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What are cosmic strings? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I have a question for you about how
0:11
Speaker 1: physics works. All right, shoot, yeah, what happens when it
0:15
Speaker 1: doesn't work? Like what happens when you're wrong? That really
0:19
Speaker 1: depends depends on what how wrong you are. No, it
0:24
Speaker 1: depends on whether you're an experimentalist or a theorist. It
0:29
Speaker 1: makes a difference. Oh yeah. For an experimentalist, if you
0:32
Speaker 1: are wrong one time, it's like a career death. It's
0:35
Speaker 1: like getting caught from murder. You know, once is enough
0:38
Speaker 1: to send you away forever. You murdered science. If you
0:42
Speaker 1: if your results are wrong, you murdered your credibility. But
0:47
Speaker 1: not for a theorist. Like if a theorist is wrong,
0:49
Speaker 1: there's no consequence. No, almost every single paper written by
0:53
Speaker 1: a theorist is wrong, and in fact, if they are
0:56
Speaker 1: right even one time, they win. The Nobel problem does
1:00
Speaker 1: sound like better? Odds, Daniel, Why did you even become
1:03
Speaker 1: an experimentalist? I asked myself that question every day. I
1:23
Speaker 1: am Jorge make cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
1:27
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle of physicist, and though I've
1:30
Speaker 1: never been wrong in a scientific paper, I have zero
1:32
Speaker 1: Nobel prizes, No wait, that's not actually true. I do
1:35
Speaker 1: have a tiny slice of a Nobel Prize. Well, you
1:38
Speaker 1: could be wrong about having a Nobel Prize, like you could.
1:41
Speaker 1: I could write a paper about having a Nobel Prize
1:44
Speaker 1: and they'll be wrong and then get a Nobel Prize
1:47
Speaker 1: for it in literature maybe. But anyways, welcome to our
1:51
Speaker 1: podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe Even the Wrong Parts,
1:55
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, in which we take
1:58
Speaker 1: a trip around the universe, giving you a tour of
2:01
Speaker 1: everything that's amazing, everything that's exciting, everything that's real, and
2:04
Speaker 1: everything that's theoretical. Not just what's out there in the universe,
2:08
Speaker 1: but what's inside the minds of scientists, what they're hoping
2:11
Speaker 1: to discover out there in our universe. That's right, We
2:15
Speaker 1: take you on a trip across the cosmos, not just
2:18
Speaker 1: to see what's there, but what might be there. What's
2:21
Speaker 1: physicists think might be the next big idea that could
2:25
Speaker 1: revolutionize how we understand the universe. And we have a
2:29
Speaker 1: special group of people whose job it is just to
2:31
Speaker 1: come up with crazy ideas that might describe our universe.
2:35
Speaker 1: You have a group of people just to be wrong.
2:37
Speaker 1: Is that kind of how it works. They only have
2:39
Speaker 1: to be right occasionally. But yeah, basically, just throw ideas
2:43
Speaker 1: out there. It's like the brain, the brain trust. Yeah,
2:48
Speaker 1: it's like a brainstorming, you know, like maybe the universe
2:50
Speaker 1: works this way. Go check. Oh no, I guess not.
2:52
Speaker 1: Maybe the universe works that way. Go check. Oh no,
2:55
Speaker 1: I guess not. Keep coming up with ideas, folks, Yeah,
2:57
Speaker 1: because the universe is pretty crazy out there. You know,
3:01
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that we didn't expect,
3:04
Speaker 1: and so as crazy as an idea might seem right now,
3:09
Speaker 1: it could be right. Yep. Absurdity is no obstacle to reality.
3:13
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't take a theory of physics and
3:15
Speaker 1: say that's too crazy, because some of these crazy ideas
3:19
Speaker 1: turned out to be real, you know, quantum mechanics and relativity.
3:23
Speaker 1: There have been moments in history when we had to
3:26
Speaker 1: accept things that were very difficult to swallow, and that
3:30
Speaker 1: means we need to keep our minds wide open to
3:32
Speaker 1: future crazy ideas. Yeah, you could be absurd and be
3:35
Speaker 1: right at the same time. That's the situation of the universe.
3:40
Speaker 1: That's your review of the Universe on its Amazon web page.
3:43
Speaker 1: Absurd but right, absurved but true. Five stars. Yeah, that's
3:49
Speaker 1: kind of like this podcast a Cartoonists and physicism physics
3:53
Speaker 1: for an hour, And I wonder what that's like sometimes
3:56
Speaker 1: for a theorist, because I'm not a theorist. You know,
3:58
Speaker 1: you spend your life coming up with ideas maybe there's
4:00
Speaker 1: this particle, maybe the universe works that way, and and
4:03
Speaker 1: predicting them and suggesting ways to check but almost never correct. Right.
4:08
Speaker 1: Most theorists who write papers, most of their theories don't
4:11
Speaker 1: even get checked because we can't check all of them,
4:13
Speaker 1: and when they do, mostly they just get ruled out. Yeah.
4:16
Speaker 1: I guess there are a lot of theorists out there
4:19
Speaker 1: and they can't all be right right, and they can't
4:22
Speaker 1: all be checked. So how does how do these ideas
4:26
Speaker 1: come through to get checked? Yeah? Well, if you're a theorist,
4:29
Speaker 1: you have some crazy new idea, you say, I think
4:31
Speaker 1: the universe works this way, and then you have to
4:33
Speaker 1: make a prediction. You have to say, well, if somebody
4:35
Speaker 1: did such and such experiment, they could verify my theory.
4:39
Speaker 1: Like Einstein had his theory relativity, and he predicted something
4:42
Speaker 1: would happen when light bent around the sun or when
4:45
Speaker 1: light bent around the moon during an eclipse, so it
4:48
Speaker 1: make a very specific prediction. Then the key is you
4:51
Speaker 1: have to find an experimentalist someone to do that experiment
4:55
Speaker 1: and check your prediction. If you can't convince anybody that
4:58
Speaker 1: your prediction is worth checking, it just doesn't get checked.
5:01
Speaker 1: Is there like an app for physicists to match experimentalists
5:05
Speaker 1: with theories, you know, like a dating app physics or
5:10
Speaker 1: or checker. Yeah, I'm not sure. Um, you know it's
5:14
Speaker 1: sort of arbitrary. You know, experimentals will read a paper
5:18
Speaker 1: and say, oh, that's really cool, I want to check that.
5:20
Speaker 1: Or me as an experimentals, I'll go to conferences and
5:22
Speaker 1: talk to theorists and hear about the new ideas and
5:25
Speaker 1: try to think about what's most interesting to test. Because
5:28
Speaker 1: you can't test everything, you have to make your choices. Yeah,
5:30
Speaker 1: I guess you swipe left or right depending on whether
5:33
Speaker 1: you think it could be right or what are you
5:35
Speaker 1: based on? Like is it is it? Are you tempted
5:38
Speaker 1: by like, oh that would be a big fish to catch,
5:41
Speaker 1: or are you tempted by like is this an easy
5:44
Speaker 1: fish that I could verify? Well, that's a great question.
5:47
Speaker 1: I'm a bit unusual in particle physics. Most people choose
5:51
Speaker 1: theories that they think sound sort of aesthetically beautiful, like
5:55
Speaker 1: supersymmetry and gravity and all these things. They have like
5:58
Speaker 1: a deep fear redical reason to motivate that theory, like
6:02
Speaker 1: why we think it exists? Um. For me, I'm more
6:05
Speaker 1: interested in stuff that's uh going to be a surprise,
6:08
Speaker 1: Like I'd like to look for something that isn't predicted,
6:11
Speaker 1: So I try to do experiments that nobody's predicted, because
6:14
Speaker 1: then if you see something new, a new particle, then
6:17
Speaker 1: you get to be the first person to describe it,
6:19
Speaker 1: and it sort of comes out as a pleasant surprise
6:21
Speaker 1: for the community. So it is like a dating app.
6:24
Speaker 1: You swipe left or right if it's like, oh this
6:26
Speaker 1: is beautiful, I like it, or on this floats my boat,
6:30
Speaker 1: I'm gonna swipe it. All right, You're right, I give up.
6:33
Speaker 1: Physics is just like a dating app. It's basically the
6:35
Speaker 1: same thing. Well a lot of it. Amazing and incredible
6:39
Speaker 1: discoveries have been made this way. For example, the Higgs
6:42
Speaker 1: boson was really just a theory out of the blue,
6:45
Speaker 1: and it was a theory for a long time until
6:46
Speaker 1: people decided to try to test it. That's right, and
6:49
Speaker 1: people spend decades trying to test this theory, and finally
6:52
Speaker 1: we build a collider or powerful enough that we could
6:54
Speaker 1: create the Higgs boson and prove that it existed. And
6:58
Speaker 1: so this theory is to fifty years or Elier had
7:00
Speaker 1: predicted the existence of this particle, was proved right and
7:03
Speaker 1: got his Nobel prize. Yeah, that was like a like
7:06
Speaker 1: a twenty billion dollars swipe there, you know, that was
7:08
Speaker 1: a big swipe that that was good dollars. Yeah, but
7:13
Speaker 1: you know, he wasn't the only one to predict it.
7:16
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of controversy when we discovered
7:18
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. Who was going to get the prize
7:20
Speaker 1: for it? Should it just be Higgs, should also be
7:23
Speaker 1: this guy Englert who was around and wrote a lot
7:25
Speaker 1: of very similar papers but didn't get his name on
7:28
Speaker 1: the particle. And then there was a whole other group
7:30
Speaker 1: of people that wrote very similar papers, but we didn't
7:33
Speaker 1: get any part of the prize. That's right, And so
7:35
Speaker 1: today we'll be talking about a prediction from a theorist
7:39
Speaker 1: that maybe should have gotten the Higgs Nobel Prize but didn't.
7:43
Speaker 1: And he made his second prediction about the universe that
7:46
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about today. That's right. And
7:48
Speaker 1: this comes from a question from a listener. Somebody wrote
7:51
Speaker 1: it and said, hey, could you explain this to us?
7:53
Speaker 1: I just don't get it. Yeah, So this is a
7:55
Speaker 1: question that Peter from Poland sent us via email, and
7:59
Speaker 1: so to be on the pro and we'll be asking
8:00
Speaker 1: the question what is a cosmic string? I don't want
8:10
Speaker 1: to string people along. Let's just let's just get down
8:12
Speaker 1: to it. Daniel. Yeah, well I was thinking, you know,
8:15
Speaker 1: silly string versus string theory, and there's a lot of
8:19
Speaker 1: different combinations there, but a lot of strings in physics. Yeah,
8:24
Speaker 1: it's a great question. Thank you Peter from Poland for
8:26
Speaker 1: writing in, and anybody out there, if there's something in
8:29
Speaker 1: physics you've heard about but haven't really understood any of
8:32
Speaker 1: the explanations, send to us. We're going to try to
8:34
Speaker 1: break it down. And this is a tantalizing subject because
8:37
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about strings. We're talking about cosmic strings.
8:41
Speaker 1: So they sound like a very big deal, and they
8:44
Speaker 1: are kind of a big deal. They're not small strings
8:46
Speaker 1: like maybe some people might be imagining it. That's right.
8:49
Speaker 1: This is not you know, star studied strings in your
8:53
Speaker 1: drawer or anything like that. These are things that could
8:55
Speaker 1: span the entire observable universe. And so we were wondering
8:59
Speaker 1: how people had heard of these two words put together
9:02
Speaker 1: costmaking strings out there, and how many people maybe even
9:07
Speaker 1: had an idea but what it could be. So, as usual,
9:10
Speaker 1: Daniel went out there and as people in the street,
9:13
Speaker 1: if they've heard what a cosmic string is, so before
9:16
Speaker 1: you hear these answers, think to yourself for a moment,
9:18
Speaker 1: do you know what a cosmic string is? What would
9:20
Speaker 1: you say if I asked you on the street. Here's
9:23
Speaker 1: what people had to say. It sounds like a Marvel
9:26
Speaker 1: movie before me? Is that similar to string theory? The
9:30
Speaker 1: loops that way upon it's like a fifth dimension potentially?
9:34
Speaker 1: Do you know all this stuff? I don't know any
9:36
Speaker 1: of this. I don't know any it's something, um, I
9:42
Speaker 1: don't have no idea. Cosmic strings something that uh, and
9:48
Speaker 1: then I think that's what space string. QUITE have no idea.
9:54
Speaker 1: If you laugh, is it sound funny? It just sounds
9:56
Speaker 1: like like science fiction. I heard of cosmic bowling. You're
9:59
Speaker 1: not cosmic cosmic bowling? What's that? That's when they shut
10:02
Speaker 1: down the lights for Friday night bowling, strings that you know,
10:07
Speaker 1: unite like different potential space and time like you Yeah,
10:14
Speaker 1: like space and time like a pass I guess in
10:16
Speaker 1: a way when it's stringing together, str together, I have
10:21
Speaker 1: no idea something to deal with. I don't know um energy, energy,
10:27
Speaker 1: and I don't have no idea how okay, but so
10:30
Speaker 1: very much obviously cosmic, yes, but strings those starts together now,
10:36
Speaker 1: all right, Not a lot of familiarity, although I do
10:39
Speaker 1: like the answer the person who said it sounds like
10:41
Speaker 1: a Marvel movie to me, which it totally does. You know,
10:46
Speaker 1: infinity stones, cosmic strings, quantum realm. You're you guys are
10:52
Speaker 1: all watching the same movies. You could put cosmic in
10:54
Speaker 1: front of anything. It would sounds like a Marvel movie.
10:56
Speaker 1: Cosmic quantum, cosmic bowling. I like that answer. I was like, yeah,
11:00
Speaker 1: that does sound like a good idea. I'd like to
11:02
Speaker 1: go to cosmic bowling, cosmic breakfast, cosmic fast. All right. So,
11:10
Speaker 1: not a lot of people seem to know what it was,
11:12
Speaker 1: although it definitely sounded science and science fiction. A lot
11:15
Speaker 1: of people said, oh, it sounds like science fiction, or
11:16
Speaker 1: it sounds like something that might be related to string
11:21
Speaker 1: theory or physics or energy. It definitely has a science
11:24
Speaker 1: feel to it. Yeah, and it might have just been
11:27
Speaker 1: the way my hair looked that day. Maybe it looked
11:28
Speaker 1: more like a crazy physicist, or maybe it just does
11:31
Speaker 1: sound like a sort of a physics thing. So people
11:33
Speaker 1: are definitely guessing that. I'm trying to imagine how you
11:36
Speaker 1: can look more like a physicist, Daniel, It's kind of hard.
11:39
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to imagine. I don't know. I
11:41
Speaker 1: guess I could put on a lab coat. I mean
11:42
Speaker 1: I don't usually with a lab code when I'm walking around.
11:45
Speaker 1: You put on a marble costume and boom, I need
11:48
Speaker 1: an m c U lab coade so I can do
11:50
Speaker 1: both things at once. Oh, that would be that's a
11:53
Speaker 1: good idea. Actually print um something fun on a lap code.
11:57
Speaker 1: M that sounds like merch. Get on that people, next
12:00
Speaker 1: product for the Daniel and Jorge explain the universe store.
12:04
Speaker 1: But all right, so let's get into it. Daniel, what
12:07
Speaker 1: what are they? What is a cosmic string? And I
12:10
Speaker 1: I am totally with the people on the street. I've
12:12
Speaker 1: never heard of this concept before this morning. Well there's
12:15
Speaker 1: a good reason, because cosmic strings are a pretty crazy idea.
12:19
Speaker 1: They're pretty far out there, but they're really fun and
12:23
Speaker 1: conceptually sort of mind blowing, which is why I think
12:25
Speaker 1: the theory stuck around for a while. People get swiping
12:28
Speaker 1: it because it sounded fun. Yeah, everybody wants this theory
12:32
Speaker 1: to be true. And so what is a cosmic string?
12:34
Speaker 1: A cosmic string is a line in space where the
12:38
Speaker 1: space itself is a little bit different from the way
12:41
Speaker 1: spaces for us, from me and you and most of
12:44
Speaker 1: the space in the universe. It's like a little bit
12:46
Speaker 1: of leftover from the Big Bang where it never quite
12:49
Speaker 1: cooled and relaxed the way the space for us has.
12:52
Speaker 1: It's like a pocket, like a pocket or a bubble,
12:54
Speaker 1: or like a stretch dog bubble. Is that kind of
12:57
Speaker 1: what mean? No, it's a really long, thin line, like
13:00
Speaker 1: it's maybe a phemptometer wide, so like super duper tiny,
13:04
Speaker 1: like the width of a proton. But then it can
13:06
Speaker 1: be super long, like it could be as long as
13:09
Speaker 1: the observable universe, like nine billion light years. It's kind
13:13
Speaker 1: of like a crack in space itself. Yeah, and you
13:17
Speaker 1: have to think about what space is and remember that
13:20
Speaker 1: space used to be really different. Right back when the
13:23
Speaker 1: universe was created. Everything was hot and dense and there's
13:27
Speaker 1: a lot of energy everywhere. And remember that space is
13:30
Speaker 1: not emptiness. Space has all this stuff in It has
13:32
Speaker 1: these quantum fields. And when you put energy into space,
13:36
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're making those fields wiggle. And
13:39
Speaker 1: so back in the very early universe, those fields were
13:42
Speaker 1: going crazy because it was so much energy everywhere. So
13:45
Speaker 1: everything was wiggling really fast, and everything had a lot
13:47
Speaker 1: of energy. In our book, we talked about how space
13:50
Speaker 1: is kind of like a goo. It's like, it's not emptiness.
13:53
Speaker 1: It's more like it's like something that you're swimming in almost,
13:57
Speaker 1: and it can wiggle and bed and push you in
14:01
Speaker 1: different directions. Right, that's right. Gravity does really weird things
14:04
Speaker 1: to space. It can stretch it, it can bend it, it
14:06
Speaker 1: it can ripple it. But for now, let's just think
14:08
Speaker 1: about like one unit of space, Like what's in that
14:11
Speaker 1: box of space? And in that box of space are
14:13
Speaker 1: quantum fields. Now, the universe started out really hot and
14:16
Speaker 1: dense and really energetic, and those fields had a lot
14:20
Speaker 1: of energy in them. But the space that we're familiar
14:22
Speaker 1: with that operates in the way that we expect, like
14:25
Speaker 1: has electrons in it and and atoms and stuff that
14:28
Speaker 1: only came about after the universe relaxed a little bit.
14:31
Speaker 1: We talked about on the Higgs Boson episode that there's
14:35
Speaker 1: one of these quantum fields, the Higgs one, that when
14:37
Speaker 1: it relaxed, when the universe cooled down, that this field
14:41
Speaker 1: didn't go all the way down to zero, sort of
14:43
Speaker 1: got stuck on a shelf. Right, Like the field that
14:47
Speaker 1: the universe is made out of are not necessarily static,
14:51
Speaker 1: like they can be kind of buzzing with energy. That's right.
14:54
Speaker 1: Every time you have a particle that's a ripple in
14:56
Speaker 1: the field, which means you've injected energy into it. Now,
14:59
Speaker 1: most of the few can go down to zero like
15:01
Speaker 1: you've got no electrons in your box of space. That
15:04
Speaker 1: fuel is at zero. But the Higgs boson never gets
15:07
Speaker 1: down to zero. Got stuck on this shelf. And so
15:09
Speaker 1: how does that explain these pockets or these cracks in space?
15:13
Speaker 1: So what happens when the universe is expanding, is it
15:16
Speaker 1: it's cooling, right, All this energy is getting spread out
15:18
Speaker 1: into more and more space. It's like you're stretching out
15:21
Speaker 1: the fields, right, Like you're stretching them out basically, and
15:24
Speaker 1: so they calmed down. Yeah, you have the same amount
15:27
Speaker 1: of energy in more space, and so it gets deluded.
15:30
Speaker 1: So everything's like cooling and relaxing and sort of like
15:33
Speaker 1: you know, you you toss your blanket over your bed
15:36
Speaker 1: and it sort of settles down and settles over your bed, right,
15:40
Speaker 1: like a cosmic nap is like a cosmic blanket. Yeah,
15:45
Speaker 1: and it settles down. But the Higgs field got stuck. Right.
15:48
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The Higgs field has lots of
15:51
Speaker 1: different ways to get stuck on that shelf. Is that
15:54
Speaker 1: shelf is not just like one little balcony. It's like
15:57
Speaker 1: a long round balcony, and the universe can get stuck
16:01
Speaker 1: in different spots on that shelf. And so as the
16:03
Speaker 1: universe is cooling, if this chunk of space over here
16:07
Speaker 1: got stuck on a different spot then that chunk of space,
16:10
Speaker 1: then there's this sort of boundary between them, this place
16:13
Speaker 1: between them that doesn't quite work because it's sort of
16:16
Speaker 1: trapped between space that got that cooled in two different ways.
16:20
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how you know, water or air
16:23
Speaker 1: has different states like solid liquid and gas, and you know,
16:28
Speaker 1: as you cool something down, you can form these little
16:32
Speaker 1: pockets of liquid or gas or what's either one solid
16:37
Speaker 1: water crystal. Yeah, it's like when you, like when you
16:40
Speaker 1: stick water into the freezer and it cools down and
16:43
Speaker 1: forms ice. It doesn't form like this perfect solid of ice.
16:47
Speaker 1: It forms like it has bowls and cracks and wiggles
16:50
Speaker 1: and it is that kind of what you're saying, is
16:51
Speaker 1: happened happened? Or how is happening to space right now?
16:55
Speaker 1: Exactly like that, if you cool water down, then you
16:57
Speaker 1: get a crystal. But it doesn't, as you say, turn
17:00
Speaker 1: into a crystal all at once. There's these sites that
17:02
Speaker 1: begin because they're the coldest, little dots, and the crystals
17:05
Speaker 1: start to form there, and then they form out from
17:08
Speaker 1: those little spots where they have nucleated. And then what
17:11
Speaker 1: happens when two crystals meet, You have this boundary, right,
17:15
Speaker 1: and you don't have a perfect crystal. You have a
17:17
Speaker 1: defect in the crystal. That's why, like some diamonds are
17:19
Speaker 1: perfect and some diamonds are not because there's a defect
17:22
Speaker 1: there where in the crystal where one half of it
17:24
Speaker 1: is cooled in a different time than the other half,
17:27
Speaker 1: so they're not all lined up perfectly. The same thing
17:30
Speaker 1: happened to space, maybe, like there are imperfections in space,
17:34
Speaker 1: there are imperfections in their defects or cracks in space.
17:37
Speaker 1: Where on one side the Higgs field, it's at the
17:40
Speaker 1: same level, right, it's just pointed in a different direction,
17:43
Speaker 1: because the Higgs field has sort of two we call
17:45
Speaker 1: them degrees of freedom, the level let it relaxed that
17:48
Speaker 1: and also where on that shelf it got stuck. So
17:51
Speaker 1: if this chunk of space is stuck on a different
17:53
Speaker 1: spot in the shelf, then that chunk of space, it's
17:55
Speaker 1: sort of like your ice cooling at different ways. In
17:59
Speaker 1: different ways, the stoles are oriented in different directions, and
18:02
Speaker 1: so at the boundary you get this thing that doesn't
18:04
Speaker 1: quite make sense. So I always thought the universe was
18:07
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good, but I guess it's not a triple
18:09
Speaker 1: A diamond quality space. I mean, I love our universe.
18:14
Speaker 1: I would not trade it in for anything. I think
18:16
Speaker 1: it's perfect just the way it is. But it might
18:18
Speaker 1: have these cracks in it, right, And we don't know.
18:20
Speaker 1: We have never seen one of these things, but it
18:22
Speaker 1: might have these cracks in it. That's the idea. That's
18:25
Speaker 1: the concept of a cosmic string, cosmic flaws in space itself.
18:29
Speaker 1: And so along that line, it's like the universe never
18:32
Speaker 1: got to cool because it doesn't know like should I
18:34
Speaker 1: cool in this way or should I cool in the
18:36
Speaker 1: other way. It's sort of like trapped between them, and
18:38
Speaker 1: so it still has that energy density from the initial
18:42
Speaker 1: universe when everything was really hot and dense. And so
18:45
Speaker 1: these cosmic strings, even though they're really really thin, they're
18:48
Speaker 1: like a femtometer wide. They're incredibly massive, and they could
18:52
Speaker 1: be holding energy like the cracks or the flaws in
18:54
Speaker 1: the universe could be storing some sort of energy or
18:58
Speaker 1: tension into them. Absolutely incredible amounts of energy. Like two
19:03
Speaker 1: centimeters of a cosmic string weighs as much as Mount Everest.
19:07
Speaker 1: A kilometer of cosmic string weighs more than the Earth.
19:12
Speaker 1: And so we're talking about these things. They could be
19:13
Speaker 1: like ninety billion light years long. It's an enormous amount
19:17
Speaker 1: of energy. What you just totally correct my mind here, Daniel,
19:21
Speaker 1: cosmically cosmically dude. But all right, so let's get into
19:26
Speaker 1: it and why is physicists think these crazy cracks might
19:30
Speaker 1: exist and whether or not they're real. But first let's
19:32
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Okay, so you're saying that as
19:47
Speaker 1: the universe was cooling or assets cooling right now, you
19:51
Speaker 1: might have these areas these lines, these huge lines in
19:56
Speaker 1: space that are sort of like cracks, like where space
20:00
Speaker 1: is kind of freezing into different crystals like structures or
20:05
Speaker 1: different modes, and so you have these kind of edges
20:08
Speaker 1: to the wrinkles in space itself due to the Higgs
20:11
Speaker 1: field precisely, and we are in the crystal part, right,
20:14
Speaker 1: we're in the part of space that cooled, and these
20:16
Speaker 1: chunks of space that all cool sort of together. That's
20:19
Speaker 1: like could be as wise nine billion night years like
20:23
Speaker 1: the observable universe. So it's not like you have a
20:25
Speaker 1: little pocket of space, assize your hand and the next
20:27
Speaker 1: pocket is different, the next pocket is different. If there
20:30
Speaker 1: are these pockets and they're vast, they're incredibly enormous, but
20:33
Speaker 1: then at their edges there can be these cracks. And
20:36
Speaker 1: you're saying, these edges, these boundaries look like strings, and
20:41
Speaker 1: so why don't they look like walls or like you know,
20:43
Speaker 1: planes out in space. Why is it shape like a
20:46
Speaker 1: long like you're super thin but really long string. Yeah,
20:50
Speaker 1: that's a great question. That's because the Higgs boson. The
20:53
Speaker 1: field for the Higgs has a lot of different ways
20:56
Speaker 1: you can relax, Like there's one level at which you
20:59
Speaker 1: can relax one and energy level, but on that energy
21:01
Speaker 1: level can sort of point in a lot of different directions.
21:04
Speaker 1: And so the way to get a boundary is like
21:06
Speaker 1: if you had two different energy levels and and the
21:09
Speaker 1: boundary like a would be like a plane between them.
21:12
Speaker 1: But um, because there's only one energy level, everywhere in
21:16
Speaker 1: space has that energy level, but they just point in
21:18
Speaker 1: different directions. And so what you get is this defect
21:21
Speaker 1: that's like a string. And then as you go around
21:24
Speaker 1: the string, the Higgs field is pointing in different directions,
21:27
Speaker 1: and so it points in a different direction every point
21:30
Speaker 1: around the string. And then the only place where you
21:33
Speaker 1: can't get sort of like smoothness is along this one
21:36
Speaker 1: infinitesimally thin line where space doesn't know where to point
21:40
Speaker 1: because every point everything around it is pointing in a
21:42
Speaker 1: different direction. So it's like I can't relax. I don't
21:45
Speaker 1: know which way should I go. It's kind of like
21:48
Speaker 1: me in this podcast, We're going in every direction. What
21:53
Speaker 1: happens if I touch one of these strings? Like what
21:55
Speaker 1: if I'm touch one of these things and I run
21:57
Speaker 1: into like, you know, like a spiderweb, you know, I'm
22:00
Speaker 1: walking down the street and just run into one. Well,
22:03
Speaker 1: I would recommend wearing oven myths first of all, because
22:06
Speaker 1: there's a lot of energy there. Oh, that's right, they
22:09
Speaker 1: trap energy. It's like a so I guess it's more
22:12
Speaker 1: like a wrinkle in space. Right, It's not so much
22:14
Speaker 1: like a crack, but it's more like, you know, like
22:17
Speaker 1: you're tucking in or you're bending a lot of space
22:20
Speaker 1: along the line of it. Yeah, a wrinkle is a
22:22
Speaker 1: good way to do it. I think a cosmic wrinkle
22:24
Speaker 1: um would have been a good way to sell this
22:26
Speaker 1: thing that could be the sequel to the Plaguind novels
22:29
Speaker 1: A Wrinkle in Space Time. Turns out there was physics
22:34
Speaker 1: behind that novel. You would notice one almost immediately if
22:37
Speaker 1: you saw one, because there's so much mass that they
22:40
Speaker 1: bend the space around them the way everything does. Everything
22:43
Speaker 1: with mass bend space, and it would cause a huge
22:45
Speaker 1: gravitational lens. So it would really distort the way light
22:48
Speaker 1: moved around it. Wow, like a black hole. Be like
22:51
Speaker 1: a black string. Yeah, it would be a lot like
22:54
Speaker 1: a black hole, except it would be really really thin
22:56
Speaker 1: and very very long. Okay, there would be probably crazy
23:00
Speaker 1: stuff happening around it, right, like a you know, it
23:03
Speaker 1: wouldn't just sort of sit there in space that there
23:04
Speaker 1: would be you know, some kind of you know, cosmic
23:07
Speaker 1: storm kind of swirling around it. Would there be uh
23:11
Speaker 1: in the m c U version of this movie, then yell.
23:14
Speaker 1: The visual effects would be dramatic all around it. Is
23:16
Speaker 1: that what you're thinking? Yeah, yeah, what what does the
23:18
Speaker 1: gauntlet that holds the cosmic strings look like? No, it's
23:22
Speaker 1: actually fascinating because, unlike a black hole, which has enormous
23:25
Speaker 1: gravitational pull and so has a huge amount of stuff
23:28
Speaker 1: around it, like a maelstrom that's like giving off light
23:32
Speaker 1: because of all the gravitational energy and the and the
23:34
Speaker 1: title forces, cosmic strings don't actually provide a strong gravitational pull,
23:40
Speaker 1: like they distort space, but they don't necessarily create gravity themselves.
23:45
Speaker 1: It's a really weird consequence. It depends on the shape
23:48
Speaker 1: of the string, if they're a loop or if they're straight.
23:51
Speaker 1: It's actually quite complicated. Didn't you say that it has
23:54
Speaker 1: more mass than the Earth? Yes, or like, you know,
23:58
Speaker 1: it's just really massive, but it's a mass but no gravity.
24:01
Speaker 1: It has mass, it distores space, so it can become
24:04
Speaker 1: a gravitational lens, but it doesn't necessarily attract you because
24:08
Speaker 1: of the configuration of it. It depends precisely on the
24:11
Speaker 1: shape of it. Remember, general relativity tells us that gravity
24:14
Speaker 1: is much more complicated than just things that have mass
24:17
Speaker 1: pull on each other. It depends a lot on the
24:19
Speaker 1: shape of that stuff. That's why if you have the
24:21
Speaker 1: right configuration of stuff, you can even get repulsion like
24:24
Speaker 1: dark energy. And so these cosmic strings are a really
24:27
Speaker 1: weird little object. And and it depends exactly on the
24:30
Speaker 1: configuration of it whether you get pulled into it or repelled,
24:33
Speaker 1: or whether it basically ignores you. So when you say
24:35
Speaker 1: it's massive, it's it's really more like the equals mc square,
24:38
Speaker 1: Like it just has a lot of energy to it. Yeah,
24:41
Speaker 1: it has a huge amount of energy, a lot of
24:43
Speaker 1: energy density in a really small spot. All right, Well,
24:45
Speaker 1: it sounds kind of dangerous and that maybe you don't
24:48
Speaker 1: want to run into one of these strings out there
24:49
Speaker 1: in space unless you want to win a Nobel prize,
24:52
Speaker 1: unless you want to die trying, I guess. But why
24:57
Speaker 1: why do phacests think they might exist? Is this thing
25:00
Speaker 1: that you're pretty sure of or it's a crazy idea?
25:03
Speaker 1: What would what would make someone think of these strings
25:07
Speaker 1: as possibly being out there? Well, it comes from this
25:10
Speaker 1: guy named Tom Kibble, and Kibble was one of the
25:13
Speaker 1: folks who was around when the whole idea of the
25:15
Speaker 1: Higgs boson was being invented, This question of like how
25:19
Speaker 1: do particles get mass? And do we need to invent
25:22
Speaker 1: a new quantum field that fills space that gives particles mass?
25:26
Speaker 1: And you know, anytime theorists come up with some new idea,
25:30
Speaker 1: then they like to play with it and they say, oh, okay,
25:32
Speaker 1: now we have a new toy, this Higgs field. What
25:35
Speaker 1: else does it mean? You know, how can we what
25:37
Speaker 1: consequences would it have? And so he was thinking about
25:39
Speaker 1: the early universe and how the Higgs field would be
25:42
Speaker 1: cooling as the universe expanded, and then he hit on
25:45
Speaker 1: this idea. He thought, wait a second, what if it
25:47
Speaker 1: doesn't cool evenly? Would you get these cracks? And I
25:50
Speaker 1: guess that was just really fun to think about. He
25:52
Speaker 1: also he didn't get included in the Nobil Prize because
25:55
Speaker 1: he sort of came in a time he'd bit too
25:57
Speaker 1: late on those papers. So maybe he was going for
25:59
Speaker 1: a backup Nobel Prize strategy. I wonder if his name help,
26:02
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the committee was like, we can't give
26:04
Speaker 1: it no prize to someone named Kimble. You know, there's
26:09
Speaker 1: a whole group of people. There's like three folks out
26:12
Speaker 1: there who were writing papers right at the same time
26:14
Speaker 1: as Higgs and Englert, and they just got totally snubbed
26:17
Speaker 1: by the Nobel Prize committee. Wow, it's just about when
26:21
Speaker 1: they submitted the paper or when when they came up
26:24
Speaker 1: with the idea. There's a lot of controversy because it's
26:27
Speaker 1: you know, some journals that the date on the paper
26:30
Speaker 1: reflects when you submitted it, and in other journals it
26:32
Speaker 1: reflects when it was finally accepted after review. And so
26:36
Speaker 1: there's a lot of controversy about who came up with
26:38
Speaker 1: the idea first. And you can only give the prize
26:40
Speaker 1: to three people. And the three people who everybody mostly
26:45
Speaker 1: agrees came up with the idea first Higgs, Englert, and Brown.
26:49
Speaker 1: They were they won the prize except for Brown who
26:52
Speaker 1: had died already, so it was just split to the
26:54
Speaker 1: Higgs and England. And then in the second tier they
26:56
Speaker 1: were like three people and so they were like, well,
26:59
Speaker 1: it either it gives two or we give it to five.
27:01
Speaker 1: We can't give it to five, so I guess we'll
27:03
Speaker 1: just snub that whole second tier. Wow, is there a
27:06
Speaker 1: runner up Nobel Prize honorary. Yeah, it's sort of like
27:11
Speaker 1: fake gold, you know, just like hollow plastic. It's not
27:16
Speaker 1: nearly as cool. Okay, so that's the theory. The theory
27:18
Speaker 1: is that asked the universe is cooling, You got these
27:21
Speaker 1: kind of flaws and how the Higgs field was cooling down,
27:25
Speaker 1: and so you form these crazy strings. But they're not
27:28
Speaker 1: related to string theory, right. That might be confusing because
27:31
Speaker 1: they're both strings, but there are totally different scales. That's right,
27:34
Speaker 1: they're not related to string theory at all. String theory
27:37
Speaker 1: deals with like the fundamental nature of the universe on
27:39
Speaker 1: the smallest scale, like ten to the minus thirty five meters,
27:43
Speaker 1: is everything actually made out of these tiny vibrating strings.
27:46
Speaker 1: The thing they have in common is the sort of
27:49
Speaker 1: analogy we use in our minds where we put them that, like,
27:52
Speaker 1: you know, this thing is really long and thin, so
27:54
Speaker 1: let's call it a string. So fundamental strings that are
27:57
Speaker 1: really tiny we think might be these one dimensional objects.
28:01
Speaker 1: So they're really long and thin, not that long actually, um,
28:05
Speaker 1: but they're much longer than they are thin and cosmic strings.
28:08
Speaker 1: Are you know, light years long and a femptometer thin.
28:11
Speaker 1: So the only thing they really have in common is
28:13
Speaker 1: that name. But there's there were other reasons to think
28:16
Speaker 1: that cosmic strings might have existed, all right, So then,
28:19
Speaker 1: so what was the motivation for these Like I know
28:21
Speaker 1: they were playing around with the theory of the Higgs field,
28:24
Speaker 1: but what makes this a particularly fun theory, like you said,
28:28
Speaker 1: or interesting theory to look for. Well, you're right, it's
28:32
Speaker 1: a fun idea and it's fun to play with, but
28:33
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that get theories excited and
28:36
Speaker 1: fun to play with. I mean, they're fun strings. That's
28:40
Speaker 1: what they do. They just go in their office and
28:41
Speaker 1: play with strings. Um No, The thing that made this
28:44
Speaker 1: idea sort of stick in people's minds was that they
28:47
Speaker 1: thought it might solve a problem that we had, which
28:50
Speaker 1: is that we didn't understand like why we had galaxies.
28:53
Speaker 1: We didn't understand why the universe had structure at all.
28:56
Speaker 1: We talked about this on the podcast before, like the
28:59
Speaker 1: universe started totally smooth. How do you get any clumping?
29:02
Speaker 1: How do you get things started so that gravity can
29:05
Speaker 1: take over and give you stars and planets and rabbits
29:07
Speaker 1: and hamsters? Right, Like where did that initial texture of
29:10
Speaker 1: the universe come from, or the initial clumping of stuff? Exactly?
29:16
Speaker 1: We could have been in a universe where everything was
29:17
Speaker 1: just spread out and bland and boring and gray. Right,
29:21
Speaker 1: that's right. And somebody was thinking about cosmic strings early on,
29:25
Speaker 1: and they calculated like, well, how many cosmic strings would
29:28
Speaker 1: there have been? And then they calculated like, well, how
29:30
Speaker 1: many galaxies are there? And those two numbers were pretty similar,
29:33
Speaker 1: so that they thought, wait a second, me, me, cosmic strings, galaxies.
29:38
Speaker 1: Maybe the reason we have structures because of cosmic strings.
29:41
Speaker 1: Maybe these cracks in space, these imperfections, are the reason
29:45
Speaker 1: that stuff started to clump together and form structure and
29:48
Speaker 1: planets and hamsters and ice cream and bananas. So maybe
29:51
Speaker 1: cosmic strings explained the universe. It would have tied everything
29:54
Speaker 1: up pretty neatly with a string, exactly. It would have
29:57
Speaker 1: been quite the cosmic solution. That's why people got excited
30:00
Speaker 1: about it, because you have this new toy which is
30:02
Speaker 1: connected to this fun new theoretical idea of higgs boson,
30:06
Speaker 1: and maybe it solves the problem you have. All right, Well,
30:09
Speaker 1: it sounds really tantalizing, and I'm definitely seeing the fun
30:13
Speaker 1: of it. And I definitely feel like I'm being strung
30:16
Speaker 1: along here to some interesting conclusion. So let's get into
30:19
Speaker 1: whether or not they are real and how we might
30:22
Speaker 1: actually see these cosmic strings out in space. But first
30:26
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay, Daniel, So our cosmic
30:42
Speaker 1: strings real, and how will we know? Are we Are
30:46
Speaker 1: we going to see them out in space? Are we
30:47
Speaker 1: gonna be looking out into space one day and see, like,
30:49
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what is that little crack we check
30:52
Speaker 1: our glasses and our telescopes. It's not a crack in
30:55
Speaker 1: the lens. It's an actual crack in space, in the
30:58
Speaker 1: universe itself. That would be pretty awesome. I mean, what
31:02
Speaker 1: a thing to discover, What a moment that would be,
31:05
Speaker 1: to see a crack in space itself. Unfortunately, no human
31:08
Speaker 1: has had that experience yet. As far as we know,
31:11
Speaker 1: there are no cosmic strings out there. Like how you said,
31:13
Speaker 1: no humans. I don't want to rag on alien science,
31:16
Speaker 1: you know, I'm hoping those guys have made some advances
31:18
Speaker 1: well past what we have done, so that when they
31:20
Speaker 1: come visit, they share with us all those secrets. No
31:23
Speaker 1: human that we know of, no human that we know of,
31:27
Speaker 1: and no human would make this discovery, and I think
31:29
Speaker 1: keep it to themselves because it would be of really
31:31
Speaker 1: cosmic significance. And remember we also we can't say they
31:35
Speaker 1: don't exist. We can just say we haven't seen them,
31:37
Speaker 1: so we don't know that they exist. Okay, so we
31:40
Speaker 1: haven't seen one yet, but it's a theoretical prediction that
31:44
Speaker 1: it sounds fun and that might explain some of the
31:47
Speaker 1: structure in the universe. So are people looking for these
31:51
Speaker 1: cosmic cracks or are we just hoping that one day
31:54
Speaker 1: we maybe see them, Like, are active search for these cracks?
31:58
Speaker 1: I'm just waiting for alien you accords to come pulling
32:01
Speaker 1: one and drop it on the Earth. That's what that's
32:04
Speaker 1: what they used to steer the the cosmic unichorus. They
32:07
Speaker 1: used cosmic strings. No, that will be the opening scene
32:11
Speaker 1: in the Marvel movie about cosmic strings. Um. But people
32:14
Speaker 1: were thinking that maybe this affected the shape of the universe,
32:17
Speaker 1: and they had all these predictions like if these cracks
32:20
Speaker 1: in space were the things that caused sort of the
32:22
Speaker 1: large scale structure, the reason we have galaxies, then they
32:25
Speaker 1: had predictions for how the universe should have sort of
32:28
Speaker 1: been rippling in its first moments. And remember that we
32:31
Speaker 1: have seen the early universe. We can look back in
32:33
Speaker 1: time and see what the universe looked like when it
32:36
Speaker 1: was very young. Called this the cosmic microwave background radiations
32:40
Speaker 1: leftover glow from the Big Bang. But didn't these strings
32:43
Speaker 1: form way after the Big Bang when everything was cooling down?
32:47
Speaker 1: Or or was it that it? Did they start wrinkling
32:50
Speaker 1: right after the Big Bang? Right after the Big Bang? Yeah,
32:52
Speaker 1: it's when as space was expanding. That's when sort of
32:56
Speaker 1: things were cooling and the ice crystals of space were forming,
32:59
Speaker 1: and and the cosmic microwave background happened like hundreds of
33:02
Speaker 1: thousands of years later. And now we've seen that. So
33:06
Speaker 1: these cosmic strings, the idea was invented before we had
33:08
Speaker 1: precise measurement of this cosmic microwave background light, and it
33:12
Speaker 1: made very specific predictions for what that light should look like.
33:16
Speaker 1: And then we saw that light from the early universe
33:18
Speaker 1: and it didn't look right. It doesn't look the way
33:20
Speaker 1: you would expect it to if cosmic strings were real, Really,
33:24
Speaker 1: you would see this in the cosmic microwave background, Like
33:28
Speaker 1: aren't these I mean, aren't these cracks you're saying they're
33:30
Speaker 1: one phantometer? Then how would you even see them? In
33:34
Speaker 1: the cosmic background. If they're there and they did affect
33:37
Speaker 1: the sort of structure of the universe, you would start
33:39
Speaker 1: to see that structure beginning to form in the very
33:42
Speaker 1: early universe. I mean they've had three hundred thousand years
33:44
Speaker 1: or so to start to get things starting to wiggle,
33:47
Speaker 1: and we do see structure in the early universe. I
33:49
Speaker 1: mean early universe is very smooth because it was early
33:52
Speaker 1: on and things were just getting started. But we look
33:54
Speaker 1: at that light and we see like hot spots and
33:56
Speaker 1: cold spots. We can analyze those rates of hot spots
34:00
Speaker 1: and cold spots and say what theory would give us
34:02
Speaker 1: sort of that level of fluctuation, that level of structure
34:05
Speaker 1: at that time, and cosmic strings just predicts sort of
34:08
Speaker 1: a different distribution of hot spots and cold spots than
34:11
Speaker 1: we see. Really, even if them, what if there aren't
34:14
Speaker 1: as many strings as you thought there might be, you
34:17
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like maybe there's just just far
34:20
Speaker 1: and few in between for you to see them. Know,
34:22
Speaker 1: the pattern is just wrong. It's not like about the number,
34:25
Speaker 1: it's about the distribution, how far apart they are and
34:27
Speaker 1: sort of how they affect the shape of space. Instead,
34:30
Speaker 1: it's totally consistent with just quantum fluctuations in the early
34:33
Speaker 1: universe then getting blown up by inflation. So there were
34:37
Speaker 1: sort of two competing theories, like this random fluctuation plus
34:41
Speaker 1: inflation or cosmic strings. And now the data really look
34:45
Speaker 1: a lot like random fluctuations plus inflation and not like
34:49
Speaker 1: cosmic strings. I guess that's good, right, because if it
34:52
Speaker 1: turned out that the the universe as a baby had
34:54
Speaker 1: a lot of wrinkles in it, that would be kind
34:56
Speaker 1: of strange and disturbing, wouldn't Who wants to see a wrinkly,
35:02
Speaker 1: old looking baby. Man, if the universe is listening to
35:05
Speaker 1: this podcast, you're in trouble. I'm already in troubled in
35:10
Speaker 1: But you know, if cosmic strings do exist, they don't
35:13
Speaker 1: have to have formed the structure. This is like, if
35:16
Speaker 1: they caused the structure, here's what that structure should look like.
35:19
Speaker 1: But they could still exist. It could be that they're
35:21
Speaker 1: still out there. They're just not responsible for the structure
35:24
Speaker 1: of the universe as we know it. Oh, I see,
35:26
Speaker 1: we know that there. They maybe didn't have a hand
35:30
Speaker 1: in structuring the universe, but they could still be out there.
35:33
Speaker 1: They're just sort of like under the radar more than
35:35
Speaker 1: you thought they would be. That's right, and so we
35:38
Speaker 1: have other ways to look for cosmic strings that people
35:40
Speaker 1: are actively doing right now. What are some of the
35:42
Speaker 1: ways that we can search for these cosmic strings. Well,
35:46
Speaker 1: cosmic strings have a lot of energy density, and so
35:48
Speaker 1: they do this gravitational lensing thing. They bend space, and
35:52
Speaker 1: so if you have a really bright source of light
35:54
Speaker 1: behind a cosmic string and you're standing in front of it,
35:57
Speaker 1: then you see like sort of a doubling of an
35:59
Speaker 1: image because the light we get bent around the string.
36:02
Speaker 1: Like if I had a flashlight and there's a cosmic
36:04
Speaker 1: string between us, and I turned on my flashlight, you'd
36:06
Speaker 1: see two bulbs, right, But wouldn't aren't these strings really thin?
36:11
Speaker 1: You know, I'm trying to think about how much distortion
36:14
Speaker 1: a little string, and Megan, it would be kind of tiny,
36:17
Speaker 1: right would it would be really hard to see, Like
36:20
Speaker 1: a small imperfection in such a huge canvas would be
36:23
Speaker 1: really thin, but it'd be really really massive. Right. Say
36:26
Speaker 1: we took them Mount Everest and squeezed it down to
36:29
Speaker 1: a tiny string, right then it could have a significant impact,
36:33
Speaker 1: all right, So and we would we would maybe see
36:36
Speaker 1: not not as a lens but like a kind of
36:39
Speaker 1: like a lens in the form of a string, kind
36:41
Speaker 1: of like we would see doubles all along the string itself, precisely.
36:46
Speaker 1: And so what we've done is we looked out in
36:47
Speaker 1: the space and we look for this kind of effect.
36:50
Speaker 1: And we see gravitational lensing all the time in space.
36:53
Speaker 1: Usually it's black holes or blobs of dark matter, this
36:55
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But as you say, a cosmic string
36:57
Speaker 1: would look a little different. And people have seen like
37:00
Speaker 1: pairs of galaxies in the sky near each other that
37:03
Speaker 1: looked really really similar, and they thought, oh, wait, maybe
37:06
Speaker 1: that's a cosmic string, but then they look closer when
37:09
Speaker 1: they discovered nope, it's just two similar galaxies. It's not
37:11
Speaker 1: a reflection. It was just Bob's hair that fill in
37:14
Speaker 1: the lens of our telescope. Yeah, And so these days
37:19
Speaker 1: there's another way to look for cosmic strings that people
37:21
Speaker 1: think is the most promising. What's that? And that also
37:24
Speaker 1: has to do with their gravitational effects, because these cosmic strings,
37:27
Speaker 1: we don't think they're just floating there. We think that
37:29
Speaker 1: they are so much energy, they're like whipping and ripping
37:32
Speaker 1: and crackling. No way, what Yeah, like you know, lightning
37:37
Speaker 1: bolts um coming from fingertips in a marble movie. Right, yeah, Oh,
37:43
Speaker 1: they're active, these strings, These boundaries can move, yeah, because
37:49
Speaker 1: I guess the the field is shifting around it, and
37:53
Speaker 1: so the boundaries is like fluid. Yeah. And also the
37:56
Speaker 1: strings can get twisted and if they cross over each other,
38:00
Speaker 1: they can break, and then you get ends, and those
38:03
Speaker 1: ends can like whip around like crazy. It's it's pretty nuts.
38:07
Speaker 1: Can they form loops and knots? They can form loops absolutely. Yeah.
38:11
Speaker 1: Can you make a cosmic knot? I cannot make a
38:14
Speaker 1: cosmic knot, but the universe might be capable. If you
38:17
Speaker 1: get one of these crazy strings in a in a
38:20
Speaker 1: strange shape, then its movement can get generated a lot
38:23
Speaker 1: of gravitational waves. And we now have gravitational wave detectors
38:28
Speaker 1: like Ligo that saw when two black holes aid each other,
38:32
Speaker 1: or when two neutron stars collided. They create these ripples
38:35
Speaker 1: in space itself, and we can see that now. Wow,
38:38
Speaker 1: it's like a picturing like a snake trashing in a
38:41
Speaker 1: puddle of water, Like it's moving and it's generating ripples
38:45
Speaker 1: that we might be able to see precisely, but we
38:48
Speaker 1: don't know how fast they move, and so they could
38:50
Speaker 1: be like zipping around really fast, generating enormous signals of
38:54
Speaker 1: gravitational waves that we could detect. Or it could be
38:57
Speaker 1: like a cosmic time scale thing where they're like decades
39:01
Speaker 1: long signals. These ripples, you have to like take data
39:03
Speaker 1: for a hundred years before you see the up and
39:06
Speaker 1: the down, So we don't quite know what to look for.
39:09
Speaker 1: They could be not whipping around, but maybe just whipping
39:13
Speaker 1: around precisely, precisely, And so people are using gravitational wave
39:20
Speaker 1: detectors here on Earth. Do you have these long hauls
39:23
Speaker 1: filled with vacuum and lasers to measure space really precisely
39:26
Speaker 1: to see if these little ripples, And then people also
39:29
Speaker 1: trying to use the entire galaxy as a gravitational wave detector. Yeah,
39:33
Speaker 1: why not? Well, I mean, I got other things to
39:35
Speaker 1: use the galaxy war but if it's there, if it's there,
39:39
Speaker 1: might as well use it to find cosmic blacks whole strings?
39:44
Speaker 1: Why not? Yeah? And I love this idea because, um,
39:47
Speaker 1: it just sort of takes what's already out there and
39:50
Speaker 1: tries to use it to do science. Like you could
39:52
Speaker 1: never build a galaxy size physics experiment, but hey, just
39:56
Speaker 1: take the galaxy and turn it into an experiment. I
39:58
Speaker 1: love this idea. And so what's the idea here that
40:01
Speaker 1: the string might as it's moving around, kind of affect
40:04
Speaker 1: the things around it. The idea is just to build
40:06
Speaker 1: a bigger detector, Like the larger your gravitational wave detector
40:10
Speaker 1: is the smaller wiggle you can see. It's easier to
40:14
Speaker 1: see in a larger detector because it's uh, it's just more.
40:17
Speaker 1: You have more sensitivity too, because it's over more space.
40:20
Speaker 1: And so the idea is to build one the size
40:22
Speaker 1: of the galaxy. You know, you can't build your own detector,
40:25
Speaker 1: but there are things out there that you can use
40:27
Speaker 1: as a detector. And the thing that we can use
40:29
Speaker 1: are these stars called pulsars. These are stars that are
40:32
Speaker 1: emitting light in a regular pattern like when they were
40:36
Speaker 1: first discover They you see these these regular beaps from space.
40:40
Speaker 1: And so if the space between us and some of
40:42
Speaker 1: these pulsars gets wrinkled and a little bit or ripples happen,
40:46
Speaker 1: then it changes how the pulsing of these pulsars. And
40:49
Speaker 1: so the idea is to use all of these sort
40:51
Speaker 1: of measure the smoothness of space. Oh, I see, but
40:55
Speaker 1: that's only if these strings are moving fast enough for
40:59
Speaker 1: us to sort of noticed them or notice the difference. Yeah.
41:03
Speaker 1: If if they take a hundred years to send a signal,
41:06
Speaker 1: then our grand students are going to be really old
41:08
Speaker 1: before they get their PAGs. You don't sound that surprised, Daniel,
41:14
Speaker 1: like it's a big deal. You're like, I might take
41:16
Speaker 1: a five years or hundred years. I can't. Hey, it's research.
41:20
Speaker 1: I can't predict, right, That's what I always tell my students.
41:22
Speaker 1: You never know. You're the first person to ever do this.
41:25
Speaker 1: So you told them that you could be wrong. I
41:27
Speaker 1: tell him, We've never published a paper knowingly wrong yet,
41:31
Speaker 1: so don't be the first. So many caveats in that statement, Daniels,
41:35
Speaker 1: So many caveats. I had that vetted by my legal department.
41:41
Speaker 1: All right, So I guess that answers a question. What
41:44
Speaker 1: is a cosmic string. It's a It's like an imperfection
41:47
Speaker 1: in this in the fabric of the universe itself. It's
41:50
Speaker 1: like a wrinkle caused by the stretching of it and
41:53
Speaker 1: the weird cooling of the hicks Field. I can't believe
41:56
Speaker 1: I just said that in one sentence. Yeah, and you
41:59
Speaker 1: know these quad and fields are not just an idea,
42:01
Speaker 1: they're real. They're out there. And as the universe cooled
42:05
Speaker 1: from the like hot nasty quantum fields, too cold crystallized
42:09
Speaker 1: quantum fields that we have today, then how that cooling
42:12
Speaker 1: happened could have affected the way the universe is formed.
42:14
Speaker 1: And it's cool to think that what we might do
42:16
Speaker 1: with this knowledge, right, Like, if we know that space
42:20
Speaker 1: can wrinkle and crack like this, who knows what we
42:23
Speaker 1: could do with space? Possibly? Can we faul space? Can
42:26
Speaker 1: we make space origami? The one thing we can never
42:31
Speaker 1: do is get the Nobel Prize for Tom Kimble. Oh
42:35
Speaker 1: did he pass away? He passed away? So he missed
42:38
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for the Higgs boson. And if he
42:41
Speaker 1: was right about cosmic strings, he missed that one also, Right,
42:45
Speaker 1: But you can still get in on the party by
42:47
Speaker 1: maybe being the president of the food discovers it? Right,
42:50
Speaker 1: that's right, and maybe time people will get another kind
42:53
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which is almost
42:56
Speaker 1: like a run rough prize. Right. Well, I guess the
43:00
Speaker 1: idea is that maybe someone listening to this out there
43:02
Speaker 1: might be the person who discovers it. Might be you
43:05
Speaker 1: might be me. Might be someone listening to this who
43:08
Speaker 1: discovers these wrinkles in reality that's right, or something even crazier.
43:13
Speaker 1: The next time you hear a theorist talk about some
43:16
Speaker 1: totally bonkers notion about the way the universe or space
43:19
Speaker 1: might work, then remember there are crazier ideas out there
43:23
Speaker 1: that are actually real. That's right. They could still be crazy,
43:27
Speaker 1: but they might also be right. You never know, m
43:31
Speaker 1: that's the wrinkle on your reason. Thank you very much,
43:34
Speaker 1: Peter for that question. I love email questions from listeners,
43:37
Speaker 1: so please, if there's something you'd like to hear us discuss,
43:40
Speaker 1: send it to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge
43:43
Speaker 1: dot com. You hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for listening.
43:45
Speaker 1: See you next time. Before you still have a question
43:55
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
43:59
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
44:01
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
44:05
Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
44:08
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that. Daniel
44:12
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
44:15
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44:18
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44:22
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,