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Can element 115 be used for anti-gravity? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what do you think of all those videos
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: of UFOs? You know, those fine things doing things we
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: can't quite explain.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I love those videos. I can't get enough of them.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: What do you mean you watch them on repeat all
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I've seen those hundreds of times, absolutely hundreds.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of time. Do you think they're videos
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: of aliens?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Oh? Man, I really want to believe. I really hope
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: they are aliens.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: That doesn't answer the question, do you think they are aliens?
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I think the truth is out there, I.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Guess, well, definitely, and it's not in here, not yet,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: at least That's what I want people to believe. This
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: is all a big gaslighting operation by US aliens? Is
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: it working?
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: I believe?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: All right, I'll take that as a yes.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Hi.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I'm Moorhey, ma cartoonist. I'm the author of Oliver's Great
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Big Universe.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: at UC or Fine, and I'm not sure if I'm
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Mulder or Scully in this conversation.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Oh tough choice. Let's see. Are you handsome and happy,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: go lucky like Mulder? Or are you a stickler for
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the small details? Like Scully.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Can't I be handsome and a stickler? P?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you bose the two options.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I'm the quantum superposition of Moulder and Scully.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I see you're Mully or Scolder.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: I'm neither a stickler nor handsome.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Wait so you're neither, Then you're Nully. I can't take
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: your hat. Well, I'll take either one. I think they're
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: both great. Were you a big fan of the X Files?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I love the way they capture that mystery and the
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: enthusiasm to understand the unknown. Yeah, it was well written stuff.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: You know they're doing a reboot right.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, and I'm a superposition of excited and terrified.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: The word reboot almost never goes well unless well, although
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: recently Dune that movies just came out by the time
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: this comes out, and that's a pretty good reboot.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, mister and missus Smith was a great reboot. Enjoyed that?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Mmm, I haven't seen that. Which myth are you, mister
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and missus?
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: I think that's too personal a question.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of Our Heart Radio.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: In which we want to believe that the truth is
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: out there, that there exists an explanation for everything that
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: happens in the universe, that we live in a cosmos
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: that follows rules, that makes sense, that it is governed
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: by order and principles, and that we can reveal those
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: by doing experiments and thinking deeply and peering out into
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: the far reaches of space. It is possible to understand
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: everything out there in the universe. And our goal on
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: this podcast is to bring all of that knowledge and
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: all of those questions to you.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: That's right, because we're all special investigators, we're all Scully
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and more. They're both excited about what could be out there,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: but also we need to be a little skeptical about
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: what we see or think that we see.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: That's right. We need to restrain our budgeting enthusiasm for
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: talking to aliens about the mysteries of the universe with
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: the healthy note of skepticism, so that we don't fool
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: ourselves into believing something that isn't real.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: But Daniel, do you think if aliens do exist and
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: they come here, are they going to be offended by
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: our skepticism.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I think they'll respect it absolutely.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: That's a no.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Then no, I don't think they'd be offended. I mean,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: if I landed on an alien planet, I would expect
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: them to ask a few questions before they accepted my story.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Oh that's an interesting phenomenon. You could be the alien
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: in another plan, but you would never leave your couch.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: You've stated that before.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, but I know that you have a kidnapping scheme
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: ready to launch me into space, so I'm mentally preparing
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: for it.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure I would pick you as our
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: ambassador or humanity. You seem too eager to sell us out.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I think that's great news for everybody.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: But anyways, it is an interesting and amazing universe out there,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: full of mysteries and unknowns and potentially interesting technologies that
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: we have yet to discover that could be used, maybe
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: for things like making us aliens on another planet.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: There are so many mysteries we'd like answers to, so
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: many tools we'd love to develop, And it's very tempting
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: to imagine that the aliens might already be here and
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: might be sharing it. That there could be secretive labs
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: in which our government is right now reverse engineering alien technology.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I noticed you said could be You're not sold yet.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: You didn't say there are secret labs.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't say there are because I don't know.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure there are secret labs, whether they have
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: aliens or not. I think that's the bigger question.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, there are definitely secret labs. I mean I grew
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: up in a town where most of the labs were
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: behind this big fence with guns. So yes, I can
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: testify to the fact that there are a secret life.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Whether they are reverse engineering alien technology is a much
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: bigger question.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Well, that's an interesting concept, the idea of reverse engineering
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: alien technology. I guess the scenario is that maybe the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: US discovered or found some alien technology in the past,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: maybe it's high hiding an area fifty one or area
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: of fifty two, And the question is could we ever
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: do something with that technology or would it be maybe
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: too alien for us to figure out how it works?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: And more than just speculating generally, there are specific claims
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: that folks have made about the precise technology that the
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: US government is right now or reverse engineering.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: can element one P fifteen be used for anti gravity propulsion? Well,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of words in this question which could
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: be the basis of an X File episode, like, you
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: don't need all of it. You can choose have an
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: episode on antigravity, propulsion or an element called element one fifteen.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: That's right. And this question sounds kind of out there,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: like an X Files episode, But this specific question has
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: been sent to me by many listeners who've heard the
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: stories floating around about Bob Lazar and his claims about
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Area fifty one and element one fifteen.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Hmmm, do you think those people are part of the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: cult there or people on the fringe of the cult.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Are just people looking from the outside into this kind
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of eighteen cult?
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know. They could be Area fifty one security
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: agents trying to figure out if we've cracked their codes.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. It could be like a double agent
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: kind of they're trying to catch you.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: This whole episode is us walking into a trap.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a drop. But I have to say I've
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: never heard of this element one fifteen. It sounds very
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: science fiction y.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Mmmm. It's fascinating because at the time Lazar first talked
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: about it, it was science fiction y and now it's
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: just science mm.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: It sounds like elementium or by vranium.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that that element one fifteen is now very real.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Is it more real than one fourteen?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: I think they're both maximally real and a lot more
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: real than unoptainium.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: All right, I guess we'll dig into what this all
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: means and who is Bob Luzar, But first we were
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: wondering how many people out there had heard of element
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: one fifteen and whether it could be used for anti gravity.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Thanks very much to everybody who answers my tough questions
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: about physics and my weird questions about alien technology. Really
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: appreciate your time and enthusiasm. If you have time in enthusiasm,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: please don't hesitate to write to me two questions at
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Daniel and Jorge dot com.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: So think about it for a second. Do you think
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: element one fifteen can be used for anti gravity propulsion?
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: So, I don't know what element one fifteen is off
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: the top of my head, but it is ringing a
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: bell from the time when I went down some rabbit
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: holes of Bob lass are supposedly finding this while working
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: for the government in the area fifty one, and given
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: that I'm pretty skeptical of him, I would have to
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: say say it can't.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: But I have no idea.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: Yes, I believe that element one one five can be
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: used anti property proportion if it can be found, and
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: it's not just a story. There is a specific element
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: that can.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Be used to define gravity to provide propotion.
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: Assuming I knew what element one fifteen was offhand, Yeah, sure,
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: Obviously we're just not working hard enough.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: I want my anti GRAVI unit.
• 8:23
  Speaker 6: I don't know what element one fifteen is, but I
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: will throw out a guess that it could be if
• 8:29
  Speaker 6: we could make enough of it and keep it stable
• 8:32
  Speaker 6: for long enough to disperse it slowly as a fuel
• 8:36
  Speaker 6: or as a propulsion.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like there's other elements. I mean,
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: there's one hundred other fourteen elements. You have to use
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: element one fifteen. I'll let you do it this one time, Daniel,
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: You guys can just do it this one time, or
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: anti gravity potion. But I feel like there's a lot
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: of radiation in bananas. We should use the potasium in
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: the bananas. There's a lot of bananas, a lot of potassium,
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: probably a lot of anti gravity proportion.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: In that thing.
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: I took CAM in college, and I don't remember learning
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: anything about element one fifteen or even what it's called,
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: and I'm pretty sure if it was useful for anti gravity,
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: the professor would have mentioned it in lecture and I
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: would have remembered at least I think I paid attention
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: to most of the lectures.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: I think that fully encapsulates the complete spectrum of answers.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some people here I have never heard of it,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and some people are like, yes, I believe, let's do it,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: let's go to space.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: I know this is really enthusiasm out there. Right.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess I've never heard of this, Daniels. So
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: let's start with the basics. What is element one fifteen?
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, element one fifteen is just an atom with one
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen protons in the nucleus. If you look
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: at the periodic table, it's arranged by the number of
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: protons in each nucleus. Hydrogen means you have one proton,
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Helium means you have two protons, Lithium means you have
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: three protons. As you add protons, you change the nature
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: of the element, and you can just keep adding protons
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: until you get to one.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Hundred fifteen and beyond.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Right or not, we've gone up to one eighteen by now,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: that's oganessan The heaviest element we've ever made. We don't
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: know how far it goes. We think it might go
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: on for a long time, and that there could be
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: really new, fascinating, even stable elements up at very high
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: atomic number with very large numbers of protons.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Meaning like you can just keep adding protons to the
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: nucleus of an atom and you would get a different atom,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and you can just keep going, I guess your imagination.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: But at some point there's a limit to which one
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: we've been able to make in.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: A lab exactly. And there's two questions here, like how
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: to actually make it, and the other is how long
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: it sticks around, whether it's stable.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So maybe as a reference, like I think most people
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: know that uranium is pretty heavy. What's the atomic number
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: of uranium?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Uranium is actually the heaviest element we find in nature.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: It has ninety two protons in it. So uranium is
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: made in natural processes. The universe started with almost all
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: just hydrogen. Made it a little bit of helium during
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang, but mostly it's been stars that've been
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: fusing those protons together to make heavier and heavier stuff.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: You can make like up to iron in the hearts
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: of stars and then you need to like collide neutron
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: stars together or wait for supernova to make heavier stuff
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: up to like uranium. The heaviest thing that will stick
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: around forever is lead that has eighty two protons in it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: But you know, natural processes make heavier stuff that that
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: decays away, like uranium, which turns into lighter stuff like lead.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Now uranium is the heaviest one we've found. Is that
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: because nature can't make anything higher or it just gets too.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Rare, Well, we don't know. It's definitely rareer. And everything
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: else above uranium is also unstable, everything that we've discovered
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: at least, So it might be that that stuff is
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: made out there in nature when neutron stars collide, it
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: just doesn't last long enough for us to find it.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, do you mean we've discovered heavier elements than uranium.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: We have manufactured heavier elements than uranium in the lab. Absolutely,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: we can collide elements together and see them form atoms
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: of heavier elements. That's how we got it to like
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: one eighteen.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: But somehow nature has not made heavier ones because maybe
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: it made them, but they decayed and broke apart. Or
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: is it just like there's some sort of energy barrier there.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: It's more likely that they were made and then just
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: broke apart. The half life of these really heavy elements
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: can be like tenths of a second or half of
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: a second, and so if these things were made in
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: collisions far far away, then they're not going to last
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: long enough to get here and to like sit around
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: in the Earth for us to dig up.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so then, h that's kind of how the atom works.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: You can just keep piling on protons to the nucleus.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: But then how did neutrons figure it?
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the neutrons are actually what helps us make them
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: and keep it stable because it's a little tricky, Like
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: it's not that easy to put two protons together. They're
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: both electrically charged. They like to repel each other. You
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: got to get them close enough that the strong force
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: within them helps attract them. Protons are bound states of
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: quarks inside each proton are upquarks and down quarks stuck
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: together with gluons. Technically, it's all neutral. The color charges
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: inside the proton all balance each other out. But if
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: you're really close to one side of the proton, then
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: you're like closer to one of the quarks than some
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: of the other quarks. So you're feeling a little bit
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: of residual color charge. And so there's like a little
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: bit of strong force there enough to bind them together.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: But the neutrons help out by keeping the protons from
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: getting too close together so they don't repel. It's a
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: whole theory for how you build a stable atomic nucleus
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: involves like building shells of protons and neutrons. It's not
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: just like a big pile of them all slashing around.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: There's an arrangement sort of similar to the way electrons
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: are arranged in shells around the atom. We think protons
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: and neutrons are arranged in shells within the atom.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I see because I guess protons that are positively charged,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: right like they're the opposite of electrons, And so you
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: get two positive protons together, they repel each other, sort
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: of like two magnets might repel each other. And I
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: think you're saying that the neutrons they're neutral, but they
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: are sticky in the strong force. Yeah, and so they
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: somehow they're like a sticky filler so that you can
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: pile on more protons in one place exactly.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: They have the stickiness you need to the strong force,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: and they help reduce the repulsion among the protons by
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: keeping them further apart. That's why you need more neutrons
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: than protons, especially as these things get heavier and heavier.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: So above lead everything is unstable. But that's only as
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: far as we've gotten. We've made up to one eighteen
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: by gently tossing together a lighter nuclei. This is also
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: really tricky because if you smash two nuclei together really fast,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: they just explode and you got shrapnel from two nuclei.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: If you toss them together too slowly, they bounce off
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: of each other like two baseballs. You got to find
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: just the right sweet spot where they like stick together,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: they like mush together and become one new atom. It's
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: very very finicky work.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: How do you do it? Do you? You just can
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: like shoot them from a cannon other or what.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: I never thought of particle accelerators as cannons, but yeah,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: they kind of are particle canons. Yeah, you just use
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: an accelerator so you have ions of these things. You
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: strip off the electrons so they're positively charged, and you
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: put them in an electric field that accelerates them, you
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: point them at each other and you have collisions just
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: like we do at the Large Hadron Collider, where we're
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: colliding basically hydrogen ions, protons and protons against each other,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: except they're colliding like calcium into emerisium.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: They see, you can just maybe smashed to uranium nuclei together,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: can you?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: You can try that if you want to make the
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: atom with one hundred and eighty four protons in it,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: And nobody successfully done that yet. The highest we've gotten
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: up to is one hundred and eighteen.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I see, And then when did that happen?
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: So that was like in the last twenty years. It's
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: this facility near Moscow which has like all the expertise
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: and the machinery to do this. They've made all of
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: the heaviest stuff. It takes a long time for people
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: to officially recognize this and pour through the data and
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: convince themselves that it really is real. So element one
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: eight it was only recognized in twenty fifteen, some like
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: twelve years after the experiments were done, so it's pretty
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: recent stuff.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So and then you make them, but then they
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: quickly break down. Is that what happens to these elements?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: You said?
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Maybe the only last few seconds. Yeah, exactly, they can
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: last a few seconds or tenth of a second. These
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: really heavy elements are really unstable. They think though, that
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: as you add more protons and more neutrons and you
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: get to heavier and heavier elements, something weird might happen
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: that instead of getting more and more unstable, you might
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: reach some island of stability where you've completed some internal
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: shell inside the nucleus, you have like enough protons to
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: all click together at a form like you know, a
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: roman arch of stability effectively, and you might get really
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: heavy stable atoms. We have a whole podcast about the
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: possibility of super duper heavy stable atoms that might exist
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: out there in the universe or even be buried in
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: the crust of the Earth. Nobody's ever found one, and
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: it's still theoretical. But these heavy atoms are starting to
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: show slightly longer lifetimes, which suggests we might be like
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: on the shore of the island of stability.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And now, if they last for so little of a time,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: how do we know they were there.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the tricky parts. They have to
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: display behavior that's consistent with our predictions. So they have
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: to interact in a certain way or emit photons, et cetera.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: And because they don't last very long and we can't
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: make very many of them, you can make only a
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: few kinds of measurements. So that's why these things are
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: sort of subtle. It's not like you've made an ingod
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: of it and you can now sit around and play
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: with it for five years and you're like, yeah, this
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: is the stuff of one fifteen. For example, we've only
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: made one hundred atoms of this element ever.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so one fifteen is the one that's tied to
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: these alien conspiracies. And so let's talk about it one fifteen,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Where it came from, when it was made, and why
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: do people think it has something to do with anti
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: gravity and aliens until let's stick into that. But first
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Al Right, we're exploring the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: X files here on the podcast, or at least the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: wires Z files, which a letter of the alphabet or
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: be some alien alphabet alpha alpha dema blurb blurk, blurk, exactly,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the blurk files. That's what they watch in the alien planets.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Somewhere out there, some alien parents yelling at their kids
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: to practice their blurk.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Bet there you go. Well, we're talking about this idea
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: that maybe element one fifteen can be used for anti
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: gravity propulsion and somehow tied to alien conspiracies, and so
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: we'll dig into that. But first, Daniel, I guess we
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: talked about what element one fifteen is, which is just
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: an atom maybe with one hundred and fifteen protons in
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the nucleus. Does it have neutrons in it? Does it
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: matter if it has neutrons also in the nucleus.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It does also, of course have neutrons in it. Like
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: every other atomant needs neutrons in order to make it
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: more stable. You need those neutrons like buffer the protons together.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: And so element one fifteen has one hundred and fifteen
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: protons and a total number of one hundred and seventy
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: two protons plus neutrons, which means it has fifty seven
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: neutrons in it.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Wait, so it doesn't have one hundred fifteen protons in
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: it has one hundred and fifteen protons or neutrons.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So like every other heavy element, it has to
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: have neutrons in it to buffer those protons to help
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: make it stable. In this case, it needs a lot
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: of neutrons. So there are one hundred and fifteen protons
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: in that nucleus. That's what makes it element one fifteen muscovium.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: But there are also one hundred and seventy two neutrons,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: so in total, there are two hundred and eighty nine
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: protons plus neutrons in this fat blob of a nucleus.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Well, that seems like an number, so there's more neutrons
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and protons. This is the only formula they've been able
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: to make, because you maybe could make this element with
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a different number of neutrons.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. That's what comes out when you smash calcium
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: forty eight together with emerisium two forty three, which are
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: two things that they also know how to make and
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: shoot at each other.
• 20:20
  Speaker 6: Hmmm.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And so you call it Muskovium. What was that named after? Moscow?
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, named after Moscow. The guy who pioneers this, who
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: like developed this special technology and really has like the
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: finesse to do this is a Russian scientist named Yuri Oganessian,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: and so element one eighteen Oganessan is named after him,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: and one fifteen muscovium is named after Moscow because this
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: facility is in Dubno, which is near Moscow. Oh.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Interesting, that feels very Russian socialist. Like the first element
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you discover has been ended after the state, the government,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and then and then if you find three more, we'll
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: let you name one after yourself.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: I think there must have been a lot of high
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: level arguments about the naming of these elements. You notice
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: there's like emerisium, there's a berkeleam. You know, there's a
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: lot of politics about who gets to name these things.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, there's a trend of naming them after the city
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: in which you discovered them.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't even know the politics behind all
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: of this.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: WHOA. I guess I should get going. If we're ever
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: going to discover Pasadenium or as you say, south pasadenium,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: When was this muscovovium discovered?
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: So it's made in two thousand and three in the
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: same facility as ogonnessan element one eighteen and recognized in
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: two thousand and.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Fifteen to twelve years. Mmmm.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is subtle stuff. You know, they've made one
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: hundred atoms of this stuff. They think it only lasts
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: for like zero point six y five seconds. At the
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: time that they were running, they could make like one
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: of these atoms every day. It's like very very finicky.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Whoa, And then what happens? They just split up into
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: smaller atoms.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. This one decays down into one thirteen, which
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: then decays down into other stuff. There's nothing heavier than
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: lead that's stable, so eventually everything decays down into something.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Stable, like it just kicks out a proton or something
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: or two.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it kicks out a proton, or you get beta
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: decay where neutron turns into a proton they split or something,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: or inverse beta decay. There's all sorts of stuff that
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: can happen for radioactive decay down into lighter stuff.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: And what can we say about this muscovium? Is it
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: super hard? Is it super special? Can it absorb vibrations
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: like rebranium? Can you make a shield out of it?
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: To the American flag in it?
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I don't think you could build an entire African economy
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: based on this thing, especially since we have only made
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: one hundred atoms ever, but based on where it sits
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: in the periodic table, we can speculate or predict its
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: chemical properties. So we think it's probably similar to like
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: nitrogen and phosphorus. And arsenic and thallium. That's the group
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: of elements that they put it in.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: M all right, So then this is part of a
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: pretty serious scientific which is like what's the heaviest element
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: we can make in a lab and to study maybe
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the limits of these atoms and what is stable or
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: not stable. But then somehow this got mixed up into
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: alien conspiracies. What's the story.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: So the story started in nineteen eighty nine a guy
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: named Bob Lazar came forward claiming to have top secret
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: information about element one point fifteen.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Who's Bob Lazar?
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: That's a really deep question and there's a huge internet
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: rabbit hole about who is Bob Lazar? Where does he
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: come from, Where did he actually work? Where does his background?
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Is he really an alien or not?
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Wait, he could be an alien. He could be an
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: alien theory floating out there.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Anybody could be a lizard person man, you.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Never know, well, suspicious, his last name is Lazar, a
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: lizard person exactly.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: I've seen him blink. How many eyelids does he have?
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that this person just came out of nowhere
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: or he started publishing, or how did he come into prominence?
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: He approached a local news reporter with a really compelling story.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: He claimed to be an Area fifty one employee. This
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: was in about a near Area fifty one, and he
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: said that his job at Area fifty one was to
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: reverse engineer crashed alien flying saucers. He said that he
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: had seen these craft, that there were nine of them
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: in the facility, and that he had personally worked with
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Element one point fifteen, the crucial element to piloting alien spacecraft,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: which relied on anti gravity technology.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I thought he was just someone with like
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory, but he's saying he was a person
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: in Area fifty one working on these aliens bishops mm.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: And the thing I'll say about Bob Blazaar is that
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: his story is compelling. It's like he's a good storyteller.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: It's like one of those stories you hear where it's
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: almost immediate, you know, my friend saw this, or I
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: heard from my sister. So he's one step away from
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: you being able to verify it yourself. He says he
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: worked with this stuff, and he's a good storyteller. It
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: sounds very compelling.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Can he drive like you know, and she's like sketch
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: out what he saw?
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's provided a bunch of details. The more details
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: he provides, the less the story seemed to hang together scientifically.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: You know, that's sort of the question of the episode, like,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: does Element one fifteen actually have anything to do with
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: anti gravity technology now that we've actually synthesized it and
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: made it and created it. At the time, element one
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: fifteen was sort of a fantasy. Nobody had ever made
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: it before knew of it was even possible. But you know,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Bob Blazar claimed in his drawings that the US government
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: had five hundred pounds of element one fifteen. To date,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: we made one hundred atoms of it. But he claims
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: that in Area fifty one they're sitting on a pile
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: of this stuff. That's five hundred pounds.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, so what's his background? I guess is Lazar
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: an engineer himself or you know, or was he like
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: the janitor working there, or does he have diploma from
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: somewhere you can track down.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: That's a really good question. And because his story is
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: so compelling and has received a lot of attention, a
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: bunch of people have dug into the background of Bob
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Blazar and he claimed to have gone to MIT and
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: he has his pedigree. But then there's this long argument
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: about whether he graduated from MIT, whether he was actually there.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: He claims to have worked at Los Alamos, which would
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: also like add to his scientific credibility.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I feel like this could be easily settled. I
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: did you just sit him down with the real engineer, Like,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: you know, like if you sit him down with the
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: real engineer, the real engineer will very quickly be able
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to tell if this person is trained, if they've actually
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: seen what they see, they can describe accurately whether they saw.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Nobody start to do that.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: He came out initially with this story, which was reported
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: by local reporter George Knapp, and then he sort of
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: retreated from a lot of the attention, and he sort
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: of emerged periodically to answer questions and then retreat back
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: into isolation again. Recently, there was a detailed documentary put
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: out by Jeremy Corbel interviewing him and asking him a
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: bunch of questions. But you know, I think that the
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: scientific community feels like there's still a lot of unanswered
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: scientific questions about his claims.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like it's all questions, all right, But
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: I think what you're trying to get to is that
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: he claims that the US government had a lot of
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Element one fifteen, and he claimed that it was somehow
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: tied to the spaceship's abilities.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: To fly exactly. And the positive thing about Bob Bazar
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: is he tells a really really good story. It sounds
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: really good. I mean, you start digging into details and
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: you have questions that aren't answered, but it's a well
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: told story. It also lines up with other reports of
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: like flashing lights people saw over the desert dot dot dot.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: The difficult part about Bob Blazar is that that's all
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: there is. There's just this story. He doesn't have a
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: piece of Elepment one fifteen. He doesn't have a piece
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: of the alien craft. He can't lead us to it.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: You know, there's nothing physical, nothing hard, no concrete evidence
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: he can point to or produce to show us that
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: a story is more than just a story.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you could just he could describe as
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: co workers, he could describe, you know, all these things
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: that it could be verified. It seems pretty crazy anyone
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: would believe him with any of any of this proof.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people will want to believe.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: I mean I want to believe also it's a great story.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be awesome?
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm noticing a lot of empathy here. Yeah, I'm
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: here for Bob Blazaar.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: I do. I do because it's exactly the fantasy that
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: I wish were true. Aliens come and have this technology
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: and we're busy reverse engineering it. Oh my gosh, how exciting.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: But you got to engage your skepticism and be like,
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: all right, how do we know it's not just some
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: dude with a story, Because there's lots of dudes out
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: there with stories. They're usually called science fiction authors.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: So his claim is that element one fifteen is somehow
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: tied to anti gravity, So what's the connection there?
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: So basically, there is no connection as far as I'm
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: aware of now. Element one to fifteen is something that's real,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: something we've made, something we've studied. Anti gravity is a
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: real area of research. It's like something people are actually
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: trying to do. You and I had a whole podcast
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: episode about whether anti gravity is a real technology, whether
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: we could ever achieve it. There are people who have
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: claimed to achieve anti gravity, and that's been debunked. Anti
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: gravity as a research area is real, and there are
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: some potentially some avenues you could explore. But I'm not
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: aware of any connection between anti gravity and element one fifteen.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: We've made element one fifteen. It doesn't display any anti
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: gravity properties or any connection to any of the possible
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: directions for anti gravity.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I can't make a connection. But since we're down
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the rabbit hole, Daniel, if you were writing the science
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: fiction story here, what's it a connection would you make?
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: What kind of an excuse would you make to tie
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: element one to fifteen to anti gravity? Like, does the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: number of protons somehow reach a special state where, somehow
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: anti gravity particles are generated?
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: You know, sound that was fantastic about.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Da YadA YadA antigravity?
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the mental YadA YadA YadA. Okay, Well, let's
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: do the exercise right. How might anti gravity be possible
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: in our understanding of it?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I can tell you've thought about this and you've
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: already had an answer.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, how can you achieve anti gravity? Well,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: there's one idea that anti matter might have anti gravity.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Antimatter is like matter, but with the opposite charges. So
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: we have protons, we also have antiprotons. Antiprotons have opposite
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: electric charge. Anti electrons have the opposite electric charge of
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: an electron. Antimatter is a real thing, but because antimatter
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: is so rare, we haven't really verified that antimatter feels
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: gravity the way that matter does. Like it might be
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: that antimatter falls up and matter falls down. Antimatter might
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: have an anti gravity effect.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, is the idea that maybe an anti electron
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: has anti gravity, or is the idea that maybe there's
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: an electron out there that has anti gravity.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Now, the idea is that anti electrons might have anti
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: gravity and antiprotons might have anti gravity.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Because an anti electron has the opposite charge when electrons
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: to happen, and it also has the opposite of other
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: things than an an electron. Right, like quantum property is true.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it has the opposite weak and electric charges. It
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: doesn't have any strong force charges, so those are just
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: zero becas all of its quantum charges flipped. And since
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: we don't really understand gravity, we don't know like it's
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: gravity a quantum thing anyway? Is the mass, like the
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: quantum charge is that flipped? Does an anti electron have
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: negative mass or negative gravity? This is sort of like
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: big open questions. There's actually an experiment that's turned to
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: probe exactly this question. They've been playing with antimatter and
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: trying to see like does it fall up or does
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: it fall down. It's a surprisingly difficult question to answer
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: because antimatter is hard to make and gravity is super
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: duper weak. Particles have almost no mass. It's affected by
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: everything else out there that might be tugging on it.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Initial indications suggests that it's more likely that antimatter has
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: normal gravity, so you couldn't build anti gravity out of antimatter.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: But it's you know, not totally ruled out, so it's
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: a basis for you know, plausible speculation. But even if
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: you go there, if you say antimatter might provide anti gravity,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I still don't even know how to YadA YadA YadA
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: that to element one fifteen because element one fifteen is matter.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Unless then I'm just thinking about this. Now they have
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: like antimatter element one fifteen, and that's what they've got
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: at area fifty one.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Oh I knew you had an answer for this, Daniel. Okay,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: So now the Daniel theory here is that you can
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: have like anti carbon in antioxygen, meaning like if you
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: take a bunch of antiprotons, put them in a nucleus
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: with some anti neutrons I guess too, and anti electrons,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: you can make a stable anti atom.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Probably a lot of that is speculative because we haven't
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: made big anti atoms before. You know, there aren't that
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: many protons, and doing fusion with antiprotons is tricky. But
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: in principle we think that the rules are the same
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: anti matter and matter in terms of those bonds. So yeah,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: principle you could put together anti lead and anti uranium
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: and anti.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Moscovium because we've made anti hydrogen, haven't we Yeah, we have.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And so the theory is that it wouldn't be element
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: one to fifteen that's anti gravity, but maybe anti element
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: one fifteen.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe Boblezar just got the sign wrong, you.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, there you go, because he's not a real
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: engineer apparently.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Ooh, that's tough, man, that's tough.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: But somehow this anti element one fifteen it gives you
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: anti gravity but not anti carbon or would anti carbon
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: also be anti gravity? Issues that somehow element one fifteen
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: is what would you say special about it?
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. And this theory anti carbon
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: will also give you anti gravity. Even anti hydrogen would
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: give you anti gravity because they would all have the
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: same relationship with gravity. Why would the aliens choose anti
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: matter versions of element one fifteen, I don't know. And
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: even in this speculation, element one fifteen thimeta version should
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: be just as unstable as the matter version of element
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: one fifteen. So if they did have five hundred pounds
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: of it, very quickly they wouldn't They would decay down
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: to lower atomic elements.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Well, the government has apparently five hundred pounds of element
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: one fifteen, and there must be a way to make
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: it stable in this fantasy world.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: There mustn't. There probably is a way to make it stable.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: You know. For example, neutrons are not stable. If you
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: just have a bunch of them floating around in space,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: but squeeze them down together into a neutron star, they
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: become stable. It's like a new state of matter. So
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: if you have like pure element one fifteen as individual atoms,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: they're not stable. The aliens are able to like squeeze
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: them down into some like crystal of element one fifteen.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: It could have different properties and that could create stability.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: That's possible, Yeah.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: And maybe that would make sense because you know, if
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: you're trying to be anti gravity as much as possible,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: do you want the heaviest element that you can right
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: It will make you float more.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so maybe element one to fourteen would work as well,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: but an element one fifteen is like one percent better,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: So might as well go for it because those aliens
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: they're really efficient.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe a question is how would you control
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: the anti gravity force? Right, Like, if you have anti
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: gravity and you're trying to land on the planet, that's
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: a problem because the anti gravity element wouldn't lead you land.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you have five hundred pounds of this stuff
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: on your ship, then it's not going to be easy
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: to turn on and off. But maybe if you could
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: control how it decays, you could like rapidly let it
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: decay down into something else and maybe even convert into
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: normal matter. You could flip its gravitational behavior, and then
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: if you could somehow make it again, you could imagine
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: developing some control mechanism. If you could fabricate and dematerialize
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: this stuff pretty rapidly, I.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Suppose you'd be like making it and breaking it down
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: to throttle how much you float.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: We are so far out on a speculative limb here. Yeah,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I'll let the engineers develop that one.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: We're already inside the rabbit holes, so.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: So bibles are After this episode, he started a scientific
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: supply company, and in twenty seventeen the FBI rated his company.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, dides this actually happen or are you
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: just making stuff up?
• 36:03
  Speaker 6: Now?
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: No, this actually happened.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: So after what do you mean after this episode?
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: After he became famous in nineteen eighty nine for all
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: of these claims. Then later on he founded this scientific
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: supply company, and at some point he got in trouble
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: with the FEDS, and the FBI raided his company in
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. I won't say what they were looking for,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: but there's a lot of speculation online that they were
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: looking for stolen bits of element one fifteen.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Whoa or something he stole from the lab. Then maybe yeah,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: maybe it was a janitor in.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: And so somebody actually got to ask Bob Blazaar. This
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: reporter Tim McMillan asked Bob blazar in directly whether he
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: actually had a piece of element one fifteen, and Lazar's
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: response is, and I quote, if I had some, would
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: I reveal it to confirm my accounts absolutely not.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Why not.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Because it's more valuable than his credibility apparently.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Hmmm, I thought you were going to say that. He
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: said that if I had it, I'll be flowing around,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: not stuck down here on Earth talking to you.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: I'll float that suggestion to Bobo's arm.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I think there's an even bigger problem, which is
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: that if you have five hundred pounds of an antimatter element,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: that is incredibly dangerous, right, because if it touches five
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds of real matter, you would have an explosion,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: probably bigger than a supernova.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Maybe, Oh yeah, that would be catastrophic. Even one gram
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: of antimatter like a raisin's worth, when colliding with a
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: gram of matter, would release as much energy as a
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: nuclear weapon. So five hundred pounds of the stuff would
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: be devastating.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Would be how much listen to the math? Like a
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: million nuclear bombs or right, a billion nuclear bombs?
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: A quarter million nuclear weapons? WHOA, So yeah, that would
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: be pretty dramatic. Let's just hope nobody like trips and
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: drops the stuff.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's not give it to a random dude, because
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: even if he has a little bit of this antimatter element,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: one fifteen. It would be extremely dangers It.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Would be very dangerous. If the government actually has this stuff.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: I hope to have more responsible people dealing with it
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: than bah Blazar.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: All Right, so maybe it's not made out of antimatter.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: That seems too dangerous. What other ideas do you have?
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: So in a sort of related way, there's a concept
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: of exotic matter. This is not antimatter. This is some
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: new kind of matter we've never seen before. But it
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: would also have negative mass. And this comes out of
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: the idea actually for wormholes. Wormholes are a theoretical way
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: to get across the galaxy. Like maybe aliens have developed
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: technology to avoid the light speed limit that's so frustrating
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: that keeps us from getting from here to Alpha Centauri
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: or across the galaxy. By shortening those paths, by creating
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: connections between points in our space and in their space,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: so you can go from here to there very quickly,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: you don't actually have to travel all the way through
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: that space. That's what a wormhole is, just a connection
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: between two points in space. But if you do the
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: math in general relativity for wormhole, it says, yeah, no problem,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: they can actually exist. It's not against the rules of
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: physics as we know them. But if they do exist,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: they collapse very very quickly, like they're not stable. The
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: only way to keep them around is to have some
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: sort of exotic matter with negative mass and a constant
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: beam of that stuff traveling through the wormhole. That would
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: provide some sort of like pressure to keep the wormhole open.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: So that's not evidence that negative mass exists, but it
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: is an idea in physics generated by the need to
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: keep wormholes open.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Wait, so to keep an wormhole open, you would have
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: to keep shooting exotic matter with negative mass through it
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: that would somehow keep it open, and then somebody you
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: would sneak into that stream and to get to the
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: other side. Or what's the idea.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, or maybe you could have stable exotic matter
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: that lives inside the wormhole, or you have a stream
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: of it and then you can jump into that stream.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Whether you could keep it open large enough to like
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: pass that ship through, or whether these would always be microscopic,
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: there's a whole other question. We did an episode about
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: whether macroscopic wormholes could even be kept open long enough
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: for a ship to pass through them, and whether the
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: tidal effects of the wormhole would anyway shred your ship
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: as you went near it. That these things are like
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: far from being even theoretically practical, but it does involve
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: this concept of negative mass exotic matter that has this
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: like negative gravitational effect relative to real matter.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so then what's the connection to element one fifteen
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: is the ideot element one fifteen would somehow turn into
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: exotic matter and have negative mass, or that you would
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: have to build element one fifteen out of exotic matter.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: There is no real connection with element one fifteen, though,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, we could be creative and come up with one,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Like you just tried to scaffold between these two ideas,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: but there is no real connection between the two. But
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: you know, for example, potentially element one fifteen isn't element
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: one fifteen. And what babbo'sar thought was element one fifteen
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: is actually something else, and it's exotic matter that has
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: properties similar to element one fifteen in some ways, and
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: so he was confused by it, or some other scientists
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: mistook it for it to interesting.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: What he thought was element with fifteen was really made
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: of particles that we don't even know about, Like it's
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: not made out of protons and neutrons and microns. Maybe
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: it's made out of you know, urvanium.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or something else, right, lazarium. You know, our tendency
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: in physics is to explain everything we don't understand in
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: terms of what we do understand. So you're presented with
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: some new kind of stuff, you want to say, well,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: what element is it? What is it made out of?
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: And everything we've experienced is made out of some kind
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: of element, and so that's the first natural question. So
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: you might interpret it incorrectly as element one fifteen. You know,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: those government scientists sometimes make mistakes, all.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Right, So it seems like we don't really have an
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: answer here to the main question. Can element one fifteen
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: bes for anti gravity propulsion? It sounds like no physicist
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: maybe has a way to link those two concepts.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I think the takeaway is that at the
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: time Lazar was telling his story, element one fifteen was exotic,
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: if something we hadn't made before, and so nobody could
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: really verify his claims, much like most of his claims
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: about what went on in secret that nobody can verify
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: because it was all in secret. Nobody could counter his
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: claims about one fifteen because we didn't know if it
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: could be created, We didn't know what it would be
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: like it, so it seems sort of exotic and unreachable.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Now that we have made element one fifteen, it doesn't
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: really line up with any elements of lazarre story at all.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: And so while it's still potentially possible that aliens have
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: like weird crystals of anti matter element one fifteen or something,
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: that his story is all true, that's certainly possible, there's
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: nothing about our actual element one fifteen that we've created
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: that lines up with his story or lends any credence
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: to it.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: So you're saying, basically science killed his buzz.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: I'm saying, we want to believe, but we need some proof.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Man, you actually win and discovered this element and there's
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: nothing special about it.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, science ruining everything since fifteen forty two.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: And maybe he's gonna come out and say, oh, actually
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I made element negative one to fifteen. I forgot about
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the negative sign.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or two fifteen, like try to make that.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Guys just keep going up. All right, Well, I guess
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: another interesting example of how there are still big unknowns,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: but as we make progress in science, we get to
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: figure out what's real and what's not, What deserves an
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: episode of The X Files, and what maybe deserves an
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: episode of the ABC Files.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly we should rename this.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Podcast, We should call it the WI Files.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Why are we even talking about this.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Because we're always wondering why that's right?
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Because our listeners wrote in and sincerely wanted to know
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: what element had to do with anti gravity.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: joining us, See you next time.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg, Insta,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 44:08
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• 44:14
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