Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Is the Universe made of waves (Part 1)

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Is the Universe made of waves (Part 1) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, are we made out of particles or waves?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: M That depends on what depends on what you mean
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: by particle and what you mean by wave.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: That's a very particular answer.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm not just gonna wave my hands when I
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: answer a question.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I would have thought that a particle physicists would have
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: leaned into the particle answer.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Well, I do have kind of a particle brainwave about it.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I think you're just trying to wave me off.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: In particular.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm poorhe Mae, cartoonist and the author of Oliver's
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Great Big Universe.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: at UC Irvine, and i'd like to think i'm I'm
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: also a wavular physicist.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: A wavuler. I don't think I've ever heard that word.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I just made it up. Man, aren't physicists great at
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: naming things?
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Would it be more perpetsey you're a wavy physicist or
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a waiver physicist?
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I got wavy hair, and I do sometimes waver about
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: my decisions.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: There you go, waves dominate your life and you didn't.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Even know it.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I'm waving everybody right now.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she'd waveright it? But anyways, Welcome to our podcast
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: In which we try to dig deep into the nature
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: of the universe around us. How is it all put together?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: How does it all work when you zoom in on
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: the tiniest little bits? What are they actually like? Are
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: they little bits of sand? Are they weird? Quantum ripples?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Are they both? Are they neither? Are they something else
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: completely different? Our goal in this podcast is to tackle
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: these questions directly and do our best to explain everything
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: we do and don't understand to you.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: That's right. It's an amazing universe full of mysteries out
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: there for us to look out and ponder about and
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: ask questions about. But sometimes the biggest mysteries are within us,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: inside of us, and they're about our very nature of
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: how we exist.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: That's right, because we are part of the universe. When
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: we ask what is the universe made out of? How
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: does that actually work? We also want to understand ourselves.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: One of the deepest goals in physics, but something we
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: don't often say directly is that we want to understand
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: how everything works so well that we can understand ourselves.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: That we could build up from our picture of the
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: microscopic world, the tiny little quantum particles, all the way
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: up to our microscopic world, which means us and ice
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: cream and blueberries. Somehow, we hope that revealing the nature
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: of the universe on the tiny level will give us
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: a crack and understanding why we're here and what to
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: do with ourselves.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a huge challenge to connect what's happening
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: at the microscopic level to what's happening at the cosmic
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: and universe level. That is the goal of science to
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: make those connections and give us a sense of the
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: big picture of how it's all put together.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: That's right, because we assume that there is a way
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: it's all put together, that the universe is following rules,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: that it has a nature that we could know, that
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: we could understand, that we could maybe even describe with
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: our primitive human mathematics and predict and manipulate it in
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: a way that might improve our lives. That at least
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: is the goal of trying to understand the universe. Whether
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: or not we've made any progress is another question.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: It seems like we've done pretty well, Like we discovered
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: our bodies then we discovered we're made out of cells,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and then we discovered those cells are made out of molecules,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and those molecules made out of atoms, and then those
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: atoms made out of particles. I feel like we've drilled
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: down pretty deep into the makeup of the universe.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty impressive how far we've gone and how
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: we've been able to make some connections between how things
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: happen on a small scale and what we experience on
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: a larger scale. Even just like the idea of germs
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: and disease, that tiny little bugs swimming around in the
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: air and in our bodies can have a big effect
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: on our experience. The whole germ theory is sort of
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: a triumph of the idea that the microscopic world controls
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: the macroscopic world.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Wait, do you mean like a virus can have an
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: impact in our lives? News flash, isn't it all made
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: up by scientists?
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: M I'm not even going to touch that.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to touch those viruses.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to take a deep breath of that.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: But at the forefront of human knowledge, what you described
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: as the latest bit of our understanding, you know, the
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: particles that make us all up. What are those really?
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: We had a whole podcast episode where we dug into
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: the question like what is a particle? Because a particle,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: in some sense is an extrapolation from things we find
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: intuitive in our world, little bits of stuff. The particulates
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: we think make up our world just sort of like
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: extended down to the very very tiny. We find when
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: we get down there is that particles obey very different rules.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: And it's almost a bit of a scam to use
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: a word that relies on our classical intuition to describe
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: something that happens at the quantum world.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: WHOA, WHOA are you saying that physics it's sort of
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: like a scam.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I'm saying physics has been kind of lazy in using
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: its words, and that we're often borrowing words that have
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: like intuitive baggage that's misleading. And when we talk about
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: particles and we talk about waves, we're often not really
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: clear about what we actually mean when we're talking about
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: these things, and I think we're often misleading people.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: It seems like we drilled down right beyond the atom
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: into the particles that we're made out of, but then
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: we sort of hit a wall in terms of our understanding,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: because once you get to these tiny quantum particles, you
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: get to ask, like, what are these particles, what are
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: they made out of? What's their origin?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have a mathematical description that works really,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: really well. Quantum field theory can describe these interactions and
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: make predictions and tell us what's going to happen in
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: our experiments. With challenging is developing an intuitive picture in
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: your mind for what's going on the microscopic scale, And
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: that's always going to be challenging because what's happening down
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: there has no analog in our experience. There are some similarities, like, yeah,
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: electron is a little bit like a little bit of stuff,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: and ripples in a quantum field are a little bit
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: like what happens in your baptub when you splash your
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: hands around. But those are like stepping stones towards a
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: real understanding. They aren't the deepest, most intuitive understanding of
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's going on at those deep levels? And what
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: is matter and energy actually made out of? And so
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: to the on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: is the universe made of waves?
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Are you made of waves? Man?
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I am a little wavy. I guess right now, I
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: think I'm in a lull. For sure.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: It feels like that question through you for a wave.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, I wasn't able to serve my way to a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: with answer. I wipe out, physics wipeout.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: I think this question is interesting because we know fundamentally
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: that all the laws of quantum field theory are wave equations.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Like at the heart of it, everything is described in
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: terms of waves. But we have this intuitive sense that
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: we're made of stuff, and we like to think of
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: ourselves as built of little bits of stuff, maybe lashed
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: together with forces. But it's hard to imagine ourselves as
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: like made of waves, that you and I are both
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: just like waves in the universe.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I feel like you know someone who listens casually
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: to physics. You know, you sort of grow up learning
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: about this idea of whether things are made out of
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: particles or waves, and you know that there was a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: big debate at the turn of the last century, and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: then you sort of learn about the idea of the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: wave particle duality, like things are both particles and waves.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I think the wave particle duality is well intentioned, but
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: very confusing and often misleading because it gives people the
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: idea that electrons or particles or photons or whatever switch
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: between being waves and being particles, Like they are both,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: but sometimes they're being a particle and sometimes they're being
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: a wave. I think that's very confusing and misleading.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely confusing, but I guess you know, as
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: a casual consumer, I've always just accepted that things are
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: like two things at the same time, Like, isn't that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: kind of the nature of quantum physics, Like things can
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: be two things at the same time, and if you
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: look at it one way, it's a particle, and if
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: you look at another way to wave. Isn't that kind
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of the basic thing that physicists have been teaching.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: I like that you apply quantum superposition to like our
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: understanding of it, Like, well, I understand it this way,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: and I understand it that way in a quantum mechanical sense,
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Like I have two ideas in my mind at the
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: same time.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bad point and a good point at
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the same time. It's both deep and shallow at the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: same time. I am both smart and dumb when it
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: comes to quantum physics.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give you a good explanation and a
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: bad explanation at the same time. Hold them both in
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: your heads. No, I think what's confusing about that is
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: that physicists say that, but they mean something specific when
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: they say the word particle, and it mean something specific
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: when they say the word wave, And I don't think
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: it's understood that way.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: What do you mean? What do they mean when they
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: say particle? What do they mean when they say waves?
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: When they say particle, really they just mean you've made
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a localized measurement of something, not that it's like converted
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: into a little bit of stuff, and it's not flying
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: along through space with a definitive path and location and
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: momentum and velocity and all the things you expect of
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: a little bit of stuff. And when they say wave,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: what they really mean is it still has uncertainty that
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: you haven't collapsed it. You haven't asked the universe to
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: tell you where it is. You haven't made a measurement it. Really,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: it's all still just waves. Even this idea of a
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: particle being localized in one spot like a dot on
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: a screen, a measurement you make, that's also a property
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: that a quantum wave can have. It can collapse into
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: one local spot.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And so that's where this question comes from, Like is
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the universe made out of waves? Are you sort of
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: making the argument that the word particle doesn't make sense
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and it's really all just waves?
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: In the end, the word particle makes sense if you
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: give it a sensible definition, but everybody seems to have
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: a different idea of what particle means. So it's sort
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: of like an overloaded word that's more confusing than clarifying.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see, So people shouldn't like major in a
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: field if the name is confusing or misleading, is that
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: what you're saying, or devote their whole careers to it.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Hmm, I see, you're walking me down the garden path here. Absolutely, yeah, exactly.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't have like a PhD and a professorship in
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: a word that you don't even understand what it means.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, I totally agree.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: That would be ridiculous. Anybody who did that should be
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: mocked and ridiculed.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, mocked, ridiculed, and also given a podcast.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely totals agree.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, if this idea that everything is
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: a wave and the word particle doesn't make sense, doesn't
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that sort of challenge your whole you know, feel the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: research and the whole particle collider idea.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to switch over to being a waveular.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Physicist, yeah, or a wavy physicists.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just going to collide waves from now on.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Man, Waveler, I don't even know how to process that word.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Why would you use that word?
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: It seems like the natural adjective version of waves.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: But is it an adjective wave?
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: You aler?
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're a particle physicist, that doesn't mean that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: particles inadjective.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Particles describing physics there right, I guess I could be
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: a particular physicist.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I mean. That's why Waveler feels so weird.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Oh I see, all right. Well, in the conversation with
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: our guest today, he introduces another word wave it cull
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: because he also doesn't like the word particle.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Why don't you have everyone come up
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: with their own words? M and let's do science that way.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: That's basically what we've done so far, and it's not
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: working very well.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Everyone's like, I came up with a word, he's mine. No,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: he's fine.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It's a basic principle of language that words are supposed
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: to have meetings, but we've been pretty bad about that
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: in physics.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I vote for wavy wavy physicists.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to position my department for a
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: change of my title.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Well, today we're doing something a little bit interesting, which
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: is we're jumping right into an interview that you did
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: with a professor of physics who has a new book out.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: That's right, my colleague, professor Matt Strassler. He's a theoretical
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: physicist and listeners to the podcast might already know him
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: because he's the author of a pretty well known blog
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: on particle physics called of Particular Significance. He should be
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: called of wavular Significance.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like he might be invalidating his own blog.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: And he's an excellent writer for a general audience. And
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: he's got a new book out called Waves in an
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Impossible See where he shares his vision for how the
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: world works on a microscopic scale.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Interesting he didn't name it Wavecles in an Impossible See.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Cale.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I suggest everybody get a popsicle and going enjoy the book.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. All right, Well, what are some
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: of the things you talk about with Professor Strassler.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: We try our best to sketch out the argument in
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: his book Walk You through the principles that lead you
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: to a new vision for how the universe works, from
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: relativity to fields to waves, and how that's all crucial
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: for getting a real understanding of how the Higgs field works.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I see it's not just a being handwavy about things. Well,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I can wave to dive into it. So here's Daniel's
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: interview with Professor Matt Strassler, author of the book Waves
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: in an Impossible Scene.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to introduce the podcast.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Professor Matt Strassler a friend and colleague. Matt is a
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: theoretical physicist and an author. He's been a researcher at
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: the Institute for Advanced Studies, a professor at the University
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: of Pennsylvania, University Washington, and at Rutgers University, as well
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: as a visiting professor at Harvard. He's very well known
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: in the academic particle phys community for as many new
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: ideas and influential concepts, such as the possibility of a
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: hidden valley, which isn't about a new kind of ranch dressing,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: but the idea that significant parts of the universe could
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: be mostly shut off from us, hidden by our limited
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: ability to interact with them. He's also widely respected for
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: his scientific writing. His blog of particular Significance is an
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: example of scientific writing for a general audience at its finest.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: This isn't just more the same, where you'll find a
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: few tired analogies recycled. Matt writes with a unique voice
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: that demonstrates his deep intuitive understanding of the physics, which
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: he can convey with a crisp but logical and accessible explanation.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Listeners to the podcast who write to me to ask
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: for more details on virtual particles or the Higgs field
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: will often get a response back that includes a link
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: to some of Matt's blog posts, because it's some of
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: the best explanations out there for these weird and tricky concepts.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: So I was very happy to hear, of course, that
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Matt decided to write a book, and having just finished
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: reading it, I can tell you that it lives up
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: to my hopes. It's clear and compelling journey through the
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: complex topics that gives you a new way of looking
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: at the world and thinking about the complicated ideas you
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: often hear about waves and particles and fields. And mass
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: and all that stuff. So Matt, welcome to the podcast.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Daniel, it's a pleasure to be here.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: So tell me first why you decided to write a book.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: What question is this book an answer to?
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Well, I think, as with many books, the question that
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: the book ended up being in the answer to is
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: not the question I was originally trying to answer. Not
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: that the questions aren't connected. But as you and many
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: of your readers and listeners will know, there was a
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: big event in particle physics back in twenty twelve, and
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: that was the discovery of the famous Higgs boson, which
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: is a type of particle that the news media likes
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: to call the God particle, and most physicists think this
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: is a ridiculous thing. But so much for science journalism.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: We're stuck with that. And the thing which was one
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: of the tasks of science journalists and scientists at the
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: time of that discovery before or to explain why it
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: was that physicists were looking for this thing, was to
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: explain why it's important to do that. Why are we
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: spending a substantial amount of money and a lot of
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: people's time to go looking for this one type of
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: particle who cares?
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: So obviously this was something that scientists thought a lot
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: about how to explain what is fundamentally a tricky concept.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: And there were some explanations that were really not so great,
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: but there were.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: A few that were not bad, and one of them that.
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: Took on a life of its own and sort of,
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: you know, people started to take it kind of seriously
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: at the level that it started appearing often in science
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: journalism and even started appearing in long form books about
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: the Higgs particle correctly explained that the Higgs particle isn't
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: really the big deal here. The Higgs particle was a
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: means to an end. We were trying to understand something
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: much deeper, which is called the Higgs field. The Higgs
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: field is something that present throughout the universe. It has
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: an enormous impact on our lives, a secret impact, but
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: nonetheless something we can't live without.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: And so the better.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: Explanations said, Okay, don't worry about the Higgs particle, that's
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: just a means to an end. We really want to
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: understand the Higgs field. Then the next question was, all right, well,
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: if the Higgs field is important, why is that? And
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: the answer is that it has something to do with
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: how certain elementary particles get mass, and mass turns out
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: to be essential in our universe for us, because if
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: electrons didn't have mass, there would be no atoms. I
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: don't need to explain beyond that point how important the
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: Higgs field is.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I like Adams, atoms are good. Yeah, I'm planning to
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: have atoms for dinner tonight. For example.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: You may have them for the rest of your life,
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: I certainly hope so, so, yes, we can't really do
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: without them. But then came the next question, which was,
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: all right, if the Higgs field gives mass to things,
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: how does.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: It do it?
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: And that's where things went a little off the rails again,
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: not because anybody was trying to, you know, pull the
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: rug over people's eyes or somehow try to mislead, but
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: to actually explain it takes some cleverness and it takes
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: a little while, and so if you're asked to give
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: a sound bite, you can't quite do it. So the
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: SoundBite that people came up with was that the way
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: it works is kind of like this. The Higgs field
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: is like a substance that fills the universe like a soup,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: or like snow or like molasses.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: I've heard the molasses one many times.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the molasses is a great one.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: Right. You kind of imagine yourself swimming through molasses and
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: somehow breathing through it, and it slows things down, just
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: as molasses would do, or soup.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: What do you try to get through it? It slows
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: you down.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: And because it slows things down, that's how it gives
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: things mass.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And to be clear, this is the common popular science
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: explanation that we're not happy.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: This is unacceptable, and the reason that's unacceptable is that
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: it not only mis explains how the Higgs field works,
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: but it does so in a way that contradicts probably
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: the single most important principle of physics that you have
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: to understand to be able to understand pretty much anything
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: about how the universe works, and that is the principle
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: of relativity. That's the principle that explains why the Earth
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: can go round the Sun for billions of years without
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: slowing down and crashing into the Sun. That's the principle
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: that explains why light can move across the universe and
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: atoms can move through the universe all you know, over
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: enormous distances, and if you abandon the principle of relativity
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: because you want to try to explain how the Higgs
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: field works. You're giving up something even more important to
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: explain something and not even really explain it.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: So that just doesn't make said.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I hear that question from our listeners all the time
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: because they hear this explanation and then they're like, wait
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: a second, having mass doesn't mean you slow down, Like
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: you can be really massive and fly through the universe
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: without slowing down. Exactly, how is the Higgs slowing things down?
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: And they're right, and that's really any sense, And then
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: I link them to your blog. But this was the
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: initial motivation you're saying for like, why you wanted to
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: write this book. You felt like it was a missing
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: part of the story here. Is that what the book
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: ended up being about.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: Also, well, in a way, yes, in that I think
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: it does provide for the first time a complete and
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: coherent and correct explanation as to what the Higgs field
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: is actually doing.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: And in particular, not only.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: Does it not have anything to do with slowing things down,
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: it doesn't have to do with motion at all, and
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: it gives mass to electrons via an indirect route, which
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: in order to understand one has to first understand what
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: electrons actually are, and that, in the end, in a way,
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: is more what the book was about, essentially by necessity,
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: because in order to explain what the Higgs field does,
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: I have to really explain how the universe works in
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: its most basic sense, and that requires understanding relativity, not
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: in detail, not with the math, but the basic conceptual framework.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: And it also requires understanding a little bit about the
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: basic framework of quantum physics.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: All Right, I have a bunch more questions for Matt
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: about how the universe works and how we can really
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: understand the Higgs field correctly. But first let's take a
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: quick break. Okay, we're back and we're talking to Professor
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Matt Strassler, author of the new book Waives in an
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: impossible see, who wants us to really understand how the
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: universe is all made of ways and how that's crucial
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: to understanding how particle physics and the Higgs boson works.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And I will say that I was surprised when I
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: started reading the book because I expected it to be
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: about how the universe is all made of waves or
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: how the Higgs field actually works. And then you start
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: off with Galleo in relativity, and I'm like, wow, we
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: are going back to the beginning. Matt is rebuilding all
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: of physics for us. But by the end I could
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: tell why you had done it, because you relied on
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: crucial details in that understanding to give a cogent explanation
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: for how this all works. So kudos to you.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Daniel.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: But as you say, the key to writing the book
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: in a way was to I mean, obviously, the universe
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: is enormous in many different senses of the word, but
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: you could write ten books explaining it. The key in
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: a sense was to pick out those things which were
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: most critical and explain them really well, and to try
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: not to explain too many things, but to really go
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: to the heart of the matter, in hopes that a
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: reader would come away not onunderstanding everything, but understanding a
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: few things really well, so that at the end what
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: the Higgs field is doing and how it gives mass
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: to things would make sense. And I try to do
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: it without watering things down. You know, I'm not using
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: math in it, but I am trying to make sure
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: the concepts are a complete story.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, And for those of you who want to understand
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: the higgs Field in a deep, conceptual and intuitive way.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Really encourage you to get the book and to read
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: it carefully and to think about it, and to write
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: us with questions if something in there doesn't job with
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: your understanding, because that's a learning moment. On today's podcast,
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: I hope that we can get a sketch of these ideas.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Of course, we can't do justice to the whole book
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: and all of its careful explanations, but maybe we could
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: do an abbreviated version to give people an idea of
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: this important way of thinking about the universe that makes
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the Higgs field make actual sense rather than molasses sense.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: So let's start at the beginning. You started with relativity
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: for a reason, because we need to understand relativity to
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: understand what it is the higgs field is doing and
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: is not doing. What is the principle of relativity that
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: people really need to.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: Understand well in a way.
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: You know, the word relativity comes with Like most words
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: that we physicists use when we try to explain what
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: we do to the wider public, it comes with baggage.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: And the cultural baggage of the word relativity couldn't be heavier, right,
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: I mean, we're talking Einstein. But what most people don't
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: realize is that the principle of relativity goes back to
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: Galileo and the year sixteen thirty two. And this is
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: when Galileo wrote down for a reading public that you
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: cannot tell just by looking around you, or by watching
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: other objects around you, or by doing simple experiments, how
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: fast you're moving. And this is hard enough for us
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: to think about. I mean, you know, if you're in
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: a car, if you're moving thirty miles an hour, of
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: the car bumps around a little bit, Whereas if the
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: car isn't moving at all, well you don't feel any bumps.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: So I mean, we're used to the idea that if
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: you're traveling faster, the bumps are more and you can
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: tell how fast you're moving. But we forget that at
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: this very moment, where I am seated in my chair,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: and many of your readers are seated in their chairs
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: or doing something that means that they're not moving relative
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: to their room. They are nevertheless going around the axis
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: of the Earth as it spins. They are going round
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: the Sun once a year, at twenty miles a second.
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: The Sun and Earth and the whole solar system are
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: going around the center of the galaxy at one hundred
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: and fifty miles per second, and we don't feel it.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: And this was Galileo's realization based on some experiments that
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: he did, but it was central in the history of
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: human thought because up until that point there were many
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: brilliant thinkers, including Tycho Brahe, who was the person who
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: collected the data that Kepler then used to figure out
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: how the solar system works. And bri was after Copernicus
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: by fifty years. So Copernicus said, you know, the Earth
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: goes round the Sun, but people didn't necessarily believe him because,
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: as Brahe himself said around sixteen hundred, look, I mean
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: if the Earth were moving, we'd feel it. And he
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: was wrong, not because he was dumb, but because this
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: principle of relativity is so weird and so counterintuitive that
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: whatever space is, whatever the empty space that we call
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: the vacuum or just deep space is, we can move through.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: It as though it's nothing.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: And then you might say, well, okay, maybe it is nothing.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: What's the big deal?
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: And that's a perfectly good answer until Einstein comes along
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: and says, no, it can't really be just nothing, because
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: it can expand I mean when we say the universe
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: is expanding, we don't mean that there's stuff flying out
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: into empty space. We mean empty space is growing. And
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: when we say gravity is a manifestation of the shape
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: of empty space, we're saying that empty space is something
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: that can bend. And the big Nobel Prize of twenty seventeen,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: the big discovery of twenty fifteen was the observation of
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are ripples in space, So you
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: can't really explain away the idea that, okay, the reason
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: we move through space without feeling anything is that space
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: is nothing, because then you have to explain how can
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: nothing ripple and stretch and do all these crazy things.
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: So now you have a puzzle. How can it be
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: that Galilee is right that you can't tell how fast
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: you're moving even though you're moving through a substance or
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: something that acts like a substance. I mean, maybe it's
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: not a substance. We haven't ever you know, bottled it
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: and sold it in stores. But it's very strange that
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: this should be true. So this was a place to
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: start because it forces us to confront a sort of
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: fundamental confusion that we seem not to be able to
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: detect whether we're moving through this substance, but it does
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: seem to be a substance. And this has been confusing
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: since the time of Einstein. I don't know whether I
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: should say he was confused about it. That I think
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: would be unfair, but he understood this was a fundamental
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: puzzle or conceptual. Maybe puzzle is even the wrong term
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: because it's not clear it needs a solution, but it's
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: a conceptually strange thing about the space that makes.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Up the universe.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: And just to make it like explicit, the thing that's
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: confusing is, if you're moving through space, why can't you
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: measure your speed relative to space? If space is a thing, right,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: if it has properties, it can ripple, it can expand,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: and you can put numbers in it, why can't you
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: measure your velocity relative to space, which would give you,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: like a way to absolutely measure your velocity around the Sun,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: or around the galaxy, or inside a ship or inside
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: a car. That's the central puzzle here.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: In a way, there's two interesting puzzles, and they're related,
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: and yet the answer to the two puzzles is contradictory
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: or seemingly contradictory. The first puzzle is why can we
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: move through space without slowing down? If it's a substance,
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, we can't move through air without slowing down.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: If that's why airplanes need engines, and you can't move
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: through water without slowing down, that's why submarine isn't itine?
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: And one potential answer to that has to do with
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: the idea that we are made from waves, that the objects,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: namely the electrons and quarks and other fundamental particles, really
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: should be understood as waves. And one way to see
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: that is that if you ask yourself whether you and
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: I could move through solid rock, Well, that's a ridiculous idea, right,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: killed instantly if we tried to do that. And yet
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: seismic waves from earthquakes they just go right through the earth.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: In fact, scientists use them to probe the inside of
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: the earth. The waves go right through Why because they're
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: part of the rock. They're the rock doing something right.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Sound waves it's the same thing. Why is it that
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: an airplane needs engines and sound waves don't need engines.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: Soundwaves can travel thousands of miles and they don't slow down.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Why not?
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: Well, they're the air in action. So the idea that
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: we might be made from things that are really sort
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: of the universe in action waves in some sense of
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: the universe, arises very naturally from these observations. Maybe the
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: reason we don't feel any friction, any drag when we
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: move through the universe is that we're kind of made
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: of it in some gunal sense.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: You're saying we are wiggles in the universe, the way
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: seismic waves are wiggles in rock.
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: I will qualify that by saying there's a little more
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: complexity to it, but that's the basic idea. Now, the
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: simplest ripples in empty space are precisely gravitational waves, and
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: we're not made from those. But it is possible for
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: space to have sort of unseen properties, unknown properties which
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: could have waves in them, and we might be made
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: from those. That's a way of possibly interpreting what we're
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: made of. And for example, in string theory, although this
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: is not limited to string theory, that is a common
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: way of understanding space.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: It's more complicated.
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: Specifically, it has extra dimensions and weird shapes, and so
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: there are properties of space that are not obvious to us,
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: at least through our senses and waves that have to
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: do with those properties might be the things that we
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: are made from.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: That's speculation.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: But the idea that we are made of waves that
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: are somehow made of things that are integrated into the universe,
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: that follows from the math that we use today in
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: a sense that's less speculative. It's a way of interpreting
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: the math that we already have. And so that's one
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: puzzle and one possible solution that oh, okay, the unuse.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Really is a substance.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: It's got these properties, there are waves in those properties,
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: and we're made from those waves. Okay, great, We can
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: still worry about the fact that it's not so easy
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: to build objects out of waves that you and I
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: are familiar with. You've never seen a cathedral built from
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: sound waves, and you've never seen an elephant made out
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: of seismic waves. There is this question how are you
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: going to make things out of waves? But we'll come
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: back to that because that's the question of quantum physics
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: and how electrons can be waves in.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: The first place. But there's a second puzzle that has
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: to do with space. So again the puzzles that had
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: to do with space.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: The first one was how can we move through it
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: if it's a substance without feeling any drag, without slowing down.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: And one solution is, we're made of waves.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Of this substance.
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: Okay, great, But then you ask yourself, fine, it's a substance,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: let's go feel it, let's make a bottle of it,
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: let's track.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: It down, Let's measure our velocity relative to it exactly.
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: And there are many ways that you can think of
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: doing that. So for us moving through air, that's not difficult.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: You use a wind meter that tells you how fast
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: the air is moving relative to you, or vice versa.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: If you want to know how fast you're moving through
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: the water on a boat, just put your hand in
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: the water and you'll feel, you know, the water will
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: pull your hand in some direction, and which direction it
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: pulls your hand in and how hard will depend on
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: how fast you're moving through the water. That's not quite
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: a fair comparison, though, if I've just told you that
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: we're made of waves of that stuff, right, So then
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: you want to ask yourself, well, supposing you were a
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: creature made out of ocean waves, how would ocean waves
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: know how fast they're moving through the water, Which is
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: a weirder question, and we're not used to asking that.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: But you can ask it.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: And one way that ocean waves can tell is they
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: can look at other ocean waves as they come by,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: at least in principle, right, if you're made out of
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: ocean waves and here comes your friend made out of
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: ocean waves, they're coming in a different direction, how fast
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: are they moving? And you can tell from looking at
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: how they behave how quickly you yourself are moving through
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: the water. And one way to say this is hidden
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: in the notion of the speed of sound. So in air,
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: when we measure the speed of sound and we say
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: it's eleven hundred feet per second, well, it's a speed.
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: What is that speed relative too? And the answer is
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: it's relative to the air. The speed of sound is
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: eleven hundred feet per second relative to the air. And
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: so if the air we're blowing by you at some velocity,
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: if there's some strong wind, well then the sound waves
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: going in the direction of the wind will pass you faster.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: Then the sound waves go in the opposite direction because
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: they're being pulled along by the air as it flows
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: by you. And if you're a supersonic jet, you're out
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: running your own sound. The sound is moving eleven hundred
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: fet per scond relative to the error, and you're moving faster.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: But with light, when we talk about the speed of light,
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: what is that relative to And in the analogy that
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: we've been talking about, you might imagine that, well, it
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: should be whatever it is one hundred and eighty six
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: thousand miles per second relative to space or whatever it
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: is that fills space that makes up the thing in
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: which light is a wave. But that's not how it works. Somehow,
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: the way the universe works is that the speed of
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: light is measured relative to an observer who is trying
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: to measure it, and not relative to space. And the
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: importance of that is that it allows for something bizarre,
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: which is that no matter how fast you're moving, no
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: matter how fast some object that's emitting light is moving,
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: the speed of light when it passes you is always
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: the same from all directions and from any source. That's
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: not true for sound, it's not true for ocean waves.
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: And those facts are directly tied with the fact that
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: you can tell whether you're moving what relative to the
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: substance of air or water. But the way it works
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: for light, despite all the analogies between waves of sound
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: and waves of light, and of course our ability to
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: perceive them.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: It just works differently.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: All right, we're going to get even deeper into this,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: but first we're going to take a quick break. We're
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: back and I'm talking to Professor Matt Strassler, author of
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Waves and an Impossible Sea. Is that a consequence of
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: the nature of space you always measure the speed of
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: light to be the same thing, because you can't measure
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: your speed relative to space. Or is it go the
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: other direction that because you have to measure the speed
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: of light the same for all observers, therefore you cannot
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: measure your velocity relative to space.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: It's a great question because in a sense, the cause
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: of relation isn't clear. Yeah, we know these are facts,
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: we know they are related, but we don't fundamentally know
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: which thing should be considered sort of primary and which
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: things should be considered a consequence. And so, just to
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: bring everything full circle, what Einstein was doing when he
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: proposed that the speed of light was a constant from
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: all observers point of view, which had not occurred to
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: anyone prior to him, was deeply tied with this inconsistency
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: between what relativity ala Galileo says that you should not
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: be able to measure your speed and what light waves
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: tell you, which is well, light as a wave's just
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: like sound as a wave, So there should be some
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: substance relative to which light speed can be measured. You
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: can't have it both waves, because if light does have
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: a speed relative to a substance, and you can measure
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: your speed relative to the light, then you can also
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: measure your speed relative to the substance, and then Galileo's
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: relativity is no longer true. You can tell how fast
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: you're moving through the universe. And what Einstein said was
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: maybe Galileo's principle is still true, and there's something about
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: the way you're thinking about light waves that is fundamentally
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: different from how it works for sound waves.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: So it's truly Galileo's theory of relativity that Einstein protected
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: correct or rescue.
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: That's right, that's exactly now. Einstein's theory of gravity is
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: a bigger deal. And not to say this was a
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: small deal. I mean, saving galileos relativity was a major achievement.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: But it's important to understand that fundamentally what Einstein was
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: doing was saving Galileo's principle at the expense of the
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: notion of space and time, which seemed obvious in order
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: to make it possible for light to do something that
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: seemed impossible. And it does leave us with this notion
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: of space as this substance like thing with respect to
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: which we cannot measure our motion.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: And we don't really have a great explanation for why
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: that is.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: We can see that as a consequence of the speed
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: of light being constant for all observers, but we don't
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: have like a ground truth the fundamental reason for why
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: a space has this property based on what it is. Right,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: sort of going backwards, we're saying it just has this
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: property because we know it can't do this thing.
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's an experimentally derived fact in the end, right,
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: it was Einstein's idea that maybe space and time works
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: this way. But the reason we know it's true is
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: one hundred years of experiments and doing things like building
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: giant particle accelerators, which would not work at all if
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: these facts weren't true in detail. So the fine tuning
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: of an engineered particle accelerator requires that Einstein's formulas be
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: correct to many decimal places, and so these are not
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: speculative ideas anymore. Even though when Einstein wrote the down
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: at that time it was a proposal, he didn't know
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: it was true, but it turns out that it is.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: But there's a difference between being well established and being understood.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely can say, well, we know this is correct and
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: describes the universe, but gosh darn it, we don't understand
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: what it means about the universe right correct.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: There are many speculations about what it might tell us
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: about space and time that would take us far afield
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: from the story of this book. In my book, I've
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: tried to avoid speculations and stick to the things that
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: we know, because I think it's really important for anyone
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: who wants to read this speculative stuff. I mean, there's
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: wonderful ideas out there, which most of which, of course
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: will turn out to be wrong, but they're based on
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: these fundamentals, and so you really have to understand the
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: fundamentals to grasp what deep problems physicists are grappling with.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: And what's wonderful and exciting and challenging about what I've
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: just told you about space is that you don't need
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: to be a mathematician or an expert in physics to
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: understand the problem, to understand how deep a puzzle this is.
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: And that's part of why I thought a book like
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: this could really work. And I think it's important that
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: as many people as possible appreciate just how spectacular these
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: types of problems are. It shouldn't hurt your head to
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: learn about the problem, and yet it should hurt your
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: head when you try to understand the problem in just
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: the same way it hurts mind.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: It's not as though.
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: These things are hard because it's difficult to understand what's strange.
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: They're hard because any human being, including the experts, find
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: this strange.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: And so I want to share with listeners the picture
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: that you paint in the second half of the book
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: how the universe works, so that we can better understand
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: the Higgs field and the context of this discovery of
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: space and light and how things wiggle, and you were
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: mentioning it earlier, how everything is made out of waves.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: This is all super wonderful and fascinating and making me
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: rethink how the universe around me works and how it's
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: all made of tiny waves. But before we dig into
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: the rest of this and understand the Higgs boson. We're
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: going to have to pause here and pick up this
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: discussion in the next episode, Part two of my conversation
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: with Professor mattz Stressler, where we'll talk about how the
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: universe is actually all made of waves and why that's
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: vital to understanding what the Higgs field is and what
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: it does how it gives us all mass. So hold
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: on to your thoughts about how the universe works and
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: check out Matt's book Waves in an Impossible See available
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: everywhere right now, See you next time for the second
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: part of this conversation. For more science and curiosity, come
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: find us on social media where we answer questions and
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg, Insta, and now TikTok.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: you listen to your favorite shows.