Latest / The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast / Inside the Particle That Helps Build Reality

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Inside the Particle That Helps Build Reality · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quart Side Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I want you to stop whatever you're doing for just
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: a second and we'll look at your hand.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Just go ahead and flex your fingers.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, because you are looking at matter. I mean,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: you are made of matter. We all are, right the device,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: you're listening to this, on the chair, you are sitting
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: in the ground right beneath your feet. It is all
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: just matter. We interact with it every single second of
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: our lives.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: And yet we completely take that solidity for granted.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: We really do. We almost never stop to ask this
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: very basic, frankly kind of mind bending question, which is
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: what is actually holding all of that together?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: It's you know, it's the ultimate invisible reality. We think
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: of a table as solid just because we can knock
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: on it and it makes a sound.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Right, But if you were to somehow zoom in like
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: way past your skin cells, past the complex protein.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Molecules, as the individual atoms themselves, yeah.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: You don't find solid walls at all, you find mostly
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: just empty space.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Vast amounts of empty space.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Actually exactly, and right at the center of that massive
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: emptiness you find this tiny, unimaginably dense nucleus, which.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Is where things get really weird. So weird because if
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: everything is so incredibly small and spread out at that
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: fundamental level, what is the invisible glue that's keeping the
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: universe from just, I don't know, falling apart into cosmic dust.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Well, that is the exact mystery that has kept physicists
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: awake at night for decades. When you zoom in that far,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: the normal rules of the everyday world just completely.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Dissolve, like they just don't apply anymore, not at all.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: You're entering a realm governed by fours that are unimaginably powerful,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: yet they're operating on a scale so small it almost
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: breaks the human brain just trying to visualize it totally.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: And today we are going right into the heart of
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: that mystery. We are exploring the secret internal life of
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: a subatomic particle called the.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Pion, the ultimate cosmic glue.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: The cosmic glue exactly. We're going to uncover how scientists
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: are leveraging absolutely mind boggling supercomputer power, specifically looking at
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: some recent breakthrough physics coming out of the Ragon National
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Laboratory to map the three D structure of this particle.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: It's a huge step forward, it really is, and in
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: the process they are solving the mystery of how visible
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: matter actually forms from these elementary building blocks.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, let's unpack this. To understand the pion, we first
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: have to understand the neighborhood it lives in, right, right, and.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: That neighborhood is the atomic nucleus. So to set the
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: stage here, most people are familiar with protons and neutrons
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: heavy stuff exactly, we call them nucleons. Together, these protons
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and neutrons account for virtually all of an atom's mass.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I read somewhere that if you step on a scale
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: and weigh yourself, you are essentially just weighing your protons
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: and neutrons.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: That is literally true. Yeah, the electrons barely register.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: But wait, protons are positively charged, right, and if you
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: remember anything from high school physics, you know that like
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: charges aggressively repel each other.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: They absolutely hate being close together.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Right, So if you pack a bunch of positively charged
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: protons into a microscopic space like a nucleus, shouldn't they
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: just violently blast apart. Well, the electromagnetic force is practically
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: screaming at them to separate. Yes, So for the nucleus
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: to actually hold together, there has to be another force.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: At play, something stronger.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Something overwhelmingly stronger than electromagnetism, and physicists, in a rare
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: moment of straightforward naming, just called it the strong nuclear force.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I love when they keep it simple, right.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: It is the fundamental force that holds protons and neutrons
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: together against their natural urge to repel.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: And here is where our main character enters the story,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: the pion, because pions are the particles that actually mediate
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: that strong force between the nucleons.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: They're the go betweens.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was trying to wrap my head around this
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: before we started recording, and I kept picturing like a
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: brick building.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, let's hear it.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: So the protons and neutrons they're the bricks. They're the heavy,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: substantial things making up the structure itself. But you can't
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: just stack bricks and expect the building to survive a hurricane.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you need something to hold them, right.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: You need mortar, You can something active to bind them.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Is it safe to say the pion is kind of
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: like that microscopic border.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Well, mortar is a helpful starting point, but it's a
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: bit too passive. Mortar just sort of sits there.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: A more accurate way to visualize the pion is to
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: imagine two people standing on skateboards facing each other, and
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: they're tossing a really heavy medicine ball back and forth.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Oh wow on skateboards.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The sheer force of rowing and catching in that
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: heavy ball keeps them locked in this dynamic relationship, right,
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: it's pushing and pulling them.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Okay, that paints a crazy picture.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: The pion is that medicine ball. It isn't just a
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: static paste. It is constantly being exchanged between the protons
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: and neutrons, and that dynamic exchange is what actually generates
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: the strong force.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: That makes so much more sense. So the force isn't
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: the thing you just touch, It's an action that's happening exactly.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: And the pion itself is incredibly complex. Pions aren't composite particles,
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: meaning they aren't fundamental blocks themselves.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: They're made of even smaller stuff.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Yes, quarks and gluons. Understanding how those quarks and gluons
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: are confined and how they interact within a pion. That
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: is the holy grail of nuclear.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Physics, because if we figure that out, if.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: We can understand that internal mechanism, we unlock the secret
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: to how all visible matter forms at its absolute most
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: fundamental level.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, but I have to push back here because this
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: sounds almost physically impossible to me. How so, Well, if
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: this pion is existing at the absolutely smallest scale in nature,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: acting as this medicine ball bouncing around inside in the atomic nucleus, Yeah,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: how can we possibly know what the individual quarks inside
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: the pion are doing? It's tough, Like we can't exactly
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: put a pion under a microscope and watch the quark
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: swim around.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: Right. This raises an important question, and it highlights the
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: exact wall experimental physics.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Hit.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Oh really Yeah, For the lightest of these particles, which
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: the pion is, we actually do not have many experimental results.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Available at all because there's just too fast.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: They're incredibly fleeting. They exist in these highly dynamic, high
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: energy states. We can't just pin one down on a
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: glass slide, isolate it and measure its internal quark distribution.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: With lasers or whatever.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: So we can't just look at it.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Now, the physical experimental data on the pion's internal structure
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: is severely lacking.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: So wait, we have this fundamental particle that helps bind
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: the universe, but it's too small, too fast, and too
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: light to properly measure in a lab. That feels like
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: a massive scientific dead end.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: It completely would be if we relied solely on physical microscopes.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: But scientists have found a way around this limitation by
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: essentially building their own universe inside a.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Machine, a virtual universe.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: Exactly because we lack physical experimental results, we have to
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: rely on massive, large scale theoretical simulations to reveal the
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: pion's internal three dimensional structure.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And here's where it gets really interesting. When we say simulation,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: I think people naturally picture like a video game engine
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: or maybe a localized weather model on the news shirt. Yeah,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: but to map the pion, researchers aren't just taking a
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: simple picture that they have to simulate the actual fundamental
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: physics of strong force itself.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: They do, and they do that using the mathematical framework
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: governing the strong force, which is called quantum chromodynamics or
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: a QCD for short.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Hold on quantum chromodynamics. That is a massive term. Can
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: you break that down for me, specifically the chromo part,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: because it sounds like we are talking about colors.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: We actually are, but not colors you can see with
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: your eyes. Wait really yeah, Chromo comes from the Greek
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: word for color. In electromagnetism, you know, particles have a
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: charge that is either positive or negative. Right, Well, in
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: the strong nuclear force, quarks have a different kind of charge,
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: and because there are three types of this charge, physicists
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: whimsically name them after primary colors red, green, and blue.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Seriously, that's hilarious.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: It makes the math easier to talk about. And the
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: gluons are the particles that carry this color force between
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: the quarks. So quantum chromodynamics is just the study of
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: how these color charged quarks and gluons interact with each other.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, so the researchers have the rules of QCD. How
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: do they actually simulate it?
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  Speaker 3: They use a method called lattice QCD. They basically map
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: out four dimensional space time.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: So that's length with depth plus time.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Exactly plus the dimension of time, and they represent that
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: four D space time as a massive discreen grid or
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: a lattice. The simulation then tracks the interactions of the
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: quarks and gluons across millions of individual grid points on
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: this lattice.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, I was trying to visualize this forty lattice idea earlier,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: and honestly, my brain was short circuiting.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: It's a lot to picture, but I started.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Picturing it like trying to understand a massive crashing ocean wave. Okay,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: if you take a photograph of the wave, you just
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: have a static two D image tells you what the
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: wave looks like in one frozen millisecond, but it tells
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: you absolutely nothing about how the water is actually moving
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: or where the kinetic energy is flowing. Right.
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  Speaker 3: A photograph provides surface level geometry, but absolutely no deep
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: dynamic context.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Right. So imagine instead of a camera, you have millions
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: of microscopic sensors suspended in the air on the water,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: forming this giant three dimensional grid.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, I see where you're going.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: And as the wave crashes through this crid, every single
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: sensor records the exact speed, direction, and pressure of the
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: water droplets hitting it, frame by frame over time.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: That's a great way to look at it.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't just have a picture of the wave. You'd have
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: a complete dynamic interactive map of every single drop of
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: water in motion. Am I anywhere close to how the
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: supercomputer's actually looking at this?
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: That captures the essence of it beautifully. The forty lattice
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: does exactly that, but for spacetime. It captures hundreds of
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: individual snapshots, tracking exactly how the quirks move, interact, and
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: correlate inside a moving pine.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: But, as you can probably imagine from your ocean wave analogy,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: the sheer volume of mathematics required to calculate all the
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: interactions at millions of grid points across hundreds of snapshots
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: of time.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: It has to be insane.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: It is staggering. No human brain and no ordinary computer
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: could even scratch the surface of the algebra involved here.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure. If I tried to run this on
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: my laptop, it would probably melt straight through the desk.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: It absolutely would. This is a task that is only
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: possible with immense large scale parallel computing power. Specifically, this
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: breakthrough simulation was run on the Polaris super computer at
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Polaris operating at the Argonne National Laboratory, which is a
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: US Department of Energy office of science user facility. We're
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: talking about machines that take up entire rooms, right.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Entire floors. Actually, Polaris processes the immensely complicated physics of
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: quantum chromodynamics simultaneously across these vast arrays of advanced processors.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Just crunching unbelievable amounts of data.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: It handles millions of calculations at once, allowing researchers to
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: run these theoretical frameworks at scales that were literally just
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: science fiction a decade ago.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: So the team feeds the fundamental rules of the universe,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: this quantum chromodynamics into Polaris. They set up their four
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: D spacetime lattice with millions of grid points. They let
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: the simulation run, capturing hundreds of snapshots. What actually pops
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: out the other side, like what does a map of
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the Pian look like?
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Well, the key deliverable from the Polaris calculations was something
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: called the quark generalized part and distribution or GPD for
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: short generalized.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Part and distribution and physicists naming things That sounds like
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: a tax form.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: It is a very dense term, I admit, but think
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: of a GPD like a highly sophisticated topographic map. Okay,
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: a standard map just shows you where a mountain is.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: A topographic map shows you the elevation contours, like exactly
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: how steep the mountain is at specific.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Points, showing the actual terrain. Right.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: A generalized part and distribution maps the exact spatial distribution
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: of quarks inside the pion, but it also cross references
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: that with how much of the pion's total momentum each
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: individual quark is carrying.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: So it's tracking both where the quarks are physically located
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: and how much energy or momentum they are individually carrying.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Has the pion zip surround, Yes, exactly.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: It allowed the researchers to look at the momentum values
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: both along the direction the pion is moving, which is
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: the longitudinal momentum, and the momentum perpendicular to it.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, So the cross section two right.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: It provides a complete transverse spatial distribution of the quarks
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: while strictly accounting for controlled systematic uncertainty.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, so they have this incredibly detailed topographic momentum map.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: They are looking at the full three D internal structure
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: of a moving pion, and the big reveal the thing
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: that completely blew my mind is what happens to the
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: pion as it speeds up.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: It's so counterintuitive, it really is.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: The simulation show that as the pion's momentum increases in
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: its direction of motion, its transverse size meaning it's width
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: how wide it is across, actually decreases. It literally shrinks.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: What's fascinating here is how strange quantum mechanics behaves at
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: these scales. You might naturally think that a particle flying
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: faster would become more chaotic, or maybe it would spread
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: out as it gains energy, right like a splash, But
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: the high resolution images prove the exact opposite. The transverse
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: size physically narrows.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: But why, I mean, I'm trying to reason this out.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: If I drive a car really fast down the highway,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: the car doesn't suddenly get narrower.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Fortunately, not right.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I know. Einstein's theory of relativity says that objects moving
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: close to the speed of light contract, but that's in
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: the direction they are moving, like a pancake flattening out. Yes,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: length contraction, But you're saying the width of the pion
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: shrinks like a torpedo getting skinnier. What is the mechanism
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: actually making that happen.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: It has to do with how the momentum is distributed
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: among the quarks themselves. As the pion moves faster, the
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: individual quarks inside it that are carrying the largest fractions
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: of that momentum tend to be pulled tighter toward the
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: center of the particle.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Oh interesting, The.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Quarks carrying less momentum might be further out, but the
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: heavy lifters, the ones driving the particle forward, they cluster tightly.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: In the core, so they bundle together exactly.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Because the core becomes so dense with momentum, the overall
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: effective width of the particle spatial distribution narrows. The faster
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: it goes, the tighter that core correlation becomes.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for the big picture?
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: We have a particle acting as the fundamental medicine ball
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: of the atomic nucleus. You map it on a supercomputer,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: and you find find out that the faster it moves,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: the tighter its momentum core gets, literally shrinking its with
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: and researchers even noted that at moderate parallel momentum values,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: the effective size of the pion actually becomes smaller than
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: that of the proton it's interacting with how does knowing
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: this bizarre relationship between momentum and size actually change our
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: understanding of physics?
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: It provides something crucial that theoretical physics desperately needs right now,
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: which is mathematical certainty.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Certainty.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Yes, for decades, theories involving the behavior of hadrons, which
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: is the category of composite particles that includes both protons
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: and pions, they've been built on profound but sometimes mathematically
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: unverified assumptions about these exact internal dynamics.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Oh so they were just well educated guesses in some ways.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: Yes, But by pinpointing the pion's generalize part and distribution
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: with such high resolution and controlled uncertainties, we are just
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: guessing how the quirk to behave anymore, We are grounding
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: our theories of the strong interaction in a precise mathematical reality.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: And what really struck me is that this shrinking pattern,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: this narrowing of the width as longitudinal momentum increases, is
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: something scientists have actually seen happen in the proton too.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's not unique to the pions.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: So this isn't just a quirky thing the pion does.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: We are uncovering a universal architectural rule about how the
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: strong force organizes matter at the quantum level.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Like if you, the listener, were somehow accelerated to near
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: the speed of light, the fundamental building blocks of your
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: body would be shifting and tightening in these exact mathematical ways.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: The rules governing quarks and gluons apply across all different hadrons,
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: but the pion, being the absolute lightest of these composite particles,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: serves as a really unique, stripped down baseline for understanding
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: these mechanics.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: It's the simplest version.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: Exactly. If we can map the simplest version of this dynamic,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: we can scale that understanding up to more complex matter, which.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Brings us to a real practical question. As mind blowing,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: is this virtual supercomputer generated universe is it's still just
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: a simulation. Sure, we established earlier that there are currently
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: no experimental measurements of the piangpd in the physical world,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: So why does running this massive calculation on polaris actually
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: matter outside the walls of the Argon National Laboratory.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, science
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: operates best as a constant dialogue between theoretical math and
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: physical experiment.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: They feed each other.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: Exactly Because we cannot yet measure the pian's internal structure
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: directly with physical tools. These supercomputer results are stepping into
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: that void. They provide the vital theoretical framework and the
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: necessary mathematical guidance for upcoming physical experiments.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: It's like drawing a highly detailed treasure map before you
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: ever pick up a shovel.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: That is the perfect way to phrase it. We have major,
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: multi billion dollar physical particle accelerator facilities being built and
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: up graded precisely to test these quantum realities like where
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: for example, the Department of Energies Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: Facility and the future electron Ion Collider that's currently being
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: And these are the facilities that take actual physical particles
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: and smash them together at unimaginable speeds.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Right, yes, they smash them together or they shoot electrons
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: at them to physically measure things like the generalized part
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: and distribution from the debris.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: But without the map from Polaris, those experimental facilities are
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: basically flying blind. They'd have no baseline, they wouldn't know
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: exactly what statistical signatures to look for in the aftermath
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: of those massive particle collisions.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: Exactly. The supercomputer simulation essentially tells the experimentalists, Hey, here
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: is how the quarks should be distributed based on the
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: fundamental laws of the strong interaction. Look for this specific
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: shrinking effect at these specific momentum values.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: That is so cool.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: It is one discipline, computational theory, tells us where to look,
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: and the other discipline, experimental physics, ultimately proves it is
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: physically there. It is a beautiful synergy.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: It really is its theory and practice working in perfect
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: harmony to decode the universe. And what is so exciting
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: is that this isn't the end of the road, not
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: at all. We use Polaris to map the pion, the
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: lightest particle, to basically prepare ourselves for the heavyweights. Like
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: the principal investigator on this Argon project, physicist Young Zoo,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: laid out the road map ahead. The next step is
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: to upgrade from the pion to the proton itself.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: That's the next massive hurdle. They plan to use an
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: even more advanced system at the Argon Leadership Computing Facility,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: the Aurora Supercomputer to map the proton in three dimensions.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Aurora.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Aurora is an exass scale supercomputer, meaning it can
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: perform over quintillion operations per.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Second a quintilion. Mapping the proton in full three D
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: is kind of the ultimate prize, isn't it. I mean, protons,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: together with neutrons, make up all the atomic nuclei i
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: in existence. Everything we see, every star in the sky,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: every planet, every drop of water, every single cell in
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: your body, it all comes back to protons. By mapping
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: the pion first, scientists have essentially built the mathematical tools
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: and proved the methodology they needed to completely decode the
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: building blocks of all visible matter in the universe.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: The Aurora supercomputer will allow for an even deeper, exponentially
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: more complex lattice simulation. As our computational power grows, our
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: literal resolution of reality grows.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: With it, like putting on glasses for the first time.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Exactly. We are moving from a fuzzy, abstract understanding of
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: nuclear physics to a sharp, high definition three dimensional reality.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: It is truly staggering when you step back and look
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: at the journey we just took. I mean, we started
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: with a fundamental question, what holds you me and the
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: chair you're sitting in together.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: The basic glue of the universe.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Right. We dove past the atoms, past the nucleus to
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: find the pion, the invisible dynamic medicine ball of the universe.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: We explored how scientists used millions of grid points of
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: forty space time inside the Polaris supercomputer to essentially build
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: a virtual universe just to see how quarks dance inside
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: this particle. All mathematically perfect, and we emerge with a blueprint,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: a high resolution three D map that explains why this
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: particle actually shrinks as it speeds up, laying the critical
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: groundwork for the next generation of physical particle accelerators.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: It is a profound testament to human curiosity. We are
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: using massive macroscale engineering supercomputers the size of office buildings,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: just to understand the absolute smallest, most fleeting mechanics of nature.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And it leaves you with a thought that is honestly
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: hard to shake. Well, if mapping the internal structure of
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: the absolute lightest composite particle in nature, just one single particle,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: requires simulating forty space time across millions of grid points
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: on one of the most powerful supercomputers on Earth, what
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: unimaginable level of computing power will humanity eventually need to
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: fully simulate the complex, everyday reality we experience around us.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Wow, it is a humbling perspective on just how mathematically
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: dense and computationally heavy our physical universe truly is.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: It really is? So flex your fingers one more time.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: The sheer amount of sub atomic data processing happening naturally
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: in that one simple movement is beyond anything our greatest
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: machines can currently handle. Keep questioning the universe around you,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: because the closer you look, the more incredible it gets.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us on this exploration.