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Why Is Gravity So Weird? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I just think it's fascinating that it's such a fundamental
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: force in the universe, right Like, it's it's basically the
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: thing that builds galaxies and keeps planets moving right and
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: gets structured to the entire cosmos. That's right on the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: largest scales, actually the most important force. It's the reason
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: why things look the way they do, the reason why
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: our planet is around, it's the reason why we're on
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the planet. It's pretty important, and yet we don't know
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a lot about it, right, Like, there's some really deep
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and strange mysteries about it. On one hand, we have
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a theory which works really really well. On the other hand,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: we have questions about it, but to seem really really basic.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And not only that, it's it's very different than all
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the other forces of nature. That's right, one of these
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: things is not like the other ones. Ye hi am more.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I'm a cartoonist and I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: And this is our podcast Daniel and Joe explained the universe,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: in which our cartoonist and physicists try to figure out
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: how to make the universe understandable to anybody. Yeah, and
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: today on the podcast we are examining a very heavy topic,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: gravity and specifically why is gravity so weak and strange. Gravity,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: as we said earlier, is something which controls the structure
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of the universe. I mean, the reason the Solar system
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: looks the way it does is because of gravity. The
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: reason the Earth is round is because of gravity. The
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: reason we have galaxies is because of gravity. The reason
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: we weighed so much, it's it's because of gravity. Right,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: it's not my belt, No, that's because of late night
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: cake eating. Um. But it's such a fundamental force of nature. Rights, Like,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: it's present in our everyday live We spend a lot
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of time thinking about gravity, right, how not to fall down,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: how not drop things, how to go up buildings, how
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: to go down buildings? Right, that's right. It seems like
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: one of the most important forces. I mean, if you
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: ask people, you know, to name a force or what
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: kind of forces the experience in their life, gravity is
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the one that's present in their lives. Right, you're climbing upstairs,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: you're fighting gravity. Trip, you fall down, you're feeling gravity.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: You look around you. The shape of things is controlled
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: by gravity, and that's why it's particularly strange that gravity
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: is the weakest force of all the forces we've discovered,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: it's by far the weakest. Yeah, it's really strange to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: hear you say that, Like, how can gravity be weak?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Like you know, like it's it's keeping the whole Earth together,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: it's making the entire higher planet swing around, going to
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: circle basically, right. Without gravity, we would just shoot off
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: into space. That's right. It's a really strange situation. And
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: there's other things about gravity we don't understand as well.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: It's really strange. It doesn't play well with the other forces.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It's very, very weak. It's a total mystery to science,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: except that we have a theory which works beautifully. Right.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: We can calculate exactly how mercury orbits the Sun. We
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: can send things into outer space and note with two
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: millimeter precision exactly where they're going to land. We have
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: a working theory that we can use, right, but we
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: don't understand it on a conceptual level. We have these basic,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: deep questions about about what gravity is and how the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: universe works because of it. So it's a weird question,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and maybe one of the people hadn't thought about before.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: So Daniel went out as usual and ask people on
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the street, why do you think gravity is so weak.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Here's what a random selection of folks who are willing
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: to talk to me on a Tuesday morning had to
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: say about gravity. I don't know. I should don't know
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: about that, all right, I was. I was thought it
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: was a pretty strong force. So I don't know. But yeah, because, um,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: it depends on the distance and it's long range one,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: so that's why we feel it's very weak most of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the time. Cool. No, okay, I have no I'm sorry,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: it's not very fruitful. I have no idea, but I'd
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: be interested in finding out why. All right, that wasn't
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that was pretty good. Most people weren't surprised when you
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: said gravity is weak. I don't know. I feel like
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: of all the questions I've asked people, this is the
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: one that flams them the most. You know. People were like, what,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I have no idea, or um, they had crazy ideas
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: why gravity must must be weak. I feel like, usually
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: we get one person who knows what the answer is
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: or has a good clue about what what's going on.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: This time, I feel like almost everybody was pretty clueless.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, one person said I always thought gravity was
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: pretty strong, right, which kind of sums up the situation. Right.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Gravity is omnipresent in our lives. It dominates our experience,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: and yet it's so weak compared to the other really
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: powerful forces we've discovered. Well of people, A couple of
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: answers were that had to do with distance, Like, gravity
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: gets really weak with distance, that's right. And the problem
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: there is that all the forces get weak with distance,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: like electromagnetism also falls as a as a distance grows. Right,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So all of these forces followed this one over our
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: squared rule or are as your distance from the thing
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: that's that's giving you the force, right, maybe maybe right? Maybe? Yeah,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: mostly we think and uh, and so that can't be
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the answer, right, because all the other forces have that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: same feature. So when you say it's the weak is
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: it's not that it changes over distances differently than the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: other forces. That's right. So maybe we should talk about
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: what the forces are and compare them to each other.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: So focus and get understanding of how crazy weak gravity is. Right. So, Daniel,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: what are the forces of nature besides a bad movie
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: with Ben Affleck in center Bullock? Well, I think comedy.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Comedy is definitely force of nature. You know, it solves
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: big problems around the world. You know. The fundamental forces
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: are electromagnetism, right, that's the one that controls electricity and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: magnetism obviously and is responsible for the cool things like
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: light and lightning and all that all that cool stuff. Um.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And then there's the weak nuclear force, which is a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: force which is responsible for radioactive decay of a nuclei. Right.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And the cool thing about electricity and magnetism and the
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: weak nuclear force is that we actually have shown that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: there are two sides of the same coin as a particle. Physicists,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: we refer to them as one force. We call it
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the electro week. So sort of magnetism lost out there
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: in the name merger, right, it should be electro magnetic week.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: But nobody voted to keep magnetism in the the name
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: of the partners on the law firm. Nobody, nobody lobbied
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: for weak electro or magneto weak force. Yeah. Yeah, again,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: we are suffering the fate of some anonymous committee of
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: scientists that get to name these things. Right, who are
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: these people? It's probably some grad student, right or some
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: you know, like this is really weird call it this. Yeah.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So we have electricity and magnetism, which is a single force.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: We have the weak nuclear force, which is really should
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: be combined with electricity magnetism. And then there's the strong
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: nuclear force, and this is the one that holds the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: nucleus together. You know, the nucleus is just a bunch
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, right, so it's
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: only positively charged particles in the nucleus. So you might think,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: what it even holds the nucleus together, right, you have
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: all this positively charged stuff should be repelling themselves. Well,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: it's the strong nuclear force, and it does so by
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: exchanging these crazy little particles we call gluons, and that
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: holds the nucleus together, and it's pretty strong. It's even
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: stronger than electromagnetism. Well, let's take a step back. So
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: in the universe there's stuff. There's like, yes, affirm that
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: there is stuff in without reservation, there is stuff. I'm
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: glad we saw that question. But I mean it's like
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: there's stuff that has substance to it, that has masked
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: to it, or you know that it sort of exists.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And then there's also besides the at how these things
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: interact with each other, like how they affect each other
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that's right. There's the matter and then there's the forces. Right.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: The forces affect how they interact with each other, and
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: that's pretty much the universe. That's that's like, it's matter
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and forces. Yeah. One way to look at the universe
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: is that it's particles, right, or you would say matter
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and their forces. In modern particle physics we think about
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: one level deeper, which if we think of quantum fields,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and quantum fields are responsible both for matter and for forces.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: So we can talk about that maybe in another podcast.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: What is a quantum field and how can I get one?
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: You know for leaser rent um? What can they do
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: for me? But yeah, I think it's it's fair still
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: to think about the universe in terms of particles and forces.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: On that note, let's take a quick break. There are
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: only four kinds of forces. Yeah, there are four kinds
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: of forces. So after magnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and then of course gravity, right, that's the fourth force
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that we've discovered. The fascinating thing is that different particles
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: feel different forces, right, Like, some particles feel this set
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: of forces, some particles feel those set of forces. For example, right,
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  Speaker 1: particles with electric charge feel electromagnetism. Right. The electron, for example,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: is negatively charged, the proton is positively charged. You bring
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: them close together, they're gonna pull on each other. They're
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: gonna suck each other together, right, because they have opposite charges.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: We all know that, um. But you bring a neutral
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: particle nearby, it just totally ignores it. Right, It doesn't
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: feel it at all. Right, It's like it's like somebody's
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: walking through a crowd of people shouting, but they have
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: headphones on so they can't hear anything, and they're totally
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: oblivious to it. It's kind of like how we talked
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: about in a previous podcast. They're almost like languages or
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: like social media platforms. Like some people are on Twitter,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: some people are on Facebook, but some people are not
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: on this. And so if somebody if you're not on
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Twitter and so many sense to your tweet, you're not
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: going to get it. And so it's just different ways
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the particles in right, that's right. Gravity is the Google
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: plus social media right because nobody uses the trendstor it's
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: ancient but powerless. Yeah, And so different particles feel different forces.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And for example, an electron, while it feels electromagnetism. Because
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: it has a negative charge, it doesn't feel a strong
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: force at all. It will pass right by a bunch
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: of particles that are really tugging on each other with
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: a strong force and not be affected at all. Whereas corks.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Corks feel all the forces. They feel a strong force,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: which is how they get pulled together in the nucleus. Remember,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: protons and neutrons are made of quarks. Quarks feel electromagnetism
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  Speaker 1: because they have electric charge. They feel the weak force.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: They also feel gravity, of course, because they have mass.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: So quarks get their fingers in everything they feel. They
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: get the feels for everything. They feel everything's right, They
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: got the strong feels. Course, they're really deeply emotional part
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: of um. And on the other side of the spectrum,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you've got things like neutrinos. Patrinos don't have electric charge,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: so they ignore all electricity magnetism, right, They don't interact
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: with light. They're invisible. They pass right through anything that that.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: They ignore electro magnetic bonds, so they pass through most materials.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: They don't feel the strong force. The only way they
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: interact is with the weak force, and the weak force
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: is pretty weak, which is why neutrinos can mostly just
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: pass through matter unaffected. So we have four fundamental forces, right,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: and gravity is one of these forces. And so when
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: you say that antravity is weak, you actually mean it's
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: weak compared to these other three forces, that's right. And
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: so the ranking is the strong force is the strongest,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: so that one is actually well named. Congratulations, you know,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: anonymous group of scientists. Yeah, yeah, we should be called
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the as currently known to be the strongest force force. Um.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Right after that comes electromagnetism, and you know, we know
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: that force is pretty powerful. You stick your finger in
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a socket, you're going to feel the wrath of electromagnetism, right.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It's it's not an unfamiliar feeling, right, right to think
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: your finger in anything? You feel it, right, because it's
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: electromagnetism is the force that keeps you from basically passing
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: through the table or passing through your car. Right, that's right.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Because electromagnetism is the basis of chemical bonds, right. And
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: chemical bonds are really the thing that form the structure
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: of your body. Right. You think if your body is
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: like a bunch of particles, but it's held together by
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: all these forces, it's like a chain link fence binding
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: together these little particles and prevents you from passing through
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: something else. Yeah, so we got the strong force, and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: then electromagnetism, and then actually the weak nuclear force. Right,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: this is the force that like powers neutrinos and radioactive decay.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: It's much weaker than electromagnetism um and much weaker than
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the strong force. Even weaker than the weak is gravity.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: That's right. If you make a list like strong force, electromagnetism,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the weak force, then you should leave like a hundred
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: blank pages and then you get to grab because when
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: we compare these forces, we put things like an equal
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: distance apart and compare the strength of the forces. Gravity
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: is ten to the thirty six times weaker than the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: weak force. But that's ten with thirty six zeros in
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: front of it. But it isn't that sort of a
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: matter of units or scale, do you know what I mean? Like,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: it's much weaker, but only if you compare apples to apples, right,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: or orange to oranges. That's right. But put two protons
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: next to each other, right, Two protons have a certain
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: amount of mass and a certain amount of electric charge,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and the force of their charges is going to be
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: much much stronger than the force from their masses. So yeah,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: if everything was much much more massive, then there would
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: be stronger gravity. But you can compare these things apples
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: to apples by comparing them, you know, the same distance
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: and the same basic unit of interaction. Right, But what
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: if you take an apple put it next to another apple? Well,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I think you can do that experiment. Nothing's going to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: happen because gravity is so weak. Right. You don't see
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: two apples like pulling themselves together on the counter, right,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: then they'll alden apple collider um. You know, the apples
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: are not drawn to each other. Gravity is a super
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: weak force, and you can see this yourself. Right, you
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: can do an experiment where you counter the entire gravitational
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: force of an enormous celestial body like the Earth. Right,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: take a small kitchen magnet and use it to hold
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: up a nail and think about what's happening there. Right,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: you have the nail is being pulled down by every
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: single rock in the Earth. It's pulling with all of
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: its gravity. But a tiny little kitchen magnet totally overcomes that.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: It can lift the nail even though it's pulling. It's
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: being pulled down by the whole entire planet Earth, right exactly. Now,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: imagine a magnet the size of the Earth, right, I
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: mean that would be that would be extraordinarily powerful. And
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: so you have basically like a gravitational blob the size
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: of the Earth. Still pretty ineffective compared to electromagnetism. So
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: so it's weak if you sort of compare it by object,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Like you said, if you take a proton and put
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: it next to proton, the the force are going to
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: feel from electro magnetism is so much bigger than the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: force of gravity. They're going to feel towards each other
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the same with like two electrons or two cords and things.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: So in the scale of like the particles that we know,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: it's a really weak force, that's right, exactly. And yet
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: and yet it seems to dominate. Right. That's a bit
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: of a puzzle. Like, on one hand, it's super duper weak,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: and we're telling you that it hardly counts for anything.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's responsible for the structure of
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the Solar System, man for the galaxy, and it's the
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: reason the universe looks the way it is, right, And
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: so that can be confusing to people, Like how do
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: you reconcile those two things in your head? Yeah, Like
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: why doesn't the Earth feel an electromagnetic force with the Sun,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: which it would be so much bigger than the force
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: of gravity. Yeah, what, it would be pretty shocking. And
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: and that's actually the reason is um gravity is different
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: from the other forces and that it can't be canceled out. Right,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: if there was some huge electrostatic difference between the Sun
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and the Earth, like a bunch of positive charges there
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of negative charges year, it would create
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: such an enormous force that it would be very quickly balanced.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Like that's what lightning is, right, When there's a charge
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: differential between clouds and the ground, it's it doesn't take
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: that much before those charges want to rearrange themselves to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: a lower energy configuration. They rushed down to the ground,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: or they rushed up to the clouds and they jump
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: to balance themselves up. Because you have two kinds of charges,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: you have positive and you have negative, so you can
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: find an arrangement where basically everybody is happy. It's an equilibrium, right,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: But that's not true for gravity, Okay, I get it.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So for example, if the Earth was every particle on
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Earth had a positive electromagnetic charge and every particle in
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the Sun had a negative electromagnetic charge, there would be
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a humongous pool from electromagnetism pulling the Earth into the Sun. Yeah,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: we'd be toasted pretty quick. Yeah, I would be huge.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Even the opposite if we were all positive and the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Sun was all positive, we would get shot out of
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the solar stem very quickly, that's right. And that's why
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: you know, early days of the Solar system being formed,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: you have these gases and the gas and dust coalescing,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: and very rapidly things neutralize, right, because anything that feels
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: an electrostatic force to something else is going to find
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the opposite charge and they're going to coalesce and they're
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: gonna make something neutral. Right. That's why most of the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: things around you are neutral, Right, Most of the elements
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: are neutral, because any deviation from neutral results in a
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: powerful force to neutralize it. So, thankfully the Earth is
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: made out of both like equal amounts of positive and
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: negative particles, right, that's right. Thankfully we're sort of balanced electromagnetically,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and so even if the Sun was all positive, we
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: would look like neutral, like a neutral ball to to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the sun. Yeah, that's right, we're on large scales. The
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Earth is neutral, right, I mean there might be some
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: residual positive or negative charge depending on the solar wind, etcetera.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: But basically the Earth is neutral, and so the largest
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: force of the Earth feels is the gravity in the sun,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: even though gravity is super duper weak. Right, it doesn't
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: take a lot to counteract gravity. But it's the only
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: player left because everybody else is sort of pair it
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: up and danced off for the night, and gravity is
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: just there left holding the bag. And gravity can't be balanced, right.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: You feel gravity if you have any mass, right, But
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: there's only positive masses and no such thing as a
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: negative mass to give anti gravity. Well, let's keep going,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. Okay, So that's
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: how gravity is so much weaker than the other forces. Um,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: so how's it different than the other three forces of nature?
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: There's like no end to to weys, the gravity is weird,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you know, there's no end to like the puzzles of
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Gravity's fascinating bottomless pit. That's right, it's a black hole
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: of questions. Um. And one of my favorites is just
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that we have no way to sort of fit gravity
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: in with the way the universe works according to everything else.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: You know, we talked earlier about how we have particles
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and we have forces or quantum fields equivalently, and that's
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a really successful way to describe the universe. You know,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: we have the Large Hadron Collider to explore these things,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: really high energies, and we've understood all sorts of things
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: using this theory. But that theory is used as quantum mechanics.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So the way we describe interactions, you know, the way
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: we talk about two electrons um repelling each other, or
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: the way lightning is formed or anything involves passing quantum
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: particles back and forth. And that's just not true for gravity.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: What does that mean? Passing particles back and forth? Like
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: when like if I have two magnets and they're attracted
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to each other, they're not. They're not It's not like
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: an invisible telekinesis pulling on each other. They're actually swapping
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: particles and I can't see that. Is that kind of
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: what you mean? That's exactly what I mean. Um that
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the way two things interact via some four is by
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: exchanging particles. And so for example, electromagnetism, right, is the
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: force behind a magnet, And the way electromagnetism works, we
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: think at a sort of microscopic particle level, is that
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: there's a particle that transmits that force, that sends sort
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: of the information back and forth between two things that
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: are feeling it. And in the case of electromagnetism, that
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: particle is the photon. Right. The particle is also a
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: packet of light. So each of the quantum forces that
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: we talked about before, electromagnetism, the weak force and the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: strong force, each of them have a particle we associate
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: with it. And that's not just like some name tag
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: we put on and say, hey, you get this one,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: you get this one. We think that that's the particle
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that's responsible for making the force work. So when two
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: electrons come near each other, how do they repel each other?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: How does that actually happen? But we think that they
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: send photons out right, The electric field of a moving electron, right,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and accelerating electron generates photons, and those photons um interact
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: with the other chron's and so basically the passing messages
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: back and forth using these quantum particles. So gravity is
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: weird because we don't know that there is an quantum
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: particle being exchanged when two things get attracted gravitationally. That's right.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: So we have this great framework. We say, oh, maybe
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: all forces are quantum mechanical fields interacting with each other. Right,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Let's apply that to the electromagnetic field. Yeah it works.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Let's apply that to the weak force. Yeah it works.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Let's applies to the strong force. Oh cool, it works.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is something deep about the way the universe works.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Let's apply to gravity. Oh it doesn't work, right, So
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: what does that mean? What does it mean when I
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: say it doesn't work? Well? For a theory to work,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: it has to provide predictions for experiments. You have to
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: be able to say, okay, theory, what would happen in
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: this configuration if I shot a proton and another particle.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Predict what would happen, and then you can go off
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: and do the experiments and compare it. Right. Well, when
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: you do that for gravity, you try to form a
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: quantum theory of gravity, it doesn't work. You get nonsense answers.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: You can answers like infinity right, or things disappear, or
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: it just it doesn't mathematically function like there's no way
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: to build a theory of gravity that we've discovered so
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: far that works, that actually explains the way these things happen.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: There are a few candidates out there there pretty far
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: from being a functional theory of quantum gravity. There's a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: loop quantum gravity or string theory. But the basic problem
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: is that quantum mechanics and general relativity, which is our
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: best theory of gravity, do not play well together. And
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: we have no functioning quantum theory of gravity. So does
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that mean that we don't have the right theory or
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: is that gravity is just not quantum in nature? That's
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: exactly the question we don't know the answer to. Right
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: In a hundred years from now, somebody will know the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: answer that I hope, and they'll look back and they'll wonder,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: you know, why do those guys see the clues but
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: we don't know. It could be that there is a
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: quantum theory gravity, we're just not smart enough to think
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: it up yet, right, Like the right person hasn't been
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: born yet to put the math together, or maybe it
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: requires a different kind of math that we're using. Right,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: there's some assumption we're making that's a that's a mistake
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: or maybe just giving it a wrong name, like maybe
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: it should be or gravitinos grabby toss exactly. That's definitely
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the problem. That's step number one when we made a mistake,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and step number one when we could define the particle um.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: The other option, of course, is that maybe gravity is
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: not a quantum force the way the other forces are. Right,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the other forces we call them quantum forces because they're
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: well described by quantum mechanics, but gravity is kind of different.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, the current theory we have a gravity general relativity.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: It doesn't like to describe gravity as a force, right,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: describes gravity instead as a bending of space. It says
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: that when you have mass somewhere in space, space no
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: longer becomes straight, becomes bent, so the things moving curves
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: and circles. And it's not like an actual just a
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: mathematical nuance where a mathematical perspe active. What's really confirms
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: it is the idea that gravity can affect things that
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: don't have mass. Right, That's how we know it's more
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: than just a force between things that have mass. It
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: actually like affects space for things that don't have mass. Right,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So if you shoot a photon through
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: space that has mass nearby. The photon will not moving
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: what we consider to be a straight line, right, it
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: will find a path through this bent space that involves
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: basically curving. And this is what Einstein predicted with his theory,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and they and they saw it, you know. And you
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: can see in space it's called gravitational lensing. You can
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: see photons get bent by heavy objects. And it's because,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: as you say, the heavy objects are bending space itself. Right,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: It's not like gravity is pulling the photon because the
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: photon doesn't have any mass, right, that's right. The photon
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't have any mass, you know. So that's so that's
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: how it's different. Like gravity seems to affect things that
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: don't have sort of its fundamental property, you know, like
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: electromagantic forces can affect something that does not have an
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: electric charge. That gravity can affect things everything else. Right. Yeah,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty deep insight there. I'm not bad for
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: a cartoonist at all. Yeah. Um, that's a fascinating to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: think about. I think that's totally correct. Um. Yeah, And
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: so if gravity is instead of being a force, if
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: it's a way we change the shape of space itself,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: then maybe that's why we don't have a quantum theory
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of it. Right, And that's amazing and it's fantastic and
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: it's exciting um. And another reason why we have a
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: hard time bringing these two things together is that quantum mechanics,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the theory we've developed only works so far in flat space.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: That is, if there's really heavy stuff nearby, we don't
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: know how to do those quantum calculations. We can basically
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: only do quantum mechanics in places where there isn't really
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: strong gravity. So wa, it's a quantum physics doesn't work
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in reality basically, is that what you're saying, like, it
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't work in the space that we actually live in, Well,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: it works basically everywhere except for those to black holes. Right.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: You need to basically a black hole have enough gravity
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to break down quantum mechanics, because it's when when space
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: gets really distorted that you start to see the effects
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: of gravity on space and and then it becomes comparable
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to the strength of other stuff, and that's when that's
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: when quantum mechanics breaks down. Yeah, quantum quantum field theory
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: works basically what we call flat space, whereas gravity bends space.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: So earlier when we categorize gravity as part of these
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: four fundamental forces, maybe that's just the wrong approach. Maybe,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you know, do you know what I mean? Like, maybe, um,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't be categorizing these four things as is one
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: category of quote forces. That's right. It could be that
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: it could be that there is no quantum theory of
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: gravity as a fundamental force because it isn't one. Yeah,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: and it's just a feature of space, right, Absolutely, that's
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: one possible explanation. But then we still need a way
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to make quantum mechanics work in bent space, right, And
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: we still need understand how to make our theory of
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: general relativity play well with quantum mechanics, because we think
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics describes the universe, right, and general relativity is
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: not a quantized theory. It's it's continuous, right. It treats
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: space and everything as if it's infinitely divisible. Right, it's
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: not a quantum theory all the fact that it came
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: about before quantum mechanics was even invented. And so while
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the basic tenants of it how it distorts space are
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: probably correct, I been verified to zillion degrees of accuracy. Right,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like it can be a fundamental description
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: of nature because it's not quantum mechanical. So like we
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: want to call it a force because it seems to
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: move things like all the other forces, but it's it.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's not a force. Maybe it's just kind of
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: like a some other weird property of space. Yeah, exactly.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe we've been trying to put a round
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: peg into a square hole all these years, a gravity
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: peg and a quantum hole. That's right, that's right. And
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: there are other ways that people are trying to solve
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: this problem. Like one way is thinking that maybe gravity
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: is a fundamental force, but it just works a little
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: bit differently from the other forces. For example, people think
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: about how the universe might have additional spatial dimensions, you know,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: like instead of just being able to move in three
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: spain directions, maybe there's like four or five six dimensions
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: that you can move in. And folks who are interested
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: in that should listen to our podcast on extra dimensions. No, yeah,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: we did a whole episode on extra dimensions, but we
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: didn't start of get into this particular topic. Um, so
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: tell us how extra dimensions might explain why gravity is
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: so weak. Yeah. The idea is that maybe gravity isn't
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: so weak. Maybe gravity is just as strong as all
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the other forces. But if there's a whole other set
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: of dimensions out there, there's ways directions that think can move.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: It might be that gravity is the only thing that
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: feels those dimensions, right. It might be that those dimensions
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: are invisible to electromagnetism and to the weak force into
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the strong force, but visible to gravity. And what that
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: means is that gravity might be basically leaking out into
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: those other dimensions. Know, we talked about how the farther
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: your way you get from something, the weaker the forces.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: So like Mercury feels the force of the Sun's gravity
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: much more strongly than Pluto does. Right, irrelevant of whether
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: or not you call it a planet, it doesn't feel
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: gravity very strongly. And that's because it's further from the Sun, right.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I mean that goes like one over our squared or
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: r as the distance. It's one of our squared because
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: we have three dimensions. If we had six dimensions, it
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: would be one over our five, right, which falls much
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: more rapidly. So if there are additional dimensions out there, okay,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and only gravity feels them, think that might be the
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: reason why gravitational force fall so quickly. Maybe gravity is
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: actually just as strong as everything else when you get
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: really really close. But then these extra dimensions exist, and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: most of gravity leaks out into those other dimensions, sort
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: of like between you and me, there's not just the
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: three dimensions between you and me. May there are other
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: secret hidden spaces kind of between you and me or
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: these other dimensions exactly, other ways for gravity to spread out. Right,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: So gravity would be like just as strong as all
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: the other forces, but it's just flexing its muscles in
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: these other spaces that we can't see or feel exactly.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, if somebody's at the center of
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a crowd and they let go a really stinky far right.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: The people next to them they smell it strongly, and
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: the people further away they smell it much more weakly,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and people outside don't smell it at all. Right, now,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: imagine really suddenly, but let's let's let's go with it. Hey,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to make this successible. You know, this is
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: something everybody going to appreciate. Trying to make it. And
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: but if there was somewhere else for that fart to go,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: you know, if it could move not just sideways, but
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: also could float up right. So you had a really
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: tall room in the floor, fart floated up, then people
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: wouldn't feel it as much because most of the fart
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: would dissipate into the upper corners of the room. And
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: so gravity might be the same way. It might be that,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: you know, for the first millimeter, so the first centimeter,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: so gravity gets very weak, very quickly, it falls off
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: really wrap ly, and that then you know, a normal
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: distances like a meter or ten ms or whatever, you
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: don't feel those other dimensions anymore because other other dimensions
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: only activated really really short distances. This is the theory
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: people came up with, and we don't know if it's real.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: You know, we've tested it so far. It seems like
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: gravity works the same way um for galactic scales and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: for Earth scales, and for microscopic scales. It seems to
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: always fall off at the same rate as a function
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of distance. So nobody's ever seen any evidence of these
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: extra dimensions. But it's a fascinating theory and it's a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: you know, it's one that would give a kind of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: a natural explanation for why gravity would fall off so
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: quickly and why gravity is so weak it wouldn't explain
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: all these other things. But people sort of try to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: use gravity to see if there are other dimensions, right, Yeah,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that's right. It would be a really cool clue, right if.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And and that's a fascinating way that science has done.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: You know, you try to look at everything around you
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: and see if you can fit it all into one framework,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: like can I use this one set of ideas to
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: describe everything canto one part of concepts? That's right, and
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: my far theory of you in the universe. Um, The
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: best possible way I think to unravel this is to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: actually go visit a black hole, because a quantum mechanics
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: and general relativity tell you very different things about what's
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: happening inside a black hole. Right, As we said before,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: general relativity tells you it's an infinitesimal dot of of
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: almost infinite density. Quanto mechanics says, you know, the universe
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: is quantized first of all, so you can't have infinitesimal
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: dots um. And also this sort of a minimum size
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: to stuff, right, and you can't have all that stuff
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: compressed in such a tiny little area. And so if
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: you could see inside a black hole, you would learn
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a lot about gravity. So what would be the plan.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: You would go into a black hole. You would observe
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and discover how the universe works, and then and then
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: you'd be stuck there. That's right. They would have to
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: send your Nobel Prize into the black hole. Act, which is,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: assume you'd figure it out, and the Nobel Prize into
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: space into the black hole. Congratulate for anybody who's listening.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Please do not go into a black hole. Please, please
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: do not go into a black hole. But you know,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: we don't need to visit black holes. We could try
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: to create them here on Earth. That sounds like a
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: great idea. Yeah, doesn that sounds like a great idea.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm excited make a quality. Yeah, let's create
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a black hole and study here. Right, Um, if gravity
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: gets really really powerful when you get two really short
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: distances because of this extra dimension theory, then it might
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: be that if you shoot two protons together really really
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: hard and they get really really close to each other,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: that you can create a super duper mini extra cute,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: little fuzzy black hole. Right. I'm trying to make it
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: sound like a cozy thing. Yeah, you're trying to sell
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: it and so um, before we turned on the Large
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: he collided about ten years ago, people thought maybe by
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: smashing these protons together we could actually create black holes
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: and we could study them. We can reveal the deep
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: secrets of gravity, right um. So, then the idea would
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: be to try to make them at the Large Hattern
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Collider and just kind of see what happens, like, does
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: it tell us something about gravity or quantum physics at
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the same time exactly by seeing how often they're made
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: and how strong they are and what they turned into
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: when they decay, we can understand something about the way
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: black holes work, and that would have been really powerful.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you feel about
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: black holes, we haven't made any black holes at the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider that we've discovered that you but maybe
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: isn't it true that maybe you've made them but they evaporate. Yes,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: these black holes would be very short lived, but you know,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: everything we make at the Large Hadron Collider is really
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: short lived. These things last we like tend the negative
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: thirty seconds or tend the negative twenty three seconds. We're
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: pretty good at seeing short lived stuff because it usually
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: blows up into other things. And a black hole would
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: have a really unusual signature in our detective it would
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: be pretty clear to see if we had made them. Okay,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: but short of going into a black hole or detecting
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: farts and extra dimensions, we may not know in the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: near future what what makes gravity so different? That's right,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: it's going to take some work. I mean. The other direction,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: is theoretical, is to build up a theory of quantum
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: gravity sort of from the bottom up, like like, start
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: from the beauty of math and physics and then try
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: to build it up to our level exactly. And that's
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: that's a wonderful way to do, is to say, like,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: maybe the universe works in this way, that's most basic
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: fundamental nature, and build it up from there and see
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: if you can describe the universe that we see around us.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's um, it's pretty shocking to think
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: gravity it's such a place, such a big role in
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: our lives, and yet it's it's like the the weakling
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: in the universe, right, It's like, imagine, imagine if if
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: gravity was stronger, life would beat a lot more chaotic,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: right and crazy? Yeah, exactly. We would be closer to
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the Sun and everything would feel more intense. It's fascinating
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: to me that gravity has been a mystery to physics
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. I mean, it was the focus
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: of Isaac Newton's studies, you know, like hundreds of years
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: ago people working on gravity. And still today, even though
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: we've made so much progress in terms of gravity, we
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: still have so much, so many basic questions about it
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: that we don't we don't know the answers to, not
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: even really beginning of how to answer them to meet.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Gravity is such a rich source of mystery
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: for physics and for everybody. Wow, alright, cool, I think
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: it's maybe time to push down this question. Thanks for
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: joining us. If you still have a question after listening
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
• 36:31
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• 36:34
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• 36:38
  Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.