Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / How did exotic particles change the Universe?

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How did exotic particles change the Universe? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, it Jorhan Daniel here, and we want to tell
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: you about our new book. It's called Frequently Asked Questions
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: about the Universe because you have questions about the universe,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and so we decided to write a book all about them.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: We talk about your questions, we give some answers, we
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: make a bunch of silly jokes as usual, and we
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: tackle all kinds of questions, including what happens if I
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: fall into a black hole? Or is there another version
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of you out there that's right? Like usual, we tackle
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the deepest, darkest, biggest, craziest questions about this incredible cosmos.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: If you want to support the podcast, please get the
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: book and get a copy not just for yourself, but
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: you know, for your nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, parents, dogs, hamsters,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and for the aliens. So get your copy of Frequently
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Asked Questions about the Universe is available for pre order now,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: coming out November two. You can find more details at
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the book's website, Universe f a Q dot com. Thanks
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: for your support, and if you have a hamster that
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: can read, please let us know. We'd love to have
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: them on the podcast. Hey Daniel, do you ever wish
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the universe was a bad simpler you mean, like easier
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: to understand. Yeah, you know, it seems so complex, filled
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: with crazy particles and weird phenomena that's hard to understand.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess I'm glad that the universe
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: is weird and mysterious. Well, I see, because then otherwise
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you'd be out of a job. Yeah, and we'd be
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: out of a podcast. But also because the universe without mystery,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it sounds boring. You make it sound
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: like understanding the universe would be born. Yeah, you know,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: sort of like you're watching that horror movie and it
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: shows you the monster a little too early, and you're like, hey, physicists,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: watch out. The truth is right behind you. Physicists don't
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: want to jump scare Hi'm more handing cartoonists and the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: physicist and a professor you see, Irvine, And I'm not
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: scared by anything the universe might offer us. Really not
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: even I don't know anything your kids might say to
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: you one day. I'm barely terrified of whether this world
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: will be livable for my kids. But when we do
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: uncover secrets of the Universe. I feel like I'm prepared
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: for the craziest, most bonkers is ideas out there. What
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: if it tells you that the universe is a horror movie,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: alien simulation or alien Netflix. Wow, if my life is
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: scaring people, I don't know what to say to that.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: It's pretty terrifying. Oh, I see, it's a it's more
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: of a tragedy than a horror It's a disaster movie.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Is a disaster movie? Well, if it's an American version,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: it's going to have a happy ending. So let's hope
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: for that. We're like the shark Nado of the Alien Netflix.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe let's just hope they got enough budget to make
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: realistic special effects and Welcome to our podcast Daniel and
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: in which we talked about everything that is special and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: everything that is mundane, and everything that is boring and
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: amazing about the universe. We take it all in stride.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: We want to understand all of it. We think the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: deepest thoughts about the universe, and we ask why is
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: it this way, Why is it not some other way?
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Why doesn't it make sense to us? We try to
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: digest all of the deepest questions in the universe, from
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: black holes to tiny particles to everything in between, and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: explain all of it to you, because it is a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: pretty exciting universe out there, full of interesting plots in
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: conflict and drama and sometimes a surprise twist ending. That's right.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: In this journey to uncover the nature of the universe,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: we have had lots of surprising moments where we found
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: things we didn't think we needed or things we certainly
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: didn't expect and later wondered, like do we really need
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: those bits where you scare it that is startled physicists.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: There are lots of moments like that. But you know
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: what they say, like a particle discovered in Act one
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: has to kill somebody in Act three with the renting
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: in the hall in the particle physics lab. Yeah, and
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it makes you ask a deeper question like is there
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a reason for everything? If you discover something about the universe,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean it had to be that way or could
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: it had just been accidental? Are you uncovering some grand
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: plan or just some like random collection of numbers that
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanically fell into place? Yeah? Like is there a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: sort of a structure or sort of some sort of
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a goal to the universe, or is it all just
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: kind of random? Right, because that's one theory of the
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: origin of the universe, that we're just kind of like
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: a random occurrence or a random fluctuation and in existence. Yeah,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of people ask why questions about physics, right.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Physics is mostly focused on how how does this work?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: How does this fit together? How does this talk to
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the other thing? But in the end, the reason we're
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: interesting these questions is because of the why questions. Why
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: is it this way and not some other way? And
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I hope that when we do have the full picture
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of how everything works, we can look at it in
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: see and say, hmm, well it couldn't be any other way,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: so it had to be this way. But you're right,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: it might just be that there are lots of universes
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and they're all just different and there's no rhyme or
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: reason why anyone is any certain way. Is randomly generated
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: by the Netflix agrilla? Is that random? I thought it
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be intelligent. Seems kind of randoms. There
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: are a lot of random shows and Netflix someuntimes it
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: seems random at least but physicists are asking pretty interesting
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: questions out there about the universe, the cosmos, what's out there,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: what's at the edge of the universe. But one of
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: the more interesting questions that physicists asked is kind of
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: about us, like what are we made out of? That's right,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: because we want to bring this question home in the end.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: This question is about our lives and our experiences and
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: understanding our world, and that of course includes us and
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: the things we eat and the things around us. And
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: when you look around yourself in the universe, you wonder, like,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: what is the pattern here? Am I similar to that rock?
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Do I have something in common with that squirrel or
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: that bit of lava? With that piece of ice cream
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: over there? We all made out of the same bits,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and we've made a lot of progress in that direction. Yeah,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: me and the rock have a lot in common. You
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: both eat a lot of ice cream, right, Yeah, we
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: both eat a lot and also um, But I think
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: we're made out of the same things, carbon and nitrogen.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I think that's right and pure determination, that's right and awesomeness.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Of course. I hear he gets up at five am
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and has a workout? Is that also your schedule? I
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: got to sleep at five am after I work out
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: my brain cells. Yeah, it's a big question what are
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: we made of? And as a scientists physicists have made
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of progress answering that question. Like we we
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: sort of have it down up to a pretty good
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: level of you know, kind of the fundamental elements of
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the universe. We know that most of the things around
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: us are made of a few basic building blocks that
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: you're familiar with, you know, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, all that
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, the elements of the periodic table. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: it's sort of incredible, right that you can describe so
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: many different complicated things in terms of a few basic
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: building blocks. It's like we talked about sometimes it's like
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the lego principle of the universe that with a small
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: number of things arranged in complex ways, you can make
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: incredible complexity. But of course we've dug even deeper than that.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Right inside the atom, we know there is the nucleus
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: which has protons and neutrons inside of it, which are
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: made out of quarks. And those corks are just two
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: particular flavors. There's the up cork and the down cork.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Combine them in one way you get protons, combine them
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: another way, you get neutrons sprinkling some electrons, and you
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: get everything any human has ever eaten or slept on
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: or thrown at their little sister. Yeah, it's sort of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: like finding out that legos are actually made out of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Lincoln logs, super tiny little Lincoln logs, super tiny Lincoln blogs.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like everything not just us and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: in this planet, but like everything you kind of see
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: out there in the universal stars, the asteroids, all those
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: billions and trillions of planets out that they're all made
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: out of just three particles, the up and down quirks
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and the electron. That's right, And not just only those
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: three particles, but those three particles in basically the same ratios, Right,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Like the number of electrons and up corks and down
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: corks that are in ice cream are the same as
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the number that are in lava. So like a kilogram
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of ice cream and a kilogram of lava have basically
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the same number of each kind of particles. It's just
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: how you put them together that makes one different from
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, we're all pretty hot. Yeah, have you
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: ever had lava flavored ice cream? By the way, I
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: have loved as ice cream, lava ice cream, but I
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: have not had lava ice cream. All right, we are
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: breaking new ground here today, and it's sort of amazing,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: right that you can get so much complexity out of
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: that just these three particles. It blows my mind every
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: time I think about it. Yeah, it's pretty amazing that
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: we're all just made out of three particles. But the
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: weird thing about the universe is that those are not
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: the only particles in the universe. There are other There's
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  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other particles out there that can
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: possibly exist, and also a lot of them are are
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: kind of flying around and raining down upon us. Yeah,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like in the Pantra the universe, there
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: are a bunch of others ices, but your cook only
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: ever uses three of them, right, and only uses those
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: three to cook every single meal, And then you discover, wow,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: what about some basil or maybe a little bit of
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a reggano, you know, or some time? There are other
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: things out there in the universe, not just the up cork,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: the down cork and the electron. Which spices? Do you
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: think humans are made out of saltiness? I think a
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: little cayenne pepper in there for sure, spice there. So
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: we have not just the up cork and the down cork,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: but we have four other corks that we have discovered,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and the electron has five more partners, other particles we
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: call lepton. So in total, there are twelve of these
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: matter particles out there, only three of which we need
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to make me and you and kittens and lava and
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: all sorts of crazy things like kitten flavored ice cream.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So that's a very big mystery in the universe that
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: physicists are still pondering about, like why are those other
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: particles there? Why does the universe need them? And I
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: guess what would the universe be like if we didn't
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: have them? You know, what role do they play? Like,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: imagine a universe without them, how would it work? They're
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: really important or they just sort of extraneous. This is
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: actually a question that came from one of our listeners
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: asking me about it on Twitter. So to be on
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the podcast, we'll be asking the question what if the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: exotic particles didn't exist? And thanks a lot to Paolo
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Avocado for asking us about this on Twitter. It was
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: a really cool question and inspired this episode. So, Daniel,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: why are they called exotic particles. That sounds like, um,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it sounds almost non PC. Well, I
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: think we call them exotic. I don't know, I call
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: him exotic. I don't know if that's like the official title.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: You know, the High Council on Physics naming hasn't met
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: us since you started disparaging us on the podcast. Yeah,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: we're blackballed now. We'll never get a particle called Daniel
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: and Jorge explained the universe. You know, that's for sure.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: We're not top of the list anymore. But we call
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: him exotic because they don't appear in normal, everyday matter,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: because you need exotic unusual situations in order to create them,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and they don't laugh for very long. I guess you'd
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: call them exotic because you like you rarely see them,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: or like they rarely happen. Yeah, both. I mean, they
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: do occur outside of our laboratory, but again rarely under
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: special circumstances. And so there's sort of like, you know,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: that strange bird that you don't see very often in
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the park. You know, it's like compared to pigeons, that
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: really weird strange bird is you might call it exotic
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: if you don't see it very often landing on a
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: tree nearby. So the big question is what would happen
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: if that exotic bird didn't exist, Like, would the ecosystem
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: be the same, would your experience of going to the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: park be the same, or would you even notice if
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: they didn't exist? What if they were only pigeons? Right,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: we should ask Roseberry mousk of that question. It's pigeons
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: all the way down. But we were wondering, as usual,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: how many people out there had thought about this question
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: or thought they had an answer. So Daniel went out
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: there into the wilds of the internet to ask what
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: if the exotic particles didn't exist? And I love the
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: symmetry here because this question came from the Internet and
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I'm sending it back out into the Internet to get
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: people's responses. And so if you would like to participate
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: in future questions for future episodes, please don't be shy.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Right to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: It's fun, it's easy, you'll be semi famous. It sounds
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: like that's a typical strategy for physicist Daniel, Like someone
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: asks you a question, you just ask the question back.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Why do you say that's a typical strategy. I don't know,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: why do you think Anyways, here's what people had to say,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna say, yes, we would notice if the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: particles that don't make a normal manner disappeared, like neutrinos,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and now, because we can observe them, albeit not often,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: uh so all of a sudden we wouldn't be able
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: to observe them anymore. But I assume there would be
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: some other effects that we haven't considered, or maybe someone's
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: considered that would have profound changes to our existence. That
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: is a very good question, and yes, I think we
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: would notice. I know that these particles don't interact with
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: us or anything around us, and I know that neutronos
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: are usually something that comes from supernovas or outer space.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: But I think we would notice because maybe there would
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: be a difference in the supernovas, or maybe there is
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: something that these particles interact with that we are yet
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: to discover. I think we would notice, but I don't
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: know how. I think we will notice. I don't know
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: how much it will affect us. I don't know how much,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: but I'm sure we can notice it. Well. I think
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: all matter is supposed to be interconnected and affecting each other.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So even if we can't see it or since it,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: something's got to happen to normal matter if that non
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: normal matter disappeared. I imagine if the moon suddenly disappeared,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: we would certainly notice it, not just by what we saw,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: but by the change in the motion of the Earth. Um.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know enough about neutrinos and tows, you know,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: if they have mass or anything like that, but they
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: have to have something that we're interacting with that we
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: would no longer be interacting with all of a sudden,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and that's got to be weird. I think we definitely
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: would notice if particles like neutrinos that don't make up
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: normal matter disappeared all of a sudden, because I know
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: there's experiments around the world that detect those particles. I
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: don't know what the consequences of that happening would be,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: though I'm assuming that the particles that don't make up
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: normal matter have an effect on normal matter. I'm not
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: in timely sure what I know that neutrinos passed straight
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: through stuff without affecting it, so I would hesitate to
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: say that we wouldn't notice it at all. It seems
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: to me like that's unlikely, because there's quite a lot
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: of them. If particles that don't make up normal manner disappeared,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: we would not us because the energy of the universe
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: would decrease. All right, people had opinions here. Nobody said
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I have no idea. Yeah, exactly, this is their universe
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: we're talking about. Man, you know, they're really getting into it.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: It's important to them. It's almost like they didn't they
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: haven't read the book We Have No Idea, A Guide
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: to the Unknown Universe or our new book. Frequently asked
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: questions about the universe, which is out right now. Yeah,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: check out your copy of Universe f a Q dot com.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: But no, it seems like a lot of people sort
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: of had opinions about this, right, So people said we
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: wouldn't notice, and people said we wouldn't notice. Yeah, nobody
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: was on the fence, and a lot of people felt like,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you know, these do make up an important part of
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: our universe, even if you don't necessarily see them or
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: detect them every single day. All right, Well, let's dig
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: into it, Daniel. What are the exotic particles like specifically?
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Can you name them? I can't name them, though, I'm
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: not responsible for having chosen their names, of course. And
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: you know, the first sort of exotic particle is the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: new trino. We talked about the particles that make up
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: matter in their two corks and one lepton. This electron
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: is a particle we call a lepton, but the electron
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: actually has a partner which is pretty weird and doesn't
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: exist as part of matter, and that's the neutrino. It's
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: this very strange particle. And it's not strange because it's rare.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: It's actually very very common. It's just not part of
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the atom. The Sun makes lots and lots of neutrinos
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: when it produces nuclear fusion, and it's like a hundred
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: billion of them raining down on every square centimeter of
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: the Earth every second. So the universe is filled with neutrinos,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: but they're mostly invisible to us and they don't play
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a role in the atom. Yeah, I guess it's kind
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of weird to think about that. You know, the Sun,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: like the hydrogen in it and the fuel that's making
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: it burn, is made out of the same things that
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: we know that you and I are, you know, up
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: and down quarts and electrons, and it's burning, but in
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: doing so it creates other particles like the neutrino and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: then shoots a whole bunch of them out into space. Absolutely,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: and that's because involved infusion is the weak force, and
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the neutrino is a pro dout of the weak force.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Like every time you have a W boson created by
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the weak force, it decays into, for example, an electron
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and a neutrino. So every time you get like a
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: neutron that de cas into a proton. The way that
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: happens is one cork changes into another one by giving
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: off a W which then turns into an electron and
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: a neutrino. So you go from neutron into proton, electron
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: and a neutrino. Yeah, it's almost like the universe just
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: kind of makes these particles out of nothingness, right, Like
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: there's some sort of collision or reaction in the center
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: of the Sun, and there's like pure energy for a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: brief second, and then that energy, you know, kind of
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: solidifies or becomes particles that can exist and including stuff
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: like the neutrino. Yeah, you can think of it that way.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: You know that we are like converting one kind of
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: matter into another kind of matter. It's not like we're
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: rearranging the pieces inside these particles to make something else
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: out of the same bits, like a jigsaw puzzle or
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: chemistry experiment. We really are converting one kind of matter
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: into another. But another way to think about it is
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: in terms of fields. If you'd like to think of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: about particles as like little energy bubbles inside a field,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: then you can just think about these fields is like
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: connected to each other, and the energy can slash from
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: one kind of field, you know, like a field that
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: has a w boson in it, to another kind of field,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: like one that has neutrinos. And the way the forces
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: work is that they are the things that connect those
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: fields together that allow energy to slash from one kind
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: of field into another. Yeah, but then a trina is
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: not the only exotic particle. There's a whole bunch of
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: other ones, that's right. So we talk about those three
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: particles that make up the atom and then the neutrinos together,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: we have four particles we've talked about so far. And
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the amazing thing is that those four particles each have
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: a copy out there. So those four particles we call
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: them the first generation of particles. They're like the core
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: group of particles, and then each of them has a
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: copy in the second generation of particles. So for example,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the up cork has a copy which is called the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: charm cork, and the down cork has a copy which
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: is called the strange cork, and the electron is a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: copy which is called them you you on. And by
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: copy I mean that there's another the particle out there
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that has almost exactly the same properties, the same electric charges,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the same interaction, the same spins, etcetera. Except it's different
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: because it has more mass. It's definitely a different particle,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: right Like all the ones in the first generation, the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: up and down course, the electron, the neutrino, they're all
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: very different, right, Like they all have different electrical charges,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and the maternal has zero electrical charge. They're like very
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: different in terms of their properties. But there are sort
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of copies of them that are just heavier like that,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: but heavier precisely. And it's a big mystery, like why
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: do these particles exist? If you're gonna have more particles,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: why just have like reruns of the particles you already had.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Why not have like brand new, weird kinds of particles.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, there's this mirror image. This is
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: like symmetry. This is the kind of thing we've see
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: in particle physics all the time. You know, like every particle,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: you know, the electron, has lots of different kinds of symmetries.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: You know, there's also the symmetry that says every particle
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: has an anti particle. That's like another reflection of this
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: first generation of particles. We don't think about them usually,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: it's like the whole other set of particles. We think
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: about the electron and its antiparticle like grouped together into
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: one idea. And so here we have like a different
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: way to reflect this first generation. We say this first
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: generation has a copy, which we call the second generation.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And the incredible thing is that there are two copies actually,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: so this is the second generation of particles, and then
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: another four particles, the top and the bottom, and the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: towel particle, which is a copy of the electron of
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: the muan, and then another neutrino. So in total there
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: are twelve of these particles and eight of them are
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: just copies of the first four. Yeah, that is super weird.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And you know that there you call them different particles,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: not just because they're heavier. But because they said act
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit different as well, I mean, like the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: fact that they're heavier makes them act different. They certainly
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: do act differently. And because they are heavier, and more specifically,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: because there is a lighter version of them, they don't
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: laugh for very long because they can decay, Like the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: top cork lasts for like ten to the minus twenty
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: three seconds and very quickly decays into a bottom cork
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: and a couple of other things, and then the bottom
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: core class for a very short amount of time before
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: it decays into other things like muans or charm corks
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: or other stuff. And so things don't like to stick
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: around in very massive particles. They tend to fall down
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the ladder to the lowest mass particles and those get
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: stuck like an up cork and a down cork. They
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: can't decay into anything else because there's nothing below them
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: on the ladder. I guess what I mean is like
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: there's no continuum of mass with particles, you know what
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, Like, there's not like an electron and then
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: a slot, and then you can have a slightly heavier
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: electron and a slightly slightly heavier electron all the way
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: up to like you know, super heavy that there's like
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: discrete kind of slots for the mass of an electron,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: regular electron, a little bit heavier electron, and x L electro.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: That's right. It's not like ordering shoes on Amazon where
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: they have every single size. You know, there's like the
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: very very small ones, the heavy ones, and then the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: supermassive ones. And the incredible thing is that there's no
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: like pattern to these masses. It's not like the second
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: generation or all twice as heavi or three times as
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: heavy as the first generation. They all have different ratios
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: for the first generation, and the third generation has even
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: weirder ratio. Its like the top cork is ridiculously heavy.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: It's like much heavier than everything else put together, and
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: then times fifty. So we don't understand the pattern of
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: those masses at all. As you say, it's not regular,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: it's not like something in every location, is not something
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: that every possible mass, and there's nothing to explain why
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: we have some masses and others. All right, So then
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: we have eight or nine. I guess I need to
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: count the neutrino exotic particles, which are you know, rare
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: particles that don't make up the usual matter. And so
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the big question is why do we need them? And
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: what would happen to the universe if we didn't have them.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: So we'll get to those questions, but first let's take
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: a quick break. Alright, we're talking about exotic particle and
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: who needs them? Why do we care? Daniel? They don't
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: make me up, Like, I'm not made out of any
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: exotic particles. None of the things around me, said, are
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: made out of exotic particles. It seems like there's sort
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: of extraneous at least to the human experience. But it
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: seems like most of the experience of the universe they're
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: a little bit extraneous. So I guess the big question
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: is do we actually need them like that the universe
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: need to make them or create them or invent them. Well,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I need them. I mean they're not experenious to my experience.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: They're pretty big job of my everyday life. You know,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: without them, I wouldn't be a particle of physicist studying them. So,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: you know, for some tiny sliver or humanity, they are
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: actually a central part of the human existence, you mean,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: an essential part of your job. Like if they didn't exist,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: you we just have a different job. Yeah, I guess,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: so I would have a different job. What job Daniel
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: have in that university be inventing terrible ice cream flavors
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: in a factory somewhere, like lava flavor and kitten flavor, yeah,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: or lego flavor. And you're right, you know, we don't
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: necessarily see them in our everyday lives, but I think
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: that probably we do need them. I think that these
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: particles are clues. I mean, I think that they exist
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: because there's something deeper going on, you know. I think
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that they come about because fundamentally, they're like a different
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: way to organize little bits that are inside all of
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: these particles, you know, sort of like the way the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: periodic table has structure, Right, it has metal here and
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: this kind of stuff there, and various atoms act in
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: certain ways and their patterns there, and those patterns come
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: from the structure of the atom. How many electrons you
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: have in orbitals or whatever. So now we look at
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: this table of the fundamental particles and we see that
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: there are patterns, and I'm pretty sure, though I have
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: no proof, that those patterns come from something smaller that
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: makes up all of these particles. Some you know, way
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: to rearrange little er bits that give you all of
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: these things. And so in that sense, we do need
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: them because they're like an expression of what's going on underneath.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: And we certainly need them because their clues that will
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: help us figure out what's going on underneath. I see
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: you're saying like maybe the universe doesn't really need them,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: but are sort of useful or great for us that
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: they're there because they might help us sort of understand that,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the secrets of how the rest of the universe,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: like the stuff we are made out of, how and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: why it's built. Yeah, So for example, if corks and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: electrons are not like the smallest things, we're pretty sure
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: they're not. If they're made out of smaller things inside
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: them tying your little particles, then I suspect these other
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: things muans and the top corks and bottom corks are
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: just natural byproducts of other ways those things can come together,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: And so I think that they're vital clues towards pointing
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: us to those secrets. Right, and I vote that we
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: name those smaller particles Lincoln Lugginos or something. But I
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: guess maybe you know, and asking like why do we
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: need them. Do we have anything that's made out of
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: these particles? Is there anything out the any universe that
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: kind of uses these for like building anything, or you know,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: at least momentarily in some extreme cases. So these particles
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: are not stable, so they can't hang out. You can't
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: like take a bunch of top quarks and build it
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: together into some structure that's just made out of top quarks.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: You can't do the same thing with muons or with hows.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: These particles, if they are in the universe, they last
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: very briefly and then they turn into lighter stuff, So
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: you can't like build anything out of them. But that
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they don't play a role. Just because
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: you can't stick around for a long time doesn't mean
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: that you can't influence what happens. You know. It's sort
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: of like a guest appearance on a TV show. You
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: don't have to be in all the seasons, but you
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: can still like totally steal a scene when you come
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: in and change the way things happen. You're saying they
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: sort of have a presence about them. Yeah, they certainly do.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: They have some charisma, and there's actually lots of ways
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: in which these particles really strongly influenced not just the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: structure of the universe and the way it's organized, but
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: our everyday lives. I think we're going to get into
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: that later, but I guess maybe a question I have
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: is about the neutrinos. I mean, the neutrinos are pretty stable,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: they hang out for a while. It doesn't seem like
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: they're used for anything because they're so Yeah, that's true.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Neutrinos are stable. They can last for a long time.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: They do actually slide into each other. Like if you
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: produce an electron neutrino and you shoot it through the universe,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: it might end up as a muon neutrino or a
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: town neutrino. These particles sort of mix into each other,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: which is sort of cool, and we have a whole
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: fun podcast episode about neutrino mixing. It's this crazy quantum
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: mechanical effect though you can learn about if you check
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: out that episode. But you're right that even though neutrinos
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: are mostly stable, if you make a neutrino, you're gonna
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: have a neutrino. You can't build anything out of them,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and the reason is that they don't really interact. They're
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: not like sticky, right. The neutrinos have only one way
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: to interact with each other or with other stuff, and
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: that's through the weak interaction, which is super duper weak.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Like you can shoot a neutrino through a block of
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: lead that's a light year thick and you only have
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: a fifty percent chance of interacting with anything in there.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: So mostly the universe is just totally transparent to a neutrino,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: which makes it hard to like, you know, make something
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: like atoms or elements or anything more complex out of
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: neutrin knows. So that's why complexity doesn't arise out of
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: just like pure boxes of neutrinos. But then would you
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: say they're needed for anything in the universe, Well, their
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: math definitely contributes to things, you know. The fact that
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: their neutrinos are out there changes the overall mass energy
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: density of the universe, so it contributes, you know, to
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: like the curvature of the universe, Like if you deleted
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: all the neutrinos in the universe, it would change a
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: little bit the gravitational shape of space. I also remember
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: talking in another episode about how you know some of
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: these heavier exotic particles they disappear very quickly. But that's
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: only because right now things are pretty calm in the universe.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: But back at the beginning of the universe, when things
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: were like super hot and crazy like, these particles were
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: more normal kind of, they were less exotic. Yeah, precisely.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: And that's what we're doing at particle accelerators is we
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: are trying to recreate those conditions. These things require a
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: certain temperature. It's sort of like having a puff of steam.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: You know, out there on a cold night. It's not
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: going to stay stem very long, but you inject the
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: puff of steam into a sauna, then yeah, you can
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: hang out and stay a puff of steam. And so
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: back in the early universe, when everything was hot and
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: dense and very compressed, if you had one of these particles,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: it could hang around a lot longer because it was
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: surrounded by a lot of energy, so the energy didn't
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: have to spread out into lower mass particles. You could
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: just hang out like that, like the average energy denstat
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: The temperature of the universe was higher, so we could
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: make these heavier particles and have them stick around. But
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: these days the universe is very very cold and dilute.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: So if you get that much energy concentrated into one spot,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Entropy likes to spread it out and very quickly decays
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: into the lower mass stable particles. But I guess maybe
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: back then, when the universe was hot and crazy, could
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: you have made an atom out of like a top particle,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: you know, like a heavier version of what we would
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: normally call hydrogen. Now, yeah, people are thinking about that
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, you know. Can you make things like toponium,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: which would be like a bound state of a top
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: cork and an anti top cork, or charmonium or stuff
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: like this. Can you have those things? We have actually
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: seen charmonium like to charm corks, They get together and
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: make a stable particle. It doesn't last for that long,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: but it hangs out for a little while, and so
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: people experiment with that kind of stuff. Those calculations are
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: very very difficult to do because they involved the strong force,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and you're talking about a lot of particles in a
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: really small place, and so the calculations gets sort of
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: out of control. It's not something we can very actively simulate.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: But yes, we do think that there were other different
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: weird states of matter in the very early universe that
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: might have involved some of these heavier particles. Yes, like
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: maybe the early universe was a universe dominated by these
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: exotic things made out of these exotic particles, though it
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be as like separated, you know, you wouldn't have
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: like these things floating around and separated and is distinct
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the way we think about Adams now. It's more like
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: a big plasma, like a big gamush where things are
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: like interacting constantly with lots of other things. So things
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: were more exotic and also swishier. Yeah, exactly, it was
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: like a crazy party packed full of weird people. Nowadays
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: were less exotic and I guess um less squishy. Definitely
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: not lower mass though, yeah, not only used to go
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: up well. And also I like this analogy you were
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: telling me that it's it's sort of like wondering what
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: iron or or at least what some of these like
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: super heavy elements that you see like plutonium or you know,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: even those crazy einsteinium like what are those four? You
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: can ask and you might say, well, they're not really
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: good for anything, but there's sort of you know, evidence
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: or a result of the universe having these kinds of
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: rules about how to put things together, which is useful
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: for us to know exactly if you're going to have
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: like protons and neutrons and electrons, then they're going to
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: come together and make weird stuff. And that stuff includes
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: of course hydrogen and helium, basic stuff, but also more
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: complex stuff. And that's great because when you see that
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: complex stuff, you can look at the power, you can
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: look at the clues, and you can figure out what's
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: going on underneath. Now, in that case, you know they
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: formed stable things like iron is pretty stable, it will
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: last for a very very long time. In the case
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental particles, like none of those other ones
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: we think are stable, so they don't last for a
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: very very long time, but we do hope they are
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: clues of about what they might be made out of
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: a smaller scale where those tiny little particles that make
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: all of matter might be. It's so that's why I
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: think there's sort of like a natural byproduct of the
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: deeper pattern of the universe. So you just can't get
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: rid of them. Like if you're gonna have protons and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: neutrons and electrons, you can't just remove iron from the universe.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It's going to happen. I guess you could almost say
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Daniel that these exotic particles exist for you kind of
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: like for you to understand the universe. Yeah, well, you know,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: they're just sort of like the consequences of the universe.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And I think about this a lot, like what in
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the universe is fundamental, like what is written into the
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: basic laws of the universe, and what just sort of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: like arises from how those fundamental elements interact, you know,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: like me and you, humanity and biology. None of that
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: is fundamental, is to say in the source code of
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: the university have to have it. It comes out of,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: you know, the interactions of particles in a very complex way,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: something it's very difficult to foresee. And the same thing
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: is true of iron and platinum and all these complex elements.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: You take basic particles and you let them run free
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: and they do these crazy things. And we think about
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the particles we know now, the electron, the upcork, the downcourt.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Could think about those as if they're fundamental particles, but
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: likely they are also just like emergent phenomena that arises
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: out of something much much smaller that's interacting in a
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: weird way in creating those things. So I think we
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: haven't even seen the deep truth of the universe. All
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: we've ever seen are the things that sort of happened
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: to come together. I guess, in general, asking the question
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: like do we need these exotic particles, it is really
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: kind of a philosophical question, you know, And like maybe
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the better way to approach this question is, like what
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: would the universe be like if we didn't have these
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: exotic particles? Like what would be the consequences if they
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: somehow didn't exist? I think it's asking like a hypothetical question,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: like how different would that universe be if you could
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: some like edit these out of the simulation, right, And
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: so let's talk about that, Like what are some of
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: the things that would change about our universe if we
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: didn't have these exotic particles. Well, one thing that would
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: happen is we would all feel less radiation. When particles
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: from space hit our atmosphere, like really high energy protons
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: or electrons or whatever, they create tiny little meteor showers.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Like what happens when a rock hits the atmosphere. It
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't just hit the ground with the same energy as
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: when it hit the atmosphere. It loses a lot of
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: energy on re entry, right, or like a spacecraft also
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: heats up when it enters the atmosphere. The same is
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: true on a tiny scale. When a particle hits the atmosphere,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: it bangs into all the other particles in the atmosphere
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: and gives up some of its energy, and it creates
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: weird matter because it's created like extra energy density. So
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: like a proton like smashes into an atom and the
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: top of the atmosphere, it might create momentarily like a
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: pion or a kon or some other weird combination that
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: requires one of these exotic particles and then decay and
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: produce muans, And those muans then come down and hit
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: the earth, and that's radiation. That's radiation that hits your
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: brain or hits your finger, or hits the ground. But
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: it's definitely radiation created from exotic particles. Yeah, and it's
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: not harmless radiation, right, Like it can actually kind of
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: mutate your DNA. Like if those muans or those little
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: bits of stuff that are falling down, you know, hit
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: a DNA molecule, it's going to create a mutation. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: so that could be trouble, yeah, or it could be necessary. Right,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: We don't know how much radiation is Like the exactly
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: best amount of radiation to cause mutations in your DNA,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: because evolution needs some mutations. If every creature is just
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: a copy of its parent, then you're not like exploring
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the possible ways creatures can be. You need variation and
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: mutation to get randomness for natural selection to work, and
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: so we sort of rely on some of those mistakes
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: caused by cosmic rays. Well, I guess you know, when
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: you're out in the sun, people worry about UV rays,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: which are photons, but you're saying that there's other particles
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: raining down on me that could you know, harm me
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: or burn my skin. Yeah, like muans. So muans don't
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: last very long. They last just a few microseconds, but
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: when they are created in the upper atmosphere, they're going
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: really really fast, like some fraction of the speed of light,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: and so actually their clocks are slowed down. Even though
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: they only last a few microseconds in their reference frame
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: from our point of view, they actually last a long time,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: long enough to hit the ground, and the same is
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: not true for example, for electrons. Electrons can't penetrate all
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the way down to the ground, so it's only because
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: these muans are heavier they can make it all the
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: way through the atmosphere down to the ground to cause
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: a mutation in your d n A. If we didn't
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: have muans, then what would happen when a proton hit
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere is it would just create a shower
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: of electrons, and those electrons wouldn't make it down to
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the surface, and they wouldn't cause mutations in that primordial
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: soup that were necessary for you to evolve. So I
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: think what you're saying is that without exotic particles, the
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: sun block industry would go out of business, first of all,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: and second of all, we might not even be here,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: like humans may not have evolved at all, or life
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: on Earth. Yeah. Actually, if you want to protect yourself
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: against muans, you need like several meters of lead or
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: rock or something. No sun blog is going to do it.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: How about at several of that. You gotta live underground, folks.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: That's why we do these experiments, these dark matter searches.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: We do them deep deep underground, so that we can
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: protect ourselves from the reign of new ones coming from
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere. All right, Well, that's one way in which
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the universe would be different. Let's get into other ways
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: in which the universe would be different without exotic particles.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: But first, let's take another quick break. All right, we
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: are painting the picture of a less exotic universe. I
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: guess a more bland universe, Daniel, Is that the opposite
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: of exotic, a more boring universe, a less surprising universe,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: more typical, or I guess less diverse universe? Right, yeah, exactly,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: all right, And so we talked about how the universe
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: would not have cosmic race you're raining down on Earth
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and maybe even kickstarting evolution for us that lead to
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: humans evolving. What are some of the other ways in
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: which the universe would change change without exotic particles. Well,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: exotic particles actually play a really big role in the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: reason the universe even exists at all, in the way
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: that it does. You know, one of the deep mysteries
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: of the universe is why it's made out of matter
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: and not antimatter. Like we know that every particle out
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: there has an antimatter equivalent. Electrons have positrons, and protons
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: have anti protons, and quirks have antiquarks, and there seems
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: to be this deep symmetry, right, this is cool reflection,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And you wonder, like well, why is the universe made
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: out of matter and not antimatter? Because in the Big Bang,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: we think that like the same amount of matter and
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: antimatter was made out of that primordial goo. So why
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: didn't it just like find each other, smash up, and
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: then annihilate and give us a universe filled with photons
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: and energy with no matter left over whatsoever. So if
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the two were perfectly symmetric, then that would have happened
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: and we would have no stuff left in the universe.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: But you look around you and obviously there's lots of
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: stuff in the universe. There's like tons and tons uns
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: and stuff in the universe. There's billions of stars and
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: galaxies and all sorts of crazy stuff made out of
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: matter and not antimatter. And for that to happen you
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: need some kind of process, some weird physics interaction that
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: prefers to create matter or that turns antimatter into matter. Yeah,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: that is weird that the most of the universe, or
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: almost all of the universe is matter and not antimatter.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: And so you're saying that maybe exotic particles are the
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: reason that is so, Yeah, we know of only a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: few ways that the universe prefers matter to antimatter that
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: it likes to produce more matter than antimatter. Mostly it's
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: totally symmetric, like in almost every way it's symmetric. It's
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: sort of amazing, like it's cern we have made anti hydrogen.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: For example, we took an anti proton and we put
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: an anti electron around it, and the two things formed
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: anti hydrogen, and it acts just like hydrogen. You know,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: it's like emits light and it has energy levels to
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: matter antimatter. Almost totally symmetric. But there are a couple
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: of ways in which the universe prefers matter to antimatter,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: and those involve these exotic particles. So, for example, if
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: you have a weird interaction that involves a bottom cork
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: or a strange cork, that's more likely to give you
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: matter than antimatter. And so we think that maybe in
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: the early universe, this is what happened, that those exotic
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: particles like steered the balance a tiny little bit towards matter,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: so that most of the stuff annihilated and turned into light.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: But what was left over is the matter that ended
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: up being me. And you, wow, that's some heavy matters here.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is that, you know, when
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you smash particles together or there's a you know, explosion
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: or something, there's kind of a fifty fifty chance of
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: making matter or antimatter usually out of these kind of
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: collisions or reactions. But you're saying that if it involves
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: one of these exotic particles, then maybe it's not. Yeah,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: this is like fifty point one percent chance of making
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: matter rather than antimatter, and that's enough. You know, it
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: adds up, and we haven't actually identified all the ways
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: that it happens. We found a few ways that the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: universe prefers matter to antimatter, and those are solid and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: they're real, but they can't explain the imbalance, Like the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: amount is actually bigger than we can understand, and so
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: we suspect that these exotic particles are doing even more
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: than we think to tip the balance towards matter than antimatter.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: We haven't figured it out yet. It's still an open mystery.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: So like, if you have a bottom cork in that reaction,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: then it will create a little bit more matter than antimatter.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: But what if you have like an anti bottom cord,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: wouldn't that create more antimatter? Yeah, Actually, these things are
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: bound states of matter and antimatter. So you have things
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: like it's called a b maison, which is like a
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: B cork and an anti D cork, and those things
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: oscillate back and forth between matter and antimatter, but they
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: are more likely to stick around and stay as matter
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: than antimatter. All right, So that's another kind of reason
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the universe seems to have these exotic particles, or at
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: least you know, one big thing that would change if
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: we didn't have these exotic particles, maybe we wouldn't be here, right, Like,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: maybe everything would just annihilated itself and there wouldn't be
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: any room for us. Yeah, if they were just up quarks,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: down quirks and electrons made in the Big Bang, that
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: they might have all annihilated and there wouldn't be anything
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: left for us to be built out of. All right. Well,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: what are some of the other ways in which the
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: universe would change without exotic particles. Well, we think that
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the really heavy particles play a really big role in
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: the Higgs boson in a giving mass to the other particles.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: You know that the Higgs boson is the way that
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: other particles have mass, and that it does that because
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: it has this field that fills the universe called the
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Higgs field. And the key to the Higgs field is
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that even when it's most relaxed, even when it's like
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: lowest energy, it's not a zero energy. So everywhere in
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: space has this weird thing and it called the Higgs field,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: which has some energy stored in it. And when particles
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: fly through the Higgs field, they interact with it in
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: different ways and that's what gives them mass. So a
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: particle that interacts with Higgs field a lot gets a
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: lot of mass, and particles that don't interact with the
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Higgs field really at all get a very small amount
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: of mass. And so that's key that the Higgs field
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: has this energy stored in it. It's vital or making
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: all the particles we know and love have the masses
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: that they do. Right, Like, if the Higgs field didn't
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: have this kind of basic energy to it, like everything
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: which just fly through the universe, like it didn't have
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: mass like a photon kinda yeah, exactly, if the Higgs
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: field had cooled and relaxed down to zero energy inside
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of it, or much much smaller energy than most of
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the particles would have almost no mass. That W and
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the Z would have no mass, the electron might not
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: have any mass, and the whole nature of the universe,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: the whole like way things come together, all those emergent
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: phenomena we talked about earlier, the complexity that arises when
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: you collide these particles and make them into soup. Then
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: it would be totally different and the universe would look very,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: very different. And the Higgs field only has the value
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: that it does because of the heavy particles that are there.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Whoa wait, wait a minute. You're saying that the Higgs
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: field has some energy, and without it, we wouldn't have
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: any mass, or nothing would stick together because everything would
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: be flying around like light. Basically, you're saying that it
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: has this energy because of the exotic particles, or it
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: has this energy, or it keeps this energy because of
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the heavy particles. It keeps the energy because the heavy particles,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: like the Higgs field in the early universe had a
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: lot of energy in it like everything else. And then
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the universe started to cool and everything got more spread
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: out and calmer, and everything started to relax down to
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: smaller and smaller energies. But the Higgs field at some
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: point got stuck. It's sort of like water that was
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: flowing downhill, but instead of making it all the way
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: to the ocean, it got stuck in some sort of
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: mountain lake, right, really high energy, like it's holding some energy.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: It's holding some energy exactly. If it didn't have that energy,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't have the mass that we do. And the
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: only reason it got stuck in that lake is because
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you know, there's like another other side of the lake,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: the thing that's like blocking it from flowing downhill. And
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: then blocking comes from the heavier particles. Like if you
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: didn't have the top cork, then the Higgs field would
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: not have gotten stuck in that mountain lake. It would
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: have flowed all the way down to the ocean. I
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: guess that's a kind of a hard picture to understand.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: You're saying not because the top cord exists, but because
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: it sort of can exist almost in a way, right,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Like the top cork is something that could happen, and
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: so because it can happen, the Higgs field doesn't just
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: dump all of its energy. Yeah, because the top corp
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: can exist because its field is out there, and because
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: it's field interact with the Higgs boson so much, right,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: because the top cork is super massive, then it creates
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: this weird shelf that the Higgs field gets stuck on.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I guess what you mean, Like, if you didn't have
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: the top cork field, then the Higgs field with relax
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: down to zero energy. What does it mean to not
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: relax or relax? Well, the Higgs field has energy stored
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: in it, right, because it's sort of stuck. Like think
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: about a ball that's trying to get down to the
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: lowest energy state. It's like rolling down a hill, but
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: it gets trapped along the way. You know, it can't
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: relax down to the lowest height. And so the Higgs
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: field is sort of like that. It got stuck while
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: he was relaxing. Well though the rest of the universe
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: was cooling down, the Higgs field got stuck at a
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: certain energy level, and it's the top cork that's keeping
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: it from getting all the way down to zero energy.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Even though you don't see a lot of top corks
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: out there in the university. They're sort of fleeting and
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: they don't exist for very long. Just the fact that
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: they can exist somehow prevents the Higgs field from collapsing. Yeah,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: it changes the potential energy for the Higgs field to
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: create this weird little local minimum that the Higgs field
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: gets trapped in, and we don't really understand that shape
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: of that minimum. We know that it's due to the
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: top cork. We also don't know how stable it is,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: like it could collapse. We have a whole fun podcast
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: episode about whether the Higgs boson will destroy the universe
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: if that local minimum falls apart. So right now the
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: top cork is protecting it and making it strong, but
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: we don't know how long that's going to go on for. Well,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: thank goodness it's there, because I know that without the
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Higgs field, or with the Higgs field collapse, like the
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: whole universe would kind of like turnover right invert itself. Yeah,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the universe would be totally different if the Higgs field
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: ever collapsed. We still would have a universe, but the
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: effective laws of physics would change dramatically because all of
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: a sudden, like electrons and up corks and down corks
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: would have much much less mass, if any at all,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and that would change the way everything worked. Yeah, my
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: son learned about this recently and it's been keeping him up.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a scary picture. Hopefully won't happened, and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: thank goodness, it's not happening because of the one of
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: these Eiggs particles. Exactly. Just tell your son that the
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: top cork is out there saving the universe the unsunk hero.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: All right, we have one more way in which the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: universe would be different without exotic particles, and it has
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: to do with the weak force. That's right. We talked
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: about new trinos, and neutrinos don't play a role in
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the atom, but they do play an important role in
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: the weak force, like when you have beta decay, Like
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: when a neutron decays, it can't just decay into a
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: proton and an electron. It also has to make a
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: new trino, right, because something has to carry away that
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: extra hypercharge. And so every time you have a process
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that involves the weak force, which turns out to be
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: pretty important in basic fusion and all sorts of stuff
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: in the universe, then you have to have a new trino.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: For example, you were taking the universe and redesigning it
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: and stripping stuff out. If you took away the new trino,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: you'd have to get rid of the w boson. If
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: you get rid of the w boson, then the whole
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: weak force doesn't work because the weak force is this
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: complicated dance of the W and the Z and the photon.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: So now you've got to get rid of all of that.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: So neutrino sort of like at the foundation of the house,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and once you start pulling it out, then things start
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: to collapse. And specifically you get rid of the weak force,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: you get rid of electromagnetism, and you also got to
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: get rid of the Higgs boson. I guess what do
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: you mean, Like if I take out the neutrino, you
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: have to take out the W boson and everything falls apart,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Like what would happen, Like there wouldn't be like the
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: same reactions wouldn't be able to happen, or like the
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: reactions would happen, but they would be different or they
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: like do you need them to have some sort of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: like exhaust or byproduct that kind of makes the reactions work? Yeah, Well,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: the way I think about them, you know, there are
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: just like different elements of the same Rubik's cube. You know,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the weak force is the W particles and the Z particles,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: but also the particles that interact with them, and so
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: that's the neutrino. Like, the neutrino is the thing that
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: interacts via the weak force, and so you know what
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: does the W particle do? For example, Well, it turns
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: electrons into neutrinos. Right, if you have an electron and
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: admits a W, that W carries the ectric charge, and
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: so it carries away the charge of the electron and
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: leaves you with a new trino. And so you just
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: can't do that anymore if you don't have new trinos. Like,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: if an electron admits a W, then what does it
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: turn into. It's not nowhere to go without a new trino,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: And so that means that you basically can't have W
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: bosons in the universe. And the whole symmetry this beautiful
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: picture of the electroweak force, this combination of electromagnetism and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the weak force as one nice machine that all fits
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: together perfectly and respects certain symmetries. It all just falls apart,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: and you can't just like pick and choose. It's like
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: a game of Jenga. You know, you pull out the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: wrong piece and the whole thing falls apart. But I
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: guess that's kind of a weak excuse. Part of the
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: pun for motivating the existence of a particle, Like, you know,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: why can I just be extra careful when I take
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: out the Jenga piece and still have the thing hold
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like unless it's like the
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: one piece holding everything up, you know, you can usually
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: you know, patch it up or have it balanced something else.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: Like couldn't you have the weak force without the trino?
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Like couldn't it do the same things, just not output
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: a neutrino. The way particles does this think about the
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: weak force is that you have these states where you
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: have the electron and the neutrino together, and what the
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: weak force does is sort of like rotates those states.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: We have an episode recently about gauge symmetry that showed
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: you that every force that's out there is really just
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: there to respect and protect some sort of weird internal
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: symmetry of the universe. And in the case of the
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: weak force, that's the symmetry between electrons and neutrinos, which
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: is why the w boson, for example, turns electrons into neutrinos.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: So to have this symmetry at all between electrons and neutrinos,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: you need the neutrinos. So the weak force exists sort
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: of to protect this symmetry between electrons and neutrinos. Without
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the neutrinos, you don't need the weak force. And so
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I mean would it exist without it, It wouldn't be active,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be part of the universe, even if it potentially
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: could be if you didn't have neutrinos. I see, it's
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: like it's such an integral part of the weak force
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: that you wouldn't have an excuse to have the weak
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: force without it exactly who ordered that? Well, you could
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: still maybe order it, it would just be an exotic
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: part of the many all right. Well, then the weak
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: force is pretty important because without the weak force, and
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: you would have no Higgs effect, right, and so again
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: things wouldn't have mass. Yeah, because the Higgs field again
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: is also just around to solve this puzzle of the
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: weak force, of why the weak force is connected to
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: electromagnetism but also so different. You see Higgs boson, which
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: breaks that symmetry. It's called electroweak symmetry breaking for anybody
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: who wants to read further on it. So that's why
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: we have the Higgs boson. So without the neutrinos, we
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: don't have the weak force. Without the weak force, we
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: don't have the Higgs boson, and then we don't have
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: me and you and kitten flavored ice cream. Sounds like
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: the main reason we have these particles are just to
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: save you a lot of anxiety, Daniel. I feel like
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: it would really spress you out if we took away
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: these particles. I don't know. I imagine what would Daniel
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: be like in the universe where there were a lot
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: more exotic particles where we found like twelve thousand of them.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: That seems like much more of a headache. Well, that's
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: another big mystery, right, Like why do we only have
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: eight exotic particles and not more? Like technically we could
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: have more. We certainly could have more, and we don't
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: know if we don't have more. These are just the
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: ones that we have seen. It could be that if
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: we build bigger colliders and smash more energy together that
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: we could create even heavier particles. There might be more
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: out there that are just not yet discovered. All right, Well,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: I guess the overall picture is that, you know, we
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: don't need these exotic particles to make you me ice cream.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Things that are you know, effect us in a daily
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: life sort of or at least at first glance. But
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: if you actually took them away, they might have some
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: pretty cosmic consequences, like none of us would be here
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: none none of us would have evolved, or none of
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: us would be here, none of us would have mass.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: The whole universe might just collapse without them. That's right.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Nothing in the universe seems to be optional. Nothing in
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the universe seems to be extraneous. If you pull apart
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: one piece of this Jenda puzzle, the whole thing collapses. Well,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: I think lava ice cream is optional. I don't think
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: that's a requirement in any diet. Let's see what happens
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: if we delete lava ice cream from the universe. I'll
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: do it right now. Uh, nothing happened, alright, Well, just
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: another great reminder of how exotic and flavorful and mysterious
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and the kind of scary the universe can be. Hopefully
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: the collapse of the Higgs field won't scare us like
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: a horror movie jump scare. And also kind of beautiful,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the way all these particles and fields fit
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: together to make this incredible universe. It's gorgeous. It's sort
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: of like figuring it out and unraveling this mystery is
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: really beautiful. It really feels like we're revealing some deep mechanism,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: which is kind of gorgeous when you see all of
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: its working parts. Are you saying these exotic particles are
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: like the bling of the universe. They just make everything
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: sparkle a little more. That's right. You might not need them,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: but they make you look special. All right. Well, we
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: hope that expanded your idea of what the universe can
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: do and why it is the way it is. Thanks
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorghe explained. The uni Verse
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,