Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions 14: Black holes, aliens and zombies!

Transcript

Listener Questions 14: Black holes, aliens and zombies! · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, congratulations you're making it to the year. Thanks.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: It was a bid harrowing. Wasn't sure we were going
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to get here. Our physics is preparing for what might
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: throw at us. Man, I'm hoping we don't have to.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: If we get to the point where we need physics
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to save us, it's probably not a small problem. I
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: guess CERN can't help with the plumbing issues there. You know,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: if you want a black hole flush down your pipes,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: give us a call. I think we'll save our call
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Discern for the big st of you know, like asteroids
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and zombie apocalypse. Oh my goshe will probably be the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: year of the asteroid zombie apocalypse. That's a new show.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: It's called The Orbiting Dead. I am jorheam and cartoonists
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD comics. Hey, I'm Daniel. I'm
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a particle physicist and I love all science fiction, except
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: for zombie apocalypse movies. M That doesn't count as science
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: fiction to you. No, it counts as science fiction. I'm
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: just not that into it because you don't like it
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: or it makes you afraid. I'm not that afraid of zombies,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: you know, in real life. But it's just kind of boring.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: They're they're always just getting chased by these slowly shuffling
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: zombies and it's always just like, you know, how many
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: heads can you explode before they kill you? Oh? Man,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: you've been watching the wrong zombie movies. But you know
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: they run and they climb walls. Now they've upgraded, all right,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I'll look for zombies to point o. Welcome to our podcast,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of My
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we tackled the biggest questions of
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: the universe. We toss our minds into the depths of
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: space and try to understand where everything is made and
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: how everything works. We zoom into the littlest particles and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: try to wrap our minds around what they're doing and why.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Our goal on this podcast is to literally explain the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: entire universe to you, because there is a lot of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a universe to explore, and there are a lot of
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: mysteries out there, a lot that we don't know about
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the universe, about what it's made out of, what's out there,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: what can happen, and what is possible in these vast
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: cosmos we live in. That's right, It turns out even
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty episodes of this podcast is not
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: enough to explain the entire universe. It's a big place
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: with a lot of mysteries, and we love talking to
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: you about it, and we love hearing from you what
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: you'd like us to break down. Yeah, even after two
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: d and fifty episodes, people still send us questions. We
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: get questions through social media, emails to people. Ever to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: choke up at your door, Daniel with questions You know
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: you joke, But when we had classes in person, I
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: used to hold office hours in person and occasionally a
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: random person from the street would show up and said
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: they looked me up and came in with a question
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: about the universe. So yeah, kind of wow. Is there
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a zooming ovalent now? For that, you know, there is
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: this equivalent. I have monthly public office hours so people
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: can drop in and ask physics questions. Wow. Cool, All right, Well,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: today we are actually addressing listener questions. We are taking
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: in questions and trying to break them down in fifty minutes.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Because we know that while we do our best to
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: talk about the mysteries of the universe in a way
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: that makes sense to you, there's always some angle we
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: didn't consider something that makes you wonder something that doesn't
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: make sense to you. So when that happens right to us,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: let us know what you're still wondering about, and we'll
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: break it down for you, either over email or on
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: the podcast. So on the podcast today we'll be tackling
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: listener questions Number four teens. Teens are fourteen episode. Yes
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: we are officially teenagers. I think we were teenagers one
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: episode ago technically. But yeah, that's a lot of questions
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: we've answered. Each time we answered like three, so you know,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you would think out the two and fifty episodes, we
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: would have answered everyone's parties about the universe. Do you
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: think so? But they keep coming in. So today we
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: have three awesome questions about black holes, about our favorite topic, aliens,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and our least favorite topic, zombies. That's right, So thank
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: you to everybody who's sent in questions. And if you
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: have a question, please don't be shy. Yeah, we love
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: to get your questions and Daniel loves to answer them.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Will usually answer them, right, I mean you'll usually answer, Oh,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I answer every question. You engage with us on Twitter
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: or send us an email, you will get a reply.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I guarantee it, but if they don't get a reply,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: that means we might be doing it on the show. Right. No, actually,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I right back to everyone. Sometimes people also get a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: special podcast episode if I think the question is exciting
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: enough that everybody might want to hear the answer, Like
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: if there's zombies, then I would think you want to
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: stay away from that question. But maybe maybe physics will
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: save us from zombie. We'll see, all right. Well, the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: first question is about black holes, and it comes to
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: us from Patrick from Nashville, Tennessee, Daniel, and Jorge. My
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: name is Patrick oh Leary from Nashville, Tennessee. I have
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: a question for you guys. I was curious what would
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the chemical or elemental makeup of a black hole consists of.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: If our son is made of hydrogen elements fusing into helium,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and if other life stages of stars include heavier elements
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: fusing and so forth leading up to this big collapse,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: wouldn't it seem reasonable that a black hole will consist
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: of some super heavy element resulting from some sort of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: hyperfusion occurring during and after the gravitational collapse. Would there
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: be an element that doesn't fit on the periodic table?
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: That may have some sort of infinite density. Would it
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: even be an element or would this singularity potentially be
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: something entirely different? Is there something else that this matter
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: in the black hole could theoretically be. I just want
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: to see what y'all thoughts are. We really enjoy the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: show and uh look forward to hearing your answer. Thanks. Well,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: that's a super heavy question from Patrick. Yeah, it's an
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: awesome question thinking about weird places in the universe that
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: can make weird kinds of matter. So super awesome question,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: thanks Patrick. Yeah, I guess the fundamental question is what
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: is a black hole made out of? We know it's black.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's made out of like charcoal. It's
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: just an aluminum sphere with black paint on it. I mean,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: sorry to break everybody's bubble here, but that's all it is.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: It's fake news exactly. It's fake physics news. Huh. I
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: can see his reason in there. It's pretty interesting and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: pretty convincing. Like if you think about heavy objects in
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: our universe, like stars there made out of hydrogen and
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: things are fusing inside and gravity is crushing them down
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and they get older and explode and come back together.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: They're making heavier and heavier elements, and so does that
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: mean that when you get to the ultimate dense object,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: does that mean it's made out of super heavy elements. Yeah,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: this is a super fun question. I thought it'd be
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: fun first to think about, like what is the mass
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that turns into the black hole, like
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: just before it becomes a black hole? What mix of
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: stuff do you have there? And then we can talk
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: about what happens to it as the black holes collapsing,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Like does it form some new weird state of matter?
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Could you even call that an element? Etcetera, etcetera. Oh,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I see, like the scene of a murder. Let's go
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: let's go back to right before the actual event and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: see what conditions are there, and then maybe that would
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: tell us what happens when the actual black hole forms. Yeah, exactly.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: We're not murdering any iron here. I think of it
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: more like cooking, you know, And we want to make
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: sure we understand what are the ingredients we're just killing irony,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: We learned straight to the answer that's right, or we're
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: cooking it up one of the two. All right, Well,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: he mentioned stars because a lot of black holes come
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: from stars, right, and stars collapsing or super annobody. Yeah,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and so there's two categories of black holes. They're the
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: super massive ones at the centers of galaxies. But let's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: focus on the other ones, the smaller ones that are
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: stellar black holes. And this happens when you have a
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: star and it gets too heavy and the gravity sucks
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: it in and eventually becomes a black hole. And he's
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: totally right that this is where heavy elements are made.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, the universe started with mostly hydrogen, and the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: way you get heavier elements is that you fuse hydrogen
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: nuclear together to get helium, and then helium together to
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: get heavier stuff, and you work your way up the
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: periodic table, eventually getting to iron. And so in the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: center of stars are these conditions to take two elements
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and turn them into a new element. Right, the amazing
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: thing that we once thought it was impossible, alchemy actually
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: happens all the time at the centers of stars, creating
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: new kinds of matter. So that happens in our universe.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome, Yeah, because the elements are just different
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: combinations of the same three things, right, quarks and electrons,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and so you know, if you if you get something
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that has three quarks and two electrons, and you compress
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: it with something that has four quarks and another three electrons,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and you get something that's additive. Right, yeah, exactly, You
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: just add them together and to make a new element, though,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: what you need to do is to add a new
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: proton to the nucleus, Like a typical atom has protons
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: and neutrons, which of course are made of quarks in
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: the nucleus and then surrounded by electrons. To get to
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: a new element, like to go from helium to lithium
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: or something, you need to add protons, change the charge
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of the nucleus, and then add more electrons to make
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: it neutral. The other thing you can do is add neutrons. Right,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: If you add neutrons, that doesn't change the element, just
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: changes the isotope. Right. You've heard of like uranium two
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: thirty eight or uranium two thirty five. That tells you
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: how many nucleons are in the nucleus. They're both uranium
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: because they have the same number of protons, but they
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: have a different number of neutrons, right, And so that's
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: what's happening inside of stars, is that you're making these
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: heavier and heavier elements, but only up to a certain point, right,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Like you can build it up through carbon and silicon,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: but then you get to iron. Yeah, exactly, if you
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: want to make super heavy elements, you can keep doing
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: that fusion process, but only up to iron. Up to iron,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: it releases heat, and so it drives the reaction and
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: makes it happen more and more. Above of iron, it
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: absorbs heat. So you confuse to iron nuclei together to
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: make something heavy, but it costs you heat, and so
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: it cools down the star. And that's why stars that
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: build up too much iron inside them collapse and form supernovas,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: because it's the pressure from that heat that keeps the
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: star from collapsing. So if the fusion actually causes the
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: star to cool down, then it's actually encouraging it to collapse.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: It's working in the same direction as gravity, rather than
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: pushing out against it. And so that's why stars collapse
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: after they get it big enough iron core, right, And
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: when these stars collapse, that's when you get the heavier elements,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: right because of the explosion or what Well, actually, that's
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: something we've only recently understood. For a long time, people
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: thought that you've got the heavier elements gold and platinum
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: in that collapse or in the supernova that happened just afterwards,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: because they thought maybe the conditions were crazy hot enough
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: in the supernova to force extra neutrons onto an iron
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and then those neutrons would decay into protons and you
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: end up with a heavier element. But it turns out
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: that's not the case. That most of the gold and
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the platinum and the heavy stuff in the universe is
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: not actually made in supernovas. Yeah, and they learned this
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: because they found bits of supernova in the ocean. What crabs,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: What does a bit of supernova look like? Yeah, Well,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: on the outer layers of the supernova are these little
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: seeds like heavy elements, which then get covered and stuff
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: from the supernova and blown out into space. And these
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: are special little grains which you can later identify. And
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: like our Solar system is made up literally of star dust, right, well,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: some of that star dust are these little grains from
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: supernova and you can find them and you can study them,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and they've looked at them and they've tried to understand
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: whether they have evidence in those grains for the formation
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: of heavy elements. Is like particular signal you need that
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: shows you that heavier elements were made during the supernova expansion,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: and they don't see them. Right, you need this marker.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: It's plutonium two forty four, and they just don't see
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: them in these grains that they find buried in the
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: ocean crust. But now we have another candidate for how
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: we those super heavy elements were made. What's a candidate? Well,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: instead of being created during the supernova, we think that
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: sometimes these stellar collapses lead to neutron stars, these very
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: very dense objects. They're not heavy enough to collapse all
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: the way to a black hole, but are heavy enough
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: to be this crazy new form of matter just neutrons.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: And sometimes those neutron stars can collide, they can find
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: each other in a binary system, and they can spiral
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: in and form this collision and those of the conditions
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: you need to make gold or platinum or these super
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: heavy elements. What that's wild? Wait, so I know neutron
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: star is just like a giant mass of neutrons. Right,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you don't even have elements or atoms. It's just all neutrons.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: It's just all neutrons. It's like some new element that's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: pure neutrons and new protons. It's a weird form of
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: matter that frankly, we don't understand very well. And so
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: you're saying, and sometimes two of those collide, like crashing
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to each other, and then when in the crash they
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: create elements, or when they break apart, they create new elements.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: In the crash, they create those months, and the fact
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: that there's a collision sprays those elements out into the universe,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: which is why now we find those elements on Earth.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: For example, most of the gold and the platinum on
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Earth we think is produced in the collisions of neutron
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: stars billions of years ago. Wow, that's a weird sentence.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Neutral collision, like a collision that doesn't care. It's amazing
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: because it means that formation of gold and platinum is
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: much more rare than we thought. Neutron stars don't collide
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: as often as you have supernova, but when you do
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: have a neutron star collision, you make a lot more
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: of these heavy elements than you would in a supernova. So,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: for example, we used to think that supernova collapse is
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: produced about one moon's worth of gold. That's a pretty
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: big chunk of gold. And we think like the universe
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: was sprinkled with all these basically moons of gold. But
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: now we think that it happens more rarely. But when
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: it happens, when you get these neutron star collisions, you
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: get like a Jupiter of gold. Whoa, that's a lot
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: of blink And so it's more like the universe is
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: sprinkled with these really big chunks of gold rather than
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: more like evenly distributed with little, you know, sprinkles of gold.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: It's like chocolate chip cookies rather than chocolate sprinkles. All right,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: so let's get made back contract of the black hole.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: So that's how we get heavier elements in maybe nutron
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: stark collisions. But then do those neutron stars become black
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: holes or not? No, they usually just get torn apart.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Sometimes if they get over the threshold, they can turn
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: into black holes, but not all the time. Most of
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the black holes that are out there, these stellar mass
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: black holes, start out as sort of larger suns like
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: ten to fifteen stellar masses, which then threw a lot
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of fusion, builds up a heavy iron core, and collapse
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: straight to a black hole. And so they're potentially you
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: can imagine heavier stuff being made or weird forms of
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: matter being made in a supernova in the supernova which
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: leads to the collapse into a black hole. Yeah, oh,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: I see. So there are heavy elements due to neutron
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: stark collisions. But when you get a black hole from
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: a collapsing star, you may also make heavy elements. You might.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not something we understand very well. And
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: you know, let's think about the ingredients you have there. Say,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: for example, you start with like ten solar masses of stuff.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: You have a big sun which makes a heavy iron nucleus,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and then it collapses. You might be imagined that you
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: start with ten solar masses of iron, but it collapses
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: before it turns the entire mass to iron. So you
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: probably have like a heavy core there that's like one
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: or two solar masses worth of iron that forms the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: sort of gravitational center that leads to the black hole.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So you've got a lot of iron there, and then
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: you've got a lot of other in rushing matter during
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the collapse exactly, And those are the conditions you need
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to make new kinds of matter. Right, you have iron,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: which is very heavy, and then you have a lot
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: of protons and neutrons coming in. But it's a very
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: strange situation. I mean, it's like much denser and much
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: hotter than even neutron stars. So I think that's the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: guide you might be imagining. You have iron, and you
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: have all these other particles, and you're adding them together,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: you might be making heavier elements instead. Typically what you
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: make are not elements like what we recognize, but weird
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: new forms of matter like you see in neutron stars, right,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: because you need to get to the right density to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: create the black hole, right, So at some point you
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: do need to sort of create this weird kind of
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: super heavy mass. Yeah, exactly. Formation of new elements requires
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: that you take a nucleus, you add protons to it,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and then you sort of like let it go off
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: by itself and be stable. Here we're taking the results
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and we're squeezing it down really intensely, So all the
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: protons are just going to turn into neutrons because they're
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: gonna get an electron squeezed into them, and then most likely,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: instead of forming weird new elements, you're gonna get really
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: strange neutron rich matter, you know, strange new kinds of matter.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: We haven't even imagined weirder things than neutron stars. Right.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe the answer then is that in a black hole,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: or at least as you're getting into a black hole,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: like regular elements can exist, Like you can't have an
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: element where it's like neutrons and pro autons and electrons.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: It's like it's the conditions are so extreme. Everything is
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: compressed into this weird new type of matter. Yeah, exactly,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and the distinction between like this atom and that atom
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: breaks down when the atoms get so close together and
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: get so pushed on each other. What you're really going
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: to get is some sort of like weird fluid of
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: neutrons and protons and electrons, and that's going to get
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: compressed into something even weirder, and you might get, for example,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: like a quark gluon plasma where the quarks are no
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: longer bound even into neutrons and protons because they're so
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: dense and intensely pressured. So basically you're like recreating the
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: conditions of the early universe sort of in reverse. Wow.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: All right, well that's just leading up to the creation
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: of the black hole. Let's get into what might be
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: inside of it once the black hole is made. But first,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, we're answering listener
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: quite Shans, and our first question was about what element
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: is a black hole made out of? Like is it
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: some kind of new kind of super heavy element. And
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: it seems like, at least going into the black hole,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: we don't have actual elements. By the time you're you're
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: dense enough to create a black hole, you're in this
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: weird state of matter. Yeah, because elements are not fundamental, right,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: They're not like a basic thing in the universe. There's
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: sort of like a special configuration of quirks and electrons
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that require certain conditions, you know, certain temperatures, certain densities,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and if you get hot enough and you get dense enough,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: then you just don't have elements anymore. So it doesn't
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: really make sense to talk about like is this plutonium,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: is this uranium, is this black holium? It's some new,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: other weird kind of matter black holium like that it
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: sounds holy. All right, Well that's before you go into
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: the black hole. So like at the core and like
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the time of birth, the black hole is probably at
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: the core made out of this weird super heavy neutron soup.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: But what about like after it forms like boom, suddenly
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I have a black hole and you know, stuff keeps
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: falling into it. What can we say then about what
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it's made up? Like if it grows, then it's probably
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: not mostly this neutron soup. That's right. We're talking about
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the super dense conditions that are going to be like
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: at the very core of the black hole. What's sort
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: of like on the outskirts of the black hole, just
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: inside the event horizon, for example, but not super close
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: to the very dense material at the center that's maybe
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: forming a singularity. Well, we think that inside a black
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: hole space mostly works the same way as it does
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: outside the black hole, except that it's sort of like
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: oriented towards the center. So, for example, if you toss
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: a banana into a really big black hole one where
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the spaghettification doesn't happen until you get close enough to
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: the center, it'll just pass over the event horizon and
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: continue drifting in towards the singularity. From its point of view,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: there's nothing special there at the boundary, it'll still be
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: a banana. But for how long? First of all, they
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: nat gets spaghettified, and does that sped getification also kind
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: of get rid of elements. Does it? Is it a soup?
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Is it a bananas By the time it goes in,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: It's definitely a banana smoothie by the time it goes in.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: When you take a banana, you make it into spaghetti
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: and then you put that spaghetti in the blender and
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: you get a smoothie banana spaghetti. That's probably very popular
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: in Italy. What kind of sauce or wait, can you
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: put parmesan cheese on banana spaghetti? It's gluten freedom. As
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: you approach the center of the black hole, that obviously
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the tidal forces are going to be very, very strong.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: That's the difference in the gravitational force between one side
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: of the banana and the other side of the banana.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: That's what's responsible for the spaghettification. It's going to pull
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: it apart, and then as it gets closer and closer,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: those tidal forces get stronger and stronger, pulling those little
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: bits of the banana apart further and further, and eventually
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: it's got to hit some really dense part of the
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: black hole, someplace where the matter is really dense, and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: then it'll just you know, join whatever that is, whatever
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: that is Is that an official element in the in
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: your physics table. That's the official way of us saying,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: we really just have no idea what's going on at
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the center of the black hole. So yeah, whatever that is.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: So then that's kind of the real answer, because all
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: these things that we think are might be happening beyond
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: even horizon, we don't really know right for sure, We
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: don't really know for sure. And the sort of two
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: directions in which we don't know, Like we don't know
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: from a sort of nuclear physics theory perspective, what happens
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: if you squeeze neutrons together even harder than the conditions
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: of a neutron star, Like we can't do those calculations
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: right now for a neutron star, Like we can't sit
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: down on a computer and simulate a neutron star because
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: the calculations are too difficult. So even heavier than that,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: even crazier conditions that we also cannot do. Also from
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a sort of like black hole theory point of view,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: we just don't know what the distribution of matter is
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: inside the black hole. General relativity says there's a singularity
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: of infinite density, but we know that doesn't really make sense,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and the quantum mechanics says it's impossible. So there's a
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: lot of questions about what's going on at the heart
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: of the black hole, not just like what is the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: matter made out of? Once you get there? All right, Well,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: it sounds like the answer for Patrick is that a
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: black hole is made out of We have no idea
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: exactly or black holio. It's kind of a mystery, but
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: we know that when you make a black hole, it's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: not like an element. There aren't any elements inside. It's
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: more like this kind of hot mess of a soup
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: of neutrons. Probably probably exactly. All right, let's jump into
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: our next question, which is about aliens from space. So
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: we have a question from Ignacio, and he's from Jupiter.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Is that Jupiter Florida? Uh No, I'm not sure if
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: he's talking about Jupiter Florida or Jupiter the Solar System.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: He might actually be an alien, in which case, why
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: is he asking us? All right, everybody, get ready to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: listen to the first message from alien. His name is Ignacio.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: There is this question, Hi from Jupiter. Apparently my question
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: is that, well, we are always wondering it would be
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: to receive my search from an advanced aliens realization. But
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: if we were to discore in disputable evidence of an
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: abilience relization existing different way planet that is roughly equal
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to us in technology, how could we send them a message?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: How will we make ourselves known to them? All Right,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty cool question. The question is if we
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: ever find evidence of aliens, like if we get a
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: signal from far away or like we figure out the
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: aliens out there, how can we ever reach them or
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a column or or text them or send them at
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: d M. Yeah, that's a really fun question. I mean
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I always like to think about what would be like
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: to get that message, But then it's really interesting to wonder,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: like how could we respond with technology is available to us?
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And what should we say? Yeah, like, I guess if
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: you find that they're aliens, like you know, the next
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: star over like four light years away or thirty light
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: years away, Like, do we have technology that can beam
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: a message that far know? We do, or at least
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: until very recently we did. We probably heard of the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Arecibo radio telescope. That antenna can receive messages, but it
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: can also send messages out into space. It's a giant
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: like dish wouldn't we want something more I guess focused
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: or can that do? Like a focused beam of message? Well,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the dish allows you to basically capture a bunch of
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the messages put out by the antenna and focus it
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: all in the same direction. That's the idea behind a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: parabolic dish is that it bounces off the message from
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the antenna all in a parallel direction, so allows you
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: to create a directional beam. And a directional beam would
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: be very very important. Otherwise the power of your message
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: would fall really really quickly as it got further and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: further from Earth, right like if you transmitted like in
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: a broadcast antenna, it would just kind of spread out
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: in all directions and by the time it gets to
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: you know, thirty light years away, they probably couldn't hear it. Yeah, exactly,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: just like a candle in the dark. It's very bright
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: close up, but it falls off like one over distance squared,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and so twice as far away it's one fourth the intensity,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and a hundred times away it's one ten thousands the intensity.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: And so I've actually done this calculation to figure out
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: how far away could an alien planet be for us
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to hear a message using Arecibo, and it turns out
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that if they have an air cebo sized telescope and
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: they're broadcasting in every direction, we would have to be
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: within a one light year of their planet to hear
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: it with our air cbo telescope. That's not good enough,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: because we're we're further away from that. That's right. There
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: are zero stars within one light year of Earth. So
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: basically for us to get a message from another solar system,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: they would either have to broadcast it in all directions,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: much more powerfully than our technology could, much more powerfully
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: than air cbo could broadcast, or they would have to
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: beam it at us directly, which means they would have
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: to know we're here and send it to us intentionally.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Now can you do that? Can you stand out an
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic signal in a focus way, kind of like a laser? Sure, exactly,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: you could use a laser for example. I mean, radio
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: waves are just a kind of light. A laser also
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: sends out a beam of light, So it's just a
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: question of like what frequency do you want to use?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: The best way to communicate through the universe is to
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: choose a frequency that's not easily scattered or distracted or
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: absorbed by other stuff, and so things in the radio
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: spectrum are actually a great way to communicate. Is there
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: such a thing as a radio laser? Can you shoot
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: like a radio beam? Actually? Yeah, there are people working
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: on building semiconductors capable of generating radio frequency laser beams,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: so that would be super cool. That's one way to
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: communicate with aliens is to send them a message basically
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: using electromagnetic radiation, which means, you know, light or ultraviolet
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: or infrared or radio somewhere on the spectrum, pick something
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: that is sort of quiet in the universe. But you know,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: if we get a message from aliens, then we should
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: respond basically in the same way that they wrote to us. Right.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: If you get an email, you don't then send somebody
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: a text? Why not? That's totally inappropriate. Man, If you
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: get a text right back with text, you get a
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: phone call, you don't write somebody a letter in response, right,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: So if somebody sends us a message via e M waves,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: you know, radio message, then we should respond in the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: same frequency. Right. But I guess the problem might be
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that maybe we got it in one way, but we
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: don't have anything powerful enough to send it the same way. Back. Yeah, well,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I guess that would make a pretty good case for funding, right, Like, hey, look,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: we got this message, although you know, I'm not sure
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: it's such a great idea to respond to aliens. You know,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: we don't know these folks at all. It's like, do
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: you pick up the phone when you get a number
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: you don't recognize? Not all the time. That depends how
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: bored ant anyway, and how lonely I am, and depending.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, imagine that we're out there in the universe
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and we've just become technologically savvy enough to get these messages.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: We're probably the youngest civilization out there because we've just
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: burst on the scene, and so we'd be a pretty
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: easy mark, you know. Alright, well, so be mean with
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: some sort of radio laser would be our main options.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: We have any other options to send the message out Well, basically,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: it's just all kinds of radiation, and the kinds of
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: radiation that can transmit through space are either photons or
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: other kinds of particles. So we could imagine, for example,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: shooting a beam of particles at an alien star and
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: use that as a way to send messages, you know,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: like Morse code via neutrinos for example. M I wonder
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: if the problem would be, like, if we shoot a
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: laser at an alien civilization, would they interpret that as
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a as an act of war or something? You know
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: what if they don't get the message, what if it
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: just goes over their head and they're like, they're shooting
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: at us. Well, I would encourage us to not use,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: for example, Morse code in nuclear explosions. But I think
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: that a laser beam would not be interpreted as an
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: active warming. By the time I guess to them, it's
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: going to be so faint they would have even trouble
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: picking it up. So if they interpret that as an
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: act of war, then they were just looking to start something.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I see they're happy, in which case maybe we shouldn't
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: be something exactly exactly all right, So it sounds like
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the answer is we have the technology to write to
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: any aliens folziation, and we've done it. In fact, in
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the seventies, there was a really weird message that we
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: saw come from space. It's called the Wow signal because
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: nobody understood it. And at the time that we saw
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: this message come in, some astronomer wrote wow on the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: transcript of it as it printed out from the like
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: old school printer, and we got this and it came
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: from space, and we don't understand it. We don't know
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: was it Aliens, was it just some weird new kind
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: of star. Nobody's ever understood it because it's never been repeated.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: It was just a one time event. But we drafted
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: a response and sent it out back in the direction
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: of the signal, hoping maybe someday somebody would read it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: What do we say in this message? Up, we said,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: new phone. Who did know? What we did is we
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: communicated something about where we live and how our life works.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: We showed them our number system, We described the basics
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of our chemistry. There's a little illustration of the shape
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: of the human body, and and then the sort of
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: directions to the solar system. Well everything a alien species
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: would need to come and conquer us, basically all of
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: our passwords, our biggest weaknesses save words exactly, our elementary
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: school teacher, all that stuff. Yeah, it was sort of
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: a naive message, but it's sort of like hopeful, you know,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: we hope that somebody reading it would understand it. And
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: in this spirit of exploration of the universe and physics
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: and whatever, come and send us a message back and
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: tell us something about their civilization. All right, so we
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: sent out using the RCIBOW antenna, and do we think
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: it made it or do you think it's too weak?
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: By the time it gets there, it might be too weak.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: But we don't know what their technology is. But it
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: won't get there for quite a while. We don't know
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: who's out there and maybe receiving that message. But the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: message came from something called M thirteen, a globular cluster
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: that's about twenty five thousand light years away, so it's
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: going to take a while before it gets there if
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: that's where their original message came from. All right, it
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: sounds like we have options for sending messages neutrinos or
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: radio telescope or maybe these radio lasers. But you were
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: telling me there is one way right now, if you
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: want to broadcast a message out into space, there is
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: a way to do it. It turns out that if
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: you use Craigslist, there's an option on Craigslist to broadcast
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: your message out into the Solar System. No what, seriously,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the CEO of Craigslist, this guy, Jim Buckmaster, bought a
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: bunch of time on the deep space communication network this
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: place in Florida that can broadcast into space. So they're
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: picking ten thousand ads to broadcast into space. So if
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: you're having a garage sale and you think, you know,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: maybe Ignacio from Jupiter should come by and check out
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: what you're selling, then hey, click the button and Craigslist
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: will advertise in space. Wow, that's crazy. So not only
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: are we inviting people to to come attack us, reminding
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: them to come rate our garages. Like, I don't want
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: my junk to just reappear somewhere else in the neighborhood.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I want it off planet. Well, we do have a
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: lot of junk, and it would be good if evan
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: alien came and took away all of our our unused
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and outdated toys. Hey, one species junk is another species gold, right,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: so yeah, maybe they love all televisions and satellites. All right, well,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: thank you Ignacio from Jupiter for that question. And now
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: let's get into our last question about zombies. But first
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, we're answering listener questions,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: and our last question here is it's sort of debatable
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: whether it's a physics question at all. Maybe I don't
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: know you have a question from Lucas from Finland. Hello,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Harney, Greetings from Finland. This is Lucas. Have
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: a question, Um, which would you more likely survive using
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: physics and nuclear winter or a zombie be apocalypse? Wow? Yeah,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I guess the question is in an apocalypse, what are
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: physicists useful for besides food? Maybe? Like if you had
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: a physicist in your little, you know, survival group, are
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: they an acid or are they allowed a liability? When
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: you say food, you mean to cook the food right
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: as a chef, right, not as a source of sustenance.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm assuming you're talking about here, you know,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and the apocalypse. You know, you gotta You're gotta be
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: flexible when you're thinking. You really learned who's your friend
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: when the apocalypse comes? And who's your dinner? I really
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: learned from shows like The Walking Bead. Maybe I should
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: watch some of those shows. You want to be prepared.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: This is a fun question because I often put questions
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: on the podcast that stumped me and I'm like, hmm,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know the answer that right away. I gotta
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: do some reading, And this one definitely stumped me. Were
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: you a little offended that they would someone would question
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: your usefulness in a post apocalyptic scenario. No, I'm a man.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Is that they think that physics could be useful in
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the apocalypse. I've often thought of myself as definitely a
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: luxury of a society. I'm not a blacksmith, and when
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the end times come, I don't have that many useful skills,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Like nobody needs calculations done? Are the rates of particle
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: collisions when you're scrambling to escape the zombies. I definitely
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: see myself as something supported only by a wealthy society. Well,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I'm an engineer, a mechanical engineer, and actually this question
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: kind of gives me anxiety. You know, like what if
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: it's an apocalypse and someone's like, quick, your a mechanical engineer,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: make us a water filtration system with a power source,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: and be like, um, Like, I could draw you one.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I could simulated using that lab. I could send the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: order out to a machine shop. Yeah, it'd be it'd
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: be kind of difficult. It tells you something about how
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: far we've come from all being like self sustaining little
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: societies you know that can live off the land and
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: do everything for themselves, were so far developed as a
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: society were so specialized that if society fell apart, a
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: lot of us would find ourselves useless. All right, So
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I guess the question from Lucas is, if you're a physicist,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: or if you knew a lot about physics, which one
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: would you most likely be able to survive? A nuclear
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: winter or a zombie apocalypse? Yeah, exactly, And so a
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: nuclear winter, right, that's a scenario where you have a
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: nuclear war and a large fraction of humanities arsenal of
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons get exploded and they send into the atmosphere
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of dust and ash and all sorts of stuff,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: and then basically you block out the sun. So you
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: get this layer of cloud which blocks out of the
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: sun from a significant fraction of the planet, causing an
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: artificial winter. So it's basically constant winter. Yeah, like a
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: permanent winter. Like a permanent winter. And you know that
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: could be like a runaway effect because plants need sunlight,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: and without plants to grow, then you're not going to
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: get food at the bottom of the food chain, and
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: then US apex predator, US physicists and mechanical engineers won't
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: have anything to eat, right, And that's trouble because everything
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: on Earth depends on that solar power, right, I mean,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: all the food we eat, all of the weather that
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: kind of creates rivers and hydroelectric stations, that all depends
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: on the sun. So if the Sun is blocked, we're
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: sort of energy less. Yeah, exactly, you are almost literally
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: pulling the cord on the entire ecosystem if you yank
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: out the Sun. At the base of it, all is
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: solar power, gathered by plants or gathered by rocks or whatever.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: All of it is in the end solar energy. And
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: so this is like asking the question, what would happen
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: if the sun went out? Right? So, then physicists would
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: be useful because maybe you could make us a new
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: power source. Maybe we could go into overdrive. I guess
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: with nuclear power or fusion power. Would that be enough
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: to kind of sustain a civilization, to grow plants and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: things like that. It could, It would be a big effort.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: But yeah, there are ways to generate power that do
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: not rely on the Sun. Obviously, solar power is out.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Even things like wind power, right, are mostly driven by
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: patterns of wind that come from solar heating. So you
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: need something like nuclear power. But of course nuclear power
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: to scale to support agriculture and have massive growth. Farms
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: would produce an enormous amount of waste. So really, I
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: think what you would need to do is just accelerate
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: the fusion research and really try to ramp up fusion
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: as a source of power, because remember, fusion can provide
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: electrical power basically just using water as a fuel. All right,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: So then physicists would be kind of useful in a
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: nuclear winter apocalypse, although to be fair, you would have
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: to also blame them for the nuclear winter apocalypse because
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: they made the nuclear weapons in the first place. They
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: designed the nuclear weapons. They didn't drop the bombs, right,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I see, I just made the thing that killed us.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't use the thing that kills No. I joke,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: But that's an important question. And you know, my parents
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: actually both working all those alumos and worked on weapons programs,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: and I on purpose became the kind of physicist that
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: would be totally useless when it comes to weapons development,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: because there are real moral complications there. If you are
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: developing weapons of mass destruction and you know they will
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: be pointed at cities, then yeah, you could be considered
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: complicit if they're ever used. Yeah, all right, so then
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: now let's consider or a zombie apocalypse. Let's say that
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: zombies are real. What what could a physicists do? Could
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: they engage in dialogue with the zombies or I don't know,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: shoot lasers. Can you develop a zombie killing laser? They
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: could bore the zombies with calculus lessons or something. Well,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: that's the mathematicsies. You're gonna use them for something. I
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: don't really know, like how a physicist would be helpful here.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Perhaps if the biologists figure out what the zombie weakness is,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: then yeah, the physicist could develop some kind of weapon
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: that could use that weakness, a laser that goes right
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: to the heart of the zombie brain or something. Or
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: maybe we could just decide, hey, earth this toast, it's
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: covered in zombies, it's contaminated, and we need the physicists
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: to ramp up work on development of terraforming technology for Mars.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I see go there and then have another apocalypse in Mars.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: So now we have martians zombies. A second, who's putting
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the zombies on the spaceship. It always happens, Daniel, There's
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: always that one person who gets on board and they're
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: like coughing and sweaty, and you're like, oh, shoo, let
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: him in, all right, let him in, and then it
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: all turns out badly. One scientist who brings some zombie
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: tissue along, you know, just to study. Yes, yes, scientists agree. Well.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: I always wonder in these zombie movies and shows. It's
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: like it doesn't seem physically possible. I feel like zombies
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: violate the laws of physics, Like where do they get
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the energy? That's true. I mean it's like they never sleep, right,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I certainly can't eat brains for that long
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: every single day. You mean, like, what's power in the zombie? Yeah?
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: What's powering? If they're not eating all the time? You know,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: they always to zombies like danning around forever. Yeah, where
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: do they get the calories to move their muscles and things? Like?
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe they're solar power. So maybe what you need in
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the zombie apocalypse is a nuclear winter to block off
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: all the solar power so the zombies fail. Or better
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you make the zombies into a power source. Instead of
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: making solar panels, you just have like zombies on a
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: treadmill and you're just like shoveling zombies into the furnace,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: like having empowered like a hamster wheel or something. Right,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: you like angle a brain in front of them and
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: you just get them to walk forever. Yes, alright, better
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: start thinking of that, Danny, just in case. Okay, all right,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I'll drop some diagrams this afternoon. I'm just desperate to
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: find a way to be useful in the end time,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: so you don't eat me or get eating. I gotta
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: prove my worth, all right. I think that answer is
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Lucas's question, which is most likely a nuclear winter. You
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: would be useful, but you will also be kind of
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: partly to blame. Yeah, I'll take it, but there might
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: be a ways for you to redeem yourself in these
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: zombie apocalypse I'll do my best, That's all I can promise, Lucas.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: All right. So those are our three questions. Thanks to
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: everyone for sending in their curiosity and their thoughts. Thanks
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: to everybody for sharing with us you are desired to
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: understand the universe and for writing to us with those
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: things that make you wonder. We're here to help you
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: understand and hopefully not eat you in the end times.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: All right. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: See you next time, ye thanks for listening, and remember
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcast from my heart Radio,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.