Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions 31: Photons, aliens, and baseball

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Listener Questions 31: Photons, aliens, and baseball · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I have a question. You have to be
0:10
Speaker 1: really good at math to be a physicist? Well, you know,
0:13
Speaker 1: it depends a bit on what whether you want to
0:15
Speaker 1: be a good physicist or a bad physicist. Actually, I
0:18
Speaker 1: think that the most evil physicists are probably the ones
0:21
Speaker 1: that are best at math. Do you say that because
0:23
Speaker 1: you're not good at math? I say that because I'm
0:25
Speaker 1: not an evil physicist. That's what all evil physicists say.
0:31
Speaker 1: That's my answer to that question. But to answer your
0:33
Speaker 1: other question, I think it depends a little bit on
0:36
Speaker 1: the kind of math you have to do. What do
0:38
Speaker 1: you mean, like complex or simple? Well, you know, for example,
0:41
Speaker 1: I have no trouble doing calculations and boosts and rotations
0:45
Speaker 1: and special relativity, but I mess up time zones at
0:48
Speaker 1: least once a week. Yeah, those time zones can be
0:51
Speaker 1: super complicated. You have to like add numbers and subtract numbers.
0:55
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Sometimes you have to subtract different numbers based
0:58
Speaker 1: on where you live and where I live. It's crazy, man. Yeah,
1:02
Speaker 1: I know. There's there's like twenty four times. That's a
1:04
Speaker 1: lot for one simple brain to handle. Too much for me.
1:08
Speaker 1: Does not compute po A. We're late for our recording.
1:26
Speaker 1: Hi am or handmte cartoonist and the co author of
1:28
Speaker 1: Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
1:31
Speaker 1: a particle physicist and a professor at u C Irvine.
1:34
Speaker 1: And the thing that's preventing me from having a far
1:37
Speaker 1: flung evil empire is the time zones. Oh man, you're
1:41
Speaker 1: like lex Luthor with a special weakness. Like, all we
1:44
Speaker 1: have to do is what schedule and meeting with you,
1:47
Speaker 1: and you'll be defeating exactly. I'll show up at the
1:49
Speaker 1: wrong time and get frustrated and my plans would just
1:52
Speaker 1: fall apart and SWAT team will be waiting for you
1:54
Speaker 1: to arrestue. But you know, it's more complicated than you
1:58
Speaker 1: make it sound, because it's not just that they're twenty
2:00
Speaker 1: four time zones around the globe and that my team
2:03
Speaker 1: is actually spread out over several of them. But the
2:06
Speaker 1: time zones shift independently. There's two weeks of the year
2:09
Speaker 1: when Europe doesn't have daylight Saving Time and we do,
2:12
Speaker 1: and then there's some states in the US that do
2:14
Speaker 1: and don't. It's a nightmare. Well, they have this new
2:16
Speaker 1: thing called computers, Daniel, that will do all of these
2:19
Speaker 1: calculations for you. I don't know if you've are up
2:22
Speaker 1: on this technology, but all you have to do is
2:24
Speaker 1: some type in your local times on the computer and
2:27
Speaker 1: will tell you what time it is in other parts
2:29
Speaker 1: of the planet. That's a good idea. We should use
2:31
Speaker 1: computers to help with physics. I don't think anybody ever
2:34
Speaker 1: thought of that before. I'm gonna get right on that.
2:36
Speaker 1: You don't even need a I or anything. You just
2:39
Speaker 1: need I. But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and
2:41
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio
2:44
Speaker 1: in which we tried to translate things much more complicated
2:48
Speaker 1: than the local time in Geneva. We want to understand
2:51
Speaker 1: the very nature of the universe itself. If you dig
2:55
Speaker 1: down into the firmament of human knowledge, can we penetrate
2:58
Speaker 1: even below that, understand the actual bedrock foundation of the universe.
3:03
Speaker 1: Can we take it all apart and understand the very
3:06
Speaker 1: basic pieces of reality and translate those into our minds
3:11
Speaker 1: so we can play with them, contemplate them, and understand
3:14
Speaker 1: why the universe is the way that it is not
3:17
Speaker 1: some other way. We ask all those big and hard
3:20
Speaker 1: and difficult questions on the podcast, and sometimes we even
3:23
Speaker 1: answer a few of them. Yeah, because life seems pretty normal,
3:26
Speaker 1: pretty sensical on an everyday basis. But as you drill
3:29
Speaker 1: down into the universe, and you already look out into
3:31
Speaker 1: the cosmos, things get a little bit complicated. Even time
3:34
Speaker 1: itself is more complicated than most people think. It's relative,
3:38
Speaker 1: and it's different depending on where you are in the universe,
3:40
Speaker 1: not just here on Earth. And the way the universe
3:42
Speaker 1: works at the smallest skills and in the vicinity of
3:45
Speaker 1: black holes is very different from the way the universe
3:48
Speaker 1: seems to work in our normal, everyday lives. So we're
3:51
Speaker 1: forced to try to translate this unknown, unfamiliar universe into
3:56
Speaker 1: rules that we do find familiar, and along the way,
3:58
Speaker 1: we use mathematics as a bridge to guide us into
4:01
Speaker 1: the depths of the unknown truth. Because the way we
4:04
Speaker 1: familiarize ourselves with the universe is by asking questions, wondering
4:08
Speaker 1: how it all works, how can it all make sense?
4:10
Speaker 1: And what kind of math do I need to know
4:12
Speaker 1: to predict what's going to happen? And we ask questions
4:15
Speaker 1: about the universe because we are curious people, and we
4:17
Speaker 1: know that you ask questions about the universe because you
4:21
Speaker 1: are all curious people, and we want to encourage that.
4:23
Speaker 1: We love to hear your questions. We want you not
4:26
Speaker 1: just to listen to us blah blah blah about the
4:28
Speaker 1: nature of the universe, but to ask your own questions
4:31
Speaker 1: to make sure the ideas we are talking about are
4:33
Speaker 1: really clicking together in your mind, that you can do
4:36
Speaker 1: more than just listen along and not but that you
4:38
Speaker 1: can take these ideas and apply them to new situations.
4:42
Speaker 1: And if that doesn't quite work, we want you to
4:44
Speaker 1: reach out and send us an email to Questions at
4:46
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com so we can help straighten
4:49
Speaker 1: it out for you. Yeah, because everybody has questions, and
4:52
Speaker 1: sometimes the questions you might have about the universe are
4:54
Speaker 1: the same questions that leading edge physicists have about what's
4:57
Speaker 1: going on that's right, Like what time is it right
5:00
Speaker 1: now in Geneva? Yeah, I guess technically you're a leading
5:03
Speaker 1: edge physicist and you don't know what time it is.
5:05
Speaker 1: So it's cutting edge research to look at your watch, Daniel.
5:08
Speaker 1: It's the very forefront of human knowledge. Like am I
5:11
Speaker 1: the only one here because I'm late for this meeting?
5:12
Speaker 1: Or am I early for this meeting? Or is this
5:15
Speaker 1: even the right month? For this meeting. Well, maybe you
5:17
Speaker 1: should upgrade from using you know, sand clocks or sun
5:20
Speaker 1: dials to know what time it is. I know you'd
5:24
Speaker 1: like to be like O. G physicists, but you know
5:26
Speaker 1: that those computers nowadays are pretty good. Yeah, they are
5:29
Speaker 1: pretty good. But I think I need even more basic
5:31
Speaker 1: health than that. I've shown them for flights at the
5:33
Speaker 1: wrong day, I've shown for flights at the wrong airport.
5:36
Speaker 1: I've landed the wrong airport. You know, sometimes I think
5:39
Speaker 1: there's even a limit to what computers can do to
5:41
Speaker 1: help somebody. And then you say I'm the one that's
5:43
Speaker 1: always late. It sounds like you know, the one with
5:46
Speaker 1: bigger problem here. Well, I'm just glad you're here at
5:49
Speaker 1: the right time, at the same time as me. It's
5:51
Speaker 1: one of the deepest questions in the universe, this Daniel
5:54
Speaker 1: actually know what he's doing and where he's supposed to be.
5:56
Speaker 1: We do get questions from listeners, and we love to
5:58
Speaker 1: answer them here on the podcast because we get some
6:01
Speaker 1: pretty amazing questions. Our listeners are pretty awesome, pretty curious,
6:04
Speaker 1: and also they sort of know their stuff right, they
6:07
Speaker 1: really do. I got a lot of really sophisticated and
6:09
Speaker 1: well thought out questions. So, if you're out there and
6:12
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the podcast for several years and
6:15
Speaker 1: you have burning questions about the universe, don't be shy.
6:18
Speaker 1: Please write to us. We really do want to hear
6:20
Speaker 1: from you, and you really will hear back from us
6:23
Speaker 1: right to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So
6:25
Speaker 1: today we have three awesome questions from listeners and they
6:28
Speaker 1: range from how do you see photons? What color photons are?
6:32
Speaker 1: And also what are the ingredients for life or the
6:37
Speaker 1: not ingredients for not life? I guess it's kind of
6:39
Speaker 1: a complex question. It's also involving baseball. So to the
6:42
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be tackling listener questions thirty one,
6:50
Speaker 1: which somehow is coming after listener questions two. Who says
6:55
Speaker 1: we have to do listener questions in order anyway? Man,
6:59
Speaker 1: you say we try, we'll somehow back in time Daniel. Yeah,
7:01
Speaker 1: that's a much simpler explanation than Daniel got confused and
7:04
Speaker 1: scheduled these out of order. We've gone back in time
7:07
Speaker 1: to answer ancient listener questions. Did you schedule in the
7:11
Speaker 1: wrong time zone or something? Or are weally like thirty
7:14
Speaker 1: two time zones back? Any number bigger than thirty is
7:17
Speaker 1: basically infinity. You know, I like dealing with very small
7:20
Speaker 1: things and very small numbers of things. There's a reason
7:23
Speaker 1: we don't have thirty quarks in the standard model. You know,
7:25
Speaker 1: we just lose track. Boy, we pay you to be
7:27
Speaker 1: a physicist. I'm starting to think maybe we should see
7:30
Speaker 1: some bona fides or have you do do a test
7:34
Speaker 1: or something. Maybe because you did rely on the computer
7:36
Speaker 1: to organize these podcasts, I thought you did. Don't you
7:40
Speaker 1: have an Excel spreadsheet with the numbers and stuff. Are
7:42
Speaker 1: you saying there's a user error here? It is possible
7:45
Speaker 1: to make mistakes in Excel? That's true. But this is
7:47
Speaker 1: the thirty guests technically thirty second time we answer listener questions,
7:51
Speaker 1: even though this is the thirty first episode, right, this
7:55
Speaker 1: is the second time we've said it's the thirty second time,
7:57
Speaker 1: and we love answering listener questions. Let's jump right into it.
8:01
Speaker 1: Today's first question comes from Sam, who is a question
8:03
Speaker 1: about how we see photons. Hello Daniel and hard Day,
8:08
Speaker 1: and thank you for your wonderful podcast and especially thank
8:11
Speaker 1: you for being so accessible to answer listener questions. I
8:15
Speaker 1: have a follow up question to a recent listeners question.
8:18
Speaker 1: In that podcast, there was discussion about photons and their
8:21
Speaker 1: speed around black holes. The discussion made references to things
8:25
Speaker 1: like two observers of a photons movements and seeing photons
8:29
Speaker 1: moving away from us. I understand that we infer the direction, velocity,
8:34
Speaker 1: and composition of objects based on the information conveyed by
8:37
Speaker 1: the stream of photons that I received, which I or
8:41
Speaker 1: my instruments used to constructed details of that object. But
8:44
Speaker 1: I was confused about the discussion an idea of two
8:47
Speaker 1: observers seeing the same photon or seeing a photon moving away,
8:51
Speaker 1: as I didn't know how that information could be sent
8:54
Speaker 1: by a photon and to two observers at the same time.
8:57
Speaker 1: Thanks again for helping me and others better understand this
9:01
Speaker 1: weird universe. Alright, awesome question, Thank you, Sam. And it's
9:05
Speaker 1: I guess it's a follow up question to a question
9:07
Speaker 1: we had in a in another episode. But is it
9:10
Speaker 1: from an episode we did in the future or in
9:12
Speaker 1: the past. It's an episode we haven't yet done in
9:15
Speaker 1: the past, and so Sam is psychic. Maybe Sam is
9:20
Speaker 1: just many times zones ahead of us somehow in Geneva
9:24
Speaker 1: is seeing Denmark or something They're pretty smart. In Denmark,
9:26
Speaker 1: they are pretty smart. You can see the future. But
9:28
Speaker 1: I guess this question is has to do with this
9:31
Speaker 1: thought experiment we talked about in an episode before about
9:34
Speaker 1: how do you tell if if photons changed their path
9:37
Speaker 1: around a black hole? Yeah, we were talking about photons
9:40
Speaker 1: having different speeds than just the speed of light, and
9:43
Speaker 1: if you were far away from a black hole, for example,
9:45
Speaker 1: you could see photons get bent around a black hole.
9:48
Speaker 1: You could see them crawl out of the gravitational well,
9:51
Speaker 1: very very slowly. And we had a whole conversation about
9:53
Speaker 1: how the speed of light for photons is really just
9:56
Speaker 1: the speed of light locally, and that far away photons
9:59
Speaker 1: might have all sorts of weird different speeds. It's a
10:02
Speaker 1: really complicated topic in general relativity, right. I think the
10:04
Speaker 1: experiment was that you know, if you have you have
10:06
Speaker 1: a black hole out there in space, and there are
10:08
Speaker 1: two photons kind of flying near it, you know, one
10:12
Speaker 1: near it or one less near it, they're going to
10:14
Speaker 1: do different things. And I think Sam's question is, like,
10:17
Speaker 1: how do we know what those photons are doing if
10:20
Speaker 1: they're moving away from us or they're moving perpendicular to us, Like,
10:23
Speaker 1: how do you see a photon moving if it's not
10:25
Speaker 1: you know, hitting your eyeball. Yeah. So it's a really
10:27
Speaker 1: great question because Sam is thinking, like, how do you
10:29
Speaker 1: actually do this experiment? Is this something physicists or just
10:33
Speaker 1: thinking about, or is this something you could actually measure
10:35
Speaker 1: in the universe, which is a really important thing to do,
10:37
Speaker 1: because physics is more than just like thinking about things.
10:41
Speaker 1: It's also about going out there in the universe and
10:43
Speaker 1: making measurements. Many times we thought the universe worked one
10:46
Speaker 1: way and then went out there to confirm it and
10:48
Speaker 1: discovered oops, nope, the universe works a different way. So
10:51
Speaker 1: definitely doing experiments and making measurements a vital part of
10:55
Speaker 1: learning about the universe. Yeah, so I guess maybe let's
10:58
Speaker 1: break it down Daniel, Like, you have a photon out
11:01
Speaker 1: there flying through space, how do you actually see it.
11:03
Speaker 1: If you can't see it, your mental picture of a
11:05
Speaker 1: photon is probably misleading. You're imagining like some pulse of
11:08
Speaker 1: light that flows through the universe. Maybe it flies past you,
11:12
Speaker 1: and you might even be thinking about it, like glowing
11:15
Speaker 1: that you could see a photon fly by you, because
11:18
Speaker 1: in the end, it's light, right, you can see light.
11:21
Speaker 1: The truth is that you can only see photons that
11:23
Speaker 1: actually hit your eyeballs. Like if you're in a dark
11:27
Speaker 1: room and a photon flies right in front of your
11:29
Speaker 1: nose but doesn't hit your eyeball, you can't see it.
11:32
Speaker 1: It's invisible to you. You would never know that it's there.
11:35
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like a laser beam in a
11:38
Speaker 1: Star Wars movie, right, like a laser gun shot, right,
11:41
Speaker 1: you won't see a stream of light flying pass here,
11:43
Speaker 1: exactly like in those spy movies when they have to
11:46
Speaker 1: do it dance through a room full of laser beams
11:48
Speaker 1: and not interrupt any of them. The reason you see
11:50
Speaker 1: those laser beams is because they're reflecting off dust in
11:53
Speaker 1: the air, or if they're really intense, maybe they're even
11:56
Speaker 1: ionizing the air so the air glows. But in a vacuum,
12:00
Speaker 1: if the photon is moving unobstructed in front of you,
12:03
Speaker 1: you wouldn't see it would just pass right in front
12:05
Speaker 1: of you and be totally invisible. Right. And also in
12:08
Speaker 1: the case of the laser that you can see, it's
12:10
Speaker 1: like it's shooting a whole bunch of photons and some
12:12
Speaker 1: of them are hitting the dust particles or the smoke
12:14
Speaker 1: particles in the air and then bouncing into your eyeballs,
12:17
Speaker 1: but the other ones are just going right through right exactly.
12:20
Speaker 1: And in the more realistic spy movies, the lasers are
12:23
Speaker 1: invisible and then throw a handful of sawdust into the
12:25
Speaker 1: air to make the lasers visible again. So the point
12:28
Speaker 1: is that you can't actually see photons unless they hit
12:32
Speaker 1: your eyeball or some detector. So he's absolutely right that
12:35
Speaker 1: a photon passing by a black hole and getting bent
12:38
Speaker 1: and shot off in another direction, you couldn't literally see
12:40
Speaker 1: that with your eyeballs right in a vacuum, although they don't.
12:44
Speaker 1: We talk about once some special materials or some special
12:47
Speaker 1: situations where like a photon makes like a wake or something.
12:50
Speaker 1: We did talk about the really amazing experiments that show
12:52
Speaker 1: that the human eyeball can see a single photon, and
12:55
Speaker 1: they do this by splitting a photon in two. There
12:58
Speaker 1: are special materials that will take a photon and like
13:01
Speaker 1: split it into two of lower energy, and so then
13:04
Speaker 1: you can see one while the other one is like undisturbed.
13:08
Speaker 1: But that's not technically the same thing. So a single
13:10
Speaker 1: photon traveling out there in the vacuum, you can't actually
13:14
Speaker 1: see it go pass unless it hits your eyeball exactly,
13:17
Speaker 1: or unless you have a friend whose eyeball it hits
13:19
Speaker 1: and then they tell you about it. So then you
13:21
Speaker 1: couldn't see a photon traveling away from you either, right, yeah, exactly.
13:24
Speaker 1: You shoot a laser beam out into the universe, you're
13:27
Speaker 1: not going to see that beam unless it hits something
13:30
Speaker 1: and bounces back. Right. If it hits dust or smoke
13:33
Speaker 1: in front of you, you'll see where it is. Like
13:35
Speaker 1: at night, if you shine a flashlight up at the sky,
13:37
Speaker 1: you can see the beam a little bit if it's
13:39
Speaker 1: reflecting off of dust, but mostly it's invisible. The aliens
13:43
Speaker 1: on Alpha centauri that receive your photons, they can see
13:45
Speaker 1: it eventually, but you can't see the photons unless they've
13:48
Speaker 1: hit something and come back to you. Right. So, then
13:50
Speaker 1: in these thought experiments where you shoot in a photon
13:53
Speaker 1: at a black hole, in theory, the photon will slow
13:57
Speaker 1: down right as it approaches the black hole and move
14:00
Speaker 1: lower than the speed of light to you, but you
14:03
Speaker 1: won't actually be able to see it doing that. Right, So,
14:05
Speaker 1: to be very precise and specific, if you're just a
14:07
Speaker 1: single observer and you're shooting that photon towards black hole.
14:11
Speaker 1: Then Sam is exactly right, you won't see it. But
14:13
Speaker 1: this is a thought experiment, and we do this in
14:15
Speaker 1: physics all the time. We try to imagine what might
14:17
Speaker 1: happen in various scenarios. In those thought experiments were often
14:21
Speaker 1: skipping an implied step. If we were to actually do
14:23
Speaker 1: that experiment, it would look different. We would set up
14:25
Speaker 1: detectors everywhere, or we would have huge teams of observers
14:29
Speaker 1: in lots of different places so they could see stuff.
14:31
Speaker 1: And that's kind of boring in a lot of work,
14:33
Speaker 1: so we don't talk about that stuff when we set
14:35
Speaker 1: up the thought experiment. But Sam's exactly right that in
14:37
Speaker 1: order to actually detect those photons, to do that experiment,
14:41
Speaker 1: you would have to have more than just the one observer.
14:43
Speaker 1: You have to have whole teams of observers and careful
14:46
Speaker 1: rules about how they synchronize and communicate that information. Yeah,
14:49
Speaker 1: you have to figure out what time zones are in
14:51
Speaker 1: I mean that would just be impossible for physicists. You
14:53
Speaker 1: just sit there in the zoom waiting right all by
14:56
Speaker 1: yourself for somebody to send you the details, and we're
14:59
Speaker 1: never going to get this paper app right. I think
15:01
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that in order to see what
15:02
Speaker 1: happens to a photon that flies near a black hole,
15:05
Speaker 1: you would have to maybe put a detector near the
15:07
Speaker 1: black hole or something right, and measure how long it
15:09
Speaker 1: takes for the photon to get to that detector. Yeah, exactly,
15:12
Speaker 1: And this is true. And lots of thought experiments we
15:14
Speaker 1: do about special relativity, lots of examples of people going
15:17
Speaker 1: near the speed of light and measuring their time and
15:19
Speaker 1: looking at each other's times. You often have to have
15:21
Speaker 1: like whole teams of observers to actually conduct those experiments
15:25
Speaker 1: in real life. So we've thought about how that might work,
15:28
Speaker 1: and we've proven ourselves that technically it's possible to make
15:31
Speaker 1: these observations if you have the right team. And we
15:33
Speaker 1: don't usually talk about that part in the thought experiment
15:35
Speaker 1: because it's like the boring details and you would actually
15:37
Speaker 1: have to organize to make things work, right. I think
15:41
Speaker 1: maybe what Sam is getting at is that in the
15:43
Speaker 1: thought experiment, you talk about what happens to one photon
15:45
Speaker 1: as it goes near a black hole, it would slow down,
15:48
Speaker 1: But maybe in a real life experiment it wouldn't just
15:50
Speaker 1: be one photon like you shoot, maybe two photons at
15:53
Speaker 1: the same time, and one of them you would measure
15:55
Speaker 1: halfway through and the other one you would measure in
15:57
Speaker 1: another point. Do you know what I mean? Like you,
15:59
Speaker 1: you would need more than one photon. You can't just
16:01
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen or what is happening to
16:03
Speaker 1: one photon. Yeah, sometimes you can measure what happens to
16:06
Speaker 1: just one photon, although a lot of these experiments you
16:09
Speaker 1: want to know what would happen in various circumstances. So
16:11
Speaker 1: you're right, you would need multiple photons, and anyway you'd
16:14
Speaker 1: want to replicate your experiments and make multiple measurements. So
16:17
Speaker 1: practically speaking, that's exactly right. You'd want a stream of photons.
16:21
Speaker 1: So sometimes you want to separate them so you know
16:23
Speaker 1: which photon is which. Like an experiment where we're figuring
16:26
Speaker 1: out if the human eye can see a single photon,
16:29
Speaker 1: it's very important to know when one photon arrives at
16:32
Speaker 1: the eye, so you can know if it arrived and
16:34
Speaker 1: if the person saw a real photon were just made
16:37
Speaker 1: of a flash. So sometimes you want them to be
16:39
Speaker 1: well separated, right, So I guess that's the answer to
16:42
Speaker 1: the question, then, is that you can't see a photon
16:44
Speaker 1: moving away from you, but you could set up a
16:47
Speaker 1: detector ahead of you to catch that photon right, and
16:50
Speaker 1: then that way you would know what happened to that photon.
16:52
Speaker 1: And you can imagine filling the universe with detectors or
16:55
Speaker 1: with assistance, you know, to take note of things and
16:59
Speaker 1: later seem chronize them against your clocks. And so if
17:02
Speaker 1: you add that sort of implicitly to all the thought experiments,
17:05
Speaker 1: you can think more concretely about how you would actually
17:08
Speaker 1: do these things right. But unfortunately that's boring and a
17:11
Speaker 1: lot of work, which apparently physicists are not willing to
17:13
Speaker 1: do because then you have to get out of your couch.
17:16
Speaker 1: I guess, well, you have to organize it, and everybody
17:18
Speaker 1: shows up at the wrong time and so like yeah,
17:21
Speaker 1: and then so it's practically impossible. At least one physicist answered,
17:27
Speaker 1: you should try harder working on Do you see what
17:31
Speaker 1: they say? Idea that means the work is on you, Sam.
17:35
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get to some of these other
17:37
Speaker 1: questions about the ingredients of life and maybe other planets,
17:40
Speaker 1: and also about the red shifting of photons. But first
17:45
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, we are answering
18:00
Speaker 1: there there no questions here today, and we have some
18:02
Speaker 1: awesome questions here from people about the ingredients of life
18:05
Speaker 1: and also the color of photons. Our next question is
18:08
Speaker 1: from Christian. Hi, there, Daniel, and Jorge. I just wanted
18:12
Speaker 1: to start off by saying, I love your podcast. I've
18:14
Speaker 1: been watching baseball lately and that's inspired my question. So
18:18
Speaker 1: in baseball, we see a lot of teams do what's
18:20
Speaker 1: called recreation in the aggregate. So they maybe lose a
18:23
Speaker 1: good player or a great player, and they try to
18:26
Speaker 1: recreate that player's effect with multiple good players. So my
18:30
Speaker 1: question is this, you're the GM of the universe. For
18:33
Speaker 1: whatever reason, we lose the crucial elements of life, water, carbon, oxygen, etcetera.
18:39
Speaker 1: Maybe they're traded to the Mets, whatever, How would you,
18:42
Speaker 1: as GM of the universe, recreate these crucial elements in
18:46
Speaker 1: the aggregate? Are these elements so unique that no other
18:49
Speaker 1: elements or combination of elements could recreate their effect? What
18:53
Speaker 1: qualities in particular make these elements so conducive to life
18:57
Speaker 1: and why might they be unique? Thanks again for taking
18:59
Speaker 1: the time to review my question and go twins. Awesome
19:03
Speaker 1: question from Christian, Although he made a crucial mistake in
19:06
Speaker 1: that question? What's that he assumed we followed sports. We
19:10
Speaker 1: can't answer your question, Christian, because we have no idea
19:12
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Sorry, yeah, next question. No, I'm
19:16
Speaker 1: just kidding a. Let's see the movie Moneyball, So I
19:17
Speaker 1: think I'm sort of qualified answer this question. That's right,
19:21
Speaker 1: Jorge did his homework, that's right. Yeah, and uh, in
19:24
Speaker 1: this case, the GM is Brad Pitt? Right exactly? Is
19:27
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt can also play you in the movie about
19:29
Speaker 1: your life? Yeah? I should play Brad Pitt in his movie, right,
19:34
Speaker 1: that's definitely happening. Yeah, So this is an interesting question.
19:37
Speaker 1: It's almost like fantasy football mixed with physics. Or would
19:40
Speaker 1: you say it's fantasy physics. It's more like fantasy chemistry. Yeah,
19:44
Speaker 1: but it's really interesting question about like how life might
19:48
Speaker 1: operate without the basic building blocks that we use. And
19:51
Speaker 1: it's not just a fantasy, you know, biochemists have been
19:54
Speaker 1: thinking about this for a while. Is the recipe of
19:56
Speaker 1: life that we have here on Earth? The only possible
19:59
Speaker 1: recipe are we being like narrow minded when we look
20:02
Speaker 1: for biosignatures on other planets that are similar to the
20:05
Speaker 1: ones on our planets. Shouldn't we be thinking about other
20:08
Speaker 1: ways life might evolve so that we can anticipate it
20:11
Speaker 1: and look for it more effectively in other places. I
20:14
Speaker 1: think it's a really cool thing to think about. Yeah,
20:16
Speaker 1: and so I guess specifically, his question is like, if
20:19
Speaker 1: you're the general manager of the universe, I guess, or Earth,
20:22
Speaker 1: and you're trying to make life, and you have these
20:25
Speaker 1: ingredients water, carbon, and oxygen, but somebody took away one
20:29
Speaker 1: of your ingredients or they got traded to I don't know,
20:32
Speaker 1: another universe or another planet. Could you find a way
20:35
Speaker 1: to replace these elements to still make life? Yeah, you know,
20:38
Speaker 1: I know that baseball fanatics are pretty fanatic, but he's
20:41
Speaker 1: basically putting the GM at the god level of the
20:43
Speaker 1: universe here, Yeah, godly manager. I guess baseball is Christians religion.
20:49
Speaker 1: But it's a really interesting question whether you could make
20:52
Speaker 1: life with other fundamental bits of biochemistry. And Christians specifically
20:56
Speaker 1: asked about carbon and water and oxygen, and he's right,
21:01
Speaker 1: those are essential bits in our kind of life, and
21:04
Speaker 1: so it's fun to think about whether you could build
21:07
Speaker 1: life without them, right, And I guess specifically, like, you know,
21:10
Speaker 1: we should go through each one like if you took
21:11
Speaker 1: out carbon, could you still find something to replace it
21:15
Speaker 1: or a set of other molecules or atoms to replace
21:18
Speaker 1: it to make life? Yeah, And so to answer that,
21:20
Speaker 1: you have to think about like, well, why do we
21:22
Speaker 1: use carbon? Why is life carbon based? What is the
21:25
Speaker 1: utility of carbon? If you're going to replace it, what
21:28
Speaker 1: do you kind of thing you're gonna look for? And
21:29
Speaker 1: carbon is pretty ubiquitous in life. I mean, what we
21:32
Speaker 1: call organic molecules are the ones that have carbon in them, right,
21:36
Speaker 1: And there's a reason for that because carbon is very flexible.
21:39
Speaker 1: The way that it's electrons or organized means that it
21:41
Speaker 1: can build all sorts of really interesting bonds. It's like
21:44
Speaker 1: that really useful lego brick that you're can attach other
21:47
Speaker 1: stuff too. And so you can make all sorts of
21:50
Speaker 1: really interesting molecules and complicated molecules that can swap around
21:53
Speaker 1: a lot. And so it allows for us to build
21:55
Speaker 1: really complex things like DNA that can store a lot
21:59
Speaker 1: of information asian, and it allows us to create really
22:02
Speaker 1: complicated metabolisms right to move energy around and create the
22:06
Speaker 1: processes that we need for life. So it's really at
22:09
Speaker 1: the foundation of all the biochemistry of life, as we
22:11
Speaker 1: know it interesting, right, Is it true that all life
22:14
Speaker 1: as we know it uses carbon? Like, do we know
22:16
Speaker 1: of any life that doesn't use carbon? We do not,
22:19
Speaker 1: absolutely not. We've never seen any life on Earth that
22:22
Speaker 1: doesn't use carbon. And you're saying it's because carbon has
22:25
Speaker 1: something unique about it. What is it that's unique about it?
22:28
Speaker 1: Like it has its electrons or the right number of
22:31
Speaker 1: electron orbitals, or the orbitals are a special precision. What
22:35
Speaker 1: is it about carbon? Yeah, So the chemical properties of
22:38
Speaker 1: any element are determined by like how many electrons it
22:41
Speaker 1: has and how many empty slots it has in its
22:44
Speaker 1: outermost ring, and carbon has just the right number that
22:47
Speaker 1: it makes it easy to like stick them together, to
22:49
Speaker 1: make these bonds in a useful way, and also to
22:52
Speaker 1: stick other things onto it. So you can stick like
22:55
Speaker 1: iron and magnesium and zinc and nitrogen onto these like
22:59
Speaker 1: chains of carbons. Carbon is useful because you can stick
23:02
Speaker 1: a couple of carbons together and still have room for
23:04
Speaker 1: another one and another one, So it can make these
23:06
Speaker 1: very long chains, and then you can have like other
23:08
Speaker 1: elements stuck onto the side. It's not limited in that way.
23:11
Speaker 1: Other elements like xeno and for example, all their orbitals
23:14
Speaker 1: are just full, so they don't like to interact with anything.
23:17
Speaker 1: And yet other elements you can stick them together in
23:19
Speaker 1: a couple of ways, but they're sort of limited because
23:21
Speaker 1: the number of the electrons they have free in their
23:24
Speaker 1: outer orbital So carbon is just like a very versatile element, right,
23:27
Speaker 1: it's versatile, But is there something unique about it that
23:30
Speaker 1: lets you make complex molecules that can make complex molecules
23:34
Speaker 1: out of something else or just not as well you're saying,
23:37
Speaker 1: So it is possible. Actually, if you look through the
23:39
Speaker 1: periodic table, there are other elements that have similar behaviors.
23:43
Speaker 1: Silicon is the most famous example. You can also build
23:46
Speaker 1: really long chains of itself, so you can get big,
23:49
Speaker 1: complex molecules, molecules that can carry a lot of biological information.
23:54
Speaker 1: And so it's been famously proposed that life elsewhere in
23:56
Speaker 1: the universe might be made out of silicon. In out
24:00
Speaker 1: of carbon. It's like an alternative, you know, it's like
24:02
Speaker 1: do blow bricks instead of lego bricks the knockoff. But
24:07
Speaker 1: I guess what's the difference between carbon and silicon. Do
24:09
Speaker 1: they have the same number of electrons? Do they have
24:11
Speaker 1: different you know, orbitals or atomic weight? Well, carbon is
24:15
Speaker 1: much further down on the periodic table, right, it's element
24:17
Speaker 1: number six, where silicon is fourteen. And so you might think, oh, well,
24:21
Speaker 1: that makes carbon much more common in the universe and
24:24
Speaker 1: therefore much more just likely to be useful for life.
24:28
Speaker 1: And it's true the carbon is much more common in
24:30
Speaker 1: the universe because remember where these elements come from. They
24:34
Speaker 1: come from fusion at the hearts of stars. You start
24:36
Speaker 1: with just hydrogen from the Big Bang, you stick it together,
24:39
Speaker 1: you get helium. In the hearts of really really hot stars,
24:42
Speaker 1: you can make carbon, and you build from there to
24:44
Speaker 1: make the heavier elements. So in the broader universe, carbon
24:47
Speaker 1: is much more common. There's like ten times as much
24:50
Speaker 1: carbon in the universe as there is silicon. But actually
24:53
Speaker 1: here on Earth, silicon is nine hundred times more common
24:58
Speaker 1: in the Earth's crust then car been, so we're actually
25:00
Speaker 1: sort of drowning in silicon here on Earth. But of
25:04
Speaker 1: course our life is made out of carbon. So that
25:07
Speaker 1: sort of suggests that like, carbon is much more useful,
25:10
Speaker 1: it's much easier way to start life than silicon is.
25:13
Speaker 1: Even though silicon is much more common here on Earth,
25:16
Speaker 1: you're saying silicon has a higher etomic weight like it's heavier,
25:19
Speaker 1: it has more protons and neutrons and the nucleus, and
25:22
Speaker 1: does it also have more electrons and in its orbit, Yeah,
25:25
Speaker 1: the neutral atom will have the same number of protons
25:28
Speaker 1: and electrons. So carbon has six protons and silicon has
25:31
Speaker 1: fourteen protons, which means it also has fourteen electrons. But
25:35
Speaker 1: when't having more electrons give you more ways to like
25:38
Speaker 1: interact or form bonds with other atoms. It's not just
25:41
Speaker 1: the number of electrons in total, right, It depends on
25:44
Speaker 1: the number of electrons, mostly in the outer layer, because
25:46
Speaker 1: those are the ones that do the interacting. When you
25:49
Speaker 1: click elements together, you do it by having their outer
25:52
Speaker 1: shells interact. Electrons don't really go deeper into the lower shells.
25:56
Speaker 1: That really just has to do with how many you
25:57
Speaker 1: have free in the outer shells that like, you click
26:00
Speaker 1: these things together like lego bricks, right, And silicon can't
26:03
Speaker 1: form bonds with other important atoms, right, that's one of
26:06
Speaker 1: its problems. Yeah, So carbon is really cool because it
26:09
Speaker 1: can easily make bonds with like phosphorus and sulfur and metals,
26:12
Speaker 1: And while silicon can make long chains of itself, it's
26:15
Speaker 1: not as good at connecting with these other kinds of things,
26:19
Speaker 1: and so like oxygen and nitrogen phosphorus, it's not so
26:22
Speaker 1: easy to build like biochemical molecules with all these other
26:26
Speaker 1: little bits in it out of silicon than carbon. So
26:29
Speaker 1: from that perspective, carbon is a better choice for making
26:32
Speaker 1: a diversity of chemical combinations. I see, I think you're
26:36
Speaker 1: saying that it's it's still possible to make life with silicon,
26:39
Speaker 1: but maybe because it's not as versatile, you couldn't maybe
26:41
Speaker 1: do as maybe neat tricks with the with your molecules
26:44
Speaker 1: as you could with carbon, which maybe it would make
26:46
Speaker 1: it harder to kind of evolve life. I imagine it
26:49
Speaker 1: might make it harder. There's certainly fewer things you can
26:51
Speaker 1: do with silicon than carbon. Though, actually being prevented from
26:55
Speaker 1: like latching onto all these weird other things can also
26:58
Speaker 1: protect life. Right For example, the basic building blocks of
27:02
Speaker 1: your life can't grab onto heavy metals magnesium and zinc,
27:06
Speaker 1: then you're sort of shielded from some of those impurities
27:09
Speaker 1: because they don't engage with your biochemistry. So like silicon
27:12
Speaker 1: based life might be more protected from heavy metals, for example,
27:16
Speaker 1: whereas we find like mercury and lead poisonous in our biochemistry.
27:20
Speaker 1: So there's sort of a pro andacon there. And as
27:22
Speaker 1: you said, there's much more silicon here on Earth than carbon,
27:26
Speaker 1: and yet life chose carbon as its building ball. Yeah, exactly,
27:30
Speaker 1: And so even though there's more carbon in the universe
27:33
Speaker 1: here on Earth, we don't have like an average scoop
27:35
Speaker 1: of the universe stuff. Right, Hydrogen is the most common
27:38
Speaker 1: thing in the universe by far, but we don't have
27:40
Speaker 1: very much hydrogen here on Earth because it was mostly
27:43
Speaker 1: gobbled up by the Sun and by Jupiter. So the
27:45
Speaker 1: process that formed the Earth didn't get like an equal
27:47
Speaker 1: sampling of everything. And especially here on the crust, there's
27:51
Speaker 1: a lot more silicon. We think that the carbon based
27:54
Speaker 1: molecules were more volatile and they sort of like boiled
27:57
Speaker 1: away early on. And so you're right, even though we
28:00
Speaker 1: have more silicon than carbon, we ended up making life
28:03
Speaker 1: out of carbon. And that's just you know, one example.
28:05
Speaker 1: We don't know if that's typical, if it's common, if
28:08
Speaker 1: everywhere life will start from carbon, it might be unusual.
28:11
Speaker 1: It might been like a single flash in the pan.
28:13
Speaker 1: So it's carbon super unique to make life, or can
28:16
Speaker 1: physicists and chemists imagine using another atom to make life
28:20
Speaker 1: like I know, silicon, Maybe it's not a great candidate,
28:23
Speaker 1: but are there others? There are not a lot of
28:24
Speaker 1: other great candidates in terms of replacements for carbon. It's
28:27
Speaker 1: basically silicon or nothing. Oh wow, So if there is
28:31
Speaker 1: life out there in the universe, it's probably carbon too, right,
28:34
Speaker 1: probably carbon or silicon or weirder than anything we have
28:38
Speaker 1: imagined so far, which could be very unlikely or very
28:41
Speaker 1: very common. What do you mean, we're like it uses um,
28:44
Speaker 1: I don't know that titanium. Well, we're starting from some
28:47
Speaker 1: assumptions that the biochemical processes and information storage that's part
28:52
Speaker 1: of our life will be necessary for other kinds of life.
28:55
Speaker 1: And maybe that's not true, and so maybe there's a
28:57
Speaker 1: completely different way to organize self sustaining information. You know,
29:01
Speaker 1: loops of plasma currents inside of stars that can just
29:05
Speaker 1: be made out of hydrogen, for example, where the complexity
29:07
Speaker 1: comes from, you know, the structure of the plasma instead
29:11
Speaker 1: of the structure of the atoms that you're making out
29:13
Speaker 1: of heavier elements. We don't know what we haven't yet
29:16
Speaker 1: imagined about the ways that life can be, right, right,
29:19
Speaker 1: I wonder if like all life and the universe being
29:21
Speaker 1: made out of carbon means that we're more likely to
29:24
Speaker 1: be eaten by aliens. We're more likely to be edible
29:27
Speaker 1: to aliens. Yeah, absolutely, that's what I mean. We know,
29:30
Speaker 1: I mean, we're all, you know, tasty to each other. Perhaps,
29:33
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's tackle some of the other ingredients
29:36
Speaker 1: of life. What if we had all of the ingredients
29:37
Speaker 1: of life except another one of these crucial ones, water, Like,
29:41
Speaker 1: what would happen if we didn't have water. It's a
29:42
Speaker 1: great question, and maybe not a necessary one because remember
29:45
Speaker 1: that like water is everywhere in the universe. It's not
29:49
Speaker 1: like water is that hard to find. I know, on
29:52
Speaker 1: space operas they are always talking about finding water and
29:54
Speaker 1: selling water. But you know, we have like whole planets
29:57
Speaker 1: of water out there, Neptune and Uranus. They're called ice
30:00
Speaker 1: giants for a reason. There really is a lot of
30:02
Speaker 1: water out there in the universe. But anyway, it's fun
30:05
Speaker 1: to think about where life might start if there isn't
30:09
Speaker 1: much water around. You know, for example, there are moons
30:12
Speaker 1: of Jupiter and Saturn that have oceans that could be
30:15
Speaker 1: made out of other kinds of liquids ammonia for example,
30:19
Speaker 1: or methane, And so it's fun to think about whether
30:21
Speaker 1: or not you could have life that uses other solvents. Right.
30:24
Speaker 1: The role of water in life basically is to dissolve
30:27
Speaker 1: stuff so that things can slosh around in exchange. It's
30:30
Speaker 1: hard to have life if everything is like a solid crystal,
30:33
Speaker 1: because then they can't like exchange information and transfer energy.
30:37
Speaker 1: You need some flow, some movement so that energy and
30:40
Speaker 1: information can sort of move around and make things happen.
30:42
Speaker 1: It's like you need it as a medium, right, not
30:45
Speaker 1: just for life to develop in and for like books
30:47
Speaker 1: to move around in, but also like inside of our bodies,
30:50
Speaker 1: you need water so that you can circulate stuff, right,
30:53
Speaker 1: and ions can move from one place to the other. Yeah,
30:55
Speaker 1: you need these basic processes to happen, and so you
30:58
Speaker 1: need some kind of flow. Just like if you have
31:00
Speaker 1: a party but nobody's talking to each other, then nothing's
31:02
Speaker 1: really going on. And so to get the party started,
31:05
Speaker 1: you need some way for these bits and pieces to interact,
31:08
Speaker 1: and the best way we know is to dissolve them
31:10
Speaker 1: all in water, and then they can just sort of
31:12
Speaker 1: slash around. When they bump into each other, good stuff happens.
31:15
Speaker 1: And so people have thought about whether this is possible
31:18
Speaker 1: in other kinds of chemicals, and one fun alternative is ammonia.
31:22
Speaker 1: Ammonia is also fairly common in the universe, and like water,
31:25
Speaker 1: it's liquid over a large temperature range and can also
31:29
Speaker 1: dissolve a wide variety of compounds. Wait, so do all
31:34
Speaker 1: life on Earth as we know it use water as
31:37
Speaker 1: its basis? Do we know? But any other life that
31:39
Speaker 1: doesn't use water. We don't know of any life that
31:41
Speaker 1: doesn't use water. It's all water based, and you know,
31:43
Speaker 1: the basic cell has water inside of it. Life basically
31:47
Speaker 1: is a bag of water with other stuff dissolved into it.
31:51
Speaker 1: But how don't they found bacteria and like, you know,
31:53
Speaker 1: sulfur pools and you know, at the bottom of volcanoes
31:57
Speaker 1: and things like that, they have found bacteria basically every
32:00
Speaker 1: were but they are all little bags of water. Okay,
32:03
Speaker 1: So then ammonia is interesting because it's also a liquid.
32:07
Speaker 1: And what's the chemical formula for ammonia. Ammonia is n
32:10
Speaker 1: H three, so it's nitrogen and three hydrogens. And you know,
32:14
Speaker 1: there's plenty of hydrogen out there in the universe, and
32:16
Speaker 1: nitrogen is also not that rare, although it's not as
32:19
Speaker 1: common as oxygen. But there's plenty of ammonia out there
32:22
Speaker 1: in the universe. Okay, So then out of all the
32:24
Speaker 1: liquids out there that could form the basis of life,
32:27
Speaker 1: why is ammonia better or a candidate than everything else,
32:31
Speaker 1: but maybe not as good as water. Well, it's a
32:33
Speaker 1: good candidate because it has some of the same properties
32:35
Speaker 1: as water, meaning that it's liquid in a large temperature range.
32:39
Speaker 1: For life to happen in ammonia, you need ammonia to
32:41
Speaker 1: be liquid. To be liquid, so for this to be likely,
32:44
Speaker 1: you wanted to not have to have very special circumstances,
32:48
Speaker 1: and so, like water has a hundred celsius degrees in
32:50
Speaker 1: which it's liquid, ammonia also has a pretty broad range.
32:55
Speaker 1: It's liquid from negative seventy eight to negative thirty three C.
33:00
Speaker 1: There are other liquids that are liquid over a wide range.
33:03
Speaker 1: What makes ammonia special, Well, ammonia can dissolve a bunch
33:06
Speaker 1: of stuff. Also, ammonia has a large heat of vaporization.
33:10
Speaker 1: That means if you have like a lake of the stuff,
33:12
Speaker 1: it's harder for it to just like evaporate into the atmosphere.
33:17
Speaker 1: And we think that probably life formed in like lakes
33:20
Speaker 1: and oceans, maybe brackish water where like waves were lapping
33:23
Speaker 1: up and mixing stuff around. So you need sort of
33:26
Speaker 1: like stable pools of this liquid for life to form.
33:29
Speaker 1: And ammonia, like water, has this large heat of vaporization
33:32
Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy to evaporate it into the atmosphere. Interesting,
33:36
Speaker 1: why is that? Why does water an ammonia have this property.
33:38
Speaker 1: So it's getting deep into chemistry territory, which is not
33:41
Speaker 1: my expertise, but I think it has to do with
33:43
Speaker 1: the intermolecular forces. Basically, how hard is it to pull
33:47
Speaker 1: these things apart. Each of these atoms are pretty stable,
33:49
Speaker 1: but they're also a little bit sticky. When they get
33:51
Speaker 1: near each other, they like to clump together. And so
33:54
Speaker 1: this just depends on how much energy it takes to
33:56
Speaker 1: pull the individual molecules apart to change it from a
33:59
Speaker 1: lick wid into a gas, and that depends on the
34:02
Speaker 1: details of the chemical structure. Yeah, I guess if you
34:05
Speaker 1: had like a large lake of alcohol, it would just
34:07
Speaker 1: evaporate pretty quickly, exactly. So for different chemicals, either you
34:11
Speaker 1: need a lot of energy to evaporate them or not
34:14
Speaker 1: very much. And so for ammonia you have a fairly
34:16
Speaker 1: large heated vaporization, though not as big as for water.
34:19
Speaker 1: So water sort of better at forming big stable pools
34:22
Speaker 1: than ammonia is. All right, So ammonia it might be
34:25
Speaker 1: a good replacement for water, But life on Earth didn't
34:28
Speaker 1: use ammonia. Why aren't there any ammonia based life forms
34:31
Speaker 1: on Earth. Well, again, we don't know. It's just luck.
34:33
Speaker 1: But water does have some advantages that ammonia doesn't have.
34:36
Speaker 1: For example, ice floats on liquid water. When you freeze water,
34:40
Speaker 1: it actually grows in volume, so it's density drops, which
34:43
Speaker 1: is why lakes, for example, in the winter, freeze from
34:45
Speaker 1: the top down. The liquid water can stay underneath, and
34:49
Speaker 1: like fishes and microbes or whatever can sometimes survive through
34:52
Speaker 1: the winter under the ice, whereas that would be trickier
34:55
Speaker 1: if they froze all at once, for example. And so
34:58
Speaker 1: this very strange property of water allows it to float
35:01
Speaker 1: on liquid water, and that doesn't happen for ammonia for example. Also,
35:05
Speaker 1: water is stable in the presence of oxygen. A lot
35:09
Speaker 1: of things out there, when you put them near oxygen,
35:11
Speaker 1: they can combust, right, they can burn, or they can oxydize.
35:15
Speaker 1: The water is actually stable in the presence of oxygen
35:18
Speaker 1: because it's actually the product of combustion. You take hydrogen
35:21
Speaker 1: and oxygen together and you light a match, you get water,
35:25
Speaker 1: And so water is stable in the presence of oxygen,
35:28
Speaker 1: which is nice if you want to have oxygen in
35:30
Speaker 1: your atmosphere and not have it beyond fire all the time. Right. Also,
35:33
Speaker 1: I imagine water is much more abundant here on Earth, right,
35:36
Speaker 1: Like we don't have large lakes of ammonia, but we
35:39
Speaker 1: do have a whole ocean of water. We certainly have
35:41
Speaker 1: a lot more water than ammonia. In other places in
35:44
Speaker 1: the Solar system there are lakes of ammonia or methane
35:47
Speaker 1: for example. Is it also sort of a property of
35:50
Speaker 1: its solvent but properties you know, like maybe like if
35:54
Speaker 1: you try to grow something in kerosene, it which is
35:56
Speaker 1: can dissolve and and die. Is it water like soluble
36:00
Speaker 1: but not too soluble. They're both really good at being solvents.
36:04
Speaker 1: But one disadvantage for ammonia is that it's liquid at
36:06
Speaker 1: lower temperatures, right like negative seventy eight negative thirty three C.
36:11
Speaker 1: That means if you have life that's ammonia based, it's
36:13
Speaker 1: going to move slower, It's going to evolve more slowly.
36:16
Speaker 1: Like the whole time scale for things to happen is
36:19
Speaker 1: going to be slower just because things are colder. So
36:21
Speaker 1: water based life might just like outpace and outrace ammonia
36:25
Speaker 1: based life. Interesting, So it is possible for life out
36:29
Speaker 1: there in the universe to be ammonia base. If there's
36:31
Speaker 1: a planet where there's no water, but there is there
36:34
Speaker 1: are oceans of ammonia, maybe life could develop there. Yeah,
36:36
Speaker 1: it seems like it's totally possible. Yeah, And so they
36:39
Speaker 1: would be drinking a glassful of ammonia every day. They
36:42
Speaker 1: might think that water stinks, right, maybe they use it
36:46
Speaker 1: to clean all right. The last ingredient that Christian mentioned
36:50
Speaker 1: was oxygen. Do if you lose oxygen, can you still
36:53
Speaker 1: have life? And it seems like oxen it's part of
36:56
Speaker 1: water too, So I guess the questions are kind of related. Yeah,
36:58
Speaker 1: I suppose. So oxygen is a part of water that's
37:01
Speaker 1: not a part of ammonia. But when you think about
37:02
Speaker 1: oxygen life, you're mostly thinking about breathing oxygen, like atmospheric
37:06
Speaker 1: oxygen O two within the atmosphere that you pass through
37:10
Speaker 1: your lungs and that many many things on Earth rely on.
37:14
Speaker 1: And we often think about oxygen is like a biosignature.
37:17
Speaker 1: We're looking on other planets to see if there's maybe
37:20
Speaker 1: life in their atmosphere. We're checking out to see if
37:22
Speaker 1: there's oxygen there. Like, are you saying, if we had
37:26
Speaker 1: maybe water and carbon but not a lot of oxygen gas,
37:29
Speaker 1: could you still have life or what would you used
37:31
Speaker 1: to replace oxygen? Yeah? And it turns out you actually
37:33
Speaker 1: don't need oxygen, and we didn't have oxygen here on
37:36
Speaker 1: Earth when life evolved. Oxygen itself is a product of photosynthesis.
37:42
Speaker 1: So life started here on Earth when there was no
37:44
Speaker 1: oxygen in the atmosphere. It was ani aerobic to begin with. Right.
37:48
Speaker 1: There are bacterias that grow without any oxygen, right, Yeah,
37:52
Speaker 1: Like the bacteria in your gut are mostly ania aerobic
37:55
Speaker 1: microbes because there isn't a whole lot of oxygen in there. Right,
37:58
Speaker 1: But eventually life produced to oxygen and that's what we
38:01
Speaker 1: require right now, So what is oxygen good for them?
38:04
Speaker 1: So oxygen was originally a waste product? Right, Microbes learned
38:07
Speaker 1: to do photosynthesis and oxygen is the byproduct of photosynthesis.
38:12
Speaker 1: It's just like their garbage. And it turns out that
38:15
Speaker 1: some kinds of metabolisms that involve oxygen are much more
38:19
Speaker 1: efficient than the anaerobic ways, and so a bunch of
38:22
Speaker 1: other microbes figured out how to take advantage of that
38:24
Speaker 1: waste product and use it to make themselves more efficient.
38:28
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like supercharges life's metabolisms. And that's
38:31
Speaker 1: just like a lesson about microbes. Microbes will always figure
38:34
Speaker 1: out how to use someone else's garbage and turn it
38:37
Speaker 1: into their food. It sounds like it's super charges life.
38:40
Speaker 1: So could you have complex life or life as we
38:43
Speaker 1: know it without oxygen? We don't know. We didn't have
38:45
Speaker 1: a lot of atmospheric oxygen on Earth until about eight
38:48
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million years ago, and that's also about
38:52
Speaker 1: when things started to get much more complicated. So it's
38:55
Speaker 1: possible that you sort of need oxygen or something similar
38:58
Speaker 1: to supercharge and metable is M and allow things to
39:00
Speaker 1: get complicated, or it's possible that it would have done
39:03
Speaker 1: it without oxygen. We only really have this one experiment,
39:06
Speaker 1: so we don't know. If we didn't have it, could
39:08
Speaker 1: you replace it, or you know, if we didn't have
39:10
Speaker 1: those victoria making it and you wanted to supercharge life,
39:13
Speaker 1: there's something else you could use. Oxygen is pretty special
39:16
Speaker 1: because it's so reactive, and it's very good at like
39:18
Speaker 1: accepting electrons at the end of this metabolism cycle. But
39:22
Speaker 1: there are other things you can do. People think that
39:24
Speaker 1: like sulfur, for example, could also serve as part of
39:27
Speaker 1: the like respiration process for alien life. Though nothing really
39:31
Speaker 1: is as good as oxygen. Right, It's probably won't smell
39:34
Speaker 1: as good. We're talking about aliens sipping ammonia and smelling
39:39
Speaker 1: like sulfur, smelling like ron eggs. All right, well, I
39:42
Speaker 1: think that answers christians question, which is that if you
39:45
Speaker 1: lose anyone in your life team, it'd be pretty hard
39:48
Speaker 1: to replace them. It seems like that you could try,
39:50
Speaker 1: but you probably won't win the World Series. We don't
39:54
Speaker 1: know if you'll be as competitive. But then again, we're
39:56
Speaker 1: just looking at the one example we have here, and
39:59
Speaker 1: we don't know, i this is the one lucky time
40:02
Speaker 1: that the Twins actually win the World Series, or if
40:04
Speaker 1: this is a pretty typical example out there. And in
40:06
Speaker 1: the meantime, we'll just assume Christian looks like bread Pitt,
40:09
Speaker 1: or maybe Christian is bread Pint. All right, let's get
40:12
Speaker 1: to our last question of the day. But first let's
40:14
Speaker 1: take another quick break. Okay, we are answering listener questions,
40:30
Speaker 1: and we've answered awesome questions about how do you see
40:32
Speaker 1: photons moving away? And also what would happen if you
40:36
Speaker 1: lose some of the ingredients for life here on Earth.
40:38
Speaker 1: Our last question here is about the red shifting of
40:42
Speaker 1: light and it comes from Josh hid Daniel and Jorgey.
40:46
Speaker 1: I had a question about red shifted photons. I was
40:49
Speaker 1: just wondering how we can always tell the difference between
40:53
Speaker 1: a photon that's been red shifted versus it just started
40:58
Speaker 1: out more red. A few good day again into that
41:00
Speaker 1: that'd be great. Thanks to keep up the good work alright.
41:03
Speaker 1: Awesome question here from Josh. I think his question is
41:06
Speaker 1: how do you tell what color a photon was originally? Like,
41:11
Speaker 1: was it made a certain color or if it was
41:14
Speaker 1: stretched to a certain color, And the answer is that
41:16
Speaker 1: we can't. All we can do is measure the energy
41:19
Speaker 1: of a photon. Measure its wavelength or its frequency, those
41:22
Speaker 1: are all equivalent. Those determine how much energy it has.
41:25
Speaker 1: So when a photon arrives on our sensors, we measure
41:27
Speaker 1: its energy and then we can say, oh, this photon
41:29
Speaker 1: has a certain frequency or a certain wavelength and that's
41:32
Speaker 1: technically all we can know just from the photon itself,
41:36
Speaker 1: from context, from where it came from, from all the
41:39
Speaker 1: neighboring photons that arrives with, we might be able to
41:42
Speaker 1: deduce something about his history. But directly, all we can
41:45
Speaker 1: ever measure is the photon's current energy. We can't ever
41:48
Speaker 1: really measure its past energy. Really, so there's no difference
41:52
Speaker 1: between a photon that's been stretched to be read and
41:55
Speaker 1: one that was made red. Yeah, quantum particles are very
41:59
Speaker 1: simple in some way. They have a list of properties
42:02
Speaker 1: and that's it. And two photons that have the same
42:04
Speaker 1: energy and are going in the same direction are identical, right,
42:07
Speaker 1: There's no difference to them. They don't even really have
42:10
Speaker 1: an identity. You can't like say this one's Fred photon
42:13
Speaker 1: and then that one's Maria photon. Really no difference. They're
42:16
Speaker 1: just like ripples in the larger field that they're all
42:19
Speaker 1: part of. Anyway, isn't there another I don't know, a
42:22
Speaker 1: component to a photon that might be able to tell
42:24
Speaker 1: you something like, you know, if I take a photon
42:25
Speaker 1: and I stretch it so that it's red, when I
42:28
Speaker 1: lose some overall energy or something, it's supposed to maybe
42:31
Speaker 1: making a red photon that's really energetic. Then you could say, oh,
42:35
Speaker 1: this one's really energetic, this one's low energy, maybe this
42:38
Speaker 1: one was stretched. Well, the energy determines the color, and
42:41
Speaker 1: so two photons that are like the same redness have
42:44
Speaker 1: the same energy, So you can't tell if one of
42:46
Speaker 1: them earlier had more energy and then got stretched to
42:50
Speaker 1: lower energy, and you might wonder, be like, where's that
42:53
Speaker 1: energy going. Energy doesn't go anywhere when a photon gets
42:56
Speaker 1: red shifted. It's because the relative velocity between you and
42:59
Speaker 1: the source. So it really just sort of like depends
43:01
Speaker 1: on the frame of reference, doesn't really go anywhere. Well,
43:04
Speaker 1: maybe we should talk a little bit first then about
43:07
Speaker 1: what it means to wred shift something and what are
43:09
Speaker 1: the different ways that can happen, because I think it
43:12
Speaker 1: can happen in two ways. Right, whether the source of
43:14
Speaker 1: light is moving away from you, or you're moving away
43:17
Speaker 1: from the source of light, then the photon is gonna
43:19
Speaker 1: look redder. It can also happen because of the stretching
43:22
Speaker 1: of space, right, Yeah, there are two different ways to
43:24
Speaker 1: red shift of photon. If an object that shoots light
43:28
Speaker 1: at you is moving away from you really really fast,
43:30
Speaker 1: then the wavelength of that light is stretched out and
43:33
Speaker 1: so it gets redder. Remember the light always travels at
43:36
Speaker 1: the same speed, So if somebody's in a galaxy far
43:39
Speaker 1: far away and they're moving away from you really quickly
43:41
Speaker 1: and they shoot a blue laser at you, then it's
43:44
Speaker 1: still going to arrive here at the speed of light.
43:46
Speaker 1: It always travels at the speed of light, but it
43:48
Speaker 1: changes the wavelength, so it gets red shifted. This is
43:51
Speaker 1: a handy way to measure the velocity of things that
43:54
Speaker 1: are far away that we can't otherwise measure. If we
43:56
Speaker 1: can measure their red shift, then we know how fast
43:58
Speaker 1: they are going relative to us. But you're right, there's
44:01
Speaker 1: a second way that photons can get stretched out, and
44:04
Speaker 1: that's if space itself is expanding, So not just things
44:08
Speaker 1: moving through space, but space itself making more of itself,
44:12
Speaker 1: bubbling up from within to stretch itself out. And we
44:15
Speaker 1: think that's happening in the universe. The whole universe is expanding,
44:18
Speaker 1: and that expansion is accelerating, and so photons moving through
44:21
Speaker 1: the universe gets stretched out. A great example is the
44:24
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background radiation. We measure these at very very
44:28
Speaker 1: long wavelengths, very very red light. But originally when it
44:33
Speaker 1: was generated, it was generated by a very hot plasma
44:36
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of degrees, so it was very short wavelength.
44:40
Speaker 1: But over the timeline of the universe, those photons have
44:43
Speaker 1: gotten stretched out to very very long wavelengths. It's interesting
44:47
Speaker 1: to think that the color of a photon depends on
44:50
Speaker 1: your perspective in a way, right, Like I can make
44:53
Speaker 1: a photon here and I put a lot of energy
44:55
Speaker 1: into it, so it's really blue. But depending on how
44:57
Speaker 1: you catch it, you're gonna think or that the in color.
45:01
Speaker 1: I might think, oh, this is super low energy if
45:03
Speaker 1: you catch it while on the run. It feels weird
45:06
Speaker 1: because energy feels like a fundamental thing, and people say
45:08
Speaker 1: it's conserved, and so it feels weird to think like
45:11
Speaker 1: different people could measure different energy. There's an important difference
45:14
Speaker 1: between something being conserved and something being invariant. Something invariant
45:19
Speaker 1: means that everybody measures the same thing. Everybody always measures
45:23
Speaker 1: the speed of light to be the same, but you
45:24
Speaker 1: don't always measure energy to be the same. So you're
45:26
Speaker 1: running past me and I throw a ball. I see
45:29
Speaker 1: the ball moving really really fast, has a lot of energy.
45:31
Speaker 1: I say, but if the ball is moving at the
45:33
Speaker 1: same speed you are, then it has no velocity relative
45:36
Speaker 1: to you, and you say, no, the ball is at rest,
45:38
Speaker 1: it has no energy. So you don't even need relativity
45:41
Speaker 1: to disagree about the energy to things have. Yeah, that's
45:44
Speaker 1: super trippy, but I think what you're saying is that
45:46
Speaker 1: you know, if you just catch a photon out in
45:48
Speaker 1: space and you see that it's red, there's no way
45:50
Speaker 1: for you to know just looking at the photon whether
45:53
Speaker 1: it started out as red, or if it started out
45:55
Speaker 1: as blue, or if it was blue and a turn red.
45:57
Speaker 1: There's like no way for you to know if you
45:58
Speaker 1: don't know anything about word it came from. That's right.
46:01
Speaker 1: So you get a photon from another galaxy, it's got
46:03
Speaker 1: a specific frequency. You don't know what frequency you would
46:06
Speaker 1: see it at if you were in the rest frame
46:07
Speaker 1: of the galaxy. You just can't tell, right. But if
46:10
Speaker 1: you know something about where it came from, or do
46:12
Speaker 1: you have more of them coming from the same source,
46:14
Speaker 1: you could maybe the dues whether they were made at
46:16
Speaker 1: a certain frequency or not exactly. Because this is something
46:19
Speaker 1: we do all the time. We look at a whole
46:20
Speaker 1: galaxy and we say, oh, the life from here is
46:22
Speaker 1: red shifted. So if we can't tell from an into
46:25
Speaker 1: individual photon, how can you tell the red shift of
46:27
Speaker 1: a galaxy. The answer is, as you say, you look
46:30
Speaker 1: at all of them at once, because the galaxy emits
46:32
Speaker 1: photons at certain frequencies. It's filled with specific gases hydrogen
46:37
Speaker 1: and helium and neon, whatever, And each of those gases
46:40
Speaker 1: admit only at certain frequencies because remember they're all quantum objects,
46:44
Speaker 1: and they have electrons whizzing around them, and those electrons
46:47
Speaker 1: like to go up or down energy levels, and those
46:50
Speaker 1: energy levels are sort of like floors in a building.
46:53
Speaker 1: The elevator stops at one, or at five or at seven.
46:56
Speaker 1: It doesn't stop at like floor four point seven two,
46:58
Speaker 1: And so the electrons give off photons of very specific energies.
47:02
Speaker 1: If you have a bunch of hydrogen gas and it's
47:04
Speaker 1: hot and glowing, it's gonna glow its specific frequencies. So
47:07
Speaker 1: if you look at the energy of the photons you're
47:09
Speaker 1: getting from a big blob of gas, you can tell
47:12
Speaker 1: is it hydrogen, is it helium, is it neon? Based
47:14
Speaker 1: on the energies of those photons. But if it was
47:17
Speaker 1: just missing one frequency, right like if the source only
47:20
Speaker 1: had one element in it, then would it would be
47:23
Speaker 1: hard to tell. It's only when you have you know,
47:25
Speaker 1: complex things like stars that you know have multiple elements
47:28
Speaker 1: in it, that you can sort of identified the light. Right,
47:31
Speaker 1: You can actually do it with just hydrogen because hydrogen
47:34
Speaker 1: has multiple levels. It has a whole set of energy levels.
47:37
Speaker 1: So hydrogen gas emits not just one frequency but many
47:40
Speaker 1: to What you do is you look at the spectrum
47:42
Speaker 1: you see and you compare it to what you expect.
47:44
Speaker 1: You say, oh, this looks like hydrogen, but it's been
47:46
Speaker 1: shifted over a little bit. So hydrogen has its own fingerprint,
47:49
Speaker 1: helium has its own fingerprint, Neon has its own fingerprint.
47:53
Speaker 1: So you can actually tell all of these things apart,
47:56
Speaker 1: and you cannot only measure the red shift. You can
47:58
Speaker 1: also measure the elemental company positions. You can tell how
48:01
Speaker 1: much helium there is, and how much hydrogen there is,
48:03
Speaker 1: and how much water vapor there is by where those
48:06
Speaker 1: peaks are. You don't you wouldn't get confused between like
48:08
Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium because the two are different. Yeah, the
48:11
Speaker 1: two aren't different even if they're shifted, because they're all
48:14
Speaker 1: shifted together typically, Right, the hydrogen and helium, and that
48:16
Speaker 1: galaxy are all moving at the same speed relative to you. Mostly.
48:20
Speaker 1: It's actually also the way we measure the rotations of galaxies.
48:24
Speaker 1: We look at like one side of the galaxy, but
48:26
Speaker 1: the other we see different shifts, which tells us that
48:28
Speaker 1: the galaxy is rotating in a certain way because parts
48:31
Speaker 1: of it are moving towards us and parts of it
48:33
Speaker 1: are moving away from us. Right. But I guess I
48:35
Speaker 1: mean if we had a whole galaxy of just hydrogen
48:37
Speaker 1: and another whole galaxy of just helium, would you be
48:40
Speaker 1: able to tell the two apart or would you be confused?
48:42
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, maybe this is hydrogen but shifted to helium,
48:45
Speaker 1: or maybe this is helium shifted to hydrogen. Well, our
48:47
Speaker 1: voices would all sound really weird if the whole universe
48:50
Speaker 1: was just helium. Right, So that's clue number one, but
48:52
Speaker 1: also clue number two. Scientifically, they do have a different spectrum, right,
48:56
Speaker 1: Helium and hydrogen have different spectrum that have different energy
48:58
Speaker 1: levels because it's a different charge in the nucleus, So
49:01
Speaker 1: the solutions to the Shorteninger equation aren't different. So the
49:04
Speaker 1: gaps between the energy levels and helium are different than
49:07
Speaker 1: in hydrogen. So there's no way to take helium and
49:10
Speaker 1: like red shifted to make it look like hydrogen. All right,
49:12
Speaker 1: So then you wouldn't need to know where it came from,
49:15
Speaker 1: or would you. I mean, once you get the light
49:17
Speaker 1: and you see these fingerprints and you instantly know whether
49:19
Speaker 1: it was red shifted or not, yeah, exactly, because there's
49:21
Speaker 1: no other way to make those fingerprints. There's no gas
49:23
Speaker 1: in the universe that emits light like hydrogen red shifted
49:27
Speaker 1: with the Z of four, right, So once you see
49:30
Speaker 1: that spectrum like, well, this has to be hydrogen, and
49:32
Speaker 1: it has to be red shifted this certain amount. There's
49:35
Speaker 1: no other way to make this pattern of light. Right.
49:38
Speaker 1: But to see I guess, to see those fingerprints, you
49:40
Speaker 1: need a whole bunch of photons of different frequencies, right,
49:43
Speaker 1: You need your source to emit a whole range of frequencies.
49:46
Speaker 1: Whereas if you just got a whole bunch of photons
49:49
Speaker 1: in one frequency, there's no way you could tell they
49:51
Speaker 1: were red shifted. Or even if you've got like a
49:52
Speaker 1: weird sampling of different photons of different frequencies, there's no
49:55
Speaker 1: way for you to know. You you would have to
49:57
Speaker 1: assume it came from you know, stars or a galaxy. Yes,
50:01
Speaker 1: not information you can get from one photon. It doesn't
50:03
Speaker 1: carry its own personal history around. It's only from a
50:06
Speaker 1: whole collection of photons that you can tell what the
50:09
Speaker 1: red shift was of the source. But so if like
50:12
Speaker 1: an alien and another galaxy shot a laser ad you
50:14
Speaker 1: that they manufactured artificially, there would be no way for
50:17
Speaker 1: you to tell whether it was red shifted, right, Yeah, exactly,
50:20
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be able to tell what the original frequency
50:23
Speaker 1: was and what the shift of the frequency was, assuming
50:25
Speaker 1: that they could make a laser of arbitrary frequency, right,
50:28
Speaker 1: which they're aliens who probably Yes, right, you're given the
50:32
Speaker 1: aliens a lot of credit here. I mean, I'm assuming
50:34
Speaker 1: they're still bound by the laws of physics, right right,
50:36
Speaker 1: You're assuming they're in the right time zone to shoot
50:38
Speaker 1: you the laser in then they know what they're doing.
50:40
Speaker 1: Maybe that's going to save us, right, Maybe they want
50:42
Speaker 1: to vaporize us, but they used the wrong time zone,
50:44
Speaker 1: and so they actually vaporized Geneva instead of us. Yeah,
50:48
Speaker 1: they get rid of the Danish. What are we gonna
50:49
Speaker 1: have for breakfast without the Danish? Yeah? And then we'd
50:53
Speaker 1: all be drinking ammonia, and you know, in Denmark, of course,
50:57
Speaker 1: they don't call Danish. Is Danish is? They just call
50:59
Speaker 1: it breakfast. They call him Vienna bread. Actually Vienna bread? Wow?
51:04
Speaker 1: What do they call him Vienna? I don't know. I've
51:07
Speaker 1: never been to Vienna. I got the time zone wrong.
51:11
Speaker 1: I was supposed to go, but I missed by flight.
51:13
Speaker 1: Somebody from Vienna right in and please educate us. That's right?
51:16
Speaker 1: And is the Danish is the pastry red shifted or not?
51:19
Speaker 1: If you eat it in Denmark or Vienna? I don't know.
51:22
Speaker 1: Is it blueberry shifted or is it raspberry shifted? Deep questions?
51:26
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I think that answer is Josh's question
51:29
Speaker 1: is that you you can't tell the difference if you
51:31
Speaker 1: just look at a photon if it's red shifted or not.
51:34
Speaker 1: But if you get a whole bunch of photons and
51:36
Speaker 1: you assume they come from you know, natural sources, then
51:38
Speaker 1: you could the dudes whether it was red shifted or
51:41
Speaker 1: not exactly. And it's a great question because it's really
51:43
Speaker 1: good to think about, like how do we actually know
51:46
Speaker 1: what we know? And are we sure we're not being
51:48
Speaker 1: confused about what we're looking at? Basically, the light has
51:51
Speaker 1: to be organic, otherwise you can't tell it has me
51:55
Speaker 1: natural at least farm raised. You know, cage free light
52:00
Speaker 1: and you can tell that's right. No pesticides please in
52:02
Speaker 1: our astronomy. All right, well, I think that answers all
52:04
Speaker 1: of our questions here today. Thank you everyone who sent
52:07
Speaker 1: in their questions. We love getting questions, we really do.
52:10
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Speaker 1: Twins fan. I don't even know where the twins are from.
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Speaker 1: Are they from the Twin Cities, Minnesota? Man? What is
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Speaker 1: it hockey or basketball? I think it's lacrosse lacrosse. It
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Speaker 1: looks like lacrosse, depending on your point of view. All right, well,
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