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Why can quarks never be alone? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, did you know that not all particles
0:11
Speaker 1: are created equal? You mean, like some of them are
0:15
Speaker 1: heavier or more charged than others. Oh, that's definitely true.
0:18
Speaker 1: But also not all of them have the same rights,
0:23
Speaker 1: the same rights. I mean, is there a is there
0:25
Speaker 1: a particle constitution that grants them certain freedoms? Only some
0:29
Speaker 1: of them have freedoms. Electrons can be free, but quarks cannot. Oh, man,
0:34
Speaker 1: poor quarks. Somebody ought to hit the streets and protest
0:37
Speaker 1: for them. That's right, I can see the clever signs
0:39
Speaker 1: already set the quarks free. Hi. I'm or hammate cartoonists
0:59
Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
1:03
Speaker 1: a particle physicist, and I'm an activist for the freedom
1:06
Speaker 1: of corks. And welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge
1:09
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in
1:13
Speaker 1: which we talk about all the amazing and crazy and
1:15
Speaker 1: wonderful and beautiful and insane things about our universe and
1:19
Speaker 1: try to explain them in a way that makes you
1:21
Speaker 1: laugh and hopefully makes you understand the way they work.
1:24
Speaker 1: That's right. We talked about all the big things in
1:26
Speaker 1: the universe, the origin of the universe. How big is
1:29
Speaker 1: the universe? And we also talk about the smaller things
1:31
Speaker 1: in the universe, the little bits that make up everything
1:34
Speaker 1: around you. I feel like it's kind of cheating that
1:36
Speaker 1: in physics or in particle physics, I get to work
1:39
Speaker 1: on both the biggest, the baddest, the most original, the
1:42
Speaker 1: cosmic questions, and also the tiniest. I feel like it's
1:46
Speaker 1: at both extremes of the universe, right everything in between.
1:50
Speaker 1: You don't care. That's chemistry, man, who cares? Chemistry, biology, philosophy, life,
1:57
Speaker 1: your happiness, that's right, democracy, human rights, that's all beyond
2:02
Speaker 1: the scope of your physics research. Yeah, exactly, And I
2:05
Speaker 1: don't mean to say nobody cares about chemistry. Chemistry is
2:07
Speaker 1: really important, otherwise we wouldn't have pharmaceuticals and all that
2:11
Speaker 1: good stuff. I also said human rights study, but you
2:13
Speaker 1: don't seem to want a caveat human rights as well.
2:16
Speaker 1: I'm more worried about backlash from chemists than people advocated.
2:20
Speaker 1: The chemists have acids, assets and dangerous things that can
2:23
Speaker 1: kill you. Yeah, but maybe it's just that you know
2:27
Speaker 1: that stuff is harder. It's more complicated for me. Physics
2:30
Speaker 1: at the extremes they're really tiny and they're really big. Uh,
2:33
Speaker 1: sort of the simplest questions, the most basic, and therefore
2:36
Speaker 1: the most interesting and also easier to grapple with. Well,
2:40
Speaker 1: today we're getting into some things that are kind of
2:42
Speaker 1: the opposite of that, Right, We're getting into the nitty
2:44
Speaker 1: gritty complex details of the legality of particles, kind of
2:50
Speaker 1: what rights particles have. Yeah, because when we study the universe,
2:54
Speaker 1: what we like to do is to take it apart.
2:55
Speaker 1: If I look at the banana in front of me
2:57
Speaker 1: and I say, what's this made out of? I'm mean,
3:00
Speaker 1: what particles is it made out of? And when you
3:02
Speaker 1: do that, you're sort of taking an intellectual leap. You're saying,
3:05
Speaker 1: this banana could get blown up into its constituent particles.
3:09
Speaker 1: You could break it up into these little bits, and
3:12
Speaker 1: that's an important part of how we think about understanding
3:14
Speaker 1: the universe. But it's not always possible to actually separate
3:18
Speaker 1: those particles. Right, do you actually have a banana in
3:21
Speaker 1: front of you, Daniel, I have a metaphysical banana here
3:25
Speaker 1: in front of me. Here, I'll pass you my banana
3:27
Speaker 1: using the Ray and Kyler ren teleportation system. Just digitize
3:33
Speaker 1: the banana and email it to me. Oh, there you go,
3:35
Speaker 1: there you go. Somebody should develop a device that scans
3:38
Speaker 1: a banana, turns it into an electronic banana signature, and
3:41
Speaker 1: then at the other side like three D prints of banana. Right,
3:45
Speaker 1: using AI. Don't forget AI, using AI precisely because every
3:49
Speaker 1: kitchen appliance needs AI now. But anyways, we are going
3:54
Speaker 1: to be talking about the some of the rules that
3:56
Speaker 1: governed the universe at the smallest levels, because there are
3:59
Speaker 1: a rule and that's kind of what physics is a
4:02
Speaker 1: little bit all about. Right. Yeah, And once recently on
4:06
Speaker 1: a podcast, we talked about magnetic monopoles, how you could
4:08
Speaker 1: take an atom and separate it's positive and negative charges
4:12
Speaker 1: and move them far away to infinity and they could
4:14
Speaker 1: ignore each other. But you can't do that with the
4:17
Speaker 1: north and south of the magnetic monople And today we'll
4:20
Speaker 1: be talking about a sort of similarly confusing, sticky topic
4:23
Speaker 1: in particle physics. Right. It's a rule about the universe
4:26
Speaker 1: that physicists don't really know why it's there. Right, It's
4:30
Speaker 1: kind of another of the big mysteries in nature. Yeah,
4:33
Speaker 1: I think that describes every rule about the universe. You know,
4:36
Speaker 1: we don't know why any of them are there. Some
4:38
Speaker 1: people write in and they ask me questions like that,
4:40
Speaker 1: to say, why is electromagnetism this way and not that
4:43
Speaker 1: other way? And I think, wow, you're a physicist, because
4:46
Speaker 1: that's the question we all want to answer to. We
4:49
Speaker 1: don't know. You're a physicist because you don't know anything.
4:53
Speaker 1: You two can get paid for it like I am,
4:55
Speaker 1: because you embrace your ignorance, and you want to ask why.
4:59
Speaker 1: And it's a deep question in physics, why is something
5:02
Speaker 1: this way not the other way? You know, maybe someday
5:04
Speaker 1: in the future of physics will be looking at the
5:06
Speaker 1: equations of the universe and will say, oh, it makes sense.
5:09
Speaker 1: This is the only set of equations we could possibly have,
5:12
Speaker 1: and so it has to be this way. Or we
5:14
Speaker 1: can be looking at the equations to say, well, this
5:16
Speaker 1: is one of ten to the one hundred possible universes,
5:19
Speaker 1: So why is it this way not the other way?
5:21
Speaker 1: We might not ever know, right right, again, you don't know.
5:26
Speaker 1: That's the way you summarize physics. It's some we don't know.
5:29
Speaker 1: We have no idea, which is the title of a
5:30
Speaker 1: great book I've heard about which everyone should check out.
5:33
Speaker 1: I don't know. I heard it has a lot of
5:34
Speaker 1: puns in it. Oh, like the are they as good
5:37
Speaker 1: as the as the ones we have in our show here,
5:41
Speaker 1: they're better because they're edited the Thank you Courtney. Well,
5:46
Speaker 1: today on the podcast, we'll be tackling a pretty sticky subject,
5:50
Speaker 1: and it's the question of a special rule that governs
5:53
Speaker 1: one of the particles of nature. So today on the podcast,
5:56
Speaker 1: we'll be tackling the question why can quarks never be alone? Yeah,
6:06
Speaker 1: So it turns out that one of the fundamental particles
6:09
Speaker 1: in nature, the cork, has some special rules that govern
6:13
Speaker 1: what it can and cannot do. That's right. Quarks feel
6:16
Speaker 1: the strong nuclear force and electrons don't. And anything that
6:20
Speaker 1: feels the strong nuclear force is subject to that forces
6:23
Speaker 1: really weird properties. We've talked about it a few times
6:27
Speaker 1: in the podcast how it has strange properties like color.
6:31
Speaker 1: But today we've been talking about one very special property
6:33
Speaker 1: that really likes to stick these quirks together. Yeah, and
6:37
Speaker 1: so the question is why why whether course can be
6:40
Speaker 1: alone by themselves? And you know, does it does it
6:42
Speaker 1: mean alone like um like psychologically like they feel alone,
6:47
Speaker 1: or is it like alone where they have to be
6:48
Speaker 1: They can't be in a room by themselves. Yeah, you
6:53
Speaker 1: you can't put them in solitary confinement for too long
6:55
Speaker 1: or they go crazy. There's another kind of quirk you
6:57
Speaker 1: never heard about, Not the strange corps or the charm cork,
7:00
Speaker 1: but the crazy cork. That's right, the inmate cork. No,
7:05
Speaker 1: that's not a laughing matter. Solitary confinement is pretty serious stuff.
7:09
Speaker 1: But we have found in physics, and as you said earlier,
7:12
Speaker 1: we don't know why, but we have found in physics
7:14
Speaker 1: that when you try to separate a cork, to pull
7:17
Speaker 1: it far away from everything else, to isolate it the
7:20
Speaker 1: way you could take, for example, an electron and put
7:22
Speaker 1: it in the middle of space. You just can't do
7:25
Speaker 1: that with the cork. It's physically impossible. Wow, the universe
7:28
Speaker 1: doesn't allow it. It would take an infinite amount of energy,
7:31
Speaker 1: which would then just collapse into a bunch more quirks.
7:34
Speaker 1: All right, we'll get into that in more detail. But first,
7:37
Speaker 1: as usual, we were curious to know how many people
7:40
Speaker 1: out there. First of all, I had heard of corps,
7:43
Speaker 1: and second of all, knew whether or not courts can
7:45
Speaker 1: ever be alone. So you see, Irvine was closed for
7:48
Speaker 1: the holidays, and so these questions went to random strangers
7:52
Speaker 1: at coffee shops who were amenable to answering questions, and
7:55
Speaker 1: as usual at you see Irvine pot nine percent of
7:59
Speaker 1: random students are willing to answer my questions, but the
8:02
Speaker 1: rate of acceptance of coffee shops is much much lower,
8:05
Speaker 1: which I think says something awesome about students that you see.
8:08
Speaker 1: I so a physicist wearing sandals and scraggly hair is
8:13
Speaker 1: normal at a college campus, but in a commercial, regular
8:17
Speaker 1: coffee shop, you're seen with more skepticism. Yeah, or you know,
8:20
Speaker 1: maybe it's just the slice of people that you encounter
8:22
Speaker 1: at a coffee shop are less open to that kind
8:25
Speaker 1: of stuff. I'm surprised you did it twice because they
8:28
Speaker 1: didn't kick you at the first time. I had to
8:31
Speaker 1: go to a variety of coffee shops, you know. I
8:34
Speaker 1: see you're trying never to hit the same one twice.
8:36
Speaker 1: That's how you can. They have my picture up on
8:38
Speaker 1: the wall, and so they pressed that little red button
8:43
Speaker 1: on the counting when they see me coming. Oh man,
8:45
Speaker 1: I can picture you walking into one in the disguise
8:48
Speaker 1: just to try to get your coffee. That's right, I'm
8:51
Speaker 1: disguised as a chemist. Sometimes you were the grutch marks,
8:54
Speaker 1: you know, glasses and nose and mustache. But no, way,
8:57
Speaker 1: that's already you. No, I just put it on a
9:01
Speaker 1: lab coat and safety goggles. Right, chemistry, and you were
9:04
Speaker 1: nice clothes, he said, Is that what you're saying yourself?
9:08
Speaker 1: Physicists have to dress up to become chemists. Yes, that's
9:10
Speaker 1: definitely true. Alright, So here's what people at that coffee
9:13
Speaker 1: shop had to say. Um, and have you guys heard
9:15
Speaker 1: of the particle called the cork? Yes? Now did you
9:19
Speaker 1: know the corks can never be found by themselves? Now,
9:22
Speaker 1: I've heard of it, but I don't know too much
9:25
Speaker 1: about it. You never did you know you can never
9:27
Speaker 1: find a cork by itself? They can never be alone? No? Yes?
9:31
Speaker 1: Did you know the quarks can never be alone? No?
9:34
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Although there are two meanings
9:37
Speaker 1: for cork, I wasn't sure if you meant the yogurt
9:39
Speaker 1: meaning or um, the particle meaning. I think yogurt can
9:43
Speaker 1: be alone. Yeah, but I can't tell you what it
9:47
Speaker 1: is because you know that corks can never be alone. Animal. No,
9:52
Speaker 1: it's a tiny little particle. Okay, yes, you know the
9:54
Speaker 1: corks can never be by themselves. Actually, I didn't know
9:58
Speaker 1: that I guess I haven't looked into it deep in. No,
10:00
Speaker 1: I actually think I have, and I have no idea
10:03
Speaker 1: why I wouldn't know that or what it is. Yeah.
10:06
Speaker 1: Of course they're made up of blue once, I believe,
10:10
Speaker 1: and they make up protons and electrons, and I think
10:15
Speaker 1: neutrons too. Did you know the corks can never be
10:18
Speaker 1: by themselves? They can never be alone, Yeah, because they
10:22
Speaker 1: have to switch between because I don't I tried to
10:26
Speaker 1: study this, but I don't completely understand, because I know
10:30
Speaker 1: I can't remember as the quarks that are labeled red, blue, green,
10:33
Speaker 1: and they have to switch from zone to zone. They
10:35
Speaker 1: always have to be occupied and they can't exist by themselves.
10:41
Speaker 1: I do not know why. No, I couldn't figure that out, actually, kid,
10:45
Speaker 1: all right, I guess, um. Not a lot of people
10:48
Speaker 1: I've heard of the cork. No, there's not a lot
10:50
Speaker 1: of familiarity about the cork the particle, though. One friendly
10:54
Speaker 1: person commented on cork the yogurt. Oh again, all right,
10:58
Speaker 1: it must be a really popular brand yogurt. It's a
11:01
Speaker 1: whole it's a whole dairy product. I think it's not
11:04
Speaker 1: even just a brand. It's like kind of thing, you know, Well,
11:07
Speaker 1: I like how this person said, do you mean the
11:08
Speaker 1: particle or the yogurt? Because this person knew about both,
11:12
Speaker 1: and he's like, let's terrify are we talking? Are we
11:15
Speaker 1: talking food or physics? Here? She was ready to talk
11:19
Speaker 1: about quirk the yogurt or quirk the particles. Yes, it's
11:23
Speaker 1: a renaissance person right there. Yeah, precisely. And there were
11:27
Speaker 1: some misunderstandings about quirks, people who think that they are
11:30
Speaker 1: made up of gluons or that electrons are made up
11:34
Speaker 1: of quarks. So definitely a topic that we should cover.
11:37
Speaker 1: Explain to people what quarks are and how they were right,
11:39
Speaker 1: because obviously they're not made out of gluons. Everyone knows that. No,
11:44
Speaker 1: of course, not glue is made out of glue. It's
11:48
Speaker 1: a sticky subject, of course. Yeah, so let's get into it. Um. So,
11:53
Speaker 1: first of all, Daniel water quirks and talk to me
11:57
Speaker 1: about this idea that that that they can never be alone. Yeah. So,
12:01
Speaker 1: corks are one of the fundamental particles. If you take
12:05
Speaker 1: matter apart, you'll find, of course that it's made out
12:07
Speaker 1: of atoms, and those atoms have inside them electrons whizzing
12:11
Speaker 1: around the nucleus and then inside the nucleus, We have
12:14
Speaker 1: neutrons and protons. Even glue is made out of the
12:17
Speaker 1: same of those same things. Everything is made out of
12:19
Speaker 1: those things. Everything that you've eaten, at least there are
12:22
Speaker 1: kinds of matter out there in the universe that are
12:23
Speaker 1: not made out of atoms, dark matter specifically, but everything
12:27
Speaker 1: that you've encountered, everything you've sat on, everything any human
12:30
Speaker 1: has ever eaten or thrown at each other is made
12:33
Speaker 1: out of atoms. And so it's pretty universal recipe. Right,
12:36
Speaker 1: What if my kid ate some dark matter? Should I
12:38
Speaker 1: call the doctor or um? I think you should eating
12:42
Speaker 1: because you're getting a Nobel prod proving that dark matter
12:46
Speaker 1: exists for feeding my child dark matter? Are you talking
12:49
Speaker 1: about the dark matter that goes into your child or
12:51
Speaker 1: out of your child though, because that's a whole different topic.
12:53
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on before somebody calls Social services off. No,
12:57
Speaker 1: But the amazing thing about this is that it's a
12:59
Speaker 1: recipe for all kinds of stuff. Like everything out there
13:02
Speaker 1: has the same number of protons, neutrons and electrons. And
13:06
Speaker 1: just can't get over this fact. Like every kind of
13:08
Speaker 1: material out there, every element right has one proton per
13:11
Speaker 1: electron and just about one neutron per proton. So it's
13:15
Speaker 1: one to one to one no matter what it is, right,
13:18
Speaker 1: And so it's not just any particle or any random
13:21
Speaker 1: or insignificant particle nature. This is like the particle, right,
13:25
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean you and I are made out
13:27
Speaker 1: of the out of them. Everyone is made out of them.
13:29
Speaker 1: It's one of the big h two particles that make
13:32
Speaker 1: up everything. Yeah, and so the most of the stuff
13:35
Speaker 1: that's inside you is made out of these protons and neutrons.
13:38
Speaker 1: But the protons and neutrons are not actually themselves fundamental.
13:41
Speaker 1: They're made of these smaller particles. And those are the corks,
13:44
Speaker 1: the up cork and the down cork. And you mix
13:48
Speaker 1: those together in one way you get a proton. You
13:49
Speaker 1: mix them together another way you get a neutron. But
13:52
Speaker 1: of course the proton and the neutron, you know, those
13:55
Speaker 1: are the physical particles that we can see, we can
13:57
Speaker 1: interact with, we can separate them. You can have like
13:59
Speaker 1: one proton and have one neutron over here. And for
14:03
Speaker 1: a long time people thought that they might be fundamental.
14:06
Speaker 1: But then in the seventies, by shooting super high energy
14:10
Speaker 1: electrons at the proton, we found that there was structure
14:13
Speaker 1: inside the proton. We found that there were particles inside there,
14:17
Speaker 1: and so that's what the corks are, right, And so
14:19
Speaker 1: that's what a cork is. And there's something funny about
14:22
Speaker 1: them because, for example, electrons can't be by themselves. You
14:25
Speaker 1: can't have it like a sink. You can hold a
14:26
Speaker 1: single electron in your hand, for example. The corks you're
14:30
Speaker 1: telling me have come as a kind of a special
14:32
Speaker 1: rule that they can never be alone. Yeah. The way
14:36
Speaker 1: that we found out about electrons, you know, is that
14:39
Speaker 1: we separated them from their atom. We isolated them so
14:41
Speaker 1: we could study them. And we talked about in the podcast. J. J.
14:44
Speaker 1: Thompson ionized atoms and made beams of electrons before he
14:48
Speaker 1: even knew what he was doing. And the way we
14:50
Speaker 1: discovered the nucleus is the same way. We separated and
14:52
Speaker 1: we broke the atom into pieces so we could study it.
14:55
Speaker 1: But with the quarks, we've never been able to do that.
14:58
Speaker 1: What we've been able to do is poke the inside
15:00
Speaker 1: the proton and see the corks sort of bouncing around
15:03
Speaker 1: in there. We have been able to break up the
15:05
Speaker 1: proton into quarks, but we can't ever see the corks
15:08
Speaker 1: by themselves. They are so much in love with being together.
15:13
Speaker 1: You always find them in pairs or triplets. But well,
15:16
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit confused because you you told me that,
15:19
Speaker 1: you know, at the large Hattern collider, and you take
15:21
Speaker 1: protons and you smash them together. But when you smash
15:25
Speaker 1: them together, you're saying, they don't actually break apart. But
15:28
Speaker 1: we do smash protons together at the large had Run collider.
15:31
Speaker 1: You're right, I was not lying. And what happens there
15:34
Speaker 1: is that the corks inside one proton interact with the
15:37
Speaker 1: quarks inside the other proton. But there's a rule about
15:40
Speaker 1: sort of the maximum distance that a cork can ever
15:43
Speaker 1: be from another cork. And so what happens there is
15:46
Speaker 1: you can have like two corks go pair off to
15:48
Speaker 1: be their own little particle. The quarks can never leave
15:51
Speaker 1: by themselves. Oh so you smash protons together, which are
15:55
Speaker 1: made out of quarks inside. But when they smash to
15:58
Speaker 1: the together, it's not like in a an explosion where
16:00
Speaker 1: everything flies off in all kinds of directions. Uh, the quarks.
16:04
Speaker 1: You know, you can't have a cork flying off from
16:06
Speaker 1: a collision by itself, That's right, you can't do that.
16:10
Speaker 1: They always have to be found in pairs or in triplets.
16:13
Speaker 1: There's no way to find a cork all by itself.
16:16
Speaker 1: But well, you've never seen it by by itself, right, Yes,
16:21
Speaker 1: you're right. Um, In physics we should never say never.
16:24
Speaker 1: We don't think it's possible. Nobody's ever seen a free cork.
16:27
Speaker 1: Nobody's ever isolated a cork by itself. Quarks are in
16:31
Speaker 1: that sense more mathematical than any other kind of particle,
16:35
Speaker 1: because we've never seen them on their own. They only
16:37
Speaker 1: exist sort of as part of our model for what's
16:40
Speaker 1: inside all these particles that we think are made up
16:42
Speaker 1: of quarks. You've got protons, you've got neutrons, and you
16:46
Speaker 1: mix corks and lots of other ways. You can get
16:47
Speaker 1: all sorts of other crazy particles pions and masons and
16:51
Speaker 1: ada particles and omega particles and um, all sorts of
16:55
Speaker 1: crazy stuffs. You're just gonna try to slip that in. Yeah, uh,
17:03
Speaker 1: to just go with it. Um, But I guess paid
17:05
Speaker 1: the picture from me right. So, at the large hattern collider,
17:08
Speaker 1: you have protons kind of going at each other right there,
17:12
Speaker 1: coming at huge speeds. So and and in each proton
17:15
Speaker 1: you have three quarks kind of bound together. They're stuck
17:18
Speaker 1: together at each one and then they the two protons
17:22
Speaker 1: smash into each other. They do, and you create this mess.
17:25
Speaker 1: And you're saying that you know, everything that leaves out
17:28
Speaker 1: of that collision, that explosion has to be paired up
17:31
Speaker 1: like the No matter how you smash them together, somehow
17:35
Speaker 1: they always corks always pair up when they fly off together.
17:38
Speaker 1: That's right. And one possibility is that you just sort
17:41
Speaker 1: of rearrange the quarks. You say, I got three quarks
17:44
Speaker 1: from this proton. I got three quarks from the other proton,
17:46
Speaker 1: so I'll just pair them up. Maybe I'll get like
17:48
Speaker 1: three pairs of quarks and this is gonna go fly
17:50
Speaker 1: off and make me three pions. That's one possibility. But
17:54
Speaker 1: sometimes if you put enough energy into these things, the
17:57
Speaker 1: corks sort of try to go free, like you get.
17:59
Speaker 1: You push one cork off in one direction, another one
18:02
Speaker 1: off in another direction, and there and none of the
18:04
Speaker 1: other original quirks from the proton are near it, and
18:06
Speaker 1: it's like flying off into outer space by itself. But
18:10
Speaker 1: physics says no, and what yeah, And what happens there
18:14
Speaker 1: is that some of its energy gets converted into making
18:18
Speaker 1: a new cork. It pops a new cork out of
18:21
Speaker 1: the vacuum, so that cork doesn't have to be by itself.
18:24
Speaker 1: Wait what so you're saying one of the corks after
18:27
Speaker 1: the collision was going off to the left, but because
18:29
Speaker 1: physics says no, it like it disappears and it reappears
18:32
Speaker 1: somewhere else. Say, for example, you have a quirk going
18:34
Speaker 1: off really fast to the left and another cork going
18:37
Speaker 1: off really fast to the right, so the distance between
18:39
Speaker 1: them is growing. Well, what happens is that takes a
18:42
Speaker 1: huge amount of energy, and that energy gets converted into
18:46
Speaker 1: making new corks. Like you create new corks, one for
18:50
Speaker 1: the one going to the left and one for the
18:51
Speaker 1: one going to the right, so that each of them
18:53
Speaker 1: now has a companion, so they're not by themselves. The
18:56
Speaker 1: universe is like you're going off by yourself here, I'll
18:59
Speaker 1: make you a companion it. Yeah, And that's because the
19:01
Speaker 1: strong nuclear force is super duper weird. And we'll talk
19:05
Speaker 1: about that in more detail in a minute, I hope.
19:07
Speaker 1: But the short version is unlike electromagnetism, where as the
19:11
Speaker 1: distance between them grows, the force gets weaker and fades.
19:14
Speaker 1: In the strong force as the distance between them grows
19:17
Speaker 1: the force gets stronger, so it takes more and more
19:21
Speaker 1: energy to separate them, and eventually there's enough energy to
19:24
Speaker 1: create new matter. All right, let's get into the details
19:27
Speaker 1: of that a little bit more. But I think it's
19:28
Speaker 1: pretty considered of the universe not to to be looking
19:31
Speaker 1: out for quirks like that. You know, it depends. I mean,
19:34
Speaker 1: if you're quirking, you just want some like me time,
19:37
Speaker 1: then it's not a little love is a curse you're saying.
19:44
Speaker 1: If you ever grew up in the house that's kind
19:46
Speaker 1: of crowded, you know that there's value to time by yourself.
19:48
Speaker 1: You know, you want time with your book. And just
19:50
Speaker 1: like nobody asked me to do something or ask me
19:52
Speaker 1: a question. You know, my family is pretty quirky, and
19:57
Speaker 1: you've got some strange quirks in your family and some
19:59
Speaker 1: charming works, you know, of course. Right, all right, let's
20:03
Speaker 1: get into more of this kind of mysterious force that
20:06
Speaker 1: makes quarks just so that they're not alone. But first
20:09
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, all right. I know, so
20:24
Speaker 1: it seems like the universe doesn't like for courts to
20:27
Speaker 1: be alone, to the point where it even makes up
20:29
Speaker 1: new corps when it needs to whenever it sees a
20:31
Speaker 1: cork going off to be alone, it makes a new
20:33
Speaker 1: cork to pair up with it, which is pretty amazing.
20:37
Speaker 1: And you're telling me that this is all because of
20:39
Speaker 1: the force between courts. Yeah, one of the three or
20:42
Speaker 1: four fundamental forces of nature, depending how you count. We
20:46
Speaker 1: have gravity, which we don't understand quantum mechanically. We have
20:49
Speaker 1: electromagnetism and the weak force, which I think of together
20:53
Speaker 1: as bound as part of the electroweak force. And then
20:56
Speaker 1: we have the strong nuclear force. And this is the
20:58
Speaker 1: thing that holds the proton together and holds the neutron together,
21:02
Speaker 1: and also it's a thing that holds the nucleus together
21:04
Speaker 1: because there's a little residual bits of it left over
21:06
Speaker 1: after you've made the proton and the neutron. But this
21:09
Speaker 1: force is really powerful and really different from any of
21:12
Speaker 1: the other forces. It's called the strong force, right, Yeah,
21:16
Speaker 1: not the Strange force, though maybe they should have called
21:18
Speaker 1: it the strong nut. If you get a pc in
21:22
Speaker 1: the in the strong into the strange force, does that
21:24
Speaker 1: make you the doctor Strange? It absolutely officially does, and
21:28
Speaker 1: gives you power over time. It's been to everybody, right, right,
21:32
Speaker 1: even the Benedict commor batches of the world. Yeah, and
21:36
Speaker 1: you know, we like to categorize things in physics. We
21:38
Speaker 1: like to say, are these things are all similar to
21:40
Speaker 1: each other? And what connections can we draw between them?
21:43
Speaker 1: But we also like to contrast things. We like to say, how, look,
21:46
Speaker 1: these forces are similar because they're all forces, but they
21:49
Speaker 1: have some big differences in them, and so those things
21:53
Speaker 1: can teach us like what kind of forces can there
21:55
Speaker 1: be in the universe? And the strong force is different
21:59
Speaker 1: and basically every way that it can be different from
22:02
Speaker 1: the other forces. Really, so it's one of the four
22:05
Speaker 1: fundamental forces, but it's very different than the other three
22:08
Speaker 1: or the other two. Yeah, it's very different from I
22:11
Speaker 1: would say the other two. For example, gravity has one
22:15
Speaker 1: way it can push, right, It can only pull things together,
22:17
Speaker 1: and that's because there's only one kind of mass. You
22:20
Speaker 1: can have positive and negative mass. It's so gravity is
22:23
Speaker 1: only attractive. Electromagnetism right works on positive and negative charges,
22:28
Speaker 1: and so we can both push and pull. It pushes
22:31
Speaker 1: if two positive charges or negative charges come near each other.
22:34
Speaker 1: It pulls if you have opposite charges near each other.
22:37
Speaker 1: But the strong force is weird because it has three charges,
22:42
Speaker 1: and we call those red, green, and blue, and so
22:46
Speaker 1: it's it just it blows your mind and thinking like
22:48
Speaker 1: whoa there can be like a three different kinds of
22:51
Speaker 1: charges and it requires different kinds of math like to
22:54
Speaker 1: balance the mouth to neutralize them, and all sorts of stuff, right,
22:56
Speaker 1: because I was just thinking that the one I think
22:58
Speaker 1: most people are familiar with see electro magnet magnetic force,
23:02
Speaker 1: right in terms of they're being charges, we're so used
23:05
Speaker 1: to just they're being two write plus or minus. Yeah,
23:08
Speaker 1: you're used to there being two, and they used to
23:09
Speaker 1: being there being two kinds of magnets right north and south.
23:12
Speaker 1: What if they were like three kinds of magnets, you know,
23:15
Speaker 1: right north, south and east or something, and the east
23:17
Speaker 1: magnet was super weird and like it would it would
23:20
Speaker 1: be a really different force. Well, that's what the strong
23:22
Speaker 1: force is. Has three kinds of charges like a plus
23:26
Speaker 1: minus and x. Well, red, green, and blue. And that's
23:30
Speaker 1: why you can have bound states of two quarks, because
23:33
Speaker 1: you can have like a red and an anti red,
23:36
Speaker 1: or three quarks if you have like a red, green
23:38
Speaker 1: and blue because red, green and blue add up to neutral. Well,
23:43
Speaker 1: I guess step me through this a little bit um
23:45
Speaker 1: more because I know that. You know, if I have
23:48
Speaker 1: a plus charge and a minus charge will attract each
23:51
Speaker 1: other in electromagnetic forces, or if you have two pluses,
23:57
Speaker 1: they'll repel each other. So how does it work if
23:59
Speaker 1: you have three? You know, it's like two. I know
24:01
Speaker 1: three is kind of a weird thing. Are you asking
24:03
Speaker 1: me how to have a three sum? In part of yes,
24:05
Speaker 1: I was trying to avoid that reference. But if you
24:10
Speaker 1: want to go there, let's go there. I mean, it
24:12
Speaker 1: turns out to be pretty different if two pluses in
24:14
Speaker 1: a minus or two minuses in a plus. I see,
24:17
Speaker 1: it's a whole different genre exactly. No, it's a it's
24:22
Speaker 1: a very different kind of situation. And the weird thing
24:25
Speaker 1: is basically, anything that has color that isn't neutral will
24:29
Speaker 1: attract the other thing. So red will attract red, red
24:32
Speaker 1: will atract anti red, well, red will attract green, green
24:35
Speaker 1: willottract blue, blue will attract anti blue. It's basically always
24:39
Speaker 1: a party when it comes to this trait. So anything
24:42
Speaker 1: that has a color charge attracts other things with color charge.
24:46
Speaker 1: Anything that has a color charge will interact with other
24:48
Speaker 1: things that have a color charge. Whether or not they
24:50
Speaker 1: attract or repel depends on where they are, how close
24:55
Speaker 1: they are. Well, if you take a red cork and
24:57
Speaker 1: an anti red cork, if they're too close together, they
25:01
Speaker 1: will repel each other. If they're too far apart, they
25:03
Speaker 1: will attract each other. Oh, I see, So they like
25:06
Speaker 1: to be sort of a specific distance apart. Yes, they
25:09
Speaker 1: like to be a specific distance apart. Anything else takes
25:12
Speaker 1: more energy. So if you have a red cork and
25:14
Speaker 1: an anti red cork and you want them closer together,
25:16
Speaker 1: you gotta squeeze them, because they repel that they avoid that. Similarly,
25:21
Speaker 1: if you want them further apart, you gotta put in energy,
25:23
Speaker 1: And as they get further and further apart, it takes
25:26
Speaker 1: more and more energy. And that's the thing that's really
25:29
Speaker 1: weird about the strong force. Like with electromagnetism, you take
25:32
Speaker 1: plusant and minus and you pull them apart, the force
25:35
Speaker 1: between them starts to fade right as they get further
25:37
Speaker 1: and further apart. It goes like one over are squared.
25:40
Speaker 1: But what about like a red and a green same situation.
25:43
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some little details there for higher order calculations,
25:47
Speaker 1: but roughly it's about the same. So everyone wants to
25:50
Speaker 1: be with everybody else, but not too close, but not
25:53
Speaker 1: too close. So why isn't everything just being pulled together?
25:57
Speaker 1: Why are in my red quarks just totally you know,
26:01
Speaker 1: pulling the red quarks in my microphone or in the
26:05
Speaker 1: sun to me, because your red quarks are all in
26:09
Speaker 1: color neutral bound states, mostly protons and neutrons. Oh, they're happy.
26:14
Speaker 1: They're happy three and a happy threesome. They're in a
26:16
Speaker 1: happy threesome. Yeah. And you know why is the nucleus
26:20
Speaker 1: held together Because there's a little bit of strong force
26:22
Speaker 1: that leaks out of the proton and holds those protons together. Um,
26:26
Speaker 1: so mostly they're in a totally happy state. But you know,
26:29
Speaker 1: sometimes the neutron decays into a proton. Oh, I see.
26:33
Speaker 1: It's like asking why why aren't all my plus charges
26:36
Speaker 1: in my body attracting the plus charges in the sun.
26:39
Speaker 1: And the answer is that my plus charges are all
26:41
Speaker 1: happy stuck with a negative charge inside of me. Yeah, exactly.
26:45
Speaker 1: Most of your plus charges are in neutral atoms, and
26:48
Speaker 1: so the neutral atoms don't really interact unless you get
26:51
Speaker 1: really close. And then it depends on how close you
26:53
Speaker 1: are to the plus part of the minus part. But
26:55
Speaker 1: on average you're neutral, and so you don't interact with
26:58
Speaker 1: the electric charges in the raw or in your mazdo
27:01
Speaker 1: or whatever. So if I had like the power to
27:03
Speaker 1: create a red cork right in front of me, like poof,
27:05
Speaker 1: I just made one in front of me, it would
27:07
Speaker 1: be super attracted to or maybe not. It would look
27:10
Speaker 1: for the closest single cork and get attracted to that.
27:14
Speaker 1: That's right. But it would take an enormous amount of
27:17
Speaker 1: energy to create that cork and have it be really
27:19
Speaker 1: far away from any partner, because it's because that the
27:23
Speaker 1: potential energy would be so big. Precisely, think about the opposite.
27:28
Speaker 1: Say you had a cork and an anti red cork
27:30
Speaker 1: and you wanted to separate them. How much energy would
27:32
Speaker 1: it take to separate them to be like, you know,
27:34
Speaker 1: one galaxy away from each other. Well, every meter you
27:37
Speaker 1: separate them would take more and more energy. It's not
27:40
Speaker 1: like with electromagnetism, where once you get them far apart,
27:43
Speaker 1: they basically ignore each other. You know, a cork here
27:47
Speaker 1: would feel a quirk and andromeda super duper powerfully. That
27:51
Speaker 1: would be you know, an incredible amount of energy. And
27:54
Speaker 1: that's the really weird thing about the strong force is
27:56
Speaker 1: that the power of the force doesn't degrade with distance,
27:59
Speaker 1: it get stronger. It's like a spring. It's like a
28:02
Speaker 1: one like a mechanical spring, exactly, it goes it's linearly
28:06
Speaker 1: with a distance, just like a mechanical spring. And so
28:08
Speaker 1: is that how you explain whether you can't find one
28:11
Speaker 1: alone in nature? Is that it just it would just
28:12
Speaker 1: take too much energy. Yeah, And that energy prefers to
28:15
Speaker 1: turn into matter. So if you did take a cork
28:18
Speaker 1: and an antiquark and you pull them apart, that would
28:21
Speaker 1: require a huge amount of energy to be pouring energy
28:24
Speaker 1: into it to separate them. And nature prefers to not
28:27
Speaker 1: have that much unstable energy. It prefers to decay into
28:31
Speaker 1: lower energy states like we talked about another time. And
28:33
Speaker 1: it creates new quarks, and so it creates a new
28:36
Speaker 1: partner for those quirks you're trying to pull apart, so
28:39
Speaker 1: that no quirk is by itself. So like like let's
28:43
Speaker 1: say I grabbed uh one quark with my right hand,
28:46
Speaker 1: and I grabbed the other core another cork with my
28:48
Speaker 1: left hand, and I spent We're wearing safety goggles here.
28:52
Speaker 1: I always wear safety they're called reading glasses, all right,
28:58
Speaker 1: So you're pulling your parks apart I'm pulling apart, and
29:00
Speaker 1: I have big muscles, and I Am just pulling them apart,
29:03
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, it's really hard. It's really hard.
29:05
Speaker 1: And then at some point the universe just just snaps,
29:08
Speaker 1: like it just you know, it'll just it'll be like
29:11
Speaker 1: the spring broke and suddenly I'll have two quarks in
29:14
Speaker 1: one hand and two quarks on the other hand. Precisely. Yeah,
29:16
Speaker 1: and you can even generate more particles. In fact, what
29:19
Speaker 1: you just described is essentially my job. That's what we
29:22
Speaker 1: do with the large age on collider. You wear a
29:24
Speaker 1: safety glasses. I do wear a safety glasses. But we
29:28
Speaker 1: smash protons together and that pushes effectively the quarks away
29:32
Speaker 1: from each other. And when that happens, we see particles
29:35
Speaker 1: get created out of the vacuum. Out of that, that
29:38
Speaker 1: energy gets turned into particles, and you don't just get one.
29:41
Speaker 1: Sometimes you get a whole stream particles, depending how much
29:46
Speaker 1: energy you've created. It's like the universe says, you know,
29:48
Speaker 1: it's too much effort to pull these two quarks together.
29:51
Speaker 1: It's too much effort to fight. Wre is amazing biceps
29:54
Speaker 1: and muscles. I'll just I'll just pair up the corks
29:57
Speaker 1: that in each each of his hands. That's right, or hey,
30:00
Speaker 1: versus the universe. Think about it like tension and a string,
30:06
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's stretches and stretches and stretches. Eventually
30:08
Speaker 1: it snaps, and it just prefers to be in a
30:10
Speaker 1: lower energy state. And that lower energy state means having
30:13
Speaker 1: those particles exist. We talked about it statistically on another podcast.
30:18
Speaker 1: You know, the universe prefers configurations where there's lots of
30:21
Speaker 1: possible ways for it to be, and so it will
30:23
Speaker 1: always decay to a low energy configuration where that energy
30:28
Speaker 1: can be pointed in lots of different directions. And if
30:29
Speaker 1: you create these particles and there's lots of different ways
30:32
Speaker 1: to arrange them, whereas if you have all the energy
30:34
Speaker 1: just stored in that field between the cork and anti
30:37
Speaker 1: cork is one configuration. So just an entropy argument tells
30:40
Speaker 1: you why a very tense, single configuration, high energy state
30:45
Speaker 1: will decay to a bunch of particles. So, and what
30:47
Speaker 1: is that distance that which the string breaks, you know,
30:50
Speaker 1: like if I'm pulling them apart, what is the distance
30:52
Speaker 1: that which it just pops and it becomes for quarts.
30:55
Speaker 1: It depends on the energy um but you know, we're
30:57
Speaker 1: talking femptometers. That's the preferred distance for quirks. Quirks like
31:02
Speaker 1: to be you know, a few femptometers apart, and so
31:04
Speaker 1: push them further away and you'll start to create new quirks.
31:08
Speaker 1: And you put in really a lot of energy. You
31:12
Speaker 1: can create heavy quirks, you know, charm corks and bottom
31:14
Speaker 1: quarks and that kind of stuff. Oh wait, what if
31:17
Speaker 1: so if I pull it depends on how I pull
31:19
Speaker 1: them apart. Well, the universe we don't know how it
31:21
Speaker 1: randomly decides, but if you have enough energy, it can
31:24
Speaker 1: create heavier particles, and not all the quarks sort of
31:27
Speaker 1: cost the same in energy. The up cork and the
31:29
Speaker 1: down cork are the cheapest corks and the lightest ones.
31:32
Speaker 1: But the charm and the strange and the bottom these
31:35
Speaker 1: are heavier, so they cost more energy to make. So
31:37
Speaker 1: if you put enough energy, then you sort of go
31:39
Speaker 1: up the menu and you can make some of these
31:41
Speaker 1: heavier corks too interesting. And so what what is it
31:45
Speaker 1: that makes the courts pair up in in threesomes, in
31:49
Speaker 1: pairs and and what you call triplets. The reason is
31:52
Speaker 1: that you can neutralize the strong force using three of
31:56
Speaker 1: these charges it's because the strong force has these three charges.
32:00
Speaker 1: And so for example, two ups and a down and
32:02
Speaker 1: two downs and an up can give you a neutral
32:05
Speaker 1: object in color space in this strong nuclear charge. Right
32:10
Speaker 1: in electromagnetism, you can't imagine putting two pluses and a
32:13
Speaker 1: minus together to get zero. The the math doesn't work.
32:16
Speaker 1: But in color space and strong nuclear charge, a red,
32:20
Speaker 1: a green, and a blue equal zero. And so that's
32:23
Speaker 1: why you can get a threesome of quarks because they
32:26
Speaker 1: can balance each other out. That's that's a stable configuration.
32:29
Speaker 1: That's a stable configuration. So you can have pairs or
32:32
Speaker 1: you can have triplets. And recently people have been trying
32:35
Speaker 1: to figure out ways to get like penta quarks, like
32:38
Speaker 1: combinations of five quarks that are stable together. But that's
32:41
Speaker 1: sort of a cutting edge research. So if I have
32:44
Speaker 1: a red and a green paired up together, that that
32:46
Speaker 1: would be looking for a blue to join it. Yes, precisely,
32:49
Speaker 1: it would be desperate for a blue to finish out
32:52
Speaker 1: its color party. And you know, the strong force is
32:56
Speaker 1: really strong. I mean it's strange also, but it's much
32:59
Speaker 1: more powerful than any other force we've ever seen. You
33:03
Speaker 1: should call it the strong force. Thank you, I think
33:06
Speaker 1: we will. Um. You know, in comparison, it's more than
33:10
Speaker 1: a hundred times the power of electricity and magnetism at
33:15
Speaker 1: the same distance or at the same sort of you know, magnitude. Yeah, precisely,
33:20
Speaker 1: at the same distance at one fimtometer is a hundred
33:23
Speaker 1: times the power of electromagnetism. It's a million times the
33:27
Speaker 1: power of the weak force, and it's ten to the
33:30
Speaker 1: thirty eight times the power of gravity. So it's really
33:34
Speaker 1: the most powerful force we've ever seen, even more powerful
33:36
Speaker 1: than my biceps, even more powerful, and it's really weird,
33:41
Speaker 1: you know, know what had ever thought about how a
33:43
Speaker 1: force could get stronger with distance? And it took some
33:46
Speaker 1: really clever mathematics to explain this. And there was a
33:49
Speaker 1: Nobel prize just for that idea, the idea that maybe
33:52
Speaker 1: this is how the strong force works. And that's a
33:55
Speaker 1: Frank will check m I t won the Nobel Prize
33:57
Speaker 1: just for explaining the strong force. All you have to
33:59
Speaker 1: do is addam minus signed to one equation um, and
34:02
Speaker 1: that explained it. Well, that's what I'll do. I'll just
34:04
Speaker 1: put minus science in all kinds of equations and hopefully
34:08
Speaker 1: one of them will get me a Nobel prize. All right,
34:14
Speaker 1: it seems like a great strategy, go for it. All right,
34:18
Speaker 1: Well that kind of explains why corks can't be alone,
34:21
Speaker 1: sort of, I think. And so let's get into what
34:23
Speaker 1: it all means for the universe and for you and
34:26
Speaker 1: me and my corks. But first let's take a quick break.
34:41
Speaker 1: All right, So corks can't be alone, although I feel
34:44
Speaker 1: like it's kind of a depends on your definition of alone.
34:46
Speaker 1: Like what if a cork feels that one pmtometer is
34:50
Speaker 1: alone enough, then they can be alone. Right? That feels
34:54
Speaker 1: pretty cozy to me, you know, like when my kids
34:56
Speaker 1: are fighting on the couch about who's getting how much space?
34:58
Speaker 1: If they're one themometer art, then that would be that
35:01
Speaker 1: would be trouble. That would definitely be trouble. Yeah, I
35:05
Speaker 1: don't really feel like I'm alone if I'm going to
35:07
Speaker 1: the bathroom and if somebody one pmptometer away from you, Well,
35:10
Speaker 1: it depends how big you are. You know, how big
35:12
Speaker 1: is a court Daniel, how big is a cork? A
35:15
Speaker 1: cork is a point particle, so it really has no volume,
35:18
Speaker 1: really no no meaningful size. So you're saying a phantometer
35:22
Speaker 1: is infinitely far for them, yeah, I guess, so that's
35:25
Speaker 1: a good point. Maybe they're like, you know, folks in
35:28
Speaker 1: a marriage feel like they're always having a shout across
35:30
Speaker 1: the house at each other. What would you say, Yeah, Okay,
35:35
Speaker 1: so corks don't like to be alone caveat more than
35:39
Speaker 1: a femptometer apart, right, I guess that's maybe a better
35:42
Speaker 1: way to say it. And and so that's weird, and
35:45
Speaker 1: you're saying it's all because that's how that's just how
35:47
Speaker 1: the strong force works, Like after a femptometer, it's just
35:51
Speaker 1: decides to create more courts instead, it's easier. They're like
35:54
Speaker 1: stuck in a little valley and they just can't get out, right.
35:57
Speaker 1: And so that's a weird rule for the universe. But
36:00
Speaker 1: I guess that's just kind of the way the universe is, right, Like,
36:03
Speaker 1: if it was any different, we wouldn't be here, We
36:06
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here yet, or there would be something else here.
36:08
Speaker 1: There would be something else, maybe a funnier podcast. Impossible.
36:13
Speaker 1: The laws of the universe prevent their, uh, there to
36:16
Speaker 1: be a funnier science podcast. I have calculated the maximum
36:21
Speaker 1: humor for a physics podcast, and we hadn't reached it.
36:24
Speaker 1: Did you put a minus sign in it, though, are
36:26
Speaker 1: you it's missing a minus sign? Yeah, I'm gonna go
36:30
Speaker 1: back to check my concussions. But this is probably the
36:33
Speaker 1: funniest podcast about science with a cartoonist and a physicist
36:37
Speaker 1: that I have heard of. Daniel and Jorge from southern California.
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Speaker 1: Put enough caveats in and your number one in the universe,
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Speaker 1: but enough minus science you'll get an over price prize
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Speaker 1: that actually does work. Yeah, all right, let's get into
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Speaker 1: then what it all means. I mean, I mean, this
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Speaker 1: seems like a weird rule, and what practically does it
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Speaker 1: mean for extent for us? Well, I think not practically,
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Speaker 1: but philosophically, it means something pretty profound. You know. It
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Speaker 1: means that forces can be really different from the forces
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Speaker 1: that we're familiar with. And this is a recurring story
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Speaker 1: in physics that we think the world works one way
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Speaker 1: and then we discover, hope, there's an exception. Actually the
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Speaker 1: exception is much more powerful than everything we've been thinking about,
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Speaker 1: and so it's just another reminder that we need to
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Speaker 1: open our minds and that probably there's basic assumptions we're
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Speaker 1: making about how the world works that are wrong and
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Speaker 1: we just need to counter example to prove to us
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Speaker 1: that there's something else going on. So it's just an
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Speaker 1: example there, and you know, we'll always be asking the
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Speaker 1: question like, why is this that way? Why is this
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Speaker 1: the other way? Why isn't it work this other way?
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Speaker 1: I would have preferred um and I hope that one
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Speaker 1: day we have those answers. But right now we're totally clueless.
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Speaker 1: We're just like, we don't know. We're just looking at
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Speaker 1: it and trying to at least describe it, not even
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Speaker 1: necessarily understand it. But it also has some practical consequences, Yes,
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Speaker 1: step us through what what what does that mean for
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Speaker 1: what we can and can make out of stuff? Well,
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Speaker 1: one of the tempting things about the strong charge is
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Speaker 1: that it's super powerful. You know, it powers nuclear weapons
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Speaker 1: and nuclear power, and so you might think, wouldn't it
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Speaker 1: be awesome to apply that everyday life, you know, to
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Speaker 1: have things like batteries that sours the strong force. They
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Speaker 1: could be super small and you know, some version of
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Speaker 1: electrical current and electrical power that's powered by color instead
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Speaker 1: of electrical charge. Right, that would be super awesome, But
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Speaker 1: you can't because it's such a powerful force. Could we
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Speaker 1: somehow harness that power? To something practical to like charging
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Speaker 1: our cell phones. Yeah, could we carry that power around?
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Speaker 1: And can we store that power and use it to
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Speaker 1: transmit things? And we've done it very briefly. That's you
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Speaker 1: know what nuclear bombs are your power um. But it's
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Speaker 1: tempting to think about, you know, having like a current,
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Speaker 1: like why why couldn't you have a current of that
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Speaker 1: kind of power? But you can't because that relies on
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Speaker 1: isolating the charges. Like a battery, you can separate the
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Speaker 1: electrons and have them kind of flow along your wire
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Speaker 1: to power your cell phone. But you couldn't do that
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Speaker 1: with quarks. Like if you try to separate the quarks,
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Speaker 1: the universe wouldn't like that. Yeah, the universe is like
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Speaker 1: and I try it, snapping fingers in a Z pattern,
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Speaker 1: like I see what you're trying to do there, and
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Speaker 1: you get a big, fat note. So it just means
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Speaker 1: that there are things you can't do with that force
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Speaker 1: that you can do with other forces. And and one
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Speaker 1: of them is, you know, build a version of electricity um,
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Speaker 1: which is too bad because it's such an awesome powerful force.
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Speaker 1: It'd be cool to call it quarticity or quarkticity. I'm
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Speaker 1: not sure that one's going to catch on. Don't even
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Speaker 1: know how to spell that a kt in it. It
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Speaker 1: has a minus sign in the middle. That's why I'm getting, well,
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Speaker 1: that is a minus awesome idea. Well, why why did
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Speaker 1: you go with plus or minus? Why can't you go
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Speaker 1: with like that's a red red hot idea? There, that's
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Speaker 1: it's a cool idea. It's kind of a blue green idea.
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Speaker 1: But it also has consequences for me and for particle
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Speaker 1: physics because it makes our job a lot harder, because
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Speaker 1: it makes it hard to kind of separate these things
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Speaker 1: and study them. Yeah, if I am interested in understanding
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Speaker 1: what happened inside a particle collision, I got a look
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Speaker 1: at the stuff that flies out. Because I can't see
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Speaker 1: some heavy, new, crazy particle that I hope was made
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Speaker 1: in the collision. It doesn't last very long. I just
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Speaker 1: see the stuff that flies out, And so I love
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Speaker 1: if that stuff that flies out was sort of simple
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Speaker 1: and clean, like it just turned into two electrons or
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Speaker 1: something I can measure. But very often in these collisions,
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Speaker 1: because we're smashing protons together, we get quirks to fly out,
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Speaker 1: and the quirks make these big streams of particles, and
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Speaker 1: so instead of having one very simple, nice and neat
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Speaker 1: cork that flies out, I have fifty particles that fly out,
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Speaker 1: and it's a big mess, and they're interacting and they
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Speaker 1: splash in the detector, and we call that a jet
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Speaker 1: of particles, because when you pull that cork apart, all
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Speaker 1: that energy in the straw force transit into a jet
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Speaker 1: of other particles. Yeah, all the energy gets turned into
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Speaker 1: ten other particles with other quirks, which then combined to
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Speaker 1: make us whole sorts of crazy particles. And so it's
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Speaker 1: a big mess. So you're saying it impedes your rights
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Speaker 1: as a particle physicist, Yeah, it obscures the universe a
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Speaker 1: little bit. You know, we'd love to pull these protons
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Speaker 1: apart and study the quirks by themselves. You notice we
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Speaker 1: don't have a cork collider, right, We have a proton collider,
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Speaker 1: and that's why we're really interested in cork cork interactions.
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Speaker 1: But we can't build a quirk collider. But to build
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Speaker 1: a proton collider, and then we have to we can't
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Speaker 1: see the corks interacting and the quarks flying out. We
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Speaker 1: have to see the mess that they make afterwards. You know,
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Speaker 1: it's like you want to study preschoolers and and you know,
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Speaker 1: they leave a mess. You're like, you know, why can't
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Speaker 1: these pre schoolers just tell me what they're thinking? You know?
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Speaker 1: Instead they just they rereak havoc wherever they go and
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Speaker 1: to try to reconstruct from their tantrums what might have
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Speaker 1: been going on in their minds. Schoolers are complicated, and
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Speaker 1: so our courts. Yes, preschoolers are complicated, and so are quirks,
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Speaker 1: and so that makes our job a little harder. Well, um,
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Speaker 1: so I guess that means then that that's just how
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Speaker 1: the universe is. The universe has rules for quirks, and
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Speaker 1: quirks don't really have alone rights, right, they can ever
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Speaker 1: be alone because the universe always wants them to be
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Speaker 1: paired up or in three sums, that's right, And there's
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Speaker 1: one exception works what quirks they don't they can't be alone.
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Speaker 1: But there's one time when they don't have to be
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Speaker 1: in paris ms parisms is that a word in apples?
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Speaker 1: Or parisms or bananisms um, And that's when they're in
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Speaker 1: a huge party. It's called the quirk gluon plasma. Wait
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Speaker 1: what huh? Yeah, if you create enough energy density, you
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Speaker 1: pour enough energy into a tiny little space. Then you
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Speaker 1: can sort of free the quirks because you make this
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Speaker 1: like big frothing mass of stuff where there's too much
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Speaker 1: energy to bound these things together and they're sort of
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Speaker 1: like bound into a huge mass. Instead, we do this
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Speaker 1: experimentally by smashing heavy ions together, like the nucleus of
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Speaker 1: a lead atom and the nucleus of a lead atom.
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Speaker 1: Smash like hundreds of these things together makes this big,
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Speaker 1: big frothing mass oh, in which that suddenly it doesn't
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Speaker 1: they're not particularly paired to another quirk or two other quarks,
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Speaker 1: but there's sort of like, um, it's like a giant,
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Speaker 1: big party. Yeah, it's like a plasma. The same way
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Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of hydrogen atoms. They're happy with
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Speaker 1: every electron being paired with a with a proton, but
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Speaker 1: you squeeze them together enough and there's still overall balance
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Speaker 1: of electrons and protons, but the electrons are sort of
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Speaker 1: free to hop from proton to proton. The same way
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Speaker 1: you take protons and you squeeze them together enough and
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Speaker 1: the corks sort of smooshed together, and then they can
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Speaker 1: sort of swap back and forth very quickly between states
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Speaker 1: and so it makes sort of like a big plasma
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Speaker 1: and gluons. Yeah, like, oh, I see, So you can't
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Speaker 1: have a cork by itself, but you can't have free corks,
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Speaker 1: but only if they're in a soup. Yes, So basically
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Speaker 1: they like to be in pairs, chiplets, or in a
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Speaker 1: big party. And we've actually made that happen. We've collided
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Speaker 1: these things together and created them in colliders. And we
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Speaker 1: think that it happened in the very early universe when
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Speaker 1: the universe was hot and nasty and dense, that there
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Speaker 1: was this cork gluon plasma. But these days they're mostly
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Speaker 1: found um isolated in these pairs and chiplets. I see,
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Speaker 1: and can do these soups? Do these crazy soup parties
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Speaker 1: happen in nature or only in colliders? Only in colliders? Now?
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Speaker 1: The universe is too cool for that to happen. Although
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Speaker 1: some people think that maybe at the center of some
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Speaker 1: kinds of stars might be some cork glue in plastron stars,
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Speaker 1: maybe neutron stars, probably not dense enough amazingly, but these
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Speaker 1: stars called strange cork stars that where there might be
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Speaker 1: a cork glue in plasma, but nobody's for sure. All right,
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Speaker 1: So it can be free, cork, but it can be
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Speaker 1: alone because it can only be free when they a
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Speaker 1: whole bunch of other quirks, right, yeah, precisely, so they
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Speaker 1: can never be by themselves, can never be alone, but
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Speaker 1: it can be free if it's not alone. Oh man,
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Speaker 1: that's a tough tough trade off there, would you would
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Speaker 1: you trade your freedom for some alone some me time?
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Speaker 1: I don't know. I think the quirk's going to have
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Speaker 1: his lawyer explained to it exactly what that means. That's
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Speaker 1: a new job description, particle lawyer, quantum lawyer. I'm a
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Speaker 1: quantum lawyer. Sounds like a scam. Definitely a scam. Do
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Speaker 1: not pay anyone for quantum lawyering advice. All right, Well,
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Speaker 1: that's another pretty interesting fact about the universeitda at least
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Speaker 1: I learned today, is all these um rules that cover
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Speaker 1: govern our most fundamental particles. That's right to control how
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Speaker 1: your protons and how your neutrons are stuck together, and
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Speaker 1: why they're stuck together. So you should be grateful that
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Speaker 1: all those quarks are together and doing all that work
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Speaker 1: for you. We hope you enjoyed that. See you next time,
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Speaker 1: So enjoy your quirks and enjoy your cork yogurt and
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Speaker 1: talk to you guys soon before. You still have a
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Speaker 1: question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us
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Speaker 1: the line. We'd love to hear from you. You can
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Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and
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Speaker 1: Jorge That's one Word, or email us at Feedback at
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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember
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Speaker 1: that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production
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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my Heart Radio,
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Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.