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Is there a fifth force of the universe? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, if I wanted to win a Nobel Prize
0:10
Speaker 1: super quickly, like right now, what would I have to do?
0:13
Speaker 1: Are you in some sort of hurry You're applying for
0:15
Speaker 1: a new job or something. I might be applying for
0:18
Speaker 1: some new cartooning jobs and I figured that might help.
0:22
Speaker 1: Or you looking apply for my job? Is that what's
0:24
Speaker 1: going on here? Anyway? If you wanted to win a
0:27
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize super quickly, you'd have to discover something new,
0:31
Speaker 1: like a new particle. You know. That sounds good, but
0:34
Speaker 1: actually we kind of see new particles all the time.
0:36
Speaker 1: They're just like different versions of the particles we already knew.
0:39
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure that would cut it. So what
0:41
Speaker 1: would I have to discover? Then? Maybe like a new
0:44
Speaker 1: force of nature? What if I discover the force like
0:47
Speaker 1: in Star Wars. Well, it depends on where you're applying
0:51
Speaker 1: for your job, if you want to discover the dark
0:52
Speaker 1: side or not. Hi am Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and
1:11
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi I'm Daniel. I'm a
1:15
Speaker 1: particle physicist, though I've never discovered a particle, nor have
1:19
Speaker 1: I ever won the Nobel Prize yet yet. Daniel career
1:24
Speaker 1: over yet. That's right, You've got you still got a
1:28
Speaker 1: lot of podcasts to record here. That's right. Every podcast
1:32
Speaker 1: I do decreases my chances of discovering a new particle
1:35
Speaker 1: or finding or learning a Nobel Prize. And sorry, but
1:38
Speaker 1: remember we are discovering new friends through this podcast every time,
1:42
Speaker 1: and we're helping everybody else discover the amazing, crazy, wonderful
1:47
Speaker 1: truths about our universe. That's right, So welcome to our podcast,
1:50
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of My
1:54
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we take the things that actual
1:56
Speaker 1: working scientists are doing and revealing and learning about our
2:00
Speaker 1: universe and explain them to you in a way that
2:02
Speaker 1: you can actually understand and maybe even makes you chuckle. Yeah.
2:06
Speaker 1: And we often try to talk about what's out in
2:09
Speaker 1: the news recently, you know, the latest discoveries, the latest
2:13
Speaker 1: headlines that are catching people's attentions out there about exciting
2:17
Speaker 1: new things that scientists and physicists and Becausemolo Juice have found. Yeah,
2:21
Speaker 1: And something I take as a real vote of confidence
2:24
Speaker 1: in our ability to explain things is when something appears
2:27
Speaker 1: in the news about science and a bunch of listeners
2:30
Speaker 1: right in and say, hun, can you explain this to us?
2:33
Speaker 1: And that's just what happened this weekend. I got a
2:35
Speaker 1: torrent of emails from listeners asking us to explain something
2:38
Speaker 1: exciting that they saw in the Science News. Do you
2:41
Speaker 1: think people had options here? Daniel? Like, I could ask
2:45
Speaker 1: all these different physicists, but I'll uh, I know Daniel,
2:48
Speaker 1: so I'll ask him instead. Well, Daniel actually writes back,
2:51
Speaker 1: So maybe that's why they saw or maybe they just
2:54
Speaker 1: blasted everybody. And you know, I just thought we were
2:57
Speaker 1: special and we don't charge your fee. That's the best part.
3:01
Speaker 1: That's right. We do download malware into people's laptops when
3:03
Speaker 1: the email us. But wait, I'm not supposed to say
3:06
Speaker 1: that online. Yeah, welcome to Daniel and Jorges bought net
3:11
Speaker 1: about the universe. Try we do it to Jennifer listener numbers. No,
3:20
Speaker 1: there was an exciting piece of news over the weekend,
3:23
Speaker 1: and dating back a couple of years, has been a
3:26
Speaker 1: trend here and some exciting results dribbling in about a
3:29
Speaker 1: potentially enormous discovery. Yeah. I saw that this weekend and
3:32
Speaker 1: I was very curious it was. It was in the
3:34
Speaker 1: front page of CNN, and my favorite part about that
3:37
Speaker 1: was that it showed two scientists and lap codes doing
3:41
Speaker 1: something next to really exciting machines. So I thought, wow,
3:44
Speaker 1: that's that must be science. It's got to be science
3:47
Speaker 1: because they're wearing lab coats. Exactly every time I'm about
3:50
Speaker 1: to get a really good idea, I rushed over to
3:52
Speaker 1: put on my labat to make sure it's extra science,
3:55
Speaker 1: just in case someone takes a picture of you. Nobody's
3:58
Speaker 1: ready ever going to take a picture of me in zience.
4:01
Speaker 1: But let's not keep our listeners in the dark anymore.
4:03
Speaker 1: Let's tell them what these article is about. Yeah. So
4:05
Speaker 1: over the weekend there was there was some big headlines
4:08
Speaker 1: about a new discovery that was done I think in
4:11
Speaker 1: Europe that might potentially kind of up in our understanding
4:16
Speaker 1: of the universe. That's right. The headline of the article
4:19
Speaker 1: has to do with finding a fifth force of nature. Yeah,
4:22
Speaker 1: which is maybe more exciting than finding that fifth Beatle.
4:25
Speaker 1: I here, Well, it depends. If the fifth Beatle gets
4:29
Speaker 1: to share of all that money, you could be a
4:31
Speaker 1: much bigger deal. They can they can buy a new
4:34
Speaker 1: force that money. Yeah. And you know, sometimes you'll see
4:39
Speaker 1: something online it's like, wow, that sounds like an amazing discovery,
4:42
Speaker 1: But you don't know is this just the science journalist
4:44
Speaker 1: drumming it up for clicks, or is this actually a
4:47
Speaker 1: real turning point in the history of science. And a
4:50
Speaker 1: lot of times you'll read that and then it'll sort
4:52
Speaker 1: of fade and you never hear about it again, and
4:54
Speaker 1: you wonder like, huh, was that actually a thing? Yeah,
4:57
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell the difference. And so today on
4:59
Speaker 1: the podcast will be asking the question is there a
5:07
Speaker 1: fifth force of nature? What's the right context here, Daniel
5:11
Speaker 1: that makes it epic? Is it force of nature? A
5:14
Speaker 1: new force of nature or a new force of the
5:16
Speaker 1: universe or reality? Or what are we talking about? Yeah,
5:20
Speaker 1: I think the common phrase is a force of nature.
5:22
Speaker 1: But you know that also like makes you think of
5:25
Speaker 1: like a hurricane, or clauses and legal documents that let you,
5:28
Speaker 1: you know, get out of things, acts of God, but
5:32
Speaker 1: or or just a really motivated person. They're like, Wow,
5:35
Speaker 1: it's a real force of nature. Somebody must have discovered
5:38
Speaker 1: her while wearing a lab coat. Yeah in Hungary. No,
5:45
Speaker 1: for me, it has to do with these sort of
5:47
Speaker 1: fundamental forces I guess of the universe. You know, to me,
5:51
Speaker 1: there's not really a difference between nature, reality and the universe.
5:55
Speaker 1: These things are sort of interchangeable unless we're talking about
5:57
Speaker 1: the Marvel Comics universe or the d See universe or
6:00
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe or other fictional universes. But for
6:04
Speaker 1: the real universe, what we're trying to do is understand
6:06
Speaker 1: how it works and understand how many forces there are.
6:09
Speaker 1: And so that was a It's a big deal. And
6:11
Speaker 1: do you think it got a lot of play in
6:13
Speaker 1: the media that people can afforded it a lot and
6:16
Speaker 1: ask questions about it? Yeah? I think so. Our listeners
6:20
Speaker 1: certainly seem to have picked up on it, and there
6:23
Speaker 1: are a lot of interest Is this real? What does
6:25
Speaker 1: it mean? Can you help us break it down? Um?
6:27
Speaker 1: And so to sort of get a broader context or
6:30
Speaker 1: whether this had penetrated into, you know, the community in general,
6:34
Speaker 1: I did something a little bit different with our street interviews.
6:37
Speaker 1: Rather than walking around campus at you see Irvine, I
6:40
Speaker 1: just went to a random coffee shop in Orange County
6:43
Speaker 1: and I asked random folks if they had heard about
6:46
Speaker 1: this discovery and if even if they knew about the
6:48
Speaker 1: original four forces of nature. So these might be a
6:51
Speaker 1: little bit more caffeinated than the usual answers a little
6:54
Speaker 1: bit more caffeinated, a little bit less ramen noodle infused.
6:57
Speaker 1: Perhaps I academic less academic exactly, you know, a broader
7:04
Speaker 1: section of the Orange County public. So think about it
7:06
Speaker 1: for a second dose of you listening out there. If
7:08
Speaker 1: someone asked you at a coffee shop, what is the
7:11
Speaker 1: fifth force? Think about what you would answer. Here's what
7:14
Speaker 1: people had to say. No, never, I've never. I didn't
7:17
Speaker 1: even know what better? Okay, no, what is it? No? No,
7:21
Speaker 1: I'm not hunting through. I saw an article if I
7:25
Speaker 1: just saw the headache? No, no, well, I don't know
7:28
Speaker 1: what the four forces about it? No, don't you do that?
7:33
Speaker 1: The song earth wind and fire like wind, fire, earth
7:39
Speaker 1: like earthquakes and then also water. All right, I guess
7:43
Speaker 1: maybe they hadn't checked this front page of the CNN
7:46
Speaker 1: yet a lot of people, it seems, no, only one
7:49
Speaker 1: person had even heard of the article, and very few
7:52
Speaker 1: people could even really comment intelligently on the four forces
7:55
Speaker 1: of nature. I got a lot of sort of ancient
7:58
Speaker 1: Greek ideas, like earth in the Fire. I thought they
8:02
Speaker 1: were talking about the rock group Earth Wind and Fire.
8:05
Speaker 1: They really were a force of nature. What will be
8:08
Speaker 1: the fifth force? In that case, Earth when fire, Sun politics,
8:13
Speaker 1: rama noodles. Yeah, so I'm not sure that everybody else
8:16
Speaker 1: out there understands the ramifications of this potentially mind bending,
8:20
Speaker 1: earth shattering, universe upturning discovery. So maybe we should really
8:25
Speaker 1: start at the beginning. Yeah, I guess it wasn't like
8:27
Speaker 1: we interrupt this broadcast for an important physics announcement, have
8:32
Speaker 1: landed on the Moon and discovery the fifth Force. Yeah,
8:37
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a stop the press this kind of thing. Yeah,
8:40
Speaker 1: we didn't have President Trump commenting on this discovery yet
8:42
Speaker 1: looking up at the Sun to see if that's were
8:45
Speaker 1: the fourth the fifth force was no comment, but that
8:51
Speaker 1: was the headline. The headline was scientists discover a new
8:54
Speaker 1: force of nature, right like, um, like, if you didn't
8:58
Speaker 1: know there were forces, they just found a new one. Yeah, precisely,
9:03
Speaker 1: and so um that sounds like a big deal. But
9:05
Speaker 1: I thought, since people out there might not be terribly
9:09
Speaker 1: familiar with the forces that are out there and what
9:11
Speaker 1: means to be a force and what we think of
9:12
Speaker 1: from a physics point of view as a force, I
9:14
Speaker 1: thought maybe we should start by talking about what the
9:17
Speaker 1: four forces actually are. Yeah, the ones that we do
9:20
Speaker 1: know about, right, the fat four of fundamental forces. That's right,
9:26
Speaker 1: all these physics you'll be shocked to discover that there
9:29
Speaker 1: is not consensus agreement among physicists about how many forces
9:32
Speaker 1: we've discovered. Oh jeez, some say three, some say four,
9:37
Speaker 1: some say five. There's controversy about how many there are now,
9:40
Speaker 1: but they but now they've discovered another one. This controversy
9:45
Speaker 1: about that too. All right, well, let's get into it, Daniel.
9:47
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the forces we do know about. Um, so,
9:51
Speaker 1: what are the four or three fundamental forces in the universe?
9:56
Speaker 1: So off the bat, we think about the four fundamental
9:59
Speaker 1: forces as gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force,
10:03
Speaker 1: and electromagnetism. If you have to ask me, or you're
10:07
Speaker 1: costed me on the street and ask me what the
10:08
Speaker 1: four forces where, that's what I would say. You wouldn't
10:11
Speaker 1: say there are only three. Well, you know, from a
10:14
Speaker 1: particle physics point of view, we've done a pretty good
10:17
Speaker 1: job of showing that electromagnetism and the weak force are
10:20
Speaker 1: really one and the same. They're just two sides of
10:23
Speaker 1: the same coin. In fact, in particle physics we refer
10:26
Speaker 1: to them as the electroweak force, so that from that
10:29
Speaker 1: point of view, you have three forces gravity, the strong force,
10:33
Speaker 1: and the electroweak force. But traditionally the weak force is
10:37
Speaker 1: kind of its own thing, and it's kind of is
10:39
Speaker 1: because it has its own like particles that interacts with, right.
10:42
Speaker 1: It doesn't use the photon like the electromagnetism forced us. Right.
10:47
Speaker 1: But you know, if you want to talk traditionally, like historically,
10:50
Speaker 1: electromagnetism is a new thing. They used to be electricity
10:53
Speaker 1: and magnetism they were identified initially is totally separate phenomena
10:57
Speaker 1: and then later understood to be too sides of the
11:00
Speaker 1: same coin and merge into one that we now call electromagnetism.
11:04
Speaker 1: So you know, years and years ago you might have
11:06
Speaker 1: said five fundamental forces, that we emerged that down into four.
11:09
Speaker 1: Now we've merged that down into three. So I think
11:12
Speaker 1: three is actually the best description of you know, what
11:14
Speaker 1: we currently understand. But that's not a widely held opinion.
11:19
Speaker 1: Is this, like the Greeks thought that maybe there are
11:20
Speaker 1: only three forces, like like women, fire were actually the same. Yeah,
11:25
Speaker 1: except that we actually have more data than the Greeks.
11:28
Speaker 1: Did we conclude this pretty conclusively and mathematically. Yeah. Okay,
11:32
Speaker 1: so there are three or and or four. We'll say
11:35
Speaker 1: there are three point five forces about that the difference.
11:39
Speaker 1: This is not the kind of thing you want to
11:40
Speaker 1: compromise on. This non negotiation. I'll give you three point
11:43
Speaker 1: seven five plus you get the house on weekends. Maybe
11:50
Speaker 1: you should, and maybe you would have more headlines that way. No,
11:53
Speaker 1: And to remind people, electromagnetism is a force you're familiar with.
11:57
Speaker 1: It's responsible for electricity from magnetism um and also for
12:01
Speaker 1: chemical bonds. Is basically what holds your body together. It's
12:04
Speaker 1: what makes the wall seems solid, you know. It's it's
12:07
Speaker 1: responsible for most of the forces you actually feel. And
12:10
Speaker 1: the weak force is not one you come and commonly feel,
12:15
Speaker 1: but it is sort of related to the electromagnetic force. Yeah,
12:19
Speaker 1: it's very closely related to electromagnetism. The particles that contribute
12:23
Speaker 1: to the weak force are the W and the Z,
12:25
Speaker 1: and you can think of them sort of like heavy photons.
12:27
Speaker 1: Because they're heavy, it makes the force very weak and
12:31
Speaker 1: it makes a very short distance scale. And so this
12:34
Speaker 1: one really only comes into play for things like neutrinos
12:36
Speaker 1: and radioactive decay. And I was actually talking to a
12:39
Speaker 1: particle theorist this morning who said he didn't even consider
12:41
Speaker 1: the weak force a force because you can't really feel it,
12:45
Speaker 1: not even weakly. Not even weakly. Yeah, um, but I
12:49
Speaker 1: consider it a force. Is a it's one of the
12:50
Speaker 1: fundamental forces of nature, part of it because but it
12:55
Speaker 1: gets lumped in with electromagnetism because like the math and
12:59
Speaker 1: the the photon and the bosons, they are all sort
13:02
Speaker 1: of act the same way, or they all fit into
13:04
Speaker 1: the same mathematical box. Is that kind of why you
13:06
Speaker 1: think they're all the same. Yeah, it just makes much
13:09
Speaker 1: more sense mathematically if you put them all together in
13:12
Speaker 1: the same box, and you can show that you start
13:15
Speaker 1: from a certain set of particles and they get rotated
13:17
Speaker 1: sort of by the Higgs boson and turn into the
13:19
Speaker 1: particles we have. We should do a whole interesting podcast
13:22
Speaker 1: episode about electroweak symmetry breaking. But just briefly, you know,
13:26
Speaker 1: we have these forces, electromagnetism and the weak force, and
13:29
Speaker 1: they're responsible for some of these physical effects. But then
13:31
Speaker 1: of course there's also the strong force and gravity, right,
13:35
Speaker 1: and so the strong force is the one that holds
13:37
Speaker 1: the nucleus together, right, Like, without that one, all of
13:40
Speaker 1: our nuclear which is fall apart. That's right. Remember, the
13:43
Speaker 1: nuclei are protons and neutrons, and protons are positively charged
13:46
Speaker 1: and so they repel each other, and the neutrons are neutral,
13:49
Speaker 1: so they can't do anything to really help. So from
13:51
Speaker 1: an electromagnetic point of view, the nucleus shouldn't even hang together.
13:55
Speaker 1: We did a whole podcast episode about how the strong
13:58
Speaker 1: nuclear force holds the nucleus to other So without the
14:01
Speaker 1: strong force, we wouldn't have nucleari, we wouldn't have fusion,
14:03
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have stars. It's pretty important. And gravity, that's
14:06
Speaker 1: the that's the heavy one, right. Yeah, gravity is the
14:10
Speaker 1: weakest force actually by all of these things. But it's
14:12
Speaker 1: something you're familiar with because there are big sources of
14:15
Speaker 1: gravity nearby, and so gravity will pull together anything that
14:19
Speaker 1: has mass. You, your friend, your neighbor. You guys actually
14:22
Speaker 1: feel gravity pulling on each other. Um, you just can't
14:25
Speaker 1: really sense it because it's so small. Most of the
14:28
Speaker 1: gravity you feel is with respect to the Earth or
14:30
Speaker 1: if you're the oceans, with respect to the moon. Okay,
14:32
Speaker 1: so those are the four or three and a half
14:34
Speaker 1: forces um electromagnetism, weak force, strong first gravity, And that's
14:39
Speaker 1: what we've known for a long time, right, I mean
14:41
Speaker 1: at least maybe years is what we have known there
14:47
Speaker 1: to be in nature. Like, that's it. You can't two
14:50
Speaker 1: things can't pull or push on each other any other way.
14:53
Speaker 1: These are the four ways that they can do it. Yeah,
14:55
Speaker 1: and it's important to understand that these are descriptive. They're
14:58
Speaker 1: just a description of all the stuff we've seen happen.
15:01
Speaker 1: It's not like they come from some deep principle of
15:03
Speaker 1: nature where we've derived a rule that there have to
15:06
Speaker 1: be four forces or there can't be anymore. You know,
15:08
Speaker 1: you could see tomorrow some new physical effect that can't
15:12
Speaker 1: be explained by anything else, and that might be a
15:14
Speaker 1: discovery of a new force of nature. It's just that
15:17
Speaker 1: so far these forces have been able to describe everything
15:20
Speaker 1: we've seen. But again, there's no theoretical limit. There could
15:23
Speaker 1: be like forces and the other nineties are just super
15:27
Speaker 1: duper duper feeble. We can't even sense them. Oh, I see,
15:30
Speaker 1: up until Saturday, there was no indication in any of
15:34
Speaker 1: the up until you went into that Starbucks to ask
15:38
Speaker 1: people questions. Uh, there's no indication from any experiments that
15:43
Speaker 1: humans have ever done that there was anything else going
15:46
Speaker 1: on in the universe. Basically right like that, we hadn't
15:49
Speaker 1: seen anything. They couldn't be explained by these four fundamental
15:53
Speaker 1: forces precisely. And that's the way we like to do science. Right.
15:56
Speaker 1: You see something new and weird, first thing you do
15:58
Speaker 1: is say, can I explain it with things we know?
16:01
Speaker 1: Because if you can, and that's the most likely explanation,
16:03
Speaker 1: just a comes razor. And then you know, if you can't,
16:07
Speaker 1: then you consider, well, maybe there's something new. I have
16:09
Speaker 1: to add, something new to my theory, a new particle,
16:11
Speaker 1: a new force, and new something to explain this new
16:13
Speaker 1: phenomenon that nothing else I know can't explain. And you
16:16
Speaker 1: guys felt pretty confident that there were only these four,
16:20
Speaker 1: because you mean, you've done so many experiments over the
16:23
Speaker 1: last seventy years, you know, smashing particles over and over
16:27
Speaker 1: and over and over, that it didn't seem maybe likely
16:30
Speaker 1: that there were more forces, right, I would have guessed
16:33
Speaker 1: actually that there were. You know, if I had to guess,
16:35
Speaker 1: gun in my head, are there more forces? I would
16:37
Speaker 1: have guessed yes, And that doesn't happen. Hold hold the
16:42
Speaker 1: gun to your head, Danniel. Somebody in a lab code
16:44
Speaker 1: I'm sure Rappid from in the dramatic movie right now
16:49
Speaker 1: my life, you know where physics, And the reason is
16:56
Speaker 1: that there's a lot going on in the universe that
16:58
Speaker 1: we know that we don't understand. End um. You know,
17:01
Speaker 1: we wrote this book all about all the things we
17:02
Speaker 1: don't know about the universe, and one of them is
17:04
Speaker 1: that there's dark matter out there. And if there's dark matter,
17:07
Speaker 1: that means it's a new particle, and a new particle
17:09
Speaker 1: probably has a new kind of force, because we know
17:12
Speaker 1: that dark matter doesn't interact with normal matter in any
17:15
Speaker 1: way that we're aware of other than gravity. But we
17:18
Speaker 1: think that dark matter probably does interact with normal matter
17:20
Speaker 1: in some way in order to account for how much
17:22
Speaker 1: we see it in the early universe. So I would
17:25
Speaker 1: have guessed that there's a new force out there, like
17:27
Speaker 1: a dark photon particle that mediates some new dark force.
17:31
Speaker 1: But we don't have any actual evidence for it's just
17:33
Speaker 1: a suspicion. Oh, I see all the experiments you've done
17:37
Speaker 1: pointed to these four forces. But there are still things
17:40
Speaker 1: out there in the universe we don't understand. Yeah, And
17:43
Speaker 1: as always, there are patterns and the things we do
17:45
Speaker 1: understand that suggests something is missing. To say, you know,
17:48
Speaker 1: This would be a lot simpler if you found this
17:51
Speaker 1: new particle. So you know, until Saturday, we didn't have
17:54
Speaker 1: any evidence for that. All right, let's get into this
17:56
Speaker 1: new discovery and what the news article was all about
17:59
Speaker 1: and whether it did revolutionize our understanding of physics. But first,
18:04
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Al Right, So what was
18:20
Speaker 1: the actual article about that came out this weekend that
18:23
Speaker 1: said that they found a new force of the universe.
18:27
Speaker 1: What did they actually discover? Yeah, so the article was
18:31
Speaker 1: misleading in several ways. You won't meet surprised to learn, um.
18:36
Speaker 1: And the first thing is that this last weekend wasn't
18:39
Speaker 1: really the most important moment. There's been a series of
18:42
Speaker 1: papers from the same group in Hungary announcing discoveries for
18:46
Speaker 1: the last few years, so they've been teasing this. No,
18:49
Speaker 1: they've been trying to replicate their experiments. So maybe the
18:52
Speaker 1: most important result came out in two thousand and sixteen
18:55
Speaker 1: when they first saw evidence for what might be a
18:57
Speaker 1: new particle, and this paper from recently just sort of
19:01
Speaker 1: confirmed it in a different system. So let's talk about
19:04
Speaker 1: what happened in two thousand sixteen, because I think that's
19:06
Speaker 1: really the most important result. Okay, let's go back in time.
19:10
Speaker 1: So wh then, what was the actual experiment and in
19:14
Speaker 1: who who were these scientists and what did they actually discover. Yes,
19:19
Speaker 1: so it's a group in Hungary and their experiment is
19:21
Speaker 1: called the atom key Experiment a t O m k I.
19:26
Speaker 1: The short version of the story is that they see
19:28
Speaker 1: some things in their detector that they think are consistent
19:31
Speaker 1: with a new particle, meaning something that they had never
19:34
Speaker 1: seen before. Yeah, and something that, as we were talking
19:38
Speaker 1: about before, they cannot explain using the fundamental forces and
19:42
Speaker 1: particles that we know about. So that sounds exciting. It is,
19:45
Speaker 1: And they've been doing it since two thousand sixteen, like
19:48
Speaker 1: they've been talking about this for a while. Yeah, In fact,
19:50
Speaker 1: they've been doing this kind of physics for quite a while,
19:53
Speaker 1: and but this particular experiment is interesting. What they do
19:56
Speaker 1: is they take a proton and they shoot at a
19:58
Speaker 1: lithium nucleus and then it turns into burrillium because that's
20:02
Speaker 1: one more atomic number up. So the nucleus sort of
20:04
Speaker 1: absorbs the proton, but it's not just brilliant, it's like
20:07
Speaker 1: excited burrillium. It's like has extra energy, so it's like
20:10
Speaker 1: wiggling and dancing should we picture a dance that the
20:13
Speaker 1: billium is doing? Which of the Fortnite dances is it doing?
20:16
Speaker 1: You're the cartoon is you're the visual person. So I
20:19
Speaker 1: want to see a doodle of dancing Burrellium. When we're done,
20:22
Speaker 1: it's doing the Charleston. Let's go with that. And just
20:25
Speaker 1: like you know how electrons can get excited up from
20:27
Speaker 1: their ground state and then jump down a state. When
20:30
Speaker 1: you jump down the state, you give off energy. And
20:33
Speaker 1: so what they what we expect to happen is this
20:35
Speaker 1: burrillium jumps down back into the ground state and gives
20:38
Speaker 1: off energy in terms of a photon. Oh I see,
20:40
Speaker 1: So the proton not just transforms it into a new element,
20:45
Speaker 1: It transport forms it and gives it kind of extra
20:49
Speaker 1: surplus energy. Yea. Then it has to get rid of yeah,
20:53
Speaker 1: because the proton that comes in has a bunch of energy.
20:55
Speaker 1: It's not just at rest proton just sort of hanging
20:57
Speaker 1: out comes zooming in with a lot of energy. And
21:00
Speaker 1: then the brillium nucleus which is then formed, has this
21:03
Speaker 1: extra energy. It wants to get rid of it. And
21:05
Speaker 1: so what you expect is for it to shoot off
21:07
Speaker 1: a photon and then that photon would turn into a
21:11
Speaker 1: pair of particles, an electron and a positron, and you
21:14
Speaker 1: can measure the energy of that photon by finding the
21:16
Speaker 1: electron oppositron and sort of adding them back up. Why
21:19
Speaker 1: doesn't the photon just keep going as a photon, as
21:21
Speaker 1: a little bit of light. Why does it have to
21:23
Speaker 1: turn into an electron and a anti electron? Yeah, they can.
21:29
Speaker 1: Photons like this can fly across the universe and just
21:31
Speaker 1: go forever. But these guys have a special trick for
21:34
Speaker 1: measuring it. In the way they measure the energy the
21:36
Speaker 1: photon essentially is to induce it to turning into an
21:39
Speaker 1: electron and an anti electron, so they can it helps
21:42
Speaker 1: them measure the energy. How do you induce a photon
21:45
Speaker 1: to not be a photon? Well, every time a photon
21:48
Speaker 1: goes through matter, it interacts with the all the electromagnetic
21:51
Speaker 1: fields inside that matter, and that tends to make it
21:53
Speaker 1: pair produced. That we call it turning from a photon
21:56
Speaker 1: into a pair of particles. You're gonna like slam it
21:58
Speaker 1: against something, yeah, And the key thing is that when
22:02
Speaker 1: you do that, you measure the energy of it, and
22:04
Speaker 1: you can measure the mass of that particle and photons,
22:07
Speaker 1: of course, don't have any mass. So you expect that
22:10
Speaker 1: you get this electron and this positron. You add them
22:12
Speaker 1: back up to reconstruct what the photon was like, and
22:14
Speaker 1: you calculate what this mass was. You should get zero.
22:17
Speaker 1: But what they see is a bunch of events where
22:19
Speaker 1: it doesn't add up to zero. It adds up to
22:21
Speaker 1: a different number. It adds up to a blob all
22:24
Speaker 1: around the same number, around seventeen mega electron volts. So
22:28
Speaker 1: where did this mass come from? Wit um? So photon
22:32
Speaker 1: doesn't have mass, so you expected to split off into
22:37
Speaker 1: an electron and an anti electron. You're saying that that
22:40
Speaker 1: has to add up to zero. The mass of that
22:43
Speaker 1: pair has to add up to zero. Yeah, But sometimes
22:47
Speaker 1: they see something that they can't explain, which is the
22:49
Speaker 1: mass of that pair adds up to something which is
22:52
Speaker 1: not zero, which means that the particle that carried that
22:55
Speaker 1: energy didn't have zero mass, It had non zero mass.
23:00
Speaker 1: And so essentially what they think they've seen is like
23:03
Speaker 1: another version of the photon, a different particle that does
23:07
Speaker 1: have mass. Oh, they think that the photon they're seeing
23:10
Speaker 1: is not a photon precisely. They think they call it
23:13
Speaker 1: the X particle good branding. I was wondering if you'd
23:16
Speaker 1: like that or not exert for like mysterious. We don't know,
23:20
Speaker 1: you know, if it actually becomes something real, and I
23:21
Speaker 1: guess they'll give it a real name. I think that
23:23
Speaker 1: means that they're doing physics X at the end. So
23:28
Speaker 1: that's the basic thing is that when they plot this
23:30
Speaker 1: or the mass of this pair of electron and positrons,
23:33
Speaker 1: they see a bunch of year zero where you expect
23:35
Speaker 1: to see photons, but they also see a blob all
23:38
Speaker 1: clustered together around seventeen mega electron volts. And that's the
23:42
Speaker 1: kind of thing you would expect to see if there
23:44
Speaker 1: was a new particle. There's something which wasn't a photon,
23:48
Speaker 1: but brilliant was emitting this X particle when it went
23:51
Speaker 1: down to its ground state. Oh like sometimes or usually
23:55
Speaker 1: gives us a gives off a regular photon, but sometimes
23:59
Speaker 1: you get a lot measurements of something that doesn't look
24:02
Speaker 1: like a photon precisely. And that's exactly the kind of
24:05
Speaker 1: thing you would expect to see if there really was
24:07
Speaker 1: a new particle there. But it's not like there's something
24:10
Speaker 1: terribly different going on here. I think maybe That's the
24:13
Speaker 1: weird part for me is like, like I was following you,
24:16
Speaker 1: it sounded like things I've heard before, but some of
24:19
Speaker 1: that you're telling me that, like on irregular atom decaying,
24:23
Speaker 1: suddenly there there's this weird new kind of particle coming out. Yeah,
24:27
Speaker 1: that's precisely what they're suggesting. And remember that to be
24:30
Speaker 1: consistent with everything else we've ever seen, it would have
24:33
Speaker 1: to be pretty subtle. If this was happening a lot,
24:35
Speaker 1: or shooting out some really powerful rays, or happening really often,
24:39
Speaker 1: then we would have noticed. Are already we studied atomic
24:43
Speaker 1: nuclei great detail. We have a pretty good understanding of
24:46
Speaker 1: how this works. So for this to evade all other
24:49
Speaker 1: previous experiments, it have to be pretty subtle. Not something
24:52
Speaker 1: in particular to the beryllium or the lithium. It's just
24:56
Speaker 1: something that nobody had that had flown under people's it are.
25:00
Speaker 1: It's not like these um they were taking like super
25:02
Speaker 1: exotic matter and doing experiments with experiments with it and
25:07
Speaker 1: they found something new. It's like they were doing something
25:09
Speaker 1: pretty what sounds pretty regular run of the mill physics. Yeah,
25:15
Speaker 1: and what they did last weekend, this new result that
25:17
Speaker 1: just came out is that they reproduced the same results
25:20
Speaker 1: using helium. So instead of brillium, they excited helium into
25:24
Speaker 1: a new state and when they saw a decay, they
25:26
Speaker 1: found a few of these examples of this X particle
25:29
Speaker 1: that looked just like in the brillium decays, like helium
25:33
Speaker 1: and helium balloons have some sort of secret particles in them. Yeah,
25:38
Speaker 1: but you know, if it's real and it's actually there,
25:40
Speaker 1: it's just turning into electrons and positrons and you can't
25:43
Speaker 1: tell the difference. So if this thing is real, and
25:46
Speaker 1: then it could be happening around us all the time,
25:48
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't make much difference to your world. I mean,
25:50
Speaker 1: the world with four forces or five forces doesn't look
25:53
Speaker 1: very different to you. And what did they say in
25:55
Speaker 1: the paper? Are they just saying like, hey, we look
26:00
Speaker 1: better than everybody else and so we found it. Or
26:03
Speaker 1: are they saying, you know, nobody's looked in this range before,
26:08
Speaker 1: or are they saying this is an interaction like a
26:11
Speaker 1: reaction that nobody had studied closely before to see it. Well,
26:15
Speaker 1: nobody else has ever seen this before. Only this one
26:18
Speaker 1: group from Hungary has seen this before. Now, other people
26:21
Speaker 1: have done nuclear physics experiments other people have looked at burrillium,
26:24
Speaker 1: other people have looked at helium. Nobody's ever seen this before. Now,
26:28
Speaker 1: when they put out the paper in two thousand and sixteen,
26:31
Speaker 1: nobody really paid attention. They were like, huh, whatever, that's interesting,
26:34
Speaker 1: but it's sort of in conflict with other results because
26:37
Speaker 1: nobody had ever seen this thing before. But then a
26:40
Speaker 1: group of theorists here you see Irvine, actually, Jonathan Fang
26:44
Speaker 1: and Tim Tate, they read this paper and they thought,
26:46
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Can we find a way to explain this
26:50
Speaker 1: result in terms of a new particle that also doesn't
26:54
Speaker 1: break all the other results that we've seen. Can we
26:56
Speaker 1: find a reason why all those other experiments wouldn't have
26:59
Speaker 1: seen this particle yet they looked at it. And Jonathan's
27:02
Speaker 1: a friend of ours, right we you're a friend of Jonathan,
27:04
Speaker 1: and I've met Jonathan and he's been in our videos
27:08
Speaker 1: that we've made for YouTube before, which is why I
27:10
Speaker 1: was like, I saw the article and then I saw
27:12
Speaker 1: his name. I was like, what, I know this guy
27:14
Speaker 1: because it was his paper that got this group a
27:16
Speaker 1: lot of attention. They published their paper and nobody really
27:19
Speaker 1: paid attention. But then Jonathan showed that their result could
27:22
Speaker 1: be consistent with a new particle and also be consistent
27:25
Speaker 1: with all the other experiments. Essentially, Jonathan found a way
27:28
Speaker 1: to explain away all the other results because all the
27:30
Speaker 1: other experiments have slightly different configurations or use a different
27:34
Speaker 1: energy range or a different kind of particle a different
27:36
Speaker 1: kind of detector. So Jonathan found a theory that explained
27:40
Speaker 1: this new result and also was consistent with everything we've
27:43
Speaker 1: seen before, and that is what made it exciting. I
27:45
Speaker 1: feel like that's really gutsy, you know, like if you
27:47
Speaker 1: read a paper with a crazy idea that probably clearly
27:52
Speaker 1: sounds like they just made a mistake to be like Nope,
27:54
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna double down and
27:57
Speaker 1: find a theory that might explain weird circumstance. Yeah. I
28:02
Speaker 1: think it actually sort of went the opposite direction. They
28:04
Speaker 1: were like, well, here's a crazy result. It's ruled out
28:07
Speaker 1: by all these other experiments, right, let's do the calculation,
28:10
Speaker 1: let's estimate, let's see if these other experiments actually are
28:13
Speaker 1: in conflict with this one, or if we can find
28:15
Speaker 1: a way to wiggle this one out. I think it
28:17
Speaker 1: started as an exercise and then they realized ham there
28:20
Speaker 1: really is an opening there. There's a way that you
28:22
Speaker 1: can explain this new result that doesn't conflict with the
28:25
Speaker 1: other ones. And that's when they got excited. Do you
28:27
Speaker 1: mean it was kind of like Jonathan was sitting on
28:30
Speaker 1: a Sunday and he's like, I could do the cross
28:31
Speaker 1: word puzzle today, or I could just you know, pass
28:34
Speaker 1: some time working out some equations for this experiment. Um.
28:38
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it was an exercise at
28:40
Speaker 1: the time. He was working with his post doc Flip Tonedo,
28:43
Speaker 1: who's also a friend of ours on the podcast and
28:45
Speaker 1: is now a professor e C Riverside, and they were
28:48
Speaker 1: just sort of working through this as an exercise and
28:50
Speaker 1: then discovered, hey, maybe this overlooked piece of evidence from
28:54
Speaker 1: Hungary is actually evidence for a new force of nature.
28:57
Speaker 1: That was an exciting moment for them. Interesting. If he
29:00
Speaker 1: hadn't done that, then people might have just ignored this experiment. Yeah, yeah,
29:05
Speaker 1: I think so. I think it was the attention of
29:07
Speaker 1: this frankly world class group of theorists and this reasonable
29:11
Speaker 1: argument for how it might be a big discovery that
29:14
Speaker 1: pointed the world's scientific attention to this group and Hungary.
29:17
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'll have to ask Jonathan over a
29:20
Speaker 1: beer or something, how he got in, how he found
29:22
Speaker 1: this article and what made him get interested in it.
29:26
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's talking about the result itself and whether
29:29
Speaker 1: it's significant and whether it is actually a new force
29:33
Speaker 1: of nature. But first let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel,
29:49
Speaker 1: So have they found a new fifth force or I
29:53
Speaker 1: guess four and a half fource of the universe. I
29:57
Speaker 1: would say it's way too early to tell. I mean,
30:00
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't think we can even really
30:02
Speaker 1: conclusively say that they have seen a new particle. And
30:05
Speaker 1: then there's the follow up question of if it is
30:07
Speaker 1: a new particle, is it a new force? Also, so
30:09
Speaker 1: you you have doubts about or you want to see
30:11
Speaker 1: more evidence about whether or not even found anything. And
30:16
Speaker 1: then there's actual deeper questions about whether it actually means
30:19
Speaker 1: there's a new force. That's right, this result only comes
30:21
Speaker 1: from one team, this team in Hungary. And before you
30:25
Speaker 1: really believe that a particle exists, do you want to
30:27
Speaker 1: see it replicated by an independent team? You want to
30:29
Speaker 1: see another group that has a different setup and maybe
30:32
Speaker 1: different potential biases, make the same measurements and see the
30:37
Speaker 1: same thing. I mean, if it's a real thing in nature,
30:38
Speaker 1: you should be able to see it in more than
30:40
Speaker 1: one place. It's like when we discovered cold fusion, that
30:43
Speaker 1: group in Utah. Other groups immediately went out to see
30:46
Speaker 1: if they could reproduce it, and nobody could, which is
30:49
Speaker 1: how we knew that it was bogus. And that doesn't
30:52
Speaker 1: mean necessarily malfeasance, you know, it doesn't mean that they're
30:55
Speaker 1: lying to us, But it's a There's a lot of
30:57
Speaker 1: ways to accidentally bias your result or introduce a mistake,
31:02
Speaker 1: and that's why we cross check things to science. So
31:04
Speaker 1: where are we at now? Have people tried to replicate
31:07
Speaker 1: it or has just nobody tried And so that's why
31:10
Speaker 1: it's an open question. Like it doesn't sound like a
31:12
Speaker 1: super difficult experiment, isn't like you don't need billions of
31:16
Speaker 1: dollars for it. You don't need billions of dollars. You
31:19
Speaker 1: need some sort of particle accelerator so you can get
31:21
Speaker 1: these protons up to the right energy, and then you
31:24
Speaker 1: need a detector that can transform this particle into your
31:27
Speaker 1: positiron electron pair and measure it precisely. And you also
31:30
Speaker 1: just need time and interest. And so there are a
31:33
Speaker 1: few groups out there that are interested in potentially reproducing
31:36
Speaker 1: this measurement using slightly different equipment, but nobody has done
31:39
Speaker 1: it yet, and until that happens, I don't think anybody
31:42
Speaker 1: in science is really going to take this result seriously. Well,
31:46
Speaker 1: it's kind of a weird incentive, right, because like, if
31:49
Speaker 1: I'm a physicist, what's my incentive to being the second
31:53
Speaker 1: guy who confirms the first guys or first girls or
31:56
Speaker 1: gals experiment? You know what I mean? Like, it's like
31:59
Speaker 1: it's a weird thing to jump into, you know, because
32:02
Speaker 1: you want to get all the glory, and if you
32:04
Speaker 1: disprove it, then you know, you would you probably wouldn't
32:07
Speaker 1: get munch of glory either. That's an interesting question, and
32:10
Speaker 1: I think that goes to like who would get the
32:12
Speaker 1: credit for this kind of discovery, you know? And should
32:15
Speaker 1: it go to the Hungarian folks? Should it go to
32:17
Speaker 1: Jonathan and those folks for recognizing the importance of this,
32:20
Speaker 1: should it go do a new team that verifies it?
32:22
Speaker 1: Should you split it three ways? I'm not sure. To
32:24
Speaker 1: me for having a podcast about it, I'm not sure.
32:29
Speaker 1: And you know, there's also a question of sort of
32:31
Speaker 1: priorities and credibility you know, everybody out there's a lot
32:35
Speaker 1: to do in science and a long list of experiments
32:37
Speaker 1: they'd love to get done, and given infinite funding, sure,
32:40
Speaker 1: I'd like to see this thing happen, But you know,
32:42
Speaker 1: is it the most important thing that these other groups
32:45
Speaker 1: can be doing with their time? And also, does anybody
32:48
Speaker 1: really believe this result? This Hungarian group has sort of
32:52
Speaker 1: a I mean there are whispers and hallways and physics
32:55
Speaker 1: departments about a checkered past from this group, claiming discoveries
32:59
Speaker 1: which didn't pan out. Oh man, gossip gossip. There is
33:02
Speaker 1: physics gossip. And you know there's people who have now
33:07
Speaker 1: retired and I think passed away who used the same
33:10
Speaker 1: facilities and made a lot of claims about new particles
33:13
Speaker 1: they thought they discovered, which then sort of went away
33:15
Speaker 1: and no longer part of this team, of course because
33:18
Speaker 1: they've passed on. But it sort of lingers. The questions
33:21
Speaker 1: linger about whether results from this facility can really be trusted.
33:24
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that TV show Gossip Girl for
33:28
Speaker 1: for physics. And you know, in the end, the results
33:31
Speaker 1: speak for themselves, either you believe them or you don't.
33:33
Speaker 1: And and importantly, nobody has found a flaw in their work.
33:36
Speaker 1: People have combed through the details and nobody has found
33:39
Speaker 1: a mistake. And also people have worked really hard to
33:42
Speaker 1: try to explain the results using just standard physics, using
33:45
Speaker 1: the four forces we know, and nobody has been able to.
33:48
Speaker 1: So it's either a very subtle mistake or it's real.
33:51
Speaker 1: You're kind of saying that it's suspect. But if it's
33:56
Speaker 1: a hoax, it's a really good hoax. I'm not saying
33:59
Speaker 1: it's a hoax, right. Hoax implies that these folks are
34:01
Speaker 1: tricking us. I think they're doing honest work. Oh, I
34:03
Speaker 1: see right. But if it's a mistake, it's a really
34:06
Speaker 1: well hidden mistake. If it is a mistake or not, no,
34:09
Speaker 1: And it's really easy to make subtle mistakes. You know,
34:12
Speaker 1: these detectors only see a fraction of the events, and
34:15
Speaker 1: so you have to make some assumptions about the ones
34:17
Speaker 1: you missed, and it's very easy to introduce biases. We
34:19
Speaker 1: have lots of examples in particle colliders, for example, where
34:22
Speaker 1: we see bumps in our data and we think, oh
34:23
Speaker 1: my gosh, maybe that's a new particle, and it turns
34:25
Speaker 1: out it came from a complicated series of of influences
34:29
Speaker 1: from this and that me other which produce a bump
34:32
Speaker 1: in your data. So it's easy to produce false bumps.
34:34
Speaker 1: And so what you really just need is a totally
34:36
Speaker 1: independent cross check. And you would need that for any group, right,
34:39
Speaker 1: even if this was a very well respected group from Harvard,
34:43
Speaker 1: you would definitely need independent confirmation before you believed it.
34:46
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into the details a little bit.
34:48
Speaker 1: I think we have time and talk about to the
34:50
Speaker 1: idea that Jonathan proposed, or that this group proposed at
34:55
Speaker 1: the same time, was that like, maybe this is a
34:58
Speaker 1: new particle that we're seeing. Maybe this particle has a
35:01
Speaker 1: new force of nature attached to it. Yeah, and that's
35:04
Speaker 1: really sort of just interpretation. All we know is if
35:08
Speaker 1: this particle is real, it decays into an electron and
35:11
Speaker 1: positron pair, and that means that it has to have
35:15
Speaker 1: into your spin because the electrons and positrons are spin
35:18
Speaker 1: half and so they have to add up to either
35:20
Speaker 1: spin zero or spin one or whatever, but into your spin.
35:23
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of particle we call a boson.
35:25
Speaker 1: Bosons have intoed your spin. And so this looks like
35:28
Speaker 1: it's a boson, that's right. And so the most conservative
35:31
Speaker 1: thing you could say, is if this is real, it's
35:33
Speaker 1: a new boson. Is a photon a boson. A photon
35:36
Speaker 1: is a boson, the W, the z, bluon, all these
35:39
Speaker 1: particles are boson's. Every boson we know of is associated
35:43
Speaker 1: with the force. Photon carries electromagnetism, that W and Z
35:48
Speaker 1: carry the weak force, gluons carry the strong force. If
35:51
Speaker 1: gravity is a quantum force, it would have a graviton,
35:54
Speaker 1: which is a boson. So this is there's this association
35:57
Speaker 1: between bosons and forces. Okay, and you think so you
36:01
Speaker 1: you sort of know it's a boson because of the spin,
36:04
Speaker 1: but do you think it might be a new boson
36:06
Speaker 1: because it weighs differently than all the other bosons you
36:09
Speaker 1: know about? Precisely? But I think there's some disagreement in
36:13
Speaker 1: the physics community about whether every new boson has to
36:16
Speaker 1: be a force. For example, we discovered a new boson
36:20
Speaker 1: a few years ago, the Higgs boson. Is the Higgs
36:23
Speaker 1: boson represent a new fundamental force of nature. Some theorists
36:27
Speaker 1: say yes, Some theorists say no, because the Higgs boson
36:30
Speaker 1: also doesn't just fall out of requiring what we call
36:32
Speaker 1: a local gauge symmetry, which is a fancy jargon for
36:35
Speaker 1: having a certain kind of math. But how do you
36:37
Speaker 1: know it's not just a like a W boson that
36:40
Speaker 1: weighs differently, or like a boson W boson that eight
36:44
Speaker 1: too much for lunch. This is much much lighter, right.
36:48
Speaker 1: The W boson is about, let me do some math
36:51
Speaker 1: um four thousand times heavier than this new X particle.
36:56
Speaker 1: So it has to be a W boson on a
36:57
Speaker 1: strict diet. It's like intermittent fast W boson. It's a
37:02
Speaker 1: W boson that's skip lunch. Well, that's a good question.
37:06
Speaker 1: So you also call that in a different like like
37:09
Speaker 1: a W boson that ways less would still be a
37:12
Speaker 1: new boson. W boson that wass less would still be
37:14
Speaker 1: a new boson. Like we are looking right now for
37:16
Speaker 1: new versions of the W that have different masses. That
37:19
Speaker 1: would be a different particle, because the mass of the
37:21
Speaker 1: particle really shapes its identity. It's part of what we
37:24
Speaker 1: call a particle. And you know, like finding a heavier
37:27
Speaker 1: version of the electron, that would be a new particle.
37:29
Speaker 1: It's who they are, it's who they are um. And
37:33
Speaker 1: so there's not an agreement about whether every boson really
37:35
Speaker 1: represents a new force or not. Even if you find
37:38
Speaker 1: a heavier W Boson, that doesn't mean there's a new force.
37:41
Speaker 1: It just means you found a heavier W Boson. That's right.
37:44
Speaker 1: But of course it sounds cooler to discover a new
37:46
Speaker 1: force than a new particle, and so I think that's
37:48
Speaker 1: why some people described in the media is like, discovery
37:51
Speaker 1: of a new force of nature sounds sexier. It it
37:54
Speaker 1: focus grouped better than discovery of a new particle of nature.
37:57
Speaker 1: You would get more clicks if you say we found
37:59
Speaker 1: any force then you say and then if you say
38:02
Speaker 1: we find a new Boson, that get lunch. That's right,
38:04
Speaker 1: But it could be It could be that there is
38:06
Speaker 1: a new fundamental force out there and this boson carries
38:09
Speaker 1: that force, and that this is the first piece of
38:12
Speaker 1: evidence for the discovery of this new particle, which is
38:15
Speaker 1: the clue to the new force, which tells us something about,
38:17
Speaker 1: you know, the way the universe works. Although I think
38:20
Speaker 1: you would get a lot of clicks if you wrote
38:21
Speaker 1: the headline as you won't believe what this boson life
38:24
Speaker 1: now with its new diet. That's right, But you know
38:29
Speaker 1: there's also competing forces here because physicists are trying to
38:32
Speaker 1: discover new forces, we're also trying to get rid of forces.
38:35
Speaker 1: You know. One of our goals is to describe all
38:38
Speaker 1: the forces in terms of one mathematical structure, Like we
38:41
Speaker 1: combined electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism, and then with the
38:45
Speaker 1: weak force into the electro week. We'd love to find
38:48
Speaker 1: the grand unified force that encapsulates everything. So on one hand,
38:52
Speaker 1: we want to find more forces, and then on the
38:54
Speaker 1: other hand, we want to sort of shoehorn them together
38:56
Speaker 1: into one framework. It's like when you're trying to clean
38:58
Speaker 1: up your kid's room and you got everything sort in
39:01
Speaker 1: the closet, and then the kid comes up and says, look,
39:04
Speaker 1: I found this toy, and you're like, great, well. It's
39:09
Speaker 1: sort of like when you're trying to solve the jigsaw puzzle.
39:11
Speaker 1: First you want to get all the pieces and categorize them,
39:14
Speaker 1: and then you want to see if they fit together
39:16
Speaker 1: into one nice picture. But you can't do that if
39:18
Speaker 1: you don't have all the pieces. And so we desperately
39:20
Speaker 1: want to figure out are there other pieces out there
39:22
Speaker 1: that we're missing? Because we know this a lot about
39:24
Speaker 1: the universe. We haven't understood. When you get a headline
39:27
Speaker 1: like this, you're both kind of excited but also like
39:30
Speaker 1: you've grown a little bit, like, oh, that means that
39:34
Speaker 1: means we're behind. But hey, isn't it exciting that we're behind.
39:37
Speaker 1: We're always behind. It's not like this a schedule for
39:41
Speaker 1: discoveries of the universe. We're never gonna understand everything behind
39:46
Speaker 1: one of my jet packs yesterday, yesterday. You know, we
39:49
Speaker 1: are always going to be behind. So it's always exciting
39:52
Speaker 1: to hear about more physics to understand. All right, Well,
39:55
Speaker 1: it sounds like the answer here is stay tuned. Sounds like, um,
40:00
Speaker 1: they found something amazing, or maybe they found something but
40:03
Speaker 1: it's it's not that revolutionary, or maybe they maybe they
40:07
Speaker 1: didn't find anything. Maybe it's just something that there that
40:11
Speaker 1: people are overlooking. Yeah, stay tuned for independent confirmation. Until
40:15
Speaker 1: we get that, you really should just put a pin
40:17
Speaker 1: in it and think about it as a cool result
40:19
Speaker 1: that maybe we'll understand one day. Right, until then, we
40:22
Speaker 1: still only have three and a half fundamental forces three.
40:27
Speaker 1: That's my final offer. Let's get three point six and
40:30
Speaker 1: then weekend end this podcast Daniel done, especially after we
40:34
Speaker 1: account for Lawyer's fees on the forces. All right, Well,
40:37
Speaker 1: hopefully that answered people's curiosity and questions about this headline
40:41
Speaker 1: that came over the weekend. Yeah, so thanks for sending
40:44
Speaker 1: in your questions. If you see something in the Science
40:47
Speaker 1: News that you don't understand, please send it to us
40:49
Speaker 1: at Questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. We'll break
40:52
Speaker 1: it down for you. And remember Daniel answers Twitter and email,
40:56
Speaker 1: but he doesn't answer Instagram, Instill what instead? You know
41:01
Speaker 1: what the kids are using? But I think you do
41:04
Speaker 1: answer TikTok? Do you do TikTok? I don't know what
41:08
Speaker 1: that is, but I definitely do it. Loll the kids
41:12
Speaker 1: are doing it. I mean I'll put a lab coat
41:16
Speaker 1: on and make one of those ticker talkers. There you go.
41:20
Speaker 1: Well all right, well, we hope you enjoyed that and
41:24
Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for tuning in, and thanks
41:26
Speaker 1: for lending us your brain for fifty minutes. Before you
41:37
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
41:40
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
41:43
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41:46
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
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41:53
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