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What if our particles were different? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you worry at all about answering listener emails? Now?
0:12
Speaker 1: What do I have to worry about? You know, you're
0:15
Speaker 1: offering secrets of the universe for free to anyone on
0:18
Speaker 1: the internet. What's wrong with that? That's kind of my job.
0:21
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you know what they're gonna do
0:23
Speaker 1: with that information? Oh? I see You're worried someone out
0:26
Speaker 1: there is sitting in their underground layer, stroking a white
0:29
Speaker 1: cat in their lap and looking for physical advice about
0:31
Speaker 1: how to build a doomsday device a little bit. Yeah, well,
0:36
Speaker 1: so far nobody has asked me how to build a
0:38
Speaker 1: nuclear warhead. Wait didn't we answer that in a podcast already? Oh? Yeah, Oops,
0:43
Speaker 1: we did to give away those secrets. You know, maybe
0:46
Speaker 1: you'ld have the government filtering your emails, Daniel say, if
0:50
Speaker 1: they're not already listening, if you're hearing this, it means
0:53
Speaker 1: they let this one through. Hi, I am more handmade
1:10
Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD comments. Hi. I'm Daniel.
1:13
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I don't have any actual
1:16
Speaker 1: useful practical knowledge. But you do have a white cat
1:20
Speaker 1: that you're stroking right now. I don't anymore. I don't anymore. No,
1:25
Speaker 1: I have a beautiful pandemic puppy that we adopted, but
1:28
Speaker 1: he's not part of my doomsday plan to take over
1:31
Speaker 1: the world, right right. You never see any villains supervillains
1:34
Speaker 1: having a dog, right, It's always like a cat or
1:37
Speaker 1: some kind of lizard, some kind of dangerous animal. That's
1:40
Speaker 1: because dogs are inherently good and sympathetic. I can't imagine
1:42
Speaker 1: evil person having a pet dog, right right. I guess
1:45
Speaker 1: they would make the supervillain turn good, probably exactly exactly,
1:49
Speaker 1: whereas cats, on the other hand, they were happy to
1:51
Speaker 1: snuggle up to an evil dude. Lower standards cats, But
1:55
Speaker 1: welcome to our universe. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe
1:57
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we explain
2:00
Speaker 1: the universe to us, to you, two cats and two dogs.
2:04
Speaker 1: We talk about everything that's out there, including all the
2:07
Speaker 1: pets in the universe, and all the crazy things that
2:10
Speaker 1: we see, the things we hear, and the things that
2:12
Speaker 1: we can just barely detect with the most powerful scientific
2:16
Speaker 1: instruments ever devised. We try to weave it all together
2:19
Speaker 1: to you into a tapestry of understanding, so that you
2:21
Speaker 1: can grasp what we do and what we don't know
2:24
Speaker 1: yet about the universe, because it is a pretty big
2:27
Speaker 1: carpet of a universe, filled with small details and large
2:31
Speaker 1: amazing facts for us to discover. And Daniel, do you
2:34
Speaker 1: think we have pet listeners? I think we probably do. Yeah,
2:38
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are folks out there who listen with
2:39
Speaker 1: their pets, and so their pets are sort of like
2:41
Speaker 1: you know, second hand listeners, and they're absorbing physics. Oh
2:45
Speaker 1: my gosh, what if we give rise to like the
2:48
Speaker 1: first dog genius, some dogs out there taking notes right like,
2:53
Speaker 1: turn that on. I gotta learn exactly how that works,
2:56
Speaker 1: like the tail wax every time we say a banana
2:59
Speaker 1: joke or something. Maybe or when the dogs take over,
3:01
Speaker 1: maybe at least they'll give us credit, you know, for
3:03
Speaker 1: teaching them some secrets of the universe that were critical
3:06
Speaker 1: to their coup and when they are just gonna turn
3:09
Speaker 1: to its owner and be like, hey, I think I
3:10
Speaker 1: figured out how to imagine quantum mechanics and relativity. Also
3:15
Speaker 1: I need more. Yeah, Well, if the only expense to
3:17
Speaker 1: solving the deepest questions in the universe were more dog treats,
3:20
Speaker 1: and I think we could get the National Science Foundation
3:22
Speaker 1: to cover that I know who needs an LHC particle collider.
3:25
Speaker 1: You spend all those billions of dollars in dog treats,
3:28
Speaker 1: that's right, we need like a Chihuahwa thick tank. Yeah,
3:31
Speaker 1: you know what they say, like the monkeys and typewriter,
3:33
Speaker 1: Let's just get a bunch of dogs, play them all
3:35
Speaker 1: of our podcasts and see what happens. You know, I've
3:38
Speaker 1: been to the dog park in our neighborhood. It's something
3:40
Speaker 1: like a collider. You see dogs running in circles like
3:42
Speaker 1: crazy and sometimes bouncing into each other. But I never
3:45
Speaker 1: see like new weird kinds of dogs created in high
3:48
Speaker 1: energy dog collisions. You just got to crack up the energy, Diniel. Obviously.
3:52
Speaker 1: If there's one thing I learned in this podcast is
3:55
Speaker 1: more energy, more magic. That's right. I guess we just
3:58
Speaker 1: need to double the treats and see what happens. Do
3:59
Speaker 1: you have a special name for your dog, like Cork
4:01
Speaker 1: or Metrino or you know, strong dog or something. No. No No,
4:06
Speaker 1: Our dog is a rescue from Insanata and he came
4:09
Speaker 1: with a name. His name is Pepito, and he is
4:10
Speaker 1: a wonderful member of the family. Now, Pepito, that does
4:13
Speaker 1: sound like a particle to be named that you discover
4:16
Speaker 1: one day, you can name it the Pepito. Yeah, exactly.
4:20
Speaker 1: But it is a wonderful universe that we like to
4:22
Speaker 1: talk about, the one that we have, I guess I
4:25
Speaker 1: mean the universe that we know and that we love,
4:27
Speaker 1: that we live in, that we seem to be studying
4:29
Speaker 1: and learning more about. But we sometimes wonder if it's
4:32
Speaker 1: the only universe out there. That's right, There's a lot
4:35
Speaker 1: of things in our universe that we don't understand that
4:38
Speaker 1: seems sort of arbitrary, like why does the electron have
4:42
Speaker 1: the mass that it does, and why is the speed
4:44
Speaker 1: of light the number that it is. This is just
4:46
Speaker 1: like list of numbers that describe and define our universe,
4:51
Speaker 1: and if those numbers were different, the way everything worked
4:54
Speaker 1: would be totally different. So we wonder sometimes is this
4:57
Speaker 1: the only set of numbers there going to be? Are
4:59
Speaker 1: there other universe is with different numbers or the control
5:02
Speaker 1: rule of that universe has different settings on their knobs?
5:05
Speaker 1: Right right? With Pepito? Have more energy at the dot
5:08
Speaker 1: park impossible, He's already going maximum dog speed. He's reached
5:13
Speaker 1: the limit of the universe. But it is sort of
5:16
Speaker 1: like the universe has like a serial number, right. I
5:18
Speaker 1: was trying to think of a good example of to
5:21
Speaker 1: illustrate this, But it's sort of like the universe has
5:22
Speaker 1: a serial number, and you look at the serial number
5:24
Speaker 1: and you think, like, oh, where did that number come from?
5:27
Speaker 1: There must be other universes with maybe a different serial number. Yeah,
5:31
Speaker 1: And it's not just that we have arbitrry numbers. When
5:35
Speaker 1: physicists look at these numbers, they think sometimes the numbers
5:37
Speaker 1: look weird, like unusual, Like if you randomly pick these numbers,
5:42
Speaker 1: these would be rare. And that makes people think like, wow,
5:45
Speaker 1: maybe there's a lot of universes, so many that you
5:49
Speaker 1: even have weird and rare numbers. That's kind of a
5:51
Speaker 1: weak argument because even if there are lots and lots
5:54
Speaker 1: of universes, we have no real reason to understand why
5:57
Speaker 1: some numbers are preferred or some numbers are not or
6:00
Speaker 1: what would be rare. But physicists they like numbers like
6:03
Speaker 1: one or zero or pie. They don't like numbers like
6:06
Speaker 1: one divided by a hundred and thirty seven. So when
6:09
Speaker 1: they see a number like that, they go, that's weird.
6:11
Speaker 1: I wonder why. It's like looking at your serial number
6:14
Speaker 1: and seeing it that it's like three three, You're like,
6:17
Speaker 1: that's weird. We must have gotten like a weird, crazy
6:21
Speaker 1: coincidence number in our serial number. Yeah, but maybe not,
6:24
Speaker 1: And maybe all the numbers are out there and only
6:26
Speaker 1: the people with three three are the ones going, Oh,
6:29
Speaker 1: that's weird. I wonder what that means? Am I special?
6:31
Speaker 1: Or maybe there's a reason. Maybe it's the only number
6:34
Speaker 1: that works. Maybe there's some underlying idea that restricts what
6:37
Speaker 1: these numbers can be that says, the electron mass has
6:40
Speaker 1: to be this, and the speed of light has to
6:41
Speaker 1: be that, and the strength of gravity has to be this.
6:44
Speaker 1: We just haven't figured it out yet, right. It could
6:46
Speaker 1: be that they only made one universe and they happened
6:49
Speaker 1: to put the serial number three three through three, right,
6:52
Speaker 1: Like who knows, right, Yeah, But these are really fun
6:55
Speaker 1: questions because they make you like totally blow up your
6:58
Speaker 1: mind and think about the whole context, not just of
7:01
Speaker 1: the human experience, but of the universe. Like if the
7:04
Speaker 1: whole universe, with its billions and trillions of stars, is
7:08
Speaker 1: just one of many universes, it's just like blowing your
7:12
Speaker 1: mind at the next level. Right, that's this idea of
7:15
Speaker 1: the multiverse, which we've talked about here in our podcast,
7:18
Speaker 1: and we've talked about how there are different flavors of
7:20
Speaker 1: the multiverse. But I think the basic ideas that made
7:23
Speaker 1: there are other universes out there, and one possible version
7:27
Speaker 1: of the multiverse is that it's like a version of
7:29
Speaker 1: our universe, but with different properties or like different values
7:32
Speaker 1: for different physical things. Right, yeah, precisely, that's one idea
7:35
Speaker 1: of a multiverse, and it's really not too far fetched.
7:38
Speaker 1: You might be thinking a whole lot of seconds. The
7:40
Speaker 1: laws of physics are the laws of physics, and you know,
7:42
Speaker 1: across the metaverse there should be one set of rules
7:46
Speaker 1: that tells everything how it works. Right, Well, there might
7:49
Speaker 1: still be, But what we're talking about here are not
7:52
Speaker 1: like the deepest, truest laws of physics, but sort of
7:55
Speaker 1: the ones we observe in our experiments. These are what
7:58
Speaker 1: we call effective theory is because they don't describe like
8:01
Speaker 1: the universe at its smallest and deepest level. They just
8:04
Speaker 1: describe what we have been able to see so far.
8:07
Speaker 1: The way, for example, like describing the motion of a
8:09
Speaker 1: ball as the parabola isn't a fundamental property of the universe.
8:13
Speaker 1: It's just something that kind of works. Well, the same
8:15
Speaker 1: is true of our laws. Even like the standard model
8:18
Speaker 1: of particle physics, this quantum field theory that's like a
8:21
Speaker 1: crowning intellectual achievement of humanity. We think it's mostly an
8:24
Speaker 1: effective theory and it's controlled by deeper parameters we don't understand.
8:29
Speaker 1: So it's possible that in the multiverse, even if there
8:32
Speaker 1: is like a single coherent theory across the multiverses, it
8:35
Speaker 1: can appear different in different universes because of how those
8:40
Speaker 1: universes break out. For example, of the Higgs field ends
8:42
Speaker 1: up at a different value than all the particles have
8:45
Speaker 1: different masses, and we just don't really understand that deeper
8:48
Speaker 1: theory yet, So we don't really understand how many universes
8:51
Speaker 1: there can be and how it can translate into different theories.
8:54
Speaker 1: But in the end, it is possible that there are
8:57
Speaker 1: other universes out there with different laws of physics because
9:00
Speaker 1: their parameters are different values. Right, I guess you can
9:04
Speaker 1: have multiple universes, some with different laws and some with
9:06
Speaker 1: different values. But I think the one that we're going
9:08
Speaker 1: to tackle today is this possibility of a multiverse multiple
9:12
Speaker 1: universes with the same laws but maybe different values for like,
9:16
Speaker 1: you know, some of the fundamental physical properties, right. Yeah,
9:20
Speaker 1: and this comes to us from a future scientist who's
9:23
Speaker 1: inspired to ask us questions because he read a really
9:25
Speaker 1: fun book. Yeah, we have some great questions from Thomas
9:28
Speaker 1: from Ontario who is nine years old and best part,
9:32
Speaker 1: he's a fan of our book. We have no idea
9:35
Speaker 1: a guide to the unknown universe. That's right. His mom
9:37
Speaker 1: wrote to us saying that he really enjoyed reading the book,
9:40
Speaker 1: that it's stimulated his deep thoughts about the nature of
9:43
Speaker 1: the universe, and that he had some questions for us
9:46
Speaker 1: that he wanted to answer. Yeah, so kudos to Thomas
9:48
Speaker 1: for reading the book. I have yet to read our book, Daniel. No,
9:52
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I had to read it many times
9:56
Speaker 1: in writing it. But kudos to Thomas for reading the
9:58
Speaker 1: book and for being a fan of physics. It's never
10:00
Speaker 1: too early to start. So here is Thomas asking his questions. Hi.
10:05
Speaker 1: My name is Thomas. I'm from thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada,
10:09
Speaker 1: and I'm nine and I have some questions for you,
10:11
Speaker 1: Daniel Hawaii. Can you do an episode about what would
10:14
Speaker 1: happen if the photon had as much mass as a
10:16
Speaker 1: top quok and another question, what if the neutrino felt
10:19
Speaker 1: strong force? And and my last question, what if the
10:22
Speaker 1: neutrino photo electromagnetism. Whoa it was like a question machine.
10:27
Speaker 1: I know. Let's just hope he doesn't have a white cat,
10:30
Speaker 1: not yet. At least he's gonna listen to this episode
10:33
Speaker 1: and we realize, oh, that's the next step and becoming
10:35
Speaker 1: a super villain. Great, great, get him a dog, put
10:39
Speaker 1: tepedo and a create and ship him over. He could
10:42
Speaker 1: still become a superhero, not a supervillain. Wow, we could
10:45
Speaker 1: intervene and save the planet by turning him to use
10:48
Speaker 1: his powers for good. Yes, at least in this multiverse,
10:51
Speaker 1: in this timeline, Thomas, there is still good in you.
10:53
Speaker 1: I feel the bright side of the force. Now. I'm
10:57
Speaker 1: sure Thomas is an awesome kid, and he just wants
11:00
Speaker 1: to know more about the universe. I imagine he read
11:02
Speaker 1: our book and he saw all of these particles that
11:05
Speaker 1: we talked about and how things could be different, and
11:07
Speaker 1: he probably wondered, like what if they were not what
11:10
Speaker 1: they are right now? Like how would the universe be different?
11:13
Speaker 1: Like would it be totally different? Would it even be possible?
11:16
Speaker 1: Would we all collapse into a black hole or something.
11:19
Speaker 1: That's kind of a big question. Yeah, there's a lot
11:21
Speaker 1: going on there. You know. It's fascinating how the properties
11:24
Speaker 1: that we rely on, the things that make up our existence,
11:27
Speaker 1: come down to these numbers, and if they were different,
11:29
Speaker 1: the universe would feel so different. That's really fun to
11:33
Speaker 1: think about, how the things that are important to us
11:35
Speaker 1: are not really fundamental to the universe itself even if
11:39
Speaker 1: we rely on them. Right, And then the deeper question,
11:42
Speaker 1: you know, of could those numbers be different? Should they
11:45
Speaker 1: be different? Do we know why they are the way
11:47
Speaker 1: they are? Should they be different? That's a meta question,
11:49
Speaker 1: like if we could design the universe, what would it
11:52
Speaker 1: be like? Now you're trying to think like a super villain, Daniel. Yeah, well,
11:55
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of debate inside particle physics
11:58
Speaker 1: about whether the equation of the universe should be beautiful.
12:02
Speaker 1: Should we be seeking out a theory that hasn't like
12:04
Speaker 1: an aesthetic appeals that when we really we go, oh
12:07
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's incredible. I love it? Or does it matter?
12:11
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we just need something that works. Even
12:13
Speaker 1: if people are like, jeez, that's kind of a clue.
12:15
Speaker 1: But I guess that's just the way the universe is
12:17
Speaker 1: a bit ugly, but it works. And if it's not beautiful,
12:19
Speaker 1: can we give it a makeover? Can we, like, you know,
12:23
Speaker 1: do a little plastic surgery? Maybe? I see you want
12:26
Speaker 1: to give some notes to the creator, some notes. I
12:31
Speaker 1: don't know love what you did here, but yeah, there
12:36
Speaker 1: you go. Now you're thinking, like a supervillain or an
12:39
Speaker 1: executive producer, rewold the universe according to what we think
12:42
Speaker 1: it should be. I see. So supervillains are just like
12:45
Speaker 1: executive producers on the Universe project. All right, well, thank
12:47
Speaker 1: you Thomas for your questions. We'll start with your first
12:49
Speaker 1: one here. What if the photon had the mass of
12:53
Speaker 1: a top quark. Now, that's a pretty cool question. First
12:57
Speaker 1: of all, like what if the photeson had mass in
12:59
Speaker 1: the first place? Right, Like, that's already a big one.
13:02
Speaker 1: And then what if it had the mass of the
13:04
Speaker 1: top cork, which is kind of one of the heaviest particles, right, Yeah,
13:07
Speaker 1: the top cork is the heaviest fundamental particle we have
13:10
Speaker 1: ever found. It's the cousin of the up cork, which
13:12
Speaker 1: has almost no mass, but it weighs as much as
13:15
Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy five protons, So this tiny little
13:19
Speaker 1: particle has more mass than like a gold atom. So
13:22
Speaker 1: it's really incredible and sort of like at the extreme,
13:25
Speaker 1: which is I think why Thomas is asking, like what
13:27
Speaker 1: if the lightest particle, the one with no mass, had
13:29
Speaker 1: as much mass as the most massive particle? Nice? Alright,
13:34
Speaker 1: so Daniel remind us here, the photon is massless, right,
13:37
Speaker 1: it doesn't have any mass, It doesn't weigh anything. That's right.
13:39
Speaker 1: The photon has no mass, which gives it incredible powers.
13:42
Speaker 1: It means that it can travel at the speed of light,
13:45
Speaker 1: and then it has to travel at the speed of light.
13:47
Speaker 1: You can't ever catch up to a photon. Everybody who's
13:50
Speaker 1: measuring the speed of a photon is going to measure
13:52
Speaker 1: to be the speed of light. And that's because a
13:55
Speaker 1: photon is nothing because it has no mass other then motion.
13:59
Speaker 1: So you can't catch up to it because if you did,
14:02
Speaker 1: there would be nothing there. There's no like frame of
14:05
Speaker 1: reference of the photon because there's nothing there but it's motion.
14:09
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a really awesome special case. And
14:12
Speaker 1: it's also really cool because it's in contrast to other
14:16
Speaker 1: very very similar particles that do have mass like the
14:19
Speaker 1: w and the z bosons. These to play the same
14:23
Speaker 1: role as the photon except for the weak fource, but
14:25
Speaker 1: they do have mass. So we actually have an example
14:28
Speaker 1: in our universe of like a massive version of the photon.
14:32
Speaker 1: And I guess I'm just going back to what you
14:34
Speaker 1: said the photon. Because it has no mass, it has
14:36
Speaker 1: to go at the speed of light, right, Like, that's
14:38
Speaker 1: one of the rules of the universe. Anything without mass
14:40
Speaker 1: has to go at the speed of light. Yea, and
14:41
Speaker 1: not just photons, gluons for example, are any particle that
14:45
Speaker 1: has no mass has to always go at the speed
14:47
Speaker 1: of light and nothing else can, right, And is there
14:51
Speaker 1: sort of an explanation as to what it has to
14:53
Speaker 1: go at the speed of light because it has no mass,
14:55
Speaker 1: it has to go to the speed of light, or
14:56
Speaker 1: because it has to go at the speed of light
14:58
Speaker 1: it can't have any mass. It has to go at
15:00
Speaker 1: the speed of light because it doesn't have mass. Yeah,
15:02
Speaker 1: because anything with mass will travel at the maximum speed,
15:06
Speaker 1: and because you can never catch up to it, and
15:08
Speaker 1: so it will always travel at some speed you can't
15:10
Speaker 1: ever gain on it. Right, You'll always be measuring travel
15:14
Speaker 1: at the same speed because there's nothing there, it's just
15:17
Speaker 1: motion and that's because it has no mass. So I
15:19
Speaker 1: would say, because it has no mass, therefore it travels
15:22
Speaker 1: at the speed of light. Right, and the photon and
15:26
Speaker 1: remind me, it's like the force transmitting particle for the
15:29
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force. Right, that's right. The way like electrons push
15:32
Speaker 1: against each other is that they pass photons back and forth.
15:36
Speaker 1: You can think of photons is like ripples in the
15:39
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field. And when an electron pushes against another electron
15:43
Speaker 1: is doing so using its field. But you can also
15:45
Speaker 1: think of those fields effectively is like a bunch of
15:48
Speaker 1: photons added up. So yeah, you can think of photons
15:51
Speaker 1: is like a way to transmit the electromagnetic force. Right.
15:55
Speaker 1: And so the photon is doesn't have any mass, which
15:57
Speaker 1: I guess means it doesn't interact with the Eiggs field
16:00
Speaker 1: or does, but it has no effect. That's how things
16:02
Speaker 1: have mass in the first place. Right, they interact with
16:04
Speaker 1: the Higgs field. Yeah, the photon does not interact with
16:07
Speaker 1: the Higgs field. And it's sort of really interesting and
16:09
Speaker 1: super awesome because the photon actually is part of this
16:13
Speaker 1: group of particles, the W particles and the Z and
16:16
Speaker 1: the photon. They make a quadruplet. They're like all linked
16:19
Speaker 1: together because the electromagnetic force is really connected to the
16:22
Speaker 1: weak force. It's in one force called the electro weak force,
16:26
Speaker 1: and this quadrupletive particles. They all do interact with the
16:29
Speaker 1: Higgs field, and if the Higgs wasn't around, they would
16:32
Speaker 1: all be massless, they would all be zero mass. But
16:34
Speaker 1: the Higgs makes three of them heavy. It turns the
16:38
Speaker 1: Z and the two ws into heavy particles. But then
16:41
Speaker 1: it's sort of used up. It can only make three
16:43
Speaker 1: of them heavy, and so the photon escapes and remains
16:46
Speaker 1: massless and the other ones get really really massive, and
16:49
Speaker 1: that is why the weak force is weak. Whoa wait, wait,
16:52
Speaker 1: wait wait, So the photon is part of it, like
16:54
Speaker 1: a family, like there are other versions of the photon. Yeah,
16:56
Speaker 1: the Z is very very similar to the photon. It's
16:58
Speaker 1: exactly like the photon, and except that it's part of
17:01
Speaker 1: the weak force and it has more mass. Oh I see,
17:04
Speaker 1: It's like the electromagnetic fource and the weak force are related.
17:07
Speaker 1: But all of the forces, all of the force particles,
17:10
Speaker 1: and the weak force half mass. That's what makes it weak.
17:13
Speaker 1: That's why we call them weak. Yeah, so the photon
17:15
Speaker 1: is just like our name for the one out of
17:18
Speaker 1: the four particles that stayed massless. Whoa, and I guess
17:22
Speaker 1: then the weak force is sort of like light almost
17:25
Speaker 1: like these other particles are also light, but they're like
17:27
Speaker 1: massive lights. Yeah, exactly, they are like heavy light. And
17:31
Speaker 1: the reason that the weak force is weak is that
17:34
Speaker 1: these particles are so massive, so they like they don't
17:36
Speaker 1: go very far before they decay. A photon can travel
17:39
Speaker 1: across the whole universe. It's totally stable. But these particles,
17:43
Speaker 1: because they're massive, they break down into other stuff and
17:46
Speaker 1: that limits the weak forces strength. So like back in
17:50
Speaker 1: the early days of the universe, before the Higgs field
17:52
Speaker 1: broke this symmetry, all these particles were basically equivalent and
17:56
Speaker 1: the weak force was as powerful as electro magnetism. But
17:59
Speaker 1: then the universe cooled and the Higgs field condensed, and
18:02
Speaker 1: it made these particles heavier, and it left the photon massless.
18:06
Speaker 1: And so now the photon is like it's original version.
18:09
Speaker 1: It can go through the whole universe and its infinite extent.
18:11
Speaker 1: Electromagnetism is a very powerful force, and the weak force
18:15
Speaker 1: is like a thin shadow of what it used to be.
18:17
Speaker 1: I'm also a thin shadow what I used to be,
18:19
Speaker 1: and I'm more massive and slower than I was when
18:22
Speaker 1: I was younger. All right, well, let's get into the
18:24
Speaker 1: consequences now of Thomas's question of what happens that the
18:27
Speaker 1: photon had more mass, specifically the mass of the top cork.
18:32
Speaker 1: And I imagine it's not a light consequence. Big things
18:34
Speaker 1: will happen. It's gonna be heavy duty. It's not gonna
18:38
Speaker 1: be weak, it's gonna be mass. All right, we'll get
18:40
Speaker 1: into that, but first let's take a quick break. Al Right,
18:55
Speaker 1: we are considering multiverses, different universes in which the laws
18:59
Speaker 1: of physics worked the same, but maybe the values of things,
19:03
Speaker 1: of particles and certain properties are different. And this came
19:07
Speaker 1: to us from Thomas from Ontario, who is nine years old,
19:09
Speaker 1: and he's curious about, first of all, what happens if
19:12
Speaker 1: the photon had the mass of the top court. It
19:15
Speaker 1: would be a pretty weird universe if that happened. And
19:18
Speaker 1: the weird or you mean weird, although I guess beings
19:21
Speaker 1: that arose that universe would think this is totally natural.
19:24
Speaker 1: How could it be any other way? Yeah? Also, what
19:27
Speaker 1: would the Thomas and that universe be curious. What if
19:30
Speaker 1: the photon were massless? What would happen? Yeah, that would
19:35
Speaker 1: be as strange to them as the counterpartist to us. Yeah,
19:37
Speaker 1: exactly right. So now let's so let's give the photon mass, Daniel,
19:41
Speaker 1: what would happen if we give mass to the photon? So,
19:43
Speaker 1: if you give mass to the photon, for example, you
19:46
Speaker 1: have like a more complicated Higgs boson that has the
19:49
Speaker 1: capacity to make more particles massive, and that's not too
19:52
Speaker 1: much of a stretch, Like supersymmetric versions of the Higgs
19:54
Speaker 1: boson could do this, and we talked about in a
19:56
Speaker 1: recent podcast episode, like how many kinds of Higgs boson
20:00
Speaker 1: are there? So if you have more Higgs bosons, you
20:02
Speaker 1: could give the photon mass. If that happened, then electromagnetism
20:06
Speaker 1: would be much weaker than it is today. Like the
20:09
Speaker 1: relative power between electromagnetism and the weak force is a
20:13
Speaker 1: huge number. It's like more than a factor of a
20:15
Speaker 1: hundred and so if the photon had mass, then electromagnetism
20:19
Speaker 1: would get weakened just like the weak force has. Right,
20:22
Speaker 1: but would it be weaker or just like shorter range
20:25
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Like, would it be
20:27
Speaker 1: I still have the same strength, but just I mean
20:29
Speaker 1: not work as well up close or far away when
20:33
Speaker 1: things are far away, or would it actually like decrease
20:36
Speaker 1: in strength. Both the range is shortened by the mass
20:39
Speaker 1: because the particles decay, but also the strength of the
20:42
Speaker 1: particles effectively depends on the mass of them, because like
20:45
Speaker 1: one over the mass of the particles, and so for example,
20:48
Speaker 1: neutrinos don't interact with most of the Earth because the
20:52
Speaker 1: weak force is weak, not because neutrinos don't get like
20:55
Speaker 1: close enough to the nucleus. Even if they fly right
20:58
Speaker 1: through the nucleus of an atom, have a very small
21:00
Speaker 1: chance of interacting because it's like you roll a die
21:03
Speaker 1: every time it happens, and the die for the weak
21:06
Speaker 1: force is just much bigger, and so you very rarely
21:09
Speaker 1: hit the right number? Is it? Because like once things
21:11
Speaker 1: have mass and harder to make, Like it's harder to
21:14
Speaker 1: make photons that they were massive. Yeah, you need more
21:16
Speaker 1: localized energy. It's just less quantum probability to sort of
21:19
Speaker 1: fluctuate that out of the vacuum to create a heavy particle.
21:22
Speaker 1: Heavy particles are just rarer less likely, it's less likely
21:26
Speaker 1: to happen, which means it's a weaker force, right, Yeah,
21:30
Speaker 1: I guess there's are masses. They wouldn't be as free,
21:32
Speaker 1: like they would cost you more just to shine a light.
21:35
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, all right, and then they have shorter range
21:38
Speaker 1: because I guess they're going slower than the photon, and
21:41
Speaker 1: so therefore they give them more of a chance for
21:43
Speaker 1: them to like decay, right or change. Yeah exactly, because
21:47
Speaker 1: remember that heavy things decay into lower mass things, just
21:51
Speaker 1: like boulders roll down hills, and our universe energy likes
21:54
Speaker 1: to spread out and equalize, so really heavy particles decay
21:58
Speaker 1: into lighter particles, and so the photon, you know, it
22:01
Speaker 1: is massless though it can't decay into other stuff, but
22:04
Speaker 1: if it was heavier than it could decay into lower
22:07
Speaker 1: mass particles, it would prefer to. And so if you
22:10
Speaker 1: turn it on a flashlight, you couldn't send your photons
22:13
Speaker 1: all the way to Alpha Centauri. They would like peter
22:16
Speaker 1: out before they got there. Would be like yeah, it'd
22:18
Speaker 1: be like like shooting. Now now you're like shooting stuff
22:21
Speaker 1: more like a flashlight with way more and you would
22:23
Speaker 1: feel more of a recal when you turn it off. Yeah,
22:25
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if the momentum would be different. You know,
22:28
Speaker 1: a flashlight does impart momentum, Like if you hit somebody
22:31
Speaker 1: with a flashlight, you're giving them a very very gentle push.
22:34
Speaker 1: It's sort of like shooting them with a very gentle gun.
22:37
Speaker 1: And also when you turn on a flashlight, there's a
22:39
Speaker 1: very gentle recoil, right Like if you fire a big gun,
22:42
Speaker 1: you feel the pushback on your shoulder. The same thing
22:45
Speaker 1: is true with a flashlight. You just can't feel it
22:47
Speaker 1: because the momentum is so so tiny, but it is true,
22:50
Speaker 1: all right. So then what would happen if the electromagnetic
22:52
Speaker 1: force was weaker? What kind of what kinds of consequences
22:55
Speaker 1: would it have in our universe? Well, electromagnetism is what
22:58
Speaker 1: organizes matter into at a right, the electron is captured
23:01
Speaker 1: by a proton to make hydrogen, and it's captured by electromagnetism,
23:06
Speaker 1: and that happened when the universe was cooling a right,
23:09
Speaker 1: Imagine particles are flying around. You have protons and you
23:12
Speaker 1: have electrons and they're all flying around. You have a
23:14
Speaker 1: lot of energy because the universe is young and it's
23:17
Speaker 1: hot and everything is zooming around. So we have a plasma.
23:20
Speaker 1: Now the universe then expands and everything cools down and
23:23
Speaker 1: sort of slows down, and eventually things cool down so
23:27
Speaker 1: much that the proton, the electron, their electromagnetic force attracts
23:31
Speaker 1: each other. They're not too fast to get captured, so
23:35
Speaker 1: they fall into these atoms. That that depends on the
23:38
Speaker 1: strength of the electromagnetic force. So if electromagnetism is now
23:42
Speaker 1: weaker because photons are more massive, that just doesn't happen.
23:46
Speaker 1: At the same time, the universe forms atoms much much
23:49
Speaker 1: later in its history because it has to wait until
23:52
Speaker 1: everything is so slow and so cold. So even this
23:56
Speaker 1: weekend electromagnetism could capture the electron inform atoms. So the
24:01
Speaker 1: whole history of the universe would be different, Like would
24:04
Speaker 1: we still be in a plasma right now or would
24:06
Speaker 1: we have settled already. I don't think any of the
24:09
Speaker 1: elements we know now would be around. Like the version
24:12
Speaker 1: of hydrogen in that universe would be really different. It
24:15
Speaker 1: would have totally different energy levels. And you know, the
24:18
Speaker 1: very nature of the universe we experience depends on chemistry,
24:21
Speaker 1: which depends very very sensitively on how electron orbitals are
24:26
Speaker 1: structured around nuclei. You know, whether something is metallic or not,
24:30
Speaker 1: whether something is active or not, whether you know something
24:33
Speaker 1: conducts the electricity or not, depends entirely on those electron orbitals,
24:37
Speaker 1: and now we're totally changing those. So I think we
24:39
Speaker 1: should expect to have completely different chemistry, which means basically
24:43
Speaker 1: everything would be different. I don't even know if we
24:46
Speaker 1: would have stars in the same way. I don't know
24:49
Speaker 1: that we would have planets. I don't know that we
24:50
Speaker 1: would have the same sort of set of materials. Yeah,
24:54
Speaker 1: it would be a totally different universe because I guess
24:56
Speaker 1: you know, an electron in and atom is throwing full
25:00
Speaker 1: tons back and forth with the nucleus, right, That's how
25:02
Speaker 1: it stays in orbit, So the photon had ass it
25:04
Speaker 1: would be like a totally different relationship there, right, Yeah,
25:07
Speaker 1: And we don't know if chemical bonds could be formed,
25:10
Speaker 1: Like the way that to oxygen come together to make
25:13
Speaker 1: O two is that they are like sharing electrons between
25:17
Speaker 1: two nuclei, and that depends on the strength of electromagnetism.
25:20
Speaker 1: It might be that in Thomas's universe, with really really
25:24
Speaker 1: massive photon than a weakened electromagnetism, you can get a
25:27
Speaker 1: different kind of bond. It might also be that you
25:30
Speaker 1: just can't get bonds right that you all you have
25:33
Speaker 1: our individual atoms and no molecules, which completely changes the
25:37
Speaker 1: way all of chemistry works. Yeah. I kind of need
25:39
Speaker 1: those molecules just to get up in the morning. Yeah,
25:43
Speaker 1: and you're telling me it also it also has sort
25:45
Speaker 1: of more fundamental consequences, right, Like it actually affects kind
25:48
Speaker 1: of like the overall electrical charge of the universe. Yeah,
25:51
Speaker 1: it's really interesting that the photon was left massless because
25:56
Speaker 1: that means that its symmetry wasn't broken. We talked on
25:58
Speaker 1: the podcast a lot about how all conservation laws things
26:02
Speaker 1: that are like preserved in the universe, Like if you
26:04
Speaker 1: do an interaction and nothing changes, that's the conservation law.
26:08
Speaker 1: We talked about how those conservation laws all come from symmetries. So,
26:12
Speaker 1: for example, the fact that momentum is conserved, you know
26:15
Speaker 1: that if you collide to particles together, the same amount
26:18
Speaker 1: of momentum exists after as it did before, comes from
26:21
Speaker 1: a symmetry of the universe. That symmetry is translational symmetry.
26:24
Speaker 1: That it doesn't matter if you did that collision over
26:27
Speaker 1: here or ten miles to the right. The universe doesn't
26:30
Speaker 1: have a preferred location in space. Well, there's a symmetry
26:33
Speaker 1: of the photon. It's called electromagnetic gauge symmetry, and the
26:37
Speaker 1: consequence of that is that electric charge is conserved, and
26:41
Speaker 1: that gauge symmetry can only exist if the photon is massless.
26:45
Speaker 1: So the photon becomes massive, then electromagnetic symmetry is broken,
26:49
Speaker 1: which means electric charge is no longer conserved, which means
26:52
Speaker 1: you can do things like create charges out of nothing.
26:55
Speaker 1: You can destroy electric charges, which is not something that
26:57
Speaker 1: happens in our universe currently, right, And that could be
27:00
Speaker 1: weird because like maybe suddenly most of the universe is
27:03
Speaker 1: has a plus charge on it or has a negative charge. Right,
27:06
Speaker 1: there's nothing kind of controlling that anymore. Yeah, exactly, it
27:09
Speaker 1: could go up and down, It could change with time.
27:11
Speaker 1: It could all get super positively charged. You know. You
27:13
Speaker 1: could have photons turned into two electrons. Currently, a photon
27:18
Speaker 1: can turn into like an electron and its anti particle,
27:21
Speaker 1: and there's a symmetry there because of conservation of charge.
27:24
Speaker 1: You have to create a plus and a minus at
27:25
Speaker 1: the same time. But if that's no longer true, then
27:28
Speaker 1: photons could turn into like two electrons or two positrons
27:31
Speaker 1: are all sorts of crazy stuff. And when you change
27:33
Speaker 1: these fundamental rules, the very very foundations of everything, then
27:37
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to predict what things are going to
27:39
Speaker 1: look like at the larger scales. I guess you could
27:41
Speaker 1: say there are plusants and minus or there could be
27:44
Speaker 1: a lot of plusses and a lot of minuses. The
27:46
Speaker 1: pluses and minuses are going to be out of control. Yeah,
27:50
Speaker 1: all right, that's pretty deep. And then also it has
27:52
Speaker 1: some consequences for super conductivity, right yeah. I think something
27:56
Speaker 1: that people don't really realize is that particle physicists didn't
28:00
Speaker 1: invent the idea of a Higgs field like. It didn't
28:03
Speaker 1: actually come from particle physics. We borrowed it from another field.
28:08
Speaker 1: We borrowed it from the guys who study superconductivity. Because
28:12
Speaker 1: what happens in a material when things are super conductive
28:16
Speaker 1: is that the electrons do this very special thing. You know,
28:18
Speaker 1: Electrons don't like to be like on top of each
28:21
Speaker 1: other their fermions, they don't like to be in the
28:22
Speaker 1: same quantum state. So to get superconductivity, what happens is
28:26
Speaker 1: you get electrons forming these little pairs two electrons together
28:30
Speaker 1: because when they come together, they turn into bosons and
28:33
Speaker 1: they can do all sorts of crazy stuff they can't
28:35
Speaker 1: otherwise do, and that's how super conductivity works. Well, these
28:38
Speaker 1: bosons do weird things to the photons that are in
28:42
Speaker 1: that material, and what they do to the photon in
28:44
Speaker 1: that material is exactly the same thing that the Higgs
28:47
Speaker 1: field does to most particles. So what that means is
28:51
Speaker 1: that inside a superconductor, photons are massive, like photons have
28:56
Speaker 1: mass inside superconductors, because these electrons create the same conditions
29:01
Speaker 1: necessary to give a photon mass. Right, they sort of
29:04
Speaker 1: like act like they slow down photons, right, they like
29:06
Speaker 1: absorb and re emit them, and in a way it
29:08
Speaker 1: sort of acts like the molasses in their material, not
29:11
Speaker 1: in a way in exactly the same way. And so
29:14
Speaker 1: when we discovered the Higgs boson, it was also sort
29:17
Speaker 1: of like a triumph for condensed matter physics because we
29:19
Speaker 1: realized this is like a general idea. It doesn't just
29:22
Speaker 1: happen for fundamental particles in the Higgs field. It also
29:25
Speaker 1: happens to like emergent phenomena for like photons interacting with
29:29
Speaker 1: these cooper pairs inside super conductivity. So there are cases
29:33
Speaker 1: in our universe where photons do have mass inside a superconductor.
29:37
Speaker 1: Photons have mass, So then what would happen if you
29:40
Speaker 1: actually give them mass? With that whole super connectivity is
29:43
Speaker 1: still work. Yeah, that's a great question. It would totally
29:46
Speaker 1: upset that apple cart as well. Probably you can still
29:48
Speaker 1: make super connectivity work. Do you have to start from
29:50
Speaker 1: a completely different place? I mean everybody else would have
29:53
Speaker 1: to start all over. Biologists, chemists, everybody would have to
29:57
Speaker 1: start from scratch if we change this basic parameter. And
30:00
Speaker 1: also light would be slower to right, like, maybe the
30:04
Speaker 1: universe would feel smaller as well. Yeah, and we might
30:06
Speaker 1: not even see as much of the universe. If photons
30:09
Speaker 1: don't last forever, they're not stable, if they decay, then
30:13
Speaker 1: we can't rely on them to travel for billions and
30:15
Speaker 1: billions of years across the universe and bring us secrets
30:18
Speaker 1: from the most distant objects because they would turn into
30:21
Speaker 1: other particles on the way. So the night sky would
30:24
Speaker 1: be much much darker because we wouldn't be getting these
30:27
Speaker 1: messages from far away. So I kind of like our universe.
30:29
Speaker 1: I don't know, what do you think? Yeah, let's keep
30:31
Speaker 1: the photon in a diet. Let's not getting pot any
30:34
Speaker 1: mass I think the lesson is things would be very
30:36
Speaker 1: different Thomas. But yeah, so the universe would be very
30:39
Speaker 1: different than the photon had mass, right, it would have
30:42
Speaker 1: much weaker like promgnatic force, and and things just wouldn't
30:45
Speaker 1: be the same. We might not even be in a
30:46
Speaker 1: like here in universe. Who might be still in the
30:49
Speaker 1: plasma universe. And the crazy thing is that it's not
30:51
Speaker 1: that far from our universe, Like it could happened here
30:55
Speaker 1: if the Higgs field was more complicated, if there are
30:57
Speaker 1: supersymmetric Higgs out there, it's possible this could have happened.
31:01
Speaker 1: And so it's not a big jump from here to there,
31:04
Speaker 1: Like the universe looks totally different, but it doesn't take
31:07
Speaker 1: that much of a change in the underlying laws of
31:09
Speaker 1: physics to get from here there. So it's sort of like,
31:12
Speaker 1: you know, our neighboring universe in the multiverse. Well, hopefully
31:15
Speaker 1: the n s A edited out that last statement in
31:18
Speaker 1: case that encourages anyone to try to change our universe.
31:21
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get to thomas the second question,
31:23
Speaker 1: because he had three, and this one is pretty interesting
31:26
Speaker 1: as well. Kudos to Thomas for thinking it up. Yes,
31:29
Speaker 1: what if the netrino felt the Strong Force. Yeah, whoa Wow,
31:34
Speaker 1: I guess it's whoa Because first of all, the neutrino
31:38
Speaker 1: is kind of an exotic particle, or I guess it's
31:40
Speaker 1: not your your typical particle. It doesn't make up anything
31:43
Speaker 1: about what we are. And also the strong Force is
31:46
Speaker 1: kind of a special force, right, So yes, So you're
31:48
Speaker 1: taking like the most elusive particle that hardly interacts with
31:52
Speaker 1: anything and interacts most weekly when it does, and then
31:55
Speaker 1: you're throwing it into the mix with the most powerful,
31:58
Speaker 1: the strongest, the we weird ist force we know about
32:01
Speaker 1: in the universe. So you're like promoting the introvert that
32:05
Speaker 1: hardly ever interacts with the party. You put them up
32:07
Speaker 1: on stage and you're making them the center of the action.
32:11
Speaker 1: I feel like you're describing a recurring dream that you
32:13
Speaker 1: have to and then I wake up screaming, and then
32:18
Speaker 1: you burst into a ball of light massless photons. I hope. Yeah.
32:23
Speaker 1: So remember that the new trino is. It's weird little particle,
32:26
Speaker 1: And you're right, it's weird because it doesn't exist in
32:29
Speaker 1: our form of matter. Like, you don't need the neutrino
32:32
Speaker 1: to make up the atom. You just need electrons and corks.
32:35
Speaker 1: But there are lots of neutrinos out there in the universe.
32:38
Speaker 1: The Sun makes a huge number of them. There are
32:41
Speaker 1: natural product of fusion. So there's like billions of neutrinos
32:44
Speaker 1: passing through your fingernail every second. They're just not sort
32:48
Speaker 1: of like part of our tactile universe. They're like this
32:52
Speaker 1: parallel universe almost that's right on top of us. So
32:54
Speaker 1: I think this question sort of gets to, like, what
32:56
Speaker 1: if we can interact with more of the universe. What
32:59
Speaker 1: if we were like force to what if it became
33:01
Speaker 1: part of the structure of the stuff that we are
33:03
Speaker 1: made out of? Right, Because neutrinos are you know, they're
33:06
Speaker 1: elusive and they're not that famous, but there's a lot
33:09
Speaker 1: of them, Like through all my fingertips right now. Are
33:12
Speaker 1: are billions of neutrinos passing through right, Yeah, because the
33:15
Speaker 1: Sun is a huge neutrino factory. Yeah. So they're one
33:18
Speaker 1: of the particles that can be made, and so they
33:20
Speaker 1: are made in big reactions like in the Sun. But
33:23
Speaker 1: right now they don't feel any force except the weak force, right,
33:27
Speaker 1: that's right. They have no electric charge and we'll get
33:29
Speaker 1: into that later. That's his third question. They don't feel electromagnetism,
33:32
Speaker 1: and they have a very very very small mass, so
33:35
Speaker 1: they do feel gravity, but it's almost negligible. But most
33:38
Speaker 1: importantly for this discussion, they don't feel the strong nuclear force.
33:41
Speaker 1: This is the force that holds the nucleus together, you know,
33:44
Speaker 1: that's mediated by gluons. It's what makes corks come together
33:48
Speaker 1: into a proton or into a neutron, and then even
33:51
Speaker 1: enough residual strong force left over to pull those positively
33:55
Speaker 1: charged protons together into a nucleus. So the strong force
33:58
Speaker 1: is really what dictates the whole structure of the nucleus,
34:02
Speaker 1: which is what controls everything. So usually only courts feel
34:05
Speaker 1: the strong force. Right, Yeah, we have this weird division,
34:08
Speaker 1: like there are six corks up down charm strange top bottom,
34:12
Speaker 1: and then there are six particles we call leptons. There's
34:14
Speaker 1: electron mu on too, and the three neutrinos. For reasons
34:18
Speaker 1: we don't understand, only the corks feel the strong force,
34:21
Speaker 1: and none of the other ones. The electron, the mu on,
34:24
Speaker 1: the tow and the neutrinos, none of them feel a
34:26
Speaker 1: strong force. They just totally ignore it. All right, So
34:28
Speaker 1: then what would happen if one of the neutrinos or
34:31
Speaker 1: that nutrino felt the strong force, how would it break things. Yeah,
34:34
Speaker 1: so in order for that to happen, you'd have to
34:36
Speaker 1: give these neutrinos the equivalent of electric charge for the
34:40
Speaker 1: strong force, and we call that color. So that's sort
34:43
Speaker 1: of what it means to have a color charge. It
34:46
Speaker 1: means that you do feel the strong force. And so
34:48
Speaker 1: if neutrinos feel the strong force, then they no longer
34:51
Speaker 1: just like pass through material. Like we say the neutrinos
34:54
Speaker 1: passed through the Earth without hardly noticing, that would no
34:57
Speaker 1: longer be true. If they felt the strong force, it
35:00
Speaker 1: would smash into the nucleus and they would interact. It
35:02
Speaker 1: would be just like if you sent a proton into
35:05
Speaker 1: the nucleus, Like when that happens, it sometimes breaks the
35:08
Speaker 1: nucleus up right, So they would feel the strong force,
35:11
Speaker 1: so they would have a color charge. And so if
35:13
Speaker 1: you shoot them through a material, they would probably mostly
35:16
Speaker 1: not do anything right, they would just fly through. But
35:18
Speaker 1: if they happen to fly close to the nucleus, then
35:20
Speaker 1: they would interact with the courts inside of the nucleus.
35:23
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying, Yeah, that's true, but materials
35:25
Speaker 1: are pretty dense, and so for example, if you shoot
35:27
Speaker 1: a proton into a block of copper, you're very likely
35:31
Speaker 1: going to interact with something, unless it's a very very
35:33
Speaker 1: thin sheet. And you know, we measure these things. It's
35:36
Speaker 1: like you know the interaction length of an object as
35:38
Speaker 1: it flies into material. You fly into anything with their
35:41
Speaker 1: reasonable nuclear density, you're going to interact. And so as
35:45
Speaker 1: you shoot neutrinos with a strong force into a rock,
35:48
Speaker 1: for example, then they're not going to come out the
35:50
Speaker 1: other side. It's because there are so many nuclear and
35:52
Speaker 1: courts in that rock. But I guess what I'm saying
35:55
Speaker 1: is that the strong force this in like long range, right,
35:57
Speaker 1: like it usually only kicks up if you're really close
36:00
Speaker 1: through the courts. That's right, because the strong force is
36:02
Speaker 1: super duper strong, and it's super duper strange. It's strange because,
36:07
Speaker 1: unlike the other forces, it actually gets stronger as the
36:11
Speaker 1: objects get further apart. Like we know that gravity gets
36:14
Speaker 1: weaker as things get further apart. You feel gravity from
36:17
Speaker 1: the Sun, you feel gravity from the Earth because they're
36:19
Speaker 1: relatively close. You don't feel gravity from Andromeda the whole
36:23
Speaker 1: galaxy because it's super far away. Even though it's really massive.
36:26
Speaker 1: The strong force is the opposite. As things get further apart,
36:29
Speaker 1: the strength of the force gets larger. What that means
36:32
Speaker 1: is that things with a strong chart this color can't
36:35
Speaker 1: be really really far apart because the forces we would
36:37
Speaker 1: be so strong that things would snap together. So basically
36:41
Speaker 1: everything in the universe is balanced, has no effective color
36:44
Speaker 1: chart because if it did, then like a huge amount
36:47
Speaker 1: of energy would be devoted to fixing that, to sort
36:50
Speaker 1: of smoothing it out. And so the strong force also
36:53
Speaker 1: has sort of a short extent because it's all sort
36:55
Speaker 1: of neutralized already, right, So then what would happen to
36:58
Speaker 1: our universe if neutrinos has you know, color, and they
37:01
Speaker 1: could feel the strong force? Would we just be obliterated
37:03
Speaker 1: right now by all the neutrinos coming from the Sun,
37:05
Speaker 1: you know, like what they just totally destroy us? Or
37:09
Speaker 1: you know, would would even that meaning neutrinos be formed
37:12
Speaker 1: in the sun, It's a great question. Neutrinos are mostly
37:15
Speaker 1: formed in the internal part of the Sun, right like
37:18
Speaker 1: where the fusion is actually happening. And so if neutrinos
37:22
Speaker 1: have felt the strong force and they hit Earth, yeah,
37:25
Speaker 1: that would be a big deal, and it would like
37:26
Speaker 1: sterilize all life on Earth and kill everybody. Not a
37:31
Speaker 1: happy ending and not a happy ending. But it also
37:34
Speaker 1: means that the Sun wouldn't make as many neutrinos because
37:37
Speaker 1: the neutrinos wouldn't be able to escape the Sun because
37:40
Speaker 1: instead of like being created and then flying off through
37:43
Speaker 1: a sun, which is to them transparent, the Sun would
37:46
Speaker 1: be suddenly opaque. It would be a huge barrier. So
37:49
Speaker 1: they would just be like reabsorbed, or they would trigger
37:51
Speaker 1: more nuclear fusion, or they would form balanced crazy states.
37:56
Speaker 1: And so probably the Sun just wouldn't produce as many neutrinos.
38:00
Speaker 1: It would still have all that energy, and it would
38:02
Speaker 1: get hotter, and it might really more photons because it
38:05
Speaker 1: gets hotter, but it wouldn't produce as many neutrinos, but
38:08
Speaker 1: it would still produce some. And when those neutrinos hit
38:10
Speaker 1: the Earth, it would be bad news. Right, we would
38:13
Speaker 1: in our atmosphere protect this. Maybe our atmosphere does protect
38:16
Speaker 1: us from cosmic rays. Like there are particles that feel
38:19
Speaker 1: the strong force effectively that hit the atmosphere, like protons.
38:22
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're really high energy, but you know, you can't
38:25
Speaker 1: really evade them. What happens when they hit the atmosphere
38:28
Speaker 1: is they create this big shower of particles cosmic rays,
38:31
Speaker 1: and those cosmic rays get down to Earth and they cause, like,
38:34
Speaker 1: you know, changes in our DNA. It's actually important part
38:37
Speaker 1: of our evolution that sometimes errors in DNA are created
38:41
Speaker 1: from cosmic radiation. And so what you're talking about is
38:45
Speaker 1: increasing the amount of cosmic radiation doesn't mean we'll all
38:48
Speaker 1: instantly get cancer, but it does mean that there'll be
38:50
Speaker 1: a lot more DNA errors, and that means that you know,
38:53
Speaker 1: the next generation would be pretty weird or has superpower.
38:58
Speaker 1: This could be a great origin story. Everyone bitten by
39:01
Speaker 1: a radioactive neutrino. Yeah, you get all the powers of
39:04
Speaker 1: the neutrino. All right, Well, it sounds like maybe the
39:06
Speaker 1: consequences are not as dramatic as in our first question.
39:10
Speaker 1: But because you know, neutrinos are more dangerous, but they're
39:13
Speaker 1: also maybe wouldn't we wouldn't see as many of them, right,
39:15
Speaker 1: because they're harder to make, and they would also do
39:18
Speaker 1: other weird stuff. Like the reason we have protons and
39:21
Speaker 1: neutrons and other particles made of quarks is because those
39:24
Speaker 1: quirks like to group together and make interesting things. And
39:26
Speaker 1: there's lots of different ways to put quirks together. You
39:29
Speaker 1: can make pions and chaons. These are all just different
39:32
Speaker 1: combinations of the same lego particles. Now in that universe
39:35
Speaker 1: and Thomas's universe where the neutrino feels a strong force,
39:38
Speaker 1: it's another lego piece you can use to make these
39:40
Speaker 1: weird particles. So now you can have like I don't know,
39:43
Speaker 1: two quirks and a new trino making some new kind
39:46
Speaker 1: of particle, or just like you know, a bound state
39:48
Speaker 1: of a bunch of neutrinos could build something. You can
39:50
Speaker 1: have all sorts of new forms of matter made out
39:53
Speaker 1: of either combinations of quirks and neutrinos or just neutrinos. Whoa,
39:57
Speaker 1: you could have like more atoms than what we have
40:00
Speaker 1: in the periodic table. You could have like a whole
40:02
Speaker 1: separate table or more multiple table. You would be a
40:05
Speaker 1: whole other dimension to the periodic table, you know, where
40:08
Speaker 1: you have a hydrogen with more or fewer neutrinos inside
40:11
Speaker 1: the nucleus. Wow, that's pretty cool. It's like getting more
40:14
Speaker 1: pieces for your lego said of the universe. So things
40:18
Speaker 1: would maybe be very different, right, there would be more
40:20
Speaker 1: types of matter. Yeah, exactly, it would be much more
40:23
Speaker 1: diverse the kinds of things you could build out of
40:25
Speaker 1: the strong force. All right, well, hopefully that answer is
40:28
Speaker 1: Thomas the second question, and so let's get to his
40:30
Speaker 1: last question, and this one is pretty killer, but first
40:35
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. All Right, we're answering questions
40:50
Speaker 1: from Thomas, who's nine years old from Ontario. Please read
40:53
Speaker 1: our book We Have No Idea, a Guide to the
40:55
Speaker 1: un Universe. And he has questions about what if the
40:59
Speaker 1: universe was different, what if we were actually in a
41:02
Speaker 1: different universe in our multiverse where things had different values
41:07
Speaker 1: or things at different properties. And so his last question
41:11
Speaker 1: is what if the neutrino felt the electromagnetic force? Yeah,
41:16
Speaker 1: and I love this series of questions because it connects
41:19
Speaker 1: to this like series of inclusion, Like the strong force
41:24
Speaker 1: only touches quarks. That's interesting, it's weird. We don't understand why.
41:28
Speaker 1: Then there's electromagnetism. It touches quarks like quarks have charges,
41:32
Speaker 1: they can create photons, all this kind of stuff. But
41:35
Speaker 1: also electrons, muans, and taws feel electromagnetism. So of the
41:39
Speaker 1: twelve particles, only six of them feel the strong force.
41:42
Speaker 1: Electromagnetism is more inclusive, Like nine of those twelve particles
41:46
Speaker 1: feel electromagnetism, but then the last three particles, these neutrinos, right,
41:50
Speaker 1: they don't feel either the strong force or electromagnetism. So
41:53
Speaker 1: it's really fun to think about, like what the universe
41:55
Speaker 1: would be like if that were different. These neutrinos are
41:58
Speaker 1: special and crazy because they don't feel either of the
42:00
Speaker 1: more powerful forces. Yeah, I mean these are definitely not
42:03
Speaker 1: random questions. I feel like Thomas really sort of looked
42:06
Speaker 1: at the table of fundamental particles and he saw the
42:08
Speaker 1: gaps and like, what wasn't connected? And he's liked, what
42:11
Speaker 1: if we connect these two things? Yeah, And I think
42:13
Speaker 1: the other side of these questions is not just what if,
42:15
Speaker 1: but why, right, because the implication is maybe this doesn't
42:19
Speaker 1: make sense, maybe it doesn't work, and that's why the
42:22
Speaker 1: neutrino doesn't feel a strong force, it doesn't feel electromacticism,
42:25
Speaker 1: because if it did, the universe would be incoherent or something,
42:28
Speaker 1: you know. I think that's sort of the way we
42:30
Speaker 1: are all thinking about is sort of in the field,
42:32
Speaker 1: trying to ask these what if questions? All right, Well,
42:34
Speaker 1: his whatef question is what if the neutrino felt the
42:37
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force. So right now, we know that the neutrino
42:39
Speaker 1: doesn't feel the electromagnetic force, which is why it like
42:42
Speaker 1: flies through us and doesn't kill us and doesn't do
42:44
Speaker 1: anything to us even though there are a ton of
42:46
Speaker 1: them flying through us. So I guess if they felt
42:48
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic force and we would feel them to right,
42:51
Speaker 1: we might even be toast. We would definitely be toast exactly.
42:55
Speaker 1: It's very similar to what would happen if neutrinos felt
42:58
Speaker 1: a strong force. Right right now, Neutrinos mostly ignore the universe,
43:01
Speaker 1: but the universe is built out of the strong force
43:03
Speaker 1: and electromagnetism. So now, if a neutrinos feel electromagnetism, that
43:08
Speaker 1: means that when they pass through matter, they interact with
43:11
Speaker 1: everything that has an electric charge. Right, That's what it means.
43:14
Speaker 1: To feel electromagnetism means to have a charge and to
43:18
Speaker 1: interact with things that do have charge. That's really what
43:20
Speaker 1: electric charge is. When we say, like the electron has
43:23
Speaker 1: electric charge, what we mean is that when you put
43:26
Speaker 1: it in an electric field, it gets accelerated, so that
43:29
Speaker 1: has zero charge. We mean it ignores electromagnetism. For a
43:33
Speaker 1: neutrino to feel electromagnetism, it would have to have electric
43:36
Speaker 1: charge to it that have to be like a positive
43:38
Speaker 1: neutrino and a negative neutrino. And then as it flies
43:41
Speaker 1: through matter, it would interact with electrons and the nuclei
43:45
Speaker 1: and do exactly the same stuff that other charge particles do.
43:48
Speaker 1: It would cause crazy havoc, right, Yeah, I guess you
43:50
Speaker 1: would have to make two kinds of neutrinos, right, if
43:53
Speaker 1: you give them charge, you'd have to give them You
43:55
Speaker 1: have to make up the plus and the minus type. Yeah,
43:57
Speaker 1: because every particle that has a plus also has a minus.
43:59
Speaker 1: There's the antiparticle. One of the really interesting things about
44:02
Speaker 1: the neutrino is that we don't know if it is
44:05
Speaker 1: its own antiparticle or if there's a separate anti neutrino. Like,
44:10
Speaker 1: we can't tell the difference between neutrinos and anti neutrinos
44:13
Speaker 1: because they don't have electric charge. Most particle antiparticle pairs,
44:18
Speaker 1: like the one of them is positive, one of them
44:19
Speaker 1: is negative, So we put them in a magnet. They separate.
44:22
Speaker 1: Neutrinos have no charge, and so we can't tell are
44:25
Speaker 1: they their own antiparticles there's just one kind or are
44:28
Speaker 1: there two kinds? And we just sort of can't tell
44:31
Speaker 1: the difference. It's one of the deepest questions about neutrinos.
44:34
Speaker 1: But if they had electric charge, they would definitely have
44:36
Speaker 1: to be two kinds. And in fact, I think their
44:38
Speaker 1: name comes from the fact that they don't have any charge, right,
44:40
Speaker 1: neutral neutrino comes from the word neutral. Right, so you've
44:44
Speaker 1: given charge. You would have to change its name, Yeah, exactly.
44:47
Speaker 1: No trino means little one in Italian, right, little neutral
44:51
Speaker 1: one in Italian, sort of like a little cute particle
44:53
Speaker 1: with no charge. You would have to call the positive
44:55
Speaker 1: one like the pepito, and maybe the negative one the
44:59
Speaker 1: nepedo may Yeah exactly, that would be the most important
45:03
Speaker 1: consequence in the universe. Again, but I guess what I
45:09
Speaker 1: mean is that they wouldn't be called to Trina's right, absolutely,
45:12
Speaker 1: their most fundamental property would be different. And neutrinos were
45:15
Speaker 1: hard to discover. We didn't even know about them until
45:18
Speaker 1: fairly recently. And the reason is that they are neutral.
45:21
Speaker 1: They hardly ever interact. We only know the neutrino exists
45:24
Speaker 1: because we saw a momentum sort of disappear and without
45:26
Speaker 1: wait a second, momentum can't disappear. And so somebody said, well,
45:29
Speaker 1: maybe it didn't disappear, maybe some weird and almost invisible
45:33
Speaker 1: particles carrying it off, and that's how the name came about.
45:36
Speaker 1: Somebody said, oh, that would be fun. But if there
45:37
Speaker 1: was a little neutral particle carrying it off, so we
45:40
Speaker 1: would have discovered the neutrino much much sooner. If it
45:43
Speaker 1: did have electric charge, it would have been much more obvious, right,
45:46
Speaker 1: all right, So then if it's not neutral, if it
45:48
Speaker 1: does feel the electromagnetic force, it would interact with us,
45:51
Speaker 1: and so we would be toast right because we're getting
45:53
Speaker 1: showered by them right now, a ton like ten billion
45:56
Speaker 1: per square centimeter, and so each one of those would
45:59
Speaker 1: basically you know, push us, or interact with us, or
46:01
Speaker 1: knock an electron off or you know, maybe change our DNA.
46:05
Speaker 1: We'd be toast right to be a ton of energy
46:07
Speaker 1: showering us right now. Yeah, we basically all be in
46:10
Speaker 1: a particle accelerator all the time, and that's not recommended,
46:14
Speaker 1: you know, like to have all those particles ripping through
46:16
Speaker 1: your body, ionizing things, basically causing cancer, damaging your cells.
46:21
Speaker 1: It's like being shot by billions of tiny, tiny bullets
46:24
Speaker 1: all the time. So yeah, we wouldn't survive very long.
46:27
Speaker 1: But again, just like in the case with the neutrinos
46:30
Speaker 1: feeling the strong force, fewer of them would come to
46:32
Speaker 1: Earth than now, because the Sun would also absorb a
46:35
Speaker 1: lot of them internally, and so it would radiate more photons.
46:38
Speaker 1: The Sun would be brighter, it would heat up, and
46:40
Speaker 1: we'd all get like hotter from the temperature of the Sun,
46:43
Speaker 1: but would feel fewer neutrinos, but still a lot of them,
46:46
Speaker 1: and those would cause damage. Right, This is interesting that
46:48
Speaker 1: you said that the sun would be brighter like it
46:51
Speaker 1: would make the same amount of neutrinos. Wouldn't the neutrinos
46:54
Speaker 1: be harder to make? And if you make them, then
46:56
Speaker 1: how does it make the sun brighter? Yeah, that's a
46:57
Speaker 1: great question. I haven't thought about whether fusion is more
47:00
Speaker 1: or less likely to make more neutrinos. But assuming that
47:03
Speaker 1: the same number of neutrinos are made, they don't escape
47:05
Speaker 1: the sun right now. The sun again is opaque to them.
47:08
Speaker 1: It's a barrier. It's not transparent. You know, Neutrinos are
47:12
Speaker 1: super cool because when you make them inside a star.
47:14
Speaker 1: That star is like glass to the neutrinos, they just
47:16
Speaker 1: fly right out of it. It's super interesting. For example,
47:19
Speaker 1: when we observe supernova in the sky, we see neutrinos
47:22
Speaker 1: from the supernova before we see photons from the supernova.
47:26
Speaker 1: And you might think a whole lot of second. Photons
47:28
Speaker 1: travel the speed of light, right, shouldn't they always get
47:30
Speaker 1: here first? Yes, But neutrinos come from the heart of
47:34
Speaker 1: the supernova, so they're the first thing that's created, and
47:37
Speaker 1: the photons come when the shock wave reaches the outside
47:39
Speaker 1: of the supernova. So neutrinos actually get here first because
47:42
Speaker 1: they started first, and they travel almost the speed of light.
47:45
Speaker 1: It's like the trailer for the main feature. Yeah, exactly,
47:48
Speaker 1: were like, watch out, you're about to be zapped. Well,
47:52
Speaker 1: if they had charged, they would zappas the trailer would
47:54
Speaker 1: be just as good as the Yeah, So if they
47:56
Speaker 1: had charged, they wouldn't be able to escape in those
47:58
Speaker 1: first moments. They would be reabsorbed. All the other particles
48:01
Speaker 1: just contributing to the overall temperature of the Sun. That
48:04
Speaker 1: would cause the sun to glow brighter if it's hotter,
48:07
Speaker 1: so would heat up the sun and the sun will
48:09
Speaker 1: also be shorter lived, right, it wouldn't last for so
48:11
Speaker 1: many billions of years alright, so we'd be toast and
48:14
Speaker 1: maybe not live as long. But would we even be here,
48:17
Speaker 1: Like if you gave charge to the neutrino, would the
48:20
Speaker 1: universe form the same way? Or will we also have
48:22
Speaker 1: like interesting new kinds of matter. It would be totally different,
48:25
Speaker 1: where the stable forms of matter would be really different,
48:28
Speaker 1: and you would probably have like neutrinos in bound states
48:31
Speaker 1: around protons. Right, you could form atoms with neutrinos, not
48:34
Speaker 1: just with electrons, And maybe you could have atoms that
48:37
Speaker 1: have like some neutrinos and some electrons, And again the
48:40
Speaker 1: orbitals would be really weird, and chemistry would be much harder.
48:43
Speaker 1: Like you think organic chemistry is hard now, whow with
48:46
Speaker 1: neutrinos in there, it would be even more complicated. So
48:49
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even deign to predict what it would look like.
48:51
Speaker 1: But I'm sure that the very structure of matter would
48:54
Speaker 1: be very different if neutrinos had electric charge and could
48:57
Speaker 1: participate in the forming of atoms. All right, Well, I
49:02
Speaker 1: think maybe the main lesson from all of these questions
49:04
Speaker 1: from Thomas is that like the universe could be very different,
49:07
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't take that much for things to be
49:10
Speaker 1: totally different and maybe even feels like a totally different universe.
49:14
Speaker 1: That's right, So Thomas, if you wander into the control
49:17
Speaker 1: panel of the universe, please take care before you play
49:20
Speaker 1: with somebos not. Ye I know, I know you're nine
49:23
Speaker 1: and you want to touch things and pull pushing buttons,
49:25
Speaker 1: but you know, think about it for a second. And also,
49:27
Speaker 1: if you're a dog listening to this, also, you know,
49:30
Speaker 1: restrain yourself. Don't turn into a super doogulin. All right, Well,
49:33
Speaker 1: thank you Thomas for these awesome questions about what would
49:36
Speaker 1: happen if things were a little bit different in our universe.
49:39
Speaker 1: It sounds like things would be a lot different, Daniel,
49:41
Speaker 1: things would be a lot different, And it just goes
49:43
Speaker 1: to show you that the universe that we exist in
49:46
Speaker 1: now really rest on like a very finely balanced set
49:50
Speaker 1: of stuff, and if you change any of that, then
49:53
Speaker 1: the downstream effects are very dramatic and very hard to predict.
49:56
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's be grateful that we have the
49:58
Speaker 1: universe that we have with the pretty is that it has,
50:00
Speaker 1: because otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask these awesome questions.
50:04
Speaker 1: That's right, and thank you very much to Thomas his
50:07
Speaker 1: mom for encouraging his curiosity. And thank you to all
50:10
Speaker 1: the parents out there who fan the flames of curiosity
50:13
Speaker 1: and wonder in your children. Those are future scientists who
50:16
Speaker 1: I hope are going to solve the big problems of
50:18
Speaker 1: the day. You just don't get him a cat, just
50:20
Speaker 1: to make sure it's a nice, friendly dog. All right. Well,
50:25
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
50:36
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
50:39
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from
50:42
Speaker 1: my heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
50:46
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.