Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What was the first particle ever discovered? And how was it discovered?

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What was the first particle ever discovered? And how was it discovered? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, why do you think people are preoccupied with being first?
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: What do you mean, you know, like first person on
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the moon, first person or run four minute mile. Yeah,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I see what you mean. There's kind of an obsession
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: right with being first. But you know, I think last
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: can be good too. What who wants to be last?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: You know, like the last cookie in the box is
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: always the tastiest. The last person to arrive at the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: party makes you the coolest person. That's true. That's true.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Last person to turn in their project but still be
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: on time, that's right. I am a big believer in
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: optimal procrastination. Hi. I'm or Hey. I'm cartoonists and the
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: creator of PhD comics. Hi I'm Daniel. I'm a particle
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: physicist and I'm sitting in a closet in Aspen, Colorado.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't know you were in the closet, Daniel, I'm
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: more literally in the closet than figuratively in the closet,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: only only in Aspen, Colorado. That that is a wild
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: world place. It is a beautiful place. I'm here because
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I'm at the Aspen Center for Physics for a week,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: where people come from all over the country to sort
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: of sit around and think about big ideas and think
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: about the future of physics and brainstorm new experiments and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: think about the history of physics. Also, wow, pretty cool.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Is that something that happens every year? Yeah, every summer
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: physicists come to Aspen and think big thoughts while surrounded
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: by rich people. You're saying like, that's an exclusive thing.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: You can't be rich and a physicist. Well, it feels
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: like an Aspen. There's two kinds of people, the rich
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: people and the physicists. But it's fun to be here
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and to think about, you know, all the physics that's
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: been done in the last fifty years of pysis that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: will be done in the next fifty years. And also
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: makes me think back about the origin of physics, you know,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: like where this all started. Yeah, so welcome to our party.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. That's right, our podcast in which
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: we think about all the big things, the hard things,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the new things, the old things, and try to explain
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: them to you in any way that we hope is educational, understandable,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and maybe a little entertaining. First things, the last things,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the things that made it just in time, not to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: be late all the things that's right. We should do
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: a podcast on people who won the Nobel Prize and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: their discovery came in just in time before the threshold. Well,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I always say that, you know, when I see grass
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: students really stressed out, I always tell them that, you
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: know what you even if you get to c you
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: still get a PhD. That's true. It took me a
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: while to understand that nobody in graduate school cares about
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: grades like you get, you gonna a minus, you gotta
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: be doesn't really matter anymore because just surviving is all
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: that matters. Yeah, but they do care about in science,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: about being first, right, Like that's a huge deal. It
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: is a huge deal, and first counts for a lot.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Like if you're the first person to publish an idea
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: in a paper, even if you're first by one day,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: which means the other folks were thinking about it at
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the same time as you were, they just didn't put
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: their paper out, you get primary credit for it, so
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: it matters a lot. Yeah, you get the particle named
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: after you, you get um people making videos about you online. Yeah,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: it's basically first, and then there's everybody else. And I'm
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: saying that's the right way to do it, or that
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: it's fair, or that it's healthy. Um, it's a little
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: bit insane, but it's sort of the way we do things.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: There's a system where we put articles on the Internet,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and the order in which the articles appear on the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Internet for that day's listings depends on how close your
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: submission was to four pm Eastern Time. So every day
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: at three fifty nine Eastern time, there's a bunch of
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: physicists sitting around their computers trying to click their paper
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in just past the deadline. It's like an Internet comments
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: where the first person always says first first comment. It's
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: saying there's just a bunch of Internet trolls. That's right,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Internet trolls with PhDs. Yeah, that's basically describes our field.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: But first of discovers a big deal. But maybe an
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: even bigger deal is to discover the first of something, right,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: like the first planet or the first moon or the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: first asteroid. Those are pretty big too, even maybe more
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: important than getting the credit. Yeah, it's sort of like
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a categorical discovery, right, you discover a whole new kind
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: of thing. The first person to discover, you know, a
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: new kind of like marsupials or something. Right, It's like, whoa,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: It's not only are you found a new animal, you
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: found a whole new category of animals. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: it changes everyone's perspective about things, right, I mean to
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: be the first to discover a giraffe, I mean that
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: probably blue people's mind. Yeah. And and that's the idea,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: is that the first person is one that really carries
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the most information. Like if you have the first person
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: to have this new idea of an new way of
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: thinking about the universe, or the first person to find
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: something out, that's the piece of information. Right. That's how
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: humanity sort of learned about it. And that's why I
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: think being first is prized. It's not just like Usain Bolt, um,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: you know, running over the finish line of tiny bit
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: faster than the next guy or the next gal. It's
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it's really about who's delivering the information, who's making that
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: sort of intellectual leap forward? Yeah, like who planted that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: flag on that new continent? Right, Like you're literally out
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: there by yourself. Yeah, except that it turns out there
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: is usually indigenous people that you've slogged on the way.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: But that is side side let's not let's not make
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the analogy physicist and complete. Let's not promote white based
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: yours central colonialism on this show. But yeah, I say
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: you're the first personal end of the moon. Right then
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: you're doing something no human being has ever done before.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: That really is an important moment. And so today this
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: might be the first in a series of episodes about
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: first and today we're going to be talking about the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: first particle. Who discovered the first particle? And what was
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the first particle discovered? Yeah, and this is a fascinating story.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Not only did he discover particles, he sort of invented
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the concept of particles, which is something we're sort of
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: still struggling to figure out, Like what is a particle?
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: We've talked about on this podcast a few times, Like
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: what does that mean philosophically? What does it look like?
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: What are we really talking about? Do we have more
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: than just a mathematical model. Do we have like a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: complete understanding what a particle is? Anyway, And so it's
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: instructive to go back to sort of the first time
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: anybody said, oh, look I found a particle, to understand
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: what made them think it was a particle? What ideas
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: did they have that justified this creation of a whole
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: new concept. Yeah, and it's a big deal because everything
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: is made out of particles, right, It's what makes up
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: the things in the universe. Everything's made out of a particle. Well, yeah, everything,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: if you mean everything, the five percent of the universe
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: that he knows made out of particles. Right. I didn't
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: tell you that I know what dark matter and dark
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: energy I part made of. I didn't. I forgot to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: mention mastered those concepts. It was more for our listeners.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I know that you're aware of dark matter and dark energy,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: but you know it's dark energy. We don't know what
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: it is. Dark matter might be made of particles, we
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: don't know, but it might not. But yeah, the rest
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: of all the stuff in the universe, stars and ice
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: cream and hamsters and all that great stuff is all
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: made of particles, right, And so it's fascinating thing about it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: And and I think we should clarify here when we
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: talk about particles, I'm thinking about it in the modern sense.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: We have like twelve matter particles. We've thought about five
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: force particles. We've thought about not in terms of like elements,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: which sort of an earlier development, which of the current
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: particles that we think of is not divided into smaller
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: bits was discovered, right, And there was a time in
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: our human history where we didn't know these things, right, Like,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: we didn't know that we were made out of particles,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and we didn't know how many there were. We didn't
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: know what they were, what they looked like, are also
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: big they were so and it's pretty recent, right, Yeah,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: most of human history we really had no idea. I mean,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Greek suggested this concept of an atom, that maybe matter
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: was divided into tiny bits, but that was just one
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: idea they had of like, you know, lots and lots
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: of ideas. So the fact that would happened to be right,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I think people give them too much credit for. But
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the modern idea that matter was divided into these tiny
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: little lego blocks, essentially, that what seemed to us to
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: be smooth and indivisible and continuous was actually just like
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: made of super tiny little pixels. That's a pretty modern idea.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: The origin of it comes in the eighteen hundreds, you know,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: with chemistry. People started to think about, you know, reactions
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: between different gases and stuff, and they noticed that these
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: gases had reactions in these patterns which suggested that there
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: was like individible little units of the gases, which of
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: course turned out to be atoms and molecules. Right, I
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: imagined that maybe not a lot of people out there
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: know what was the first particle discovered? Right? I mean,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: you know, if I had to guess, um, I don't
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: know what I would say. You know, protons, neutrons, the particles.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of the twelve matter particles. We have six leptons,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: those electron muan tao, and then three neutrinos and then
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: six quarks right the up down strange charm bottom top.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: So if those particles, I was wondering, did people know,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: you know, which was the first discovered? People have any idea?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And so I walked around and I asked people what
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: was the first particle discovered? And again these these interviews,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: you'll hear we're not done at U c Irvine, but
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: actually in the airport at Heathrow, um, and so you'll
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: hear some international voices. So think back, if somebody ask
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: you what was the first what do you think the
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: first matter particle discovered? Was? What would you say to
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: a random stranger at an airport in London here's what
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: people have to ask you physics questions before you call security.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Think about what your answer would be. Well, here's what
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: those travelers had to say, iron, I don't know, oxygen
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: or probably the electron electrons, I imagine, all right, a
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: lot of good guesses there. So people said iron, some
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: people said the proton, some people said oxygen. Yeah, exactly.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people when I said particle,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: they thought elements, they thought atoms, um And I'm not
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: sure if that's because they weren't aware of the structure
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: of matter sort of below the atomic level, or they
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: just thought that that still counts as the particle. But
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: you know, in modern day particle physics, we don't think
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of oxygen as a particle. It's basically like a huge construction,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's massive on the particle scale. Yeah,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: and we're so we're talking about the discovery of the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: things that atoms are made at. We know that matter
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: is made out of molecules, and molecules are made out
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: of atoms, and atoms are made out of smaller things
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: that we so far don't know that they can be
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: split anymore. Right, that's right. And we know that these
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: particles that some of those particles makeup atoms right up,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: quirks down, corks and electrons makeup atoms. But there are
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: other particles out there, right, There's lots of other particles.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: There's twelve of them, and so it could be that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: when you discover particle, it's not a particle that exists
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: in the atom, right, or it could be a particle
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: that helps them solve the puzzle of how the atoms
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: put together. Um, so there's more particles out there than
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: sort of exist in your ice cream besides the chocolate chips, right,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: and the that is a fundamental unit of happiness, but
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: not a fundamental unit of the universe and charcolate chips up.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: But so at some point we thought adams were like
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the smallest things in the universe, right, But then we
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: find out that there are there. They're actually made out
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of particles. And so one of those particles was the
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: first one discovered, and so the question is which one
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: was it? That's right, So I thought it'd be fun.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: We'll walk you through the experiment from the point of
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: view of the experiment or right, what were they doing?
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: What were they trying to figure out? Why did they
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: do it, what do they learn? And at the end
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: we'll we'll reveal what the first particle was that was
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: discovered by this experiment. A mystery, an ice cream exactly.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Nobody dies in this mystery. We well they did die,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: but um at the time they were due to this mystery.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Nobody was killed by this particle. All right, let's get
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: into that's not true. People are killed by this particle
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: all the time. All right, let's get into the story.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: trying to piece together the story of which was the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: first particle discovered ever so the first time that we
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: figured out that the atom is not the fundamental unit
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of the universe. So so step us thirty daniel, what
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: what what year is it? What what year are we in?
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: And what was what we're people thinking? Cast your mind
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: back thirteen or so decades to the late eighteen hundreds,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and back then, physicists we're really just starting to make
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: any any progress in like understanding the thing around this
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: stuff around us. Back then, physics was like, okay, we
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: got this kind of thing. We got magnetism, we got
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: you know, people get electrically zapped. We got gravity, we
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: have just like a long list of things that we
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: don't understand, and compared to modern physics, where we feel
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: like most of the stuff around us we understand, you know,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the macroco the macroscopic scale. Right, it's rare these days
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: that you see something happened you're like, whoa, that's just
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: totally a mystery. Back then, there was a lot of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: stuff going on that people didn't understand, and so people
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: were just sort of investigating it, playing with it, right.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: They didn't understand what gamma rays were, X rays were
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. Now we have a holistic understanding.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: But back then there were a lot of these mysteries
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and one of them. One of them was cathode rays.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: This is something people had created and we're playing with
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: but didn't really understand. It's amazing to think have that mindset, right,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Like there's so many weird things going on and you're
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: just like, oh, well, I'll just go about my life anyways. Yeah.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And you know, also, there were many fewer people doing
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: science back then, um, and so there's just a lot
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: less progress being made. And I wonder what it's like
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: sometimes to live in the universe where you know their
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: natural things happening for which we just do not have
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: an axclanation, like in your everyday life. Yeah, Like you're
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: walking around and it's like, oh, look at that cloud.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I have no idea what the thing is made out of?
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Or yeah exactly could who knows somebody painting it blue?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah right? Or why is lightning strike? Or what is lightning? Right? Um,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, or what is disease? Right?
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: People had no idea how disease was transmitted. Um. My
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: wife tells me this story about how until fairly recently,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: doctors used to go from doing autopsies on cadavers to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: delivering babies without washing their hands because they just didn't
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: understand right that what disease was. And so it's hard
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: to it hard sometimes to put your mind in in
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: the mindset of what people were like back then. But
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: back then people were playing with Catherine Raise and until recently,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: cathode rays were pretty common. They're what used to make
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: TVs work. It's a little beam of electrons east sweep
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: along the back of the screen and make the picture
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: on the screen. These days everybody has a flat screen.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: But you know those old deep TVs, the ones that
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: are pretty thick. Yeah, those have a little beam of
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: particles at them. Back then people were playing with them
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: because they were pretty easy to make. All you need
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: to do was make some like glass tube that was
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: mostly that was a pretty good vacuum, and you'd put
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: some material and it's some metal and you'd um, you'd
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: heat it up and then it put some electrical voltage
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: across it and you would get these crazy glowing rays
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: that shot from one side of the tube to the other. Ah,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: whoa yeah, And they were like it was like a
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: side show. People were like go around like you know circuses,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: like oh, here see the bearded lady. See the man
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: who can make glowing rays in the tube, you know,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: and nobody understood it. But it was just this like
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: weird thing. And that's why it's called cathode ray tube,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Like yeah, like those old monitors and TVs or they're
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: called c rt s because that's what it stands stands for,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: right exactly. And you know, Kathy, it comes from the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: fact that you have a voltage across as you have
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: an an node and a cathode, right, and and you
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: would get these weird rays and nobody understood, like what
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: is this ray you couldn't like put your hand in
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: there because it was inside the tube and like touch it.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: People were wondering, like is a ray a fundamental thing
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: of the universe? Right? They didn't know, and like I
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: can make this thing glow, but you know, everything in
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: the universe is a mystery, is indistinguishable from magic until
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: physics basically takes it apart and understand it. Either I
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: could say that's either ruining the magic or you know,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: revealing the mysteries. Physicists killing the magic since late eighteen hundreds,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: physicists capturing the magic to make better TVs for you
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: about that, or thinking the magic and then publishing a
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: long paper about it and hopes that they get the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Nobel Price about it and getting it in just on
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: time before they did. So we were in late eighteen hundreds,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and you know that, I imagine there's also all kinds
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: of weird thing is going on, right, Like Tesla was
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: around that time to write and just the people people
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: were playing with electricity and magnetism, and it was people
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: were just starting to understand how those two things were connected.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: But there was lots of there was like every day
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: there was some physics experiments somebody did with the result
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: that people didn't understand, you know, which almost never happens anymore.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: But back then there was just like tons of stuff
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: that nobody understood. It was it was a field day
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: for physics. Okay. So and so that this one in
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: particular led to the first discovery of a particle. Um
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: So step was who who is playing with this? So
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: it's a guy named J. J. Thompson, and he was
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: curious about what these things were and he was like, well,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: let's try to you know, poke them. Let's see what
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: we can do to affect these rays. So the first
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: thing he did was like, all right, I'm gonna make
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: my cathode ray and then I'm gonna put the cathode
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: ray tube inside another electric field. Remember there's already a
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: little electric field inside. If a cathode and an anode,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: you're playing a voltage across it as it makes the rays.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: But then he puts that inside and other electric field
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to see if he could bend the race. His question
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: was like, can I move the direction of the rays
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: by applying an electric field? Because you know, like why not? Right? Yeah,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Like you know you have this is how you do science.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: You have a limited number of tools, and you just
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: try to poke everything you can with those tools and
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: see if they give you any information. Do you think
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: that was the first thing he tried? Like did he try?
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Was He's sitting around like what if I put a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: banana on the beam, or what if I you know,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: what if I light a fire under the beam? Or
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: what if? I think a great question? And I bet,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I bet his his log notebook um contains a bunch
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: of hilarious stuff. But this is what if I dipped
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the capite ray and chocolate. This is the first productive
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: set of experiments he did. And and what he found
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: was that if you put another electric field on it,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: you can bend the rays. So he instead of just
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: having straight rays across the tube, he could make the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: rays hit the side of the tube instead. WHOA, Like
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: he was bending the light rays. Like he was bending
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: this magical glowing ray. Yeah, and it like glows purple
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And he was bending this ray And that
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: must have been pretty cool, right because you can turn
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: up and down the electric field and you can see
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the ray bending, and so you're like, wow, I have
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: power over this ray, you know, And and that's not
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: something you can do with light, like if you light
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: a flashlight, that beam is not gonna get band noticeably
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: or at all by a magnet. Right, that's right. A
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: magnet or electric field will not change the direction of light.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: You can do with a black hole, though, But I
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: don't think you have went around in your workshop. He
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: didn't have a black hole. He did not have a
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: black hole, or I'm sure he would have tried it, right,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: dipped the black hole and chocolate, combined the black hole
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: with bananas. You never knew these rays you could bend,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: which was weird. Right, And that told him that they
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: probably had some electric charge to them, right, that this
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't just like neutral light. This was something with special
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: property to it. Because the only things that have electric charge,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: you depositive or negative, get moved by by electric fields. Right.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Everything else just ignores electric fields. So I told him
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: these rays had some charge to them. So that was
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the first hint that they had like some quality. Rather
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: than being glowing and cool, they carried a charge, meaning
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: like they prefer or get repelled or attracted by like
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the opposite ends of a magnet. Exactly exactly, Okay, So
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: that this told J. J. Thompson that there was something
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: to this glow right like it was. It wasn't just
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: like empty light. There was something to it. Yeah, And
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: then to confirm that, he did another experiment, which was
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: he swapped out the electric field for a magnetic field.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And remember, any particle that feels charged will also get
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: bent by a magnetic field that works a little bit differently,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and so this sort of confirmed to him that there
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: really was something that that was charged because he could
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: also bend them. We use the magnetic field. So he
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: turns the magnetic field on and the rays bend, and
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: if you use the magnetic field, they also bend. Yes,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: they also been with the magnetic field, so bent to
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: electric field and it been to a magnetic field. So
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: that really told him that there was something there with charge.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: But the real genius of his experiment came in the
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: next step. What other people had tried this kind of stuff,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: but he was the first person to combine the electric
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: field and the magnetic field at the same time. But
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the cool thing about this combining them was that an
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: electric field bends it based on how much charge it has. Okay,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the magnetic field bends it based on how much charge
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: it has. And also it's more sensitive to the mass. Right,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: So by by measuring how much the electric field bends
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: it versus how much the magnetic field bends it, you
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: can measure the ratio of the charge and the mass
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of this this ray, this thing. Right, So he's shooting
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: this particle through the Catherine ray, he's bending it one
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: way with the electric field, another way with the magnetic field.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: He's measuring all that. That lets him know that the
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: ray has mass, right, that the thing that's inside the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: ray that's causing this glow has some mass, And it
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: lets him measure the ratio of the charge to the mass.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Because like, if something is heavy and has a negative charge,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: it will bend one way, but if something is light
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and has a negative charge will bend differently. Yeah, it
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: won't bend as much if it's heavier for example. Okay,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: So the stronger the charge, the more the bending. The
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: higher the mass, the less the bending. And because the
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: electric field the magnetic field are sensitive in different ways
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: to these two quantities, he could measure this ratio by
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: measuring both of those things. So this is like experimental cleverness.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: We hear lots of stories in the history of physics
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: of like theoretical genius, right, moments of insight, but experimental cleverness,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: you know, has really paved the way. This is like
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: people figuring out, how can I solve this puzzle? How
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: can I make the universe tell me this answer? How
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: can I arrange things in a way that nature cannot escape? Right?
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: So I like, can I outclever the universe? Yes, exactly.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It's like being a detective, right, It's like, how can
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I prove you know, how can I rule out this alibi?
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: How can I construct a situation where the suspect has
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: to reveal to me who is the real killer? Right? Um?
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: That's experimental cleverness. Um. And the answer he got blew
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: his mind because he measured this charged mass ratio and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: he was enormous, right, the charge which much much, much,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: much much bigger than the mass. So he saw that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: whatever this ray was, it was supercharged, basically like it
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: had a huge amount of charge but very little mass, yes, exactly,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And so he was like, wow, whatever this thing is,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: there's stuff to it. It has mass, but it also
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: has charge, but it's got this like way more charged
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: than it has mass. But that must have been a
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: kind of mind blowing, right, like, this ray has mass,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: like it has substance to it. That was the moment
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: when particle physics as a concept as a field was
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: born because he was like, ah ha, now I can
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: say that this ray is made of something that has
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: stuff to it, right, And he that's when he took
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: this first step. He created the concept of the fundamental particle.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And he's like, there's something in there that has both
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: charge and mass. So it's like a dot in space
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: that has more than one property, right, And that's sort
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: of the idea of a particle. It's like, it's just
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: a point in space that we could put labels on.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: But how do you know it wasn't just another atom
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: or that it was just another like fluid or something. Well,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: we knew it wasn't an atom because the atoms are
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: either neutral or they have positive charge with He didn't
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: know the structure of matter right at this point, he
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: didn't know what atoms were made out of. Right, But
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: no atom had this charge to mass ratio, right. Atoms
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: were much more massive compared to their charge. So this
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: is definitely something This is definitely something new because remember
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: atoms are dominated by protons and neutrons, which are much
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: much heavier than electrons. Okay, so U and that was
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a big deal. Do you think that really kind of
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: blew his mind that he write like eureka on his notebook? Yeah?
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I think that was a great moment. You know, and
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: other people had tried and failed, mostly because they didn't
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: have a good in off vacuum in their in their
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: catholine ray tubes, and so they didn't achieve these these results.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And so you know, he worked carefully, he had some
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: good ideas, and so he was the first one across
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the line. So because he was the first one across
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: the line, of course he got the right to name
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: this thing. Right. He created this whole concept of a particle,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and I think it was a mind blowing moment for
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: him because he thought pretty grandly about it. But I
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: don't think he'd be very impressed with the name he
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: All right, well, before we reveal the name of this
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: first particle, let's take another quick break. Alright, we're talking
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: about the first particle ever discovered, and we've been talking
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: about the story of J. J. Thompson, who did some
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: clever experiments and he found that these rays of glowy
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: stuff had a lot of large but not a lot
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: of mass. And so I'm trying to figure out, Daniel,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: how this you go from that to like, oh, it
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: must be little tiny particles. That's basically it, right, he said,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: that is what a particle is. It's a point in
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: space that has some mass and has some charge. And
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: that's like he knew this was something new. I hadn't
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: been discovered before, and so he thought, like, I'm gonna
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: call this thing something. It must be something because it
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: has some mass to it. You know, these days of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: a modern particle physics, right, we don't have to have
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: mass to have a particle. Sort of generalize the concept
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: of a particle to just be like a dot in
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: space that has labels, and those labels can be like
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: do you have electric charge yes or no? Do you
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: have quantum color charge? Yes or no? Do you feel
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the weak charge? Yes or no? Do you have mass?
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Yes or no? Right? Do you have spin? Very various
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: answers to that, And so we've sort of generalized this
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: concept of a particle um to be like a dot
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: in space with various labels. But to my understanding, this
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: is the first in history when that idea was used, Like,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: here's the thing it's an it, and it has a
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: special property of mass and a special property of charge
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: that are you know, sort of like labels on it. Yeah.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And and remember he's imagining these rays to be made
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: up these things of these things, and they're all identical, right,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: they all have the same charge to mass ratio. So
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: it's like this, he's imagining it to be this stream
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of little special dots. And so that was the birth
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: of particle physics. Yeah. Yeah, although he didn't call it
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: a particle. His talents were in experiments and in cleverness,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: but not necessarily in you know, naming things. He and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I would not have been friends. No. He called this
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: thing that he found the corpus skule. Ah, And I
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: think corps comes from like, you know, incorporation, not like
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: a company, but like a like a corpse, you know,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: like matter, like like a body, Yes, like a body exactly.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: And so I think he was going for like, you know,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: corpsito with corpuscule, like a little body, you know, or something.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: He had been Italian, the history of physics would have
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: been totally different, that's right, exactly, or a Spanish or something.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: So he called it his corpuscule. So he saw this
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: weird glow, and he thought, and he figured out that
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: it has mass and charged and so he imagined that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: it must be little tiny things and he called them exactly,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: and he called called them corpuscules. And he was pretty
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: pleased with himself. I mean, it's a pretty big discovery.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: And he um, he named this thing. And then he imagined, ah, well,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: maybe I haven't just discovered what makes these rays up.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe everything is made of these things. And you know,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: there's this tendency in physics when you make a discovery
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: to generalize it, to think too expansively, to imagine that
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: maybe you've cracked like a really deep secret in the universe.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: And so he imagined that, you know, maybe atoms were
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: made out of these things, and he had found the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: basic building block of the whole universe. He kind of
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: wasn't that far off, right, Like, in a way, everything
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: is sort of that we know about is sort of
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: made out of these corpus schools, corps corpuscuits, that's right.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: He was right that the little corpusculitos were boiling off
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the cathode, right, and so it was reasonable for him
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: to imagine that maybe everything had these little corpuscules inside
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: of them. Of course there's a deeper question there, right, like,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: because these things are negative and most matter is neutral,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: so you have to answer the question of like, you know,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: what's balancing it out. So he imagined that his model
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of matter was, you know, basically a bunch of his
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: little corpus scules and then some like thin positively charged
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: jelly to fill the universe to balance out those elect
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: those the negative charges from his little corpuscuit, corpuscule and jelly.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: That's right, he was thinking about dessert. Right, Well, let's
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: not keep our listeners and suspense anymore, Daniel. So this
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: corpus school is was later renamed into what we all
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: know and love as the electron. Most of the time
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: in particle physics, whoever discovers the particle, we give them
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the right to name it, and even if it's ridiculous
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: or silly, we usually keep it. But this one, for
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: reasons I don't understand, was later renamed and his the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: inventor the discoverer's choice of corporate skool was tossed aside.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Oh man, there was like a vote. I don't know,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I have to dig into the history of that. A
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: little bit like, we love you, j J. But you
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: got skills, but these aren't them. We love you. But
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: that's a dumb name, man, And it is a dumb name.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm so I'm glad to be a particle
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: physicist and not a corpuscule physicist. I don't know. I mean,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: is electron really a better name than corpus school? I
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: mean it sounds kind of corporate skul. It sounds like
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: a disease or something. I'm sorry, sir, you have corpus
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: s fueles. I'm gonna prescribe chocolate covered bananas for the
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: rest of your life. I'm sorry, sir. Every atom in
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: your body has a bunch of corpus skools, and that
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: is you're in acted with corpus skules. There's nothing we
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: can do about it. I'm sorry to be so negative. So, so,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: that was the first particle then that was ever discovered
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: by humans. It was the electron, that's right, yeah, And
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and um, And he was right that electrons or corpuscules
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: as he said them, as he called them, are inside
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: all of matter, right. Um. He was wrong about the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: structure of the atom and and where the positive charges are,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: but he was right, that that corpus skules play a
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: role in matter, and that's pretty cool. Wait wait, I'm
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: not made out of some positive jelly. I'm positive that
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you're not made out of jelly. And you know, to
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: round it out, we now have a pretty solid modern
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: understanding of what happens inside cathode ray tubes, right, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: why they why they work, and you know very quickly
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: they have the You have the cathode on one side
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and you heat it up in the electrons boil off,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: then they get slurped across by by the electric field
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: to the other side. But the interesting little nugget there
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: is that if you have a perfect vacuum, you won't
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: see any cathode rays. Right. Electrons are not really visible,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: they don't glow. The reason that J. J. Thompson saw
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: raise is because he didn't succeed in making a perfect vacuum.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: He still had some gas in there and that gas
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: was getting ionized by the electrons and it was glowing.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: So the cathode rays he was seeing were it actually electrons.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: There were glowing gas caused by the electron, Like the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: electrons hit the gas and then that's what makes it glow. Yeah, exactly.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: So if he had been a better experimentalist and achieved
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: a better vacuum, he never would have discovered the corpus fuel.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: If he had been the first to create a vacuum,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: he would he would not have discovered the electron. That's right, exactly.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: So it takes a combination of luck, skill, cleverness, and ineptitude.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: All right, So that's the first particle ever discovered, the electron,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: And I have to say, I think that's the one
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I would have guessed, probably the electron. Yeah, because electricity
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: is sort of immediate and tactile. Why would have electron accessible?
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And I just associated with there you know, they need
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: about lightning and Tesla's coils and things like that. Do
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: you have like a steampunk image of physics needs? Basically
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: everything I know is through comics basically, you know what.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: That's probably pretty accurate, so I won't dispute it. And
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: so what do you think would happen if we had
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: stayed with corpus school, Like would this be my corpus
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: stronic watch that I'm wearing and I'm listening to Corpus Corona?
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know, And I can't even imagine, Like if
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: we had stuck with that as a sort of precedent,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: what would we have named the other particles? You know,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: we have to follow, follow the corpse um, the corpse ethos,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the cule pattern, the cels. So that's pretty cool to
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: think about how things are discovered, you know, like to
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: imagine not knowing anything about the things around you and
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: to be the one who comes up with a some
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: crazy idea or some some crazy experiment that cracks it
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: all open. As always the case when you look at
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the history of science, it seems pretty straightforward, like he
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: didn't have to have any special materials. The kind of
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: stuff he had around, lots of people had around. He
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: just combined it in a sort of unusual way. And
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: it's easy to look back and think, oh, I would
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: have done that, But remember back then there were a
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: lot of things people didn't understand. And having these ideas
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and recognizing the significance of the results you have, that's
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: really where the genius comes in, and and knowing which
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: experiments to do and what they mean. And so we
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: should give a lot of credit to J. J. Thompson.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: We made a little bit of fun of him, but
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: he really kicked off this whole field a part of physics,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and so I certainly owe him a lot, right, And
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: there's still a huge number of things we don't know.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: So any one of our listeners out or it could
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: be the one, could be the next J. J. Thompson
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: could be the next person to discover something amazing. Yeah,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: and maybe with the materials you have in your garage,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: just maybe give it a little more thought before you
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: name it. Just yeah, you do discover new particle, please
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: call Jorge is very reasonable consulting rates. I work for bananas,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: so very reason Alright, alright, thanks for tuning in. Hope
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. See you next time. If you still
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Ye