Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What's the smallest piece of matter? Is there one?

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What's the smallest piece of matter? Is there one? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Pretty much all the stuff that we're made out of.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Me and you and cats are made out of quarks
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and electronics. We cats are made out of something strange though, right, Yeah,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: some people sinspect cats come from another dimension. We made
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: little weird particles, and that would explain a lot um.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: But so far, everything that we've ever interacted with, all
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the history of science, everything we've been studying for hundreds
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: of years, um is only studied stuff that's made out
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of quarks and electrons. And so for a long time
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: we thought, well, maybe everything's made out of cork and electrons. Right,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We've never seen anything else. Hi, I'm Daniel and I
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and this is Daniel and Jorge Explain the universe. Today
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about dark matter. What is dark
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: matter anyway? How dark is it? Does it really matter?
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, who cares? Right, Well, hopefully they care because
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: they clicked on the podcast. Well, dark matter certainly matters
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: to us, and so today we'll be talking about all
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the interesting things about dark matter, all the mysteries and
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: amazing facts that we've know and don't know about dark matter.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: So what do you think dark matter is? We went
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: out in the street and we asked people what they thought.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Here's what they had to say. Ah, I don't remember.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: It's like black holes, right and stuff like that. Lava,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm thinking it's like this dark mass
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that I have no idea what's in it, but it's
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: just a dark mass. Cool. Wow. People have some pretty
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: interesting ideas about what dark matter is and what dark
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: matter isn't so I think it's pretty good that we're
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: going through this to explain all the details of dark matter. Yeah,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and it's interesting that most people seem to have heard
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: of it, but people sort of don't quite have a
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: good grasp of it. Well. I think there's also a
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: lot of abuse of the phrase dark matter you see
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: in science fiction. It's the title of several albums and
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: bands that have nothing to do with dark matter. So
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: it sort of entered like the pops popular lexicon without
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: carrying along with the possibles. I would like a dark
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: matter popsicle. Um, it's under the popular lexicon without sort
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: of carrying along with it what it actually means. So
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: this phrase which exists in the language, and it's been
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: stripped of scientific meeting and lots of content. I know
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: that I've read a lot of science fiction novels that
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: talk about dark matter title dark matter and have nothing
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: to do with dark matter. Right, So it's just two
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: words that are tailor made for like science fiction, right,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: dark and like matter. You know, like that's a great triumph.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: It's a great triumph of marketing. Right, it's an awesome
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: sounding theory. Yeah. Yeah, secured those jobs for those physicists,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: that's right, that's how we get paid. Yeah, coming up
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: with cool names for theories. Well, we came up with
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: the list of the four things you should know about
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: dark matter, and the first thing you should know about
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: dark matter is that it's a different kind of matter
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: than what you and me and Daniel are made out of. So, Daniel,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: what does that mean that it's a different kind of matter.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: That's a great question. Well, to answer that, we really
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: have to think for a moment about what we're made
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: out of. Right, I'm made out of particles. You're made
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: out of particles. This chair I'm sitting on his mating
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: out of particles. Everything we know pretty much is made
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: out of particles. Particles like atoms. Yeah, particles inside atoms.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: So you have the molecules your body is made out of,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and those are made out of atoms like hydrogen and
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: lithium and that kind of crazy stuff. And inside those
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: are smaller particles protons and neutrons and electrons, and inside those,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: generally down even further are quarks. Everything in the universe, um,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: everything out there that we've seen is made out of
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: these things quarks, electric right, that's right, it's the stuff
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: we can see, and and we what can we see
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: where we can see stuff that sends us light like stars.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: We can see stuff that reflects light, like gas and
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: dust and and stuff like that that reflects light from
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: other stars, like the moon. Right, the moon doesn't give
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: off its own light, it's not doesn't shine, but we
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: see it in the sky because it reflects the light
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: from the sun. So it's something that we can see.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It's a kind of matter. We know, we understand it.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I can think about everything's made out of these three things.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: But dark matter is something different, right, dark matter is
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: something else. It's a different kind of matter. It's not
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: made out of quirks and electrons. And there are even
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: other weird kind of quirks that we discovered, like by
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: smashing particles together. And we know dark matter is not
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: made out of any of those, something of any kind
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: of quirks or even weird kind of electrons. It's something else,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: something different, something new that we don't know what that is.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: We don't know what that is at all. We don't
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: know if it's another kind of particle. We don't know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: if it's a weird new kind of matter, this not
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: made out of particles. We don't know, if it's something
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: we haven't even imagined yet. That's my personal fantasy is
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I hope that when we do figure out what dark
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: matter is, it totally blows our minds and turns out
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to be something that even science fiction writers that never
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: thought of. That would be my my favorite scenario. So
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: it's something that's made out of something entirely different than us.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: But there's a lot of it. And that's the second
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: thing you should know about that we wrote down we
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: should you should know about dark matter, which is that
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: there's a ton of it in the universe and it's
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: all around us. That's right. Dark matter is everywhere. So
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: people talk about dark matter like, oh, it's it's weird
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: stuff out in space, or these other galaxies have dark matter,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: But dark matter is all around us. It's there's a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: huge blob of it in the center of our galaxy,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and then there's a big diffuse cloud of it that's
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: that envelops the entire galaxy and pretty much every galaxy
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: out there. Dark matter is matter. It's stuff, right, And
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: when we say it's matter, we mean that it feels gravity.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And that's actually how we figured out that it's there.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: After all, matter something that feels gravity. But wait back
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: up a second. So it's it's like there's blobs of
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: it floating out in space. Is that is that kind
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: of what we know about dark matter, Like it floats
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and blobs. Dark matter definitely forms blobs because it feels gravity,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and like anything else, things that feel gravity are going
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: to slowly accumulate and pull themselves together. So just like
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: normal matter, you know, the gas and the dust pulled
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: themselves together to form stars and galaxies, dark matter also
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: pulls itself together and form these big blobs. So those
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: blobs aren't like out there in space, they're on top
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: of us. They're here with us. If you lift up
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: your hand right now and wave it all around, you're
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: passing through a huge blob of dark matter that's there
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: in your living room or kitchen or car or wherever
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: you happen to be. It's like in the air around us, Um,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: what does that mean? Like, it's like it's in the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: space between regular particles. It's here with us, and there's
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of space between particles. Right, particles are super
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: duper super tiny, and if you don't feel a force
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: that the particles are pushing back on you with, then
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: you can't even tell that they're there. There's lots of
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: examples of that. For example, there's a lot of neutrinos
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that pass right through your body all the time. There's
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: a hundred billion neutrinos passed through your fingernail every second.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: You can't feel them, um, And they just zip right
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: through and don't even notice you. And the reason is
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: that they don't have any way to talk to you.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: So if you can't communicate with them, you can't. There's
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: no way for you to push them or pull them,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: or for them to push your pull you. You can't
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: even tell them they're You just walk right through them
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the way you walk through an empty room. So you're saying,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: we're sort of swimming in dark matter. Absolutely, we're almost
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: drowning in it, because there's more dark matter than normal matter.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So there's your room that you're sitting in has five
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: times as much dark matter as it has air in it.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: For example, it's five of all the energy in the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: universe is normal stuff, and then something like is dark matter.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, one sixth of all the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: stuff that's in the universe, of all the matter that's
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: in the universe, is what we used to call normal matter,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: and the rest of it is dark matter. And that's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: mind blowing to discover that what you thought was typical,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: we thought was normal, what you thought you know was
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the basic unit of the universe turns out to be
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: a little extra bit. You know. It's like we've been
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: eating the frosting and ignoring the cake, right, or we've
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: been like focusing on the tail and ignoring the whole elephant.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I have so many questions for you, but before we
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: dive in, let's take a short break. So dark matter
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: doesn't feel electromagnetism. And we know that because we know
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: it's there, but we don't see it. Right, that's what
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: we mean by see it and feel it. So that's
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: what it's called dark right, It's you can't see it
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: exactly that's just what we mean by dark that awesome
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: marketing campaign of dark matter. That's the concept behind dark.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Dark meaning we don't see it or feel it is
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: right by it doesn't care. That's right. Yeah, But then
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: you might wonder, like, well, if we can't interact with
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: it at all, how could we possibly know it's there? Right?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: If you can't feel it or see it in any way,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: is it not just some fantasy some speculations, and like
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: why should we care, Like if we can't see it
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: or touch it, why why is it important to the universe?
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: That's right? And so there is one way we can
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: interact with dark matter, and that's through gravity. Dark matter
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: is and that's the matter part of it, right, dark
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: meaning we can't see it. Matter meaning it has stuff
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to it has gravity, and we know that it's a matter.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: We know it's made of something and it does have gravity.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: That's what matters is kind of defined as stuff that
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: feels gravity and has mass. Yeah, exactly. That's what makes
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: matter matter, is that it has some stuff to it,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: some mass to it, and anything that has mass to
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it is going to feel gravity. Okay, it's true that
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: we can't feel or see dark matter because it doesn't
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: have any electromagnetism, but it does have gravity, and so
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: we can detect it. But because gravity is so weak,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: it takes enormous amounts of dark matter for us to notice.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: So kind of actually that there's so much dark Like
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: even if there's a blob of dark matter right in
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: front of me, I know I can't see it or
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: touch it because it doesn't feel like your mignety forces. Um,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: but I know that you're telling me that I have
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: like a gravity relationship with this blob, right, But it's
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: super right. It's I don't even feel the gravity from
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: this blob. There's definitely gravity between you and that room
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: full of dark matter. Okay, And depending on what your
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: math is, we don't have to say on that head. Yeah,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: even if you're a super massive guy who never left
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the house or massively cool, right or just massively funny
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and that's how weird, right, Like, um, like I have
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a gravity relationship with the error around me, have a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: gravity relationship with the like the microphone in front of me,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: with the table in front of me, with the car
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: when I'm driving, But you just don't really feel that
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: gravity relationship, right, That's right, You can't tell. It's drowned
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: out by everything else in your life, and so you
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: don't even notice. So you know, you can act like
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: there's no gravitational force between you and the chair in
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: front of you, because it's almost true. It's only like
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: with the entire Earth that I feel that gravity relationship. Right,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: that's the one that pulls me down, That's right. And
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: it takes a huge blob of stuff the size of
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the Earth for you to even notice. Okay, so dark
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: matter is a different kind of matter. There's a ton
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: of it in the years. It's all around this. We
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: can't see it because it doesn't feel electromagnetic forces. We
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: can't touch it also because of that um, but it
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: does feel gravity. So how do we know that it
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: was there? Like, how do we can't see or touch it?
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: How do we how do we figure that? Yeah, it
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: took people a while before they really accepted the dark
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: matter was the thing. And it's a fun story because
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: it's started with just a discrepancy. What they were doing
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: was they were checking to see if they understood how
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: galaxies spin. So our galaxy, you know, we are in
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: a solar system, and a solar system is part of
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a big group of stars called the galaxy that all
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: spins around. And our galaxy is called the Milky Way.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: And there's lots of galaxies in the universe, trillions more
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: even more than that, probably, And we can look out
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: into the sky and you can see other galaxies also spinning.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: And you can think of a galaxy sort of the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: way you think about like a America round. If you
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: have a merriga round and you put a bunch of
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: pink pong balls on it, you spin it, what's going
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: to happen? The pink pun balls will fly off? Yeah,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: they'll shootout and hit your sister in the face. And
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: then you get a diferent And those are some dark matters,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and um, so what happens with the galaxy? Well, in
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the case of a galaxy, it's got a bunch of
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: stars in it, and the galaxy is spinning. So why
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: don't the ours get thrown out into intergalactic space all
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: the time the way the ping pong balls might from
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Amerry around? Right, So galaxies are spinning their stars in it,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: why don't the stars just like spill out? That's right,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I wanted they get tossed out? And the answer is gravity.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: The galaxy is a lot of gravity from all those
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: stars in the black hole in the center and all
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: that stuff, and that gravity holds the stars in place,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: like keeps everything in orbit. That's right, Yeah, it pulls
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: it together and keeps stuff from getting thrown out. So
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: some grad student went out to check this and they
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: got a crazy result. And the result is that these
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: galaxies are spinning way, way, way too fast. There's no
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: way that the amount of stuff that we see in
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: those galaxies is providing enough gravity to hold the galaxies together. Okay,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: something else had to be there, right, that's right, because
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the stars are not getting thrown into space, right, the
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: galaxies are getting held together. So, as you know, first time,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: you have a crazy result. And there's a lot of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: explanations people come up with, and so the simplest explanation
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: in some sense is, well, there's some kind of gravity
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: that that's from something we can't see. So let's invent
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: a new kind of stuff. It has to be dark
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: because we can't see it. It has to be matter
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: because it's giving us gravity. So we'll come up with
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: a cool name for this new thing, called it dark matter.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And that sounds like a simple explanation. But on the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: other hand, is not because there's not a tiny amount
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: of stuff you have to add to these galaxies. Right,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: they're spending way too fast. And that's how we know
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: that there's a ton of dark matter, because to get
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: enough gravity to hold these galaxies together, you have to
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: multiply the amount of stuff you can see by a
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: factor of five. Tells you that, yeah, it tells you
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: that what you see of the galaxy is not most
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: of the galaxy. You know, you're looking at the galactic tonails,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: or you know they're just the galactic fingertips or something.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Most of the galaxy is something else, right, right, the
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: milky toes of these and and so for a long
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: time people didn't accept that, and there were other ideas.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: People thought, well, that's crazy because you can't just say, oh,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: my experiment didn't work. Maybe the universe is filled with
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: there's a new kind of stuff that nobody's ever seen before,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: and there's a huge amount of it and it's everywhere. Right,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: it's sort of a convenient and crazy explanations. Remever, in science,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: we like simple explanations, right. We want the simplest set
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of ideas to explain everything. We see so that was yeah,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: so that was that was that was the mindset, right.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, we know, we think we know
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the universe. Let's check to see if the galaxies are
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: spinning as they should. But they found out they're spinning
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: too fast. And the only explanation someone could come up
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: with was like, may there's invisible gravity stuff in these
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: galaxies that's like five times eavery than all of those stars.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: That's right, That was the idea of dark matter. There
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: actually were other explanations that lived for a little while,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: and recently they died because they they were ruled up
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: by other experiments. Since then, we're pretty sure that dark
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: matter is a thing. And one way that we were
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: able to figure out that dark matter is there and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: it's not just a misunderstanding of the way gravity works,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: is that we found a few other ways to spot it.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So they're all they're almost all gravitational, but there are
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: other ways to spot it to tell us that would
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: give different results if it was actually dark matter or
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: this other weird kind of theory about gravity. And I
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: want to talk about that some more, but first let's
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: take a quick break. So one way, it's called gravitational lensing,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and that's when dark matter in the sky bends the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: light and gives these crazy optical effects. And that's one
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: way we can tell where dark matter is. It's in
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: a blob here, it's in a blob there makes these
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: cool distortions in the sky because it has gravity, and
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: it's like not just pulls the stars and planets around it,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: but it also bends light around it, because we know
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: that's what gravity does, right, Yeah, because that's what matter does. Matter,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: All matter has gravity, and dark matter can bend the
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: space because it has gravity, so it acts like a
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: cosmic lens in the sky. It's totally mind blowing and
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: everybody out there should google gravitational lensing and see those
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: those images because they're gorgeous. And then the other way
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: that we know that it's definitely there through gravity is um, what,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: what's the other thing? Yeah? The other thing was this
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: amazing event that happened very far away, a long long
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: time ago when two clusters of galaxies smashed into each other.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And what every every cluster of God sees has both
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: normal matter like me and you and gas and stuff
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and dust and also dark matter. So when they smash
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: into each other, the normal matter smashes and creates explosions
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and gives off light, and we can see that. But
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: the dark matter passed right through to the other side,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: so you can and we can see the dark matter
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: there because of the gravitational lensing, so that dark matter
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: got separated from some of the normal matter, and we
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: can see its gravitational effects on its own And that
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: was the key to knowing that dark matter really is
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: its own thing with its own gravity. It's not just
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the misunderstanding of the way gravity works, right, because if
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: that were the case, you wouldn't be able to separate
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: this new new gravity from the old gravity. But because
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: you can, because you can say, oh, here's this dark
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: matter separated from all that gas in the dust. We
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: can see it has its own gravity. It must be
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: its own thing. So that tells us there's a lot
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: of dark matter. It's out there. We can see it
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: kind of through gravity, even not directly, but doesn't really
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: tell us that much more about dark matter. Why if
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: is this care about dark matter? Like, why is it?
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Why is it important? Why is it cool? And interesting? What?
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: We want to make awesome sunglasses? That's the number one goal.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: How would you make dark matters sunglasses, that would be
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty easy. Yeah, well matter for sure. No, it
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: just comes out of a desire to understand. You know,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: we look at the world around us. We want to
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: know how does this all put together? You know, what
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: is the principle that organizes this um And part of
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: it is a desire to build new kinds of stuff.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you understand the world around you, then
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you know how to manipulate it and use it and
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: build transistors and all sorts of cool stuff. So there's
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: thousands of applications as soon as you understand how matter works.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: But there's also just that core curiosity. We're like, you know,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: five dots away from being able to connect dark matter
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: with anything specifically that's useful. But every time we found
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: something new about the universe, some surprise, something crazy, something new,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: it's always led to, you know, economic revolutions, or technological revolutions,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: or even just intellectual revolutions. I mean, if you find
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: out that the universe works in a way different from
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: what you expected, it changes the way you think about
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: your life and the whole human experience. I mean it's
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: not just a little bit. It's like we're we're the
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: minority in the universe, you know, not been We're not
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: even the center of gravity of the universe by any means, right,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: that's right. If there was an election, we would definitely
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: not any representatives. But yeah, that's that that's wild to know, right, Like,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: we're not the most kind of stuff in the universe.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And so that's that's why dark matter is important. It's like,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: that's that's the bigger chunk of the universe, and so
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: it kind of affects the way we know how things happen. Yeah,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and it's responsible for the basic structure of the universe.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: We've done simulations. For example, we say, what would the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: universe look like if there hadn't been any dark matter? Right,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: run those stimulations forward and fourteen billion years in, you
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: don't have any galaxies really, And the reason is that, yeah,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: you don't have dark matter pulling together normal matter and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: compressing it. No, we wouldn't be here at all. The
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: universe would be much more diffuse and boring. We wouldn't
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: have any podcasts at all. That's not to say like
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: dark matter is the reason for creation or is more
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: important than us. I mean, we don't really know what
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it is at all. It could be totally boring and
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: sterile and just a bunch of little particles that are
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: kind of aloof and ignore us, all right. It could
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: be something more interesting though, So dark matter it's a
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: different kind of of stuff of matter than us. We're
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: made out of quarks and electrons um. Dark matters maybe
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: made it out of something different that um. It's not
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: quite the same thing as we were made out of, right,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: And it could be particles. It could not be particles.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: It could be um stuff. It could be some new
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff how other stuff works. So it's different
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: than us. There's a ton of it in the universe.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: There's five times more dark matter than regular matter. And
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: it's all around us. It's like it's it's almost on
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: top of us, you know, we're in it, and it's
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: inside us. It's everywhere and passing through us. And you're
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: waving your arms through right now. I feel that dark matter, Yeah,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I feel it. It's it's inside of you. It's been
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: inside of you all along. Well that sounds a little
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: in appropriate. No, it's like a like courage, you know,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: it's like cark ridge or or wisdom, summon the dark
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: matter within you sort of thing. Yeah, Okay, it could
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: be like complex stuff, right, dark matter could be interesting
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and complex and have different kinds of properties to it. Right,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: that's right, because there could be other checkboxes we talked about,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: you know, the strong and the weak force, and electromagnetism
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and gravity. Those are the four forces we know, but
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: there could be a fifth force that only dark matter feels.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: And it feels it with itself. It's easy to say, well,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: the simplest idea is dark matter is all just one particle.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: And that's simple idea, and we like to start with
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: simple ideas to mapically work versus just like a weird
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: homogenous blog. Yeah, but you know, look at the five
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: percent in the universe we've studied. It's not just one
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: kind of particle. It's a bunch of different kind of particles,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: and it's complicated and interesting. So there's no real reason
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: to expect that dark matter is different. It could be
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: even more complicated. And that's and that's assuming Remember that
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: dark matter is a particle. We have actually no evidence
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: whatsoever proving that dark matter is a particle. Of the
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: normal matter we've ever seen is made out of particles,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: And that's the assumption we're using to say, well, probably
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: dark matters also made out of particles. That's like saying
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I've only ever seen the tail of the elephants, so
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the rest of the elephant must also be tails, right card,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: It's all tales all the way down. It sort of
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: falls apart, and it's a good way to start, you know.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: But I'm hoping that we discover the dark matter is
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: something else, insing, weird, some different kind of matters just
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: sort of expands our minds out of our current way
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: of thinking into some new direction where we consider possibilities
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: we hadn't even considered before. Do you have a question
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: you wish we would cover, Send it to us. We'd
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge one Word, or email
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: us to feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. N