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A Cosmic Photon May Be Challenging Einstein’s Physics · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomy podcast. Each episode offers a
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: You know, usually when something travels 2 billion light years
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  Speaker 2: across the universe... We expect it to obey the fundamental
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: speed limits and, you know, the standard traffic laws of physics.
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  Speaker 3: Right. You definitely think so.
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  Speaker 2: But back in October 2022, something hit Earth that completely
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  Speaker 2: broke Albert Einstein's rules. So you are about to hear
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  Speaker 2: the story of a particle that, well, by all known
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  Speaker 2: mathematical models of the universe, it just should have been
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  Speaker 2: annihilated long before it ever reached our solar system.
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  Speaker 3: It really is such a remarkable anomaly. We're talking about
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  Speaker 3: a single elementary particle of light that survived an absolutely
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  Speaker 3: impossible journey. Yeah. And it's now forcing astrophysicists to reconsider
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  Speaker 3: the structural rules of spacetime itself.
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  Speaker 2: Which is wild.
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  Speaker 3: It is.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Because the data we gathered from this event, it points
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  Speaker 3: to mechanisms we have theorized about for decades, but we've
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  Speaker 3: never actually observed them in nature before.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: OK, let's unpack this by grounding it in what actually
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: happened on October 9th, 2022. So Earth was washed over
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: by this massive shower of photons. From a cataclysmic explosion
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  Speaker 2: two billion light years away.
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  Speaker 3: Right. A massive burst.
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  Speaker 2: And astronomers cataloged it as GRB 21009A. But it quickly
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: earned a much more descriptive nickname, the BOAT, which stands
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  Speaker 2: for the brightest of all time.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, the BOAT did. And, you know, gamma ray bursts
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  Speaker 3: are already the most energetic explosions we know of. They're
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  Speaker 3: typically triggered when massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and just, well,
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  Speaker 3: collapse into black holes.
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  Speaker 2: Firing out those concentrated jets of pure energy.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. But the boat, it was an outlier even among
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  Speaker 3: Gannery bursts. The sheer volume of photons it dumped on
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  Speaker 3: our solar system physically saturated our satellite detectors.
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  Speaker 2: Like they couldn't even process it all. Right.
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  Speaker 3: The instruments were essentially blinded by the glare. It was
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  Speaker 3: that intense.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, but it wasn't the sheer volume that caused astrophysics
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  Speaker 2: departments around the world to panic, right? I mean, out
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  Speaker 2: of that massive deluge, there was one specific photon recorded
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  Speaker 2: by a facility in the Russian Caucasus called the Buxan Observatory.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, down on the ground.
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  Speaker 2: Right, their carpet cosmic ray detector caught a single photon
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  Speaker 2: carrying an astonishing 300 tera electron volts, or TV, of energy.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and to give that number some weight for anyone
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  Speaker 3: familiar with particle physics... 300 TeV is exponentially higher than
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  Speaker 3: anything we can produce artificially.
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  Speaker 2: Like here on Earth? Right.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, which is
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: the most powerful machine humanity has ever built, it maxes
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  Speaker 3: out at collision energies around 13.6 TeV.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: And this was 300? Yes.
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  Speaker 3: This was a single massless particle of light carrying 300 TeV.
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  Speaker 3: It is just a staggering concentration of energy.
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  Speaker 2: Okay. So we have this 300 TeV photon, and it
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  Speaker 2: arrived on Earth. So the objective today is to figure
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  Speaker 2: out the physics behind why its survival is considered impossible
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  Speaker 2: and how the mechanism that allowed it to survive points
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  Speaker 2: to a potential crack in the theory of relativity.
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  Speaker 3: Which is a huge deal.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: A very huge deal. So why exactly is a 300
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  Speaker 2: TeV photon considered dead on arrival under standard physics? Wait,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: isn't space supposed to be mostly empty vacuum? Why is
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: this photon acting like it's navigating a crowded room?
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  Speaker 3: Well, that is a really common misconception. And to understand
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  Speaker 3: the impossibility here, we have to completely discard the idea
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  Speaker 3: of an empty vacuum.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so space isn't empty.
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  Speaker 3: No, not at all. Intergalactic space is actually permeated by
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  Speaker 3: the cosmic microwave background or the CMB.
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  Speaker 2: Which is the leftover stuff from the Big Bang, right?
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. It's the relic radiation from the Big Bang itself.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: It is a persistent, dense bath of low-energy photons. filling
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: every single cubic centimeter of the universe.
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  Speaker 2: Every centimeter.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: So a photon traveling from the Boe has to basically
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  Speaker 2: wade through this ocean of ancient CMB photons for 2
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  Speaker 2: billion years.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, an incredibly long swim.
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  Speaker 2: But why does that matter? I mean, photons of visible
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  Speaker 2: light from distant galaxies cross that ocean all the time
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  Speaker 2: and hit our telescopes without any issue.
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  Speaker 3: They do, but the rules change drastically at ultra-high energies. See,
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  Speaker 3: when a standard visible light photon encounters a CMB photon,
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  Speaker 3: nothing happens.
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  Speaker 2: They just ignore each other.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: They pass right through each other without interacting. But when
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  Speaker 3: a photon energy crosses into that extreme care electron volt range,
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  Speaker 3: the cross-section for interaction fundamentally shifts.
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  Speaker 2: Meaning they notice each other?
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  Speaker 3: Very violently, yes. A 300 TV photon colliding with a
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  Speaker 3: low-energy CMB photon has enough combined energy to trigger a
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  Speaker 3: process called pair production.
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  Speaker 2: Care production, meaning... The kinetic energy of the collision is
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  Speaker 2: like physically converted into mass. Yes.
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  Speaker 3: Matter and antimatter specifically.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: Under Einstein's mass energy equivalence, you know, E equals MC squared,
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  Speaker 3: the immense energy of that 300 TV photon and the
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  Speaker 3: CMB photon interact and spontaneously transform into an electron and
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  Speaker 3: a positron.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
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  Speaker 2: So the original light particle is just gone.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. The original 300 KV photon ceases to exist. its
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  Speaker 3: energy is entirely consumed in the creation of those two
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  Speaker 3: new particles, which then just veer off in different directions
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  Speaker 3: along magnetic field lines.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let me make sure I'm visualizing this correctly. A
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  Speaker 2: 300 TV photon traveling through the CMB is basically an
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  Speaker 2: arrow flying through an incredibly dense forest.
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  Speaker 3: That's a good way to picture it.
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  Speaker 2: But it's not just trying to avoid hitting a solid tree.
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  Speaker 2: If it even grazes a leaf, The fundamental physical laws
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  Speaker 2: of the universe force the arrow to instantaneously turn into
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  Speaker 2: two entirely different objects. Say, two birds that just fly
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  Speaker 2: away and the arrow just vanishes completely.
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  Speaker 3: Yes. That framing captures the unavoidable nature of the mechanism perfectly.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, the mathematical probability of a 300 TV photon
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  Speaker 3: traveling 2 billion light years without triggering pair production is
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  Speaker 3: essentially zero.
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  Speaker 2: Zero. Because there are just too many leaves in the forest.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. The distance is simply too immense, and the density
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: of the CMB is too high. The photon should have
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  Speaker 3: been absorbed by the universe long before it reached the
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  Speaker 3: Milky Way.
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  Speaker 2: But the Boksan Observatory has the data. The carpet detector
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  Speaker 2: caught it. So if we rule out a broken detector,
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  Speaker 2: we have to figure out how it bypassed this unavoidable annihilation.
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  Speaker 3: We do.
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  Speaker 2: And from what I understand, the initial attempt to solve
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: this relied on a theoretical framework involving something called axion-like particles,
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  Speaker 2: or ALPs.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, ALPs. And they are hypothetical ultralight particles that are
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  Speaker 3: often proposed as candidates for dark matter.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, dark matter, right.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, but the fascinating part of ALP theory for our
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  Speaker 3: photon is that it allows for a temporary state change.
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  Speaker 3: The theory proposes that when a high-energy photon passes through
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  Speaker 3: a sufficiently strong intergalactic magnetic field, it can actually spontaneously
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  Speaker 3: oscillate into an axion-like particle.
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  Speaker 2: Wait, how does a photon just change its state? I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it's a particle of light. It doesn't have a choice
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  Speaker 2: in the matter.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it doesn't make a choice, right?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: It reacts purely to environmental forces. The oscillation is driven
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  Speaker 3: by the interaction between the photon's electromagnetic properties and the
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  Speaker 3: external magnetic field.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: So the stronger the field, the higher the probability the
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  Speaker 3: photon alters its fundamental state.
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  Speaker 2: It sounds like light passing through a specialized prism or...
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  Speaker 2: Maybe even like water vapor, like if the conditions, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the temperature and pressure in the atmosphere are just right.
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  Speaker 2: Invisible vapor condenses into a physical raindrop.
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  Speaker 3: That's actually a great analogy.
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  Speaker 2: And then when the atmospheric conditions change again, it evaporates
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  Speaker 2: back into invisible vapor.
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  Speaker 3: The phase change analogy works very well here. Under the
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  Speaker 3: influence of those intergalactic magnetic fields, the photon essentially condenses
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  Speaker 3: into an ALP. And now the crucial detail is that
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  Speaker 3: ALPs do not interact with the cosmic microwave background.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, because they aren't photons anymore, so the rule doesn't
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  Speaker 2: apply to them.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. They are completely immune to pair production.
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  Speaker 2: So it tends like a fugitive putting on a disguise
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  Speaker 2: to sneak past a massive line of security checkpoints. They
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  Speaker 2: can coast right through the CMB ocean without turning into
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  Speaker 2: an electron and a positron.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, they just slip right past the guards. And then
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  Speaker 3: as the ALP approaches the Milky Way... It encounters our
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  Speaker 3: galaxy's own localized magnetic field.
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  Speaker 2: Which takes the disguise off.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: It triggers the reverse oscillation. The ALP converts back into
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  Speaker 3: a high-energy photon just in time to hit the Earth's
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  Speaker 3: atmosphere and register on the carpet detector.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's an incredibly elegant workaround for the universe.
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  Speaker 2: But since astrophysicists were still scratching their heads over this
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  Speaker 2: specific photon, I'm assuming this phase change doesn't actually solve
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  Speaker 2: the problem for the Biot.
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  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, no. It solves the problem for photons carrying a
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  Speaker 3: few tens of tera-electron volts. The required magnetic field strengths
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  Speaker 3: and particle masses, they balance out perfectly for those lower energies.
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  Speaker 2: But not for our 300 TV photon.
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  Speaker 3: Right. 300 TV is simply too energetic. To force a
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  Speaker 3: photon of that massive magnitude to oscillate into an ALP
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  Speaker 3: and stay in that form long enough to cross 2
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  Speaker 3: billion light years, you would need intergalactic magnetic fields installed.
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  Speaker 3: Far stronger than anything that actually exists in the universe.
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  Speaker 2: Ah, I see.
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  Speaker 3: The math just falls apart completely.
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  Speaker 2: So the disguise doesn't fit.
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  Speaker 3: It really doesn't.
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  Speaker 2: If the environment can't force the water vapor to become
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: a rain drought, we are basically back to square one.
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  Speaker 2: The photon remained a 300 TV photon, meaning it had
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: to face the CMB ocean, meaning it should have been
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  Speaker 2: destroyed by pair production. Unless, of course, the rules of
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  Speaker 2: pair production themselves are flawed.
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  Speaker 3: And this is the exact realization... that led Giorgio Galanti
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  Speaker 3: from the National Institute for Astrophysics and Marco Roncadeli from
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  Speaker 3: the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy to propose
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  Speaker 3: a radical new model. Okay, now we're getting to the
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  Speaker 3: new science.
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  Speaker 2: Right. They published a study in Physical Review Letters that
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  Speaker 2: combined the ALP theory with a violation of one of
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  Speaker 2: physics' most sacred principles, which is Lorentz invariance.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, let's break that down because Lorentz invariance is heavy stuff.
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  Speaker 3: If I recall correctly from basic physics, it's a foundational
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  Speaker 3: pillar of Albert Einstein's special relativity.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, it is.
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  Speaker 3: It basically says the laws of physics, including the speed
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  Speaker 3: of light and how events unfold in space time, they
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  Speaker 3: remain identical for all observers, regardless of their constant velocity
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  Speaker 3: or orientation in space.
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  Speaker 2: That is the core of it, yes. Lorentz invariance is
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  Speaker 2: the fundamental symmetry of nature. It is what keeps the
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  Speaker 2: universe predictable.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: But certain advanced models of quantum gravity have suggested for
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: years that at absolute extreme energy scales, you know, approaching
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: what we call the Planck energy, spacetime might not be
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  Speaker 2: the smooth, continuous fabric that Einstein described.
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  Speaker 3: What would it be instead?
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  Speaker 2: It might be quantized, or what physicists call foamy. Foamy spacetime? Okay,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: if spacetime is foamy at those extremes, Lorentz invariance might warp.
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  Speaker 2: But how does warping spacetime actually stop our 300 TV
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  Speaker 2: photon from colliding with the CMB photon and turning into
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  Speaker 2: an electron-positron pair?
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  Speaker 3: It shifts the energetic threshold required for pair production to
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: actually occur.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, I see.
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  Speaker 3: Under standard Lorentz invariance, a 300 TV photon hitting a
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: CMB photon always meets the kinetic energy requirement to create
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: that electron and positron. It's a guarantee.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: But if Lorentz invariance is violated at extreme energies... due
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: to the foamy structure of spacetime, the mathematics governing that
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: interaction fundamentally altered.
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  Speaker 2: So the goalposts move.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly, the goalposts move. The threshold for pair production gets
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: pushed much higher. So the 300 TD photon no longer
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: has the necessary correct energy to trigger the creation of
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: matter and antimatter when it hits the CMB.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: Because it can no longer interact under these bent rules,
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  Speaker 3: the universe effectively becomes transparent to it. It slips through untouched.
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  Speaker 3: And researchers describe this altered state of spacetime as, as
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  Speaker 3: providing a fast lane for the ultra-high energy photon.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so they merged the ALP phase change theory with
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  Speaker 2: this Lorentz invariance violation to explain how it survived. But
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: hold on, I need to push back on something here.
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  Speaker 3: Sure.
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  Speaker 2: You just called it a fast lane where the universe
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: becomes transparent. But I also know that this specific 300
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: TV photon arrived at Earth about an hour later than
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: the rest of the gamma ray burst.
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  Speaker 3: That's right, it did.
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  Speaker 2: If it is in a fast lane, why is it late?
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: That sounds like a massive detour, not a fast lane.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: That is an excellent catch. And the term fast lane
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: can definitely be misleading if we only think about velocity.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: When physicists use that phrase in this context, they mean
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: an unobstructed survival path, a lane where you don't crash
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: into the CMB.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: But mathematically, navigating that survival path does exact a toll
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: on the particle's travel time.
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  Speaker 2: Because of the phase change into the ALP.
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  Speaker 3: Partly, yes. Remember, the Galantian-Rochedelli model is a combination of
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: both theories. So the photon is oscillating into an axion-like
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: particle in the presence of magnetic fields. And while standard
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: photons are completely massless and travel at exactly the speed
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: of light, ALPs theoretically have a microscoping amount of mass.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Okay. And anything with mass, even a tiny fractional amount,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: cannot travel at the speed of light. It has to
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: travel slightly slower.
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  Speaker 3: Precisely. And if you combine that microscopic mass with the
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: violation of Lorentz invariance, where the very structure of phony
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: spacetime alters how high-energy particles propagate, you get a cumulative
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: drag effect over a distance of 2 billion light-years.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: It adds up over time.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Exactly. And the true genius of Galantine-Roccadelli's combined mathematical model
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: is that it didn't just retroactively explain the photon's survival.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: It made a strict forward prediction about this drag.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: It calculated that if this dual mechanism occurred— The 300
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: TV photon should have been delayed by roughly one hour
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: compared to the standard low-energy photons from the exact same burst.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting. Because we actually have
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: observational data to back that up, right? The Large High-Altitude
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Air Shower Observatory in China, LAASO, they were monitoring the
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: boat burst as well.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: They were, yes. LAASO detected the initial massive deluge of
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: lower-energy photons. And those photons didn't need to change into
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: ALPs or rely on relativity violations because they weren't energetic
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: enough to trigger pair production anyway.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: They just flew right under the radar.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: Exactly. They sailed through the CMB, normally at speed of light,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: and they arrived in a massive synchronized wave. Then the
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: researchers checked the timestamps across different observatories. Roughly one hour
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: after that primary wave hit LA Aso, the carpet detector
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: at Baxan registered the 300 TVO photons.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: The exact delay predicted by the model. Yes.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: The alignment of the observational data with the theoretical prediction
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: is what makes this so incredibly compelling. We're looking at
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: one elegant framework that solves two distinct anomalies simultaneously. It
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: explains the evasion of pair production and it nails the
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: specific one-hour delay.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: That is just mind-blowing. But I do have to ask,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: with all this talk of Lorentz invariance being violated, does
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: this mean Einstein was just flat-out wrong? Do we have
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: to throw out relativity?
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: What's fascinating here is that We definitely aren't throwing out Einstein.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, good to know.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Relativity is still the most robust framework we have for macrophysics.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: It still dictates the orbit of planets, the expansion of
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: the cosmos, and, you know, the synchronization of our GPS satellites.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: So it still works for the big stuff.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: What Galanti and Roccadelli are proposing is that relativity is
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: an incomplete picture at the absolute extreme edges of quantum mechanics.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: It's basically a localized exception that only activates under unimaginable
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: energy conditions.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: An asterisk on relativity, not an eraser.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: That is a perfect way to put it, yes.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: An asterisk. So what does this all mean for you
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: and me? I mean, for anyone listening, why does an
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: hour-late photon from a distant explosion matter to our understanding
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: of reality?
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Well, it matters because of the profound limitations we face
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: in studying quantum gravity. To experimentally test theories about how
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: spacetime behaves at these extreme subatomic levels... We would need
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: particle accelerators capable of generating energies we can barely fathom.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Way bigger than the one in Switzerland.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: Oh, massively bigger. A machine that powerful would likely need
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: to be larger than the Earth itself. We simply cannot
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: build it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: But we don't have to build it if the universe
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: is running the experiment for us.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: That is the crucial takeaway. The cosmos is a natural,
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: unbridled laboratory. By observing cataclysmic events like the bow out,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: We are granted access to energy scales that test the
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: extreme limits of our physical laws.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: We just have to be watching at the right time.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Exactly. We are watching the universe stress test itself. Every
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: time a particle like this arrives, it delivers data from
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: a realm of physics we could never access on our own.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: It really is profound. I mean, we started with a
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: particle traveling through a dense cosmic ocean for 2 billion years.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: It bypassed the annihilation of pair production by relying on
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a spontaneous phase change. navigated a warped immersion of space-time
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: that shifted the goalposts of relativity, and then arrived exactly
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: one hour late to prove the math right.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: It's quite a resume for one particle.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: It really is. It shows us that the universe is
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: far stranger, and the laws of physics are far more
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: flexible than we ever assumed.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: It reinforces the reality that our understanding of the universe
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: is still evolving. When we push physical laws to their
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: absolute boundaries, they reveal intricate layers of mechanics we have
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: yet to fully comprehend.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: It leaves me with one final thought to mull over
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: long after this discussion ends. If a single burst of
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: extreme energy from billions of years ago can briefly warp
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: the fundamental rules of spacetime and shift the thresholds of
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: physical reality just to ensure its own survival, what other
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: seemingly absolute laws of the universe might temporarily bend when
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: pushed to their absolute limits? And the really wild question,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: if we ever fully map these extreme exceptions to the rules,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: could humanity one day learn to harness those loopholes for ourselves?