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Pressure – From the Deep Sea to Diamond Anvils · Talking Science

0:00
Right now, as you sit there listening to this,
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there is a literal ton of invisible weight pressing
0:07
against every single inch of your body. Which
0:10
is pretty terrifying when you frame it like that.
0:12
Right. I mean, if you were an empty tin can,
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you would be crushed completely flat in a fraction
0:16
of a second. So, well, why aren't you? It is
0:19
one of those profound mysteries of the physical
0:21
world that we just, you know, completely tune
0:24
out. staggering forces acting on us at every
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moment. Yeah, because we expect physics to be
0:34
something we can actually see, like a ball rolling
0:37
or a car crashing. We rarely think about the
0:39
unseen architecture that dictates how our reality
0:42
holds together. Exactly. And that unseen architecture
0:46
is exactly what we're going to unpack today.
0:48
Yes, today we are taking a deep dive into the
0:50
physics of pressure. We want to follow this invisible
0:53
silent push from the incredibly ordinary experience
0:57
of, say, your ears popping on a commercial flight
1:00
right into the thermodynamics of your kitchen.
1:02
And then we'll take it down into the crushing
1:04
pitch black depths of the ocean. Yeah, the Mariana
1:07
Trench. And finally, we'll look into extreme
1:10
laboratories where pressure is used to forge
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entirely new states of matter. So we're proving
1:17
that physics isn't just equations on a chalkboard.
1:19
It is happening to you every second of the day.
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And I want to set the tone right out of the gate
1:24
here. We are going to keep this completely unhurried.
1:27
You absolutely do not need any prior science
1:29
background for this deep dive. Love that. Yeah,
1:32
we will define every single technical term as
1:35
we go. It's just going to be a smooth, highly
1:38
informative journey. Okay, let's unpack this,
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starting with that airplane example, because
1:41
it's something almost everyone has felt. Davo.
1:44
You're on a flight, climbing up to cruising altitude,
1:47
and you feel that tightness in your ears. Or
1:50
maybe you glance over at the seat pocket and
1:52
notice a sealed bag of potato chips has puffed
1:56
out like a shiny little balloon. Right, the classic
1:58
puffed up snack bag. Exactly. That right there
2:01
is pressure in action. But before we explain
2:03
why the bag puffs up, we need to clarify what
2:06
that word actually means. Because in everyday
2:08
conversation, we use pressure and force as if
2:11
they're, you know. The exact same thing. They
2:13
are definitely related, but they describe very
2:15
different physical realities. Force is really
2:18
just a push or a pull. Okay. But pressure is
2:21
that force divided by the size of the area it's
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applied to. Formally, it is the amount of force
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spread over a specific surface. So it's about
2:30
concentration. Precisely. And if you want to
2:33
put a metric on it, the official scientific unit
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is the Pascal, named after the 17th century French
2:37
scientist Blaise Pascal. Right, but a single
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Pascal is a remarkably tiny amount push, isn't
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it? I mean, practically speaking. Oh, it is incredibly
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faint. One Pascal is just one newton of force
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spread out evenly across an entire square meter
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of space. And a newton is what, like the weight
2:54
of an apple? Yeah, roughly the weight of a small
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apple. So imagine taking the weight of one apple
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and smearing it across a dining room table. Wow,
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okay. That is nothing. Right. Because it's so
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small, we usually talk in thousands of pascals.
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Or we use a much more relatable unit called the
3:09
atmosphere, which just represents the average
3:12
pressure of the air pressing down at sea level.
3:13
I was actually trying to wrap my head around
3:15
that difference between force and pressure earlier,
3:18
and the source material snowshoe analogy really
3:20
locked it in for me. It's a great visual. It
3:23
really is. So imagine a person walking out into
3:25
deep, powdery snow wearing normal winter boots.
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Their body weight is the force, right? Right.
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And because that entire force is concentrated
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on the relatively small footprint of their boot
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soles, the pressure is super high. So they plunge
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right through the crust and sink to their knees.
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Now take that exact same person with the exact
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same body weight and put them in a pair of wide
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snowshoes. They can suddenly walk right on top
3:50
of the snow. Exactly. The downward force hasn't
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changed by a single ounce, but by widening the
3:55
area, the force is distributed. The pressure
3:59
on any specific patch of snow beneath them drops
4:01
dramatically, so the snow's structure can suddenly
4:04
support them. It is a brilliant illustration
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because it shows that you can completely change
4:09
the physical outcome of a situation without adding
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or subtracting any energy at all. You just change
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the geometry of how it connects. Which brings
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us back to the literal ton of weight currently
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trying to crush you. We look up and the air above
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our heads looks like empty space, but it's really
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not. Oh, not at all. The atmosphere is made of
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real physical matter. It's mostly nitrogen and
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oxygen molecules. And gravity is pulling every
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single one of those microscopic molecules down
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toward the center of the Earth. Right. If you
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imagine a column of air, say one inch square.
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stretching from the top of your head all the
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way up to the edge of space. All those miles
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of molecules stacked on top of each other actually
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have weight. And at sea level, that atmospheric
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pressure works out to roughly 101 ,000 pascals,
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which means there is about one kilogram of force
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pressing down on every single square centimeter
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of your skin. Yeah, it's an immense amount of
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weight. So wait, if there are literal tons of
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force pressing on my body right now, why don't
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I feel remotely crushed? It all comes down to
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a perfectly calibrated internal balance. The
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reason you don't feel crushed is that your body
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is constantly pushing back. Pushing back how?
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Well, the fluids in your cells, the blood pumping
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through your veins, and the gases in your lungs
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are all naturally pressurized. They're pushing
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outward against your skin with the exact same
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force that the atmosphere is pushing inward.
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Oh, wow. So it's just a stalemate? The forces
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cancel each other out completely? They do, yeah.
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As long as the environment remains stable anyway.
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Yeah. You only ever really notice atmospheric
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pressure when that... delicate balance is broken,
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which is exactly what happens on that airplane.
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Right. As the plane climbs miles into the sky,
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the air outside gets thinner. There are fewer
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molecules stacked above the plane, so the atmospheric
5:57
pressure inside the cabin drops. But you have
6:00
this tiny trapped pocket of air inside your middle
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ear, behind your eardrum, that is still pressurized
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for sea level. And that higher pressure air inside
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your head is suddenly pushing outward harder
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than the cabin air is pushing inward. Your eardrum
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physically bows outward. That's the tightness
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you feel. To resolve it, your body has to vent
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that trapped air through the Eustachian tube.
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And just to clarify the Eustachian tube is that
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narrow passage connecting your middle ear to
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the back of your throat, right? That's the one.
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It's basically a biological pressure release
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valve. When you swallow or yawn, that tube flexes
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open, the air rushes out to equalize with the
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cabin, and you hear that distinct pop. And the
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potato chip bag is doing the exact same thing.
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It was sealed in a factory on the ground, trapping
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sea -level air inside. At 30 ,000 feet, the air
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in the cabin is weaker, so the air inside the
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bag pushes the plastic outward. It is a perfect
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real -world demonstration of a fundamental rule
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of physics. Pressure and volume are inversely
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related. When the confining pressure drops, a
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gas will naturally expand to take up more physical
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space. Okay, so we just saw how altitude changes
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the pressure in a chip bag. But I was totally
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blown away to learn that this exact same lack
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of pressure at high altitudes completely breaks
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the rules of cooking. Oh, it absolutely rewrites
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them. We take so much of our kitchen physics
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for granted. I mean, most people are taught that
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water boils at a universal temperature of 100
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degrees Celsius. But boiling isn't fundamentally
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about temperature. Wait, really? Yeah, boiling
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is actually a mechanical battle of pressures.
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How so? What is actually happening in the pot?
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Well, when you heat water... you are giving the
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water molecules kinetic energy. They start vibrating
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and bouncing around. Their tendency to want to
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fly apart and escape the liquid surface as a
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gas is called vapor pressure. Okay. But remember,
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the heavy weight of the atmosphere is pushing
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down on the surface of that water, acting like
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an invisible lid, physically holding the molecules
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in the liquid state. So to boil, the water molecules
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have to push upward harder than the sky pushes
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downward. Exactly that. Boarding only occurs
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when the liquid's vapor pressure finally matches
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or exceeds the atmospheric pressure above it.
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At sea level, it takes 100 degrees of thermal
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energy to push back against the atmosphere. But,
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and this is where it gets crazy, if I take my
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camping stove up a high mountain, the air is
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thinner. The invisible lid pushing down on my
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pot of water is much lighter. Right. So the water
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molecules don't need as much kinetic energy to
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break free. Does that mean water boils at a lower
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temperature up there? It does. The water might
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start bubbling and boiling at, say, 90 degrees
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Celsius on a mountain. Does that mean my pasta
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takes longer to cook even though the water is
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bubbling like crazy? Unfortunately, yes. Which
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creates a profoundly counterintuitive problem.
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The water is at a rolling boil, but it is physically
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cooler. And because the chemical reactions of
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cooking rely on heat, not bubbles, boiling your
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pasta on a mountain takes significantly longer.
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The water just can't get hot enough to cook the
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food efficiently before it turns into steam and
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leaves the pot. That is so wild. But we've actually
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engineered a way around this with the pressure
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cooker, and the mechanics of it make so much
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sense now. A pressure cooker is really just a
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heavy pot with a locking, airtight lid. Yes,
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a very strong seal. So as the water heats up
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and turns to steam, the steam is trapped inside.
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It can't escape. And as more steam builds up
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in that confined volume, the pressure inside
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the pot skyrockets well above normal atmospheric
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levels. You are artificially creating a super
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dense atmosphere right inside your kitchen. And
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because this artificial lid of steam is pushing
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down on the liquid water so hard, the water has
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to reach a much higher temperature before it
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can boil. Often up to 120 degrees Celsius. And
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because you are bathing your food in liquid water
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that is 20 degrees hotter than normal, a tough
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cut of meat that might take three hours to braise
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in an open pot becomes tender in 45 minutes.
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Though it's worth pointing out that taming physics
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comes with risks. If that steam pressure builds
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indefinitely, the pot will violently rupture.
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Which is incredibly dangerous. Yeah. That's why
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every pressure cooker has a mechanical safety
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valve engineered to lift and release a jet of
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steam if the internal pressure reaches a critical
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threshold. It is carefully controlled physics.
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But, you know, if a pressure cooker is about
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maximizing pressure... The vacuum flask, like
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the thermos you keep your coffee in, is about
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eliminating it entirely. Right, creating a vacuum.
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Just a region of space where pressure is vastly
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lower than atmospheric levels, essentially empty
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of matter. We often think of vacuums existing
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only in outer space, but a thermos uses a localized
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vacuum as a brilliant thermal shield. The flask
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has an inner wall holding your hot coffee and
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an outer wall you hold in your hand. Right, there's
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a gap between them. Exactly. During manufacturing,
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the air between those two walls is sucked out
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and the gap is sealed. Because heat transfer
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specifically, conduction and convection, requires
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physical molecules to bump into each other to
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pass the thermal energy along. Yes. So if there
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are no air molecules in that gap, the heat from
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your coffee literally has no physical bridge
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to cross to reach the outside wall. The emptiness
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of the vacuum traps the heat perfectly. It's
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so elegant. From the invisible weight of air
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to the engineered emptiness of a vacuum, our
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manipulation of pressure in the kitchen is masterful.
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But if we shift our focus from the air to a much
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denser fluid like water, the physical stakes
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get substantially higher. Because water is heavy.
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If you dive into the ocean, the pressure scales
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up incredibly fast. Immensely fast. Water is
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nearly a thousand times denser than air at sea
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level. For every 10 meters you descend into the
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ocean, the weight of the water above you adds
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the equivalent of another entire atmosphere of
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pressure. 10 meters. You have to stack miles
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of air to get one atmosphere, but just 10 meters
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of water does the exact same thing. It adds up
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so quickly. By the time you reach the deepest
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part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, nearly
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11 kilometers down, the pressure is a thousand
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times greater than at the surface. That is the
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equivalent of a small car resting on every couple
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of square centimeters of your body. It is an
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environment that destroys almost any human -made
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machinery. And yet, it's not a barren wasteland
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down there. Which brings up a massive biological
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question. How is the ocean floor not just a graveyard?
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How can animals survive a car sitting on every
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inch of them? How is a deep -sea fish not just
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immediately crushed into a paste? The mechanism
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of their survival goes back to that internal
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balance we mentioned earlier. If you send an
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empty, rigid metal submarine down, it is full
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of low -pressure air. The water pushes in, the
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air can't push back hard enough, and the metal
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hull buckles. Right. But deep -sea life doesn't
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have air -filled cavities, no large, spongy lungs,
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no gas -filled swim bladders. They are essentially
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completely fluid -filled, and water itself is
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virtually incompressible. So the crushing force
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of the ocean is met by an equal, unyielding outward
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force from the water inside their own tissues.
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Exactly. But the adaptation goes even deeper
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than that, down to the molecular level. Extreme
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pressure actually forces proteins to misfold.
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It squeezes the molecular machinery of life so
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hard that enzymes stop working and cell membranes
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literally solidify. Wait, really? The pressure
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actually changes how chemistry works in their
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bodies? Yes. To survive, these creatures have
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evolved specialized organic molecules called
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piezolites, which acts like microscopic scaffolding.
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Wow. Yeah, these molecules bind to the water
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inside their cells, creating a structural buffer
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that prevents the immense external pressure from
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crushing their delicate proteins out of shape.
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That is absolutely astonishing, and it allows
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for entire ecosystems that operate completely
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independently of the sun. Down at hydrothermal
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vents, where volcanically heated, mineral -rich
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water jets out of cracks in the sea floor, you
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have... giant tube worms and crabs thriving under
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a thousand atmospheres of pressure. It's a completely
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alien world down there. Totally. They don't use
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photosynthesis. The bacteria there use chemosynthesis,
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drawing energy directly from the toxic chemical
14:03
soup of the vent fluid rather than sunlight.
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It really demonstrates that life can adapt to
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almost any continuous extreme. The biological
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problems only really start when an organism tries
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to quickly cross between those high and low pressure
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environments. Which brings us to human scuba
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divers. We are surface dwellers, full of air
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cavities descending into a high -pressure world.
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When a diver breathes from a tank at depth, the
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regulator delivers air at the exact same pressure
14:29
as the surrounding water so their lungs don't
14:31
collapse. Right, but breathing highly pressurized
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air introduces a hidden danger into the bloodstream.
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The bends. Or decompression sickness. I want
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to break down exactly how this happens because
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the chemistry of it is fascinating. What's fascinating
14:46
here is that it relies on a principle called
14:48
Henry's Law, which basically states that gases
14:51
dissolve into liquids much more easily when they're
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under high pressure. Okay. When a diver breathes
14:57
pressurized air, which is mostly nitrogen, that
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extreme pressure forces massive amounts of inert
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nitrogen gas to dissolve directly into their
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blood and fatty tissues. And while they are down
15:07
deep... The pressure keeps the nitrogen perfectly
15:10
dissolved. It's exactly like an unopened bottle
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of fizzy soda. The carbon dioxide in the soda
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is dissolved into the liquid under pressure.
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You can't see any bubbles. The liquid looks completely
15:20
still. Yes, that is a perfect analogy. The crisis
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occurs when the pressure is removed too quickly.
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If a diver ascends to the surface too fast, the
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ambient water pressure drops faster than their
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lungs can off gas that dissolve nitrogen. It's
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like twisting the cap off the soda bottle. The
15:38
pressure plummets and the gas suddenly can't
15:40
stay dissolved anymore. It rapidly comes out
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of solution and forms actual physical bubbles.
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But instead of fizzing in a plastic bottle, it
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is fizzing inside the diver's bloodstream, their
15:50
spinal cord and their joints. And those micro
15:53
bubbles block blood vessels, tear tissues and
15:56
trigger severe immune responses. It causes excruciating
16:00
joint pain, which is why it's called the bends,
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as divers would literally double over in. pain
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and it can easily be life -threatening. So how
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do you treat that? We actually use pressure as
16:09
medicine, right? We do. They put the injured
16:11
diver inside a hyperbaric chamber. It's a sealed
16:13
steel vessel. They pump the air pressure back
16:15
up to match the deep ocean. Oh, so they recompress
16:18
them. Exactly. The immense pressure physically
16:20
crushes those nitrogen bubbles back down into
16:23
a dissolved state in the blood, which immediately
16:25
stops the damage. Then, over the course of hours
16:28
or even days, the doctors slowly reduce the pressure
16:31
in the chamber. allowing the diver to safely
16:34
exhale the nitrogen, completely bubble -free.
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Incredible. We've gone from surviving pressure
16:39
to using it to heal. But there is a whole other
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level where we harness extreme pressure to completely
16:45
break the rules of chemistry. Let's look at extreme
16:48
science and diamond anvil cells. This is where
16:51
geology meets quantum mechanics. A diamond anvil
16:54
cell is an instrument designed to generate pressures
16:56
that rival the conditions found at the very center
16:59
of the Earth, or even deep inside gas giants
17:01
like Jupiter. And the mechanism is elegantly
17:04
simple yet mind -boggling. They take two gem
17:06
-quality flawless diamonds and cut the tips perfectly
17:09
flat. They place a microscopic sand -sized grain
17:13
of a sample material between those two tips.
17:15
Usually inside a tiny metal gasket to hold it
17:17
in place. Right. Then, using mechanical screws,
17:20
they squeeze the diamonds together. But why diamonds?
17:22
They use diamonds for two crucial reasons. First,
17:26
diamond is one of the hardest -known natural
17:28
materials. The perfect, rigid lattice of carbon
17:32
atoms can distribute that immense localized force
17:35
without the crystal shattering. And second, diamonds
17:38
are completely transparent to light. Exactly.
17:41
Transparency is the key to the whole operation.
17:43
Because the diamonds act as windows, scientists
17:46
can fire high -energy lasers or X -rays directly
17:49
through the diamond into the crushed sample.
17:51
They can observe the atomic structure of the
17:54
material shifting in real time. And under those
17:56
planetary pressures, normal materials stop behaving
17:59
normally. Their electron clouds get squeezed
18:02
so tightly that they completely rearrange into
18:04
new exotic phases of matter. I mean, for example,
18:08
under enough pressure, oxygen gas will solidify
18:10
into a red crystal. Or consider metallic hydrogen.
18:13
By crushing hydrogen gas between diamond anvils,
18:16
scientists have forced it into a state where
18:18
it begins to behave like a liquid metal, capable
18:20
of conducting electricity. Which is just crazy
18:22
to think about. It's a state of matter we believe
18:25
exists in massive oceans, deep inside Jupiter.
18:28
And we recreate it in a laboratory room. using
18:32
a device you can hold in your hand. I love that.
18:34
We are essentially bottling planetary cores.
18:37
But I want to bring this all back home to the
18:38
listener's driveway. Because we don't just use
18:41
pressure to study distant planets. We wield it
18:44
every single day in ordinary engineering. We
18:47
need to talk about Pascal's principle and the
18:49
absolute magic of hydraulics. This is a beautiful
18:52
return to where we started. Blaise Pascal observed
18:55
a fundamental law of fluid mechanics. If you
18:58
have an incompressible fluid like oil or water
19:01
completely enclosed in a container and you apply
19:04
pressure to one part of that fluid, that pressure
19:07
is transmitted equally and undiminished in every
19:10
single direction throughout the entire system.
19:12
Okay, so if you push on the fluid on the left
19:14
side, the exact same amount of pressure pushes
19:16
out on the right side. Yes. On its own, that
19:18
just sounds like pushing a liquid around. Yeah.
19:20
But here's where it gets really interesting.
19:22
When you combine it with our definition of pressure
19:24
force divided by area, you get a mechanical superpower.
19:27
Because you can manipulate the area to multiply
19:30
your force. Right. So picture a hydraulic car
19:33
jack. You have a sealed pipe filled with hydraulic
19:36
fluid. On one end, there is a small piston. maybe
19:41
just one square inch in area on the other end
19:44
under the car is a massive piston let's say a
19:47
hundred square inches in area if you push down
19:50
on the small piston with 100 pounds of force
19:52
you are creating a pressure of 100 pounds per
19:56
square inch in the fluid And Pascal's principle
19:59
says that exact same pressure, 100 pounds per
20:02
square inch, travels instantly through the fluid
20:04
to the giant piston. But that giant piston has
20:07
100 square inches of area. So you have 100 pounds
20:10
pushing on each of those 100 square inches. Meaning
20:13
the total upward force is suddenly 10 ,000 pounds.
20:15
You put 100 pounds of effort in, and you get
20:18
10 ,000 pounds of lifting force out. You just
20:21
lifted a one -ton car with the push of a single
20:23
arm. The first time I learned this, it felt like
20:25
magic. It feels like you're creating free energy.
20:28
Well, the universe never gives you free energy.
20:29
Fair enough. The trade -off is distance. To move
20:32
that massive piston up by just one inch, you
20:35
have to push the small piston down by 100 inches,
20:38
moving a large volume of fluid. You trade distance
20:41
to multiply force. But it is the exact same mechanism
20:44
keeping us safe on the road. When you press your
20:47
foot on the brake pedal of your car, you aren't
20:49
strong enough to stop a speeding heavy vehicle.
20:52
Definitely not. But your foot pushes a small
20:55
piston in the master cylinder, creating pressure
20:57
in the brake fluid. That pressure races through
21:00
the brake lines to wider cylinders at the wheels,
21:03
multiplying your foot's force immensely, clamping
21:06
the brake pads down with enough sheer power to
21:08
halt thousands of pounds of moving steel. It's
21:11
just pressure. A gentle tap of the foot translated
21:14
into massive stopping power entirely through
21:17
the invisible architecture of fluid pressure.
21:19
And that perfectly circles back to our mission
21:21
today. We have followed this invisible, silent
21:24
push from the sky all the way to the microscopic
21:26
space between two diamonds. We've seen how the
21:29
weight of the air pops your ear on a flight and
21:31
changes how your food cooks. We've explored how
21:34
the crushing weight of the deep ocean requires
21:36
biological marvels just to exist. and how humans
21:40
have to strictly manage dissolved gases in our
21:42
blood to safely return from the depths. And we've
21:45
seen how engineering that pressure allows us
21:48
to squeeze hydrogen into metal and multiply the
21:51
strength of a human leg to stop a car. It is
21:55
everywhere, connecting everything. It really
21:57
is. Pressure is constant, it's invisible, and
22:00
it is quietly shaping every moment of your existence,
22:03
whether you notice it or not. It dictates the
22:05
phase of the matter beneath our feet, the weather
22:07
systems above our heads, and the very chemistry
22:10
keeping ourselves intact. And I want to leave
22:12
you with one final provocative thought to mull
22:15
over. Building on what we discussed about those
22:17
diamond amble cells, we know that by generating
22:20
extreme planetary pressure here in Earth's slabs,
22:22
we can force ordinary atoms into completely alien
22:25
phases of matter like that solid metallic hydrogen.
22:28
But our machines have limits. Think about the
22:31
unimaginably high pressure cores of massive distant
22:35
exoplanets worlds much larger and denser than
22:38
Jupiter. What entirely unknown, bizarre materials
22:42
might be forging in the dark centers of those
22:44
planets right now? Materials whose physics and
22:47
chemistry we literally can't even dream of yet.
22:49
It certainly makes you view the universe as a
22:51
much more dynamic, malleable place. It really
22:54
does. And I suspect it will definitely change
22:56
how you view the world the next time you are
22:58
sitting on a flight watching a bag of potato
23:00
chips silently puff up in the seat pocket next
23:02
to you. Thank you for joining us on this deep
23:04
dive. Until next time.