Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions about rogue planets and black holes!

Transcript

Listener Questions about rogue planets and black holes! · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how's the podcast email inbox looking?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's pretty massive?
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Massive? You mean like people are asking about mask or
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: are you just getting a lot of emails both?
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Actually, we're getting many emails about massive topics.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Well, it must be weighing heavily in the minds of
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: our listeners. But do you ever worry that your inbox
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is going to collapse into a black hole.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I'm doing my best to keep it from growing by
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: emitting email Hawking radiation to shrink it.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Ooh, how do you do that? You just like give
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: out Stephen Hawking vibes.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Now I try to answer as many limb as I can.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if that works. You know that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the more emails you write, the more emaos you get.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you might be right, you know. I was hoping
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: to get to some sort of like general relativity singularity
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: like inbox zero.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: But zero is not a singularity, and similarity means one.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Or maybe you mean like all of the emails in
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the universe crime into one message.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: That would be awesome and I could answer all the
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: questions all at once, But.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Then what happens when you hit reply? Then it's not
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: a singularity anymore.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Then I Collapse.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Hi am Horehem, a cartoonist and the creator of PHP comments.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: at UC Irvine, and I love reading your emails. Send
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: me more and more and more.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Like all of a person's emails, or just the ones
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: related to physics.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I love reading the emails they send to me. Emails
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: between other people not interesting to me.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's kind of nosy there. I love
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: reading emails.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: I am not the NSA. I'm not interested in what
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: you wrote to your partner, or to your kids, or
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: really to anybody else. But when you say and me
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: emails with questions about the universe, I love seeing those.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: But wait, if you were the NSA, would you tell us.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: If I was the NSA, I would say exactly what
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I'm saying now.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Which is nothing very suspicious.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Den I deny. That's the playbook.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: But anyways, Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: In which we dig into our questions about the nature
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: of the universe. Why is it like this, why isn't
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: it some other way? How does it work? What's out there? Anyway,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: and can we make sense of it. We marinate in
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: those questions and try to think up answers. We take
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: you to the very forefront of human and scientific knowledge
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: about what we do and do not know. And we
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: also love hearing about your questions about the universe.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it is an amazing universe, but it is
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: kind of questionable. I feel the universe in the sense
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: that it's a kind of a little bit sus you know,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: like it pretends to be one thing, but then when
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you dig into it, it's like totally different, very questionable.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: That's just your interpretation. Man, The universe has been consistent
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: this whole time. You just misunderstood what was going on.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Well, I see the blame you for being fooled.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: I guess I blame all of humanity for its misunderstanding
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: of the universe. You know, it's not like the Sun
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: was going around the Earth for thousands of years while
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: we thought that was happening. The Earth was going around
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the Sun the whole time. We just misunderstood.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I see. So all those flat earthers out there, it's
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: not their fault.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: It is their fault, exactly, It's their fault. They're misunderstanding
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: what the universe is doing. The most amazing, incredible thing
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: about the universe is that it does seem to be
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: logically consistent, that it does make some sense, that it
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: can be described at all by mathematical formulas that make
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: sense to humanity. We don't even know why that is,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: but it gives us the power to unravel some of
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: these mysteries through careful experimentation and thought.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what I meant also when I
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: said the universe is questionable, but it's like you can
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: ask questions about it, you know, like you can think
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: about it, look at things, and formulate questions about it
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: that then you can and kind of confirm or denying
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: or answer using experiments.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish we could directly just ask questions to
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: like an oracle of the universe and get answers that
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: made sense to us. Instead, we have to sort of
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: like corner of the universe into revealing secrets, setting up
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: special circumstances that will answer our question and say like, oh,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: are you doing this or are you doing that. That's
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: basically what we call experimental science is forcing the universe
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: to reveal some of its secrets. But I wish it
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: would just come right out and tell us.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I guess you could ask chad GPT that's sort of
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: like an oracle. Have you tried that? Have you tried
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: asking it physics questions?
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: I have?
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Actually, it's just a nonsense generator. I mean, it's just
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: generates words. It doesn't have any understanding behind it. There's
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: no like mind there, not yet yet.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Exactly do you think you'll replace physicists someday?
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: No, Chad GPT is not capable of generating new knowledge.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: It's like a huge interpolation scheme. It just like reads
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff, and when you ask a question,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: it's like maybe the answer is sort of between this
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: thing I and that other thing that I read.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I think you're describing all of the entertainment industry there.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right, Yeah, exactly. It's like Diehard meets Fast
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: and Furious or something. Right, that's exactly what they're up
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: there doing.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Meets physics. Just mix physics in there, and we've got
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a blockbuster.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Netflix. We are ready to pitch you the details.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: But do you think maybe someday it will be able
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to do science? Like you know, you could say the
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: same thing about humans that humans can't come up with
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: anything new. But yet humans are still able to.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Humans are definitely capable of coming up with new stuff.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: We're not just constrained by what we have learned. I
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: think that our neural networks are much further advanced than
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: chat GPT. It is, for example, possible to imagine a
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: neural network which comes up with new theories and then
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: like runs simulations to verify at least that its theories
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: makes sense. So you can imagine a chat GPT based theorist,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: for example, be.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: A chat PhD.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So you think it is possible then for an AI
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to do signs in the.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Future, Oh, in the future, absolutely, yes, because.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Then you just have to plug it into external sensors
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and then it's taking data from the universe, and then
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it could formulate its own theories.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I don't think there's a theoretical limit. But
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: large language models are not doing that at all. They
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: don't have a model inside them of how the universe
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: works that they're using to generate hypotheses, so just generating
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: strings of text.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: But I wonder if right now, like maybe like you know,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: like the asterisk to the universe is there in all
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of the literature, all the physics literature that humans have made.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: We just don't see it right now. Maybe an AI could,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: you know, string together some papers and come up with
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the one theory.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: It's certainly possible. There were lots of moments in the
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: history of physics when great ideas were out there in papers,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: just waiting for somebody to read them and put them together.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Like Einstein's formulation of a photon is an explanation for
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: the photoelectric effect. All that dude did is read Plank's
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: papers and read papers about the photoelectric effect and put
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: those two things together. Chocolate plus peanut butter, and boom,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: he had a Nobel Prize.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: There you go. He just did a reboot, is what
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: you're saying, right. He was like, I have a new theory.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: It's dark matter meets black holes meets electromagnetic force. Boom.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what he did. He was like Vin Diesel
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: plus Bruce Willis equals movie gold.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: But speaking about asking questions about the universe, that is
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: sort of how scientists explore the universe. It's by asking questions.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And it's not just scientists that ask questions. Everyone has questions,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: even our.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Listeners, especially our listeners. These are folks who think deeply
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: about the nature of the universe and are inherently curious
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: about why things work the way that they do. People
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: who are listening to the podcast are trying to assemble
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: in their minds some understanding of what's going on out there,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: and sometimes a bit of that like sticks out or
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: doesn't mesh well with another part, and so then they
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: write to us and they ask us about it. Can
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: you explain this to me? Or you said this and
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say that and it
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't make any sense. Please clarify. And I love getting
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: your questions. So if you are thinking about the nature
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: of the universe or don't understand something that we said,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: please write to us to questions at Danielandjorge dot com.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I wonder if a lot of people don't know
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: this by now that you can write to that email
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and actually get an answer. You're sort of like chat
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: gipt for physics and podcasts.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I'm going to try to take that as a compliment.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I do, indeed string words together to answer people's questions.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: There you go, and you don't do any new research.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: You're just kind of like parsing old research to give
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: them answers.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Well, it's true that answering these emails prevents me from
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: doing research because it takes my time, but I'm very
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: glad to do it. Absolutely.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe you should getchat Gypt to do your job and
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: then you can just answer questions.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Maybe all I'm doing right now is reading chat gipt
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: responses to what you say.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, maybe you mean I'm talking to an
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Ai right now.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Could be could be maybe I'm the NSA. Maybe I'm
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: an AI. Maybe I'm a combination.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're the NSAI. Oh my god, that's greenlight that movie.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe even Diesel is talking to an Ai and the
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: NSA is spying on them, and I'm relaying what the
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: NSA has learned.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Or you go up being I.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Knew it this whole time.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like I need a deeper, more
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: gravelly voice. But anyways, people do have questions, and Daniell
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: always answer them, and sometimes you pick some of these
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: questions to answer on the podcast.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: That's right. Sometimes there's a question that requires me to
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: do a little bit of research, or there's a question
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: I imagine a lot of people might be asking and would
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: like to hear any answer to do.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: They get a price. If they stump people.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: They get to hear their question on the podcast.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but do they get a price like a value? Exkidding?
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: You get to have your question heard by tens of
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of people.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: And you get the warm feeling that other people out
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: there who were curious about the same thing are also
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: hearing an answer.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: So to the end the podcast, we'll be tackling listener
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: questions number thirty eight. This is our thirty eight episode
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: where we answer questions.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Indeed, and we have many more of these sucked up.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I get these emails every single day and they are
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: piling up, so we are trying to work through the backlog.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Well, today we have some awesome questions here about rogue planets,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: about the electromagnetic force and the event horizon, and also
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: about black holes and hamsters. Our first one comes from
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Spencer Hygien Jorge.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: My name is Spencer. I hear the ramillions of rogue
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: planets in the Milky Way? Do we know how close
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: in yours?
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: One is?
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: What would happen if one got so close the song's
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: gravity put it into our Solar system? Even if I'm
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: passed by the York Cloud, would it cause problems.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you all right. Awesome question from Spencer. He sounds young.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: He sounds young and curious.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Which is the best, which also applies to me. I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: think he.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Also sounds kind of concerned. He's a little bit worried
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: about what's going to happen to our solar system if
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: one of these rogue planets comes for a visit.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: It does sound a little concerning. Even the name rogue planet.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: It sounds like a narrow, duel planet or a planet
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: that's up to no good.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: It's kind of sus right, like what do you doing
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: over their planet? Like get in mine?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: They go? She just call them suss planets.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know why astronomers don't just adopt your names.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: I don't either. But let's dig into this question here.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Spencer wanted to know how close is the closest rogue
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: planet out there and what would happen if one came
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: into our Solar system? Would it kind of mess things up?
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Or would it change things? Would it cause a meteor shower?
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: What would happen? So let's dig into Daniel, what exactly
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: is a rogue planet?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: So a rogue planet is the name we give to
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: a planet that's not gravitationally bound to a star. So
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: the Earth, for example, is orbiting the Sun, and you
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: can think of it as like trapped by the Sun's
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: gravitational field. There are other planets out there wandering the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Milky Way, just zooming around that are not trapped by
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: any particular star. They feel the tugs of those stars,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: but they have like enough velocity that they can escape
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the gravitational attraction of any particular star, so they're sort
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: of like on their own. You might also call them
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: like orphan planets.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Oh sounds sad, little bit. Can you adopt the planet?
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: It's possible, Yeah, absolutely. You can also give up planets
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: for adoption, or you can just sort of like eject them.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: And in fact, we think that's where most of the
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: rogue planets came from. We think that probably planets are
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: formed in the same process as stars are formed. They
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: have a big cloud of gas and dust which collapses
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: to form a planetary system, and you have the star
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: at the heart, and you form planets also further out
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: in the disk. But in the early days of that
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: formation it can be a little bit chaotic. It's not
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: necessarily the case that gravity forms objects in a way
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: that's going to be stable forever. So sometimes those objects
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: will interact with each other, and like a big planet
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: might even eject little planets from the Solar system.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: You mean, like every planet, even the rogue planets out there,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: have to have come from a star. Is it possible
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: to make a planet just out of like gas and
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: debris out there in space without a star forming?
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: It is possible, And there's a big debate exactly about
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: what constitutes a rogue planet, because, for example, you can
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: imagine a clump of stuff that doesn't have enough mass
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: to turn into a star that ignites into fusion, something
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: like a brown dwarf right, or like a super jupiter,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: And so as that clump gets smaller and smaller, it
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: could still form into an object. So there's a bunch
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: of stuff out there that people are wondering, like did
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: this come from a solar system or did it form
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: on its own?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: But the basic answer is that a rope planet is
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: just a planet that's out there in space, but it's
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: not orbiting a star, and it could have come from
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: a star system or it could have maybe just formed
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: out there by itself exactly.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: And the thing that might be surprising to a lot
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: of people. Is how not very rare. This is like
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: in our Solar System, we have good reason to believe
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: that there was once another big planet that got ejected.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: When Jupiter and Saturn wandered into the Inner Solar System
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: and then turned around and went back out to their
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: current locations, they probably ejected a big planet out there
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: into the Milky Way. So we probably have lost a planet.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: If you look out there into the Milky Way. There's
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: evidence that there might be billions or even trillions of
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: these things in the Milky Way. Whoa.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, wait, wait wait. First of all, I mean like
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: there might be like like the Earth might have a
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: twin sibling out there that's out there in space lost.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We don't know if it's an rocky planet like
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: the Earth or another gas giant. But if you look
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: at the history of the Solar System, it makes the
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: most sense of gravitationally if there was another planet which
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: has now been lost.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Whoa, it's like that story where you know twins are
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: born and then separated at birth and what if it
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: comes back.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: This is more like Joseph and the Technical dream Coade.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: You know, there were like ten kids and one of
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: them got given up.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Mmm, I'm not familiar with that Broadway reference, but tyke
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: care word for it.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: The other amazing thing you said was that the Milky
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Way maybe has trillions up to possibly trillions of rogue
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: planets in it. That's maybe more than regular planets.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really uncertain because these things are hard to see.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: You know, Planets in general are difficult to spot because
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: they don't glow right stars you can see in the sky.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: They send you photons, you know they're there, even if
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: they're distant, even if they're in other gallon. Planets of
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: course don't glow, so you can best see them when
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: they're close to stars, so they reflect their light. Even
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: that's tricky, right, because the stars are far away and
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: the planets are pretty close to the stars, So you
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: need really fancy technology to see the planets near the stars.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: But planets that are just like out there floating in
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: the black, it's pretty hard to spot them. So there's
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of uncertainty about how many there are.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: But you're saying it's possible there could be more than
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: there are regular planets orbiting stars.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They did this really cool study looking for micro lensing,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: looking for examples of when a star's light is distorted
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: because some massive object passes in front of it. So
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: imagine there's some star out there in the Milky Way
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: and a rogue planet like interrupts the path of photons
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: between us and it. It can basically create an eclipse
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: or a little gravitational microlensing event. So people have looked
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: for these and seen a bunch of them, and you,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: of course can't see every single rogue planet out there
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: using this technique. You have to get very, very lucky.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: But they saw so many of them that they were
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: able to extrapolate the numbers of rogue planets, and that's
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: where this estimate comes from. But it's a really big
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: extrapolation with a lot of uncertainty.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I feel like the fact that they're hard to see,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: it's very un brand with the name rogue planets.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: And like, declare your intentions planet, What are you doing
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: out there sneaking around in the dark.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if they were open and invisible, you
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: probably wouldn't call them rogue planets.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: We need to get the Galactic NSA to go spy
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: on these things and figure out what they're up to.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, you mean like a Galactic Physics Team or
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: something GPT.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: I'm going to send Vin Diesel out there to do this. Well.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Spencer's question here was what would happen if maybe a
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: rogue planet came into our Solar system, because that can
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: totally happen, right, These rogue planets are just floating around
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: in between stars and the space between stars, and so
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: it's totally possible that maybe one of them, maybe a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: big one, could come into our Solar system.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely possible. And the number of billions, maybe
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: trillions is kind of scary, but remember that stars are
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: really far apart, so there's a lot of space out
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: there for planets to be floating around and just never
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: bother anyone. We don't know how close the closest rogue
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: planet is because of course they're very dark, and so
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: there could be one kind of close that we don't see.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: The closest one that we have seen is about seven
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: light years away. Now, I remember the closest star is
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: about four light years away, So the closest rogue planet
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: is further than the closest star. But we saw it,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: and we saw it from its infrared emission. These things
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: are pretty cold, so they don't glow in the visible light,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: but they do glow in the infrared. So some of
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: our infrared space telescopes can spot these things.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Well, wait, we've actually seen one, Like what does it
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: look like? It looks like a star, but it's really
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: dim and mostly in the infrared. Is that how we
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: detected it?
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. This one is called WYSE eight five fives
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: zero seven one four, and it's called WYSE because it
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: was the Wise telescope, which is an infrared telescope, which
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: spotted this thing. And from its emissions you can estimate
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: its temperature because remember everything in the universe glows, and
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: it glows at a different spectrum based on its temperature.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Hotter things glow UV, Colder things glow in the infrared.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: So from its emissions they can estimate that this thing
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: surface temperature is like two hundred and sixty kelvin, so
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: like kind of like our temperature, but it's like something
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: between five and ten times the mass of Jupiter.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Whoa, it's huge. What didn't you call that just like
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: a red dwarf or something, or wouldn't it be equivalent
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: to a red dwarf?
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: A red dwarf has to be bigger, because a red
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: dwarf actually has fusion going on in the heart of it,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: it is glowing. But something that isn't big enough to
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: actually ignite fusion is called a brown dwarf. And in
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: order to be called a brown dwarf, you have to
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: have thirteen times the mass of Jupiter, and this thing
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: is like five to ten. So it's ryan on the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: threshold between rogue planet and sort of a failed star.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: It's a rogue dwarf maybe, which I think is a
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: new kind of dungeons and dragons class of character.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: It's got some special spills.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Well that's interesting. You can see one. And how do
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: we know how big it is? I mean, it's so
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: far away seven point three light years, wouldn't it just
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: look like a pinpoint from here? How can we know
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: how heavy it is?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: It comes from model of brown dwarfs, like we have
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: ideas or how these things form, how they get to
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: be a certain temperature. So from the temperature, basically we
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: infer like how massive it would have to be in
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: order to have that temperature. So that's also like very uncertain.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: We can't measure the physical size of this thing. It
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: is just a pinprick but just from the spectrum, we
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: could say what's the most likely object to have emitted
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: this kind of photon, and that's where we get the
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: mass from.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Now, you said this is the closest one we've observed.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Do you think this is the closest rope planet to us?
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Or could there be more rogue planets that are closer
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to us?
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Almost certainly there are more rogue planets that are closer
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: to us. Right, we look at a tiny spectrum of
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the sky. These things are very dim. You basically have
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: to point the telescope right at one of these things
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: in order to see it. So we kind of got lucky.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: It's almost certainly true that there are other rogue planets
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: that are closer. We just haven't seen them yet. I mean,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: we haven't even seen every rock in our solar system. Right,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Asteroids inside our solar system escape our detection all the
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: time because they just don't reflect light at the right
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: angle for us to spot them. We're talking about stuff
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: that's much further away than inside our solar system. It's
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: definitely possible for there to be other rogue planets pretty
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: close by.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Well, let's get into Spenser's idea for a new Netflix
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: movie What if a rogue planet came into our Solar System?
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: What what happen? Would it mess things up? Or would it
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: just go straight through?
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: It would be bad. We do not want a rogue
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: planet to go through our solar system. There's a whole
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: spectrum from like disastrously terribly vin diesel bad, all the
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: way up to dinosaur annihilation of the Earth kind of
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: bad or possibly maybe not very much happens. There's a
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: huge spectrum there, Like the worst case scenario is a
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: rogue planet comes in and smashes into the Earth, like
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: actually collides planet on planet.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I guess that's a possibility, but it seems almost impossible, right,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, the Solar System is a huge place. It's
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: almost like, what are the chances that we'll run into
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: an asteroid or anything like that? Right? It'd be really
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: bad luck.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: It would be really bad luck. Somebody would have to
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: throw a dart from a zillion miles away and hit
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: a bull's eye. Absolutely, this thing would be moving really fast,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: so it's not like it'st in Earth's gravity would attract
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: each other. The typical velocity in the Milky ways, you know,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: tens of kilometers per second, so it'd be zipping quite
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: a long. On the other hand, you know, Earth has
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: had big collisions in the past. We think that the
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: formation of the Moon came from the collision of Earth
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: and some other planet. So there have been like massive
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: planet planet collisions in the Solar System before.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: And I guess if these things are maybe five times
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: bigger than Jupiter, that's that's pretty big. That makes it
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: that makes it more likely to run into it.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Earth would be like a mosquito on the
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: windshield of this thing if that happened right, it might
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: not even impact that planet too much. If Earth smashed into.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: It, who that would be a sad death.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: That would be a sad death exactly. Remember when that
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: comet hit Jupiter, we saw those big collisions that made
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: fireballs the size of the Earth, and Jupiter just like
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: shrugged it off. So now you're talking about a planet
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: like five or ten times the size of Jupiter and
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: running into Earth. It would just like gobble us up
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: without even noticing. It would gobble Jupiter up without That
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: would be really spectacular. A huge collision between Jupiter and
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: something else would create an enormous light show in our
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Solar system. And at first it really fascinating because we
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: learned a lot about the interior of Jupiter and this
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: other planet, because it would be strewn all over the
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Solar System. On the other hand, it would create a
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: lot of debris and some of that would probably come
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: down to Earth and rain down on us, which would
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: be bad.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say it sounds cool, but not
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: if you live in Jupiter.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Even if this thing hit the Sun, which is not
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: too unlikely, that would also be dangerous. I mean, the
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: thing would be tiny compared to the Sun, right, but
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: it could cause like a disruption in the Sun, maybe
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: a huge coronal mass ejection, which should like fry all
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: of our satellites.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: All right, Maybe step us through some of the possibilities
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I could. I mean you said it can come in
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: and hit us. It could maybe come in and hit
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: another planet and create a bunch of debris that then
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: gets to us. Are there other possibilities like could it
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: disrupt the meteor clouds out there, like Spencer mentioned.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Even if it doesn't smack into the Sun or smack
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: into any planets. Spencer was told right that it could
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: cause other disturbances in our Solar system, Like number one,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It could tug on planets and change their orbits, Like
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: it could make the Earth's orbit more elliptical so that
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: we have like weirder seasons, or so that we're like
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: not really in the habitable zone anymore. Or even if
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: it doesn't affect the Earth's orbit directly, our Sun and
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: our Solar system is surrounded by a huge pile of
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: snowballs out in the orc cloud that Spencer mentioned, and
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: sometimes things will come by and disturb one of those
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: and it'll fall into the Inner Solar System as a comet.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Those comets are spectacular, but they're also dangerous.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: We are a downwind of all of those things, and
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: if one of them smacks into the Earth, it's like
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: dinosaur extinction all over again.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: So overall, not a good picture to invite a rogue
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: planet into our system exactly.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Do not invite any rogue planets?
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Is there a positive outcome? Like could we adopt this planet?
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Like could this planet come in and just join the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: party and everything's all right?
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: It's possible. I suppose that it comes into the outer
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Solar System and doesn't really disrupt the Inner Solar System
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: that much, but a really big one and would have
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: impacts all over the Solar System. I mean Jupiter, for example,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: influences every other object in the Solar System gravitationally because
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: of its mass. Now, a small rogue planet in the
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: outer Solar System might not do much damage and it
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: might just be kind of cool, So the benefits would
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: be like ooh, astronomers would be pretty excited.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Hmm interesting. All right, well, it sounds like the answer
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: is that the closest rogue planet that we know about
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: is seven point three light years away, and if one
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: ever came into our Solar system, it would probably not
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: be good.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: It would be pretty bad news, but it might make
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Vin Diesel have a cool adventure.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: For the last time. Unfortunately, we would all have one
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: last adventure.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Seem the ultimate, Fast and Furious.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: The last and furious. All right, let's get into some
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of these other questions from listeners, but first let's take
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, we're answering listener questions today,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and we just answered the question from Spencer about road planets,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and so let's get into some of these other questions.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: The next question comes from Mark, who's from Belgium.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel and Jorge, this is Mark from Belgium. I
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: have a question for you guys. You told us on
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: the podcast that you can know three things of a
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: black hole, namely it's mass, its rotation, and it's electrical charge. Now,
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: on the other hand, if the electromagnetic force is transmitted
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: by photons but they are not able to escape the
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: event horizon of the black hole, how can any observer
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: ever measure the electrical charge of a black hole? Thank
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: you love the podcast awesome.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you Mark for that great question, and also thank
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: you to Spencer. I forgot to thank him for his question.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: But Mark has an interesting question here about black holes
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and their charge.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I love this question from Mark. It gets to
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the heart of a question that I get all the
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: time about how information can escape the event horizon and
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: if you're feeling a black hole's mass or charge or
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: you gain information from inside the event horizon.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a tricky question because, as we've
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: mentioned here in the podcast, a black hole is called
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a hole because information and things like like cannot escape
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: it once it goes in. And so I guess the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: general question is like, how do we measure anything about
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: black holes because if nothing can come out of them?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you can measure things about black holes the
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: way you can measure things about any other object. You know,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: you can measure black hole's mass by seeing the gravity
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: that it induces on nearby stuff. That's one way that
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: we detect black holes. We see like stars whizzing around them,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: being pulled by their gravity, And you could, in theory,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: do the same thing about its charge. You could see
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: the effect of a black hole on an electron, or
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: on a proton or any other charge particle that would
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: feel its field. The way you can feel a black
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: hole's gravitational field even if you're not inside the event horizon,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: you can also feel its electric field even if you're
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: not inside the event horizon.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. It makes me wonder if, like you know,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: gravity is made out of particles like gravitons, for example,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: could gravit escape a black hole.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really the heart of Mark's question. He's imagining
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: that all information about forces is transmitted via particles. And
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I think he asked his question about an electromagnetism because
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: we know that electromagnetism is communicated via photons. So he's wondering, like,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: how does that work when a particle flies by a
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: black hole? Can the singularity. If it has electric charge,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: emit a photon to pull on that particle and affect it.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: How does that work if the photons are trapped inside
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the event horizon. I think that's the core of his question.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's sort of asking, how do you measure the
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: charge of a black hole if you can't really talk
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: to a black hole because the black hole can't emit photons.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: And the short answer to the question is that the
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: event horizon doesn't prevent a field from existing. It sort
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: of freezes the field of the black hole. Like the
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: black hole gets its electric charge from something that fell
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: into the black hole that had electric charge, Like you
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: threw an electron into it. Right, Well, what happens when
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: you throw an electron into a black hole is it
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: had a field just before it fell into the black hole.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: What happens when it falls past the event horizon is
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: that field is now frozen. Anything else that the electron
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: does inside the event horizon, move around, wiggle, do a
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: little dance, whatever. You don't learn anything about that. You
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: just see the electrons field from the moment before it
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: fell in. That field is frozen, and so you can
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: still feel that field. In fact, it has to freeze,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: otherwise you would be learning something about what's going on
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: beyond the event horizon.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I think what you're saying is that when an
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: electron goes into a black hole, the field doesn't disappear,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: It just kind of gets frozen. But you also said
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: that you can feel that electric field. But to feel
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: that electric field, you need photons, right to feel it,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: to have it impact something else, it needs to communicate
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: a photon, And so how did that photon escape the
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: event horizon.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. The short answer is that
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: you don't need photons to feel an electric field. You
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: only need photons to get updates about the electric field.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: In fact, that's what a photon is. I mean, step
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: away from a black for a moment and think about
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: how you make a photon. How would you generate radiation?
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Take an electron, it's just floating in space. It has
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: an electric field. If it just sits there and keeps
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: its electric field, it's not shooting photons out. It just
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: has a static electric field. To make photons, you got
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: to like wiggle the electron. Wiggling the electron moves that
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: electric field, and so it like changes the electric field.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: It makes it go up and down and up and down.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: That's what a photon is. A photon is an update
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: to the electric field. It's a ripple in that electric field.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: A static electric field. You shouldn't think of it as
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: like shooting photons out is just sort of like sitting
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: there unchanging. A photon carries information about a change in
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: the electric field. But once the electron falls into the
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: black hole, there is no change in the electric field.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: It's just frozen.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: So wait, so you just feel like you can fuss
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: me a little bit because you just said that feeling
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: an electric field m is when the electron field changes.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: But now you're saying that the electric field gets frozen
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: at the edge of a black hole. So then there's
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: how can you feel the electric field?
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: If there's no changing you can feel a static electric field.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Is no photon required there. A photon is emitted when
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: the electric field changes. When you wiggle the electric field,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: you have an update to the electric field. That's when
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: information is moving through the electric field. That's what a
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: photon is. A photon is a wiggle in the electric field,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: and that's a real photon, right. There's also this concept
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: of like virtual photons for people who don't like to
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: think in terms of fields. There's two pictures to like
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: how two particles interact with each other. The field picture
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: is that an electron creates an electric field, and that
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: field can push on other charged particles. The other picture
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: is like, no, fields are nonsense, everything's particles. What's happening
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: instead is that there are virtual particles being emitted by
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: one electron that pushes on the other electron. Mathematically, they're
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: really equivalent. It's just like writing things down in different
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: terms and giving them different philosophical names. I think the
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: field field picture is clearest here because you can think
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: of it as frozen. You can think of it as
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: like fixed in space, as no information being moved.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see you're saying. There's sort of two kinds
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: of photons. Or there are the real photons that are
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: sort of like the light that you can see, and
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: then there's virtual photons, which is sort of how maybe
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: particles interact or feel each other's electric fields exactly.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: And you shouldn't think of virtual photons as like particles.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: They don't follow the same rules, they aren't limited by
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: the same rules. They can have weird properties like negative
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: mass or all sorts of weird things. They're not really particles.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: They're really just another way of describing interactions for people
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: who like to avoid thinking in terms of fields, and
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: you can choose fields or particles. They're philosophically different but
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: mathematically equivalent. And so if you don't like to think
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: about fields, you can think about instead as like an
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: infinite sum of virtual particles. But really it's the same thing,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: and in this case, it's much easier to understand what's
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: going on if you think about it in terms of fields.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: So then an electron that goes or is about to
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: go into a black hole, that electron that's at the
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: edge can't emit a real photon, like you can never
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: see that electron, but you can still maybe feel its
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: pull through these virtual photons or it's kind of it's.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's the same thing with mass, right, Like
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: you can still feel the mass of an object when
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: it falls into the event horizon. It makes the black
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: hole more massive, it has more gravity, which you're feeling
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: is the gravity of that object just before it fell
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: into the event horizon. It's frozen there. Now the object
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: can do whatever it likes when it's inside the event horizon.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: You'll never know what the electron inside the event horizon
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: may be wiggling and dancing and emitting all sorts of
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: real photons within the event horizon you will never see,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: but the field that it had just before it fell in,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: that's now frozen in space.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I still feel like maybe, and I think this is
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: what maybe Mark is wondering. Even if it is a
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: virtual photon that it's emitting and not a real one,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: still feels like there's information coming out of the black hole,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and that information feels like it shouldn't be able to
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: come out of it because it's a black hole.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: But the only information you're sensing is that an electron
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: has fallen in. Right. The field tells you an electron
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: has fallen in. You knew that already. That's information from
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: outside the event horizon. No information from within the event horizon,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: like what the electron did, if it got Annihilator to destroyed,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: or went to another universe or ate a banana. None
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: of that information is coming out past the event horizon.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: The only thing you know is what you already knew
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: before the electron went in, that there's an electron there
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: and it has a field. Once it goes in boom,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: that gets frozen in time. There's no more information coming out.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see it sort of like because a black
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: hole freezes time at its edge, you're not getting information
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: from the electron inside the black hole. You're getting the
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: information of the electron right before it fell into the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: black hole.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That's exactly the right way to think about it.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Whatever field it had just before it fell in, it
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: can't change because in order for it to change, you
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: would have to be getting information about what it did
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: after it fell through the event horizon. You can only
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: know about what happened just before the moment it fell
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: through the event horizon. That gets frozen in time.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: But then I guess, if it gets frozen in time,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: how does it get out. If it's frozen in time.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: The electron can't get out and no more information can
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: get out. But the field is still there because the
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: black hole itself now has a charge. Right. An electromagnetism
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: says anything with a charge has an electric field. So
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: think of the black hole as just like a big
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: particle with a charge on it. It generates an electric field, right,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: You don't wonder like, how does the electrons electric field
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: come out of the electron. That's just what an electric
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: charge is. It's something that generates an electric field through space. Now,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: assign the electric charge to the black hole, the whole thing,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: instead of to the electron within it. Assign it to
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the event horizon instead, if you like.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Right, But like, let's say that a black hole has
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: an overall negative charge. Like I have a neutral black hole,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: but I throw a bunch of electrons in. So now
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the black hole has a negative charge, and it's over
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: there and over here, I have one electron. These two
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: things are going to repel each other. Right, my electron
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: is going to be repelled by this negative black hole.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: How does that force get exchanged? Don't they need to
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: swap real photons in order to push against each other?
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Mm hm. But those photons do not need to come
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: from within the event horizon, right, Those photons can come
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: from the outside the event horizon. If you're just imagining
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: the whole black hole itself has a charge. Now, then
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: it interacts the way anything with a charge does. The
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: way like you could replace it with just another particle
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: that has a negative charge instead of thinking about it
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: as a black hole.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see, it's sort of like the nature of
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: these virtual particles, they're not really being exchanged back and forth.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: They're more like they're they're coming into existence around my
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: electron exactly.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: But a black hole can emit real photons also, Like,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: take a charge black hole and wiggle it. What happens
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: is it's electric field wiggles because you're moving the black hole,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: and it generates electromagnetic radiation from the outside of the
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: event horizon. The same way if you wiggle a black hole,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: it generates gravitational radiation because you're changing the gravitational field
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: in the vicinity. In the same way, anything with mass
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: that you wiggle generates gravitational radiation, anything with charge that
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: you wiggle generates electromagnetic radiation from its outside. You don't
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: have to know anything about what's going on inside past
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: the event horizon.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: But wait, if you wiggle a black hole, you're saying
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: it's supposed to glow, But wouldn't that light just get
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: sucked back right into the black hole?
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, it's emitted from just outside the event horizon.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: So depending on the direction, it might like orbit the
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: black hole or fall back in, or it might escape. Yes, absolutely,
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: that's cool.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: All right, it sounds like it's a little bit complicated.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: But to answer Mark's question, black holes that have charge,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: you can still measure their charge because that's just kind
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: of how the universe is. I feel like that's the answer.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: You just can't because Daniel says so.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Because the field is frozen, right, you can't learn about
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: what happens after it falls into the event horizon. You've
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: stuck with a story of what happened just before it
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: fell in.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe the answer is more like, that's how
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the universe works. Like, if something has charged, even if
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: it's a black hole or something else, you can feel
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: it from a distance. That's just the way the universe
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: is with something has a charge that you feel it
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: from a distance, and the exact mechanism, whether it's like photons,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: virtual photons, or if it's just that's how fields work.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like maybe that's kind of the answer.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. You know,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: the electron that falls in, maybe it's transformed into something else,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: it's not an electron anymore, but the charge persists, right,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: So now just put that charge on the event horizon. Say,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: now the event horizon has a charge and it acts
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: like any other charge object in the universe.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you Mark for that question. And so let's
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: get into our last question of the episode, and this
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: one comes from a ten year old in Canada who
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: has a question about black holes and lamas. So let's
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: get into that, but first let's take another quick break.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: All right, we are answering listener questions today and our
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: last question comes from Daniel. Another Daniel. Is this your
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: alternate universe Daniel version? Or did you clone yourself?
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: This is like mini media ten year old Daniel curious
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: about black holes?
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: WHOA did you go back in time and ask yourself
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: what you wanted to know in your future podcast? That
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: sounds like another Netflix movie idea.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: By the way, that does Is Vin Diesel going to
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: play me in that version?
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I think maybe that is the plot of a Netflix
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: movie starring Ryan Reynolds.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I think they'd be more likely to get Seth Rogan
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: to play me than Ryan Reynolds.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: That would be a pretty good cat actually, and I'll
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: take us simu liu.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: I guess see sounds good.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Well, anyways, that this last question comes from a Daniel
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and he's ten years old and he's from Canada.
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: Hello Daniel, and Jorge. I'm Daniel, ten years old and
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: from Canada. I love your podcast and thank you for
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: choosing me for it. I was wondering whether it was
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: possible to make a black hole out of a single particle,
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: and if you can, we'll to be able to suck
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: in something bigger like a hamster or a lama.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Awesome question. Daniels must have a really good
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: questions in Jenna.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm worried about this Daniel's pets. Does he
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: have a hamster and a lama and he's like thinking
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: about making a black hole and what it would do
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: to them? Is he planning an experiment.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: He wants to get rid of with his hamster or lama?
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Or maybe he wants to get rid of the lama
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: but not the hamster, And so he's wondering, like how
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: big of a black hole do I need to make
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: so I can get rid of one but not the other.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Maybe he's tired of cleaning up after this lama and
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: he's got plans.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe he needs more room for more hamster
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: that I don't know.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a great question, absolutely.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. Daniel's question here is can
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: you make a black hole out of a single particle,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: And if you can, what size of mammo can it
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: absorb exactly? And I think we need to be precise here.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: He's very interested up to a few decimal points.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should have corresponded with Daniel's parents before we
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: gave him instructions for how to destroy the family pet.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: But hey, let's just go with it.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Why constrain the curiosity of youth?
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: iHeart legal will defend us in court.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there you go.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a great question, and the answer is that
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: we don't know because we don't understand the gravity of
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: tiny little particles. It's a fun question because in general
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: relativity we say that you can make a black hole
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: out of basically anything, as long as you squeeze it
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: down to be dense enough. Like you take the Earth
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: and you squeeze it down to like the size of
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: a peanut, it could make a black hole. You don't
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: need a huge amount of masks to make a black hole.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: What you need is an enormous density. So the Sun
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: could be a black hole, the Earth could be a
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: black hole. You could be a black hole if you
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: squeeze it down hard enough that's in general relativity, which
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: says that like space and matter are continuous and so
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: you can have infinitely small stuff and you can squeeze
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: things down as much as you like, and the rules
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: don't change. And as you get to really small.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Stuff, even a hamster, right, like, you can make a
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: black hole out of a hamster. How big would you
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: have to squeeze a hamster or how small would you
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: have to squeeze it to make a black hamster hole?
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Man, the human in me doesn't want to answer that question,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: but the physicist says that it's smaller than a millimeter.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Give in to the dark type.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Nobody out there, please squeeze your hamster down to a
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: millimeter size hamster reno to test my calculations.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: It's probably smaller than a millimeter, right, isn't it?
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: All right, let's do the calculation. So if you look
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: up the swartziled radius, that's like basically the radius that
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: you need to compress an object to make it a
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: black hole. It's a pretty simple formula. It's two times
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: big G times the mass divided by the speed of
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: lights squared. Big G is the gravitational constant. So if
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: we plug that in and we say, like, how massive
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: is a hamster? It's like, what point one kilograms?
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, I haven't haven't weighed a lot
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: of hamsters in my life.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Well, if you assume the object is point one kilograms
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: and you plug that all in, then the math tells
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: us that you need to squeeze your hamster down to
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: less than one point five times ten to the negative
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: twenty eight meters. So that's a really pretty tiny number.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: WHOA, what is that? Is that down to the size
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: of like an atom maybe? Or what how much is
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: an engstrm oh?
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: An atom is much much big than ten to the
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: minus twenty eight meters. Humanities only ever probe down to
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: like ten of the minus twenty meters in our deepest
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: collisions in proton colliders, for example. So we're talking about
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: things that are much much smaller than our idea of
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: like the size of a quark.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, So I guess if you take a hamster
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: and squeeze it down that small, then it would be
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: a mini black hole hamster.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: According to general relativity. Right, But we don't think that
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: general relativity is an accurate description of what happens when
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: things get really really small, because that's when quantum mechanics
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: takes over. Quantum mechanics tells us the universe is not
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: smooth and continuous, but it's discrete, that matter is broken
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: up into chunks, and then maybe even space is quantized.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: And so in order to answer this question, we need
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: a theory of quantum gravity that tells us what happens
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: to gravity for particles.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Well, I think maybe Daniel's general question is like, if
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: you can make a black hole out of anything, and
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: why can you make it out of one particle? Because,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: as you say, all you need is a bunch of
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: mass concentrated in one place. And maybe he's thinking, like
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: a single particle out there in space by itself is
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: mass and it is constrained to a very small spot
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: because technically particles point masses, and so then doesn't mean
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: you have kind of like infinite density in a particle
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: out there in space, And wouldn't that make a black hole?
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question, and he's totally right, right,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: If electrons really are point particles when they have mass
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: and no volume, then they're already singularities and they should
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: be black holes. And so one to answer to that
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: question is, well, quantum mechanics must prevent it from happening.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: There's something going on there that says this theory of
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: black holes just doesn't work anymore when you get to
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: really really small masses, something else takes over.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Or could it be that electrons are black holes? They
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: just look like electrons from the outside to us.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: That's the other answers, like, well, how would you know? Right,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe electrons actually are black holes and they have been
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: this whole time, And there's actually a theory about that
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: that suggests that all electrons actually are black holes. And
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: this connects with Mark's question because like, how would you
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: tell how do you know what's going on inside an electron? Anyway?
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: If it was a super tiny black hole, you just
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: assign it's charged to its electronic event horizon and it
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: acts exactly the same way.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, there is a theory out there that
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: says that all particles, electrons, quarks, everything that exists in
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: nature is its own little black hole.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, there is actually a theory out there. It's kind
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: of fringe, but there are some theorists who are working
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: on that saying, like, hmm, if these things really are
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: point particles, maybe we don't need to explain away why
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: they're not black holes, because there's no consequence of them
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: being black holes. They just are, which would mean that like, hey,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: your hamster is already made of black holes.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: It would mean we're made out of black holes. Yeah,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: it would mean like every particle in my body that
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I'm made out of is a black hole. I am
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: like a giant black hole system.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you're wondering, well, why wouldn't the electron
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: black hole then just like suck everything up. Remember, black
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: holes don't really just suck things up. I mean they
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: have gravity, just like anything else with that mass has gravity.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: And we're talking about an electron. It has almost no
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: mass as a tiny tiny mass, and so its mass
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: isn't enough to suck other things up. Like the gravity
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: between an electron and a proton in the hydrogen atom
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: is basically zero, especially compared to their electromagnetic interaction, and
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: so it's totally possible for the proton and the electron
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: to be black holes orbiting each other, making black hole
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: hydrogen interesting.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just made me think, like, what if a
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: black hole kind of referencing our previous question, what if
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: a black hole has a super amount of negative charge?
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Like you throw a bunch of electrons into it, so
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: it's super negatively charged, and then you take two of
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: those negatively charge electrons, they would repel each other mostly right, Like,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: if you put enough electric charge, they wouldn't be attracted
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: to each other and suck each other in. They would
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: actually repel each other, and so from a long distance away,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: they would just look like two giant electrons.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, because remember gravity is very very weak. I mean,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: in the case of black holes, it happens to be
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: powerful because typical stellar black holes are super massive, so
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: you can get really close to a lot of mass.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: But if you can make black holes that have low
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: mass things like electrons, that doesn't mean they're very powerful.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Their electromagnetic charge is much more powerful than their mass.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: And so the most interesting thing about these electron black holes,
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: it's not their mass, it's their charge that dominates what
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: they do.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: So maybe one answer to Daniel's question is can you
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: make a black hole out of a single particle? The
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: answer is maybe yes, Maybe all particles are black holes.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Maybe you already did, Daniel without asking your parents.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Maybe well, his hamster and Lama will already be black holes,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: So good luck. Getting rid of them.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but to the relief of his hamster and his lama,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: if you did make an electron black hole, or if
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: electrons are black holes, they would have almost no effect
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: on your nearby hamster or lama, because again, their gravity
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: would be so tiny. Right. Not all black holes instantaneously
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: grow to become super big black holes. In fact, we
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: think that really small black holes radiate away their mass
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: really rapidly and don't last for very long. Hawking says
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: that tiny black holes radiate that. We've never seen that.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: So that's in conflict with this theory of like electron
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: black holes, because Hawking would say an electron black hole
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: wouldn't last very long. It would radiate away all of
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: its energy. But we don't know what's going on for
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: these particles. These are two very different ideas of microscopic
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: black holes, neither of which is probably right. Their universe
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: is probably doing something even weirder.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Well. I think the general answer is that once you
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: get down to single particles, or at least at that scale,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: then you get these quantum effects, and basically you don't
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: know what happens at that level, Like it could be
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: that all particles are black holes. Or it could be
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that there's something quantum about them that prevents a black hole.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: For me, some people think that there might be a
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: minimum mass to a black hole, because a black hole
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: smaller than that would radiate away all of its energy
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: basically instantly. But we just don't know. We do not
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: have a theory of quantum gravity, and it prevents us
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: from asking really interesting and important questions that affect the
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: lives of hamsters and lamas all over the world.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe to ask Daniel's curiosity here, what would be
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: the size of a black hole that could suck in
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: a hamster or a lama, or a hamster but not
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: a lama, or a lama but not a hamster.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. In order to put your
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: hamster in danger, you need an object with approximately the
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: gravity of the Earth, so you could like feel its
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: force or maybe a little bit less. But you wouldn't
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: need something the mass of the Earth because you could
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: feel the same equivalent strength of its gravity much much
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: closer up. So you wouldn't need a black hole the
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: mass of the Earth, but it would have to be
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: really pretty massive. I think you're talking about something like
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: the mass of the Empire. State Building.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: You mean to make like a tiny black hole that
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: could actually, you know, if you put it close to
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: your hamster, would suck your hamster in.
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: It would need enough gravity to suck your hamster in,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: and for that it would need to have a significant
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: amount of mass. An electron would not do it. Even
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: another hamster mass black hole would not do it because
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: a hamster has very very low gravity.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Well, Daniel, that's your answer, Then go get the Empire
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: State Building and make a black hole that and then
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: you can suck in your lama.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: And for the sake of iHeart legal that was jorge suggestion.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: I do not condone turning the Empire State Building into
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: a black hole.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: But your ten year old self does want to know,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and so which means maybe we've now altered the timeline.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: We've given your younger self disinformation and then created a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: split timeline where a ten year old do you creates
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: a black hole to suck in Islama or your your lama,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: I guess Islama, and then destroyed the earth in that timeline,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: so it's not gonna affect our time, and so I
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: think we're safe. Legally.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: I didn't follow any of that, but I'm gonna trust you.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Well, that was a plot of my new Netflix movies
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: starring Vin Diesel and Ryan Reynolds.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: Is there an alternate post credit scene where Daniel is
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: the Lama?
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, that happens too, and coincidentally, that whole plot was
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: just written by Chad Gpt. So all right, Well, thank
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: you young Daniel, who may or may not be Daniel's
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: real younger self. And thanks to all of our listeners
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: who sent us questions today.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks very much to everybody who's curiosity ePower science empowers
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: this podcast and keeps us entertained. Please continue to write
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: to us with your questions, your thoughts, your musings, your
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: complaints about the universe two questions at Danielandhorge dot com.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: You hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: you next time.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: you listen to your favorite shows.