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Do Electrons Ever Break the Rules? Inside the VIP-2 Experiment · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the quark Side. Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
0:05
Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
0:11
Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
0:16
Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
0:27
Speaker 2: All right, before we get started, I want you to
0:29
Speaker 2: try something for me.
0:30
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, a little audience participation. I'm in right now
0:34
Speaker 3: wherever you are, just I don't know, reach out and
0:37
Speaker 3: touch the table in front of you, or grab the
0:39
Speaker 3: arm of your chair.
0:40
Speaker 2: Okay, I am tapping the desk right now. It's solid,
0:43
Speaker 2: cool to the touch, definitely real.
0:45
Speaker 3: Exactly, it feels solid. Your hand stops, You don't fall
0:49
Speaker 3: through your floor, your coffee cup doesn't just phase through
0:52
Speaker 3: the table like some kind of ghost.
0:54
Speaker 2: Right. We take this for granted.
0:56
Speaker 3: We take it for granted every single second of our lives.
0:59
Speaker 3: It is the basic fundamental fact of our existence. Things
1:03
Speaker 3: are solid. But here's the question that, and I'm not kidding,
1:07
Speaker 3: keeps me up at night.
1:08
Speaker 2: Why why is the world solid? It sounds like a
1:11
Speaker 2: question of five year old would ask, doesn't it?
1:13
Speaker 3: But why it does? And it's a great question. But
1:16
Speaker 3: the more you know about physics, the right the weirder
1:19
Speaker 3: that question gets because we know if we zoom in,
1:22
Speaker 3: and I mean way way in, that desk isn't a
1:25
Speaker 3: solid block of anything, not at all.
1:27
Speaker 2: It's mostly empty space, a cloud.
1:28
Speaker 3: Of atoms, and those atoms are what ninety nine point
1:31
Speaker 3: nine percent emptiness? Oh more than that, it's more like
1:34
Speaker 3: ninety nine point nine nine ninety nine percent. If you
1:37
Speaker 3: imagine an atom is the size of a huge football stadium. Okay,
1:41
Speaker 3: the nucleus would be like a marble sitting on the
1:44
Speaker 3: fifty yard line, and the electrons would be these tiny
1:47
Speaker 3: little gnats buzzing around in the absolute nosebleed seats and
1:51
Speaker 3: everything in between void nothing right. So logically, if matter
1:56
Speaker 3: is almost entirely empty space, why doesn't the entire universe
2:00
Speaker 3: just I don't know, collapse into a single microscopic point.
2:04
Speaker 3: Why doesn't my hand just pass straight through this table
2:07
Speaker 3: like smoke through a screen door.
2:09
Speaker 2: Why can we touch things?
2:10
Speaker 3: Yes? Why?
2:11
Speaker 2: It is a profound question, And the answer isn't just
2:14
Speaker 2: because matter is hard. The answer is actually a rule,
2:17
Speaker 2: a very specific, very strict rule written into the operating
2:20
Speaker 2: code of the universe.
2:21
Speaker 3: The rule that if it were broken, even just a tiny, tiny,
2:24
Speaker 3: bit would mean that chemistry, life, stars, basically everything we
2:30
Speaker 3: know and are would instantly cease to exist.
2:32
Speaker 2: You're talking about the poly exclusion principle, the absolute hero
2:36
Speaker 2: of today's deep dive. We are talking about the very
2:39
Speaker 2: bedrock of reality. But here's where it gets really interesting
2:42
Speaker 2: and honestly a little bit nerve wracking.
2:44
Speaker 3: Go on.
2:45
Speaker 2: We assume this rule is perfect, we assume it's absolute.
2:48
Speaker 2: But what if it isn't? What if there's a loophole?
2:51
Speaker 3: Ah? That is the question, and that is the question
2:54
Speaker 3: that sent a team of physicists deep deep underground in
2:58
Speaker 3: Italy to try and catch the universe cheating at its
3:01
Speaker 3: own game.
3:02
Speaker 2: And that's what we're digging into today. We are looking
3:04
Speaker 2: at a report from fizzdot org dated February five, twenty
3:07
Speaker 2: twenty six, which covers this massive, high stakes study. It
3:11
Speaker 2: was published in Scientific Reports a few months prior, back
3:14
Speaker 2: in November twenty twenty five.
3:15
Speaker 3: It's all about the VIP two experiment.
3:17
Speaker 2: The IP two. This is the absolute cutting edge of
3:20
Speaker 2: foundational physics, it really is. And their mission was simple,
3:23
Speaker 2: but I mean incredibly audacious. Break the poly exclusion principle,
3:28
Speaker 2: find a crack in the foundation, and what.
3:30
Speaker 3: They found, or maybe what they didn't find tells us
3:33
Speaker 3: something just incredible about the nature of our reality.
3:36
Speaker 2: It's a story about copper, new electrons and a number
3:39
Speaker 2: so vanishingly small it's hard to even visualize.
3:42
Speaker 3: So we're going underground.
3:43
Speaker 2: So let's unpack this. We're going to Grand Sasa, We're
3:46
Speaker 2: going to the quantum realm, and we're going to find
3:48
Speaker 2: out why you're not currently sinking through your chair.
3:51
Speaker 3: Sounds like a plan.
3:52
Speaker 2: I'm ready, okay, So let's start with the cornerstone, the
3:54
Speaker 2: rule itself, the poly exclusion principle. Sounds very bureaucratic, doesn't it.
4:02
Speaker 2: The exclusion principle like a velvet rope at some exclusive club.
4:05
Speaker 3: That is actually a surprisingly accurate analogy. The principle was
4:10
Speaker 3: formulated by Wolfgang Polly, an Austrian Swiss physicist, way back
4:14
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty five.
4:16
Speaker 2: Set the scene for us. Nineteen twenty five, what's happening
4:18
Speaker 2: in physics?
4:19
Speaker 3: Oh, it was the golden age of quantum mechanics. You
4:21
Speaker 3: have to understand at this time physicists were in a
4:24
Speaker 3: state of equal parts panic and excitement.
4:27
Speaker 2: A good stit to be in for discovery.
4:28
Speaker 3: The best, the old comfortable rules of Isaac Newton, where
4:32
Speaker 3: things moved in predictable lines like clockwork. They were just
4:35
Speaker 3: falling apart. When they looked at Adams, electrons weren't behaving
4:39
Speaker 3: like little planets orbiting a sun right the old Boar
4:41
Speaker 3: model exactly. They were jumping around, disappearing and reappearing. It
4:45
Speaker 3: was just chaos. Nobody could make sense of the data
4:48
Speaker 3: they were seeing from spectroscopy.
4:49
Speaker 2: And Polly comes along and acts as the sheriff, lays
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Speaker 2: down the law.
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Speaker 3: He essentially does. Polly was known for being incredibly critical,
4:57
Speaker 3: just famously sharp. People called him the conscience of physics.
5:01
Speaker 2: The conscience of physics. I love that.
5:03
Speaker 3: Yeah. If he thought a theory was sloppy or poorly
5:05
Speaker 3: thought out, he wouldn't just say it was wrong. He
5:08
Speaker 3: had this famous brutal put down. He'd say, that isn't
5:11
Speaker 3: even wrong.
5:11
Speaker 2: Ouch, that's colder than saying it's wrong.
5:14
Speaker 3: It meant it was so incoherent it wasn't even worth discussing.
5:17
Speaker 3: He demanded precision, and in nineteen twenty five he proposed
5:21
Speaker 3: this principle to finally explain the structure of atoms. Why
5:25
Speaker 3: electrons arraigned themselves the way they did.
5:28
Speaker 2: So what does the law actually say in simple terms?
5:31
Speaker 3: Oh, understand it. We first have to understand that in
5:33
Speaker 3: the quantum world, particles are divided into two main tribes.
5:37
Speaker 3: You're the bosons and you have the fermions.
5:40
Speaker 2: Okay, tribes, I like that. What's the difference.
5:42
Speaker 3: Bosons are the party.
5:43
Speaker 2: Animals, the social butterflies.
5:45
Speaker 3: Totally. These are particles like photons, you know, light particles.
5:49
Speaker 3: The defining characteristic of a boson is that it loves company.
5:54
Speaker 3: You can pile as many bosons as you want into
5:57
Speaker 3: the exact same quantum state.
5:59
Speaker 2: Give visual for that.
6:01
Speaker 3: Think of a laser beam. In a laser you have
6:03
Speaker 3: trillions upon trillions of photons, all marching in perfect lockstep.
6:08
Speaker 3: They overlap, They occupy the same space at the same time,
6:11
Speaker 3: with the same energy, same direction. They are perfectly happy
6:14
Speaker 3: to stack right on top of each other.
6:16
Speaker 2: They don't mind crowds.
6:17
Speaker 3: They love crowds. They are, in a word.
6:20
Speaker 2: Social, right, They stack like, I don't know, like thoughts.
6:23
Speaker 2: You can have a million thoughts in your head at once.
6:24
Speaker 3: That's a poetic way to put it. Sure, they are
6:26
Speaker 3: permeable to each other. But then then you have the
6:29
Speaker 3: fermions and electrons, which are the stars of our story
6:33
Speaker 3: today are fermions.
6:34
Speaker 2: And let me guess fermions are not party animals.
6:37
Speaker 3: They are antisocial, deeply, deeply antisocial. The poly exclusion principle
6:41
Speaker 3: basically says no two identical fermions can occupy the same
6:45
Speaker 3: quantum state at the same time period.
6:48
Speaker 2: This seat is taken precisely.
6:50
Speaker 3: It's the ultimate one per customer rule. If an electron
6:55
Speaker 3: is in a certain energy state, you can think of
6:58
Speaker 3: it like a designated parking spot in a garag. No
7:01
Speaker 3: other electron in that atom can park there. It is
7:03
Speaker 3: strictly forbidden.
7:04
Speaker 2: Now, when you say parking spot or quantum state, we're
7:07
Speaker 2: talking about more than just location, right, It's a bit
7:09
Speaker 2: more specific than.
7:10
Speaker 3: That, right, Yeah, good point. In quantum mechanics, a state
7:14
Speaker 3: is defined by a set of numbers. We call them
7:16
Speaker 3: quantum numbers. It's like a unique address. You have the
7:19
Speaker 3: energy level, the angular momentum, the magnetic moment and critically
7:23
Speaker 3: the spin spin up or spin down exactly. So Pauli's
7:27
Speaker 3: rule says you cannot have two electrons in the same
7:29
Speaker 3: atom with the exact same list of numbers. You could
7:31
Speaker 3: have two in the same energy level, but one must
7:34
Speaker 3: be spin up and the other must be spinned down.
7:36
Speaker 3: Once both those spots are taken, that level is full.
7:39
Speaker 2: So if I'm an electron and I want to join
7:41
Speaker 2: an atom, I'm naturally drawn to the lowest energy spot,
7:44
Speaker 2: the best parking spot, right near the interest.
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Speaker 3: That's where you want to go, less energy expended.
7:48
Speaker 2: But if there's already an electron there with spin up
7:51
Speaker 2: and another with spin down, that level is completely full.
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Speaker 3: You cannot enter. You are physically barred from that state.
8:00
Speaker 3: To or says no, you have to go to the
8:02
Speaker 3: next level up, and if that's full, the next one
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Speaker 3: and the next one after that.
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Speaker 2: This sounds like a real hassle for the electrons.
8:08
Speaker 3: It is. They want to be in the lowest energy
8:11
Speaker 3: state possible. They want to relax down in the basement,
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Speaker 3: but the exclusion principle forces them to stack up one
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Speaker 3: by one into these layers or shells around the.
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Speaker 2: Nucleus, and the stacking, this fourcelayering. This is the key
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Speaker 2: to everything, isn't it.
8:27
Speaker 3: It is the key to the entire universes. We know
8:29
Speaker 3: it because if they could all just crash down into
8:32
Speaker 3: that bottom level, if they could all pile up.
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Speaker 2: Like bosons, what had happened, what would an atom look like.
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Speaker 3: You wouldn't have chemistry at all. Think about the periodic table.
8:39
Speaker 3: The entire reason carbon behaves differently than oxygen, which behaves
8:43
Speaker 3: differently from iron, is entirely because they have different numbers
8:47
Speaker 3: of electrons arranged in different shells. Because of this exclusion rule.
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Speaker 2: Ah.
8:50
Speaker 3: Of course, carbon has four electrons in its outer shell,
8:53
Speaker 3: so it wants to form four bonds. It's the basis
8:56
Speaker 3: of all organic life. Oxygen has six in its outer shell,
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Speaker 3: so it behaves in a completely different way. If they
9:03
Speaker 3: all just piled into the basement, every atom would just
9:06
Speaker 3: be a slightly heavier, slightly more negative version of hydrogen.
9:10
Speaker 3: They'd all behave roughly the same.
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Speaker 2: So there'd be no complex bonds, no molecules.
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Speaker 3: No DNA, no proteins, no water, no life. You and
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Speaker 3: I would not be having this conversation. Chemistry is basically
9:23
Speaker 3: just the consequence of electrons dealing with the lack of
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Speaker 3: parking spaces.
9:27
Speaker 2: That is a fantastic way to think about it. Chemistry
9:29
Speaker 2: is the result of overcrowding.
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Speaker 3: It is, and it goes beyond just chemistry. This rule
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Speaker 3: is what creates the rigidity of matter. Thus solidity.
9:36
Speaker 2: Tay back to the table I'm touching right.
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Speaker 3: Now, exactly when you press your hand against the table.
9:41
Speaker 3: What's actually happening. The electrons in the atoms of your
9:44
Speaker 3: hand are pushing against the electrons in the atoms of
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Speaker 3: the table. They literally cannot occupy the same space.
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Speaker 2: So the feeling of solid.
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Speaker 3: That resistance, you feel, that solidness isn't the physical matter
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Speaker 3: of your hand touching the physical matter of the table.
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Speaker 3: That's not what's ha happening.
10:00
Speaker 2: What is it?
10:01
Speaker 3: Then? It is the poly exclusion principle in action. It
10:04
Speaker 3: is a quantum force. We call it a degeneracy pressure
10:07
Speaker 3: that is screaming back off. This space is taken at
10:11
Speaker 3: an atomic level.
10:12
Speaker 2: That is wild. I'm not feeling wood, I'm feeling a
10:15
Speaker 2: quantum law.
10:17
Speaker 3: You are feeling the fundamental architecture of the universe refusing
10:20
Speaker 3: to collapse on itself.
10:22
Speaker 2: And this scales up, doesn't it. I mean, this isn't
10:24
Speaker 2: just for desks. The source material mentions stars.
10:26
Speaker 3: Oh, it scales up in a huge way. Look at
10:28
Speaker 3: white dwarf stars. These are the dead, collapsed cores of
10:32
Speaker 3: stars like our sun. They are incredibly dense. We're talking
10:36
Speaker 3: about the mass of the Sun packed into a sphere
10:38
Speaker 3: the size of the Earth.
10:39
Speaker 2: And gravity is trying to crush them even further into
10:41
Speaker 2: a single point.
10:42
Speaker 3: Yes, gravity is relentless, it's pulling everything inward. But the
10:46
Speaker 3: star stops collapsing at that certain size. Why because the
10:49
Speaker 3: electrons inside are packed so incredibly tight that the exclusion
10:53
Speaker 3: principle kicks in. On a macroscopic scale, the parking garage
10:56
Speaker 3: is full. The parking garage is full on a stack.
11:00
Speaker 3: The electrons are screaming. We cannot get any closer. That
11:04
Speaker 3: outward pressure, that absolute refusal to occupy the same state
11:08
Speaker 3: holds the entire star up against the crushing weight of
11:11
Speaker 3: its own gravity.
11:12
Speaker 2: So from the table in my kitchen to a dead
11:14
Speaker 2: star in deep space, this one simple rule is the
11:18
Speaker 2: structural engineer keeping everything from imploding.
11:21
Speaker 3: It is the load bearing wall of the universe. Without it,
11:24
Speaker 3: the universe would be a soup, a very small, very hot,
11:27
Speaker 3: very dense soup.
11:28
Speaker 2: Which makes the source material for this deep dive so
11:32
Speaker 2: well terrifying. Because we have this quote from Catalina Curciano,
11:36
Speaker 2: a physicist from the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics
11:39
Speaker 2: the i NFN. She's the spokesperson for this VIP two experiment.
11:44
Speaker 3: Yes, I remember this quote. It's a very stark warning.
11:46
Speaker 2: She said. Quote. If the poly exclusion principle were violated,
11:50
Speaker 2: even at an extremely small level, the consequences would cascade
11:53
Speaker 2: from atomic physics all the way to astrophysics.
11:56
Speaker 3: It's a domino effect. If the rule is even slightly squishy,
12:00
Speaker 3: if an electron can just occasionally sneak into an occupied seat,
12:03
Speaker 3: then all of matter as we know it is fundamentally unstable.
12:06
Speaker 2: The domino's fault, all.
12:07
Speaker 3: Of them all at once.
12:08
Speaker 2: So naturally, knowing that the fate of the entire universe
12:11
Speaker 2: rests on this one single rule, scientists decided, Hey, let's
12:16
Speaker 2: try to break it.
12:17
Speaker 3: Well, that is the scientific way, isn't it. You don't trust,
12:19
Speaker 3: you verify, And the most rigorous way to verify something
12:23
Speaker 3: is to try your absolute hardest to destroy it.
12:26
Speaker 2: But seriously, let's play Devil's advocate for a minute. If
12:29
Speaker 2: this rule is so perfect, if it's the only thing
12:31
Speaker 2: keeping us solid and stable, why are we spending millions
12:35
Speaker 2: of dollars in years of time trying to prove it wrong.
12:38
Speaker 2: Why poke the bear?
12:39
Speaker 3: It's the itch, It's the fundamental scientific itch. We have
12:42
Speaker 3: this incredibly successful theory called the Standard Model of particle physics, right.
12:46
Speaker 2: Our best description of well, almost everything exactly.
12:50
Speaker 3: It predicts the behavior of particles with just insane accuracy.
12:54
Speaker 3: It is the most successful scientific theory in human history,
12:57
Speaker 3: and built into its very foundation is the assumption that
13:01
Speaker 3: the poly exclusion principle is exact perfect, zero exception.
13:05
Speaker 2: There's always a butt.
13:06
Speaker 3: But we know the Standard Model isn't the final word.
13:09
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, but it's flawed. It has holes. It doesn't
13:13
Speaker 3: explain everything we see in the universe.
13:15
Speaker 2: Like what what are the big holes?
13:16
Speaker 3: Well, it has nothing to say about dark matter, which
13:20
Speaker 3: we think makes up about twenty five percent of the universe.
13:22
Speaker 3: It has no explanation for dark energy, which is causing
13:26
Speaker 3: the expansion of the universe to accelerate. And the biggest
13:29
Speaker 3: one of all, it doesn't include gravity.
13:33
Speaker 2: It's like having a perfect map of the world that's
13:35
Speaker 2: missing an entire continent exactly.
13:38
Speaker 3: We know there is new physics out there, but deeper theory,
13:41
Speaker 3: we just don't know where to find it. So physicists
13:43
Speaker 3: are like detectives looking for cracks in the Standard Model.
13:47
Speaker 3: They're looking for any place where the rules bend, even
13:50
Speaker 3: just a little bit, and.
13:50
Speaker 2: That's what they mean by exotic physics, right, And what was.
13:53
Speaker 3: The most fundamental place is to look for a crack
13:56
Speaker 3: is right at the foundation? What if the exclusion principle
14:00
Speaker 3: isn't a hard absolute no, but more of a mostly no,
14:05
Speaker 3: like a no.
14:05
Speaker 2: But maybe if you're really really quick and nobody is looking,
14:08
Speaker 2: sort of rule exactly.
14:09
Speaker 3: And there are actual theoretical models. These are speculative, but
14:13
Speaker 3: they're out there, things called Quan models that play with
14:16
Speaker 3: this idea quon as in q yes. In standard physics,
14:21
Speaker 3: a particle is either a fermion, which is antisocial, or
14:24
Speaker 3: a boson, which is social. It's binary, it's one or
14:27
Speaker 3: the other, flagger white. But Quan models speculate what if
14:31
Speaker 3: there's a spectrum. What if a particle could be, say,
14:34
Speaker 3: ninety nine point nine percent fermion, but have a tiny
14:39
Speaker 3: tiny bit of boson character mixed in.
14:41
Speaker 2: It could occasionally cheat the system.
14:42
Speaker 3: It could occasionally cheat. It creates a loophole, a slight violation,
14:46
Speaker 3: and if that happens, even incredibly rarely, it would be
14:49
Speaker 3: a huge clue to a deeper level of reality. Atels
14:53
Speaker 3: that are neat categories of fermion and boson are just
14:56
Speaker 3: approximations of something much more complex and interesting.
14:59
Speaker 2: And the source. It also mentions another possibility this could
15:01
Speaker 2: point to, which is the structure of the electron itself.
15:04
Speaker 2: This really blew my mind. We usually think of electrons
15:06
Speaker 2: as just dots, little points of charge.
15:10
Speaker 3: Correct in the standard model, electrons are fundamental particles. They
15:14
Speaker 3: have zero size. They are just a point of charge
15:16
Speaker 3: in mass. You can't cut an electron in half.
15:19
Speaker 2: But if the exclusion principle can be violated, that might
15:22
Speaker 2: change our view of that.
15:24
Speaker 3: It could imply that electrons aren't fundamental at all, that
15:27
Speaker 3: they might have an internal structure, that they are made
15:30
Speaker 3: of even smaller things.
15:31
Speaker 2: Like little gears inside or components, or that they are squishy.
15:36
Speaker 3: Think about it this way. If two perfectly rigid billiard
15:39
Speaker 3: balls hit each other, they bounce off they cannot occupy
15:43
Speaker 3: the same space. But if two tennis balls hit each
15:46
Speaker 3: other hard enough they can press they deform for a moment.
15:49
Speaker 2: So if electrons have internal parts, maybe under extreme pressure
15:53
Speaker 2: they can. They can deform slightly and squeeze into a
15:57
Speaker 2: state where a perfectly rigid point particle couldn't fit.
16:00
Speaker 3: That's the idea exactly. So if we find a violation
16:03
Speaker 3: of poly. It's a very strong hint that the electron
16:06
Speaker 3: isn't a simple dot, but a complex object with moving parts.
16:09
Speaker 2: And then there's a big one, the one everyone's chasing,
16:11
Speaker 2: quantum gravity.
16:12
Speaker 3: The holy grail of modern physics.
16:14
Speaker 2: We are desperately, desperately trying to merge Einstein's general relativity,
16:20
Speaker 2: which governs gravity and big stuff like planets and galaxies,
16:24
Speaker 2: with quantum mechanics, which governs the small stuff like atoms
16:28
Speaker 2: and particles.
16:28
Speaker 3: And they hate each other. They just they do not
16:31
Speaker 3: get along mathematically. They speak different languages.
16:34
Speaker 2: But some of the theories that are trying to build
16:35
Speaker 2: that bridge, like certain versions of string theory or quantum
16:38
Speaker 2: loot gravity, they actually predict that the poly exclusion principle
16:42
Speaker 2: might have tiny, tiny cracks, right.
16:45
Speaker 3: Yes, some of them do. Some theories suggest that space
16:48
Speaker 3: time itself might not be a smooth, continuous fabric. It
16:51
Speaker 3: might be fuzzy or discrete, like it's made of pixels
16:54
Speaker 3: at the smallest possible scales, the Plank scale, right, And
16:58
Speaker 3: if space is bumpy at that level, it might mess
17:01
Speaker 3: with the strict rules of quantum mechanics. It might cause
17:04
Speaker 3: an electron to slip or tunnel into a forbidden state
17:07
Speaker 3: every once in a while.
17:08
Speaker 2: So finding a violation would be like finding a loose thread.
17:11
Speaker 2: You pull on it and the whole standard model unravels,
17:14
Speaker 2: But underneath you might find the real fabric of the universe.
17:17
Speaker 3: That is the hope. That is why they search. Finding
17:20
Speaker 3: a violation wouldn't be a disaster for science. It would
17:23
Speaker 3: be the greatest discovery of the century. It would be
17:25
Speaker 3: the signpost pointing the way to the theory of everything.
17:29
Speaker 2: So the stakes are just incredibly high. Either we confirm
17:32
Speaker 2: the stability of reality as we know it, or we
17:34
Speaker 2: find a portal to a whole new level of physics,
17:38
Speaker 2: which brings us to the experiment. How do you actually
17:41
Speaker 2: test this? How do you catch an electron cheating?
17:44
Speaker 3: This is the VIP two experiment. VIP stands for violation
17:49
Speaker 3: of the poly principle.
17:50
Speaker 2: And I love the sitting. This isn't happening in a
17:52
Speaker 2: shiny lab in a university basement. This is deep.
17:55
Speaker 3: Underground Grandsasso National Laboratory. Yeah, it's really an amazing place,
17:59
Speaker 3: a series of massive experimental halls that have been hollowed
18:03
Speaker 3: out from inside a mountain in Italy. You have to
18:05
Speaker 3: drive through a long highway tunnel to even get to
18:08
Speaker 3: the entrance.
18:08
Speaker 2: Why hide under a mountain. Are they hiding from the electrons?
18:11
Speaker 3: No, they're hiding from noise. We are right now constantly
18:15
Speaker 3: being bombarded by cosmic rays. These are high energy particles,
18:19
Speaker 3: mostly protons, flying in from space from supernovas and distant galaxies.
18:24
Speaker 2: And they're hitting our atmosphere.
18:25
Speaker 3: They hit the atmosphere and create a shower of secondary particles,
18:30
Speaker 3: and some of those particles, especially the ones called muons,
18:33
Speaker 3: make it all the way down to the surface. Billions
18:35
Speaker 3: of them are passing through your body as we speak. Well,
18:37
Speaker 3: that's comforting. It's totally harmless to us. But if you're
18:41
Speaker 3: running an experiment that is as sensitive as VIP two,
18:44
Speaker 3: a single cosmic ray hitting your detector would be a
18:48
Speaker 3: disaster because it would create a flash of energy signal
18:51
Speaker 3: that could look just like the violation you're hunting for.
18:54
Speaker 3: It would be like trying to listen for a pin
18:55
Speaker 3: drop in the middle of a thunderstorm.
18:57
Speaker 2: So the mountain acts as a giant umbrella.
19:00
Speaker 3: Giant rock umbrella. It's over a kilometer of solid rock
19:03
Speaker 3: overhead that blocks out almost all of the cosmic noise.
19:07
Speaker 3: Creating one of the quietest places on Earth in terms
19:09
Speaker 3: of radiation.
19:10
Speaker 2: Okay, got it, So silence, darkness, a mile of rock overhead,
19:15
Speaker 2: and in the middle of this cavern they have the
19:18
Speaker 2: VIP two apparatus. What are they actually pointing their detectors at.
19:21
Speaker 3: A chunk of copper.
19:22
Speaker 2: Copper are just just.
19:24
Speaker 3: Like copper wire, a strip of high purity copper conductor.
19:28
Speaker 3: Copper is a great choice because it's atomic structure is very,
19:31
Speaker 3: very well understood. We know exactly where the electrons should be,
19:34
Speaker 3: we know their parking spots.
19:36
Speaker 2: And they are looking for something called forbidden transitions. We
19:39
Speaker 2: touched on this, but walk me through exactly what that
19:41
Speaker 2: looks like in the experiment.
19:43
Speaker 3: Okay, so imagine the copper atom is like that parking
19:47
Speaker 3: garage we talked about. All the lower levels, what physicists
19:50
Speaker 3: call the k shell the lshll are full. They are
19:53
Speaker 3: packed tight with electrons.
19:55
Speaker 2: The VIP section is totally booked.
19:57
Speaker 3: Yes, the experimenters are watching to see if an electron
20:00
Speaker 3: suddenly jumps from a high outer level down to one
20:03
Speaker 3: of those lower levels that is already.
20:05
Speaker 2: Occupied, the move that Paully says is completely illegal.
20:08
Speaker 3: The forbidden move. Now in physics, energy is never lost,
20:11
Speaker 3: it just changes form. When an electron drops from a
20:14
Speaker 3: high energy state to a low energy state, it has
20:18
Speaker 3: to get rid of that excess energy. Usually this energy
20:20
Speaker 3: comes out as a photon, a particle of light. Okay,
20:23
Speaker 3: so a flash of light, a flash of light. And
20:26
Speaker 3: if an electron were to crash the party and drop
20:29
Speaker 3: into an already occupied slot, the energy difference between those
20:32
Speaker 3: two levels is very specific. It's a known quantity. It
20:35
Speaker 3: would release that energy as an X.
20:37
Speaker 2: Ray, an X ray, not visible light, an X.
20:39
Speaker 3: Ray because the energy drop is quite large, but not
20:44
Speaker 3: just any X ray, because the energy levels are shifted
20:47
Speaker 3: just slightly by the presence of the other electrons what's
20:49
Speaker 3: called a shielding effect. It would be an X ray
20:52
Speaker 3: at a very specific, predictable energy level, a specific color
20:56
Speaker 3: of X ray, if.
20:56
Speaker 2: You will, and that color should not exist in nature.
21:00
Speaker 3: Physic says that transition is impossible, so that specific X
21:03
Speaker 3: ray should never ever be emitted by a copper atom.
21:06
Speaker 2: So they're basically looking for a very specific flash of
21:09
Speaker 2: X ray light that would be the smoking gun of
21:11
Speaker 2: a rule violation. It's like looking for a neon green swan.
21:14
Speaker 2: If you see one, you know the laws of biology
21:16
Speaker 2: as we understand them are broken.
21:18
Speaker 3: Precisely. It's an unambiguous signal. But here is the really
21:23
Speaker 3: clever part of the VIP two experiment, and this is
21:26
Speaker 3: a detail that Alessio Procelli, the late author, really emphasized
21:31
Speaker 3: in the report. You can't just stare at a block
21:33
Speaker 3: of copper and wait.
21:34
Speaker 2: Why not. The electrons are already in there, they're whizzing around.
21:37
Speaker 2: One of them might cheat.
21:38
Speaker 3: Because of a subtle but very important rule in quantum mechanics,
21:43
Speaker 3: violations of this type are effectively forbidden from appearing in
21:47
Speaker 3: what we call a closed system.
21:48
Speaker 2: A closed system, if you just have.
21:50
Speaker 3: A block of copper sitting there, the electrons have already
21:53
Speaker 3: settled into their states, they've established their pecking order, they
21:56
Speaker 3: are in a stable configuration. They obey something called the
21:59
Speaker 3: Messiah Greenberg super selection rule, which basically says, if you
22:04
Speaker 3: start with a system of pure fermions, it's going to
22:06
Speaker 3: stay a system of pure fermions.
22:08
Speaker 2: So it's like staring at a perfectly parked car and
22:10
Speaker 2: waiting for it to double park. It's already parked.
22:12
Speaker 3: It's done exactly. To catch a violation, you need to
22:15
Speaker 3: introduce fresh players you need to create an open system.
22:18
Speaker 3: You need to probe the atoms with something new.
22:20
Speaker 2: An open system. How do they open it up?
22:22
Speaker 3: This is the genius of the experiment. Borcelli explains that
22:27
Speaker 3: they injected a huge number of new electrons into the
22:31
Speaker 3: copper target.
22:32
Speaker 2: How do you just inject electrons into a piece of metal.
22:36
Speaker 3: Simple brute force. They run a DC current through it,
22:40
Speaker 3: a very very strong electrical current.
22:42
Speaker 2: How strong are we talking about?
22:43
Speaker 3: One hundred amps?
22:44
Speaker 2: Whoa one hundred amps? That's a lot of juice. That's
22:47
Speaker 2: not your phone charger. That's like industrial welding level current.
22:51
Speaker 3: It is a massive amount of current. They had to
22:54
Speaker 3: have integrated cooling systems built into the apparatus just to
22:57
Speaker 3: keep the copper strip from melting. But think about what
23:00
Speaker 3: a current actually is. It's a river of electrons. By
23:02
Speaker 3: running that current, they are forcing billions upon billions of
23:06
Speaker 3: new electrons to flow into the copper atoms every single second.
23:09
Speaker 2: Uh okay, I see it now. So the current is
23:11
Speaker 2: basically a constant river of strangers flowing into the parking garage.
23:15
Speaker 3: Yes, and these new electrons they haven't established a relationship
23:19
Speaker 3: with the copper atoms yet. They are naive they come
23:22
Speaker 3: zooming in looking for a spot to land or just
23:24
Speaker 3: a path to pass through. This is the moment of truth.
23:27
Speaker 2: This is the real test.
23:28
Speaker 3: As these new electrons interact with the atoms, will they
23:31
Speaker 3: all follow the rules and stay out of the occupied
23:33
Speaker 3: lower levels, or will one of these fresh naive electrons
23:37
Speaker 3: try to slip into an occupied seat in the basement.
23:40
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense. You're not just watching, You're
23:43
Speaker 2: actively stressing the system. You're throwing millions of new cars
23:47
Speaker 2: into the lot every second to see if chaos breaks out.
23:50
Speaker 3: It creates what they call a clean and decisive test.
23:53
Speaker 3: It dramatically increases the probability of catching a violation if
23:57
Speaker 3: one exists. It turns a static painting into a chaotic movie.
24:02
Speaker 2: So they have the mountain shield, they have the copper target,
24:04
Speaker 2: they have the one hundred amp current pumping in fresh electrons,
24:07
Speaker 2: and they have these ultralow noise X ray detectors watching
24:11
Speaker 2: like hawks. What kind of detectors are these?
24:13
Speaker 3: They're called silicon drift detectors. They are extremely precise, a
24:17
Speaker 3: type of CCD, and they are cool to incredibly low
24:21
Speaker 3: temperatures to reduce any thermal noise. They need to be
24:25
Speaker 3: able to distinguish a single forbidden X ray photon from
24:28
Speaker 3: any other background radiation that might get through the shielding.
24:32
Speaker 2: And how long did they run this? This doesn't sound
24:33
Speaker 2: like a weekend project.
24:35
Speaker 3: Several years they monitored this target, collecting data, continuously filtering
24:40
Speaker 3: out background noise, calibrating, recalibrating, just waiting, waiting for that
24:46
Speaker 3: one specific X ray blip that would change the world.
24:49
Speaker 2: The patients involved. Is just staggering. The tension must have
24:52
Speaker 2: been incredible. I mean, every single time they checked the data,
24:55
Speaker 2: they could have been on the verge of rewriting all
24:57
Speaker 2: of physics.
24:58
Speaker 3: Or confirming that everything is exactly as boring and stable
25:01
Speaker 3: as we thought. That is the life of an experimental physicist.
25:05
Speaker 3: Ninety nine percent boredom, one percent sheer, terror or elation.
25:09
Speaker 2: Now the drum roll, please, After years under a mountain
25:13
Speaker 2: watching a supercharge piece of copper, what did they find?
25:16
Speaker 3: Nothing? Silence, No such signals were observed. That's the line
25:20
Speaker 3: from the paper.
25:21
Speaker 2: Not a single one out of all those billions upon
25:23
Speaker 2: billions of electrons flowing through one hundred amps per years, not.
25:27
Speaker 3: A single forbidden transition was detected.
25:29
Speaker 2: Now to a regular person, that sounds like a failure.
25:32
Speaker 2: We spent years and millions of dollars looking for a
25:34
Speaker 2: ghost and we didn't find it. But in science, and
25:37
Speaker 2: especially in this kind of science, a null result is
25:39
Speaker 2: a huge deal.
25:41
Speaker 3: Right, It is massive. In fact, in precision physics, a
25:45
Speaker 3: null result is often more powerful and more important than
25:48
Speaker 3: a discovery, because it's not just we found nothing, it's
25:52
Speaker 3: we look this hard, with this much incredible precision and
25:56
Speaker 3: found nothing.
25:57
Speaker 2: It lets them put a number on it.
25:58
Speaker 3: It allows them to put another number on the probability,
26:01
Speaker 3: an upper limit the number.
26:03
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this number, because the article says they
26:05
Speaker 2: set an upper limit on the probability of violation.
26:08
Speaker 3: Yes, based on the complete absence of a signal over
26:11
Speaker 3: the course of the experiment. They concluded that if the
26:14
Speaker 3: poly exclusion principle is ever violated for electrons, the probability
26:18
Speaker 3: of it happening is smaller than two parts in ten
26:22
Speaker 3: to the power of forty three.
26:23
Speaker 2: Ten to the forty three. Okay, we throw around big
26:26
Speaker 2: numbers on this show all the time, but I really
26:27
Speaker 2: need to contextualize that ten to the forty three is
26:30
Speaker 2: a one followed by forty three zeros.
26:32
Speaker 3: Correct, It is a number so vast it is effectively
26:35
Speaker 3: meaningless to the human brain.
26:37
Speaker 2: I tried to look up some comparisons for this, and honestly,
26:40
Speaker 2: our normal astronomical numbers don't even cut it. The universe
26:43
Speaker 2: is about thirteen point eight billion years old. Do you
26:46
Speaker 2: know how many seconds that is?
26:47
Speaker 3: It's roughly four times ten to the seventeen seconds.
26:50
Speaker 2: Okay, so ten to the seventeen we are talking about
26:53
Speaker 2: ten to the forty three. That is, that's twenty six
26:56
Speaker 2: orders of magnitude larger. That's a trillion, trillion times longer
27:01
Speaker 2: than the age of the universe.
27:02
Speaker 3: It dwarfs the number of atoms in the Earth. It
27:04
Speaker 3: dwarfs the number of stars in the observable universe. It's
27:07
Speaker 3: a different class of number. If you ran this experiment
27:10
Speaker 3: once every second for the entire history of the universe
27:13
Speaker 3: since the Big Bang, you still wouldn't be anywhere close
27:16
Speaker 3: to hitting ten to the forty three trials.
27:18
Speaker 2: So when they say the probability is less than two
27:21
Speaker 2: in ten to the forty three, they are saying that
27:23
Speaker 2: the poly exclusion principle is really, really, really correct.
27:28
Speaker 3: It is aggressively correct. This is the strongest experimental constraint
27:33
Speaker 3: ever achieved for electrons and open systems. It basically says
27:37
Speaker 3: that if violations happen, they are so mind bogglingly rare
27:42
Speaker 3: that they might as well not exist for all practical purposes.
27:45
Speaker 2: It's like saying I'm ninety nine point ninety ninety nine,
27:47
Speaker 2: and then you just keep saying nine for another forty
27:49
Speaker 2: digits of percent. Sure of this wall of solid exactly.
27:52
Speaker 3: It means the note parking sign in the atomic garage
27:55
Speaker 3: isn't just a suggestion written on cardboard. It is a
27:58
Speaker 3: law enforced with an iron fie. The universe does not
28:02
Speaker 3: tolerate cheaters.
28:03
Speaker 2: So the headline is physicists fail to break fundamental law
28:07
Speaker 2: of the universe. But the fallout what this result means
28:10
Speaker 2: for the world of theoretical physics is where the real
28:14
Speaker 2: drama lies. Because there were people, smart people betting on
28:17
Speaker 2: those violations.
28:18
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, Let's go back to those quand models we
28:20
Speaker 3: talked about.
28:21
Speaker 2: Right, the middle ground particles, the ones that are only
28:24
Speaker 2: kind of fermions.
28:25
Speaker 3: Christian Pachikiu, who is another leading member of the VIP
28:28
Speaker 3: two collaboration, was pretty blunt about this in the report.
28:32
Speaker 3: He said, and I'm quoting, our result places very stringent
28:35
Speaker 3: constraints on possible deviations strongly restricting the alternative quand models.
28:41
Speaker 2: Translating that from cautious scientists speak, quans are pretty much dead.
28:44
Speaker 3: Maybe not completely dead, but they are on life support,
28:47
Speaker 3: and the family has been called. If you are a
28:49
Speaker 3: theorist building a model where particles can be partially fermionic,
28:54
Speaker 3: you now have a massive, massive problem. Your model has
28:58
Speaker 3: to explain why that partial behavior is completely invisible to
29:02
Speaker 3: the tune of one in ten to the forty three.
29:04
Speaker 2: You have to fine tune your theory so precisely that
29:07
Speaker 2: it almost becomes absurd just to hide from this experiment.
29:10
Speaker 3: Right. It forces those theories into a box so small
29:13
Speaker 3: they can barely breathe. It's Okham's razor swinging like a guillotine.
29:18
Speaker 3: The simplest explanation that electrons are pure, one hundred percent
29:22
Speaker 3: antisocial fermions is winning by a landslide.
29:26
Speaker 2: It's like telling a storytelling. Okay, you can write a
29:28
Speaker 2: fantasy novel, but you can't use magic, dragons, elves, or swords.
29:31
Speaker 2: Eventually you just run out of room to tell that story.
29:33
Speaker 3: That's a great analogy, and it's the same thing for
29:35
Speaker 3: that hidden structure idea.
29:36
Speaker 2: We talked about the squishy electrons made of smaller parts.
29:39
Speaker 3: Right, if electrons had internal gears or were made of
29:43
Speaker 3: subparticles with some theories called preons, we would expect some give.
29:48
Speaker 3: We would accept that occasionally those internal parts would arrange
29:51
Speaker 3: themselves in just the right way to allow violation, a
29:55
Speaker 3: bit of wiggle room exactly. The profound silence from the
29:58
Speaker 3: VIP two experiment suggests that electrons are incredibly simple, incredibly rigid.
30:03
Speaker 2: They really are just points, no gears, no fluff, just
30:07
Speaker 2: a perfect indivisible dot of negative charge.
30:10
Speaker 3: It seems that way. This result is a huge victory
30:14
Speaker 3: for the boring but incredibly effective standard model. It reinforces
30:18
Speaker 3: the idea that elementary particles are truly elementary. They aren't
30:22
Speaker 3: legos made of smaller legos. They are the smallest, most
30:25
Speaker 3: fundamental brick.
30:26
Speaker 2: And this has to ripple out to the search for
30:28
Speaker 2: quantum gravity too.
30:29
Speaker 3: The holy grail. Yes, there are all.
30:31
Speaker 2: These theories of quantum gravity that predict spacetime itself might
30:34
Speaker 2: be a little fuzzy or discreete and that this fuzziness
30:37
Speaker 2: might jostle an electron and make it violate the exclusion principle.
30:40
Speaker 3: Like driving on a really bumpy road might make you
30:42
Speaker 3: swerve out of your lane every now and then.
30:44
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. If space time is bumpy, as
30:48
Speaker 2: predicted by quantum gravity, the electron might swerve and violate Polly.
30:52
Speaker 2: But VIP two shows the electron stays in its lane
30:56
Speaker 2: with absolute near perfect precision.
30:59
Speaker 3: So that tells us that the road space time must
31:01
Speaker 3: be incredibly smooth. Or if it is bumpy, the bumps
31:05
Speaker 3: are so ridiculously small they don't affect the electron at all,
31:08
Speaker 3: which brings us back to what Catalina Cercian who said,
31:11
Speaker 3: any viable extension of quantum theory must reproduce the Paule
31:15
Speaker 3: exclusion principle with extraordinary precision.
31:18
Speaker 2: It's become a gatekeeper. If you have a cool new
31:20
Speaker 2: theory about the universe, a new theory of everything, you
31:23
Speaker 2: have to bring it to the VIP two team. And
31:25
Speaker 2: if your theory predicts a violation rate that is bigger
31:28
Speaker 2: than one in ten to the forty three, they just
31:30
Speaker 2: shake their heads and say nope. Back to the drawing board.
31:33
Speaker 3: Try again, exactly. It clears the board. It sweeps away
31:36
Speaker 3: a lot of speculative clutter and tells theorists the answer
31:38
Speaker 3: you're looking for isn't here look elsewhere. It saves us
31:41
Speaker 3: from wasting decades of brain power on what are now
31:44
Speaker 3: dead ends.
31:45
Speaker 2: I want to pivot for a second to something a
31:47
Speaker 2: bit more philosophical. Here we're talking about precision. We're talking
31:50
Speaker 2: about measuring nothing to an impossible, almost divine degree.
31:55
Speaker 3: It is the philosophy of precision.
31:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the article mentions that this research gets support
32:00
Speaker 2: from the FQXi, the Foundational Questions Institute. They love funding
32:04
Speaker 2: this kind of deep fundamental stuff.
32:07
Speaker 3: If you do, they fund the deep, weird questions, the
32:10
Speaker 3: high risk, high reward science that might not have an
32:13
Speaker 3: immediate practical application but could change how we see everything.
32:17
Speaker 2: So why does precision matter so much? Why is it
32:20
Speaker 2: worth years of a physicist's life and millions of euros
32:24
Speaker 2: just to add a few more decimal places to a zero.
32:26
Speaker 2: Why not just say Okay, it works really well and move.
32:29
Speaker 3: On, because precision is where the new physics hides. Think
32:32
Speaker 3: about how we discovered general relativity. It wasn't because Newton's
32:36
Speaker 3: laws of gravity were completely wrong. Newton was great. His
32:39
Speaker 3: laws get us to the moon.
32:40
Speaker 2: They worked just fine for most things.
32:42
Speaker 3: But the orbit of the planet Mercury was off off
32:45
Speaker 3: by a tiny, tiny fraction of degree per century, a
32:48
Speaker 3: wobble in its orbit that Newton's theory just could.
32:51
Speaker 2: Not explain, and most people would just ignore that.
32:54
Speaker 3: They did for decades. But by chasing that tiny wobble,
32:57
Speaker 3: that tiny imperfection, Einstein revolutionized our entire understanding of gravity, space,
33:03
Speaker 3: and time. He realized Newton wasn't wrong, he was just incomplete.
33:08
Speaker 3: The VIP two team is looking for the wobble in
33:11
Speaker 3: the poly principle.
33:12
Speaker 2: And so far absolutely no wobble.
33:14
Speaker 3: Not a hint of a wobble, which brings us to
33:16
Speaker 3: what you could call the joy of nothing.
33:18
Speaker 2: The joy of nothing. I like that.
33:20
Speaker 3: There's a real comfort in this result.
33:22
Speaker 2: I feel it, I genuinely do. Knowing that the ground
33:26
Speaker 2: isn't going to suddenly turn to liquid and swallow me up,
33:28
Speaker 2: Knowing that chemistry is stable, it's nice to know the
33:31
Speaker 2: universe isn't glitchy.
33:32
Speaker 3: It implies a deep stability to the laws of nature.
33:35
Speaker 3: It suggests that the universe isn't just making it up
33:37
Speaker 3: as it goes along. There's a rigid, reliable structure to reality.
33:42
Speaker 2: But I also sense the frustration and the result.
33:47
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely every experimentalist deep down wants to be the
33:51
Speaker 3: one to find the anomaly. They want to find the
33:53
Speaker 3: crack in the wall. The fact that the wall held
33:56
Speaker 3: up is incredibly impressive, but it's also a door slamming
33:59
Speaker 3: shut in your face. We wanted to see what was
34:01
Speaker 3: on the other side.
34:02
Speaker 2: Sorry, the universe is perfect. Go home laughs.
34:06
Speaker 3: Essentially, yes, but that doesn't mean you go home. It
34:09
Speaker 3: just means you have to build a bigger hammer to
34:11
Speaker 3: hit the wall with next time.
34:13
Speaker 2: And they are, aren't they. The article clearly mentions the sequel,
34:16
Speaker 2: VIP three, because VIP two wasn't precise enough.
34:19
Speaker 3: I ever enough. The team is already planning the next
34:22
Speaker 3: generation of the experiment. They want to push the sensitivity
34:24
Speaker 3: even further.
34:25
Speaker 2: How do you even get better than ten to the
34:27
Speaker 2: minus forty three?
34:28
Speaker 3: Better detectors, silicon drift detectors with even faster timing and
34:32
Speaker 3: better energy resolution, more shielding, maybe higher currents, different target materials,
34:37
Speaker 3: longer observation times. It's a game of inches, or I guess,
34:41
Speaker 3: in this case, a game of femtometers.
34:43
Speaker 2: What's the goal ten to the minus fifty?
34:46
Speaker 3: Why not? The ultimate goal is to find the breaking point,
34:50
Speaker 3: or to prove to an even more ridiculous degree of
34:52
Speaker 3: certainty that there is no breaking point.
34:54
Speaker 2: And let's say they never find a violation. Let's say
34:57
Speaker 2: we get to VIP ten in the year twenty fifty
35:00
Speaker 2: and we're at ten to the minus one hundred. What
35:02
Speaker 2: does that tell us?
35:03
Speaker 3: That might be the most profound result of all. If
35:06
Speaker 3: the poly exclusion principle is truly absolute, if it is
35:10
Speaker 3: never ever violated, not even once, in the entire life
35:13
Speaker 3: span of the universe, it suggests that this rule is
35:16
Speaker 3: somehow different from other physical laws. How so, it's not
35:20
Speaker 3: just a description of how things move or interact like
35:22
Speaker 3: a force. It's more like a geometric necessity of reality.
35:26
Speaker 3: It would mean the universe is built on a kind
35:28
Speaker 3: of logic that simply cannot be broken.
35:30
Speaker 2: It's more like a mathematical truth than a physical law.
35:33
Speaker 3: Exactly, it's more like two plus two to four. You
35:35
Speaker 3: can't violate that. Maybe the exclusion principle is just two
35:38
Speaker 3: plus two oz for matter.
35:39
Speaker 2: A logic that cannot be broken, that is that is heavy.
35:42
Speaker 2: It is So, as we wrap up this deep dive,
35:44
Speaker 2: where does this leave us? What's the big picture?
35:47
Speaker 3: It leaves us standing on very very solid ground. Literally,
35:50
Speaker 3: we know that electrons are behaving themselves with a discipline
35:53
Speaker 3: that is almost unimaginable. We know that the antisocial nature
35:57
Speaker 3: of fermions is holding strong.
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Speaker 2: My takeaway from all this is a new found respect
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Speaker 2: for the humble electron. I usually just think of them
36:05
Speaker 2: as electricity, you know, just juice flowing through a wire.
36:09
Speaker 2: But really they are the structural beams of the universe,
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Speaker 2: and they are incredibly perfectly disciplined. They refuse to sit
36:15
Speaker 2: in an occupied seat, and that simple refusal is the
36:18
Speaker 2: only reason I exist to talk about them.
36:20
Speaker 3: That is a beautiful way to put it. My takeaway
36:23
Speaker 3: is the sheer audacity of the experiment itself. We are
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Speaker 3: monkeys who evolved on a small rock orbiting an average star,
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Speaker 3: and we build a machine inside a mountain to check
36:32
Speaker 3: the math of the universe to the forty third decimal place.
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Speaker 3: That is something to be proud of as a species.
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Speaker 2: It really is. It's the human spirit of inquiry at
36:40
Speaker 2: its absolute peak.
36:41
Speaker 3: And we aren't done. VIP three is coming. We will
36:44
Speaker 3: keep knocking on that door until it either opens or
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Speaker 3: we realize it's just painted on the wall.
36:49
Speaker 2: Here's a thought to leave you with. Then we've spent
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Speaker 2: this whole time talking about how the rules held up,
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Speaker 2: how the universe didn't glitch. But think about this. We
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Speaker 2: only know the rules hold up here in our quiet
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Speaker 2: little corner of the galaxy at relatively low energies in
37:04
Speaker 2: a block of.
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Speaker 3: Copper, right under normal conditions, so to speak.
37:08
Speaker 2: What happens inside a black hole? What happened in the
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Speaker 2: first nanosecond of the Big Bang? Does the paly principle
37:15
Speaker 2: still hold up when the universe is being crushed into
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Speaker 2: a singularity under unimaginable gravity and temperature.
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Speaker 3: Or does the no parking sign eventually get torn down
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Speaker 3: by the sheer force.
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Speaker 2: Of gravity exactly? That's the ultimate question. If gravity gets
37:28
Speaker 2: strong enough, can it finally force the electrons to give
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Speaker 2: up their space and fall into the same state.
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Speaker 3: If the exclusion principle fails at the center of a
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Speaker 3: black hole, that might be what a singularity is, all.
37:39
Speaker 2: The matter finally collapsing into the forbidden seats.
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Speaker 3: Into the forbidden seats.
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Speaker 2: And that gives me something to think about me too,
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Speaker 2: Until next time, Stay curious.