Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions 33: Questions from your kids!

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Listener Questions 33: Questions from your kids! · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what's your mental picture of a typical listener
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: of our show? Oh, that's tough. I think probably there
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: is no actual typical listener. You know, like the average
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: number of children is two point four, but there aren't
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: any actual families with two point four children. It'd be
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: hard to have a point four child. Do you think
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: there's a big range like young and old, short doll? Yeah,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I hope so. I think so. You know, we probably
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: have atheists and spiritual people. We have scientists and salespeople,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: we have teachers and students and cartoonists. Emphasis. Well, let's
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: not get too crazy here. Why do you think the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: audience is so very well? I think probably everybody out
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: there has questions. You know, it's just part of being
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: human to be curious. And if you drive a truck,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: or design buildings or lead a church, you still want
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: to know answers to the biggest questions in the universe. Yeah, Like,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: how did a cartoonist and a physicist end up with
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a podcast Mysteries of the Universe? Hi am for handed.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Cartoonists and the co author frequently asked questions about the universe. Hi,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist. And a professor U
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: c Irvine, and I was pleased at Punch to see
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: our books called out in the New York Times last Sunday.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Wait what Yeah? They had an interview with Moe Williams,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite authors and illustrators, and asked him,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: what are you planning to read next? And he said
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: he had just finished our book frequently asked questions about
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the Universe, really enjoyed it and was planning to read
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: We have no idea. Oh my goodness. We got a
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: shout out from a cartoonist about a book about physics
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: that's crazy. Yeah, and he described it as breezy yet
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: content heavy, which I think kind of nails our style. Yeah.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It's better than the being heavy and with greasy content,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I guess exactly. And the book itself isn't even that heavy, right, Yeah,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: especially if you get the book waste nothing just a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: feel like crons. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: which we tackle the heavy questions of the universe. How
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: big is it? How much mass does it have, how
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: does it all work? How long has it been here?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And for how long will it keep doing its whole
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: universe thing. We dig into all of those questions because
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: we think everybody is curious about how the universe works,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: and everybody deserves to understand at least as much as
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: anybody understands. That's right, because it is a pretty mysterious
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and amazing universe full of questions. Like kind of cartoonists
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: understand the universe? I guess it seems like the answer
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: is yes, if they read breezy but heavy books or
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: write them. I guess right. I think writing them also
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: helps cartoonis understand the universe. Yeah, and translating a physicist
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: for the general audience probably also helps. Yeah. But it
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: is a any incredible universe full of incredible and amazing
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: facts to discover. But it all starts with asking questions first.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: You've got to ask the question before you can get
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the answer, right. That's the typical order of things. That
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: is the typical order, And that's exactly why we always
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: embrace the unknown. We know that discovery begins with admitting
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: our ignorance and then diving into it, to asking questions
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: about the things that we don't know, which will lead
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: us down the path to understanding it. And it all
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: begins with asking that first question about the universe. I
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: think there's something about science and scientists that folks out
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: there who aren't practicing scientists might not realize. You know,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: science isn't some monolithic institution that just like churns out results.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Every time you see a result, it's because somebody has
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: decided to dedicate their life to studying. Whether beavers brush
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: their teeth or you know exactly how stars explode. It
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: all comes from one person's individual desire to understand something
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: about the universe. Right. But although it's not an individual effort,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: it's usually a team effort. Right. We often work in teams,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: but everybody who's on that team wants to know the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: answer to those questions. They've decided this is the most
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: important question to be answered, and this is what I'm
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: going to spend my life on. And there is a
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: huge commitment to curiosity. But as you said, Daniel, everybody
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: is a scientist. Everybody can ask questions about the universe.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: We can all observe it and even run our own
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: experiments in our backyard or garages. Right, that's right. Check
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: with your parents before you create a black hole in
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: your garage, please, or your spouse. Don't create a black
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: hole in your spouse. No, never do that. I mean,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: if you're forty year olds, I don't think you need
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: to check with your parents about making a black hole.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: You might want to check with your city. They might
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: have some kind of ordinance about it. But you know
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: your parents need to give you permission. Are you saying
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: you never ask your parents for advice anymore? They're useless
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: to you now, Well, I ask them for advice, but
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: not permission. I guess. So they're like, or, hey, don't
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: create the black hole. You're like, technically I could, though, Yeah,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: do you feel otherwise? I feel like if people are
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: telling me that what I'm gonna do is going to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: destroy the planet, even if I actually have the right
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: to you, so I'm still gonna listen. Well, of course
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you're gonna listen. I'm gonna listen to their screams as
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: they get sucked into my black hole. Although I guess
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: your parents could technically still guilt you into not doing it. Yeah,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: that's called an emotional black hole. A bit of a
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: relationship there. But parents and kids all have questions about
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the universe, and it's especially interesting to hear the questions
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: that children have about the universe because I guess they
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: haven't read as many books as other people exactly, and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: they come to it with a really wonderful sense of
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: joy and wonder and curiosity, and also stripped of some
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: of the preconceptions that adults have. So often their questions
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: are really the deepest, hardest questions to answer, and so
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: to be. On the podcast, we'll be tackling Listener Questions
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Number thirty three kid addition. Now, Daniel, are you sure?
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: This is episode thirty three of our Listener Questions series.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I'm about sure. Can you count to third? Three? Do
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: we need a kid to come and help us. I'm
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a particle physicist. I'm used to dealing with like two
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: particles interacting, three particles interacting. Anything about thirties basically infinity
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: for me, right, anything above that is what chemistry? You
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: say that with such derision admiration. Who doesn't like chemists.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I'm just overwhelmed by it. I'm not capable of it.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: That means I'm impressed by chemists. You just don't have
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the chemistry with chemistry. No, I do not have chemistry
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: with chemistry. It doesn't cause a reaction to you. No, exactly.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: My son is now taking high school chemistry and I'm
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: trying to help him with his homework. So the last
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: time I studied chemistry was also when I was in
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: tenth grade. So you're like, good luck, I'm like, I
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: hope nothing's changed in thirty years. I'm sure they've invented
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: in new chemicals by now. But anyways, we love taking
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: questions from our listeners, and especially from kids. Kids are
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: the most awesome question askers they are, and we like
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: hearing questions from our kids. We like hearing questions from
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: your kids. So if your kids ask you questions and
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: you don't know the answer, please write to us. We
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: will help you dig into it. Send us any questions.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: You have two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And so today we have questions from three kids and
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: they range in topics from philosophical questions about the nature
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: of of something this Thor's hammer. I'm looking forward to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: that one. And also we have a question about lonely stars.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: So our first question comes from Danica, who is eight
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: years old. Hi, it's me Danica. I'm eight years old,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and my question is what does nothing look like? Also,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of your podcast. Um, oh, that's awesome.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I like act. She said, Hi, it's meet Danica. Like,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I guess we know her, right, I guess so. I
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: mean she has written into the podcast several times and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I've answered her questions, so it's nice to hear her
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: voice now. Well, Danica, we love that you listen to
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: the podcast, and it's great to meet you or meet
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: your voice at least for once. And it's such an
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: awesome and deep and difficult question what is nothing and
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: what does it look like? Well, she specifically asked, what
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: does nothing look like? Can we answer as children and
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: just say nothing? Next question? Oh? No, that's how it's
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: usually answer things. It should be a title of our
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: kid edition. If we have no idea, I don't know
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: how you spell that either. Yeah, you will have to
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: come up with some new molecules for that. But it
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: is an interesting and almost philosophical question, what does nothing
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: look like? I guess first of all, what would you
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: describe as as nothing? What is nothing? That's really the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: heart of the question, what is nothing? And is it
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: even a coherent idea? You know, in philosophy people talk
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: about this question why is there something rather than nothing?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And in that case, you have to define really carefully
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: what you mean by nothing, and it has to be
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: something that makes sense, you know, that holds itself together.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: That is like an option for the universe, that the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: universe could have been that way rather than this way
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: with things in it. Because I guess there are different
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: levels of nothingness that you can have, right, I could
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: have nothing to do today, or I could have nothing
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: in my pockets, or there could be nothing in front
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: of you that I could see, for example, right, or
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: you could have nothing to say about the topic or nothing.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: For an answer to this question, I think probably she's
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: imagining physical nothingness. You know, she's in a room. It's
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: got stuff in it, all right, So now empty the room,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: take all your furniture, all the chairs, all the posters,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: off the walls, so there's nothing in it, and look around, well,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: what is in the room. Then in that case, you
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: still have air, right, so ump the air out of
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the room so that you're in a vacuum now, and
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I hope you're wearing a suit. I think this is
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: sort of the direction of nothingness she's imagining. Or do
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: you think maybe she's imagining like outer space where there's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: nothing or like a spot in space out there that
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't have anything. No planets, no stars, no gas, no dust. Yeah,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it's interesting because nothing is sort of defined by its opposite, right,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: no thing, so not defining what it is, you're sort
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of defining what it isn't. So to get to nothing,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you have to like remove as many things as possible.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: So you take out all the stuff, you take out
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: all the air, or as you say, you go out
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: into outer space where that stuff doesn't exist at all,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and you look around you. But you know, even out
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: in space there are things. If you are somewhere in
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: our Solar system, even if you're in outer space, there's
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: could be lots of particles around you. There's the solar wind,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: which is constantly blasting protons and electrons out from the Sun.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Of course it's filled with photons because you can see stuff.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: So even a random chunk of outer space, it still
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: has things in it. Right. But we talked about in
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the podcast how there are spots in space that are
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: pretty much empty. Right, There are sort of spots in
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: space potentially that they have nothing in them. It's certainly
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: possible to have a chunk of space with no particles
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in it. You know, you somehow get rid of them,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: or you find one where there aren't any. It's not
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: required that space have particles in it, but there is
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: another layer two space, right, Those particles in the and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: our ripples in the quantum fields that fills space, and
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: those fields exist everywhere in space. Even if there isn't
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a particle in the field, the field itself is there.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: What do you mean it's there if it's not active,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: or if it's not rippling or anything, if it's just
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: staying still, is it really there? Yeah. It's sort of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: like a parking lot. Right. You can have a parking
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: lot that's filled with cars or doesn't have any cars,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: and you can imagine like, well, if there are no
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: cars in the parking lot, then the parking lot is empty. Right.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: But a quantum field is a little bit different. These
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: fields that fill space and fill the universe, they can
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: never truly be empty. Quantum fields have a minimum energy states.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So every chunk of space has quantum fields in it,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and they can never really be at zero energy. So
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: every chunk of space has some energy with it. That's
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: why when the universe expands and creates more space, we
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: say it also is increasing the energy of the universe,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: because space comes with these fields sort of as a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: fundamental element of it. That's interesting. Yeah, you're saying that
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the field, even if they don't have a particle or
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: ripple in them, have some kind of energy, which means
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: they're they're kind of We can get philosophical about what
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: it means for the field to be there if you
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: can't see it, because remember, you can never actually observe
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: fields directly. You can only see fields effect on other particles,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: sort of like the curvature of space. You can't see it,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: but you can see its effect on beams of light
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: that curve it. You can't see an electric field directly,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: but if you put an electron in it, you can
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: see its effect on the electron. So some people argue
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: that fields are just sort of like a mathematical construction.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: They don't even really exist. Everything is particles, And if
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you like to go that route, then you could say
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: that every part of space is filled with a low
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: level of virtual particles that are sort of out there,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: ready to interact with particles you shoot through them. Either way,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: there's something in space. It's not ever really totally empty,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and as far as we know, these fields basically occupy
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the entire universe, right, is it possible that there's a
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: pocket of space out there without quantum feld We think
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: that they filled the entire universe, and the arguments we
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: have for that are not very specific, but they're sort
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of broad and powerful. You know. We think that the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: laws of the universe, the laws of physics, are the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: same everywhere. We see no evidence for one part of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: space being different from another part of space. So it
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: would be really strange if some chunk of space just
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: like didn't have a field in it. That would mean
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: it has different physical laws, you know, like electrons can't
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: get pushed by electric fields in that part of space
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: because there aren't any electric fields. Light can't propagate through
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: that space because light is a ripple in the electromagnetic field.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: That would be really weird. The reason we believe that
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: space is the same everywhere in the laws of physics
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: are the same everywhere, are like well number one, that's
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the simplest thing. It would be pretty weird to be different.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: And also there are consequences of that. If space is
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the same everywhere, then there are symmetries, which leads to
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: conservation laws, like conservation of momentum, and we see momentum
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: is conserved, so that suggests that space is the same everywhere.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Sort of a big leap there. So if you want
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: to dig into the details of that argument, we have
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: a whole episode about why is momentum concerned and Other's
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: theorem which makes the connections between those ideas. M I
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: think what you're saying is the quantum field is sort
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: of part of our laws of the universe, or what
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: we think are the laws of the universe, and so
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: to imagine a spotting space without quantum fields is like
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: imagining a space without any laws. Were different laws? Yeah, alright, so, Danika,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I guess there is no such thing as space without
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: with nothing in it. But you can also ask if
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: you have to have space, like you can push it
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: one step further and say, well, maybe you get rid
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: of space. Is it possible to have part of the
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: universe without space itself, because that's the way to get
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: rid of the fields, right, right, Because we often say
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: that spaces is a thing, right, it's not space is
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: not emptiness or an empty space. It's like a thing, right, Yeah,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: And that's something we don't know if it's possible. We
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: did a whole podcast episode about what is space? Where
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: does it come from? Do you have to have it
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: in the universe? And modern thinking is that space itself
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: might be emergent, It might not be fundament rental to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the universe, like pies and politicians. You don't necessarily have
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: to have in the universe. It comes out of complicated
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: interactions of other things that do exist. That might mean
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that there are scenarios where you have a universe that
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't have space in it, that space itself comes from,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: like the weaving together of quantum states via entanglement into
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: some fabric that we now recognize as space but didn't
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: always exist. You're saying that there could be and maybe
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: not in our universe, but maybe a universe out there
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: where there's all nothingness then or earlier in our universe.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Maybe that space wove itself together at some time in
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: our universe, and before that there wasn't space, And then
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you can ask like, well, maybe there was something else.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: There were these quantum states, so that wasn't nothing, but
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: it's not space in the same way, and so you
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: couldn't really look at it, and you can't like look
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: at nothingness if it's not in space. With you, because
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: looking at something requires like shooting light at it or
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: seeing like come from it, or some how probing it.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: There's no space, then you can't like interact with anything
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: in any way. So it sort of like pulls apart
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the whole question. Well, I think what you're saying is
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that space is something, and so if you had a
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: universe without anything in it, would it still even be
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a universe? Yeah, we don't know if that's possible. But
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: if you were in that universe, you also couldn't look
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: at anything because looking at things requires space. Well, let's
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: say that we give Donka superpowers and she has the
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: ability to do anything with her mind, and she imagined
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the pocket in front of her, a little blob in
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: front of her that has no space in it. What
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: would that look like to her? Probably just black, right,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: because nothing would come out of it. Definitely, nothing would
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: come out of it. But I think there might be
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: an inherent contradiction in that definition, right, you're talking about
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: a ball that doesn't have space. You're define in coordinates
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: and location and relationships between coordinates. That's really what space is.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So you're like defining a space that doesn't have space
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: in it. Well, I mean, she has superpowers, so she
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: can do whatever. Then asa she creates a little bubble
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: that if you go into it, there is no space
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: in it. Well, she has superpowers, then you know, she
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: can make it look like whatever she wants. It can
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: look like Captain Crunch or ice cream or purple dinosaurs. Well,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: we still need to follow the laws of physics outside
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: of it, right or at the border of it. Yeah,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: but if there's no space in it, then nothing can
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: propagate through it, and so nothing could leave it, and
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: so it couldn't look like anything, right, So it would
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: be like if it was just in front of her,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: it would just look black because no light can come
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: out of it, and any light that goes into it,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: which is kind of like disappear, right, Yeah, exactly. Maybe
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: a black hole has nothing in it. In fact, we
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: don't know if black holes have anything inside them. It
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: might be that everything that falls into a black hole
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: is sort of smeared onto its surface and they have
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: no interior. All right, Well, I guess that's sort of
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: an answer for Danica then, is that it could look
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: like anything you wanted to, but most likely it would
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: just look black because that's how your brain interprets when nothing,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: you know, no light enters your eyes, right, so there's nothing,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: no light coming out of this blob, then it would
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: just look black to you, even though it's not really black.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: It would just look black to you. It would look
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: like a lack of any signals. And that's how your
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: brain portrays a lack of information. So you're saying it
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: would look like nothing, then I'm saying nothing like that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you Donicus so much for that question.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: We're so glad you wrote in with it. And so
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: let's get to our other questions from our other kid listeners,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: and the next one is about Thor's Hammer, which I'm
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: really looking forward to as far as let's take a
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: quick break, all right, we are taking questions from kid listeners,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and surprisingly they're not about asking for more screen time.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: They already know the answer to that is because it's
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: a podcast, there are no screens. But our next question
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: comes from Grace, who's twelve years old and who lives
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: in Vancouver. Hi. My name is Grace and twelve year
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: old shame Vancouver, Washington. I was wondering if you could
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: help me with Thor's Hammer. It said by some that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Thor's hammer is made from the matter of a neutron star.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: If that's the case, would approximately one point five leers
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: of densely packed neutrons from such a star have enough
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: gravity on its own to even stay together if removed
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: from its original star? Or would it simply fall apart
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't have enough of its own gravity? Okay,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: So I also have a follow up question. If Thor's
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: hammer stays in one piece, how much gravity would it have.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Would the gravity be so great that it would suck
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the earth around it, becoming Earth's new core? Or would
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: it sit in the corner and collecting more dust? My
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: dad said destroy the earth, but I'd rather it's sit
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: in the corner and collect dust so I don't have
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: to clean often anyway. I bet you can do the
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: math and science can answer the question. Awesome question. Thank
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: you Grays, And the first answer is yes, I would
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: love to help you with Thor's hammer. I feel like
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: we're worthy of lifting meal near. Should we have her
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: ship it to you? Do you have like a UPS
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: number she can use? Oh? My goodness, what would the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: shipping cost her? Doors hammer? D I guess I can
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: just hold on my hand and hope it comes to me. Yeah,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: that's the true test. I think. Actually UPS has a
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: maximum shipping limit. Remember once my dad tried to order
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: an old fashioned anvil and UPS refused to deliver it
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: because there was so many hundreds of pounds. Yeah, you
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: should have to hire a truck for that kind of thing.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: But yeah, maybe UPS has some restrictions. You know, no explosives,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: no batteries, no, no magical hammers. Are you saying that
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the Marvel Cinematic Universe is based on magic instead of science. Well,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: isn't science at the end? Magic? Magic is everything we
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: haven't yet understood by science. Wait wait what it's magic
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: until you understand it and then it's science. Well this
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: is an interesting question because I do remember hearing or
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: reading that Thor's hammer is made from neutron stars, right.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: That was in one of the movies where he like
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: there was some kind of factory around a star and
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: he had to like forge a new hammer or new X.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I'll trust you on the canon of the Marble Cinematic Universe.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I have heard that it's at least as dense as
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: a neutron star. I wasn't sure if it was actually
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: made out of neutron star material or not. Well, I
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: guess let's assume for this question that it is made
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: from a neutron star. That would be a pretty amazing feed, right,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: that would be pretty amazing since the interior of a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: neutron star is a very hot, very dense, very unpleasant place,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: even hotter than California right now. So maybe step us through.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: What is a neutron star, Daniel? So, a neutron star
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: is a very massive, very dense remnant of the explosion
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: of a star. You have, like a normal star, it's
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: burning in its lifetime, it's gravity pushing in and pressure
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: from fusion going out, and eventually it accumulates so much
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: heavy stuff at its core from fusion that gravity wins
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and it creates a collapse of the star. This shock
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: wave rushes in, which then creates very hot, very dense,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: very high temperature conditions which ignite fusion very very rapidly,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: which then explodes out and you get a sup renew
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes and would you have left over at the core.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: It's very dense object, this neutron star. They're about ten
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to twenty kilometers wide and one to three times the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: mass of our sun. Sort of a lot of uncertainty
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: there in those numbers. But they're incredibly massive for their
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: very small sizes. Right. It's one of the, if not
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the densist thing in the universe. Like once they removed
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: from a black hole. Right, Like, if it was any denser,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: if anything was more dense than a neutron star, it
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: would probably collapse into a black hole. Yeah, a black
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: hole is the only thing denser than a neutron star.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: So somewhere out there there's like a version of Thor
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: with a black hole hammer that can beat our Thor's hammer.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You just gave me some
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: huge ideas for a comic book storylines. Somebody write that
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: thing up. But yes, neutron stars are like one layer
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: above black holes. They're holding themselves together against the incredible
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: gravity that's trying to compress them. If you didn't have
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the strong force pushing back out, they would just collapse
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: into a black hole. But they get squeezed down. All
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: protons and electrons get squeezed together to form neutrons, and
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: you get this thing which is mostly neutrons, though we
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: dug into on a recent episode, there's like a thin
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: crust of other atoms, and at the heart of them,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: there's a very strange stuff going on. Stuff we don't
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: even understand what happened to all the electrons that were
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: in the stars. They got eaten, right, The proton captures
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the electron and gets turned into a neutron. It's the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: opposite of neutron beta decay or neutron decays into a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: proton and an electron. Force an electron back into the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: proton and it converts into a neutron. WHOA, the electrons
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: got eaten, but doesn't they a total number of electrons
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and the universe have to stay the same. Can can
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: you just eat an electron? You can't just eat an electron.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: You have to produce also an electron anti neutrino. In
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: beta decay, you have a neutron which goes to a proton,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: an electron and a neutrino or an anti neutrino. You
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: have to have an antiparticle there somewhere, and in the
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: reverse process you have to produce the opposite particles, So
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: there's also neutrinos involved. Keep the accounting of the number
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: of electrons balanced all right? Well? In Grace's question, I
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: guess if thorce hammer is made out of a neutron star.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I guess then the process would have been that somebody
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: went to a neutron star, scooped a bunch of the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: stuff that's inside of a nutron star, and somehow forced
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: it into a hammer, which I think she estimates is
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: about one and a half liters in volume. So how
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: much would that way? Then the density of a neutron star,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: it's such that one tablespoon of that would weigh three
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: billion tons on the surface of the Earth. That's something
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: like two trillion kilograms of mass. So then you break
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: out your leader to tablespoon conversion and that's about a
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: hundred table spoons in a liter and a half, which
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: gives you about three hundred billion tons or about three
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: hundred trillion kilograms of matter. That's a lot of kilograms,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: I guess. I imagine, how does that compare to like
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the mass of the Earth or like the mass of
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: the empire state building. Yeah, so it sounds like a lot, right,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: trillions of kilograms is a big number, but you know,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the Earth is really really big. The Earth has ten
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: to the twenty four kilograms, so the Earth is like
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: a trillion times more massive. Than Thor's hammer. What about
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: like the Empire State building or maybe like your typical mountain.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: So the Empire State Building ways around three hundred million kilograms,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: so that's like a million times less than Thor's hammer.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: So Thor's hammer is like a million Empire state buildings. Wow,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: So if you had a million Empire state buildings scrushing
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: down to about the size of a coke bottle, that
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: would be Thor's hammer. That would be the mass of
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Thor's hammer if it was made out of Nutron's dormitory exactly,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: if it had that same density. Well, that sounds pretty heavy.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: That means Thor is as pretty strong guy as is
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I guess Captain America because he lists to the hammer. Also, exactly,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: that super serium is pretty super So then her next
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: question is would it hold together? What does that mean? Like,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: would it have enough gravity to hold together? Why wouldn't
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: it hold together? Well, if you've taken it from the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: heart of a neutron star, then that neutron star has
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: formed under special conditions. It's like being squeezed together by
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: all the other stuff around it. There's an incredible amount
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of pressure. It's not just being held together by its
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: own gravity. It's also all the other stuff. It's like
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: if you take something and you put it deep underwater,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure squeezing down on it, helping
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: it keep it together. So it's not clear if you
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: took it out of the neutron star if it would explode,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: like some things would explode in our atmosphere, but if
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: you put them deep underwater, the water would keep them together.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: So I think her question is if you extracted this
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: from the heart of a neutron star, where it's very
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: very high pressure, would it hold itself together or would
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: it blow up because it is under so much pressure
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: in the neutron star. But I guess what if you've
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: just formed it outside of a neutron star, Like if
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: you just took a million Empire state buildings and scrunch
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: them down together to form the hammer, would it hold together? Well,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the answer is that we don't know, because we don't
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: understand how matter organizes itself under crazy pressure. We talked
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: in a recent episode about what's inside a neutron star,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: and we think that there's some crazy things that happened.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: We think they formed these weird states called nuclear pasta
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: where first you get these blobs called nuclear nioki, and
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: then they form these rods called nuclear spaghetti, and then
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: sheets called nuclear lasagna. And these things are very very strong.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: So these are the neutrons that have assembled themselves into
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: this new form of matter, you know, the way like
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: particles can make gas or liquid or solid or whatever.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: These are emerging structures from how the little bits are
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: getting squeezed together and interacting under these crazy conditions. We
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: think you form these things called nuclear pasta, but we
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: don't know what happens to nuclear pasta if you form
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: it just out in space without the crazy high temperature
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: and pressure environment in which it was made. One possibility
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: is that it can't survive, that it blows up right explodes,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: that it's just an unstable configuration because the particles don't
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: like getting squeezed that intensely. Another possibility is that it
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: is stable, because simulations suggest that nuclear pasta might be
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: some of the strongest stuff in the universe. We have
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: examples of that, like diamonds. Diamonds you can only form
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: under very very high pressure, high temperature conditions. Once you
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: take them out of there, they're stable. They're like locked
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: into this configuration that can survive even at the surface
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: of the Earth, So we just don't know the answer.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: What happens if you make a sheet of nuclear pasta
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and then take it out into low pressure empty space.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: I see, it could be that it blows up, or
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: it could be maybe like it forms something like a
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: diamond that stays together. I guess if it blows up,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: why would it blow up? Like, why would it matter?
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Like being compressed that much? Is there something about the
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: quirks or something that they just don't like being together
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: that much? It might be that they do. We don't
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: know that they do. It might be that they're very
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: happy to get locked into this configuration. We just don't know.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: If they don't, it would be because there's some force
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: between them. Right. The reason that things push against each
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: other is because their forces between them. You push two
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: atoms next to each other, and they will resist because
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: their electrons repel each other in the same way. The
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: quarks inside those neutrons could be repelling each other as well.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: But we just don't understand the strong force of those
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: short distances as those very high intensities well enough to
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: know whether it will explode. But if it it, it
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: would because the strong force is pushing the individual corps apart.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, the last part of our question is
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: how much gravity would Thor's hammer have if it was
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: made out of nutron stars. So if we take a
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: million empire sage buildings crushed scrunching down into a little cube,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: would we be attracted to it by its gravity with
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the whole Earth sort of collapsed around it? Would it
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: start making a black hole? What would happen? It's a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: really awesome question. And so I did a few calculations.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: And you know, here we're talking about something that has
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: three hundred trillion kilogram and so the force of gravity
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: you feel towards this thing depends on how far away
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: you are, right, because force gravity goes like one over
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: distance squared. And so if you are like a kilometer
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: away from Thor's hammer, then you're gonna feel a force
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: of two Newton's which is like two percent of Earth's gravity.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Well that's a lot too. Neutants is like a pound
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of force, right, So if you're a kilometer away from
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Thor's hammer, you would feel it, right, You feel a
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: pound of force pushing you towards it. Exactly, You feel
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: like two of Earth's gravity towards Thor's hammer. So if
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: you drop a ball, it wouldn't just drop straight down,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: it would drift towards Thor's hammer. But still Earth's gravity
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: would be the overwhelming force if you're a kilometer away,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: and then if you get closer, like say you're a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: meter away from this thing, then you're gonna be feeling
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: two million Newton's which is two thousand times Earth's gravity. Remember,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: humans can survive like six, seven, eight, maybe ten times
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Earth's gravity, you know, like fighter jet pilots. Very very briefly,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: we're talking two thousand times Earth's gravity. If you're a
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: meter away from this thing, so you would get smush basically, right,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: you would get smush, you would become the outer layer
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of Thor's hammer. You'll probably get torn into pieces. Right,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: That nuclear pasta would spaghettify you because the forces on
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the back of your head would be weaker than the
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: force on your front of your head, so it would
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: tear your head apart. So it would not be a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: pleasant experience to be a meter away from them. That's crazy.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: So if I have Thor's hammer and front of it,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: it would start to suck everything in around it, right,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I mean the things a meter away from it would
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: get sucked in with two thousand pounds of fourth two
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: thousand times Earth's gravity, some more than two thousand pounds
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: of force. Yeah, So then all the stuff it gets
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: pushed onto it, which would give it more mass. That
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: stuff would compress, and then that would attract more things.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: So it would just create a giant vacuum basically on
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth. Would suck up mountains too, right, yeah,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and it would suck Earth up also, right, the Earth
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: underneath it is not that dense, so it wouldn't just
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: be sucking from the surface, would be digging into the Earth.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: And it's really massive, so I think it probably would
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: just sink into the Earth and become part of the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Earth's core. Oh right, I guess because it's also being
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: pulled by Earth's gravity to right. Yes, absolutely, so it
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: would start to suck everything around it create a giant crater.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: But then the crater would start moving down towards the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: center of the Earth. Yeah. And as you get very
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: close to this thing, the gravity is incredibly intense. Remember,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: gravity goes like one over distant squared And the impressive
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: thing about having something so dense is you can get
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: very very very close to it. If you're like a
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: centimeter away from this thing. We're talking about twenty million
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: times Earth's gravity, So the matter very close to Thor's
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: hammer would get very powerfully pulled in and very very dense. So, yeah,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: be a runaway gravitational effect. Yeah, and it would probably
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: shred matter, which would release a lot of energy to right,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: it would probably and it would also axillary things, and
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: so it would be almost like an explosion too. Yeah.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I think it might have enough energy to break chemical
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: bonds and maybe to ionize matter to like pull electrons
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: off of their atoms. Definitely not enough to like break
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: open the nucleus because tider forces require difference in gravitational strength,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: and the size of the nucleus is just so small
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: that gravity doesn't really change very much over the length
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: of the nucleus. But yeah, it would shred stuff apart.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: It would create a whirling maelstrum of destruction as it
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: sinks into the earth. Wow, would it destroy the earthy
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: thing or would it just you know, create a big hole. Well,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: in the end, it's one trillionth of the mass of
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: the Earth, and so it would sink to the Earth's core.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: In the end, it wouldn't really change Earth's gravity all
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that much. But I'm not sure what would happen at
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: the heart of the Earth. It might continue to just
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: compress what's going on at the heart of the Earth
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: and might eventually just turn the Earth into a black hole. Wait,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: what it can trigger a black hole? If it can
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: stay that dense and have that intense gravity, it's going
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: to continue to compactify the Earth around it. If you
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: teleported Thor's Hammer into the heart of the Earth, then
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the stuff right next to it would get compacted onto
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Thor's hammer. It would be even denser, which would increase
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the gravitational attraction, and so it's a runaway gravitational process.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: It might turn the Earth into a neutron star. Actually, yeah,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, because if it couldn't initially turn into
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: a black hole, why would it turn into a black
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: hole now? Just because I fed it a little earth
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: fed it little as a little a pair of teeth,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: a little moose bush. Either way, it sounds like bad
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: news for us, and so um good thing Thori's Hammer
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: is not here on Earth. We think exactly, adding Thora's
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Hammer to your living room would not help clean things up.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Although I guess if it's a fictional universe with magic
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: and stuff, then I'm sure you know, the people who
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: made the hammer put in some maybe mechanisms for it
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: to not suck literally and figuratively, they're gonna really support
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: the floorboards underneath Thord's hammer. Yeah, yeah, like somehow it's
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: made out of material from a neutron star. But you know,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: maybe it has special you know, enchantments to make it
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: all together and also not have that kind of gravity. Well,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: let's hope so. And then one day scientists in the
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Marble Cinematic universe will unravel those enchantments and understand the
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: science of them, and then they'll be worthy of lifting
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: mule here. All right, Well, thank you Grace for that
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: awesome question. We think you're a superhero yourself, and so
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: let's get to our last question here about Lonely Stars.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, we
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: are taking questions from listeners, and today we have a
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: kid edition of our Listener Questions episode, and our next
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: question comes from Derek, who's nine years old. Hi, my
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: name is Derek, and are nine years old. I was
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: wondering if there're any stars the universe that are not
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: part of any gaxy. All right, thank you Derek for
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: that awesome question. I wonder what made Derek think of
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: stars that are not part of a galaxy. Maybe Derek
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: and his family are trying to plan a vacation and
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: they're looking for an exotic spot away from everyone else. Yes,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: you know, some people just like to be isolated, and
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: you had a tough day at the playground. Maybe just curious.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a great process to think, all the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: stars I know of our in galaxies, is it possible
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: for something else to happen? Could it be that stars
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: could form outside galaxies? Just like asking basic questions about
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: our assumptions. I think it's a great way to explore
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the universe. And I guess it's kind of interesting because
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: at some point in human history, maybe not too long ago,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: we didn't even even know there were galaxies. Right. We
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: thought all stars, which is part of the Uni verse,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and there was just a big blob of stars that
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: made up the universe. Right. Yeah, just over a hundred
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: years ago we discovered the galaxies are a thing. They're
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: floating in space, separated by vast distances. Rather than the
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: whole universe just being sprinkled with stars. That was one
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: of Edwin Hubble's discoveries. Yeah, and then we realized that
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: every star we see in the night sky is actually
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: part of a galaxy, of a cluster of stars, and
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: if you look closely and far away in the Nice Guy,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: you see other clusters of galaxies. And that's how we
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: sort of figured out that this stuff in the universe
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: sort of organizes itself in galaxies. Right, that's right. Some
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: of the galaxies the night skuy are a little tricky
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to see, but they're very dramatic, Like the nearest galaxy
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Andromeda is actually huge in the Nice Guy. It's bigger
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: than the full moon. It's just not very bright, so
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: it takes a special camera to take a long image
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: of it so that you can see it. But it's
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: really big up there. Yeah. And so I guess Derek's
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: question is if you know the stars that we've seen
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: the Nice Guy are all in the Milky Way, and
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: we see other clusters of galaxies out there, I guess
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the question is are their stars that are not part
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: of a galaxy? Yeah, it's a great question, and the
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: answer is yes, there are stars out there that are
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: not part of a galaxy. But we don't think that
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: they were formed out there on their own. We think
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: that all stars are made inside a galaxy, but then
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: some of them are lost. So like between our galaxy
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and the next galaxy, there could be random stars floating around. Yes,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: we think almost certainly there are. In fact that scientists
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: have seen them. We have spotted some with space telescopes.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: We've even seen one or two go supernova out in
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the depths of space. M interesting, I guess how have
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: we seen them and how do we figure out they
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: were not part of a galaxy. Well, you can see
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: these stars with telescopes like Hubble Detective, the first one
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: in seven. You can see that they're out there and
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: you can see that they're not part of a galaxy.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Just like literally out between the galaxies. You can tell
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: how far away stars roughly by its recession velocity, by
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: how fast it's moving away from us, and by measuring
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: its red shift, and we could also compare it to
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: near by stuff. So you just see these stars out
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: there between galaxies. Yeah, because it's kind of hard to tell, right,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: because you just see a little pin point in the
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: sky and start to tell if it's really far away
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: or kind of close. Yeah, there's this ambiguity between things
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: that are really far away and bright or really close
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: and dim. All you're seeing is that point in the sky.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: It can be hard to tell. But we have some
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: tricks to figure out how far away things are. One
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: is how fast is it moving away from us? Because
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: things that are further away from us are moving faster
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: away from us. Also, we can look at nearby stuff.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: We can compare them to two things that we can calculate.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: We have like sephids, which are these special kinds of
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: stars that how will use to figure out how far
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: away things are. And then further away we can look
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: at type one nice supernova, this kind of stuff. So
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: we have a few like reference points this cosmic distance
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: ladder to figure out how far away things are. All right,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And so you're saying, if there is a star that
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: is not part of a galaxy, you're saying it probably
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't made out there in the empty space between galaxies.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: It was probably made in a galaxy. I guess my
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: first question is why do you say that? Why couldn't
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: a star form by itself in between galaxies? Will star
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: formation requires sort of special circumstances. You need a big
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: cloud of dense enough gas that has to be cold enough,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: so you need gravity, like gather together a lot of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: hydrogen in one place and then cool it down somehow
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: so that the stars can collapse. Remember, star formation happens
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: when you have a cloud of cold gas and then
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: you have a little spot in it that's denser than
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: any other spot. That spot now has more gravity than
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: everything else, and so we can attract more and more
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: stuff to it, and just like Thor's hammer that we
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: talked about, that becomes a runaway process. It grabs more
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: and more stuff. So that's happened. You need this big
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: cloud of cold gas. And while there is gas out
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: there between galaxies is just not dense enough, and it's
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: also too hot. The gas between galaxies is moving really
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: really fast. It's zipping around a lot. So you need
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: dark matter to gather together huge clouds of gas into
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: galaxies to create these star formation conditions. Right. I guess
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that's what we see right now, that in most of
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: the space between galaxies there's hot gas. But I guess
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: that doesn't maybe tell us that that there couldn't be
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: earlier in the universe just a little cloud of gas
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: that form into one star by itself, right, is that?
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I mean? Is that possible? Or I guess The same
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: question is why didn't the universe have little small pockets
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: of cold gas out there in between galaxies? Well, in
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: some sense it did, right, Remember the galaxies formed smaller.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: You started with smaller pockets of gas which formed stars,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: and then those merge. So the history we see is
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the formation of a bunch of really small galaxies which
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: come together to make bigger galaxies. So in some sense
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: it's a definitional thing. You have a blob of gas
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: which starts to form stars. You call that a baby galaxy,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: and then it merges together with other baby galaxies to
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: become a bigger galaxy. Can you get a pocket of
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: gas which forms a single star? You could, though it's
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: unlikely because these conditions tend to form multiple stars at once.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: These clouds of gas are big enough, and when the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: conditions are ripe, they form many stars sort of at
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the same time, which is why you see, for example,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: so many binary star systems because stars are formed near
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: each other and they're sort of together from birth. But
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: it's possible technically to form a single star from a
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: cloud of gas that happens to be isolated from everywhere else.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: It's not impossible. So it probably has happened somewhere in
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: the universe, right, because I guess when the universe began
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: in the Big Bang, it was all kind of random, right,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: there were huge blocks of gas here, but maybe there
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: could have been smaller blocks of gas all by themselves
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the universe. Yeah, it's definitely possible. But if
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: you're looking at the stars today that exists and are
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: outside of galaxies, we think the overwhelming likelihood is that
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: they were formed inside existing galaxies and then ejected. They
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: were kicked out, they were booted, they were voted off
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the galactic island. So it's not like a game of
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: musical chairs where all the stars were like, all right,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: everybody find a galaxy, and then there was one star
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: that gon trapped without a galaxy. That's the scenario I
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: was trying to paint. But you're saying it's more like
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: everybody got into teams and then the somebody got booted
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: out sadly. Yeah, it's more like a corporate merger, you know,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: in two big companies get together, they end up firing
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: a bunch of employees. That's sort of what happens when
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: galaxies merge. Galaxies come together, and the stars don't like collide.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: When two galaxies merge, they sort of like orbit each
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: other and form a bigger galaxy. And this is a
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: basic part of how we got the galaxies we have today.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: The Milky Way, for example, we think is the product
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: of the merger of several smaller galaxies, some bigger, some smaller.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you have like a big galaxy eats a small galaxy,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: sometimes two galaxies the same size. But when this happens,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: though the stars don't often collide, there are sometimes casualties
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: because not all the stars then fall into a nice
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: orbit around the combined mass of the two galaxies. Some
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: of them just get kicked out. Well, I'm not sure
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: nine year olds know about corporate burgers that much. You've
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: got to prepare them starting early, man for the realities
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: of the adult world. I think, what do you mean
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: is like if I take a bunch of legos and
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: nice mush them against another bunch of legos, some of
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: the limbicgo pieces are going to fly out right away
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: from the bunch of legos that I'm forming, yeah, right,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: And so almost all of the stars of the overwhelming
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: majority of them, form some new galaxy, but some of
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: them are lost. Remember, like a stable orbit is not
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: always that easy to find. We think there are planets
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: in our Solar system which we're lost because of crazy
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: gravitational hijinks by Jupiter, for example. So it's much easier
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: to lose something out of orbit than to gain something
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: in orbit. So when two little galaxies come together to
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: form a bigger galaxy, most of the stars end up
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: happily orbiting the new combined galaxy, but some of them
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: just get tossed out into space. Well, I think it's
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: can definitely relate to that. It's much easier to lose
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: their toys and to get new ones. And there's another
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: process also where a galaxy can lose stars. Remember that
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: at the heart of galaxies there's a huge black hole,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: this supermassive black hole, which can sometimes have the massive
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: millions or billion times the mass of our Sun. It's
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: really intense gravity, and we have these amazing movies of
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: stars orbiting these black holes and going super fast. Well,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: sometimes those are stable orbits, but also sometimes they're not.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: So if a star comes near the supermassive black hole
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the heart of a galaxy, it can get whizzed around
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and then just tossed out of the galaxy sort of
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: like a slingshot, right exactly the way like comets dive
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: deep into the heart of our solar system, gain a
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: lot of speed, and then get thrown back out to
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: the outer solar system. In that case, it's still sometimes
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: a stable orbit, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes we lose
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: a commet, and could that happen to our son, to
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: our start cod we somehow get booted off the Milky Way.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: It's possible the Sun is in a pretty stable orbit.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: We're not very close to the center of the Milky Way,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: We're not close to the outside. Every thirty one million
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: years or so, we crossed the galactic plane. We sort
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: of like go around in a circle that takes by
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: two fifty million years. Then we also go like up
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: and down relative to the plane and crossed through every
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: thirty million years. So it's possible that our orbit around
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: the galaxy could get perturbed if we come near some
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: other star which like gives us a yank, and we
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: end up like falling in towards the center of the
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: galaxy and then getting shot out, or in if few
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda will merge, and
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: definitely some stars are going to get voted off the island,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: all right, So to answer Dirk's question, the answer is, yes,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: you can have stars that are not part of a galaxy,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: but they're most likely booted out. But I think it's
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting to think that there are stars out there
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: floating in the huge empty space between galaxies. I wonder
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: if some of those stars could have planets orbiting around them,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: and maybe even life around them. Right, imagine being a
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: life form looking out into the sky and one of
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: these lonely stars. I bet the nice guy would look
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: pretty differently than it does to us. Yeah, technically it's possible. Right.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: We don't really gain much benefit from being part of
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the galaxy. So if you took the Sun and you
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: just deposited out in the middle of intergalactic space, our
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: lives wouldn't really change that much. All we really need
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: to survive is the Sun. But you're right, the night
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: sky would look very different because all we would see
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: would be galaxies. Right now, when you look up, you
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: see mostly stars in the Milky Way, and a few
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: little smudges from galaxies. So astronomers evolving on that star
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: would think, Wow, the Earth is really weird because everything
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: else up there is a galaxy instead of a star.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: That would be very puzzled. Right, this nice guy would
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: just look black with smushes on it, right, exactly. And
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: we know that there are a lot of them out there.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Astronomers from Vanderbilt identified more than six hundred stars just
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: past the edge of the Milky Way between Us and Andromeda.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: These are hypervelocity stars that we think we're ejected from
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the core of the Milky Way, and maybe there are
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: planets around them, although you know, the intense gravitational push
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: of getting whipped around the black hole might make a
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: star lose its planets also, that would be a crazy ride.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you Derek for that awesome question.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: And um, I hope you do make it into a
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: team in the playground and not lose your toys. That's right,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: And if the Sun is injective from our galaxy, I
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: hope we all go along for the ride. All right. Well,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: that answers all three of our listener questions. Thank you
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: to everyone, especially Danica, Grace and Derek for sending us
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: they're awesome questions and for being curious about the universe.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: And thank you to their parents for raising the next
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: generation of science. This well, technically everyone's raising the next
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: generation of scientists, because everybody's a scientist, right, That's right, exactly,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: So I'm just doing professionally. And thanks for everybody out
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: there who encourages their kids to ask questions and wonder
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: about the world and experience the joy of discovery and
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: of confusion. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explained the Universe is a production of
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my Heart Radio,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Ye