Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Daniel answers Listener Questions about diamond rain on Jupiter, travel near the speed of light and the tilt of Uranus.
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: Is our corner of the universe weird? For the longest time,
- 0:13Speaker 1: we thought that Earth was everything. When people used to
- 0:17Speaker 1: wonder about the nature of the universe, they were mostly
- 0:21Speaker 1: thinking about the rules for how things worked down here.
- 0:25Speaker 1: Even the stars just seemed like sort of decorations in
- 0:28Speaker 1: the sky. Now, of course, we know that there's much
- 0:32Speaker 1: more out there, And our little slice of this planet
- 0:35Speaker 1: is the tiniest fraction of the space in the Solar System,
- 0:39Speaker 1: which is an infinitesimal speck of the volume of the galaxy,
- 0:43Speaker 1: which of course is the tiniest drop in intergalactic space.
- 0:48Speaker 1: And the stuff that goes on out there and the
- 0:51Speaker 1: rest of the universe is super crazy. It's a bonkers
- 0:55Speaker 1: universe out there, filled with black holes and pulsars and
- 0:58Speaker 1: giant jets and crazy conditions. So is our corner of
- 1:03Speaker 1: the universe weird? Or is it the least weird place
- 1:07Speaker 1: in the cosmos? Hi? I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist,
- 1:26Speaker 1: and I have the weirdest questions about our weird cosmos.
- 1:31Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
- 1:35Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we dare
- 1:39Speaker 1: to ask the biggest questions about the biggest things in
- 1:42Speaker 1: the universe. We explore the tiniest little particles and ask
- 1:46Speaker 1: those tiny little questions about what those crazy little quantum
- 1:50Speaker 1: objects are doing. But mostly we join you in the
- 1:53Speaker 1: struggle to understand the nature of this universe that we
- 1:56Speaker 1: find ourselves in. But we marinate in the joy of
- 2:00Speaker 1: that wonder and that curiosity. We embrace it. We ask
- 2:03Speaker 1: those questions about the nature of the universe, and we
- 2:06Speaker 1: dare to demand answers. We're not always satisfied with what
- 2:09Speaker 1: we find, but we understand it's a process. Science is
- 2:13Speaker 1: not a list of answers. It's a way of figuring
- 2:15Speaker 1: out how the universe works. It's daring to expect that
- 2:19Speaker 1: we can actually understand the way the universe functions, that
- 2:23Speaker 1: we could hold in our head a model for how
- 2:26Speaker 1: the universe works and actually makes sense of it. That
- 2:29Speaker 1: would be an exciting day. That is a day in
- 2:31Speaker 1: the future. But until then, we can peel it apart,
- 2:34Speaker 1: one little bit at a time and try to help
- 2:37Speaker 1: you understand something about the nature of the universe. And
- 2:41Speaker 1: to do that, we want to encourage you to ask
- 2:44Speaker 1: your questions, to think deep thoughts about how the universe
- 2:47Speaker 1: works and to wonder when things don't fit together. And
- 2:50Speaker 1: so for that reason, we love on this podcast answering
- 2:53Speaker 1: questions from listeners. And so you probably noticed by now
- 2:57Speaker 1: is just me here in the studio today, So as usual,
- 3:00Speaker 1: I'm going to use this opportunity to catch up on
- 3:03Speaker 1: some listener questions, and so on today's program we have
- 3:12Speaker 1: listeners questions about diamonds and Jupiter, about chips approaching each
- 3:17Speaker 1: other near the speed of light, and about what knocked
- 3:20Speaker 1: Uranus on its side. So thank you to everybody who
- 3:23Speaker 1: writes in with their questions via Twitter, via email, or
- 3:27Speaker 1: sends us an audio clip that we can actually use
- 3:29Speaker 1: on the podcast. If you have questions that you want answered,
- 3:33Speaker 1: we answer every tweet. We're right back to every email.
- 3:37Speaker 1: Please send us your questions two questions at Daniel and
- 3:41Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. We really want to explain the universe
- 3:44Speaker 1: to you. And if you're too shy to send us questions,
- 3:48Speaker 1: you can also drop into my public office hours where
- 3:52Speaker 1: I hang out on zoo and answer physics questions from
- 3:55Speaker 1: anybody and everybody, including follow up questions and crazy hypotheticals.
- 4:00Speaker 1: So please come join us if you want connection and
- 4:02Speaker 1: schedule details about my public office hours. Check out my
- 4:05Speaker 1: websites at sites dot u, se I, dot edu, slash
- 4:10Speaker 1: Daniel where you can find all the information. Alright, so
- 4:14Speaker 1: let's dig into some of these super fun questions from listeners.
- 4:18Speaker 1: Here's the first one. It's all about diamonds. Hey, Daniel
- 4:22Speaker 1: and Jorgey. This is Andy and Indiana and I just
- 4:24Speaker 1: had a hypothetical question for you. Suppose it were possible
- 4:27Speaker 1: to fly a spaceship up next to Jupiter at the
- 4:30Speaker 1: very top of its atmosphere, and you tossed a piece
- 4:33Speaker 1: of coal out the window. Would it turn into a
- 4:35Speaker 1: diamond before it hit the ground? Thanks guys, I love
- 4:38Speaker 1: the podcast. All right, So Andy and Indiana doesn't want
- 4:42Speaker 1: to go to the mall to buy a diamond for
- 4:44Speaker 1: an engagement ring, and instead wants to fly to Jubiter,
- 4:47Speaker 1: drop a piece of coal into the atmosphere and see
- 4:50Speaker 1: if that will turn into a much cheaper diamond. Well,
- 4:54Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's a good return on investment given
- 4:56Speaker 1: the expense of getting to Jupiter, but it's a really
- 4:59Speaker 1: fun question about what actually happens in the crazy intense
- 5:03Speaker 1: heat and pressure of these gas giants. So let's break
- 5:07Speaker 1: it down. How do you actually make a diamond, Like,
- 5:10Speaker 1: how does that happen here on Earth? Could you just
- 5:13Speaker 1: take a piece of coal and squeeze it really really
- 5:15Speaker 1: hard and form a diamond. Well, it's true that diamonds
- 5:18Speaker 1: are just another form of carbon, right, and carbon has
- 5:21Speaker 1: lots of interesting forms. Coal is mostly carbon, graphite is
- 5:25Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes or carbon. You can assemble these little bits
- 5:30Speaker 1: of carbon and lots of different ways that have lots
- 5:32Speaker 1: of different properties at the macroscopic level. And to me,
- 5:36Speaker 1: that's super cool that, like the same basic building blocks,
- 5:39Speaker 1: you can reassemble in different ways and get really very
- 5:42Speaker 1: different materials. Right. It tells you that there's something deep
- 5:46Speaker 1: about the arrangement of stuff, That it's the arrangement of
- 5:50Speaker 1: those carbon molecules that makes a diamond a diamond, and
- 5:53Speaker 1: a piece of coal a coal, not the thing it's
- 5:56Speaker 1: made out of. And that's a deeper truth that we've
- 5:58Speaker 1: learned about the whole Nate you're of the universe, right,
- 6:01Speaker 1: That it's not what you're made out of, but how
- 6:03Speaker 1: you're put together. And that's why, for example, you are
- 6:06Speaker 1: made out of the same particles as eighty ms of
- 6:10Speaker 1: lava or of hamster. It's all the same stuff, just
- 6:14Speaker 1: rearranged in another way. And that's the cool thing about diamonds.
- 6:18Speaker 1: If you start from carbon and you get them under
- 6:20Speaker 1: really intense heat and pressure we're talking about like two
- 6:23Speaker 1: thousand degrees fahrenheit, they will form this really interesting structure
- 6:28Speaker 1: which will then survive when it goes back down to
- 6:31Speaker 1: lower temperatures. Right, it's not like the diamonds form only
- 6:35Speaker 1: in that intense heat and pressure and then sort of
- 6:38Speaker 1: break apart. You form this really intense thing under pressure,
- 6:42Speaker 1: and then it holds up when it gets back down
- 6:44Speaker 1: to lower temperatures and lower pressure. And that's the really
- 6:47Speaker 1: awesome thing. It takes this energy to build it, but
- 6:50Speaker 1: once it clicks into place, it's super duper strong. Now,
- 6:53Speaker 1: you don't get diamonds under normal conditions on the surface
- 6:56Speaker 1: of the Earth. Most of the diamonds that are on
- 6:58Speaker 1: people's engagement rings walking around come from like a hundred
- 7:02Speaker 1: and fifty to two hundred kilometers below the surface of
- 7:06Speaker 1: the Earth. That's where the temperature is high enough and
- 7:08Speaker 1: the pressure is intense enough to make it. But it
- 7:11Speaker 1: doesn't come from coal. Right, Most diamonds that we have
- 7:15Speaker 1: are not in the byproduct of coal. Getting squeezed because
- 7:19Speaker 1: coal is actually a relatively late addition to the Earth's crust. Remember,
- 7:24Speaker 1: coal is basically dead plants. Plants form and grow and
- 7:28Speaker 1: they pull carbon out of the atmosphere, and then they
- 7:31Speaker 1: die and they get squished down and you get oil
- 7:34Speaker 1: or carbon. All these fossil fuels are the remnants of
- 7:37Speaker 1: dead plants. But diamonds have been forming on Earth since
- 7:40Speaker 1: well before there were even plants, and so the raw
- 7:44Speaker 1: materials are the same for coal and for diamonds, But
- 7:47Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that the diamonds we have actually form
- 7:51Speaker 1: from coal, right And also coal tends to be in
- 7:53Speaker 1: these sort of horizontal seams. It's laid down in layers,
- 7:57Speaker 1: whereas diamonds we typically find them in the vertical pipes
- 8:01Speaker 1: inside the Earth. And the reason is that these diamonds
- 8:04Speaker 1: are formed deep deep under the Earth's surface two hundred kilometers,
- 8:08Speaker 1: but for us to find them, they need to somehow
- 8:10Speaker 1: get up to the surface of the Earth, and that's
- 8:13Speaker 1: done by volcanoes. So you need these like vertical pipes
- 8:17Speaker 1: of lava that carry the diamonds up from deep under
- 8:20Speaker 1: the Earth's surface to near the surface where we can
- 8:23Speaker 1: find them. In mind, so that's where most of the
- 8:25Speaker 1: diamonds come from. But there's actually another super cool kind
- 8:29Speaker 1: of diamond that's made on the Earth's surface, and that's
- 8:32Speaker 1: an asteroid impact diamond. Remember when our rock hits the Earth,
- 8:37Speaker 1: usually it burns up in the atmosphere, but if it's
- 8:40Speaker 1: big enough, it can make it all the way down
- 8:42Speaker 1: to the surface of the Earth and impact, and if
- 8:45Speaker 1: it's large enough that can have as much energy is
- 8:47Speaker 1: like the explosion of a nuclear weapon. Remember the rock
- 8:51Speaker 1: that killed off the dinosaurs was a really big one.
- 8:55Speaker 1: It tossed a lot of ash and dust into space,
- 8:58Speaker 1: blocking out the Sun. So that is definitely capable of
- 9:01Speaker 1: creating the conditions you would need to form diamonds. You
- 9:05Speaker 1: get super high temperature when that think impacts, and at
- 9:08Speaker 1: the impact side you also have really high pressure, which
- 9:13Speaker 1: means you can form diamonds when they impact. And if
- 9:16Speaker 1: you go to a meteor creater, this crazy hole in
- 9:19Speaker 1: the ground in Arizona, you can actually see these things.
- 9:22Speaker 1: They find these millimeter sized micro diamonds in meteor creater. Alright,
- 9:28Speaker 1: so what would happen if you actually took a chunk
- 9:31Speaker 1: of coal and went to Jupiter and dropped it in
- 9:34Speaker 1: There is Jupiter really capable of forming diamonds, And the
- 9:38Speaker 1: answer is yes, Jupiter's like a diamond forming factory. Now
- 9:42Speaker 1: a lot of this is speculation or based on models,
- 9:45Speaker 1: but we have ideas for what the pressure and temperature
- 9:48Speaker 1: are in the various layers of Jupiter's atmosphere, and we
- 9:51Speaker 1: have this from models that we've developed, and then we
- 9:53Speaker 1: can test them from various probes that have gone to
- 9:56Speaker 1: visit the planets and gather a little bit of data
- 9:58Speaker 1: and constrain those model and those models tell us that
- 10:02Speaker 1: in the interior of Jupiter, you do have the pressure
- 10:05Speaker 1: and the temperature necessary to make diamonds. And for a
- 10:09Speaker 1: long time, people thought that it was mostly uranous and
- 10:12Speaker 1: Neptune that were diamond making factories because they have the
- 10:15Speaker 1: raw materials you need to make diamonds, that is, methane.
- 10:19Speaker 1: Methane is a very carbonaceous molecule, and so it has
- 10:22Speaker 1: those raw materials. But these days we think that Jupiter,
- 10:26Speaker 1: which has less methane, also has enough to be making diamonds.
- 10:30Speaker 1: And so what happens is you have this atmospheric methane
- 10:32Speaker 1: sort of on the higher levels, and then you might get,
- 10:35Speaker 1: for example, a spark from lightning storms and the surface
- 10:38Speaker 1: of these planets, and that can spark the formation of
- 10:42Speaker 1: a diamond, which then drops into the interior and gathers
- 10:45Speaker 1: more material as it goes until these diamonds, which then
- 10:49Speaker 1: get heavier, fall deeper and deeper and they grow. And
- 10:52Speaker 1: nobody actually knows how big these diamonds can get. They
- 10:56Speaker 1: might just be small, like super tiny nano diamonds and
- 10:59Speaker 1: you have a whole lot of them. Or it could
- 11:01Speaker 1: be that they accumulate like hail falling in the Earth's atmosphere,
- 11:05Speaker 1: gathering up more and more water. You could even get
- 11:08Speaker 1: these like massive diamond bergs they call them, forming in
- 11:12Speaker 1: the interior of Jupiter. The only way to really figure
- 11:15Speaker 1: that out is to go into probe it, but we
- 11:17Speaker 1: haven't had a chance to do that yet. So we
- 11:19Speaker 1: think that the conditions are right for Saturn and Jupiter
- 11:23Speaker 1: to form diamonds, to have this essentially constant rain of diamonds,
- 11:28Speaker 1: and according to calculations, there were produced tons and tons
- 11:32Speaker 1: of diamonds every year, so they anticipate there are something
- 11:36Speaker 1: like ten million tons of diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter.
- 11:42Speaker 1: So if you could get a probe out there, you
- 11:43Speaker 1: wouldn't need to bring your own coal. There are already
- 11:46Speaker 1: tons of diamonds in jubiter But the question was about
- 11:50Speaker 1: whether it would form a diamond before it hit the ground. Remember,
- 11:54Speaker 1: the definition of the ground or the surface of Jupiter
- 11:57Speaker 1: is a bit fuzzy. There is a rocky, icy core,
- 12:01Speaker 1: but things get really dense before you even get there,
- 12:05Speaker 1: and so a bit of coal that turns into diamond
- 12:07Speaker 1: would probably stop well before it reached that rocky icy core.
- 12:12Speaker 1: It would stop when it hits the point where it's
- 12:13Speaker 1: equilibrated right whereas the same density as the stuff that's
- 12:17Speaker 1: around it. And we don't actually know what would happen
- 12:19Speaker 1: to these things as they drop into the core of Jupiter,
- 12:22Speaker 1: because on Jupiter specifically, the conditions are so extreme that
- 12:27Speaker 1: it might be possible that these diamonds form liquids. These
- 12:31Speaker 1: diamonds get so compressed that you get like liquid diamond
- 12:35Speaker 1: oceans on Jupiter. We think on Urineus and Neptune, to contrast,
- 12:39Speaker 1: that the temperatures are much cooler and you don't reach
- 12:42Speaker 1: that like eight thousand kelvin degrees you need to melt diamonds.
- 12:46Speaker 1: So Urine is a Neptune probably have huge collections of
- 12:50Speaker 1: diamonds in their interior, but on Jupiter those diamonds may
- 12:54Speaker 1: have melted and contributed to these vast oceans of liquid
- 12:58Speaker 1: diamond It's fascinating. We still don't know really what's going
- 13:02Speaker 1: on inside Jupiter. We know it's crazy. We know that
- 13:05Speaker 1: it's very different from what's going on here on Earth,
- 13:08Speaker 1: which makes it hard to extrapolate and hard to measure.
- 13:11Speaker 1: But until we get more probes out there dropping coal
- 13:14Speaker 1: or just dropping instruments into the atmosphere of Jupiter, then
- 13:19Speaker 1: we won't really know what's going on. But it's a
- 13:22Speaker 1: fascinating place to learn about what materials can do. You know,
- 13:25Speaker 1: it's all the same basic elements, just playing different roles,
- 13:28Speaker 1: just fitting together in different ways, and in some cases
- 13:32Speaker 1: you need special conditions in order to make them. But
- 13:34Speaker 1: the amazing thing is that they last even after those
- 13:37Speaker 1: conditions have broken, even when they get pulled out into
- 13:40Speaker 1: lower temperature and pressure conditions, we still have these literal
- 13:44Speaker 1: crystals of knowledge that come out of those situations. So
- 13:48Speaker 1: thanks Andy from Indiana for asking a fun question about
- 13:51Speaker 1: dropping coal into the atmosphere of Jupiter. I want to
- 13:54Speaker 1: answer a couple more questions, but first, let's take a
- 13:56Speaker 1: quick break. All right, we are back and we are
- 14:12Speaker 1: talking about the crazy things that go on in our
- 14:15Speaker 1: universe and answering listener questions about the extreme conditions that
- 14:19Speaker 1: we find in our solar system and out in deep space.
- 14:22Speaker 1: So here we have another fun hypothetical question from Cole. Hello,
- 14:27Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge. This is Cole Packard and I'm from Reading, California.
- 14:31Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the podcast and I love
- 14:33Speaker 1: listening to you guys. While I'm driving, I was listening
- 14:35Speaker 1: to your episode about how special relativity affects how we
- 14:38Speaker 1: perceived time, and it got me thinking, what if two
- 14:42Speaker 1: observers were traveling towards each other, both going near the
- 14:45Speaker 1: speed of light, would their relative philosophies be close to
- 14:48Speaker 1: twice the speed of light? Would the time distortion make
- 14:52Speaker 1: each observer look extremely slow to the other. Looking forward
- 14:55Speaker 1: to hearing your answers. Thank you all right, Thanks very
- 14:58Speaker 1: much Cole for asking a question about one of my
- 15:00Speaker 1: favorite topics, which is the crazy bonkers nature of our
- 15:04Speaker 1: universe at high velocity. Because we here on Earth are
- 15:08Speaker 1: used to things moving pretty slow, and we developed an
- 15:11Speaker 1: intuition that tells us what happens when you throw a baseball.
- 15:15Speaker 1: How fast is that baseball moving relative to the ground.
- 15:17Speaker 1: And it turns out that intuition is just flat wrong.
- 15:21Speaker 1: I mean, it mostly works if things are moving slow,
- 15:24Speaker 1: but it turns out the rules are actually fundamentally different,
- 15:28Speaker 1: and that only when you get to very high velocities,
- 15:31Speaker 1: velocities approaching the speed of light, do you see that
- 15:34Speaker 1: intuition breaking down and reveal the true nature of the universe.
- 15:38Speaker 1: But this is one of my favorite examples. This is
- 15:40Speaker 1: why we push ourselves to understand the extreme situations of
- 15:44Speaker 1: the universe, because it's there that the truth is revealed.
- 15:47Speaker 1: And we don't want just an intuitive understanding of the
- 15:50Speaker 1: universe that's sort of kind of works. We want to
- 15:53Speaker 1: know the truth. We want to read the fundamental truth
- 15:56Speaker 1: of the universe. We want to reveal its source code.
- 15:59Speaker 1: We want to understand how the universe actually works, not
- 16:03Speaker 1: just some approximation that kind of works in some situations.
- 16:07Speaker 1: So that's why I love special relativity and examples like
- 16:10Speaker 1: this that make us try to understand how things work
- 16:12Speaker 1: in crazy conditions. Now, Cole was asking us a fun
- 16:16Speaker 1: question about what happens when two ships approach each other
- 16:19Speaker 1: each moving close to the speed of light, and also
- 16:23Speaker 1: what happens to the clocks on those ships. So Cole
- 16:26Speaker 1: has managed to touch on basically all the critical elements
- 16:29Speaker 1: of special relativity. So to answer this question, we're gonna
- 16:32Speaker 1: need to remember a few things. First, remember that all
- 16:36Speaker 1: speeds are measured as relative speeds. You can't talk about
- 16:39Speaker 1: a spaceship moving near the speed of light. You have
- 16:42Speaker 1: to say moving near the speed of light as measured
- 16:45Speaker 1: by who, or moving near the speed of light relative
- 16:49Speaker 1: to what. Because there are no absolute measures, there's no
- 16:52Speaker 1: like reference frame floating out there in space that can
- 16:55Speaker 1: measure the speed of a ship. You always have to
- 16:57Speaker 1: say the speed relative to what. And it's especially important
- 17:01Speaker 1: and special relativity because two different observers moving in different
- 17:05Speaker 1: speeds will see the same ship and report different results.
- 17:09Speaker 1: The thing we have to remember, number two, is that
- 17:11Speaker 1: we can't simply add velocities. You know, if you are
- 17:14Speaker 1: in a car moving at twenty miles an hour relative
- 17:17Speaker 1: to the ground, and you throw a baseball at twenty
- 17:19Speaker 1: miles an hour, how fast is that baseball moving a
- 17:22Speaker 1: relative to the ground. Well, you think, oh, that's easy.
- 17:25Speaker 1: It's twenty miles an hour from the car plus twenty
- 17:28Speaker 1: miles an hour from your arm, you have forty miles
- 17:30Speaker 1: an hour. And that's true for small velocities. But because
- 17:35Speaker 1: in special relativity nothing can go faster than the speed
- 17:38Speaker 1: of light, you've got to change that rule. And it
- 17:40Speaker 1: turns out that as you get too high velocities, you
- 17:43Speaker 1: can't just add those velocities in a simple way. The
- 17:47Speaker 1: velocity is added in a really weird, nonlinear way, and
- 17:51Speaker 1: that's one thing that prevents you from going faster than
- 17:54Speaker 1: the speed of light. So, for example, if you are
- 17:56Speaker 1: in a spaceship flying at seven tenths the speed of
- 18:00Speaker 1: light relative to the Earth, and you throw a baseball
- 18:03Speaker 1: with your amazing arm at seven tenths of the speed
- 18:06Speaker 1: of light in the same direction, do we measure that
- 18:08Speaker 1: baseball going at point seven plus point seven or one
- 18:12Speaker 1: point four times the speed of light. No, we don't,
- 18:16Speaker 1: because you can't just add those velocities. Instead, you get
- 18:20Speaker 1: something like zero point nine five times the speed of light.
- 18:24Speaker 1: Things don't just add up linearly, and that's another thing
- 18:27Speaker 1: that's going to make it really weird to observe the
- 18:30Speaker 1: same events at different velocity. And the last thing we
- 18:33Speaker 1: need to understand to answer Cole's question is how time
- 18:37Speaker 1: is affected by special relativity. And the thing to understand
- 18:40Speaker 1: there is that moving clocks run slowly. If you see
- 18:44Speaker 1: a clock that's moving away from you really, really fast,
- 18:47Speaker 1: you will observe it's time running slowly, all right. So
- 18:52Speaker 1: with that in mind, let's dig into Cole's question. Cole says,
- 18:56Speaker 1: what happens if these two ships are approaching each other
- 18:59Speaker 1: and both are moving near the speed of light. So
- 19:01Speaker 1: first let's clarify if both are moving near the speed
- 19:04Speaker 1: of light, who is measuring that speed? So let's put
- 19:08Speaker 1: Earth at the center of that and say that one
- 19:10Speaker 1: ship is coming at Earth near the speed of light,
- 19:13Speaker 1: and the other ship is coming at Earth from the
- 19:15Speaker 1: other direction, also near the speed of light. So we're
- 19:18Speaker 1: on Earth and we measure ship one coming at us
- 19:21Speaker 1: near the speed of light from Mars, for example, and
- 19:24Speaker 1: the other one is coming the other direction and also
- 19:27Speaker 1: near the speed of light. Now you look at those
- 19:29Speaker 1: two ships and you ask yourself how fast are they
- 19:32Speaker 1: moving relative to each other? If these velocities were very
- 19:35Speaker 1: very slow, we were on the surface of the Earth
- 19:37Speaker 1: and you had, for example, two cars both coming at
- 19:40Speaker 1: you at twenty miles an hour, you could say, oh,
- 19:43Speaker 1: the cars are approaching each other at forty miles an hour,
- 19:46Speaker 1: but zoom back out to space. If both ships are
- 19:49Speaker 1: approaching you at seven tenths the speed of light, you
- 19:52Speaker 1: can't say that they are approaching each other at one
- 19:56Speaker 1: point four times the speed of light because the velocity
- 19:59Speaker 1: addition is not linear. Instead, on each ship they could
- 20:03Speaker 1: measure the speed of the other ship and they would
- 20:06Speaker 1: see something like of the speed of light, and that
- 20:10Speaker 1: works for both ships because the situation is symmetric. So
- 20:13Speaker 1: on Earth we measure each ship as coming towards us
- 20:17Speaker 1: at like seven tenths the speed of light, but each
- 20:19Speaker 1: ship doesn't measure the other one is traveling faster than
- 20:23Speaker 1: the speed of light. Because you can't just add the
- 20:25Speaker 1: velocities linear, we have this crazy non linear velocity addition
- 20:29Speaker 1: rule which changes things. Now here's a bit of a
- 20:32Speaker 1: brain twisty part. The distance between the two ships, as
- 20:36Speaker 1: seen from Earth is decreasing as faster than the speed
- 20:40Speaker 1: of light. That is, from Earth, both ships are moving
- 20:44Speaker 1: it less than the speed of light. But if you
- 20:46Speaker 1: measure the distance between the ships from Earth, that number
- 20:49Speaker 1: is decreasing faster than light could move between the two ships, right,
- 20:53Speaker 1: Because that's just measuring the distance between the two ships,
- 20:56Speaker 1: and we see one ship going in one direction is
- 20:58Speaker 1: seven tenths of speed of light and the other one
- 21:00Speaker 1: going in the other direction at seven tenths of speed
- 21:03Speaker 1: of light. So we see the distance between them decreasing
- 21:06Speaker 1: at faster than the speed of light. And that's okay,
- 21:08Speaker 1: because nobody in the scenario is moving faster than the
- 21:12Speaker 1: speed of light relative to anybody else, because if you
- 21:15Speaker 1: transform to the frame of one ship, they only see
- 21:18Speaker 1: that distance decreasing at the speed of light. And that's
- 21:23Speaker 1: the crazy thing is that different people can see the
- 21:26Speaker 1: same events and report different answers and everybody can be correct. Right.
- 21:32Speaker 1: We can give different conflicting reports of the same scenario
- 21:37Speaker 1: and all be correct. That's the most crazy thing about
- 21:40Speaker 1: the universe I've ever learned about in physics, that there
- 21:43Speaker 1: isn't one true history of the universe that we could
- 21:47Speaker 1: all agree on, that if we all had accurate clocks
- 21:50Speaker 1: and devices and rulers, then we could all figure out,
- 21:53Speaker 1: like what really happened? There is no what really happened
- 21:57Speaker 1: for the whole universe. There's a what really happened? If
- 22:00Speaker 1: you were at this location and moving at this velocity.
- 22:03Speaker 1: Then there's another what really happened if you were over
- 22:06Speaker 1: there moving at that velocity. And the crazy thing is
- 22:09Speaker 1: that they do not have to agree and they can
- 22:12Speaker 1: all be correct. We talked about this in our episode
- 22:15Speaker 1: about time dilation. For example, different people might have different
- 22:18Speaker 1: stories to tell about who won a race, and that's
- 22:21Speaker 1: because the definition of now. But whether two things happen
- 22:24Speaker 1: at the same moment also depends on where you are
- 22:27Speaker 1: and how fast you're moving. And that leads us to
- 22:30Speaker 1: the second part of Cole's awesome question about time. You see,
- 22:34Speaker 1: we know that moving clocks run slowly. That means that
- 22:38Speaker 1: if you see a clock moving at high velocity relative
- 22:41Speaker 1: to you, you will see that clock's time running slowly.
- 22:45Speaker 1: So say both of these ships which are approaching Earth
- 22:48Speaker 1: at seven tenths of speed of light in opposite directions.
- 22:51Speaker 1: Both of these ships have a clock on them, and
- 22:53Speaker 1: they have awesome telescopes so that the people on the
- 22:56Speaker 1: ships can read their own clocks and they can also
- 22:58Speaker 1: peer through these super telescopes to read the clock on
- 23:01Speaker 1: the other ship. So you're on a ship, you're moving
- 23:04Speaker 1: at seven tenths to speed of light. Most people make
- 23:06Speaker 1: the mistake of thinking that you will feel time and
- 23:09Speaker 1: running slow. You won't. You always feel your time running
- 23:13Speaker 1: the same way, running at one second per second. And
- 23:16Speaker 1: if you look down at the clock in your hand,
- 23:18Speaker 1: you will see it running normally. Why is that? Doesn't
- 23:21Speaker 1: time move slow at high speeds? It does, but it
- 23:24Speaker 1: only slows down for moving clocks, And your clock, which
- 23:28Speaker 1: is in your hand, is not moving relative to you.
- 23:31Speaker 1: You are not moving relative to you. And that's why
- 23:35Speaker 1: time passes normally for you. Now, if you look through
- 23:38Speaker 1: your telescope and you look at the clock on the
- 23:40Speaker 1: other ship, you see that clock moving really really fast,
- 23:43Speaker 1: coming towards you at of the speed of light. And
- 23:47Speaker 1: so you see that clock running slowly. You think, for
- 23:50Speaker 1: every ten seconds that passes on your clock, you only
- 23:53Speaker 1: see one second tick on that clock. So that's really weird, right,
- 23:57Speaker 1: is time passing differently on that ship? No, you can't
- 24:01Speaker 1: make statements about that. You can only make statements about
- 24:03Speaker 1: what you observe. Because now flip it around and put
- 24:06Speaker 1: yourself on the other ship. Right that other ship, they
- 24:10Speaker 1: see their clock running normally. They don't see their clock
- 24:14Speaker 1: running slowly the way you see it. They see their
- 24:16Speaker 1: clock running normally, and when they look through their telescope
- 24:19Speaker 1: they see your clock running slowly. It's another example of
- 24:23Speaker 1: how two people to observers can give faithful accounts but
- 24:27Speaker 1: come up with different stories about what happens. You say
- 24:31Speaker 1: their clock is running slowly, they say your clock is
- 24:34Speaker 1: running slowly. The physics part of your brain says, what
- 24:37Speaker 1: what actually is happening? And the answer is, there are
- 24:40Speaker 1: different things happening based on where you are and how
- 24:44Speaker 1: fast you are going, right, because truth and history are
- 24:48Speaker 1: not absolute anymore. They are relative, and they are a
- 24:51Speaker 1: function of location and velocity. And you might think to yourself,
- 24:56Speaker 1: how can that possibly be the reality? How can our
- 24:59Speaker 1: universe actually work that way? Doesn't it lead to all
- 25:02Speaker 1: sorts of contradictions. Well, you know, all these effects happen
- 25:06Speaker 1: when people are far apart or moving relative to each
- 25:09Speaker 1: other at very high speeds, and so it makes it
- 25:12Speaker 1: hard to spot these things. And you just have an
- 25:15Speaker 1: intuition that the universe works in a certain way, that
- 25:18Speaker 1: there's like a universe clock that ticks forward, and the
- 25:21Speaker 1: universe has sort of a state right now, and then
- 25:23Speaker 1: it takes forward and has another state, sort of like
- 25:25Speaker 1: a universal movie that's sliding forward in time. But that's
- 25:29Speaker 1: just not the situation. What we've revealed to our experiments
- 25:33Speaker 1: is that things really do depend on where you are
- 25:36Speaker 1: and how fast you are going. That there is really
- 25:39Speaker 1: no absolute truth to what happens in the universe. Alright, cold,
- 25:43Speaker 1: thanks very much for asking that super fun question. I
- 25:45Speaker 1: want to get to one more question, but first let's
- 25:48Speaker 1: take another break. Okay, we're back, and we are talking
- 26:03Speaker 1: about the crazy things that happened in our universe, things
- 26:07Speaker 1: that happened at light speed, things that happened it's super
- 26:09Speaker 1: high pressure and temperature, and now we're going to talk
- 26:12Speaker 1: about some of the weird things that we see in
- 26:15Speaker 1: our universe, specifically in our solar system. Hey, Daniel and Jorge,
- 26:20Speaker 1: this is Brendon from St. Louis, Missouri, and I have
- 26:22Speaker 1: a question for you guys that I've been thinking about
- 26:24Speaker 1: for a little while. Now. You can only find that
- 26:26Speaker 1: we apparently don't know. I'm just wondering if that's really
- 26:29Speaker 1: true or what our latest understanding is of what happened
- 26:31Speaker 1: to uriness to make it sideways and could that have
- 26:34Speaker 1: been what gave it its rings or is that just
- 26:36Speaker 1: wild speculation? Would love you guys, input on something like this.
- 26:39Speaker 1: All right, thanks very much for that awesome question. I
- 26:42Speaker 1: love Urinus because Urinus is really weird. It's not just
- 26:46Speaker 1: that it makes diamonds that rain in the interior. It's
- 26:49Speaker 1: a very unusual planet relative to the other planets in
- 26:53Speaker 1: our solar system. Right, if you look at the Solar
- 26:55Speaker 1: system sort of from the top down, the Sun is
- 26:58Speaker 1: spinning counter clock wise, and you notice that most of
- 27:01Speaker 1: the things in the Solar system follow that pattern. They
- 27:04Speaker 1: move around the Sun counterclockwise, and they rotate counterclockwise. And
- 27:09Speaker 1: there's a reason for that. That's not an accident. That's
- 27:11Speaker 1: conservation of angular momentum at work. You see all the
- 27:15Speaker 1: stuff that made our Solar system, the big blob of
- 27:18Speaker 1: gas and dust and little particles and flex of gold
- 27:21Speaker 1: from previous solar systems. All that stuff, when it formed,
- 27:24Speaker 1: was already spinning. And that spin can't just go away, right.
- 27:29Speaker 1: If you start something spinning in space and leave it,
- 27:32Speaker 1: it will spin forever. And so if you have a
- 27:34Speaker 1: huge cloud of gas and dust, it might be spinning slowly,
- 27:37Speaker 1: but then when gravity coalesces it into something smaller and
- 27:41Speaker 1: denser than it needs to spin faster in order to
- 27:44Speaker 1: have the same total amount of spin. It's like a
- 27:47Speaker 1: figure skater. If she pulls her arms in, she goes
- 27:50Speaker 1: faster because she has to have a higher rotation rate
- 27:53Speaker 1: to have the same total angular momentum. And so as
- 27:57Speaker 1: that huge cloud of slowly spinning gas and dust coalesced
- 28:01Speaker 1: into the Sun and the planets, that spin couldn't just
- 28:04Speaker 1: go away. And that's why we get the planets mostly
- 28:07Speaker 1: going around the Sun in the same direction that the
- 28:10Speaker 1: Sun is spinning, and also spinning around their axes in
- 28:14Speaker 1: that same direction. And that's why it's really interesting and
- 28:18Speaker 1: really weird that it's only mostly the case. Those exceptions
- 28:22Speaker 1: are fascinating because they might just reveal crazy stories about
- 28:26Speaker 1: what happened in the formation of our solar system. And
- 28:29Speaker 1: so urine is in particular is an odd ball, quite literally,
- 28:33Speaker 1: because it's tilted more than ninety degrees. It's not just
- 28:37Speaker 1: on its side, it's on its side plus a little bit,
- 28:40Speaker 1: and it spins clockwise instead of counterclockwise, so it really
- 28:45Speaker 1: stands out. And because urine is is not a small thing, right,
- 28:48Speaker 1: it's not like one tiny little rock that happens to
- 28:51Speaker 1: be spinning the wrong way. It's an enormous ice giant
- 28:55Speaker 1: of a planet. It's got a lot of mass, which
- 28:57Speaker 1: means it has a lot of kinetic energy and a
- 29:00Speaker 1: lot of angular momentum. It's not something that happens very easily.
- 29:04Speaker 1: And the more you look at Uranus, the more you
- 29:06Speaker 1: see that it's weird. I mean, it's not just that
- 29:08Speaker 1: it's tipped over, so it has like vertical rings and
- 29:11Speaker 1: vertical moons. But in the summer, it's north pole points
- 29:15Speaker 1: towards the sun right. That makes really weird seasons, and
- 29:20Speaker 1: the definition of north pole is sort of odd on
- 29:22Speaker 1: Urinus also because it's defined by the axis. But the
- 29:26Speaker 1: magnetic poles are not very well lined up with its spin.
- 29:30Speaker 1: It has this really weird off center magnetic field. And
- 29:34Speaker 1: you know, on most planets we think the magnetic field
- 29:36Speaker 1: is formed by like the slashing around of currents of
- 29:39Speaker 1: molten metals, but we don't really know what's going on
- 29:42Speaker 1: inside Uranus, and we don't know why that spinning would
- 29:45Speaker 1: give you a different magnetic field direction than the actual
- 29:49Speaker 1: spin of the planet. So for a long time people
- 29:52Speaker 1: have thought this must be evidence of some cosmic collision.
- 29:56Speaker 1: Why would you think a cosmic collision, Well, the reason
- 29:59Speaker 1: is that in order to have something stop spinning or
- 30:02Speaker 1: to change its spin, you need something external. You need
- 30:05Speaker 1: something to come from outside the solar system, some new
- 30:09Speaker 1: source of angular momentum that comes in and can stop
- 30:12Speaker 1: the spin or knock the spin, or change the spin.
- 30:15Speaker 1: That's why we think about Uriness maybe having such a
- 30:18Speaker 1: strange configuration because it got knocked into by some huge
- 30:22Speaker 1: thing that came in from outside the solar system. But
- 30:25Speaker 1: this thing would have to be huge, like the calculations.
- 30:28Speaker 1: Until about a year ago, people were thinking this needed
- 30:31Speaker 1: some object like twice the mass of the Earth. So again,
- 30:35Speaker 1: this is not a little rock that hit Urin. It's
- 30:37Speaker 1: you know, a little rock like the size of the
- 30:39Speaker 1: one that killed the dinosaurs. This is a rock twice
- 30:42Speaker 1: the size of the Earth that collided into Urinus and
- 30:46Speaker 1: knocked it over. At least that was the theory for
- 30:49Speaker 1: a while. But you know, let that marinate in your
- 30:51Speaker 1: head for a minute, Like, what would that have looked
- 30:54Speaker 1: like if you could have seen that up close? Oh
- 30:57Speaker 1: my gosh, it would have put Michael Bay and all
- 30:58Speaker 1: the Transformer movie to shame. I would have loved to
- 31:01Speaker 1: see that sort of real effect in action. Of course,
- 31:05Speaker 1: from a safe distance. The problem is that it would
- 31:07Speaker 1: have been a very cataclysmic event, and we should see
- 31:10Speaker 1: records of it all around the environment of urine is.
- 31:14Speaker 1: But when we look, for example, at the moons if
- 31:16Speaker 1: urine is, we don't see that. If such an event happened,
- 31:19Speaker 1: you would expect, for example, all the ice to be
- 31:21Speaker 1: stripped from those moons and to have mostly just like
- 31:24Speaker 1: little bits of rock, as those moons would have been obliterated.
- 31:27Speaker 1: But we don't really see that, and so there's not
- 31:30Speaker 1: the evidence of that huge collision. But we still have
- 31:33Speaker 1: urine Is knocked over on its side. What could have
- 31:36Speaker 1: done that other than some weird external source of angular momentum, Well,
- 31:41Speaker 1: it could also be a weird interplay. But with the
- 31:44Speaker 1: angular momentum inside the Solar System, which you can sort
- 31:47Speaker 1: of slash around from object to object, and you might wonder, well,
- 31:51Speaker 1: how can that happen without collisions? Will remember that there's
- 31:53Speaker 1: still gravity here, and there's lots of different objects slashing around.
- 31:57Speaker 1: Urinus is there, and it has rings and very barious
- 32:00Speaker 1: objects in the Solar System can transfer angular momentum back
- 32:03Speaker 1: and forth between each other just using gravity. For example,
- 32:07Speaker 1: the Earth's moon is slowing down the spin of the
- 32:10Speaker 1: Earth as it leaves, it's sort of stealing our angular
- 32:13Speaker 1: momentum because of these gravitational interactions. And so recently there's
- 32:18Speaker 1: been a new theory for how Urinus might have gotten
- 32:21Speaker 1: its weird direction and weird spin, and it has to
- 32:24Speaker 1: do with how Urinus is orbit around the Sun interferes
- 32:28Speaker 1: and interacts with its spin. And that is that Uranus,
- 32:31Speaker 1: like most planets, doesn't orbit the Sun in a perfect circle.
- 32:35Speaker 1: It orbits it and an ellipse, and an ellipse, un
- 32:39Speaker 1: like a circle, has a preferred direction that a long axis, well,
- 32:42Speaker 1: that long axis moves around the Sun, and that's called precession.
- 32:46Speaker 1: In a similar way, there's a precession for the spin
- 32:48Speaker 1: of the planet. It turns out that those two things
- 32:51Speaker 1: can create a resonance which can actually affect the angle
- 32:54Speaker 1: that the planet is tilting at, sort of like if
- 32:56Speaker 1: you think about a gyroscope here on Earth. You can
- 32:59Speaker 1: spin a gyr scope and then see it's sort of
- 33:01Speaker 1: like tilt over. They're all these really complicated dynamics with
- 33:04Speaker 1: angular momentum that can get your brains would twisted up.
- 33:07Speaker 1: But they have done these calculations and they've done these models,
- 33:10Speaker 1: and they've seen that like a gyroscope effect. If you
- 33:13Speaker 1: get Uriness in the right configuration, then it's spin procession
- 33:16Speaker 1: and it's orbit can interfere in a way that tilts
- 33:19Speaker 1: it over. But the funny thing is that in these
- 33:21Speaker 1: models for their calculations, they've only ever gotten the urine
- 33:24Speaker 1: is like planet to tilt over about like sixty five
- 33:27Speaker 1: or seventy degrees. They can't get into tilt all the
- 33:30Speaker 1: way over to ninety degrees just using this trick with
- 33:33Speaker 1: the interference of the processions. And so then they added
- 33:37Speaker 1: the collision of a smaller object. So it turns out
- 33:40Speaker 1: if you tilted over using this gyroscope procession effect, and
- 33:44Speaker 1: then you toss in a planet just about half the
- 33:47Speaker 1: size of Earth instead of twice the size of Earth,
- 33:50Speaker 1: then you can knock Uriness over on its side without
- 33:53Speaker 1: blasting all the ice from its moons. So that means
- 33:56Speaker 1: that if you hit Urinus with an object half the
- 33:59Speaker 1: size of Earth instead of twice the size of Earth,
- 34:02Speaker 1: it can survive. It can get the right tilt, and
- 34:04Speaker 1: the moons can keep their ice. So you know, a
- 34:07Speaker 1: lot of this is guesswork. We really just don't know
- 34:10Speaker 1: what we're doing. Is we're looking at the clues that
- 34:12Speaker 1: we see here today in our solar system, and we're
- 34:15Speaker 1: trying to explain things that happen maybe billions of years ago,
- 34:19Speaker 1: and we're doing these calculations and try to say, hey,
- 34:22Speaker 1: could this be an explanation? So we're building up more
- 34:25Speaker 1: and more sophisticated possible explanations for what might explain what
- 34:29Speaker 1: we see. That doesn't mean conclusively this is what happened,
- 34:33Speaker 1: right the way science work, Since you come up with
- 34:35Speaker 1: a potential explanation for what you see, and then you
- 34:38Speaker 1: ask yourself questions like what would be unique about this
- 34:41Speaker 1: or what can I predict? How else could I test
- 34:44Speaker 1: this model? And that's, for example, how people came up
- 34:46Speaker 1: with this curiosity of the fact that there is still
- 34:49Speaker 1: ice on the moons of Uranus, which is not consistent
- 34:52Speaker 1: with having Urinus be impacted by an object twice the
- 34:55Speaker 1: mass of the Earth. So as you make more refinements,
- 34:58Speaker 1: you ask yourself more questions, as this explain this be?
- 35:01Speaker 1: Could I test it in this other way? You come
- 35:03Speaker 1: up with more and more clever ideas for how to
- 35:05Speaker 1: test your theory, and if he keeps passing those tests,
- 35:08Speaker 1: then you build confidence in this explanation and if it fails,
- 35:11Speaker 1: one of them go back to the drawing board and
- 35:13Speaker 1: you come up with a new idea. But hey, that's
- 35:16Speaker 1: the process of science. That's why we ask these questions,
- 35:19Speaker 1: because by asking them, we learn things, and we slowly
- 35:22Speaker 1: peel back layers of reality to reveal the true nature
- 35:27Speaker 1: of the universe. And so I'm just excited to be
- 35:29Speaker 1: on this journey here with you, trying to understand the universe,
- 35:33Speaker 1: trying to peel back those layers of reality, trying to
- 35:35Speaker 1: get us closer to the ultimate truth about the way
- 35:38Speaker 1: the universe actually works. So thanks to everybody who's sent
- 35:42Speaker 1: in those questions, and thanks to everybody who engages with
- 35:45Speaker 1: us on Twitter at Daniel and Jorge or sends us
- 35:48Speaker 1: questions to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. We
- 35:52Speaker 1: love hearing from you. We want to answer your questions
- 35:55Speaker 1: about the universe. We want to explain the universe to you.
- 35:59Speaker 1: So thanks everybody for your attention and your questions and
- 36:01Speaker 1: for sharing your curiosity with us. Tune in next time.
- 36:13Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explained
- 36:16Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
- 36:19Speaker 1: more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio,
- 36:22Speaker 1: Apple Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- 36:28Speaker 1: YE