Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What's The Biggest "Thing" in The Universe?

Transcript

What's The Biggest "Thing" in The Universe? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you know, sometimes I'm really amazed about how
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: small we are compared to the entire planet Earth. Like
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: we're tiny compared to this giant ball of rock we're
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: standing on it. It's true, we are really small compared
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to the Earth. But then on the other hand, the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Earth is tiny compared to like the other planets. But
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: even the biggest planet is dwarf by the size of
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the Sun in our Solar system. Yeah, the stuff in
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the Solar System is just the Sun and the Sun.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Our Sun is not even one of the bigger stars
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: out there. It's like a mini star, right, Yeah, there
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: are some moongo stars out there, and then of course,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: like all the stars together, the galaxy is just enormous
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: compared to like our Solar system. Yeah, and as big
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: as the galaxy is, it's really just one little tiny
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: drop in the vast ocean of galaxies to our billions
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of galaxies out there, right, But the galaxies aren't just
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: an ocean. There's really interesting structures there which get bigger
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and bigger and bigger. There are things bigger than galaxies.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the galaxies are just tiny dots in the end.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating actually, because it gets bigger and bigger, and
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: then it stops and at some point there isn't anything bigger.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: There is actually the biggest thing in the universe. That's right,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and it's not my ego. I am and I'm Daniel.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained the universe
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: in which we tackled the small and today the very
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: very large things in the universe. That's right to be
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, we're going to ask the question, what
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: is the biggest thing in the universe? UNIVERSEI universe, that's right.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I thought this is a pretty fun idea. Like the
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: universe is big, but it's mostly empty, right, Like most
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: of the of the the stuff in the universe is
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: just emptiness. It's space. Right, it took an average chunk
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: of the universe, it would mostly be pretty empty. Um,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: but it's also filled with really big, big things. You know.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I love this, this the contrast in the scales between
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the different stuff in the universe, right. Yeah, And it's
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: all about context, right, Like something that you think is big,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: like you know, the empire, state building, it's big, but
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: it's only sort of big in in a certain context,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: in a certain scale. Exactly you can always zoom out
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: from wherever you are, and whatever you were amazed at
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: how big it was then just becomes a tiny dot
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and there's some other new structure. You're like, wow, look
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: at that. Look how big America is, or look how
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: big you know the world is. Look how big the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Solar system is. It's incredible how many different scales the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: universe operates on, right, Right, because it could have been different, Right.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: It could have been like the universe is just a
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: bunch of rocks. At each rock as a meter in length,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and that's it, and there's no structure, and they're not organized,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: they just sort of distributed through the universe. Right. It
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: could have been like that, just like a haze of rocks, right,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: in which case you would only be able to say
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: that the biggest thing in the universe is like a
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: one meter rock. That's right. Yeah. But the universe seems
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to like to organize. I mean, I don't want to
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: say like obviously in a literal way, because the universe
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't like or dislike anything, But the universe does tend
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: to organize stuff right into bigger and bigger objects and whatever.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: It's done organizing something that it groups those together into
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: objects and grew those together. Right, So it's pretty amazing
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: what it's managed to accomplish and only fourteen billion years.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And so these structures of the universe keep getting bigger
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and bigger and bigger forever or does it at some
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: point stop? Yeah, so that's what we're gonna dig into today.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: It turns out that there is the biggest thing in
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the universe. There's a point above which there is no
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: more organization. Everything is just sprinkled evenly through the universe.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: So the question is what is the biggest thing in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the universe. That's right, somebody something out there currently reigns
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Supreme is the biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, that's
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: a pretty impressive title, right. That's not one something that
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: you can just pick up any day. It takes billions
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: of years to work up to it. You've gotta train,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you gotta practice, you know, you gotta afternoons, endeavor, lift weights,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: make stars. I was thinking more like, eat a lot
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of pizza, you know this kind of stuff. You gotta
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: gather masks here. We're not trying to lose it, right,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, so we were
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: wondering how many people out there knew the answer to
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: this question what is the biggest thing in the universe?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: And I think, Daniel, you sort of imagine that most
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: people would say that galaxies are the biggest thing, right, Yeah.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I actually started out asking people just what's the biggest
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: thing in the universe because I was thinking about you know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: organizational stuff like groups of things, solar systems, galaxies. But
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the first answers I got were mostly about like, you know,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: biggest stars and stuff. So then I started asking a
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: slightly different question, which is like, do you think the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: galaxies are organized in any way or they just sort
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: of sprinkled evenly through the universe. So we got a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: variety of answers. Yeah. So as usually went out there
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: into the streets of you see Irvine or the pathways
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: you see Irvine, and you ask people this question. The
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: very beautifully cultivated Orange County campus of you see Irvine, which,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: by the way, if you haven't visited, really is gorgeous,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: a little smart and beautiful people, right, that's right, everybody
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: down here is smart and beautiful. Exactly Here's what people
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: had to say. Um, I think it would be the song.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I think as it has like the strongest impact on
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of the different names, Thanks very much. I know,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I guess a lot bigger, but I don't know like
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: terms the galaxy that goes No, I don't guard Okay,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know that. I know it's usually referred to
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: as like planetary neighborhoods, so that could be groupings of
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: multiple galaxies, but I don't know the term for it. Okay,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: it's just like open space, you know, it's like our universe,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and then a larger uh I'm not sure what it's called,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: but a larger area. And then there's more universes like trillions,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and you know, almost an infinite amount of like universes. Okay,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, all right, sees most people say the galaxies, right,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: someone said the Sun was the biggest thing in the universe. Um,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: you know they were probably weren't thinking very big, but Gussies,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I think most people think about right, like, there's nothing
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: bigger out there than a galaxy. Yeah, And you know,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to compare that to sort of
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: historical understandings of what people thought. Remember, like a hundred
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: years ago, people looked out into the sky and they
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: saw stars, like, okay, there are stars out there, just
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: like there's our star. And they thought for a time
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: that the universe was just a bunch of stars sprinkled
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: through the universe, um, that there was no organization. To them, right,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: that that was all there was. Basically, that the universe
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: was one big galaxy. So to them, a star was
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, a star, or
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: you could say a solar system, but that's really a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: small difference. So to them, a star was the biggest
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: thing in the universe. And then about a hundred years
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: ago they looked at some of those really faint smears
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: in the sky and discover that those aren't far away stars.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: They're actually far away galaxies right, whole other clusters of stars.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: And that has been a mind blowing moment because they
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: realized one that stars do form structure, right, they turned
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: into galaxies, and to that there are other ones right
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: in the universe has lots of galaxies in it, right,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that they're not a sort of spread out evenly in
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the universe. They cluster into things. Yeah, yeah, exactly, they
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: formed these big structures of galaxies. And so now people,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: most of the folks we talked to and maybe the
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: people out there listening, probably imagine that the universe is
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: just sprinkled evenly with galaxies. Right. It's the next logical
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: assumption that instead of just stars sprinkled everywhere, it's just
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: galaxy sprinkled everywhere. So I think that's probably what people think.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: They've heard of galaxies, they haven't heard of anything bigger,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: so they just assume the universe is evenly sprinkled with galaxies. Right. Well,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: let's think philosophically here for a second. Is a galaxy
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: a thing? You know, technically is just made up of stars?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: What makes something a thing? What makes something a thing? Yeah?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I think there must be a lot of philosophers who
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: debated this, right, what is thingness? You know, it's probably
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: a whole like um branch of philosophy about defining objects
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff, and they have seminars and
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: argue about it and smoke banana peels and stuff. Um.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: But from the physics point of view, I think we
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: can answer that and say that a thing is something
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that is gravitationally bound, so that it is essentially held
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: together by gravity. Right, it's something that holds together. I
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: was thinking, like that's a good definition of a thing,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: like you and I were made up of lillions and
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: trillions of molecules and atoms um and and and there's
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: they're sort of spread out a lot, like there's just
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of space between atoms, right, and nuclei of atoms,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: but generally were they were sort of held together into
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: this thing that that I call Rhan and for you
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the thing that you call Daniel. Okay, are you talking
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: about us individually or us as a pair, because that's
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: a different question. I'm definitely a thing. You're a thing?
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Are we a thing? Is that what you're asking? Are we? Daniel?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Are you? Are you asking me out? This? Is? Are
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: you doing this? On air? You you raised the question,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: you know, like, what's the thing? Are we a thing? So?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Here we are? You know Daniel lare Hey explore their
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: relationship live on the tape. Well, I mean, I like you, Daniel,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: but I would say that I'm a thing and you're
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: a thing A man. That's cold. That's just the way
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the universe operates. Though. If you don't have a strong bond,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: then you're not a thing. Right. Well, you know, I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: think we're just talking philosophically here, right, I think philosophically
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: would not philosophically or even scientifically, I think a thing
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: is something that holds itself together. And like, is a
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: solar system a thing? Right? Well, yeah, the Solar system
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: is a thing because the Earth doesn't want to have
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: a different path than the Sun. Right, It goes around
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the Sun. It moves together as a single object. It's
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: bound together gravitationally, just like maybe an electron, you know,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: sort of trapped going around a nuclei of an atom. Together,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: they make a thing, which is an atom. Yeah, exactly,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So you could say, like the Solar system is a thing,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: and so a galaxy that's made out of a whole
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: bunch of solar systems you could also call it a
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: thing because all of those galaxies, all of those solar systems,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: are being held together. M And also like you and
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the Earth are a thing, right because you're held down
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: to the Earth and together you form an object and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: you know you have the same fate as the Earth
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: gravitationally speaking, um, you move around the Sun together, right,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: So collectively we are all a thing with the Earth, right,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, I think that's a pretty good definition.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: So when we say a thing is like when we
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: ask a question, what's the biggest thing in the universe.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: We're kind of asking, like, what's the biggest structure or
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: what's the biggest thing that you can say is being
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: held together differently than other things in the universe. That's right,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the thing that has thingness that is also the biggest. Okay,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: so that's a good thing. We got that way. Um,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I think we've thinked about thinking enough. Yes, all right,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: let's get into the size of things, like the scale
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: of us and the Earth and the solar system. But
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right, we're talking
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: about the bigness of things and how what's the biggest
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: thing in the universe? And let's start. Let's start talking
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: about the size of things. Let's start here on Earth,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Like how big is earth? Daniel? You know, how big
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: are you? How big? I'm a I'm a big you
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: mean like like my largeness or larget no for scale?
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: You know, like, um, how many kilometers tall are you? Orhand?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Oh how many kilometers? Oh boy, I am about uh folks,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: you're hearing him, do math point? Oh oh one eight
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: kilometers tall? All right, that's not a lot of kilometers.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're a tall guy. It turns out,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: but that's actually not a lot of kilometers right in comparison,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: like the Earth, right is thousands of kilometers in width,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: it's about eight thousand miles in diameter. Yeah, that's right,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: which would make it about you know, like fourteen thousand
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: kilometers in diameter. So compared to the Earth, you're just
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: like mote, You're like irrelevant. Jude's like negligible, right, which
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: is incredible. Right, We're like a little speck of dust
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: next to next to the Earth, which makes me wonder sometimes,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: like what's the minimum size for a planet that could
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: hold life? Right? Is it necessary? Because you know that
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: book The Little Prince where the guy is this little
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: guy and he's like on a tiny asteroid, And I
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: love that because I think it would be really fun
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to be alive on a really small astronomical object where
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: you could like run laps around it or something, right
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: when you float off at some point of view, were
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: that much bigger, Yeah, your planet exactly. It's you need
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: enough gravity not just for you to stay bound to it,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: but also to like have an atmosphere if you're not.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: If your planet isn't big enough, it can't hold onto
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: gas on its surface, so you can't breathe. So there
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: really is some sort of minimum size for a planet
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: like Mars is probably too small, and you know, it
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: lost its atmosphere for life as we know it. I mean,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: there could potentially be something out there that can live
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: without an atmosphere, right, yeah, right, you can have an
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: asteroid which is alive inside of it, like the organization
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: of the flows of lava, you know, hot rock inside
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: some some object could be alive, certainly. But yeah, life
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: as we know you know that lives and breathes and
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: uses water, liquid water and stuff like that. Probably none
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: of those things evolved on a planet that we're much
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: smaller than Earth, right, So the Earth is pretty big.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: So then what's the next biggest thing in our Solar system? Well,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: if you want to scale up the planets, Jupiter is
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: about ten times the radius of the Earth, right, which
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: is huge And you might think only ten times, but
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: remember that volume goes as radius cubed, right, So if
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: you're ten times the radius, then you're you know, a
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: thousand times the volume, which means you could fit a
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: thousand earths inside Jupiter, which makes Earth like tiny. We're
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: one one thousands of the size of Jupiter. Yeah, we're
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: like a rounding error for Jupiter. Right, It's really it's
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: incredible how small we are compared to Jupiter, Like we
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: make a good mood to Jupiter. Exactly. I should look
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: that up. But there might even be moons of Jupiter
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that are comparable to the size of Earth. It's amazing.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: So this is where it's a math. So, um, I
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: calculated that the size of the Earth is, as you said,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: about four kilometers and radios. You just said it's four
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: kilometers and radio. Sorry, what's the factor of a thousand
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: between friends? Watch people Jorges doing math? That's right, don't
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: trust the cartoon is to do math. Four thousand miles sorry,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: four thousand miles. So, but but if the Earth was
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the size of a pinhead, like it was the size
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: of the pin the head in a pin, that means
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Jupiter would be about the size of a marble. Wow.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So if Earth really was a spec Jupiter would still
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: be pretty substantial. Yeah. And by that scale, the Sun,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: which is about four thousand miles in radios, would be
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: about the size of a cantaloup. Wow. I think it's
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: really pretty interesting that the Earth is one tenth the
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: radius of Jupiter, which is one tenth the radius of
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the Sun. Right right, It's like powers of ten right
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: all here in our solar system, each one dwarf the next,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you know, like that we are the size that the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Earth to Jupiter ratio is about the same as the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Jupiter sun ratio. Right. The Sun dwarfs Jupiter exactly the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: way Jupiter dwarfs us. Like if Jupiter was a bully
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: pushing us around the playground, and then the Sun just
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: like trots up, like hey, pick on someone your own size,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, like you could fit a thousand earth
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: inside of Jupiter, and you could fit a thousand jupiters
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: inside the Sun. Yeah. When do some math, that means
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you could fit a million earths inside the Sun, right Yeah,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Like we could plunge into the Sun and it wouldn't
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: even notice. It would be like a little like a
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: mosquito bite exactly exactly, like a millionth of you. Let's like,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: you know, every time you blow your nose, you lose
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: a millionth of your mass, right, so we're like we're
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: like a little bit of snot compared to the Sun. Right. Yeah, Okay,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: so then if we keep going, if the Earth is
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a pinhead, and jupiters are marble, and the sun is
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a cantaloupe. Okay, so the right scale would be, uh,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: if you if you hold the pin it in your hand,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the sun would be which is a cantalope. You would
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: have to put it about a hundred feet away. Yeah, yeah,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: because not only are these is the sound really big,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: but it's really far away, right, Yeah, Like imagine like
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: holding a pinhead than walking a hundred feet and sending
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: down a cantalope. That's how far the sun is. Yeah,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: all these things, these we think, these things we think
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: are huge, are dwarfed by just the sheer emptiness of space. Right,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Like take the Earth to Sun relationship, Like most of
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: that volume is just nothing, right, Yeah, it's incredible, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: it kind of shows you how powerful gravity is at
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: those skills, right, Like, we go around the Sun. That's
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: our life, that's how we exist, that's what makes our
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: existence possible. And yet it's like it's a pinted revolving
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: around a cantalope a hundred feet away. That's right. Well,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: we're glad we're not any closer, right, or we'd be
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a pretty toasty pad. Yeah, exactly, um. And then all
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: of this, of course, is just dwarfed by the galaxy. Right,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: if you look at the galaxy, you can't even find Sun.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: It's just a tiny thought. How big is the milk Way? Daniel?
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: The Milky Way is hard to even describe in these units. Right,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about miles, and the Earth is thousands
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: of miles and the Sun's radius is hundreds of thousands
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of miles. Right, the milky Way is fifty thou light
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: gears across. Right, it takes light fifty thousand years to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: cross the Milky Way. If you convert that to miles,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: it's three times ten to the seventeen miles, So three
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and then seventeen zeros. Right, Actually looked up the scientific
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: prefix for that, because I don't even know. And the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Milky Way is one third of an x a mile
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: X a mile x a mile. Isn't that pretty cool?
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Like a medical condition? I have X mile. I'm so
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: sorry to hear that. You should get that cream they
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: have for it. So I did the math on this
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: one too, Okay, So the Earth is a pinhead and
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: the Sun is a kind of a hunted feet away.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: The galaxy is the size of our Solar system. WHOA,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say, like a blue
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: whale or like some other like really delicious food or something.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: But the Solar system, that's pretty incredible. Yeah, yeah, it's
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: about Yeah, it would be about one point when eight
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: times since the winters. Yeah, that's how big the galaxy is.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: So imagine like a pinhead and a kind of loop
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: in our Solar system. That's how big the galaxy is,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and we are like a tiny thing on that pinhead. Yeah. So,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: as we were saying, it just gets dwarfed, right, And
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: some of you guys out there might be wondering, like, well,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: are these things typical, Like are the planets in our
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Solar system typically the size you find in planets there's
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: our sun normal is the milky way, like an average
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: kind of a galaxy. Um. So we did a big
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: digging bit of digging there and it turns out that
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the biggest planet that they found in any solar system
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: anywhere is about ten times the size of Jupiter. Right,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: So there's a planet out there there that's huge, that's
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: almost the size of the Sun. Almost the size of
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the Sun. Yeah. Um, so that's like a big planet.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: That's like a planet that's almost the Sun and of itself. Right,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: it's like literally a million times bigger than the earths
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: around in that order of magnitude when that has a
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: big honking planet, and stars also get really big. Um,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and stars change also in size in their lifetime, right,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Like our Sun is going to get bigger as it
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: gets older. It's gonna burn and then the outer layers
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: are going to get cooler and they're gonna expand. And
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: we did a whole episode on how the Sun is
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: going to die. Um. But there are stars out there
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: right now that are like a thousand or two thousand
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: times as big as our Sun. Yeah, it's huge. If
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: you had that in our solar system, it would like
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: enveloped Saturn, you know, like it would be no room
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: for for planet inter planets at all. Only be pretty crazy.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: So we will be inside the Sun, yeah exactly, We'll
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: be inside the Sun, and we will be in a
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: few billion years our Sun will also get huge and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: envelop the Earth. Right. Oh, great, stock up on that
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: fun block hand or rock gets to the other planets. Um.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: But there's one other thing that the galaxies are not
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: just stars with planets around them, right, there's other stuff
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: and there's the stuff that makes the stars. Right, there's
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: these huge clouds of gas and dust which are like
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the leftovers from blown up solar systems and blown up
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: stars that eventually coalesced to make these stellar nurseries where
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: new stars are formed. And those things are really big.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: How big are they? They can be like a thousand
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to two thousand light years across, right, So that's much
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: much bigger than any individual star. I mean, this is
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: where stars are born. Right, there's like fields of stars
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: being created in these things. But still they're small compared
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: to the Milky Way. Right, the Milky Way was like
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: fifty three thousand light years across. The biggest nebula or
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: gas cloud we've seen is like two thousand light years across.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: So so far the galaxy is the biggest thing. But
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: it's interesting to think that there are objects kind of
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: in the scale of things between our Sun and the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: milk Away Galaxy. I mean, there's bigger stars, bigger planets,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: and these clouds of gas that you meet that you
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: talked about, Yeah, And the wonderful thing about these clouds
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: is that they look like something that's dynamic, but it's
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: frozen in time, right, It's like, you know, if you
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: see a picture of a steam engine and these puffs
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: of clouds coming up from it, right, it's frozen in time,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: but you can tell that there's motion there, right, that
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: it's like in the middle of chugging and puffing and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: boiling and churning. Right, these clouds look the same way,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: and they are boiling and churning, but just on very
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: different time scales. You have to do like a crazy
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: time lapse, like watch it for a billion years to
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: see it roiling and toiling and bubbling and all that stuff.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: But it is, it's just that on our time scales,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: it hardly seems to be moving and and and in
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: that distance scale because it's a thousand light years across, yeah, exactly.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: So it's it really makes you feel insignificant, and it's
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: really impressive, like how dynamic the universe is. It's just
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: under a huge distance scales and huge time scales. Right.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: It's like if there was a whole civilization that was
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: birthed and then died in the middle of one puff
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of that steam engine, right, and it for it. The
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: steam cloud was frozen, right, it was hardly moving, you know. Um,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: And so that's the way we are with this tiny
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: dot suspended in the sunbeam around, surrounded by all this crazy,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: very slow action. Yeah, and there are stars being born
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: inside of that like popcorn. Yeah, exactly, exactly, new stars
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: still being born, exactly. Okay, let's let's um. Let's keep
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: going and see what the biggest thing in the universe is.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: But first let's take another break. All right, we're building
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: our way up to the biggest thing in the universe,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and so far we've got We've gone from the Earth
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: to the Solar System, to gas clouds to the Milky
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Way galaxy and so a lot of are the people
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: you talked to on the street thought that galaxies were
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the biggest things in the universe. But that's not actually true.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: That's right, and they're pretty big, right, And our galaxy
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: is we said, fifty light years across, and some galaxies
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: get pretty big to get up to like millions of
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: light years across, right, Aliens, Galaxies can come all different sizes. Yeah,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: it would take you millions of years, going at the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: speed of light just to go from one side of
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: that galaxy to the next. Yeah. So if you like
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: forgot your lunch at home and you work on the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: other side of the galaxy. You like, forget it, man,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: that's a ten million um a year round trip. Forget it.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: That's right. The commune is terrible and that's you know,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and that's when there's no traffic. When there's traffic, forget
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: about it, man. Yeah. Um. But so a lot of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: people thought that galaxies are just sprinkled everywhere through the universe.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: But you know, galaxies have been around for while, and
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: so what's going to happen when you have stuff hanging
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: out for a while is that gravity is going to
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: start to pull it together. Right. It's not some perfectly
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: smooth there's slight differences and there's a little bit more
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: mass here, a little bit more mass there, and so
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: over billions of years, galaxy will start to pull stuff together.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened. They started to kind of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: self organize, yeah, or as you would say, form a thing. Right.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And so the next level up from galaxies that we
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: found that galaxies are organized into these things we're not
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: very cleverly called clusters, right, So galaxy clusters like nut clusters,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: like yeah, I think, um, I think again, you should
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: have had a snack before we had this, before we
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: recorded this episode. A galaxy, a galaxy cluster usually contains
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: about fifty galaxies and it's like five or ten million
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: light years across, and they can remember a galaxy itself
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: is like, you know, fifty or a hundred thousand light
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: years across. So this is much bigger than one. Galaxies
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: has fifty galaxies which are themselves pretty far apart. But
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: they are organized, right, They're not just like it's not
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: an arbitrary assignment. They're they're orbiting each other. It's like
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: a separate group of galaxies that interacting and kind of
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: holding together, separate from other groups of galaxies. That's right.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: They're all orbiting the center of mass of this cluster, right,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the same way everything the Solar System is organized is
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: orbiting the center of mass or the Solar system, which
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: happens to be the Sun, and everything in the galaxy
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: is orbiting the center of the galaxy. Everything in this
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: cluster of galaxies is orbiting the center, which doesn't necessarily
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: have anything in it at this point, right. So that's
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a that's the next biggest thing or is a cluster
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of galaxy. It's like a structure. It's like a like
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: if you zoom out far enough, it would look like
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: a thing would look like a yeah, exactly, like a
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: blob exactly. And they're separated from other clusters. Right. The
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: distances between things and the cluster is small compared to
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the distances between the clusters. The same way the distances
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: between the planet's a small compared to the distances between
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: solar systems. Right, it's like chocolate chips floating in a
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: cookie dough. Tasty. This is a tasty galaxy reliving in um.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: And then you keep going and the clusters themselves are
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: organized into basically clusters of clusters. Okay, so the cluster
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: is not the biggest thing. So okay, So if galaxies
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: have been sprinkled out evenly, you would say galaxies are
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the biggest thing in the universe. But they're not. They're
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: organized the clusters. And if those clusters have been spread
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: out evenly, you would say that the cluster is the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: biggest thing in the universe. But there there's another structor
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: above clusters, that's right. And you know, this is just
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: things that people discovered as they looked out into the universe,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and they did sort of the three D mapping, Right,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: they're trying to understand like where is stuff around us?
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: And how is it organized? And as we get better
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and better at measuring distance scales and better telescopes, we
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: can see further out. We can build this sort of
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: three D map around us. And then we noticed these
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: these patterns. We noticed that things aren't just distributed, and
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: so the clusters themselves are organized into clusters of clusters,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: which we call superclusters. And I feel like these objects
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: got like kind of a bad rap, you know, because
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: cluster is not a very creative name. I mean, the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: galaxy is not just called like a star cluster, right,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: It's got its own cool name galaxy. Right, But nobody
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: named nobody named the cluster of galaxies other than cluster
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: of galaxies, And and somebody named it's superior, a supercluster,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: which means the cluster is like not super. It's like
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: saying this is Daniel is super Daniels. Imagine how I'm
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: not super. I think you're saying I'm not super. I'm
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: getting a lot of objection super Daniel. Daniel, there's another Daniel.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I gotta go find the sub Daniel and make me
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: feel small exactly the under Daniel. What I need really
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: is a cluster of Daniels. You know that would be
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: pretty awesome. What is the biggest daniel in the universe?
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: That's really the cluster today's podcast. Well, let's come up
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: with the name. Let's you and I Christen clusters of galaxies.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. Okay, Well, you're the creative one, go ahead. UM,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, banana of galaxies, banaxisnaxies, it's a
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: banaxis of galaxies. That's baxis of galaxies. That that really
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: rolls off the tongue. That's beautiful. And some multi some
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: alternate version of the multiversity. Were definitely a poet. Well,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: I'm technically the first person, and if there any scientists
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: out there, you technically have to quote me. Now, when
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: you refer to these, you should, um, you shouldn't just
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: reach for the snack that's on your table. You should
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: go deeper. You should think about, like, you know, Greek
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: mythology or some sort of you know, historical event or
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: something to motivate you're like, I think they had bananas
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: in Greece. Come on, how about the union. Let's give
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: it a political name, or let's call them the Union
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of Galaxies. They're organized there, you go stand together speak
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: as well and orbit together. Yes we can. So the
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: galaxies form clusters, and the clusters form superclusters. What does
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: that mean? So they're like, well, the same way that
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you know, stars organized into a galaxy and galaxies organized
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: into a cluster. Galaxy clusters themselves. You just think of
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: each of those is like a little dot. Then about
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: you know, a hundred of those together, which spans about
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a hundred million light years across, form what we call
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: a supercluster. Oh my god, it's giving me a head
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: of to think about these scales. So um, So this
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: is a cluster of clusters of galaxies which have billions
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of stars, and each star has planets, and each planet
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: has little might have little people like us exactly. Um.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And so these superclusters, I mean they're enormous. It's hard
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to even really think about these distances. You know, a
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: hundred million light years you mean superbanaxes, reunions, the exactly.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: And so that's pretty incredible. And people will figure that out.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: They thought, wow, that's pretty big stuff. You know. So
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: you said there are a hundred million light years across, Yeah,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: there are a hundred million light years across. Um. And
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: so then people started to look to see like, well,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: are those organized in some way? Are those the biggest
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: things in the universe? Yeah? Are those the biggest thing
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: in the universe. And so that's when people that's when
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the real shock arrived, because they started it started to
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: sort of look like they were just sprinkled evenly. But
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: then they noticed that in one direction it went on,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: superclusters just sort of went on for a long way.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: In another direction they stopped, and you know, they're sort
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: of building this three D one three D picture around us,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: and it turns out that we were in sort of
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: a thick sheet, like there's like a great wall of
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: superclusters as far as we can see, Like we are
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: one supercluster sprinkled with a bunch of other superclusters, but
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: it's not as thick as it is wide. It's organizing
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: to like a sheet, like a table, Yeah, like a sheet.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: And then people start to look like, well, what's in
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: that spot? Where there when the superclusters run out? Right?
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: So they built the map further and further and further,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and then they discovered, oh, it's not a sheet of superclusters.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: It's more like a bubble, right, And so the superclusters
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: are organized into these like massive bubbles that surround these
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: huge voids in which there's nothing. So like the superclusters
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: of clusters of galaxies form a bubble like they're on
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the surface of a bubble. Yeah, and you know, it's
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: not like very regular bubbles. It's more like there are
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: these filaments and sheets and empty spaces. They're not like
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: the bubbles are spherical or anything, but there's it's like, um,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: if you zoom out far enough, it's like a froth, right,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: It's like and and each um, it's like a froth
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: of these little bubbles and each bubble the surface of
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: that bubble, like the thin skin of that bubble is
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of superclusters of galaxies. Oh my god,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy. And so we live on the on
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the edge of some little bubble. And in that void,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was voids or billions of light years
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: across with nothing in them. Nothing nothing, I mean empty space,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: which of course is never really empty. Um. And you know,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: maybe like one rock got kicked out of a cluster
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: one day and wandered into those that voids, but essentially
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: nothing and those um bubbles are about billions of light
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: years across. There are billions of light years across exactly,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and that's pretty incredible. And then you know that's it. Wait,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: so that's that's the biggest thing in the universe. The
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: bubble of superclusters, of clusters, of galaxies, of stars, of planets,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: of people exactly. And if you zoom out far enough
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: as far as we know, then it just looks smooth.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: There's no more organization. Uh, it's just more bubbles. Yeah.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: The bubbles are just sprinkled evenly. It's not like they're
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the bubbles form circles or form sheets or form groups
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: or anything like that that we think that they are
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: just organized. Um, they're just sprinkled there. The universe is frothy, yeah,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: and it really is frothy. And the thing I like
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: thinking about the most is where that froth came from, right, Like,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: And it's really it's connected to the first few moments
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: of the universe. For those of you who remember, like
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: talking about the Big Bang and the cosmic microwave background.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: We've looked back in time also and we've seen the
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: early few a few moments of the universe, and what
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: we see there are is froth. Right, It's like quantum
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: randomness which generated the initial seeds for all the structure
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: of the universe. That this structure we're talking about, so
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: little random fluctuations in the early universe lead directly to
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: these huge structures that we're seeing. Now, Why do we
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: have a bubble here? Not there? Because there's some random
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: quantum particle fluctuation fourteen billion years ago at the Big
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Bang in a space in a really small space, Yeah, exactly,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and then it got stretched out by inflation and became
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the seed of structure in the universe. And that's the
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: structure we're talking about. So that these bubble sort of
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: you might say, kind of came first, right, like the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: universe biggest thing in the universe was has always been
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: a bubble. Well, you know, they were there were those
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: sort of quantum froth. I don't know if you could
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: really call those bubbles. They're just like areas where there's
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: more density and less density. But I just want to
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: make the connection and have people understand it that the
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: structure and that we see in the universe today was
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: determined in some sense by that quantum froth that happened
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: in the early universe. It just scaled up and scaled
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: up and scaled up, and that's what gives us the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: biggest things in the universe. Yeah, exactly, superbnax is bubbles, exactly.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: And the fascinating thing is thinking about why there isn't
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: any bigger structure, Like why don't those bubbles form structure?
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I said earlier, like anytime you've got stuff hanging out,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: gravity is going to start to organize you, right, And
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: that's true, but it also it takes a while. Gravity
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: is not very strong. Remember, it's the weakest force by
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: orders of magnitude, and so even though it's the dominant
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: thing in the universe on these scales and these timelines,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: it's not very powerful. So it takes a long time,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: takes billions of years to form this structure. The way,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: do we know for sure that these bubbles and this
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: froth of super duper clusters, that's that's it, that's the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: biggest thing at the universe. We're pretty sure there's nothing bigger.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: We're pretty sure we know nothing for sure, But we've
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: been building this map, this three D map of the universe,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: and that's all we see. Yeah, and it could be
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: that we haven't, you know, just seen far enough. But
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: we've seen pretty far and it just looks like these
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: bubbles and filaments and strands and sheets. You know, it's
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: these superclusters in form these surfaces. But that's about it.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: You know, there's no organization to those bubbles or sheets
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: as far as we know. And I think the reason
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: is that there just hasn't been enough time. Right. The
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: universe is old and it's but it's done a lot
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: in those fourteen billion years. I mean, that's a lot
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: of galaxies to make on a lot of superclusters to organize,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of bubbles and filaments, rights, but
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of bananas. Yeah. And you know, earlier in
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: the universe there was less structure, right, um, and so
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: these structures have formed gradually over time. You know, in
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: the first billion years after the Big Bang, we didn't
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: have any galaxies, right, and so it takes a while
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: for these structures to form. So it might be that
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: you win another fifty billion years and then you make
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: something else, something new is crowned, is the biggest thing
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: in the universe, and then we call a new hooree
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: to give it a silly name after some fruit, you like,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: a bigger one, bigger, bigger, I mean, like in the
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: future billions of years from now, maybe these bubbles will
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: form into something like a mega bubble or a giant
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: smiley phace. Who knows it might be. On the other hand,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: we've also talked a few times about dark energy. That's
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: this mysterious force that's pushing everything apart, right, that's creating
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: new space between galaxies. So that's making that actually harder
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: to make new structure, because spreading everything out is ripping
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: everything apart. Exactly, it's ripping everything apart. So it might
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: just be that we are living in the moment when
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: we will have the biggest structures ever in the universe,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: that this is like a tipping point in it. After this,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: things just get shredded and this is like the biggest
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: we ever got. Like in the in the future, everything
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: will just be spread out evenly with no discernible structure. Yeah,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: it could be right, And that's always weird. When you
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: come to the realization that you're living in a special moment.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: It makes you skeptical. You're like, well, that's sort of
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, how could that be. We just we luck
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: a coincidence, Yeah, exactly, seems like a coincidence. And in
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: science we don't like coincidences. I mean, they happen, but
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: every time there's a coincidence, it's an opportunity to ask
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: why and to maybe get a revealing answer. So, you know,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of speculation and a lot we don't know.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: It's like every generation thinks that they live in the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: peak of their culture. Every generation thinks they have the
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: best music every exactly just down just downhill from the
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: kids today. Man, they don't know what good music is.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: That's kind of what you're saying. They don't know what
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: a supercluster is exactly. That's kind of what you're saying.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Is that, well, you're saying we live in peak universal structure,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: like things are just kind might be just downhill from here,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and this is the most structure will see ever, Like
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: these big things in the universe might at some point
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: kind of get ripped apart and dissolve. Yeah, and I
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: want to emphasize again this is a lot of this
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: is speculation because we don't know what the future of
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: dark energy is, right, and there could be other things
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: we don't know about how the universe is organized. We're
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: still really babies when it comes to understanding this stuff.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: But that certainly could be we don't see any bigger structure,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: and we have reason to think that dark energy is
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: gonna in That dark energy really could prevent more structure
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: from being formed. It could even shred the structures we have.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we could be living at peak structure. Right. Wow,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So be glad that you're alive right now and you
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: could look out into the stars and see the biggest
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: thing in the universe. Well, that's the answer to the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: question we set out to talk about, which is the
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: what is the biggest thing in the universe? And right
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: now the biggest thing in the universe are these bubbles
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: of superclusters of galaxies. Yeah, and it also might be
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the biggest thing ever in the universe in the infinity
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: of time. They might the basics exactly in the history
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: of the universe. In this infinitely long podcast. All right,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: so I think we answered the question. Um. I hope
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: we took you on a fun mental trip from mind
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: blowing the small to mind blowing the huge and made
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you realize where you are in our cosmic neighborhood. We
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: hope you had a very large time thinking about these
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: huge scales and Jorges over there doing some math to
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: figure out how what fruit associates with the cluster of superclusters?
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: How big would that banana have to be inside of
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: all if you added up all the bananas you're beating
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: over your life, how big would that banana be worn it?
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: It would be a galaxy of potassium. Probably probably all right, everyone,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: thank you for listening to this biggest podcast ever. See
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: you next time. If you still have a question after
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Jorge dot com.