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Is space filled with infinite energy? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: You know, Jorge, sometimes I wish that particle physics was
0:11
Speaker 1: more useful, more useful than creating black holes and particle
0:16
Speaker 1: colliders to threaten the Earth. Yeah, sometimes I wish that
0:19
Speaker 1: we could unlock the power of physics to do something
0:23
Speaker 1: good for humanity. He could work on like renewal energies
0:27
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Actually, I do have some crazy
0:31
Speaker 1: ideas about that. Yeah, how crazy are we talking about?
0:34
Speaker 1: Very crazy? Maybe infinitely crazy? Well, I'm infinitely interested in
0:39
Speaker 1: infinite energy. Fortunately, we only have a finite time on
0:43
Speaker 1: today's podcast. I am or Hamming, cartoonists and the creator
1:01
Speaker 1: of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle of physicist,
1:05
Speaker 1: and I'm technically made of an infinite number of particles.
1:07
Speaker 1: What do you mean there's an infinite amount of you?
1:11
Speaker 1: How much did you have over Thanksgiving dinner? Is that
1:14
Speaker 1: too much, Daniel for you to take? That's an infinity
1:17
Speaker 1: too much for anyone. No, in this sense that we're
1:21
Speaker 1: all made out of potentially infinite number of fluctuating particles
1:24
Speaker 1: popping in and out of the vacuum. We're mathematically infinite.
1:29
Speaker 1: The vacuum of space always full of surprises. I feel
1:33
Speaker 1: like Yeah, like you never know what it's gonna pop
1:35
Speaker 1: out or give you or hand you for Christmas. It's
1:38
Speaker 1: infinitely surprising. So welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge
1:41
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in
1:43
Speaker 1: which we examine the infinite with a cold eye. We
1:46
Speaker 1: don't look away. We try to understand it. We think
1:49
Speaker 1: about the infinity of space, we think about the infinities
1:52
Speaker 1: in space, We think about everything there is out there
1:55
Speaker 1: in the universe, and we talk about it in a
1:57
Speaker 1: way that we hope makes sense to you. That's right.
2:00
Speaker 1: We stare down the universe until it tells us what
2:04
Speaker 1: infinite secrets it has hiding inside of its very own fabric.
2:09
Speaker 1: That's right because there is an infinite amount of joy
2:12
Speaker 1: in revealing the truth of the universe. Science is an
2:16
Speaker 1: amazing project. We just find ourselves, as conscious beings in
2:19
Speaker 1: this universe trying slowly to chip away at the truth
2:23
Speaker 1: and figure out how does it all work? What does
2:25
Speaker 1: it all mean? Doesn't make sense? Is it possible for
2:28
Speaker 1: humans to make sense of it? Yeah? Because it is
2:30
Speaker 1: a big universe and it is full of strange phenomena
2:33
Speaker 1: phenomenon that feels really strange to our everyday experience, like,
2:38
Speaker 1: for example, the idea of infinite things. We're not used
2:41
Speaker 1: to infinite things on Earth were used to finite things,
2:44
Speaker 1: things with a limit, at least that's what our parents
2:46
Speaker 1: tell us. That's right. I still have not yet eaten
2:49
Speaker 1: an infinite number of cookies, though it's an ongoing project.
2:51
Speaker 1: That's right. You can't say you haven't or you won't.
2:54
Speaker 1: That's right, give me enough time, But you're right. Infinity
2:57
Speaker 1: is a hard thing to grapple with. It's both like
3:00
Speaker 1: impossible to hold in your head and also like every
3:03
Speaker 1: day it's weird to think about the universe being infinite
3:06
Speaker 1: in extent, but it's not weird to realize that there
3:09
Speaker 1: are an infinite number of numbers between zero and one,
3:13
Speaker 1: for example. So it's a pretty weird thing. Yeah, And
3:16
Speaker 1: not only could the universe be infinite, you could have
3:20
Speaker 1: infinities inside of it. There might be an infinity of infinities, right.
3:25
Speaker 1: It might be that everywhere around us there are infinite
3:28
Speaker 1: particles popping in and out of the vacuum. And when
3:30
Speaker 1: you dig down deeper into what that means about space,
3:33
Speaker 1: it might tell you something very strange. So to be
3:36
Speaker 1: on the podcast will be asking the question, is space
3:43
Speaker 1: filled with infinite energy? And can I use that to
3:47
Speaker 1: charge my iPhone? That would be pretty useful, Like a
3:50
Speaker 1: phone that just charges if you just hold it up
3:52
Speaker 1: in the air, that would be useful. Daniel, stop writing
3:54
Speaker 1: papers about the fabric of reality and just get us
3:58
Speaker 1: that air charger. All right, I'm to move from papers
4:01
Speaker 1: to patents. That's my plan for the week. Yeah. I mean,
4:04
Speaker 1: I know Apple has like the iPod air or iMac air.
4:07
Speaker 1: It just makes like the the air, the iMac vacuum
4:12
Speaker 1: you go. But I think this touches on something which
4:14
Speaker 1: is really at the heart of what we're doing with
4:16
Speaker 1: the whole physics project, which is trying to make sense
4:19
Speaker 1: of the universe and then wondering is our understanding real
4:22
Speaker 1: Like we talk about space being filled with the vacuum,
4:26
Speaker 1: which is filled with these quantum frothing particles, But are
4:29
Speaker 1: they really there or is that just something in our minds?
4:32
Speaker 1: Could we do experiments to figure out if they really
4:35
Speaker 1: are there or if these are just calculations we're doing
4:38
Speaker 1: in our head. Yeah. So the idea is that there's
4:40
Speaker 1: a there's a concept right in physics that the universe
4:44
Speaker 1: is not empty it's filled with fields like quantum fields,
4:48
Speaker 1: and these fields are not just sitting there or they're
4:51
Speaker 1: not empty of energy. Yeah, exactly. Because these fields are quantum,
4:55
Speaker 1: they have a special property that they can never actually
4:58
Speaker 1: have zero energy in them. And so according to quantum physics,
5:03
Speaker 1: all of space should be filled with an infinite number
5:05
Speaker 1: of particles, which should correspond to a real energy, which
5:09
Speaker 1: technically means an infinite amount of energy in every piece
5:13
Speaker 1: of space. Yeah, and like they can't just chill, like
5:15
Speaker 1: they can't just bottom out. They always have to have
5:18
Speaker 1: like a little bit of like a buzz to them, right. Yeah,
5:21
Speaker 1: that's kind of the idea, and that's sort of hard
5:23
Speaker 1: to grapple with. But it turns out this a really
5:25
Speaker 1: interesting experiment that studies something called the Cassimir effect, which
5:29
Speaker 1: might be sensitive to whether these particles really are out there.
5:32
Speaker 1: And this experiment tells us something amazing. Yeah, the Cassimir
5:35
Speaker 1: effect is a really interesting well just the name, and
5:39
Speaker 1: I have to say, at first, I thought it was
5:41
Speaker 1: sort of a reference to the reins of Castimir, and
5:44
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, that's not going to end well for
5:45
Speaker 1: this podcast. Are We're gonna end up at the red
5:48
Speaker 1: wedding at the end of this, I hope not be
5:52
Speaker 1: gonna be good from Game of Thrones, but not everything
5:55
Speaker 1: it turns out is a Game of Thrones reference. This
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Speaker 1: is actually a physics effect for dicted a long time
6:00
Speaker 1: ago and recently observed. Yeah, it's an idea that's been
6:03
Speaker 1: around for a long time, like over a fifty years,
6:07
Speaker 1: seventy years, the Casimir effect. Yeah, and these are beautiful ideas,
6:11
Speaker 1: the idea to test a crazy theory of physics by
6:14
Speaker 1: coming up with an experiment that could actually pin it down,
6:16
Speaker 1: that could corner nature and force it to reveal to
6:20
Speaker 1: us what's really going on out there in space. Yeah.
6:23
Speaker 1: So this effect is a little obscure, I think, but
6:26
Speaker 1: it might sort of reveal that the universe is or
6:29
Speaker 1: is not filled with infinite energy. So, as usually'll be,
6:32
Speaker 1: were wondering how many people had even heard of this
6:34
Speaker 1: experiment or effect, and so Daniel went out there into
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Speaker 1: the wild to the internet to ask people what is
6:41
Speaker 1: the Casimir effect? So thanks to everybody who participated with
6:44
Speaker 1: so much evident joy and enthusiasm. If you would like
6:48
Speaker 1: to speculate baselessly and without reference materials on future questions
6:53
Speaker 1: for the podcast, please write to us two questions at
6:56
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. So before you listen to
6:58
Speaker 1: these answers, think about it for a second. If so,
7:00
Speaker 1: gonna ask you, what is the Casimir effect? Not the
7:03
Speaker 1: range of Casimir? What would you say? Here's what people
7:06
Speaker 1: had to say. It makes me think of something to
7:08
Speaker 1: do with sons. So maybe sun flairs or something of
7:12
Speaker 1: the sort. I have no idea what that could be.
7:16
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess that Kasimir was a scientist and
7:21
Speaker 1: he was either casually or actively observing something and noticed
7:27
Speaker 1: an effect that perhaps had not been noticed before. To
7:30
Speaker 1: see the customer effect, you put two metallic plates close together.
7:37
Speaker 1: Then they move even closer together because the number of
7:41
Speaker 1: particle anti particle or virtual particle antiparticle pairs outside the
7:46
Speaker 1: place as greater than those between the plates. So the
7:51
Speaker 1: particles outside exert a non zero net force on the plates,
7:56
Speaker 1: and they moved closer together. Most named after a guy
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Speaker 1: named Kasimir. Well, do you think that means we have
8:02
Speaker 1: no Game of Thrones fans because nobody else thought this
8:04
Speaker 1: was the reigns of Kastimir. Maybe are fantasy fan and
8:08
Speaker 1: physics loving audience doesn't overlap. But there were some pretty
8:11
Speaker 1: good guesses here. I like the it was named after
8:13
Speaker 1: a guy named Casimir. Interesting that would be normally a
8:19
Speaker 1: good guess in physics. Yeah exactly. But also a lot
8:22
Speaker 1: of people just didn't know what it is or had
8:25
Speaker 1: heard of it before. It doesn't seem to have good
8:27
Speaker 1: PR Yeah exactly. I think Cassimir and his PR team
8:30
Speaker 1: definitely needs some like social media tips well step us
8:34
Speaker 1: through this, Daniel. First of all, Yeah, what is this
8:37
Speaker 1: idea that space is filled with energy? It's a really
8:40
Speaker 1: sort of bonkers idea, but it's also totally realistic, which
8:44
Speaker 1: is my favorite thing about physics. And to get into this,
8:47
Speaker 1: you have to really understand how quantum physics looks at space,
8:52
Speaker 1: like what is space? And if you're the kind of
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Speaker 1: person that thinks, well, space is nothing right, spaces, emptiness, spaces,
9:00
Speaker 1: the gap between stuff, then remember that modern physics is
9:04
Speaker 1: a different view of space. There's this sort of general
9:07
Speaker 1: relativity view of space that tells us how space can
9:10
Speaker 1: bend and twist and ripple. That's awesome, but we're gonna
9:13
Speaker 1: put that aside today and we're gonna look at the
9:15
Speaker 1: quantum physics view of space. The quantum physics view of
9:18
Speaker 1: space says that space is not emptiness. Space is like
9:22
Speaker 1: a parking lot. It has all these fields in it
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Speaker 1: which can be filled with particles or they can be empty.
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Speaker 1: So you can imagine, for example, all of the universe
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Speaker 1: being filled with an electron field, and where there are electrons,
9:36
Speaker 1: that just means that field has a little bit of
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Speaker 1: energy in it. It's vibrating, and that corresponds to an electron.
9:41
Speaker 1: Where there aren't electrons, than those fields are empty, they're
9:45
Speaker 1: not vibrating as much. Yeah, this idea of space is
9:47
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit closer to what most people think
9:50
Speaker 1: of space before they learn about relativity. It is sort
9:53
Speaker 1: of like a big empty warehouse, like a big empty space,
9:57
Speaker 1: but it's filled with something. Yeah, exactly. And I think
10:01
Speaker 1: the mental shift you need to make to understand it
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Speaker 1: from the field point of view is that you don't have,
10:07
Speaker 1: for example, an electron moving through empty space as a particle,
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Speaker 1: just like floating through nothing. Instead, you can think of
10:14
Speaker 1: that electron moving through space is like a wiggle on
10:17
Speaker 1: a string. That wiggle moves along the string, but it's
10:20
Speaker 1: really the string that's doing the wiggling. So in this case,
10:23
Speaker 1: an electron moving through space is a vibration in the
10:27
Speaker 1: electron field, and that vibration is passing through the field.
10:31
Speaker 1: I always kind of think about it as like having
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Speaker 1: a giant room and then like having a giant blanket
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Speaker 1: over that would be the quantum field, and the electron
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Speaker 1: is like a little bump in the blanket that you know,
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Speaker 1: kind of moves around. That sounds pretty cozy. Your theory
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Speaker 1: of the universe doesn't sound like cold and empty. It
10:46
Speaker 1: sounds like snuggly and a cold, rainy day. It's called
10:48
Speaker 1: a cozy effect exactly, the quantum cozy effect, Yeah, exactly.
10:53
Speaker 1: And so you can imagine that blanket, you know, gets
10:55
Speaker 1: pushed up when you have a particle under it. And
10:57
Speaker 1: the cool thing about this way to think about it
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Speaker 1: is that it's very easy to then have two particles,
11:01
Speaker 1: because then your quantum field in that spot is now
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Speaker 1: excited a little bit more, and three particles is just
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Speaker 1: another excitation in the field. So this actually technically is
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Speaker 1: very powerful because it allows you to think about the
11:13
Speaker 1: creation and destruction of individual quantum particles. Whereas the earlier
11:17
Speaker 1: the old school quantum mechanics followed the path of an
11:20
Speaker 1: individual particle, and so it was very difficult to calculate
11:23
Speaker 1: like what happened when it was destroyed, or how do
11:25
Speaker 1: you follow two or three particles. So the quantum field
11:28
Speaker 1: approach is the more modern approach, partially because it's just
11:31
Speaker 1: technically easier to like actually calculate things. Yeah, and there's
11:35
Speaker 1: not just one field. There's like a bunch of fields
11:38
Speaker 1: in the universe, right, Like it's not just one blanket
11:40
Speaker 1: covering my warehouse. It's like a whole bunch of blankets
11:43
Speaker 1: tacked together. Yeah, every place in space has a field
11:46
Speaker 1: for every possible particle. So every point in space has
11:49
Speaker 1: an electron field, and muan field, a cork field, you know,
11:52
Speaker 1: electromagnetic fields for the photons. All of these different fields
11:56
Speaker 1: in the same place. And sometimes these fields don't interact
12:00
Speaker 1: with each other at all. Right, some of these particles
12:02
Speaker 1: don't interact with each other, and so these fields don't
12:04
Speaker 1: interact with each other, but sometimes they do. For example,
12:08
Speaker 1: the electron and the photon do interact with each other, right,
12:11
Speaker 1: electrons give off photons, So those fields are coupled together.
12:14
Speaker 1: So it's a bunch of different fields, but some of
12:16
Speaker 1: them interact with each other. They're tied together by these forces.
12:20
Speaker 1: Some blankets are to sown a little bit with other blankets. Yeah, exactly.
12:24
Speaker 1: If you make a wiggle in one, it will spread
12:26
Speaker 1: that energy out into others, and some of them slash
12:28
Speaker 1: back and forth. It's pretty cool. And you know, one
12:30
Speaker 1: of the projects of particle physics is to take this
12:33
Speaker 1: big stack of nineteen blankets we have and understand them
12:36
Speaker 1: all is like part of one big blanket that's just
12:39
Speaker 1: sort of like wiggling together according to one set of rules.
12:42
Speaker 1: We're trying to unify the whole system of these different
12:45
Speaker 1: fields and understand them in the context of like one
12:47
Speaker 1: field that unifies them all. But that's the subject for
12:50
Speaker 1: a whole different podcast. For today, the thing we need
12:52
Speaker 1: to think about is what it means when these fields
12:55
Speaker 1: are emptiest m Yeah. Now, I guess the question is
13:00
Speaker 1: do quantum physicists think of space is separate from these fields?
13:04
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean, like it's space the
13:05
Speaker 1: empty warehouse and then you put fields in it. Or
13:08
Speaker 1: do you think of it that you can't have space
13:11
Speaker 1: without quantum fields. You can't have space without quantum fields. Yeah, exactly.
13:15
Speaker 1: These fields fill the whole universe. There's no place in
13:18
Speaker 1: space where you don't have these fields. And you could
13:21
Speaker 1: ask like does that mean that that's what space is.
13:24
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I mean quantum mechanics usually consider space
13:28
Speaker 1: to be sort of like firm and absolute. It prefers
13:31
Speaker 1: to deal with sort of flat space rather than like
13:33
Speaker 1: the curved space or weirdly connected space of general relativity.
13:37
Speaker 1: It is possible in some context to connect the two,
13:39
Speaker 1: but we've never achieved like a full connection to understand
13:42
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics and curved space altogether in all sorts of context,
13:46
Speaker 1: that would be quantum gravity. So quantum mechanics views space
13:50
Speaker 1: is sort of like flat and absolute, and then you
13:53
Speaker 1: have the fields in space. But you can't have any
13:55
Speaker 1: part of space without those fields, right, right, But you
13:58
Speaker 1: can't have places where the field is not excited as usual, right,
14:03
Speaker 1: that's what you call it, like empty or vacuum. Yeah,
14:06
Speaker 1: you can have a vacuum, and vacuum sort of calls
14:08
Speaker 1: to mind the idea of emptiness of nothingness, right, or
14:11
Speaker 1: maybe lowest energy state. And in classical physics, like before
14:16
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, that meant zero. Like if you had an
14:19
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field classically, like a hundred and fifty years ago,
14:23
Speaker 1: back when Maxwell was doing this stuff, you could turn
14:25
Speaker 1: it on and you could turn it off, and when
14:27
Speaker 1: it was off, it was at zero. Quantum fields can't
14:31
Speaker 1: actually do that. Quantum fields can't settle down to zero energy. Wow,
14:35
Speaker 1: that's weird. What does that mean? Like, even though nothing
14:38
Speaker 1: is there or exciting it or you know, happening there,
14:42
Speaker 1: it still has some kind of potential or some kind
14:47
Speaker 1: of like motion. What does that mean that it doesn't
14:50
Speaker 1: have zero energy? That's really the heart of the question.
14:52
Speaker 1: What does it mean? And you said, for example, nothing
14:54
Speaker 1: is there? We don't really know if nothing is there,
14:57
Speaker 1: what it means is that quantum fields in their lowest
15:00
Speaker 1: possible state are in a state with non zero energy.
15:04
Speaker 1: This is called the zero point energy. And if you
15:07
Speaker 1: solve the math for how quantum systems work, they always
15:10
Speaker 1: have a minimum non zero energy. It's just not possible
15:14
Speaker 1: to get the quantum field down to zero energy. And
15:17
Speaker 1: so we don't know what that means. That's the heart
15:19
Speaker 1: of the question. Doesn't mean that there are like little
15:22
Speaker 1: virtual particles actually there with real energy. Is it a
15:25
Speaker 1: weird mathematical artifact that we're just not understanding as it
15:28
Speaker 1: acclude into something else, like what does this actually mean?
15:31
Speaker 1: Is the heart of the question. I guess what what
15:32
Speaker 1: do you mean it can't have zero energy? Like it
15:35
Speaker 1: it's not likely or it's just like theoretically possible, it
15:39
Speaker 1: would break some kind of math equation, And what does
15:41
Speaker 1: it mean? Like, how do you know it can't have
15:43
Speaker 1: zero energy? Like couldn't it fluctuate and sometimes dip below zero?
15:47
Speaker 1: So that's a great question. Remember, the quantum mechanics gives
15:50
Speaker 1: us probability, so it allows fluctuations, but it allows fluctuations
15:53
Speaker 1: between physically possible solutions, like you might solve an equation
15:57
Speaker 1: that says, here's nine different things in electron and can
16:00
Speaker 1: do I don't know exactly which one it's going to
16:02
Speaker 1: do when I can tell you the probabilities of various ones,
16:04
Speaker 1: and it might fluctuate between them, but it has to
16:07
Speaker 1: do one of these things. Doesn't mean the rules are
16:09
Speaker 1: off and anything can happen. I mean you solve the
16:12
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics of a system in empty space, these fields
16:14
Speaker 1: in empty space, you get a bunch of solutions, and
16:17
Speaker 1: those solutions are quantized, and the solutions are like one particle,
16:21
Speaker 1: two particles, three particles, four particles. But the zero particle
16:24
Speaker 1: solution doesn't have zero energy. It has a minimum amount
16:28
Speaker 1: of energy. When you solve the mathematics, you get a
16:31
Speaker 1: state with no particles but with energy, right, So, and
16:34
Speaker 1: somehow this kind of leads to the idea that space
16:38
Speaker 1: has infinite energy. So let's get into connecting those dots
16:43
Speaker 1: and let's talk about this interesting Casimir effect. But first
16:47
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, we're asking the question, Daniel,
17:02
Speaker 1: does space have an infinite amount of energy? And I
17:07
Speaker 1: feel like you're telling me the answer is yes. The
17:10
Speaker 1: math suggests the answer is yes, And if you think
17:13
Speaker 1: about the quantum mechanics of it, it sort of makes sense.
17:16
Speaker 1: Like we know that quantum mechanically, things are always wiggle
17:19
Speaker 1: in and struggle in and can never really be pinned down.
17:22
Speaker 1: And so if you take a quantum field, it makes
17:24
Speaker 1: some sense for it to always have some uncertainty. And
17:27
Speaker 1: if you had it have exactly zero energy, then you'd
17:30
Speaker 1: know exactly the value of the quantum field, and that
17:34
Speaker 1: seems sort of unquantum, you know, just the same way
17:37
Speaker 1: like you can't have a particle exactly zero energy. You
17:41
Speaker 1: can't have anything at absolute zero and quantum mechanics, because
17:44
Speaker 1: then you would know its location and its position. So
17:47
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics says absolute zero is impossible to reach. And
17:50
Speaker 1: this is sort of the same idea that there's a
17:52
Speaker 1: minimum amount of energy that everything has to have, and
17:56
Speaker 1: so space is filled with fields, then those fields have
17:58
Speaker 1: to have some energy. It's kind of related. You're telling
18:01
Speaker 1: me to the idea that the electron can't fall into
18:04
Speaker 1: the nucleus for example, like it it can't just collapse
18:07
Speaker 1: into into that center. Yeah, if you solve the quantum
18:10
Speaker 1: mechanics of the hydrogen atom, you have a proton and
18:12
Speaker 1: around it is an electron. You get a bunch of solutions,
18:15
Speaker 1: you get energy levels for the electron, and the minimum
18:19
Speaker 1: energy level is not at zero. It's not oh, the
18:21
Speaker 1: electron falls into the nucleus and is captured. Now, that
18:24
Speaker 1: can actually happen in some other weird states, for example
18:27
Speaker 1: in the center of a neutron star, or the electron
18:29
Speaker 1: can be forced into the nucleus and then it turns
18:31
Speaker 1: the proton into a neutron. But for a normal hydrogen atom,
18:35
Speaker 1: the electrons lowest energy level is not at zero, and
18:38
Speaker 1: it's for the same reason, right, it can't collapse into
18:41
Speaker 1: the nucleus because of the uncertainty principle, because of this
18:45
Speaker 1: zero point energy in its field. Right, So space is
18:48
Speaker 1: filled with quantum fields, and quantum fields when they don't
18:51
Speaker 1: have particles are in a vacuum, and you're telling me
18:54
Speaker 1: that that vacuum has to have a little bit of energy.
18:58
Speaker 1: So then how do we connect from that to space
19:01
Speaker 1: having infinite energy? So the amazing thing is just take
19:04
Speaker 1: one field. For example, take the photon field, the electromagnetic field.
19:07
Speaker 1: This can have photons of all different frequency right, frequency,
19:12
Speaker 1: and the visible spectrum frequency, and the X ray spectrum frequency,
19:15
Speaker 1: and the infrared spectrum. It can do all sorts of oscillations. Well,
19:18
Speaker 1: the calculation tells us that the minimum energy in this
19:21
Speaker 1: field is planks constant times of frequency over two h
19:26
Speaker 1: omega over two. That's the amount of energy for electromagnetic
19:30
Speaker 1: field of that frequency. So that's a certain amount of energy.
19:33
Speaker 1: But there's an infinite number of these frequencies, and so
19:37
Speaker 1: you can have h omega over two for every value
19:40
Speaker 1: of omega from zero all the way up to infinity.
19:44
Speaker 1: So you add up all these little zero point energies
19:46
Speaker 1: and you get an infinite amount of energy. Not an
19:48
Speaker 1: infinite amount of energy in the whole universe, an infinite
19:51
Speaker 1: amount of energy in every piece of space. I see
19:55
Speaker 1: you tell me, like, any little piece of space has
19:58
Speaker 1: a minimum amount of of photon energy at one killer herds,
20:03
Speaker 1: and it has a little bit of a photon energy
20:05
Speaker 1: at one point one killer herds, and it has a
20:07
Speaker 1: little bit of energy at one point three killer herds.
20:10
Speaker 1: So if you add it all up, you're saying that
20:12
Speaker 1: a little bit of space has an infinite amount of energy. Yeah,
20:15
Speaker 1: because there's an infinite number of frequencies and each one
20:18
Speaker 1: has finite energy, and so an infinite some over finite
20:22
Speaker 1: numbers is infinity. Yeah. All right, Well this sounds almost
20:26
Speaker 1: too good to be true. I feel like there's some
20:28
Speaker 1: sort of quantum uncertainty, virtual particle kind of fakery going
20:34
Speaker 1: on here. Well, i'll tell you what physicists usually do
20:37
Speaker 1: is they go, hmm, that's weird. Let's just subtract infinity
20:41
Speaker 1: from everything and ignore it. We've got an infinity, let's
20:46
Speaker 1: tamp it down. Yeah, because for most purposes, you're only
20:49
Speaker 1: really interested in relative energy. You're like, can we go
20:52
Speaker 1: up an energy level and absorb a photon? Can we
20:55
Speaker 1: go down energy level and give off a photon? Most
20:57
Speaker 1: of physics only cares about relative energy. About gaining energy,
21:01
Speaker 1: losing energy, transferring energy. We don't usually care about the
21:05
Speaker 1: actual absolute value of the energy, So in practice we
21:09
Speaker 1: can mostly just ignore this. We can ignore an infinite
21:12
Speaker 1: amount of energy in every little bit of space. Yeah,
21:15
Speaker 1: and you can convince yourself like, well, maybe it's some
21:17
Speaker 1: weird quantum thing and we can mostly ignore it and
21:19
Speaker 1: not worry about it. But you know, if you're looking
21:22
Speaker 1: to do something useful with physics and you want to
21:24
Speaker 1: understand the universe that is deepest level, then you can't
21:27
Speaker 1: just ignore it. You gotta dig into it. You gotta
21:29
Speaker 1: ask yourself, is there a way we could detect this
21:32
Speaker 1: if it were real? Could we do an experiment to
21:35
Speaker 1: figure out if those infinite number of photons are actually there?
21:40
Speaker 1: I guess maybe my question is is it real or
21:43
Speaker 1: is it one of these things where there's a little
21:45
Speaker 1: bit of energy at one killer hurts here, But the
21:48
Speaker 1: probability of it is, you know, one over infinity or
21:51
Speaker 1: something like that, and so it all sort of cancels
21:53
Speaker 1: out to some finite number. You're looking to divide infinity
21:56
Speaker 1: by infinity to make it reasonable. Yeah, it sounds better
21:58
Speaker 1: than putting my thumb over It's the same thing mathematically,
22:01
Speaker 1: but no, each of these frequencies should be there, like,
22:05
Speaker 1: at minimum, each of these photon frequencies should exist at
22:10
Speaker 1: h omega over two, and so that's the minimum, right, right,
22:13
Speaker 1: But what's the probability that they're actually like a real
22:16
Speaker 1: photon will pop out at that frequency? The field has
22:19
Speaker 1: that energy according to quantum mechanics, it's there, that's the minimum.
22:22
Speaker 1: So the probability for it to have at least that
22:25
Speaker 1: energy is because that's the minimum energy. But nobody knows
22:30
Speaker 1: is that real. And we have, on one hand, a
22:32
Speaker 1: fascinating experiment that suggests it might be real, and on
22:35
Speaker 1: the other hand calculations that suggest that's totally impossible for
22:39
Speaker 1: it to be real. So it's a real deep controversy
22:41
Speaker 1: in physics right now. Right. So that's what this Casimir
22:45
Speaker 1: effect is. It's an experiment that tests this idea that
22:48
Speaker 1: this is too good to be true, infinite energy everywhere idea. Yeah,
22:51
Speaker 1: this was an idea that was bubbling up after quantum
22:54
Speaker 1: mechanics was invented and developed and people were grappling with
22:57
Speaker 1: the consequences of it, and people first had these kinds
23:00
Speaker 1: of questions like, hold on a second, are you suggesting
23:03
Speaker 1: the universe is build with infinite energy. That can't be true,
23:06
Speaker 1: and so Cassimir thought, well, let's try to figure it out.
23:09
Speaker 1: Could I conduct an experiment? Could I devise a way
23:12
Speaker 1: a physical system which would reveal if those photons were
23:16
Speaker 1: actually there? So he came up with a really clever
23:19
Speaker 1: idea for a crazy effect, which he called the Cassimir
23:22
Speaker 1: effect weight. So it is a real person. Cassimir is
23:25
Speaker 1: a real person. It should have sounded like a Greek
23:26
Speaker 1: deity or something, you know, or like a Greek nymph
23:30
Speaker 1: may also be but no, a real physicist. But I
23:33
Speaker 1: like that you have in your mind. You know, physicists,
23:36
Speaker 1: nymph It's basically the same category of people. Yeah, they're
23:39
Speaker 1: all uh, magical beings. Alright. So Cassimir proposed the Casimir effect,
23:45
Speaker 1: And how do I build one of these things? It's
23:47
Speaker 1: really hard to build, which is why it was predicted
23:50
Speaker 1: in and then not actually observed for fifty years. But
23:54
Speaker 1: the basic idea is to take two mirrors and have
23:58
Speaker 1: them really really close to each other. You know, we're
24:01
Speaker 1: talking like micron distances, And why does it need to
24:05
Speaker 1: be microns? It needs to be micron distances because what
24:07
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is build a resonant cavity that
24:10
Speaker 1: blocks out most of the photons from the vacuum. So
24:14
Speaker 1: the idea is two mirrors back to back will build
24:17
Speaker 1: something which will enhance photons that have a wavelength that
24:21
Speaker 1: fits right between those mirrors. It's just the way. It's
24:24
Speaker 1: sort of like a laser works or any other sort
24:26
Speaker 1: of resonant cavity. Photons are a wave and they like
24:28
Speaker 1: to bounce back and forth between these mirrors, and so
24:31
Speaker 1: photons that fit very nicely between these mirrors, they'll be
24:34
Speaker 1: enhanced between these mirrors. And every other kind of photon,
24:37
Speaker 1: the ones that don't fit nicely between the mirrors, so
24:40
Speaker 1: like the gap between the mirrors is like one and
24:42
Speaker 1: a half or one point seven wavelengths, they will be suppressed.
24:46
Speaker 1: So that's what a resonant cavity does. And the idea
24:49
Speaker 1: here is if those photons in the vacuum are real,
24:53
Speaker 1: then what you'll do is you'll enhance a specific set
24:55
Speaker 1: of frequencies, you know, key to this really small distance,
24:58
Speaker 1: and you'll suppress every anything else. I see. It's like
25:02
Speaker 1: a resonant cavity. Right, like if there was sound and
25:04
Speaker 1: noise everywhere, and you stuck a little like flute in
25:09
Speaker 1: the middle. It would sort of make a particular sound
25:12
Speaker 1: more prominent exactly, and it will exclude the others. That's
25:16
Speaker 1: the key. He was trying to suppress some of these
25:18
Speaker 1: vacuum modes. He was trying to make a situation where
25:21
Speaker 1: those vacuum modes would disappear. Because what we talked about earlier,
25:25
Speaker 1: the minimum energy of the vacuum being h and mego
25:27
Speaker 1: over two. That's if you have like nothing around you,
25:30
Speaker 1: that's the vacuum solution. But as soon as you put
25:33
Speaker 1: material in space and you get different solutions, and this
25:36
Speaker 1: actually suppresses a lot of those modes. So they can't
25:39
Speaker 1: exist between these mirrors. So what you get is some
25:42
Speaker 1: energy between the mirrors, but more energy outside the mirrors.
25:46
Speaker 1: And the difference in that energy, like the fact that
25:48
Speaker 1: you have more photons and more frequencies outside the mirrors
25:52
Speaker 1: than between the mirrors, creates effectively a pressure pushing these
25:55
Speaker 1: mirrors together. I see, you created like a little spot
25:58
Speaker 1: in space that only like one kind of frequency, and
26:01
Speaker 1: push this out all the other frequencies, which then kind
26:04
Speaker 1: of creates pressure inwards, like it wants to collapse. Yeah, exactly.
26:09
Speaker 1: And so that's the idea. You could build these two mirrors,
26:12
Speaker 1: and if the vacuum was real, you're creating a situation
26:15
Speaker 1: where it would actually have a physical effect that you
26:18
Speaker 1: could measure, Like you could put two mirrors near each other,
26:21
Speaker 1: and you could actually measure the force between them. You
26:24
Speaker 1: could see them getting pulled together. It's almost like you
26:27
Speaker 1: have a lake and you like try to separate some
26:30
Speaker 1: water out, like carva space in the lake by separating
26:34
Speaker 1: out the water. But then now you have all this
26:35
Speaker 1: water trying to come in, which creates pressure on the
26:37
Speaker 1: walls of your little chamber. Yeah, only if there really
26:41
Speaker 1: is water in the lake, right, if you're trying to
26:43
Speaker 1: tell whether there's like invisible water in the lake, this
26:46
Speaker 1: is the way to do it. Right, figure out some
26:48
Speaker 1: way to keep the invisible water out of some portion
26:51
Speaker 1: of lake, and measure is their force now on my chamber.
26:54
Speaker 1: And so that's the idea behind the castome effect, Like
26:57
Speaker 1: block the vacuum photons from this little sliver of the
27:00
Speaker 1: universe and see if all the other photons out there
27:03
Speaker 1: try to squeeze it back. All right, So you build
27:06
Speaker 1: these two mirrors, you put them in front of each other,
27:08
Speaker 1: and then you would you measure the forces on them.
27:10
Speaker 1: You measure the forces on them, and this is obviously
27:12
Speaker 1: a very difficult experiment, Like first of all, making two
27:16
Speaker 1: mirrors that are super duper flat so you can bring
27:18
Speaker 1: them in parallel to each other with very very small distances.
27:22
Speaker 1: Even that it's hard. Then you have to isolate it
27:24
Speaker 1: to make sure there are no like residual electrostatic charges,
27:27
Speaker 1: because the force of those charges would overwhelm the force
27:30
Speaker 1: of the castomere effect or gravity or anything else. Right,
27:33
Speaker 1: So you have to do a lot of really just
27:35
Speaker 1: careful experimental work. So people try for a long time
27:38
Speaker 1: to build this and make it work, and nobody could
27:40
Speaker 1: get it to work, Like it's just too difficult to
27:43
Speaker 1: see this force. It's expected to be very very small effect. Yeah,
27:46
Speaker 1: like what kind of forces already talking about, like Pico Newton's. Yeah,
27:51
Speaker 1: if you had two mirrors with the area of a
27:53
Speaker 1: centimeter squared, and you brought them within a micron of
27:56
Speaker 1: each other, the prediction is that it would have an
27:58
Speaker 1: attractive castomer for so it pulled together like tend the
28:02
Speaker 1: minus seven Newton's which is about the weight of a
28:06
Speaker 1: water droplet. That's you know, like half a millimeter in diameter,
28:10
Speaker 1: So it's a very small effect. It sounds small, but
28:13
Speaker 1: it sounds dual for you. This does, man, I mean
28:16
Speaker 1: you have measured crazy small you know, differences and gravitational waves.
28:22
Speaker 1: You've taken a picture of a black hole really far away.
28:24
Speaker 1: What makes this especially hard it's keeping those two plates parallel.
28:28
Speaker 1: Because as soon as they're not parallel anymore, it's not
28:30
Speaker 1: a great resident cavity. And so people actually tried there
28:33
Speaker 1: for a while and didn't work. And then there was
28:35
Speaker 1: an innovation. Some guy at Los Almos, Steve Lamereaux, came
28:38
Speaker 1: up with this idea. He said, let's not try it
28:40
Speaker 1: with two plates. That's use one plate and a sphere.
28:43
Speaker 1: And it turns out that a plate and a sphere
28:46
Speaker 1: also has a Casimer effect. The calculation is a little
28:48
Speaker 1: bit different, but it still is dependent on the sort
28:51
Speaker 1: of the gap between the sphere and the plate. But
28:54
Speaker 1: a sphere and then a plate aren't just much easier
28:56
Speaker 1: to control. You can like bring this little sphere very
28:59
Speaker 1: very close to a very flat surface much more easily
29:02
Speaker 1: than you can keep two plates exactly parallel. I see,
29:06
Speaker 1: you can build a sphere out of something and then
29:08
Speaker 1: you hold it close to a mirror again or these
29:11
Speaker 1: mirrors to these are mirrors, so you have like a
29:14
Speaker 1: mirrored sphere, it's a nano sphere, and you bring it
29:17
Speaker 1: really close to a surface. And this guy was able
29:19
Speaker 1: to get it within like ten nanometers. That's like, you know,
29:22
Speaker 1: a hundred times the width of a hydrogen atom. So
29:26
Speaker 1: this is pretty close. And he had this technique where
29:28
Speaker 1: he had it sort of on the end of a
29:29
Speaker 1: stick and then he's showing a laser on the back
29:32
Speaker 1: of the mirror, and then he could see very small
29:35
Speaker 1: changes in the location of the sphere based on how
29:38
Speaker 1: the laser bounced off of it. So if the sphere
29:40
Speaker 1: moves a little bit, the laser bounces off at a
29:42
Speaker 1: different angle. Wow, sounds pretty tough, but I guess my
29:46
Speaker 1: question is how do you know it worked or didn't work?
29:48
Speaker 1: Like if I was trying to build something and measure
29:50
Speaker 1: some invisible water somewhere that I thought was everywhere, how
29:53
Speaker 1: would I know I measured it or didn't measure it.
29:56
Speaker 1: It's a difficult experiment and you have to do a
29:59
Speaker 1: lot of work to sort of rule out alternative explanations. Right,
30:02
Speaker 1: you have to rule out is this just an effect
30:04
Speaker 1: of gravity, and so you can calculate, like how big
30:07
Speaker 1: would the gravitational effect be? And see, well, we see
30:09
Speaker 1: something which can't be explained by gravity because the dependence
30:13
Speaker 1: on the distance is different and the overall strength of
30:15
Speaker 1: it is different. And you ensure that it's isolated from electrostatics,
30:19
Speaker 1: and you have all sorts of controls to verify that.
30:21
Speaker 1: So you rule out all other explanations and essentially what
30:24
Speaker 1: you're seeing is a force that you don't have another
30:27
Speaker 1: explanation for. And you can do calculations that say how
30:31
Speaker 1: strong should this force be? How strong should the Casimir
30:34
Speaker 1: effect be? And when you do those calculations, you predict
30:37
Speaker 1: a force exactly of the strength that these guys measured. Wait,
30:41
Speaker 1: so this has actually been done and they have measured
30:43
Speaker 1: this effect. This has been done, and in seven they
30:46
Speaker 1: measured the Casimir effect. It is real. Well, they did
30:50
Speaker 1: measure this invisible water trying to push in. Yes, exactly,
30:54
Speaker 1: so your faith and physicists was well founded. They figured
30:57
Speaker 1: this out. Only took fifty years, but he did it.
31:00
Speaker 1: And this guy measured this thing, and he's gone on
31:02
Speaker 1: to do all sorts of elaborate extensions on it. Making
31:05
Speaker 1: it smaller and closer. It's really pretty impressive. It's just
31:08
Speaker 1: like really cool experimental virtuosity. All right, So that means
31:13
Speaker 1: a Cassimer effect is real. You can measure it, which
31:17
Speaker 1: would imply that space is filled with infinite energy. But
31:23
Speaker 1: there is a hitch that makes absolutely no sense that. Alright,
31:30
Speaker 1: let's get into whether or not that that makes sense
31:33
Speaker 1: and whether or not it is infinitely possible to have
31:36
Speaker 1: infinite energy in space. But first let's take a quick break. Alright,
31:51
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Casimer effect and whether space has
31:55
Speaker 1: an infinite amount of energy, which experiments say that it should.
32:00
Speaker 1: That everywhere you look, everywhere you are, there is an
32:03
Speaker 1: infinite amount of energy right there underneath the surface. They're
32:06
Speaker 1: just boiling their bubbling there. But there's another big theory
32:11
Speaker 1: in physics that says this is impossible. That's right, And
32:16
Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite parts of physics. When
32:18
Speaker 1: you find something in the mathematics that's weird, that seems nonsensical,
32:22
Speaker 1: when you're like, well, that just can't be true, and
32:25
Speaker 1: then experimental physicists go out and say, actually, that's exactly
32:28
Speaker 1: what happens, and so you got to revise your sense
32:31
Speaker 1: of like, what can make sense? What could be true
32:33
Speaker 1: about the universe? I love when, like the experiments tell
32:37
Speaker 1: us that the universe is just different from the way
32:39
Speaker 1: we could possibly hold in our heads. That's like an
32:42
Speaker 1: invitation to revise your whole context for how the universe works.
32:46
Speaker 1: Those are the best moments when you're wrong. There's what
32:48
Speaker 1: you're saying. Yes, that's when you learn things when you're wrong.
32:52
Speaker 1: And then the experimentalists come back with this idea and
32:55
Speaker 1: other theorists, the gravitational folks are like, hold on a second.
32:58
Speaker 1: You should have checked with us, because we could have
33:00
Speaker 1: told you before you discovered this thing that it was impossible.
33:04
Speaker 1: You should not have look for it because now that
33:08
Speaker 1: our theories are wrong. Yeah, and here's the problem. We've
33:11
Speaker 1: been talking about space from the quantum mechanical point of view, right,
33:14
Speaker 1: these fields fluctuating and how much energy they have. But
33:17
Speaker 1: as we talked about earlier, there's another view of space,
33:19
Speaker 1: and that comes from gravity and Einstein's theory of general relativity.
33:23
Speaker 1: This beautiful, elegant theory that tells us that gravity is
33:27
Speaker 1: not an attractive force between particles, but instead an effect
33:31
Speaker 1: of motion through curved space. Is this beautiful theory because
33:34
Speaker 1: it tells us that space is not just a flat backdrop.
33:38
Speaker 1: There's a dance between energy and space, that the stuff
33:41
Speaker 1: in space tells space how to curve, and that curvature
33:45
Speaker 1: space tells stuff how to move. So it's this awesome,
33:48
Speaker 1: wonderful theory. But that's the key bit. The key bit
33:51
Speaker 1: is that stuff in space, energy or mass, tells space
33:56
Speaker 1: how to curve. Just like if you have a really
33:59
Speaker 1: dense collection of stuff, like the Sun, it will bend
34:01
Speaker 1: the space around it, changing the path of things that
34:04
Speaker 1: move near it, such as the Earth. So a lot
34:07
Speaker 1: of energy will bend space, right, It's kind of like,
34:10
Speaker 1: you know, if energy is the same as mass and
34:13
Speaker 1: mass and energy create gravity or distored space, or you know,
34:18
Speaker 1: pull other masses and other energies, then that means that
34:22
Speaker 1: if there's infinite energy everywhere, it should just be I'll
34:25
Speaker 1: be pulling, you know, squeezing space everywhere an infinite amount. Yeah, exactly.
34:29
Speaker 1: There's a problem with having infinite energy into all of
34:32
Speaker 1: space is that it should make everything be basically a singularity. Right,
34:37
Speaker 1: you just have infinite curvature everywhere in space. The whole
34:41
Speaker 1: universe is basically a singularity inside a black hole, and
34:45
Speaker 1: that's not what we see, right. We don't see space
34:47
Speaker 1: being infinitely curved. It doesn't really make any sense. One guy,
34:51
Speaker 1: just after the Customer effect came out, sat down to
34:53
Speaker 1: do this calculation and say, is it possible. Is there
34:56
Speaker 1: a way to like actually solve general relativity and have
34:59
Speaker 1: an infinite amount of energy? You know, maybe everything is
35:01
Speaker 1: just like tightly balanced. But he did the calculation and
35:03
Speaker 1: he found that if this were true, if there was
35:06
Speaker 1: this much energy, then the whole universe would be so
35:08
Speaker 1: curled up it would be smaller than the moon. Well,
35:12
Speaker 1: isn't that a theory also that we are sort of
35:14
Speaker 1: living in a singularity inside of a black hole, that
35:16
Speaker 1: maybe our universe is inside some other universe is black hole,
35:20
Speaker 1: And then like a plausible thing, there are some theories that,
35:23
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps our universe is a connection to other
35:26
Speaker 1: universes and that at the core of black holes there
35:29
Speaker 1: are singularities which can connect us to them, or perhaps
35:32
Speaker 1: even our entire universe is inside another universe. But you know,
35:36
Speaker 1: we don't see locally crazy infinite curvature. If that were true,
35:40
Speaker 1: if we were inside a singularity itself, not just like
35:43
Speaker 1: inside the event horizon. Of a huge black hole. If
35:46
Speaker 1: we were actually inside a singularity, space would have infinite curvature,
35:51
Speaker 1: and that would have real consequences for how things moved. Right,
35:54
Speaker 1: we can measure their local curvature or space because we
35:57
Speaker 1: see how things move and curve and we do not
36:00
Speaker 1: see infinite curvature. So we're pretty confident that we're not
36:04
Speaker 1: living in a singularity. Right. But you know, I feel
36:07
Speaker 1: like this tells you that there's infinite energy in an
36:10
Speaker 1: infinite amount of places everywhere. So wouldn't all those effects
36:13
Speaker 1: kind of cancel out, you know, like everywhere is a singularity.
36:17
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that flatten out in a way? Yeah? And it's
36:19
Speaker 1: a little bit more complicated because the way that general
36:22
Speaker 1: relativity works is it's not just like mass curve space,
36:26
Speaker 1: and it's not exactly just that like any energy density
36:29
Speaker 1: curves space, including mass. There's this thing called the stress
36:33
Speaker 1: energy tensor which tells space how to curve, and it's
36:36
Speaker 1: so it's sensitive not just to the amount of energy
36:39
Speaker 1: and the amount of mass, but sort of like the
36:40
Speaker 1: arrangement of it. So you can have, for example, angular
36:43
Speaker 1: momentum contributes to it, and and all sorts of complicated effects.
36:46
Speaker 1: And we don't need to go through the calculation here,
36:48
Speaker 1: but it does lead to infinite curvature rather than equal
36:51
Speaker 1: balance all through space. There is a difference. It's not
36:55
Speaker 1: just relative energy. The absolute energy is actually important for
36:58
Speaker 1: general relativity. Alright. So it seems that we have a
37:02
Speaker 1: kind of a big problem because a real experiment, like
37:05
Speaker 1: an actual thing we can measure, tells us or suggests
37:09
Speaker 1: that there is infinite energy everywhere, but our theory of
37:13
Speaker 1: the universe says that's not possible. So, like, who do
37:16
Speaker 1: you believe what you can see with your eyes or
37:20
Speaker 1: what your the theory tells you? We just really don't know.
37:22
Speaker 1: This is like a big open question in physics, you know,
37:25
Speaker 1: and remember that quantum mechanics and general relativity are sort
37:29
Speaker 1: of the two pillars of physics and don't really agree
37:32
Speaker 1: on a lot of stuff. You know, they don't agree
37:34
Speaker 1: about what does the singularity look like inside a black hole?
37:37
Speaker 1: But most of the places they disagree are really hard
37:40
Speaker 1: to get to, really hard to explore, like the heart
37:43
Speaker 1: of a black hole. So this is an opportunity to
37:46
Speaker 1: help try to resolve this question. Is quantum mechanics view
37:49
Speaker 1: of the universe correct? Or is general relativity correct. It's
37:53
Speaker 1: an opportunity to resolve this question in a place where
37:55
Speaker 1: we can actually do experiments. In our lab. We can
37:58
Speaker 1: see these two things conflict. Quantum mechanics says, no, the
38:02
Speaker 1: universe is filled with energy in every space, and look,
38:05
Speaker 1: I'm right, here's an experiment that proves it. General relativity
38:08
Speaker 1: says that's nuts and it can't possibly be right. Otherwise
38:12
Speaker 1: things would be crazy. And so what do we do.
38:14
Speaker 1: We try to come up with another theory of theory
38:16
Speaker 1: that unifies these two, that explains what we see and
38:19
Speaker 1: make sense of it. We don't have that theory today,
38:22
Speaker 1: but this is like a great clue that tells us
38:26
Speaker 1: if you're gonna build that theory, you have to somehow
38:28
Speaker 1: explain the Casimer effect. You can't just subtract the way
38:31
Speaker 1: that infinity and also you have to subtract away that
38:34
Speaker 1: infinity so that you don't curve space too much. I see. So,
38:37
Speaker 1: like you know, we measured this effect. It's real, it's real,
38:41
Speaker 1: But it may not mean that space is filled with
38:45
Speaker 1: infinite energy. It might be that our theory, which you know,
38:48
Speaker 1: ties that experiment to this idea of infinite energy, could
38:51
Speaker 1: be wrong. Yeah, exactly now, It's interesting because the predictions
38:55
Speaker 1: for the Casimir effect, when you start from that quantum theory,
38:58
Speaker 1: they predict the effect at a level that you see it,
39:01
Speaker 1: So that's pretty convincing. Now, there are some other attempts
39:05
Speaker 1: to explain these Cassimir effect experiments without using quantum zero
39:10
Speaker 1: point energy. For example, people say maybe it's just a
39:14
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of the Vanderwall's force, and people have done some
39:17
Speaker 1: calculations to suggest that, you know, relativistic corrections, small corrections
39:22
Speaker 1: to the way we think about the Vanderwall's force might
39:25
Speaker 1: account for the Cassimir effect. It's like an attempt to
39:28
Speaker 1: describe it using other physics that doesn't break general relativity
39:33
Speaker 1: so far. Those calculations, though they're cool, and they do
39:36
Speaker 1: suggest and effect is there, don't agree with what we've
39:39
Speaker 1: measured so far, so they can't really explain the experiments.
39:42
Speaker 1: That doesn't really solve the problem yet. But you know,
39:45
Speaker 1: this is like active research. Is somebody out there right
39:48
Speaker 1: now like improving those calculations trying to describe what we
39:51
Speaker 1: see out there without including quantum infinite photons. I like,
39:56
Speaker 1: what we measure may not be in effect of quantum physics,
39:59
Speaker 1: but just something else. Yeah, it could be something else exactly,
40:03
Speaker 1: And that's the struggle, Like do you come up with
40:05
Speaker 1: another theory to explain this real experimental effect that doesn't
40:08
Speaker 1: break general relativity or you try to figure out like, hey,
40:11
Speaker 1: maybe general relativity is wrong, and you know, we need
40:14
Speaker 1: another theory that includes quantum effects and somehow doesn't bend
40:18
Speaker 1: space in the universe. Right, Well, it seems to me
40:20
Speaker 1: like the consequences of this question are huge, right, Like
40:24
Speaker 1: this could determine whether quantum physics is right or relativity
40:28
Speaker 1: is right, and it seems really important almost like you
40:32
Speaker 1: know how we talk about the center of black holes
40:34
Speaker 1: being really important because they would settle this question. But
40:37
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like physics is very focused on this
40:40
Speaker 1: little effect here, you know. And I feel like there's
40:42
Speaker 1: more attention paid to black holes and there is to
40:44
Speaker 1: the Cassimere effect. Well, black holes are sexier than like
40:47
Speaker 1: tiny microspheres next to tiny microplates, you know. But this
40:51
Speaker 1: is a really active area of research, and you're totally right,
40:54
Speaker 1: is a huge opportunity. It's much more exciting than black
40:57
Speaker 1: holes because it's real and we can test it and
40:59
Speaker 1: we can explore it. But it's also very very difficult,
41:02
Speaker 1: sort of in the way the black holes are. Like
41:04
Speaker 1: these Casimir effect calculations, they are hard. We don't know
41:08
Speaker 1: how to do them for lots of configurations. Like it's
41:10
Speaker 1: an open question right now. If you build a mirror
41:14
Speaker 1: that was a sphere and you had photons bouncing around
41:17
Speaker 1: inside that sphere, would that have a Casimir effect? Would
41:20
Speaker 1: implode the sphere or would explode the sphere? Like there
41:23
Speaker 1: is du calculations that get different numbers. So it's a
41:26
Speaker 1: really sort of technically very difficult area to make progress in,
41:30
Speaker 1: both experimentally and theoretically. But I think inside physics it's
41:34
Speaker 1: widely recognized as an amazing opportunity to maybe clear up
41:38
Speaker 1: this question of quantum mechanics versus general relativity. Yeah, and
41:42
Speaker 1: their press folks should definitely get on social media. Yeah,
41:45
Speaker 1: because you know, as we heard from our listeners, almost
41:48
Speaker 1: nobody had heard of it. Yeah. And you know what,
41:49
Speaker 1: they should have gotten in touch with a Game of
41:51
Speaker 1: Thrones folks and made it the reins of Casimir instead.
41:54
Speaker 1: That would have been a great cross marketing opportunity. Yes,
41:57
Speaker 1: you can picture it. Its wedding and relativity us in
42:00
Speaker 1: thinking that, you know, it's a happy event and then
42:03
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics pulls a knife. No, I was thinking that
42:06
Speaker 1: the Jester could do some trick with a Cassimir effect
42:09
Speaker 1: and too thin plates or something, you know, after dinner entertainment.
42:12
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, go down that road if through
42:14
Speaker 1: its being slitcheder what it is, game of Thrones. I mean,
42:17
Speaker 1: somebody has to meet their demise. It's either going to
42:21
Speaker 1: be general relativity or quantum mechanics. Somebody will perish. When
42:25
Speaker 1: you play the game of physics, you're either right or
42:27
Speaker 1: you're wrong. Yeah, or you're quantum mechanicalized. All right, Well,
42:33
Speaker 1: I hear the reigns of customer playing. I feel like
42:35
Speaker 1: I think we are near the end the here of
42:37
Speaker 1: our episode where we learned that the space might have
42:40
Speaker 1: an infinite amount of energy and there's an experiment to
42:42
Speaker 1: prove it absolutely. And this Casimir effect is super fascinating.
42:46
Speaker 1: You could also, since it's real, help us build super
42:49
Speaker 1: tiny electronics with actual moving little parts at the nanoscale.
42:54
Speaker 1: Some people suggested that we might be able to use
42:56
Speaker 1: the Casimir effect and in a repulsive way to keep
42:59
Speaker 1: worm holes open to keep them from collapsing if it's real.
43:03
Speaker 1: So not only is it a fascinating question which might
43:06
Speaker 1: reveal the ultimate nature of reality. It also could help
43:09
Speaker 1: us travel the universe. Wow, that is definitely more interesting
43:13
Speaker 1: than black hole and less deadly. All right, well, once
43:17
Speaker 1: again we learned that there's more to the universe, and
43:20
Speaker 1: we realized that there might be energy kind of in
43:24
Speaker 1: the error in the space between us, between our particles.
43:27
Speaker 1: And this might even be an infinite amount of energy,
43:29
Speaker 1: which means there's potential for anything in this universe. That's right,
43:33
Speaker 1: But don't let your iPhone batteries go to zero just yet.
43:36
Speaker 1: We haven't perfected vacuum charging. Yeah, just wave it around
43:39
Speaker 1: in the air and see if that works. Do your
43:42
Speaker 1: own customer experiment at home. All right, Well, we hope
43:44
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See you next time.
43:55
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained.
43:58
Speaker 1: The Universe is a production of Heart Radio. For more
44:01
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio and visit the I Heart Radio,
44:04
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