitologist who
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: loves questions.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist with a deep voice.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: That's even deeper because I was shouting at a UCI
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: basketball game on Saturday.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, and you said you were sick. Recently, There's been
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of things happening to your voice.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: So I hope you enjoy an extra baritone version of
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: the podcast today.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It'll be fun. I just spent four hours on my
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: tractor this morning plowing our roads. So what is the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: most exciting power tool you've ever used, Daniel.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Other than the large hadron collider. That's a power tool,
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: isn't it.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Thirty three kilometers around accelerates protons to nearly the speed
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: of light, but it can't cut through a two by four.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, but I guess you win. I was feeling
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: pretty cool about my tractor, but now I think you win.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I want a particle beam to melt the snow off
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: my sidewalk. No, that's a collective tool. What power tool
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: have I personally used that's most impressive? Hmm, that's a
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: good question. We have like a cool machine shop here
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: at UCI, so we have some pre impressive power tools
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: that can, like you know, put rivets into stuff. Or
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: we have the metal cutting bandsaw, which terrifies me. Oh
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: my gosh, every time I go near that thing. I'm wondering,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: is today the day I lose a finger?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Wait, because you're using it? Or do you just mean,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: like even walking by it freaks you out?
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Even walking near it? You know, I've seen enough videos
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: of somebody like tripping and putting their hand out and
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: then zoom and then it's gone.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: In our place, we try to buy the like safest
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: power tools. Have you seen the videos where like it's
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: a table saw and they put a like hot dog
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: into the blade and it immediately stops and everything disappears.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: So like everything we have at our property is like
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the safest version. Like our tractor is low to the ground.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It's got double tires so that it's less like lit
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a flip over. Does an electro fishing boat count as
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: a power tool, because now I'm thinking that maybe that's
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: cooler than a tractor.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is. Electro fishing boat.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: It fishes electrically.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: It puts an electrical current in the water to stun
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the fish, and then you catch them in a net
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and you put them in a live well, so it's
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: that flowing water that's well oxygenated. People who work in
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: fisheries use these to survey a different population. And once
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: we were stunning the water and a fish got past
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: the people with the net, and I thought, I would
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: like save the day because we really wanted to catch
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: this fish. So I reached in to get it and
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I forgot.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I was like, you made a shocking discovery.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I made a shocking discovery. That's right. That's why it's
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: probably not smart for me to use big power tools,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: but I use them anyway.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I am awed by the power of these tools and
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: amazed that people used to build whole civilizations without them.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, that's so amazing. Yeah, when I think about
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the Pyramids, like, I know, that's like a cliche example,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: but holy crow.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Well, people have lots of questions about how the Pyramids
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: were built. We know it wasn't ancient aliens. We know
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: humans have been in genius and modern day humans are
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: ingenious about thinking about the universe and asking questions about it.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: And we love on this podcast hearing about your questions,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: not just answering the questions in my mind or in
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Kelly's mind, but answering the questions on the tips of
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: everybody's tongues.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's start to me. This is a
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: very exciting day because we have questions from a lot
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of different countries represented, well, almost a few different countries represented.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: So let's start with Brazil, and let's hear Marcella's question.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Hello, Daniel and Kelly, how are you doing. My name
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: is Marcella. I am from Brazil and I was talking
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: with a friend about the Big Bang and if we
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: were to reproduce it using the exact same seed, so
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: the particles would interact in the exact same way, moved
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: in the same exact directions, would that create a clone universe?
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Or is there no such thing. I'm very curious about this.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to hearing from
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: you on the podcast.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: All right, Daniel, So let's start with what is the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Big Bang? To make sure we're all on the same page,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: because I feel like this is one of those topics
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: that I hear about and I seem to remember you
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: telling me that the popular conception of this idea is
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: like totally not right. So let's make sure we're all
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: on the same page.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's amazing to me and kind of endlessly frustrating
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: that this incredible concept in science that's been so talked
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: about is still so widely misunderstood. That like, the mental
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: image most scientists have of the Big Bang is very
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: different from the mental image in the public's mind. And
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I had a long conversation with Zach about this when
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: we talked about one of his recent books on cosmology
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: about this discrepancy and how these things go awry. But briefly,
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: most people, when they think about the Big Bang, imagine
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: a tiny dot of matter in empty space, and then
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: an explosion of all that stuff flying out, filling out
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: that once empty space and zooming through the universe and
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: then fourteen billion years later, things are still flying out.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: That's what people imagine. And I wonder, when Marcella is
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: talking about a single seat to reproduce the Big Bang,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: the particles flying in various directions, if this is what
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: she's imagining, because in contrast, the scientific view of the
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Big Bang is quite different. There's no dot in empty space,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: and also wasn't the beginning of the universe. The Big
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Bang is a time thirteen point six billion years ago
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: when the universe was very hot and very dense. But crucially,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: there was not a dot in empty space. It was
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: filled with this hot dance matter. It was everywhere. The
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: whole universe was filled with hot, dense stuff. There was
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: no empty space. It also wasn't the beginning of the universe.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: It's just the earliest moment we can think about, or
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: we can describe with our laws of physics. So ditch
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the idea of a hot danse dot exploding into space
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: and imagine a whole universe filled with hot, dense matter.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I think that differs significantly from what I
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: was told when I first heard about the Big Bang.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's take the scenario that you just
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: laid out for us. If everything was exactly the same
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: as it was about fourteen billion years ago, and then
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: you hit play and you started it again, would you
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: get the exact same thing.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is such a great question, and I think
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: it's so important philosophically because it makes us wonder about
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: whether the life we're living is random or determined. And
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: if it's determined, is that mean I'm just a robot
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: and I was predetermined to say this thing on the
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: podcast and to make these dumb jokes, And so I'm
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: not responsible for all my terrible humor.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: You're not getting out of it. It's your responsibility.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: That was my philosophical backdoor. Anyway, It's a fascinating question
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and one that's been debated for a long time in physics,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: and in classical physics, the answer is yes, the past
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: perfectly predicts the future. It determines the future. The classical
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: way to think about this is like a billiard ball.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: If you shoot the cue ball at the eighth ball,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: and you do it again and again with exactly the
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: same setup, you should get the same answer. Because the
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: laws of physics tell you exactly how momentum travels and
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: exactly how that bounce happens, and even at the microscopic scale,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: if you think about the atoms. As long as you're
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: talking about classical physics, then the past completely predicts the future.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: There is no wiggle room at all. The universe is
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: like a clock. It's like a big mechanism, and the
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: current state addicts the future, and the current state can
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: be predicted by the past. So if you have two
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: universes with the same setup and you just hit play,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: as you say, they should end up fourteen billion years
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: later with exactly the same mushroom over here and the
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: same blueberry over there. If the universe is governed by
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: classical physics.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And the same Daniel on a podcast like all the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: way to those details like no free will at all.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: No free will at all if the universe is governed
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: by classical physics, because otherwise where can it creep in? Right,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: You either have to add some sort of dualistic thing
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: where you have like, yes, the universe is controlled by
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: classical physics, but there's a special thing where people get
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: to make decisions, and there's this like an unexplained force
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: somehow where my brain decides how neurons fire and how
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: my hand moves. You know, there's no room at all
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: for wiggles in classical physics. Right, you throw the ball
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: the same way twice, it will fly the same way
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: twice if you've captured all of those details. And that's
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: tremendously difficult, like to imagine setting up a whole universe
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: with every particle moving in exactly the same direction. But
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: you know, it's a philosophical question, so we get to
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: be unrealistic in practice. If you are building universes, it's
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: going to be very, very difficult to have exactly the
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: same starting conditions. But that's what Marcella is asking about,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: because she's not interested in is it hard to make
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: two universes start the same way? She's interested in if
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: you do what happens, and yes, you get exactly the
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: same Daniel on the same podcast, not liking chemistry or
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: with a growing interest in biology.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Oh good, good answer, and hating white chocolate. So I
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: really don't want to lose hope that there's free will
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: out there, and so I'm going to cling to my
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: knowledge that general relativity and quantum mechanics don't always agree.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: So probably at a different scale, this deterministic stuff breaks
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: down and so what happens if you're thinking about the
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: quantum realm.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so then people say, oh, okay, well, the universe
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: is not classical. There's quantum mechanics, and electrons don't obey
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: these rules of classical physics. They aren't like billiard balls.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And as you zoom down to the microphysics of the universe,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: there are different set of rules and quantum mechanics dot
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: dot dot randomness, dot dot dot free will. But there's
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: a lot that's being lost in those dot dot dots.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: And there's important subtlety about quantum mechanics which is deterministic
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: also just in a different way that I really want
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: people to understand. So quantum mechanics does not say that
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: if you shoot an electron at some experimental setup, you'll
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: get the same answer twice, even if the initial conditions
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: are the same, which is different from classical physics. Classical
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: physics says throw a baseball the same way twice, you
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: get exactly the same trajectory. Quantum mechanics says you throw
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: an electron at a wall, you don't always get the
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: same outcome. But quantum mechanics does say you always get
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: the same probability distribution of possible outcomes that is deterministic.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: So quantum mechanics is not like, hey, the universe is random.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Do anything you like, folks. Right, there are still rules,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: it's just the rules don't govern the individual outcomes. Instead,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: they govern the probability of various outcomes. So if you'd
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: like to think about two options, if an electron can
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: go left or right, and quantum mechanics is very specific
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: about the odds of going left or the odds of
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: going right.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But once you have many, many, many of these sort
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: of decision points where it goes left or right, things
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: can get very different between for example, the moment the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Big Bang happened, and now like we wouldn't necessarily have
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Daniel with a deep voice on the show today if
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: we started everything again from the exact same materials.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's exactly where it gets messy, these decision points, right, Like,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: if we throw electrons at the wall, quantum mechanics says
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: they have the same probability. But then you're suggesting, Okay,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: now let's ask where the electrons are, let's observe them.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: They end up in different places. And we duck into
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: this recently with Scott on our listener questions episode. But
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: it's interesting to play another philosophical game and say, well,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: what if we don't ever ask, like, take your universe,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: make it quantum mechanical, started from the same initial conditions,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: run it forward fourteen billion years, but never make an observation,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: then those two universes are this same quantum mechanically. They
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: have the same probabilities distribution of outcomes because nobody's ever
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: collapsed those wave functions, and so because you never made
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: any choices, quantum mechanics is completely deterministic about the probability
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: distributions of the various outcomes fourteen billion years later. And
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: so if you let the universe stay quantum mechanical, you
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: never collapse it into classical physics or make observations, then
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: the deterministic of quantum mechanics says, the answer is that
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: you get the same universe, the same quantum mechanical universe.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Or if you like to think about many worlds version
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: of quantum mechanics, you get the same set of possible
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: universes in the future if you haven't picked one at
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: any moment, and you're making that face because you're wondering, like,
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: how is it possible to not pick one. Doesn't the
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: universe force you to do that?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Well, that's one of the things that I'm wondering, But
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I could see this on multiple levels, I think. Right, Okay,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So if the electron can go left or right, and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: you know, say, getting from fourteen billion years ago to now,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that has to happen, you know, a trillion time. Why
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: during those trillion times in a quantum mechanical universe, would
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: the electron always make exactly the same decision as it
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: made initially. Why wouldn't each time it would be a
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: separate coin flip to make the decision and you could
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: end up somewhere else. Why does observing it mess that up?
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Because there is no coin flip until you observe it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Like if you shoot electrons through this double slit experiment
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: but there is no screen, then the electron could have
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: gone through the left or could have gone through the right.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: You don't know. Even after the experiment is over, you
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: haven't collapsed the wave function, the probability still remains. And
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: if it only ever interacts with quantum objects and influences
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: those that, then those probabilities are just propagated. Say, for example,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: we have our double slit experiment, the electron could have
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: gone through the left or the right, and that I
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: don't have a screen. Instead, downstream I have two more
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: double slit experiments which capture electrons that went left, to
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: capture electrons that went right, and does another split. Now
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: I have four possible outcomes for the elector and could
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: goone left, left, left, right, right, left or right right,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: and all the four possibilities exist now downstream from that,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: at another set of experiments, Now I have eight possible
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: outcomes right now, say I do this for fourteen billion years, right,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I have a huge number of possible outcomes for this electron.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: And because I never had a screen, I allowed all
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: those possibilities to propagate forwards. And if I start from
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: the same initial conditions, I will always have the same
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: possible set of outcomes for that electron. Same thing for
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: the whole universe. If there's no screen. Now, how can
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: you avoid having a screen?
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Because electrons will hit something, and the universe has planets
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: in it and there are people in it and whatever.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: And this is where we don't know the answer, because
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: we don't understand the distinction between quantum things which don't
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: force the collapse of the wave function and can happily
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: allow superpositions to propagate in classical things like my eyeball
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: or your brain that do force individual outcomes. Because I
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: can't be in a superposition. I can't be Daniel who
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: saw the electron on the left side and Daniel who
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: saw the electron on the right side simultaneously. I'm a
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: classical thing. And this is where we don't have a
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: philosophical answer to the question of why does the wave
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: function collapse sometimes and how does an observation work? We
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: don't know. So to answer Marcella's question, like, if you
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: start from the same quantum state I mean, the same probabilities,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: same undetermined reality, and you let that propagate forward, you
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: would get a clone of the universe's quantum states today,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: which includes all the uncertainties and all the unknowns, because
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: quantum mechanics is deterministic about the probabilities. Right, But you
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: were right, the collapse can't be cloned. If people do
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: experiments and there are observations in those universes, then those
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: will be individual coin flips, and those are drawn from
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: those probability distributions, but they are fundamentally random, and so
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: they will go different ways. Like a ball bouncing down
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: one of those games, it's going to end up in
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: a different slot, and that's going to cascade down the road.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: So if you have quantum mechanics and you have collapsing
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: wave functions, that it's essentially impossible to end up with
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: the same universe twice fourteen billion years later starting from
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: the initial conditions. But if you never collapse the wave function,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: then you get the same quantum mechanical probabilities for all
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: those various outcomes.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: All right, that was trippy, but I think I followed it.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Let's see what Marcella thinks.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Hey, Daniel and Kelly, thank you so much for answering
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: my question. It was very trippy. Indeed, I think I
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: prefer classical physics. I don't really understand it that deeply,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: as I am a psychology major, but I feel like
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: it wraps around my head a little bit easier than
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: quantum physics. Quantum physics is a whole different realm. But
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: it was very interesting to listen to you guys discussing
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: it and learn a little bit more about this. I
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: will have to take this to my friend now, with
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: whom I had this conversation in the beginning, and we're
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: going to discuss and if I have any further questions,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: I will definitely send it your way. Thank you so much.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Guys. All right, we are back and we're zooming out
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: from the whole universe and the Big Bang, and now
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: we're going to answer our some questions about the gooey
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: treats that we all eat.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And we're talking about wasps, which makes me very happy.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So we have a question from Petrie. Let's go ahead
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and listen.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Hello.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: My name is Petrie and I'm from Waterloo, Canada, and
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: I recently learned a little bit about figs and wasps.
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: And my question is am I really eating dissolved wasp
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: carcasses when I eat figs? Thank you?
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: So I'm very excited to hear your answer to this
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: question because just the other day at dinner, as I
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: was enjoying fig one of my son's friends said to me, Hey,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: you know you're eating wasp babies, right, And I thought
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: to myself, that is a very cool little popsie fact.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: I wonder if it's true or if Kelly would throw
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: cold water on it. Petrie and I are both very
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: curious to know whether or not we're eating wasp babies.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a question about biology, so the answer
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: has to be it depends, because nature's never that easy.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Let's dig into the biology here. So first of all,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: there's over seven hundred and fifty species of fig trees,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and almost all of them have their own wasp that
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: pollinates them, and so there's a lot of different kinds
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: of these and so the answer that you're going to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: get in the end depends on what species of fig
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: it is that you're eating and how it was cultivated.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: All right, First, I have some questions. Yeah, okay, seven
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty species of figs. I've had like three
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: different kinds of figs, like the black figs and the
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: tiger figs. Are there a lot more figs out there
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: that I should learn to enjoy? Or are these all
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: like invisible variations on bloe?
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: There are people who forage on wild figs, and they
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: would tell you that each one is its own unique
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: flavor escapade that you should go on. And so.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I like flavor escapades. That sounds great, It does.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Sound great, but I can't say that I have tried them.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I've just tried, like, you know, the typical figs that
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you get yeah, okay, but the biology is trippy. Okay,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: So because they're seven hundred and fifty different species, this
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: works in a lot of different ways, and so I'm
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: just going to give you like an overview of how
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: it works a lot of the time, but if you
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: dig into a particular system, the details probably different. All right,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: So here's the deal, right.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: So give us a background on like what it means
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: for a wasp to pollinate a fig, because I'm familiar
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: with like bees and pollen a little bit, but like
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: tell us how it works for figs and why they
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: have to use wasps.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, So figs, So usually you think of
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: flowers getting pollinated. A fig is a flower, but instead
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of it opening outwards, it actually kind of closes in
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: on itself and it's got a little tiny hole at
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the bottom called the osteole, and and it's ready to
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: be pollinated. It secretes a smell that attracts the wasps
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: that pollinate it.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: All right. So usually for fruit, you have like a
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: flower and then it's pollinated and then you get the
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: fruit laders, like you'll see cherry trees bloom and then
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: later you have cherries. But you're saying figs are the
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: blooms themselves.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, and then they ripe it.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Wow yeah, wow, Okay, fascinating plants are nuts. Nuts are plants.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. This is deep. So there's this little
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: hole at the bottom, and when it's ready to get pollinated,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: it attracts the wasp. And the hole is so small
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: that when the female wasp, and it's always a female
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: in this case, when the female wasp goes in there,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: she has to like squeeze in and her wings fall
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: off and sometimes part of her antennae fall off. She's
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: really like wedging herself in there because she's.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: So desperate to eat this smelly thing.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: To lay her eggs in the smelly thing.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, to lay her eggs in my delicious tree.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. This is just the beginning of the gross
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: pyramid or the gross ice, if you will. So she
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: wiggles her way to the inside of the fruit. And
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: if you've opened up a fig, you've maybe noticed that
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the inside has a little bit of an open space,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: and so she gets to that open space. And you
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: might have also noticed that when you open up a
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: fig often there's lots of little seeds in there. So
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the good news is that when you bite into a
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: seed and you feel something crunchy, it is the seed.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It's not the wasp, So like, don't start panicking already.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: So the mom gets in there and all of the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: little like projections and the inside of the fig are
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: as I understand it. They're like ovaries, and so they
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: can either get pollinated, and the wasp has pollen on her,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and we'll get to how she got that pollen on
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: her towards the end of the story. But she's got pollen,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and so in some of those little ovaries she deposits
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: her egg and then induces the fig to make a
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: gall where her offspring will develop.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Tamika, what a gall? What's a gall?
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Oh? Man? I love galling insects. We need to get
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: my friends. Got Egan on the show one day to
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: talk about galling insects because he freaks out because they're
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: so great.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Gallic is different from galic Gaalic is like French.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, right, this is gall Gall. A plant is
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: manipulated into producing a compartment in which an insect will grow,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: and that compartment is called a gall. Yikes, And they
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: take lots of different crazy forms, some of them are
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: super fuzzy. Some of them have spikes. This is not
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: in the figs. This is in like oaks and stuff.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: But here it's just a tiny little compartment that the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: insect grows in.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: So the fig manipulates the wasp to crawl in, and
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: the wasp manipulates the fig to make a little nest
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: for its baby.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, while it is also depositing pollen. There's all of
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: these little like projections in the gall Some of them
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: are the right height for eggs to get laid in,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and some of them are not, and those get pollen
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: on them. And so you get some insect babies inside
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: of these projections, and then in some of them you
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: just get the production of like seeds. Is that making
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: sense so far?
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely? Okay, right, so they're like sharing this thing,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: like you grow some of your babies and I'll grow
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: some of my babies. So basically figs and wasps are
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: like siblings that grow up together.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: This is a mutualism, so they both benefit. The listener
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: should let us know if you want a whole show
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: on this, because I would love an excuse to read
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: about the evolution of like how this came into being.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: But that is not the question I was asked to answer.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: So we're going to stay on focus.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: I want a whole show in this, depending on how
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: gross this gets and whether this ruins figs for me
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: in the end.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: All right, stick with me, Stick with me. Okay. So
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the mom, when she's done pollinating and laying her eggs,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: dies and that's usually the wasp that people are talking
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: about you eating. And the good news is at the
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: point where this process is happening, the fig is not
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: usually ripe enough that you would pick it and eat it.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So the mom dies and then the mom essentially gets
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: digested by the fig, so it releases this enzyme I
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: think it's called fiking ficin, and it digests the mom,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and I think it just uses that protein for like
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: its own stuff.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: So the fig eats the wasp.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: So the fig eats the wasp.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Wow, what amazing.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: There's other wasps in there, right, because you've just created
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: a bunch of goals, right, And so those gulls hatch
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and the males come out first, and often more than
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: one female wasp gets in and lays her eggs. Sometimes
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: it's only one, but the males come out first. And
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the reason it's important to know if it was one
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: or more moms is because what those males do is
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: they open up the gulls that contain the females and
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: they start impregnating those females.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Which might be their sisters, which might be.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Their sisters, and often it is their sisters.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: And so gross problematic, wasp men problematic, that's right.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Work on that wasps, work on it. So the females
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: get impregnated, and then the males, having done that job,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: start chewing their way out of the fig to create
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: exit holes for the females.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I'm losing track of who's eating who here.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know, there's a lot of bags and forth right.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: It's a mutualism. It's give and take. And so the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: males they start chewing these exit holes for the females
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: who have wings, and they manage to get out. A
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: lot of times the males like chew these exit holes
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and then they get like picked off by ants that
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: are like waiting on the outside of the fig to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: eat these other insects. Because nature is just mean, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: so the males are like sacrificial. Some of them never
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: get out of the fig. A lot of them that
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: get out of the they get eaten by ants. And
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: while they are being consumed by ants, that gives the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: females a chance to go off.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Is this the whole job of the males to dig
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: the women out and pregnate them and then let them
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: miscave the wasp or do they have a life cycle
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: outside of the wasp.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Well, that's it, that's it. Yeah, they impregnate the females,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: they help them get out, then they sacrifice themselves and die.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: So if you're a male wasp, your whole existence is
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: inside a fig. Your fig is your universe. Yes, that's crazy.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And so if you are eating a wasp in a fig,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I think you're probably eating the males m that get
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: left behind in there. So the females they get impregnated,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and before they go out and leave to go find
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: another fig, the fig that they're in starts producing pollen,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and the females go and they collect the pollen. They've
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: got like a little compartment and they collect the pollen,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: they hold onto it, and then they go off in
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: search of another fig.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Why did they do that? They just do that to
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: be nice to the fig, or there's a benefit to them.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: This is why I would love to have a whole
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: show on this. But the quick answer that I found
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: when I did a little bit of research was that
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: when females get into a fig and they lay their
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: eggs but they don't do any pollinating, the fig trees
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: are more likely to drop that fig. So it's like
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: they're punishing the wasp for not pollinating it. But there's
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: got to be some cheating. So, like, you know, if
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: two fig wasps get into a fig and one pollinates
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and one doesn't, then how do you punish the one
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: that didn't pollinate?
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Wow?
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: And so I'd love an excuse to read more about it,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: but it sounds like there's some punishment going to like
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: maintain this mutualism. There's consequences if you don't play along.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Mutualism is that the grown up word for symbiosis that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: I learned as a young biologist.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: So symbiosis means a long term interaction between two organisms.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it can be bad or sometimes it can be good.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: And so mutualism is when it is good. When a
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: symbiosis is good for both partners.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: I see, even though they eat each other, the fig
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: eats the wasp, the wasps eats the fig, it's good
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: for both of them.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: It's good for both of them, that's right, right. That's
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: like a general overview of how it works. And so
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: now let's get into the specifics. So figs have been
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: cultivated by humans for something like eleven thousand years.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Wow, how do we know that?
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: We know that because we have found figs and archaeological
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: digs and it looks like it's been going on for
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: about eleven thousand years.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Figs and archaeological digs like remnants of fossilized figs, or
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: like depictions of people eating figs or what does that mean?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's remnants of fossilized figs.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Wow. Incredible.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: But again, if we did a whole hour on this,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I'd be happy to find a lot more. All right,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: And here's where we really get out of my area
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: of expertise, and this is in how plants reproduce. But
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: here is my best guess at answering the question. Okay,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: so through that process of cultivation, we have come up
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: with some figs that don't produce seeds at all. So
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: you've had seedless watermelon. Probably this is sort of the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: same idea. I think what's happening is you like pull
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a branch off, and then you stick a branch in
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the ground and it'll just start like propagating that way,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and so those fruits will still ripen, you can still
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: eat them. And if they don't have seeds, then they
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: didn't need a wasp. And so a lot of the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: figs that you eat in grocery stores have been propagated
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: that way and have never encountered a wasp.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: There are also some figs that you can induce to
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: ripen by spraying them with plant hormones, and even though
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the wasp wasn't there, it will go ahead and ripen
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: and then you can eat it.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: So figs in the wild originally had this complex dance
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: with wasps to evolve and propagate, and that gives us
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: natural selection and all the kind of useful stuff. But
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: humans have intervened and been cultivating figs and taking them
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: out of their sort of natural cycle which might exclude
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: the wasps. Is that what I'm understanding.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, And it wouldn't surprise me if in those seven
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty fig species there were some that had
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: dropped the wasp and get pollinated in some other way,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: because plants are just kind of crazy. But yes, in general,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: you need the wasp. But when we took this system
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and cultivated it as many cases as we can, we
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: try to cut that wasp out. And that wasp also
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: has environmental conditions that can't live under. So when it
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: gets too cold, for example, and you're growing a fig
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: too far north, then you probably don't have that wasp
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: at all because the wasps can't survive, but you could
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: still get fig fruits.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: So it sounds like I'm unlikely to be eating wasps
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: if I'm eating like cultivated figs that I'm buying in
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: the grocery store. Whereas if I have a fig tree
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: just like out in my backyard and I'm eating bows,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: am I more likely to be eating wasps?
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Depends on where you live. I think it was the
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: common fig and we took it from Turkey the country
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: to California. We didn't bring the wasp with us. Initially,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the fig trees weren't doing what they thought they should
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: be doing, and so we ended up figuring out what
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: was going on, and then we brought the wasp over.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: And so there's some parts in California where the wasp
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: can survive and the wasp does its thing, maybe even
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: in Irvine. I don't know.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Irvine probably has a law against it somehow.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Glad to know. It's a bureaucratic sort of city. But
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: if you go farther north, probably aren't the wasps. There's
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: other ways of like injecting the pollen in and pollinating
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: without the wasps. But I believe that figs from like
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Turkey in southern California, you've got the wasps, and so
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: they might be in there. But I think it depends
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: on like the species, depends on where you are. It's
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: really complicated. So the answer I think is it depends.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I heard in a couple different sources that dried figs
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: tend to come from Turkey, where you do get the
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: wasp pollination, and so the dried figs are maybe more
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: likely to have wasps in them than a fresh fig
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: from northern California or something. The answer is, it depends
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: what happened to your fig?
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: All right? Well, my last question then is can I tell, like,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: if I bite into a fig, can I tell if
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: as a wasp? But it's a crunch. Differently, I mean,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: should I notice? Does it matter?
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: No?
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I would not think too hard about it. They're like
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: teeny tiny I mean, if you've looked at like a
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: seed in a fig, those are super tiny. I you know,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: imagine something like living inside of one of those or
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: something like really tiny. I mean, if you looked really close,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: you put it under a microscope, maybe you would see
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: some remnants. But just pop the thing in your mouth,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: put some goat cheese on it and some honey, smile,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and don't think about the wasps that have brought you
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: this amazing fruit.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I think you're right actually that the smaller the insect,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: the less gross. It is. Like, if I imagine a
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: wasp basically filling out the inside of the fig, and
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I'm biting the figure, I'm basically eating an entire wasp.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: That's super gross. Yeah, but I know that everything I
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: eat is covered in all sorts of microbes and mites
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: and little critters All the time. As I'm speaking, I'm
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: probably consuming some tiny flies or whatever, and I'm honestly
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: grossed out by that. So I'll just shrink those wasps
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: in my mind until I don't worry about eating them.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I think the FDA, for a bunch of different kinds
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: of foods, has criteria for how many like insects or
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: insect parts are allowed to be in there, like per
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: gram because insects are, like, they're just really hard to avoid.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of us are eating insects, whether
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: we mean to or not, whether we're vegan or not.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Cockroach legs and everything.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Ugh, No, I don't want to think about that. Cockroaches
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: do creep me out. You found my kryptonite.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: What about tiny littlelady bad ones, super tiny microscopic cockroaches.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if they're so small that I can't see them,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I'll eat them. That's fine.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: We'll do a blind taste test one day. I'll sprinkle
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: tiny cockroaches into a platter of hummus and mix it
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: in and see if you can tell.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I am not inviting you to parties anymore. But I've
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: been writing parasitologists to ask them if they infect themselves
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: with parasites, and one of them did tell me that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: they mixed some beetles in with hummus so that they
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: wouldn't know that they were eating the beetle that was
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: infected by a tapeworm when they tried to infect themselves
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: with the tapeworm. And I was like, wow, So anyway,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: hummus will always be for me. I guess the food
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: that you hide things in.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: There's got to be a Beatles joke. There is there
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: a Beatles song that sounds like it's about insects.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Here comes the infection, It's a stretch. Here comes the
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: wasp in your hummus. Yeah, I don't know. I don't
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: really like the beetles.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: So lucy in the hummus with cockroaches. That's the Beatles
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: song you never heard before.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Oh all right, Petrie, did we answer your question? My friend?
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: Hello, Daniel and Kelly, thank you very much for answering
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: my question on the podcast. And I would like to
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: say that your answer was very thorough and detailed and
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: much more explicit than I bargained for, and I thought
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: it was absolutely fantastic.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: All right, Daniel, let's bring on the Funk.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: We are zooming back out from tiny microscopic things that
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: might gross you out to imagining the fate of the
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: whole universe as controlled by tiny microscopic particles. See all
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: the connections we're making today. Next, we're answering a question
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: from Tim Funk about the Higgs Boson and the Big Bang.
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: As I was listening to listener questions, episode fifty eight
• 34:11
  Speaker 6: about the Higgs fields collapse.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: It made me wonder, could a Higgs field collapse be
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: just like the Big Bang? Thanks? All right, so this
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: is great. We've got a bit of a Big Bang
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: theme going on. So we've already talked about what the
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Big Bang is. What has happened since the Big Bang? Daniel,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: It's been a while.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's been a while. A lot of stuff has happened.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Let's summarize the whole history of the universe. I think
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: it's important to understand what's happened since the Big Bang
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: in order to answer this question, because we'll see that
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: the Higgs field collapse can be considered it's just like
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: one more stage in the history of the universe. So
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: we talked about the Big Bang as starting from this
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: moment when the universe was very hot and was very dense.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: And what happens next is that the universe expands, it
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: spreads out. You get new space created everywhere between in
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: these particles, and what that means is that the universe
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: is getting more sparse, right, it's getting less dense. So
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: the universe goes from more dense to less dense. So
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: we get a universe that starts out young, hot and dense,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: and as it expands it cools and becomes old, cold
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: and sparse. Right, And this is actually fascinating how the
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: different parts of the universe react as the universe expands.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Like matter, when the universe expands, just becomes more dilute
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: because you have like more volume and the same amount
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: of stuff. You don't get more protons made, you just
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: have more space, and so the proton density goes down.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Same thing is true for photons. You have the same
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: number of photons, more volume, so lower density of photons.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: But photons also get red shifted. They get stretched into
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: longer wavelengths as the universe expands, which means they lose energy.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: So the energy density of photons goes down faster than
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: the energy density of matter. Matter loses energy density because
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: you know, space is expanding, but photons lose energy density faster,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: which is really interesting, not just because hey, if you're
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: a nerd, this is cool, but because it tells us
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: something about dark matter. We can measure the energy density
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: of dark matter over time, and we see that it
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: decreases the same way as matter, not the same way
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: as photons, which is one reason why we think dark
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: matter is matter. People say, oh, it's just a fudge
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: factor in galactic rotations, but like man, it plays a
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: crucial role in the whole history of the universe in
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: so many ways.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Does dark energy respond the same way as photons, then.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Dark energy does its own super weird third thing, which
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: is that it doesn't get diluted at all. It is
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: constant density. You double the volume of space, you double
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: the dark energy. It's weird. It's just like an inherent
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: property of space we don't understand at all. But as
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: the universe expands the amount of dark energy increases because
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: the density is constant, totally weird and crazy.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: We got to add that to our episode list.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating. And so what's happening quantum mechanically is think
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: of the universe as space filled with quantum mechanical fields,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: and you have like electron fields and photon fields, et cetera.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: And as the universe is expanding, these fields are losing energy,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: and so they go from being like totally filled with energy,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: like an ocean of frothing energy inside these fields, to
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: being mostly empty, with little blips of energy here and there.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: And so it's at that point we can start to
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: talk about particles. It's like take the ocean and drain it,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: and now you have a bunch of drops left over
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: on the bottom. Those you can call particles. Doesn't really
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: make sense to talk about particles before that. It's just
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: a big frothing ocean. And so the universe cools, and
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: these fields deplete, and they lower with their energy density,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: and they go down, down, down, down down. They never
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: actually get all the way to zero, right, they get
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: down to some sort of quantum minimum energy. No field
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: and quantum mechanics can actually have zero energy because of uncertainty.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: I follow you there, now, can you tell what the
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Higgs field is?
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Right? So what role does the Higgs field play in
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: the sort of evolution of the universe and its future?
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: So all these fields we talked about are similar in
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: one really important way, which is that they want to
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: relax to zero, right. They want to go down to
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: zero energy density. That's sort of the most relaxed state.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: And as the universe is expanding and cooling things relaxing,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: they head down to zero particles and never get all
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: the way to zero, but they all head down to zero.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: The Higgs field is different. It's weird in this one
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: particular way, which is that it doesn't relax to zero.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: It relaxes to some non zero state. It's like if
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: you had a guitar and you plucked all the strings
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: and they all relaxed back down to like not vibrating
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: at all, but one of them relax down to like vibrating,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: or relax down to being bent. Actually is a better analogy,
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: because the Higgs field relaxes not down to non zero
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: kinetic energy, but non zero potential energy. So like if
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: one of your guitar strings after you pluck it, it
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: relaxes down to a position which is not straight but
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit bent. That would be weird, right. That's
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: the Higgs field. So as the universe cools, all the
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: fields go to zero or close to it, except for
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: the Higgs field, which gets like stuck in this higher
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: energy state. And that's what Tim is asking about. He's
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: asking about if that field could collapse, if that field
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: could eventually decay all the way to zero, because we
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: don't understand the Higgs field well enough. It's pretty new
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: that we even know it it's a thing, and that
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: we're measuring all of its properties to know if it's
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: stuck in that state and stable or just sort of
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: temporarily paused there and eventually going to relax down to zero.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Like when I say it prefers to relax at a
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: non zero state, that's a hypothesis based on what we've
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: seen so far. We don't actually understand the field well
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: enough to know long term where it will eventually relax.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: And we don't know why it stays at the non
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: zero state for as long as we've been watching it, right,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: that's also a mystery.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we can describe it mathematically. We can constru
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: dructive field that has those properties. You just have to
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: give it sort of a weird potential energy form. But
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: then the question is like, well, well why does that
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: field exist? Yeah, that we don't know. This is just
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: descriptive so it's possible to accommodate mathematically, but that doesn't
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: answer the philosophical question of why the universe is this way.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: But if the Higgs field does collapse, it means the
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: whole universe changes in its fundamental nature, because the Higgs
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: field is why particles have mass. For example, electrons have mass,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: and quarks have mass and all this kind of stuff,
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: and that only happens if the Higgs field has that energy.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: If the Higgs field collapses down to zero, those particles
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: lose their mass. Electrons suddenly massless. Now they start moving
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: like photon. They move at the speed of light, same
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: with quarks. So every atom unbounds right, all matter in
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: the universe would explode and travel outwards at the speed
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: of light. It would be catastrophic for life as we
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: know it. The universe would go on, it would just
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: have very different nature. The effective laws of physics that
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: we're used to would be totally different.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: But to stick with Tim's question real quick, how would
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that be qualitatively different than the Big Bang?
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So Tim's question is would the Higgs field collapse
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: be like the Big Bang? Well, I mean it would
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: be big, and it would be dramatic, and in some
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: sense it makes a lot of sense to think of
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: it as part of the Big Bang, not just like
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang, but sort of like a natural extension
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: of the Big Bang, because the Big Bang, again, is
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: not just like a moment in time, it's the expansion
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: of the universe. In some sense, the universe is still
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: big banging because the universe started out very hot and
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: dense and the expansion that follows is what we call
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang. So the Big Bang is still kind
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: of happening, and if the Higgs field collapses, that's sort
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: of like the natural next step, Like the Big Bang
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: is all these quantum fields gradually relaxing down to zero.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: The Higgs field got stuck for a while, but if
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: it collapses down to zero, if it's not actually stable,
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: then that's just like you know, episode seven of the
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Big Bang. So it's not a lot like the initial
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: stages of the Big Bang, where everything was very hot
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: and very dense and a very very high temperature, so
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: hot we can't even really imagine it. It's more like
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: the end game of the Big Bang, the closing chapters,
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: when things are finally relaxing closer to zero.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: So just so people like me can sleep at night,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: we don't necessarily know that the Higgs field is going
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: to go to zero. It's just if it did, it
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: would be bad. But it's not necessarily going to happen
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: because we just don't know.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily going to happen. We don't know. We're
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: making measurements right now with the particle colliders to try
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: to understand the Higgs field and better, so we can
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: get a better handle on the chances that it could collapse.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: We don't really know it. On the other hand, you
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: might ask, well, what could trigger its collapse? Like if
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: the Higgs field is stuck in this state and that's metastable,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: it's like it could stay there, or it could get
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: knocked off, you know, sort of like a ball balanced
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: on the top of a hill. It could veer off,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: or it could just hang out there if nothing touches it. Well,
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: one thing that could trigger it are very high energy
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: particle collisions creating moments of energy density. Who knows right,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: that could trigger the Higgs field to collapse. So you know, yes,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: we are trying to study it so that you can
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: sleep better at night. But you know, as with all experiments,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: there are existential risks here, and those experiments could potentially
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: maybe possibly dot dot dot. The lawyer Shay insists, I
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: had a bunch of qualifiers here trigger the Higgs field collapse.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: I thought that you got into this field because you
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: didn't want to do anything catastrophic. You've somehow managed to
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: up maybe do something even more catastrophic than anyone has
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: ever done before.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know the irony is not lost
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: on me. But the good news is if the Higgs
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: field does collapse, that collapse would propagate out at the
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: speed of light, and so it all happened very quickly.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: There'd be no long, slow biological torture where you're eating
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: from the inside out by wasps like some sort of
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: weird fig You would just stop existing instantaneously and you
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: wouldn't even know it.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: If the wasps are bringing about the end of days,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: we've got a chance to fight back, But it sounds
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: like we don't have a chance with your end of
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: day's scenario.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe we just need to evolve wasps that can fight
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: the Higgs field or prop it up, right, yea, some
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: sort of mutualism there between the Higgs and the wasps.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Problem solved, Yeah, exactly. I mean they're focused on the figs.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: It's just like one letter off to be focused on
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: the Higgs.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Wait, doesn't Higgs have two g's.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, Higgs's have a little bit.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Farther off, but it's close. This is why I think
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: interdisciplinary discussions are so important, you know, because we're solving
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: everything here.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: That's right. Nobody's ever had a podcast about the Higgs
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: figs before we're breaking new grounds.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Higgs liked figs. There's got to be
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: a biography or a biographer we could ask.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Somebody must know the answer that question.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Is Higgs still alive.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, Higgs died in April of twenty twenty four, so
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: that question, if it's not already answered, we will never
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: know the answer.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: To the mysteries abound. All right, Well, well, Tim, have
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: we answered your question? Yeah?
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: I think I got it.
• 45:05
  Speaker 6: It did raise more questions that I'll say for another day.
• 45:08
  Speaker 6: I really appreciate the reminder that the Big Bang continues
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: to be not the greatest choice of names, and that
• 45:13
  Speaker 6: carries along a lot of misconceptions by using those particular words. Otherwise,
• 45:18
  Speaker 6: I think I'm calmly reassured that if death by Higgs collapse,
• 45:22
  Speaker 6: whatever happened, is probably the best way for us to go.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks all right, Thank you everybody for asking these questions,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: for writing in, and for powering this whole show with
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: your curiosity. You know, the reason we do this is
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: because you are curious about the universe, because you desperately
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: want answers to how the universe works, how the guy
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: and creepy bits of biology work and how the fundamental
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: particles in the universe can affect everything on the grandest scale.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: And we'd love to hear more from you. Please do
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: send us your questions to questions at Danielankelly dot org.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Everybody gets an answer.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced
• 46:05
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• 46:08
  Speaker 1: really would.
• 46:09
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• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Extraordinary Universe.
• 46:14
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• 46:17
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• 46:20
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• 46:21
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• 46:24
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• 46:27
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• 46:29
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• 46:36
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