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What are quasi-particles · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what am I made out of? You're made
0:11
Speaker 1: of particles? Uh? And my lunch particles? What about the sun?
0:15
Speaker 1: Also particles? Okay? Now what are all of those particles
0:19
Speaker 1: made out of? Probably smaller particles, says it. Particles all
0:23
Speaker 1: the way down. Is there anything that's not a particle?
0:26
Speaker 1: You're asking a particle physicist, So what else do you
0:29
Speaker 1: expect to hear? An actual particle of explanation? Well, I
0:33
Speaker 1: think this podcast is basically a particle. Is it made
0:37
Speaker 1: out of? Explain eons? Bad punions? Bad? I had a
0:42
Speaker 1: bad punion last week. Didn't go over well? Hi or
1:00
Speaker 1: handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
1:04
Speaker 1: I'm a real particle physicist, not a quasi particle physicist.
1:08
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Quasi Explain the Universe,
1:12
Speaker 1: a real production of Radio That's Right, in which we
1:15
Speaker 1: talk about all the things that are real, all the
1:17
Speaker 1: things that are crazy, and all the things that are imagined,
1:20
Speaker 1: and our interpretation of all of them. We break them
1:23
Speaker 1: down for you and try to give you an understanding
1:24
Speaker 1: of what's going on out there and how scientists are
1:27
Speaker 1: thinking about it all the mysteries of the universe, all
1:30
Speaker 1: the unanswered questions, and all the amazing facts that we
1:33
Speaker 1: have learned. We bring it all to you with a
1:35
Speaker 1: pun or two. It's right, all of the things that
1:38
Speaker 1: are out there and all the things that might also
1:40
Speaker 1: be out there that scientists are not sure actually exist
1:44
Speaker 1: or are even real, even some things that could be
1:47
Speaker 1: semi real. Isn't that a weird term, Daniel, semi real
1:50
Speaker 1: almost real? It's semi weird. Yeah. Yeah, Well, you know
1:53
Speaker 1: there's a whole rabbit hole we could get down into
1:55
Speaker 1: there by like what is real even mean? Man? But
1:58
Speaker 1: I don't think we've smoked enough banana pee is yet
2:00
Speaker 1: today to get there, or like our rabbits even real.
2:03
Speaker 1: That's another rabbit hole in itself. And why are they
2:05
Speaker 1: chasing bananas down rabbit holes? Like that never made any sense. Yeah,
2:09
Speaker 1: So everything's a particle. It seems like, you know, all
2:11
Speaker 1: matter in the universe, And so it kind of begs
2:14
Speaker 1: the question like what are particles themselves made out of
2:16
Speaker 1: and what is not made out of particles? And could
2:19
Speaker 1: there be something else that's not a particle but still
2:23
Speaker 1: make up matter? Yeah, And particles are sort of an
2:25
Speaker 1: idea that we have. I mean, we look out in
2:27
Speaker 1: the universe and we break things up and we see
2:30
Speaker 1: them as smaller and smaller bits, and then we have
2:32
Speaker 1: this notion that the smallest piece might be this dot.
2:35
Speaker 1: But the whole concept of a particle is a little
2:37
Speaker 1: bit fuzzy. We've talked on the podcast about the discovery
2:40
Speaker 1: of particles. Whate really means to be a particle? You know,
2:43
Speaker 1: the first particle ever discovered was the electron. It was
2:46
Speaker 1: really just the identification of a point in space that
2:49
Speaker 1: where you had charge and mass at the same time,
2:51
Speaker 1: like this little cluster of quantum labels. And since then
2:56
Speaker 1: we've added stuff to it. You know, particles can have spin,
2:58
Speaker 1: that can have magnetic moments, that can do all sorts
3:00
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. But still this concept of like what
3:03
Speaker 1: is a particle what does it mean remains a little
3:06
Speaker 1: bit fuzzy. You know, they don't have any volume, They
3:09
Speaker 1: do all sorts of weird things. Sometimes they act like waves,
3:12
Speaker 1: and so it begs the question of like our particles
3:15
Speaker 1: real or they're just something sort of in our mind?
3:17
Speaker 1: And can we apply this notion of particles to other things? Also, now, Daniel,
3:22
Speaker 1: as a disclaimer, we we should say that you are
3:24
Speaker 1: a particle physicist, so you might not be entirely neutral
3:28
Speaker 1: on this subject, might be a little biased. Or I'm
3:30
Speaker 1: an expert, right, so you should you should listen carefully
3:32
Speaker 1: to my thoughts about it, because I'm well informed. No,
3:35
Speaker 1: it's certainly true, and I like to think of the
3:37
Speaker 1: universe in terms of particles. I'd like to think that
3:39
Speaker 1: the universe can be explained in terms of a bunch
3:42
Speaker 1: of little microscopic things, that everything is really just an
3:45
Speaker 1: emergent phenomena of the microscopic I guess a particle physicists,
3:49
Speaker 1: everything looks like a party, just like I've heard astronomers say,
3:52
Speaker 1: we're all made out of stars. I'm like, mmmm, that's convenient. Yeah,
3:57
Speaker 1: And it's sort of a question of scale. Even astronomers
3:59
Speaker 1: some times they treat like the whole sun as a particle.
4:03
Speaker 1: You know, when you're doing your gravitational calculations about you know,
4:06
Speaker 1: moving a planet around a star, you don't really care
4:08
Speaker 1: about how big the star is. You're so far from
4:10
Speaker 1: it that you can effectively treat the whole star as
4:13
Speaker 1: if it was a point mass at the center of
4:15
Speaker 1: mass of the star. And that's basically calling it a particle.
4:19
Speaker 1: It's saying, I don't care about any other details. I'm
4:21
Speaker 1: just gonna put it as a point. So it's a
4:23
Speaker 1: very powerful concept, even if you're not gainfully employed in
4:26
Speaker 1: the field. Right, And generally speaking, it just kind of
4:28
Speaker 1: means like a packet of stuff, right, Yeah, it's sort
4:30
Speaker 1: of like a little cluster of labels. You know, you
4:33
Speaker 1: can put a mass on and a spin on it,
4:35
Speaker 1: you know, other kind of quantum labels. But yeah, it's
4:38
Speaker 1: like a little cluster of labels. Yeah, like a whole
4:41
Speaker 1: bunch of little labels moving around together. Yeah. Like we've
4:44
Speaker 1: talked about how the new trino, you know, it carries
4:46
Speaker 1: a weak label but doesn't carry one for the strong force,
4:49
Speaker 1: and if photons don't carry any mass, but they do
4:51
Speaker 1: carry information about electromagnetic fields. And so to me, I
4:55
Speaker 1: think about these things having their little dots in space
4:57
Speaker 1: that have labels on them. And so there's this concept
5:01
Speaker 1: in physics called a quasi particle. Is it quasi or
5:04
Speaker 1: quasi part I'm quasi sure that it's quasi particle. Obviously
5:08
Speaker 1: quasi experts in vocabulary here and pronunciation. If we're wrong,
5:13
Speaker 1: we're only quasi wrong. It's better than being semi wrong,
5:17
Speaker 1: I guess or pseudo wrong, pseudo experts. There you go.
5:21
Speaker 1: And this came to us from listeners actually who had
5:23
Speaker 1: a question about what these things are. Listeners, Linda Campbell,
5:26
Speaker 1: Nick Beatrice, Jack Case, Tim Davis, they all wrote to
5:30
Speaker 1: us asking what a quasi particle is. That's right. If
5:38
Speaker 1: you have a question about something you'd like us to
5:40
Speaker 1: talk about, right to us, because we will actually answer
5:43
Speaker 1: your email and sometimes even do a podcast on it.
5:46
Speaker 1: And these folks had seen articles about quasi particles and
5:49
Speaker 1: asked us to explain it. What is a quasi particle?
5:52
Speaker 1: What does it mean? And have we gone too far
5:54
Speaker 1: with this concept of particles? Impossible? You can't have enough particles,
5:58
Speaker 1: said to a particle physicist, you can't have too many particles.
6:00
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a nice idea. Now we don't know, right,
6:03
Speaker 1: like we don't know if particles go on forever, if
6:05
Speaker 1: you can get down to the smallest possible particle, or
6:08
Speaker 1: if you get small enough particles doesn't really work and
6:11
Speaker 1: you need something else, like you know, pixels of space
6:13
Speaker 1: or little strings or something else. But so far, it's
6:16
Speaker 1: a very nice idea to explain the world around us,
6:19
Speaker 1: Like if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
6:21
Speaker 1: If you have a particle collider, everything looks like a particle. Yeah.
6:25
Speaker 1: And if particles have worked, then you extend the idea.
6:27
Speaker 1: You're like, well, let's see if this would also help
6:29
Speaker 1: us understand this other problem. And we do that in
6:32
Speaker 1: physics and in math all the time. We take strategies
6:34
Speaker 1: from one field and we apply them somewhere else to
6:36
Speaker 1: see if we can make connections. You know, one of
6:39
Speaker 1: Newton's greatest leaps forward conceptually was understanding that the same
6:42
Speaker 1: rules applied in the heavens and on Earth. And that's
6:45
Speaker 1: all we're trying to do. We're trying to use the
6:47
Speaker 1: concept we discovered in particle physics, the group theory, the symmetry,
6:50
Speaker 1: the conservation laws, and apply them other places. Yes, Daniel,
6:54
Speaker 1: but what is heaven made out of particles? Particles, angel ons, halons?
7:00
Speaker 1: There you go? Um. So, as usually, we were wondering
7:05
Speaker 1: how many people out there actually had heard of this
7:07
Speaker 1: concept or knew what it was. So Daniel went out
7:10
Speaker 1: there into the wilds of the Internet to ask this
7:12
Speaker 1: question and get people's responses. So before you listen to
7:15
Speaker 1: these answers, think about it. For a second. Have you
7:17
Speaker 1: heard of quasi particles and if somebody asked you, what
7:20
Speaker 1: would you say. Here's what people had to say. Sounds
7:23
Speaker 1: like something that has some of the properties of particles,
7:28
Speaker 1: but perhaps doesn't satisfy all of the conditions. Either that
7:32
Speaker 1: or some guy named quasi came up with a new particle,
7:34
Speaker 1: probably something that wants to trick you that it's a particle,
7:39
Speaker 1: and it's not guess that there are particles with more
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Speaker 1: than one. Quasi particles are virtual particles that don't follow
7:46
Speaker 1: the rules. Crazy particles, particles which are created in the
7:52
Speaker 1: vacuum because of the background energy of space that's sort
7:57
Speaker 1: of there and they're not there. Maybe how that's how
8:01
Speaker 1: that's something? Is that like a virtual particle or maybe
8:06
Speaker 1: something that we've seen in the data when we've been
8:10
Speaker 1: looking for particles that we can't quite explain. Particles have mass,
8:14
Speaker 1: and quasi particles maybe doing maybe don't. Maybe they go
8:18
Speaker 1: through a filter in the universe. Something that's almost a
8:22
Speaker 1: particle or something very similar to one. I'm not a
8:26
Speaker 1: native speaker and I had to look quasi in dictionary.
8:31
Speaker 1: It can semi so coarse particle is semi particle, Quasi
8:37
Speaker 1: means something that looks like something else. So I'm assuming
8:41
Speaker 1: the quasi particle is a particle that looks like a
8:45
Speaker 1: particle but really isn't. I would say a quasi particle
8:48
Speaker 1: is a particle that may appear to be real, but
8:51
Speaker 1: actually it's not. There was something super tiny. Well those
8:54
Speaker 1: are some pretty good guesses. Yeah, I like the person
8:56
Speaker 1: who looked it up in a dictionary. I'm like, I
9:00
Speaker 1: know there's some rules here. You're not supposed to look
9:02
Speaker 1: anything up or google anything, but you know, not being
9:05
Speaker 1: a native speaker, I'll forgive them, right, Maybe there's just
9:07
Speaker 1: quasi rules. So yeah, let's jump right into a daniel um.
9:11
Speaker 1: What is a quasi particle. So a quasi particle is
9:14
Speaker 1: called a quasi particle because it's something that behaves like
9:17
Speaker 1: a particle, has some of the same properties that we
9:20
Speaker 1: typically use to describe particles, like it's persistent, you know,
9:24
Speaker 1: it sticks around. It's quantized. You know you can have
9:27
Speaker 1: one or two without one and a half. Usually they're discreet,
9:31
Speaker 1: but it's not actually fundamental. It's not like something that
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Speaker 1: is the building block of the universe. It's not a
9:37
Speaker 1: ripple in the quantum field. It's usually like an excited
9:41
Speaker 1: state of some macroscopic solid. It's something that behaves like
9:44
Speaker 1: a particle, but it's not actually a particle. So does
9:47
Speaker 1: that include like the protons and neutrons, you know, the
9:51
Speaker 1: behavior like particles, but they're actually made out of smaller
9:53
Speaker 1: particles inside. Is that kind of what you mean or
9:55
Speaker 1: is it are you talking more like bigger scale? We're
9:58
Speaker 1: talking bigger scale, I mean, and you could argue you
10:00
Speaker 1: that protels and neutrons are not particles because they're not
10:03
Speaker 1: fundamental and they don't have their own quantum fields, and
10:06
Speaker 1: so in that sense, they really are an emergent phenomenon.
10:08
Speaker 1: And we can get into that later on. I think
10:10
Speaker 1: that's a fascinating question. But I think typically people think
10:13
Speaker 1: when they talk about emergent phenomenon, they think about sort
10:16
Speaker 1: of a larger scale. You know, imagine like you have
10:18
Speaker 1: a glass of water in front of you and it
10:20
Speaker 1: has that's sparkling. Water has bubbles. You can see those
10:23
Speaker 1: bubble sort of move up through the water, and they
10:26
Speaker 1: move sort of the way a particle does. They hold
10:29
Speaker 1: their shape, they're consistent, you know, they're coherent. They move
10:32
Speaker 1: through the water the same way a particle does. You
10:34
Speaker 1: can apply a lot of the same mathematics and understanding
10:36
Speaker 1: intuition that you apply to particles to that bubble in
10:39
Speaker 1: the water, even though nobody thinks that bubbles are a
10:42
Speaker 1: fundamental unit of the universe or that there's like a
10:44
Speaker 1: quantum bubble fielding as a manifestation of maybe quarks are
10:48
Speaker 1: made out of bubbles that we have yet discovered. Yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: it's bubble theory, you know, the same way you can
10:55
Speaker 1: look at like the ocean and you can see a
10:57
Speaker 1: wave moving through it. A wave is not a fundamental
10:59
Speaker 1: proper of the universe. It's an emergent phenomena of all
11:03
Speaker 1: these thousands and millions and trillions of particles all moving together.
11:07
Speaker 1: But mathematically it's much more convenient to talk about the
11:09
Speaker 1: wave than to track all the little particles that make
11:12
Speaker 1: it up. So quasity particles in the same way, but
11:15
Speaker 1: not really that big a scale on the scale, like
11:17
Speaker 1: bubbles and waves, but you know, like excited states of solids,
11:21
Speaker 1: like wiggles that pass through solids, or rotations of things
11:25
Speaker 1: that move in a coherent way and and sort of
11:27
Speaker 1: keep their identity as they pass through a solid, right
11:30
Speaker 1: like sound waves. Also could a sound wave like a
11:32
Speaker 1: shout or a screen be considered a quasi part of Yes,
11:36
Speaker 1: sound waves like vibrations. Basically, if you break them down,
11:39
Speaker 1: you can go down to like the quantum. The smallest
11:42
Speaker 1: possible sound wave is like the vibration of a single
11:45
Speaker 1: particle that is a quasi particle. It's called a phone on.
11:49
Speaker 1: A phone on is like the I did not just
11:52
Speaker 1: make that up. You can phone anybody and ask them
11:55
Speaker 1: about it. It's seriously then, no, it's sort of like
12:00
Speaker 1: a you know, it's a more general sense of what
12:03
Speaker 1: a particle is. And here you have like a single
12:05
Speaker 1: particle might be vibrating, and then it passes that vibration
12:09
Speaker 1: off to the next particle and to the next particle
12:11
Speaker 1: and the next thing. It's yeah, and it's quantized, right,
12:14
Speaker 1: because these particles that are vibrating the atoms or whatever
12:17
Speaker 1: in your lattice. You know, say, for example, I knock
12:20
Speaker 1: on the desk in front of me, it sends sound
12:22
Speaker 1: waves to the desk, or if I speak through the air.
12:25
Speaker 1: Then those particles, the ones that are doing the wiggling,
12:28
Speaker 1: their quantum particles. They have quantum states. It's like a
12:30
Speaker 1: minimum amount of vibration that they can have. And so
12:34
Speaker 1: if you have that minimum amount of vibration, they could
12:36
Speaker 1: pass to the next one and pass to the next one.
12:38
Speaker 1: And that's what keeps it like a coherent thing can't
12:41
Speaker 1: just disperse out into infinitely smaller things. It sticks around
12:45
Speaker 1: because of these quantum minimum They're almost like packets of stuff.
12:51
Speaker 1: And it's sort of a mental game you can play
12:53
Speaker 1: with yourself, like what's a particle and what's a quasi particle?
12:56
Speaker 1: You know. Another great and classical example of a quasi
12:58
Speaker 1: particle is the absence of a particle. What. Yeah, Like
13:03
Speaker 1: you ever play that game where you have like a
13:05
Speaker 1: bunch of tiles and there's one open slot and you
13:07
Speaker 1: have to slide the tiles around, like get them in
13:09
Speaker 1: the right order, like the little puzzles. Yeah, those little puzzles. Well,
13:13
Speaker 1: you can think about it like as the motion of
13:15
Speaker 1: a bunch of tiles, or you can think about it
13:17
Speaker 1: as the motion of a hole of a gap. Right,
13:19
Speaker 1: that gap is sort of moving through the puzzle. You're
13:22
Speaker 1: moving that gap around, so that little hole is like
13:25
Speaker 1: a particle. That little hole is sort of like another tile, right,
13:28
Speaker 1: And so in the same way, if you have like
13:30
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of electrons, you can think about one
13:33
Speaker 1: missing electron moving around like they have a ten slots
13:37
Speaker 1: for electrons, but only nine electrons, so there's one hole, right,
13:41
Speaker 1: and then if all the electrons move over, then the
13:43
Speaker 1: whole moves the opposite way, right, the opposite way precisely.
13:47
Speaker 1: So you can either think of it as moving like
13:49
Speaker 1: every single electron over one slot, or you can just
13:52
Speaker 1: think of it as the whole moving over one in
13:54
Speaker 1: the other direction. There's two equivalent ways to think about it,
13:58
Speaker 1: but one of them is simpler because you've abstracted away
14:00
Speaker 1: a lot of complications, so you can think about it
14:03
Speaker 1: and just this one blob in the same way that
14:05
Speaker 1: like watching a bubble rise through water is simpler than
14:08
Speaker 1: thinking about all the billions of little particles that are
14:11
Speaker 1: making that happen. So you sort of like abstracted away
14:14
Speaker 1: some stuff so you can apply your particle brain to
14:16
Speaker 1: this new kind of thing. I see, you just kind
14:19
Speaker 1: of blew my mind a little bit. Yeah, just to
14:21
Speaker 1: think of that. Bubbles are not actually a thing. They're
14:24
Speaker 1: just like water, molic is moving out of the way.
14:27
Speaker 1: That's a bubble, Yeah, exactly, They're just getting pushed out
14:29
Speaker 1: of the way by that air. But the arrangement is
14:32
Speaker 1: sort of static. There's like a minimum size to those bubbles,
14:34
Speaker 1: right because of surface tension or whatever. The bubbles can't
14:36
Speaker 1: just break up into infinitely small bubbles and that's why
14:39
Speaker 1: they stick around right until they eventually they pop. And
14:42
Speaker 1: in the same way, like electrons can't split in half,
14:45
Speaker 1: and so that's why you don't get these holes like
14:47
Speaker 1: gradually filled in with partial electrons. Now, this sounds kind
14:51
Speaker 1: of very macro like, you know, we're talking about bubbles
14:54
Speaker 1: and ways. Now, is this something that you use a
14:57
Speaker 1: particle physics deals with or is it more like a
15:01
Speaker 1: bigger things physics. Neither. Actually, it's not something that I
15:04
Speaker 1: deal with because I usually deal with actual particles, real particles,
15:07
Speaker 1: you know, particles that are excitations of quantum fields. But
15:11
Speaker 1: it's also not something that happens on the macro scale.
15:13
Speaker 1: Usually it's most often on the micro scale. So it's
15:16
Speaker 1: something in the adjacent field of condensed matter physics. People
15:19
Speaker 1: who build like weird materials and you know, super fluidity
15:23
Speaker 1: and think about super conductivity. I mean, another great example
15:27
Speaker 1: of a quasi particle are pairs of electrons that cause
15:30
Speaker 1: super conductivity. You know, one reason that metals have a
15:34
Speaker 1: hard time being super conductive is because electrons are fermions.
15:37
Speaker 1: They don't like to be in the lowest state together
15:40
Speaker 1: with another one. But in super conducting materials, we did
15:44
Speaker 1: a whole podcast episode about that, electrons like to group
15:46
Speaker 1: together into pairs. They're called Cooper pairs, and they're pushed
15:50
Speaker 1: together into these pairs and together they're actually bosons. They
15:53
Speaker 1: have the opposite rules from fermions, and so they can
15:56
Speaker 1: cool down and all occupy the same state and flow
15:59
Speaker 1: smoothly over each other. So a Cooper pair is like
16:01
Speaker 1: a pair of electrons sort of acting like a particle.
16:05
Speaker 1: And so that's another example of a quaty particle. They're
16:07
Speaker 1: often at this micro level. I guess the common thread
16:10
Speaker 1: is that they maintain some sort of quantum property, right,
16:14
Speaker 1: like a dust particle. Physics wouldn't call a quasi particle, right,
16:17
Speaker 1: It has to sort of maintain that quantuminez feeling about it. Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: And you know, you could probably argue that anything as
16:23
Speaker 1: a quasi particle, but I would say that it should
16:26
Speaker 1: be persistent, and it should be quantized, and it should
16:28
Speaker 1: be discreete. So many Q words quanti quasi qualitative, quantity
16:34
Speaker 1: of particles exactly and so it's fun. It's like an extrapolation.
16:39
Speaker 1: And this is always really fascinating in science when you
16:41
Speaker 1: can see something in the world and then apply those
16:44
Speaker 1: same ideas somewhere else and gain some insight because it
16:47
Speaker 1: kind of works, you know, it helps you. It simplifies
16:49
Speaker 1: the problems so you can see the larger dynamics and
16:52
Speaker 1: gives you an insight into what's going on. It lets
16:54
Speaker 1: you use your intuition from somewhere else. And that's what
16:57
Speaker 1: science is all about. It's not about figuring out the
16:59
Speaker 1: rules for a and there for being there for see,
17:01
Speaker 1: we want rules that explain everything. We want rules to
17:03
Speaker 1: tie everything together. And so yeah, if you have a
17:06
Speaker 1: hammer and you've hit a bunch of nails successfully, you're
17:08
Speaker 1: gonna go around and hit everything else with that hammer
17:10
Speaker 1: until they look like nails, until they break apart into particles.
17:14
Speaker 1: Very convenient. It all works, See, it all works. All right,
17:17
Speaker 1: let's get into what are some examples, some fun examples
17:20
Speaker 1: of quasi particles, and then let's talk about whether they
17:23
Speaker 1: or not they're actually real. But first let's take a
17:27
Speaker 1: quick break. Al Right, I know we're quasi talking about
17:42
Speaker 1: quasi particles. I'm really talking about real particles. And even
17:46
Speaker 1: this podcast is sort of a quasi particle, right, I guess,
17:48
Speaker 1: because you know, it sort of exists as electrons moving,
17:52
Speaker 1: which are particles, and it gets toward as information and
17:55
Speaker 1: it gets turned into sound ways, which are sort of
17:58
Speaker 1: quasi particles too. That's right. This part cast cannot be
18:00
Speaker 1: broken up into smaller pieces, and so it's therefore a
18:03
Speaker 1: quantized podcast and cannot disperse the universe and must be
18:07
Speaker 1: accepted into your brain. In total. It's both good and
18:09
Speaker 1: bad at the same time. You're welcome, of course, to
18:12
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast in five minute increments or twelve
18:14
Speaker 1: minute increments or five all at once, so do with
18:17
Speaker 1: as you please, of course. Oh my goodness. All right, well,
18:20
Speaker 1: what are some examples of quasi particles, Like we talked
18:23
Speaker 1: a little bit about phonons being like sound waves particles. Yeah,
18:28
Speaker 1: Phonons are vibrations, they're like the quantum of sound waves,
18:32
Speaker 1: are like the minimum component of sound waves. All sound
18:34
Speaker 1: waves in a solid are built out of phonons, and
18:38
Speaker 1: so the smallest possible sound wave you can have in
18:40
Speaker 1: a solid is one phone on and you know, it's
18:43
Speaker 1: just like energy moving through the solid. This atom vibrating
18:48
Speaker 1: in a lattice, and then the next one vibrates and
18:49
Speaker 1: the next one vibrates, and so you can think of
18:52
Speaker 1: that as the phone on moving through. And I think
18:54
Speaker 1: phone on is pretty cool word to ye. It makes
18:56
Speaker 1: me think of like some sort of like Star Trek gun,
19:00
Speaker 1: like you know, set your phone on, blasters on, wiggle um,
19:05
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's very reminiscent for me of
19:08
Speaker 1: phoning it in. I feel like physicists phoned it in
19:11
Speaker 1: when they came up with this name. They're like, what
19:13
Speaker 1: do we call a sound wave particle? I know, a
19:17
Speaker 1: phone on and I think it's awesome. Yeah, and then
19:20
Speaker 1: all the other quasi particles all have sort of similar names.
19:23
Speaker 1: You know, the kind of thing that's getting wiggled or
19:26
Speaker 1: you know, moved through and then on at the end
19:28
Speaker 1: of is it related to sort of like the medium
19:30
Speaker 1: on which these things propagated or move around in, Because
19:34
Speaker 1: I feel like a sound wave is quantized because the
19:37
Speaker 1: underlying thing that they're on is quantized. So it's at
19:41
Speaker 1: some point, you know, you can't make a smaller sound
19:44
Speaker 1: wave because run into particle, that's right, because those particles
19:48
Speaker 1: have quantized energy levels. Like, they can't wiggle at half
19:51
Speaker 1: of their energy level. They can wiggle at one energy
19:53
Speaker 1: level or two or three, but there's a minimum amount
19:56
Speaker 1: of wiggle and that's why it's quantized. You know. That's why,
19:59
Speaker 1: for example, they can't accept a photon of arbitrary energy.
20:02
Speaker 1: They're resonant frequencies frequencies that solids like to accept photons
20:06
Speaker 1: because it helps them move exactly one energy level up.
20:10
Speaker 1: And also that's why solids give off light at certain frequencies,
20:14
Speaker 1: because you know that's the resonant frequencies for that gas.
20:17
Speaker 1: For example, I can excite up by absorbing a photon
20:20
Speaker 1: and excite down by giving off that photon. And when
20:23
Speaker 1: absorbs the photon, like, where does that energy go? It
20:26
Speaker 1: goes into a phone on? Right. A phonon is the
20:29
Speaker 1: energy moving through the gas. So photons get turned into phonons, right. Well,
20:34
Speaker 1: that's fun to say. And so what are some other
20:37
Speaker 1: examples of quasi particles? Well, basically every quantum property that
20:41
Speaker 1: a particle can have when you put it in a lattice,
20:44
Speaker 1: you can think about that property moving through the ladder.
20:47
Speaker 1: What is like a like a grid of particles? Yeah,
20:50
Speaker 1: every solid you can think of is like a grid
20:52
Speaker 1: of particles, like a three D like a lego set
20:55
Speaker 1: of particles put together. And so they're all back together,
20:58
Speaker 1: back together. Each one is touching the one above and
21:00
Speaker 1: below it into its left, into its right, forwards and backwards,
21:03
Speaker 1: and they're sort of tied together by these bonds. And
21:05
Speaker 1: that's what makes a solid, right, it's sort of like
21:07
Speaker 1: a loose crystal. And so they're in this lattice so
21:10
Speaker 1: they can pass information. Right, It's like if you're in
21:12
Speaker 1: a crowd of people and everybody's whispering into their neighbor's ear,
21:16
Speaker 1: you can pass information through the crowd, and so that
21:19
Speaker 1: same way, like that's how these bonons get passed through
21:21
Speaker 1: the crowd. But you can do it also with other
21:24
Speaker 1: quantum properties like the particle spin. You said we could
21:27
Speaker 1: do it with holes, but you can also do it
21:29
Speaker 1: with like quantum properties like charge and mass and things
21:33
Speaker 1: like that. That's a good point. I mean, for charge,
21:35
Speaker 1: it's sort of holes, right. Holes essentially is the moving
21:38
Speaker 1: of charge around, but they're the actual particle moves over,
21:41
Speaker 1: like the electrons have to move over. You can't pass
21:44
Speaker 1: charge from one particle to another the way you can
21:46
Speaker 1: pass energy and electron moves from here or there, it
21:49
Speaker 1: moves the charge with it, creating sort of like a
21:52
Speaker 1: like a hole in the charge. Yeah, so you can
21:54
Speaker 1: have quasi particles in like a particle gas right with
21:57
Speaker 1: the electrons are free to move around. Then the apps
21:59
Speaker 1: and of a particle is a quasi particle that whole.
22:02
Speaker 1: But also in a lattice, you can have quasi particles
22:05
Speaker 1: like the phonon, but also things like the magnon, which
22:09
Speaker 1: is the the quantum of particle spin that helps create
22:13
Speaker 1: the magnetic field that metals can have. For example. Now
22:16
Speaker 1: that one does sound like a transformer, I have to say,
22:20
Speaker 1: which I'm all for. Waits. A particle spin can also
22:24
Speaker 1: move around like a wave. How does that work, Like
22:26
Speaker 1: the orientation of it or what does that mean? Yeah,
22:29
Speaker 1: the orientation of it. Remember, the particle spin is quantized.
22:32
Speaker 1: So for example, an electron can be spin up or
22:34
Speaker 1: spin down. So say you have a bunch of electrons
22:37
Speaker 1: that are all spin down except for one that's spin up.
22:40
Speaker 1: Then it can sort of pass that spin to the
22:43
Speaker 1: next electron making its spin up, And it can pass
22:45
Speaker 1: that spin to the next electron it can make its
22:47
Speaker 1: spin up, so the spin up nous can move through
22:50
Speaker 1: this sort of grid of electrons, and you can think
22:54
Speaker 1: of that it's like, oh, well, I got a bunch
22:55
Speaker 1: of electrons summer spin up and summer spin down. Or
22:58
Speaker 1: you can think of it like, oh, I have a
23:00
Speaker 1: magnon that's moving through a sea of electrons because like
23:04
Speaker 1: one particle will give it's been to the next particle,
23:08
Speaker 1: or or just from the gap of it. Yeah, they
23:10
Speaker 1: can transfer because they couple to each other a little bit.
23:12
Speaker 1: You know, Electrons talk to each other, they bounce around,
23:14
Speaker 1: they share energy, they interact, and spin is conserved. So
23:18
Speaker 1: you can't just like have them all be spin up.
23:20
Speaker 1: If they're all spin down except for one, then you
23:23
Speaker 1: have to have one electron spin up. It's just a
23:25
Speaker 1: question of which one. And because it's quanti as, you
23:28
Speaker 1: can't have like half spin up and a third spin up.
23:31
Speaker 1: You need to pass the whole thing over from electron
23:33
Speaker 1: to electron. And so the magnon moves around. Is it
23:37
Speaker 1: like the potato in a game of pot potato? Exactly exactly,
23:41
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure. Maybe the electrons want to be
23:43
Speaker 1: spin up, right, Maybe it's like, hey, give me that
23:45
Speaker 1: hot potato. No, give me that hot potato. I can't
23:48
Speaker 1: speak for the electrons. We should just rename the game
23:50
Speaker 1: to magnons or quasi potatoes, and then every time you
23:55
Speaker 1: want to play with your four year olds, you have
23:56
Speaker 1: to explain to them quasi particles, and then you know
23:58
Speaker 1: they're not interested in anymore, and then nobody wants to play.
24:01
Speaker 1: But these are actually really cool and they have other
24:04
Speaker 1: applications and particle physics, like if you search for magnons,
24:07
Speaker 1: you can be sensitive to really small effects. Like if
24:10
Speaker 1: you get a field of particles and they're really quiet,
24:13
Speaker 1: then you can look for magnons as evidence of like
24:15
Speaker 1: maybe dark matter has come through and hit one of
24:17
Speaker 1: these electrons and given it a spin, and so you
24:20
Speaker 1: can try to measure these things using very very sensitive
24:24
Speaker 1: magnetometers because remember the spin of the particle effects it's
24:28
Speaker 1: magnetic field, and so that's why we call it a magnal.
24:30
Speaker 1: It all goes back to dark matter, doesn't it. In
24:33
Speaker 1: the end, it's only exciting if it can help you
24:35
Speaker 1: find dark matter. I guess maybe right, because it motivates
24:39
Speaker 1: why you want to study it. Maybe it's a big mystery. Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: But here it's just like this is a cool idea
24:44
Speaker 1: and it gives us a new way to look for
24:45
Speaker 1: something really cool, and it's an example of why it
24:48
Speaker 1: is good to use like particle physics ideas in other areas,
24:52
Speaker 1: Like you can get this inside into condensed matter and
24:55
Speaker 1: how spin moves around in the lattice of electrons, and
24:58
Speaker 1: then that gives you an idea for how to look
24:59
Speaker 1: for some thing else cool and news. So you know,
25:01
Speaker 1: it's sort of like refreshes you creatively intellectually to like
25:05
Speaker 1: look at something from a new perspective. So is the
25:07
Speaker 1: idea then that, like if I have a whole bunch
25:09
Speaker 1: of electrons and they're just hanging out and suddenly there's
25:12
Speaker 1: like a potato in the middle, they're like, You're like,
25:15
Speaker 1: must have been dark matter that gave us that potato, right,
25:18
Speaker 1: or you know spin obviously, But is it kind of
25:20
Speaker 1: like that, Like if there's suddenly a potato in the middle,
25:22
Speaker 1: you've gotta wonder where that potato came from. Yeah, exactly,
25:25
Speaker 1: And eventually one dark matter experiment will have to be
25:27
Speaker 1: called potato based on this podcast, Yeah, physics ordinary what's
25:32
Speaker 1: the right acronym there? Transfer Well, while you work on that,
25:36
Speaker 1: you know, these things actually do have special power to
25:39
Speaker 1: discover dark matter because the kind of dark matter experiments
25:41
Speaker 1: we have right now are mostly waiting for dark matter
25:44
Speaker 1: to bump into the nucleus of the atom, you know,
25:46
Speaker 1: the big heavy protons and neutrons, and we see that
25:49
Speaker 1: kind of nuclear recoil, You see that getting kicked, and
25:52
Speaker 1: that requires kind of heavy dark matter, because you've got
25:55
Speaker 1: to be big enough to like give it a kick.
25:57
Speaker 1: The dark matter is really really whispy, then won't move
26:00
Speaker 1: those neutrons and protons even if it does bump into them.
26:03
Speaker 1: But these magnon detectors could be much more powerful as
26:06
Speaker 1: a way to search for a very very light, very
26:08
Speaker 1: low mass dark matter. And since we haven't found dark
26:12
Speaker 1: matter at the higher masses where we've looked for it,
26:15
Speaker 1: it's quite exciting to say, oh, look, we can build
26:17
Speaker 1: new detectors that might be sensitive to even whispy or
26:20
Speaker 1: dark matter. Because electrons are more sensitive than protons and neutrons,
26:25
Speaker 1: well they're just lighter and so they're easier to kick. Right,
26:28
Speaker 1: if you are a very light particle, then you're gonna
26:31
Speaker 1: have a bigger effect bumping into an electron. Then you
26:34
Speaker 1: are bumping into a proton or neutron, which is like
26:36
Speaker 1: you know, a boulder in comparison. So if dark matter
26:39
Speaker 1: can interact with electrons, then you would see it in
26:43
Speaker 1: a very kind of maybe bigger way if you look
26:45
Speaker 1: for these quantum spin quasi particles. Yeah, if you look
26:50
Speaker 1: for Magnon's exactly. I feel like you don't want to say.
26:52
Speaker 1: Magna is such a fun word. Yeah, Magnon, Magnon. And
26:57
Speaker 1: there are lots of other kinds of quasi particles. You know,
27:00
Speaker 1: there are polarns. This is when electrons interact with the
27:04
Speaker 1: polarization of ions. Wait, I just came up with a joke, Daniel.
27:07
Speaker 1: If you make this project, if you set up this experiment,
27:10
Speaker 1: you should call it the Magnon Particle Interface Maximon Particle
27:15
Speaker 1: Infation mp I, No Magnan p I. The ready for
27:19
Speaker 1: prime time. Everybody has to unbutton their shirt two buttons
27:22
Speaker 1: to work on this experiment. Yeah, and have a month.
27:25
Speaker 1: I'll start growing it. Then there's the like there are
27:28
Speaker 1: rotons if you have like a fluid rot If you
27:32
Speaker 1: have a fluid, then you can get like vortices in it, right,
27:35
Speaker 1: you can like little whirlpools and the sort of the
27:37
Speaker 1: minimum amount of vortex that you can get turns out
27:40
Speaker 1: to be quantized because of how these particles can spin,
27:44
Speaker 1: and so that's what a roton is. It's like the
27:46
Speaker 1: minimum quantum of vortices, I guess, because the medium again
27:50
Speaker 1: is quantized, so you know, a little like vortices also
27:55
Speaker 1: have to quantize because there's a minimum size to these particles. Yeah,
27:58
Speaker 1: and they have energy levels, and just the same way
28:00
Speaker 1: that phonons exist because solids and allattics have energy levels
28:04
Speaker 1: to their vibrations. Fluids also have energy levels, and these
28:07
Speaker 1: particles inside them, these vortices have sort of a minimum
28:09
Speaker 1: energy level, and so that's that's where you get routons,
28:13
Speaker 1: and then you get other really weird things. And you
28:15
Speaker 1: can apply this really broadly, and it's been like an
28:17
Speaker 1: explosion of different kinds of quasi particles people have sort
28:20
Speaker 1: of created or or conceived of. You know, they even
28:24
Speaker 1: have like weird two dimensional quasi particles. All right, let's
28:29
Speaker 1: get into the rest of these quasi examples of quasi particles,
28:33
Speaker 1: and then let's get into whether or not they're actually real,
28:35
Speaker 1: like philosophically, could we call them real things? And how
28:38
Speaker 1: does that maybe put into question the particles and we're
28:41
Speaker 1: being out of But first let's take another quick break,
28:57
Speaker 1: all right. I know, so we covered the phone on
29:00
Speaker 1: the magnan and the rotons. What other ons of people
29:04
Speaker 1: sort of discovered or study. One of my favorites is
29:07
Speaker 1: this weird one. It's an excitation in plasma. So plasma
29:11
Speaker 1: is like you take gas and you heat it up
29:14
Speaker 1: so much that the electrons and the nucleus separate, right,
29:16
Speaker 1: the electron becomes free, and you have like a charged
29:19
Speaker 1: gas and this is really hot and nasty stuff, and
29:22
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's what the sun is made out of,
29:24
Speaker 1: and it's what we used to try to do fusion.
29:26
Speaker 1: And sometimes you can get it acting in sort of
29:29
Speaker 1: like sheets. You can get these like sheets of plasma
29:32
Speaker 1: layering on top of each other because these things have
29:35
Speaker 1: charges and so like you can get like a negatively
29:37
Speaker 1: charged sheet and then a positively charged sheet, and then
29:40
Speaker 1: a negatively charged sheet sort of like stack up on
29:42
Speaker 1: top of each other, and weird ripples passed through these
29:47
Speaker 1: two d sheets of plasma. And these things are called plasma.
29:53
Speaker 1: That would be a good one, but no, they're called
29:55
Speaker 1: for reasons I don't understand. They're called an eons but
30:01
Speaker 1: like a n y on and you know, It makes
30:04
Speaker 1: me wonder, like, how did they come up with that name?
30:06
Speaker 1: Like maybe all the other as were taken and somebody said,
30:10
Speaker 1: is there anything left ding oh anyon nons or something, Daniel,
30:15
Speaker 1: what do you call a quasi particle made out of
30:17
Speaker 1: quasi particles? A quasi quasi particle an on? Of course, Man,
30:24
Speaker 1: I walked into all these terrible jigs you are, I
30:28
Speaker 1: am just firing off the quasi pat chokes here. But
30:30
Speaker 1: there's some really cool mathematical features of these things, Like
30:33
Speaker 1: these anions they actually act like two dimensional particles. It's
30:37
Speaker 1: like a mathematical system that we don't see in reality.
30:41
Speaker 1: You know, our universe is in three dimensions, so our
30:43
Speaker 1: particles move in three dimensions, and there's different mathematics that
30:46
Speaker 1: apply to two dimensions, the surface of things and the
30:50
Speaker 1: surface area of things, and how things diffuse, you know,
30:53
Speaker 1: instead of going like one over our square, that goes
30:55
Speaker 1: like one over our And these anions actually exhibit those
30:58
Speaker 1: mathematical properties as if they were too d particles. And
31:02
Speaker 1: that's really kind of cool. That's just like test out
31:05
Speaker 1: these mathematics in real life interesting because then then you
31:08
Speaker 1: can have like different kinds of physics, right like you
31:11
Speaker 1: can have too D physics, which could be totally different. Yeah,
31:14
Speaker 1: it is totally different, and it's fascinating to see it.
31:16
Speaker 1: And like, of course it's made out of three D things,
31:18
Speaker 1: so it's not really two D, but it's sort of
31:21
Speaker 1: like a physical simulation of two D, which is really
31:24
Speaker 1: pretty cool because you see these effects happening, but sort
31:27
Speaker 1: of you know, quasi, there's like on the meta level,
31:29
Speaker 1: you're like abstracted it out. And in this interpretation of
31:33
Speaker 1: these plasma wiggles where I call these an eons and
31:36
Speaker 1: treat them like particles that I see, that follows exactly
31:39
Speaker 1: the math you would expect for actual two D particles,
31:42
Speaker 1: and that's pretty cool. Like you can describe them with
31:44
Speaker 1: wave functions even though they're they're not like they're just
31:47
Speaker 1: gaps in other wave functions. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You can
31:51
Speaker 1: describe them with wave functions and all the mathematics we
31:53
Speaker 1: use for particle physics, but in two D. So that's
31:56
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. All right, what are some other cool quasi particles?
31:59
Speaker 1: I think maybe the That's what I'm excited about is
32:01
Speaker 1: the exciton. There's actually a part of the exciton. Yeah,
32:09
Speaker 1: and it's not like the quantum unit of Daniel's enthusiasm
32:12
Speaker 1: for science. You know, it's has a minimum are you
32:16
Speaker 1: saying there's a minimum excitability threshold always above zero? It's
32:21
Speaker 1: always above zero. And this is when you get an electron,
32:24
Speaker 1: which is a particle, you know, and a whole. So
32:27
Speaker 1: a hole is already a quasi particle, right, it's the
32:29
Speaker 1: absence of an electron. It's where it's a gap where
32:32
Speaker 1: you might expect an electron. But sometimes electrons and holes
32:36
Speaker 1: can interact with each other because that a whole is
32:38
Speaker 1: in effect positively charged, right, The absence of a negative
32:42
Speaker 1: charge is like a positive charge, and so the electron
32:46
Speaker 1: and the whole can interact and they can actually form
32:48
Speaker 1: these bound states. One electron will will drag a hole
32:53
Speaker 1: behind it, and so they're sort of moving together. The
32:56
Speaker 1: electron would drag the whole, Yeah, the electron will drag
32:58
Speaker 1: the hole behind it, because you know, whole is sort
33:00
Speaker 1: of like the absence of an electron. And you know,
33:02
Speaker 1: these are all things that come out of like complex
33:05
Speaker 1: interactions between the electrons and the positive ions that they're
33:08
Speaker 1: embedded in. And you know, not all these things last
33:11
Speaker 1: for that long, you know, like Cooper pairs don't tend
33:14
Speaker 1: to last for very long in super conducting materials, but
33:17
Speaker 1: you can still apply the mathematics to them for as
33:19
Speaker 1: long as they do live. And so do you call
33:22
Speaker 1: that carrying another particle? So a quasi particle with a particle,
33:26
Speaker 1: you can group them into a quasi particle too, Yeah, exactly.
33:29
Speaker 1: So it's just like you were saying before, it's a
33:31
Speaker 1: quasi particle made out of a particle, and a quasi
33:33
Speaker 1: particle seems really meta. It's pretty meta, and it lets
33:36
Speaker 1: us explore sort of the theoretical space for particles that
33:40
Speaker 1: we don't see in terms of fundamental particles. Like we
33:43
Speaker 1: talked on the podcast recently about whether neutrinos are their
33:46
Speaker 1: own anti particle. And this is a special kind of
33:49
Speaker 1: particle called a myrona for me in invented by an
33:52
Speaker 1: Italian guy and toward a marna. And we've never seen
33:55
Speaker 1: a myrona for meon Like, we don't know if neutrinos
33:58
Speaker 1: are their own antiparticles. We're curious about it. We've never
34:01
Speaker 1: seen it. But in quasi particles, we've seen quasi particles
34:06
Speaker 1: that have this property that are their own anti particles,
34:08
Speaker 1: where two of them when they bump into each other,
34:11
Speaker 1: they annihilate, And so we sort of have seen the
34:14
Speaker 1: mathematics of my ironic formons work on the level of
34:18
Speaker 1: quasi particles, even if we haven't seen it work for
34:21
Speaker 1: fundamental particles. And that tells you that, okay, well the
34:24
Speaker 1: math is right. If those particles exist, they're out there,
34:27
Speaker 1: we know what they would do. All right. Well, let's
34:30
Speaker 1: get into the question of maybe the more philosophical question,
34:34
Speaker 1: which is our quasi particles real? Are they just kind
34:38
Speaker 1: of like phenomenon or do you think there's something fundamental
34:42
Speaker 1: about them in the universe. We don't know if they're real,
34:45
Speaker 1: or I guess we don't know if they're fundamental. We
34:48
Speaker 1: don't know if anything is real, right, I mean, quasi
34:51
Speaker 1: particles are a mathematical way to describe, like some information,
34:55
Speaker 1: some labels, moving through a material. You could say the
34:58
Speaker 1: same thing about particles, except there the material is not
35:01
Speaker 1: like a solid or crystal. It's a quantum field, right. Particles.
35:06
Speaker 1: We say this on the podcast all the time. Particles
35:08
Speaker 1: are just excited little blobs of energy moving through a
35:12
Speaker 1: quantum field. And we had a listener question recently, like
35:15
Speaker 1: why do we have particles at all? And we said
35:17
Speaker 1: that there there's like a minimum energy that quantum fields
35:20
Speaker 1: can store, and that energy moves around and that's what
35:23
Speaker 1: we think of as a part of it. So maybe
35:26
Speaker 1: this whole particle idea is a human idea. It's just
35:28
Speaker 1: our interpretation of a localized packet of energy, and we
35:33
Speaker 1: apply that to what we call fundamental particles that we
35:35
Speaker 1: don't know if they're fundamental, and also to sort of
35:38
Speaker 1: larger groupings of things. So I find that argument kind
35:41
Speaker 1: of persuasive that there really is nothing fundamental interesting, Like
35:45
Speaker 1: maybe everything should just be called an energy on or
35:48
Speaker 1: something like that, you know what I mean, Like everything,
35:50
Speaker 1: like everything is just an excitation, Like everything is just
35:53
Speaker 1: a lip in something else. Yeah, exactly. And maybe it's
35:56
Speaker 1: not fair to have a distinction between particles and quasi particles.
35:59
Speaker 1: That all particles, right um, they're all really the same.
36:02
Speaker 1: It's just a question of like what are you wiggling?
36:05
Speaker 1: Are you wiggling some other matter or you're wiggling a
36:07
Speaker 1: quantum field. What it makes me think is like what
36:11
Speaker 1: if quantum fields are actually made out of other little things?
36:15
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like maybe but we just
36:16
Speaker 1: can't see them. Yes, very likely they are because our
36:20
Speaker 1: description of the universe in terms of quantum fields doesn't
36:23
Speaker 1: really work at some levels. So a lot of open
36:26
Speaker 1: questions we've talked about, you know, why do we have
36:28
Speaker 1: so many of these fields? Why do we have like
36:31
Speaker 1: several different kinds of forces, each of their own kind
36:34
Speaker 1: of field. Are they all just part of one field?
36:36
Speaker 1: Is there even really a field? Or is it an
36:38
Speaker 1: emergent property of something deeper? And so I think that
36:42
Speaker 1: you know, this era of particle physics, where we talk
36:44
Speaker 1: about the universe in terms of particles and the fields
36:47
Speaker 1: that they wiggle on, this is probably a temporary phase
36:50
Speaker 1: in the sort of the longer history of physics, before
36:52
Speaker 1: we dig in and we find some other concept, right,
36:55
Speaker 1: because you know, the concept of particle is only like
36:57
Speaker 1: a hundred and something years old. We could very well
37:00
Speaker 1: come up with a new mathematical concept that the universe
37:03
Speaker 1: is based out of. That's what string theory is the onion,
37:07
Speaker 1: I'm telling you man, you heard it here first, folks.
37:10
Speaker 1: That's right. It has layers. Is a theory that has
37:13
Speaker 1: layers and makes you cry. It makes me cry the
37:16
Speaker 1: more I hear about it, exactly, but slice into it. Yeah,
37:20
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean like like maybe what
37:21
Speaker 1: we think of as fundamental right now, like quirks and
37:24
Speaker 1: the electron, maybe they're just like holes in the medium
37:28
Speaker 1: of other stuff, smaller particles. Yeah. Absolutely, and everything that
37:32
Speaker 1: we have, all these ideas, we have, this understanding we
37:35
Speaker 1: have about the universe. These are just ideas in our
37:37
Speaker 1: head to describe the experiments that we do and the
37:40
Speaker 1: observations we make. We don't know that any of it
37:42
Speaker 1: is like true in any sense. It's just useful and
37:46
Speaker 1: seems to work, and it seems awfully true because it
37:49
Speaker 1: really really works. We're gonna do an episode next week
37:52
Speaker 1: about like the super high precision of the predictions, Like
37:55
Speaker 1: the mathematics of these fields and these particles gets things
37:58
Speaker 1: right on to like twelve fifteen decimal places. So it
38:02
Speaker 1: seems really true, but we don't know that it is.
38:06
Speaker 1: I I remember having this moment in college when I
38:08
Speaker 1: was learning about quantum mechanics and seeing one of these
38:10
Speaker 1: calculations where the calculation was done and the experiment was
38:14
Speaker 1: done and the two agreed to like fifteen decimal places,
38:18
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, Wow, it's like this theory is
38:20
Speaker 1: not just good, it's like what the universe is doing
38:24
Speaker 1: and that could be true. It could be that the
38:26
Speaker 1: universe has field and it's doing these field calculations to
38:29
Speaker 1: describe how particles move. But it could also be that
38:32
Speaker 1: that's totally wrong and it's just an emergent picture or
38:34
Speaker 1: something much simpler, much deeper, that hopefully we'll stumble across soon.
38:39
Speaker 1: Like maybe it's just a big coincidence. It could just
38:41
Speaker 1: be And it could be, you know that the way
38:42
Speaker 1: that we think about it, and who happened to be
38:44
Speaker 1: around when we started thinking about it, and the ideas
38:47
Speaker 1: that they had. If you ran like history twice or
38:51
Speaker 1: ten times or fifteen times, you might get very different
38:53
Speaker 1: mathematics and therefore very different sort of like intellectual notions
38:57
Speaker 1: about how to organize our knowledge about the universe. And
39:00
Speaker 1: that's really what a particle is. It's a human organization
39:04
Speaker 1: of our knowledge of the universe. So you might have
39:06
Speaker 1: come up with a different idea and science could have
39:08
Speaker 1: followed a very different path. Well, Daniel, I feel definitely
39:12
Speaker 1: a few excitans about the whole endeavor and to learning
39:16
Speaker 1: more about this. It is kind of a cool way
39:20
Speaker 1: to so to see the universe, like maybe the universe
39:23
Speaker 1: we see when we look at the stars, and when
39:25
Speaker 1: we look at ourselves in the mirror, you know, we're
39:27
Speaker 1: all just kind of like little packets of excitability, of
39:31
Speaker 1: little pockets of energy. It's just kind of rippling around. Yeah,
39:34
Speaker 1: and it's fun to think that you can explore that
39:36
Speaker 1: on the micro micro micro level. You can break yourself
39:38
Speaker 1: up and and think about the smaller and smaller particles.
39:41
Speaker 1: But it also works the other direction. You can build
39:43
Speaker 1: up from there and think of like particles at another
39:46
Speaker 1: level and a meta level, and it's still kind of works.
39:49
Speaker 1: And then that's sort of amazing. That tells you that
39:51
Speaker 1: you know, this concept of like a packet of energy
39:54
Speaker 1: or packet of excitation moving around, maybe that is something
39:57
Speaker 1: real and true in the universe. Interesting, Like everyone listening
40:01
Speaker 1: to this podcast is you on, A person on a person,
40:05
Speaker 1: a person on Daniel, It's already there. I bet they're
40:08
Speaker 1: hoping that you will move on from this jew All right,
40:11
Speaker 1: let's let's phone it in and phone on it in
40:14
Speaker 1: and wrap it up. Time to go on. All right, Well,
40:17
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. We hope you enjoyed that discussion,
40:20
Speaker 1: that that quasi discussion and maybe look at the universe
40:23
Speaker 1: in a slightly a different way and Thanks to everybody
40:26
Speaker 1: for writing in with your curiosity. We love hearing what
40:29
Speaker 1: you are curious about. The goal of our podcast is
40:32
Speaker 1: to bring you to the forefront of science, and so
40:34
Speaker 1: when you hear something talked about you don't understand, send
40:37
Speaker 1: it to us. We will break it down for you.
40:39
Speaker 1: We will explain it to you in a way that
40:41
Speaker 1: makes sense and hopefully makes you giggle on See you
40:44
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and
40:54
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of my Heart Radio.
40:58
Speaker 1: For more podcast from my Heart Radio and visit the
41:00
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
41:04
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