Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What is the Weak Force?

Transcript

What is the Weak Force? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, hey, you have strong opinions about naming things, didn't you.
0:12
Speaker 1: I just don't like kids when things are named in
0:16
Speaker 1: a very confusing way, or where the name actually confuses
0:19
Speaker 1: you instead of making things clear. All right, Well, then
0:22
Speaker 1: I have a bit of a personal question. How did
0:24
Speaker 1: you pick the names of your kids? Not through physics,
0:27
Speaker 1: for sure, that's definitely did not. There's not one called strange,
0:32
Speaker 1: one called charm. They're both strange and charming, for sure.
0:38
Speaker 1: That's a linear superposition. There is physics there. They are
0:42
Speaker 1: definitely quantum and delete for sure. Our son was named
0:48
Speaker 1: my wife had had a dream, and that's how she
0:51
Speaker 1: came up with the name for our son. She just
0:53
Speaker 1: came up with the name in the dream. And my
0:55
Speaker 1: daughter is named after a Jane Austen character. Wow. Alright,
0:59
Speaker 1: so both bired by mental realms outside of the physical world.
1:19
Speaker 1: I am more handmake cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics.
1:23
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm a connoisseur
1:26
Speaker 1: of all jokes physicals ee, strong electric and even weak
1:30
Speaker 1: ones and banana forces. Of course, that's right, And of
1:34
Speaker 1: course the mysterious banana field that feels the universe and
1:37
Speaker 1: it is mostly concentrated around Jorge's head, and together we
1:40
Speaker 1: are co authors on books and other projects. But this
1:44
Speaker 1: is our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe, a
1:48
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio, in which we take you
1:50
Speaker 1: on a tour of all the weird, crazy, amazing stuff
1:53
Speaker 1: in the universe and try to explain it to you.
1:55
Speaker 1: So you go away going, wow, that's kind of cool.
1:58
Speaker 1: I never understood that before. All these strong and amazing
2:02
Speaker 1: things and even the weak but significant things in the
2:05
Speaker 1: universe that maybe every once you know about. That's right.
2:08
Speaker 1: It's a forceful exposition of all the fascinating things about
2:11
Speaker 1: the universe. Oh man, now you're just forcing it. I
2:14
Speaker 1: think that's right. Well, you know, my my joke, force
2:19
Speaker 1: is pretty weak. But forces themselves are sort of a
2:22
Speaker 1: weird thing. It's like, forces are something that physicists you've
2:26
Speaker 1: even had a hard time grappling with over the centuries. Well,
2:29
Speaker 1: it's something that's really intuitive. I think. You know, as
2:32
Speaker 1: a little kid, even as a baby, you sort of
2:34
Speaker 1: get the idea of force, right, Thanks pushing you, thanks
2:37
Speaker 1: pulling you, gravity, pushing you down. Yeah, but I think
2:40
Speaker 1: your intuition is misleading. I think most people think of
2:43
Speaker 1: a force as something as a push, right, something that's
2:46
Speaker 1: touching you. Somebody comes up to you, pushes you over,
2:48
Speaker 1: you fall over, you move your role or whatever. So
2:51
Speaker 1: I think most people think of forces as touching. The
2:54
Speaker 1: really weird thing about forces is when they can act
2:57
Speaker 1: without touching, right, When they can, like when you see
2:59
Speaker 1: a mad levitating, it seems almost like magic, right, because
3:03
Speaker 1: this this, these two things are acting on each other
3:06
Speaker 1: without actually touching each other. Yeah, it's weird. And so
3:09
Speaker 1: today we'll be talking about one particular force out of
3:14
Speaker 1: all the forces out there in the universe, one that
3:16
Speaker 1: is maybe not the strongest one, but that led to
3:20
Speaker 1: some amazing discoveries. Right, that's right. It's not the most
3:23
Speaker 1: powerful force, but it did give us some amazing hints
3:26
Speaker 1: into the way the universe works. So it's weekly powered,
3:29
Speaker 1: but plays a strong role in the sort of overarching
3:32
Speaker 1: drama that is physics. Yep, it's a four sets inside everyone, right,
3:36
Speaker 1: it's inside of me, inside of you, inside of everyone
3:38
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast. That's right. It's everywhere in the universe,
3:42
Speaker 1: and it plays an important role in how we live
3:44
Speaker 1: and how we die and how we power ourselves. So
3:47
Speaker 1: to be on the podcast, we'll be talking about the
3:54
Speaker 1: weak fours? Weak fours? Are you just trying to add
3:59
Speaker 1: some drama to it because it needs some panash? It
4:02
Speaker 1: was a little anti climatic. Did you say I thought
4:05
Speaker 1: you might go with weak nuclear force because nuclear gives
4:08
Speaker 1: it some sort of like edge of mysteriousness. Right, the
4:11
Speaker 1: weak quantum? No of the week? Black holes pilate on.
4:17
Speaker 1: Let's just give him multiple hyvingated names the week, true, Guadalajara,
4:23
Speaker 1: Montre exactly. Um, that would be a lot more fun. No,
4:28
Speaker 1: the weak force is really amazing, it's fascinating. Yeah, it's
4:30
Speaker 1: one of the four fundamental forces in nature. Right, there's
4:35
Speaker 1: only four of them? Yeah, well, spoiler alert turns out
4:37
Speaker 1: there's three. You eliminated one like Pluto just got deep declassified. No. No,
4:45
Speaker 1: that's the goal of physics, right, is to not have
4:47
Speaker 1: four forces. We don't want to say, hey, here's how
4:50
Speaker 1: the universe works. There are four totally weird, separate rules
4:53
Speaker 1: about things, how things can push and pulling each other.
4:55
Speaker 1: We we think, we hope, we want to explain the
4:59
Speaker 1: universe in terms of one force. So the story of
5:01
Speaker 1: physics so far is look around you see all the
5:04
Speaker 1: weird thing that's happening in the universe and try to
5:07
Speaker 1: describe them all in terms of the smallest number of things,
5:09
Speaker 1: the smallest number of forces. So yeah, the goal is
5:12
Speaker 1: to sort of take things off the list and describe
5:14
Speaker 1: everything in terms of just one thing. So you're saying,
5:17
Speaker 1: there used to be only four forces in the universe,
5:20
Speaker 1: and then phasics killed one of them and or married
5:24
Speaker 1: two of them, and now there are only three fundamental
5:27
Speaker 1: forces in the universe. Yeah, well, this the drama is
5:30
Speaker 1: even more because we suspect that in the first few
5:33
Speaker 1: moments after the Big Bang there was just one force,
5:37
Speaker 1: but then as the universe cooled, we think they've broke
5:39
Speaker 1: up into all these different forces. And what we're trying
5:42
Speaker 1: to do now is sort of re run that backwards
5:44
Speaker 1: and understand, like, can we bring these things together. Can
5:47
Speaker 1: we understand these things in terms of one big picture?
5:50
Speaker 1: How do we bring marry these things back together? You know,
5:53
Speaker 1: it's like a it's like a universal divorce early on,
5:56
Speaker 1: and we're trying to bring the couples back together and
5:58
Speaker 1: show them how they can work together. You're trying to
6:00
Speaker 1: bring the band back together. Basically, it's like the Beatles
6:04
Speaker 1: broke up, and you know, we enjoyed their individual work.
6:07
Speaker 1: But come on, guys, yeah, that's a great analogy. Wouldn't
6:11
Speaker 1: you like to just describe the Beatles instead of having
6:13
Speaker 1: to describe all four members of the Beatles? Right, That's
6:16
Speaker 1: exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to show
6:18
Speaker 1: you that, you know, the drums are not interesting on
6:20
Speaker 1: their own, They're just part of a larger harmony. Right.
6:22
Speaker 1: They make much more sense when you understand them in
6:24
Speaker 1: terms of the guitar parts and the vocals which come
6:27
Speaker 1: together to make this amazing beautiful music. Right. Yeah, the
6:31
Speaker 1: physics of the Beatles, that will be the next exactly.
6:35
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna show you how Paul and John
6:36
Speaker 1: were actually the same person. Spoiler alert, they were the
6:42
Speaker 1: same person. That's right. And ringoes an alien. Everybody knows
6:46
Speaker 1: ringos an alien, right, all right? So the week nuclear
6:50
Speaker 1: force and so that's uh, it's not the most popular force.
6:54
Speaker 1: You know, most people know electromagnetism and gravity. Right. It
6:59
Speaker 1: is part of the forces, isn't it. Yeah, maybe it is.
7:04
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the ringo of forces. It's sort of overlooked,
7:07
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, dismissed, but in the end fundamentally
7:10
Speaker 1: important to making things work. Just like Ringo, you kept
7:13
Speaker 1: going to the harmony together exactly without the beats together,
7:17
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have a good song, That's right. Who ever
7:19
Speaker 1: heard a good pop song without without without a drum line,
7:22
Speaker 1: without Ringo? All right? So we were wondering it is
7:27
Speaker 1: kind of the lesser known maybe of the forces, and
7:29
Speaker 1: so we were wondering how many people out there knew
7:32
Speaker 1: what the weak force was. Yeah, and this is one
7:34
Speaker 1: of the times when I really had no idea what
7:36
Speaker 1: to expect. Had everybody heard of the weak force and
7:39
Speaker 1: they We're going to spout off some interesting physics about it,
7:42
Speaker 1: or are they going to get a bunch of blank stairs?
7:44
Speaker 1: So I was pretty curious, and so as usual, Daniel
7:47
Speaker 1: went out into the street and as random strangers if
7:50
Speaker 1: they knew what the weak force was. And so before
7:53
Speaker 1: you listen to these answers, think a little bit yourself.
7:55
Speaker 1: If someone approached you on the street and wearing sandals
7:59
Speaker 1: and supporting a beard, if they asked you randomly what
8:03
Speaker 1: the weak force, You're given away my disguise, man, and
8:06
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to wear a completely different disguise when
8:09
Speaker 1: they'll throw them off. They like, you can't be Daniel,
8:12
Speaker 1: I can I can't seat your toes. So if you
8:14
Speaker 1: were asked this question, you would you know the answer
8:17
Speaker 1: to it. Here's what people had to say. Yeah, has
8:20
Speaker 1: kind of governs radioactive to ka most particle stuff. I
8:24
Speaker 1: guess I'm not heard of the weak nuclear force. Have
8:28
Speaker 1: you heard of the strong nuclear force, the medium nuclear force,
8:32
Speaker 1: the super weak nuclear force? I made most of those,
8:35
Speaker 1: though we nuclear force not as well, but I've heard
8:37
Speaker 1: of it. I'm not sure. No, I've not heard of that. No,
8:41
Speaker 1: the m R I am measures in a clear force,
8:42
Speaker 1: and then you can know that's that's one of the
8:47
Speaker 1: four main types of forces in physics, not just in physics,
8:51
Speaker 1: in the universe right in the universe. Sure, it's kind
8:54
Speaker 1: of it's a kind of part to strong nuclear force.
8:56
Speaker 1: Why do we have it? What is it important? Or
8:57
Speaker 1: what does it do? Has something to do with how
8:59
Speaker 1: adams are together? I don't know exactly alright, So not
9:04
Speaker 1: a lot of yeses. I got a lot of blank
9:06
Speaker 1: looks on this one, that's for sure. Well, some people
9:09
Speaker 1: most people said no, they've never heard of it. But
9:11
Speaker 1: somebody actually said that it's related to the radioactive radio
9:15
Speaker 1: activity radioactive decay, Yeah exactly, and somebody even understood it
9:19
Speaker 1: was like connected to particle physics experiments we do in Geneva.
9:22
Speaker 1: So a hundred bonus points to that because your office
9:25
Speaker 1: made another physics professor that was me with disguising my
9:30
Speaker 1: own voice, asking myself a questions. Spoiler alert. They're all
9:34
Speaker 1: you always every episode. I'm just amazing and impressions right now,
9:39
Speaker 1: you know what one of my UM career goals is, please,
9:43
Speaker 1: speaking of which is um? Do you ever read The Onion?
9:46
Speaker 1: They have this fantastic people in the street section with
9:49
Speaker 1: ask people ridiculous questions and every week they have the
9:52
Speaker 1: same four pictures and they just give them made up
9:55
Speaker 1: names and jobs, you know, bone crusher or like you
10:00
Speaker 1: keyboard tester or something. My career goal is to get
10:03
Speaker 1: my face is used on the Onion. Is one of
10:05
Speaker 1: those people on the street saying something dumb. But I've
10:09
Speaker 1: actually written to the Onions several times volunteering, but never
10:11
Speaker 1: heard back. Please use my picture exactly, please make fun
10:15
Speaker 1: of me. Every week? Do they write back or they
10:17
Speaker 1: just ignored it? No? No, Unlike other Internet celebrities, they
10:21
Speaker 1: did not respond to my cold call. We'll keep trying, Daniel,
10:25
Speaker 1: there's always hope, all right, I will. So, yeah, somebody,
10:29
Speaker 1: most people didn't know what it was, and so it
10:32
Speaker 1: would Did that surprised you. I mean, it's not something
10:34
Speaker 1: that is usually covered in you know, high school physics.
10:38
Speaker 1: Even it didn't surprise me because it is a bit esoteric.
10:41
Speaker 1: And also it's not something people experience. You know, people
10:44
Speaker 1: experience gravity, they all know what it is. They have
10:46
Speaker 1: to understand it, they have an intuitive sense of it.
10:49
Speaker 1: People experience electricity, right, We've all been shocked by static electricity.
10:53
Speaker 1: People experience magnets, right. But people don't interact with the
10:57
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force very much. You don't really see its
10:59
Speaker 1: conto quince is directly. You can't tell the difference between
11:02
Speaker 1: it and something else the way you can tell the
11:04
Speaker 1: difference between gravity and magnetism. Right. Yeah, Well, there's very
11:08
Speaker 1: a couple of things about it. First of all, it's
11:10
Speaker 1: a force, and second it's weak. That's right, It's really
11:15
Speaker 1: really weak, like compared to electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force,
11:19
Speaker 1: it just is not very effective. And and one way
11:22
Speaker 1: to understand that is to think about how particles interact, right,
11:26
Speaker 1: like when you touch something or when you bounce against something,
11:29
Speaker 1: that's all done with particles. That's particles pushing against each
11:32
Speaker 1: other or interacting with each other. I mean, the particles
11:35
Speaker 1: in my finger are interacting with the particles in the
11:38
Speaker 1: table and so that and they're pushing against each other,
11:40
Speaker 1: that's right. And that's mostly using electromagnetism because it has
11:43
Speaker 1: to do with the bonds and the electrons holding the
11:46
Speaker 1: atoms tightly together and making this like you know, chain
11:49
Speaker 1: link fence of atoms that your finger can't pass through.
11:53
Speaker 1: But there are other particles, right, And that's because all
11:56
Speaker 1: the particles in your finger and all the particles in
11:57
Speaker 1: the table feel electromagnetism, but they're our particles that don't
12:00
Speaker 1: feel electromagnetism, like this mysterious particle called the neutrino. The
12:05
Speaker 1: neutrino doesn't feel electromagnetism, and it doesn't feel a strong force,
12:09
Speaker 1: and it has almost no mass or it hardly feels
12:12
Speaker 1: any gravity. The only way it interacts is through the
12:15
Speaker 1: weak force, and so it's a good lens for figuring
12:17
Speaker 1: out like how weak is the weak force? Yeah, we
12:20
Speaker 1: had a whole podcast episode about neutrinos. And we sort
12:23
Speaker 1: of talked about how, you know, the forces are sort
12:27
Speaker 1: of like social media channels. You know, there's Twitter, there's Facebook,
12:30
Speaker 1: there's Instagram that you can interact with people, but some
12:33
Speaker 1: people don't use some of the don't use Instagram, where
12:36
Speaker 1: they only use Twitter, or they only or they or
12:38
Speaker 1: they use all three. And neutrinos are like that, they
12:41
Speaker 1: only subscribe to this one very lightly used social media
12:45
Speaker 1: channel and so they hardly interact with the friends that
12:47
Speaker 1: it's the friends store of media channel, the original And
12:51
Speaker 1: so that's why neutrino can pass right through you, and
12:54
Speaker 1: a neutrino can pass right through the Earth right. We
12:56
Speaker 1: do these experiments where we look at neutrinos from the
12:59
Speaker 1: Sun and we use the entire Earth as an instrument
13:03
Speaker 1: to try to get the neutrinos to interact, but most
13:05
Speaker 1: of them fly right through the entire Earth without interacting.
13:08
Speaker 1: And if you had to say, like how thick a
13:10
Speaker 1: wall would I have to build to block neutrinos, Well,
13:14
Speaker 1: neutrinos can fly through a light year of lead and
13:17
Speaker 1: have a fifty percent chance I'm getting through. So I
13:21
Speaker 1: mean it's it's hard to even fathom, like how big
13:23
Speaker 1: a wall you would have to build to effectively block neutrinos.
13:26
Speaker 1: And the reason is that the weak force is so
13:29
Speaker 1: weak that every time the neutrino near something, it rolls
13:33
Speaker 1: a die and the dye has to come up just
13:35
Speaker 1: right for it to interact. Most of the time it
13:37
Speaker 1: just ignores it. Oh wait, so all right, so we're
13:41
Speaker 1: getting into what is the weak force, and you're saying
13:43
Speaker 1: that it is super weak, and you're saying that it's weak,
13:46
Speaker 1: not because it's just the weak force, but it's it's
13:49
Speaker 1: just less likely to interact with you. That's exactly what
13:53
Speaker 1: weak means, right, that it has a smaller chance to interact.
13:57
Speaker 1: Right that you shoot these two things against each other
13:59
Speaker 1: and will less often have an interaction. But when they
14:02
Speaker 1: do interact, the force that you actually feel is also
14:05
Speaker 1: weak or not. Oh, I see what you mean. No,
14:07
Speaker 1: the magnitude of the force is not effected. It's how
14:10
Speaker 1: often it happens. It's how likely it is to happen
14:13
Speaker 1: when it interacts with the nucleus. For example, it bounces
14:16
Speaker 1: off and goes in the other direction. It's not like
14:18
Speaker 1: just slightly deflected. It's just that it doesn't happen very often.
14:21
Speaker 1: It passes right through most of the nuclei without doing
14:24
Speaker 1: anything and just ignores the last. But in terms of magnitude,
14:27
Speaker 1: like when it does interact, it is as strong as
14:30
Speaker 1: the other forces. Yeah, that's a really good question. I
14:32
Speaker 1: never really thought about it that way. It's just a
14:34
Speaker 1: question of whether it interacts. The strength of the force
14:37
Speaker 1: reheally determines whether it's interacting, and so for example, you know,
14:41
Speaker 1: the strong force is really really strong. There's a lot
14:44
Speaker 1: of energy in that interaction, and so it's going to
14:47
Speaker 1: interact with everything else that feels it. Electromagnetism is a
14:51
Speaker 1: powerful force, and that means that it's going to interact
14:54
Speaker 1: almost all the time, and so you get lots of
14:56
Speaker 1: particles contributing. But if you're like going to measure it
14:58
Speaker 1: per particle, I think I think it's just another way
15:01
Speaker 1: of saying the same thing. I think. Um, you know,
15:04
Speaker 1: the strength of the force between them is another way
15:06
Speaker 1: of saying how likely are they to interact or not
15:09
Speaker 1: the other Fascinating about the weak force. One another reason
15:12
Speaker 1: to think about why it's weak is that it doesn't
15:15
Speaker 1: interact over a very long range, like electromagnetism to electrons
15:19
Speaker 1: that are like a thousand miles away from each other,
15:21
Speaker 1: they can feel each other and they feel each other's
15:24
Speaker 1: electric fields. Right that electromagnetism extends infinitely far the weak force.
15:29
Speaker 1: Another way to think about why it's weak is that
15:31
Speaker 1: it only interacts with things very very near it, right,
15:34
Speaker 1: Like you have to be really close to the neutrino
15:37
Speaker 1: to interact with it. Is that true? Like to electrons,
15:40
Speaker 1: even though even if there are millions of light years apart,
15:43
Speaker 1: they'll still feel each other. Absolutely, You feel the electric
15:47
Speaker 1: field from electrons in Alpha Centauri or the Andromeda galaxy
15:52
Speaker 1: or halfway across the universe. Absolutely? Is that why I
15:55
Speaker 1: feel like I'm being pulled apart? No, that it's like
16:00
Speaker 1: maybe the only scientific connection between astronomy and astrology, Like,
16:04
Speaker 1: are you affected by the movements of the planets? Well, maybe,
16:09
Speaker 1: but it's really negligible. And I also remember that it's
16:12
Speaker 1: time delayed. You know, if you if there are electrons
16:14
Speaker 1: and Alpha Centauri and somebody wiggles them, you don't see
16:17
Speaker 1: those wiggles until until the information comes here, which takes
16:22
Speaker 1: you know, which travels at the speed of light, so
16:23
Speaker 1: it takes a long time. But you're saying the weak
16:25
Speaker 1: Newark force doesn't have that long range, like at some
16:29
Speaker 1: point two particles that feel it don't affect each other
16:33
Speaker 1: with the weak force. That's right. The range of the
16:35
Speaker 1: force is really tiny. It's like the diameter of a proton, right,
16:39
Speaker 1: So these particles have to be really close together. It's
16:42
Speaker 1: just another way of thinking about whether these two things
16:44
Speaker 1: will interact. I think about it's sort of like, you know,
16:47
Speaker 1: imagine you're throwing two baseballs at each other, right, They're
16:51
Speaker 1: less likely to interact than if you're throwing two basketballs
16:53
Speaker 1: at each other, or two um or some really enormous ball,
16:57
Speaker 1: some like enormous yoga bouncy yoga ball at each other, right,
17:01
Speaker 1: And so the side this is what we call cross
17:03
Speaker 1: section in physics, because the cross section of those balls
17:06
Speaker 1: tells you how likely they are to hit each other.
17:08
Speaker 1: Balls with a really small cross section, like if you're throwing,
17:11
Speaker 1: you know, pebbles at each other, it's much harder for
17:14
Speaker 1: them to hit. And so the range of this force
17:16
Speaker 1: tells you basically the cross section of their interaction. And
17:20
Speaker 1: so the weak force is a really small range, which
17:22
Speaker 1: makes it less likely to interact. When they interact that
17:25
Speaker 1: you know, they still bounce off each other, like anything else,
17:27
Speaker 1: just less likely to happen. So what happens when you
17:30
Speaker 1: get further away? Does the force just drops off? Or
17:34
Speaker 1: you know, like I've heard that at some point the
17:37
Speaker 1: weak force doesn't travel far because the particles decay or
17:41
Speaker 1: they don't last far far out enough. Yeah, that's a
17:45
Speaker 1: really fascinating way to think about it. Um. Yeah, the
17:47
Speaker 1: weak force, it just is negligible beyond a certain distance,
17:50
Speaker 1: like you know, it's basically zero. And another way to
17:53
Speaker 1: answer the question why is the weak force weak? I
17:55
Speaker 1: mean one way to say, as well, it just has
17:57
Speaker 1: a number associated with it, and that number is smaller
18:00
Speaker 1: than the number associated with electromagnetism or you know, the
18:03
Speaker 1: strong force, And then of course you can ask why.
18:06
Speaker 1: But one way to explain that is to think about
18:08
Speaker 1: it in terms of the particles that transmit these forces. Right,
18:12
Speaker 1: we think about like the photon. The photon is the
18:14
Speaker 1: thing that transmits electromagnetism. Right, what do we mean by that, Well,
18:18
Speaker 1: we have this sort of picture that like two electrons
18:21
Speaker 1: coming near each other, one of them can shoot off
18:23
Speaker 1: a photon to hit the other electron and push it away,
18:27
Speaker 1: And that's like how electrons repel via a photon, and
18:31
Speaker 1: we we use that same sort of picture for all
18:33
Speaker 1: the forces. Actually, but the particles that are associated with
18:36
Speaker 1: the weak force, they are not massless like the photon.
18:39
Speaker 1: Is the reason electromagnetism extends so far is because the
18:44
Speaker 1: photon is massless. It zooms away the speed of light
18:46
Speaker 1: and it doesn't decay. Right, Photons can go forever, But
18:49
Speaker 1: the weak force has these really heavy particles. They're really
18:53
Speaker 1: really heavy, and so they don't go very far before
18:56
Speaker 1: they basically decays. Like if I was trying to hit
18:58
Speaker 1: you with a bowling ball and my range would be limited. Yeah,
19:03
Speaker 1: Or if you, like you know, had taped a bunch
19:05
Speaker 1: of stuff together very loosely and then try to throw
19:07
Speaker 1: it at me and it exploded in mid air before
19:09
Speaker 1: it got to me, like throwing the sandball. At some
19:12
Speaker 1: point it might break up a standball exactly. It's like
19:17
Speaker 1: throwing a sandball. You know, you're not really getting get
19:19
Speaker 1: hit by the full force of the sandball unless you're
19:21
Speaker 1: really close. And that's that's fascinating. Like these particles, these
19:25
Speaker 1: particles that mediate the weak force bosons, why are they
19:29
Speaker 1: so heavy and the and the photon is masseless. That's
19:32
Speaker 1: like one of the deep questions in physics over the
19:34
Speaker 1: last few decades. And that's why the photon can go
19:37
Speaker 1: to infinity because it's massless and it just keeps going
19:39
Speaker 1: right exactly. That's why electromagnetism is powerful, and that's why
19:43
Speaker 1: it's range is infinite, and the weak force is very
19:47
Speaker 1: weak because the things that carry it are very fat
19:49
Speaker 1: and slow. You know. It's like, you know, if you
19:52
Speaker 1: wanted to send letters ups drivers are super super faster
19:56
Speaker 1: driving Lamborghinis, right, and uh, instead you sent it via
20:00
Speaker 1: I don't know, um u s mail and they're driving,
20:03
Speaker 1: you know, a big, heavy slow bus or something. Um
20:05
Speaker 1: your letters is not going to get there is fast
20:07
Speaker 1: or might not even get there. So the thing that
20:09
Speaker 1: carries the messages, the information of the weak force, is
20:13
Speaker 1: big and heavy weeks and that that's what makes the
20:18
Speaker 1: blame the messenger. And the fascinating thing is that that's
20:22
Speaker 1: really only relevant um sort of late in the universe.
20:26
Speaker 1: That's relevant when everyone there isn't a whole lot of energy,
20:29
Speaker 1: because the mass these particles makes a difference when everything
20:33
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of energy. But if everything was
20:35
Speaker 1: really hot and dense and and zooming around, then it
20:38
Speaker 1: wouldn't really matter what the mass of these particles was, right,
20:41
Speaker 1: they have a little bit of mass or not they
20:43
Speaker 1: had a lot of energy, wouldn't make any difference. And
20:46
Speaker 1: that's why we think back from the beginning of the universe,
20:49
Speaker 1: electromagnetism and the weak force had the same strength because
20:53
Speaker 1: everything we're just closer together and interacting the same way. Yeah,
20:57
Speaker 1: and those particles, the ones that carry the weak force,
20:59
Speaker 1: just had enough energy to get further. The fact that
21:01
Speaker 1: they had mass didn't really matter because they had so
21:04
Speaker 1: much energy it was negligible. All right, So that's the
21:06
Speaker 1: weak force. Now we know it's a force, and we
21:09
Speaker 1: know why it's weak, and so let's get into what's
21:11
Speaker 1: interesting about the weak force? Why is it weak? Um?
21:15
Speaker 1: What's weird about it? Why do we have it? And
21:17
Speaker 1: how did it help us discover the Higgs Boson? But
21:19
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right, Hey, Daniel,
21:34
Speaker 1: do you think the weak force knows that it's called
21:37
Speaker 1: the weak force? You know what? I think its agents
21:41
Speaker 1: have been working for quite a while to get a
21:43
Speaker 1: name change. Yeah, I think it needs a pr overhaul
21:46
Speaker 1: for sure. Should be called Would you like to be
21:49
Speaker 1: called doctor Week or Daniel weak or I don't think
21:52
Speaker 1: anyone Master of the Week Fource experts still worked out
21:56
Speaker 1: for John Week that franchise exactly force then exactly Well,
22:05
Speaker 1: you know, what would you have called the weak force? Well,
22:08
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about it. Much about it. You
22:11
Speaker 1: should listen to this podcast to explain it to you.
22:13
Speaker 1: It's really good. Well, all I know is that it's
22:15
Speaker 1: weak and that it's a force. But you know, is
22:18
Speaker 1: there what do we know about it that might give
22:20
Speaker 1: it some identity? Like what's special about? What are you
22:23
Speaker 1: special about it? It's pretty weird. It can do some
22:25
Speaker 1: things that other forces can't do. It's sort of like
22:28
Speaker 1: messes with your mind. A lot of the things that
22:30
Speaker 1: we thought we knew about the universe, that we just
22:32
Speaker 1: assumed were fundamentally true about the universe, the weak force
22:35
Speaker 1: just sort of breaks those rules and shrugs and moves on.
22:38
Speaker 1: And so it's a great window into like what is
22:40
Speaker 1: the sort of the limitation? What can forces do in
22:43
Speaker 1: the universe. It turns out they can do a lot
22:44
Speaker 1: of things that we thought were impossible. And that's what
22:46
Speaker 1: the weak force can do. Yeah, that's what the weak
22:48
Speaker 1: force can do. For example, the weak force can change
22:51
Speaker 1: cork flavors. We had a whole podcast episode about cork flavors.
22:55
Speaker 1: And for those of you are thinking, what what's the
22:57
Speaker 1: cork and how does it have flavors? We're not talking
22:59
Speaker 1: about European yogurt snacks. There are flavors snacks called cork.
23:04
Speaker 1: We're talking about fundamental particles. Yeah, and so this the
23:07
Speaker 1: weak force can change the flavor of a cork, yeah, exactly.
23:12
Speaker 1: Electromagnetism can't do that, right, you have you have a
23:14
Speaker 1: charm cork. It can't give off a photon and then
23:18
Speaker 1: become an up cork. That doesn't happen, right, But if
23:22
Speaker 1: the charm interacts using the weak force, you can give
23:24
Speaker 1: off one of the particles that it transmits, and if
23:27
Speaker 1: it can become for example, a down cork or a
23:29
Speaker 1: strange cork can become an up cork, right, or top
23:32
Speaker 1: cork can become a bottom cork or a down cork, right,
23:36
Speaker 1: And so it can actually change these flavors, and other
23:39
Speaker 1: other forces are not allowed to do that well. And
23:42
Speaker 1: that's kind of a big deal because if I change
23:45
Speaker 1: all the flavors in the courts inside of your atoms,
23:47
Speaker 1: you'd be in trouble. Right, Well, I think I'd be
23:50
Speaker 1: even tasting charming and strange, but uh or more charming
23:55
Speaker 1: and more strangers. Yeah, well, you know this. You think
23:58
Speaker 1: of its sort of like a ladder. There's the lowest
24:01
Speaker 1: energy ones, the lowest mass ones. Those are the upcork
24:04
Speaker 1: and the down cork, and if you have the heavier corks,
24:06
Speaker 1: then that they tend to decay down the ladder. Things
24:09
Speaker 1: in the universe tend to be the lowest energy state,
24:12
Speaker 1: the lowest mass particles. So if you have the heavier
24:14
Speaker 1: particles like the top, then it uses the weak force
24:17
Speaker 1: to sort of step down that ladder, down to the
24:19
Speaker 1: up and the down and I and you and banana
24:22
Speaker 1: you've ever eaten are made up of just upcorks and
24:24
Speaker 1: down corks and of course electronics. But it also changes.
24:28
Speaker 1: It can change the upquorks and down corks back into
24:30
Speaker 1: each other. And that's actually what we call radioactive beta decay.
24:34
Speaker 1: That's how you change, for example, a neutron into a
24:37
Speaker 1: proton is by changing is by going back and forth
24:39
Speaker 1: between upquorks and down corks, because that's the difference between
24:42
Speaker 1: neutrons and protons. It's just one up versus one down.
24:45
Speaker 1: So it's weird because it can really mess with the
24:48
Speaker 1: identity of matter. Right Like, if if all my quorks
24:52
Speaker 1: change identities, I would probably blow up, right, I wouldn't
24:55
Speaker 1: be able to stay together, right Like, if all my
24:57
Speaker 1: protons turned into neutrons, you know, goodbye hore. Yeah, well,
25:01
Speaker 1: protons don't turn into neutrons, right. Protons are stable, which
25:04
Speaker 1: is a whole other fascinating thing, like can protons live
25:07
Speaker 1: for the whole life of the universe or do they
25:09
Speaker 1: eventually decay? Currently we think that protons live for like
25:12
Speaker 1: zillions of years, but neutrons don't. Neutrons will eventually turn
25:15
Speaker 1: into protons, and that's fascinating. And that's what the that's
25:18
Speaker 1: what the weak nuclear force does, and only the weak
25:20
Speaker 1: force can do that. Okay, that's weird. Um, so maybe
25:25
Speaker 1: I would call it a weird force. I don't know.
25:28
Speaker 1: The flavor force A force seems a little the tasty force.
25:35
Speaker 1: You know. The particles that it uses are also weird.
25:38
Speaker 1: Like we said, the electromagnetism has the photon, right, and
25:41
Speaker 1: that's how it transmits information. And the weak force is
25:45
Speaker 1: more complicated. It has three particles that transmit its forces.
25:49
Speaker 1: Has this particle we call the z boson and then
25:52
Speaker 1: it has the W plus and the W minus and
25:54
Speaker 1: we call them plus and minus because those particles themselves
25:57
Speaker 1: have electric charge. So it's the particles of one force
26:02
Speaker 1: feel the forces of another force. So affect the weak
26:08
Speaker 1: force using a magnet is kind of what you're saying, yeah, exactly.
26:12
Speaker 1: Or the particles that transmit the weak force can shoot
26:16
Speaker 1: off photons, right, they interact with each other using electromagnetism. Yeah,
26:20
Speaker 1: and that was a big clue. We'll talk about that later,
26:22
Speaker 1: that there's a deep, deep connection between the weak force
26:25
Speaker 1: and electromagnetism. It's kind of like it would be cool,
26:28
Speaker 1: like if, for example, you can affect gravity using electromagnetism, right,
26:31
Speaker 1: Like that would be crazy. Then you can yeah, right exactly,
26:35
Speaker 1: you could like make a magnet which turned off gravity
26:38
Speaker 1: or so that would be cool. And you know, we
26:41
Speaker 1: hope one day in the far future to have a
26:43
Speaker 1: unified understanding of all the forces, take gravity, turn into
26:46
Speaker 1: a quantum mechanical theory, which we haven't done yet and
26:49
Speaker 1: have no clue how to do, and then somehow unify
26:51
Speaker 1: it with the other forces and show that show that
26:53
Speaker 1: there's they're all just part of the same larger force.
26:56
Speaker 1: In that case, then maybe you could do what you
26:58
Speaker 1: just said is use one part of the force to
27:00
Speaker 1: balance another part of the force and affected. So yeah,
27:03
Speaker 1: I think you just invented an anti gravity machine right here, right,
27:07
Speaker 1: A should kick one what one half of a Nobel
27:09
Speaker 1: prize then, or let's go with were equal. That's probably
27:15
Speaker 1: the chances that I will get one. Um, I think
27:20
Speaker 1: that's probably accurate. Yeah, alright, so well let's get into
27:26
Speaker 1: Now we know what it is, we know what it's
27:29
Speaker 1: kind of weird. Wait, but wait, there's more. There's even
27:31
Speaker 1: a weirder thing about that. I thought it was weak,
27:33
Speaker 1: but there's more. All right, it's weak, but it's got
27:37
Speaker 1: a long backstory. Right. It's one of these superhero characters
27:40
Speaker 1: with like a really deep interesting connection. It was affected
27:43
Speaker 1: in its childhood and it's carrying all that back. Black
27:45
Speaker 1: Widow's not a lot of superpowers, but you're like, what
27:48
Speaker 1: is going on with her? Oh? You mean Black Wood
27:52
Speaker 1: of the superhero not the actual Spider. Yeah exactly. She
27:56
Speaker 1: she looks good in leather and she can really kick. Yeah,
27:59
Speaker 1: but she has all the this mysterious Russian spy backstory.
28:02
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. She's intimidating. Now the one of the weirdest things.
28:06
Speaker 1: But the weak force is that it breaks what we
28:09
Speaker 1: thought was a fundamental symmetry in the universe, and that
28:13
Speaker 1: is that we we think that it shouldn't make a
28:15
Speaker 1: difference sort of how you draw your X, Y and
28:18
Speaker 1: Z axes. Like, if you have to draw, you draw
28:21
Speaker 1: an X axis and Y axis, you put them in
28:23
Speaker 1: ninety degrees with each other. Right, then you're gonna draw
28:26
Speaker 1: Z access you want to put it in ninety degrees.
28:27
Speaker 1: But then there's a question do you draw it like
28:29
Speaker 1: sort of up above the X Y axis or down
28:32
Speaker 1: below right? And the difference is what we call handedness.
28:36
Speaker 1: Is it a left handed system or a right handed system.
28:38
Speaker 1: It's really just arbitrary, and so because most of us
28:41
Speaker 1: are right handed, we tend to draw those things the
28:43
Speaker 1: way you would have the first three fingers on your
28:46
Speaker 1: right hand point, so we call them right handed coordinates.
28:48
Speaker 1: It's kind of related to mirrors, right like you think
28:51
Speaker 1: that physics should work the same on one side of
28:54
Speaker 1: the mirror or in the reflection of the mirror exactly,
28:56
Speaker 1: because if you take a right handed coordinate system and
28:58
Speaker 1: you look in the mirror, then it looks left handed,
29:00
Speaker 1: and so for a long time people thought, well, that's
29:02
Speaker 1: just a thing we made up. It's just like human
29:05
Speaker 1: it's not fundamental or physical, right, And so they said, well,
29:08
Speaker 1: physics shouldn't matter. They should the physics shouldn't depend on
29:11
Speaker 1: whether things are right handed or left handed. So they
29:14
Speaker 1: made this assumption. They said, well, we assume that any
29:17
Speaker 1: experiment you do, if you watch the experiment in the mirror,
29:21
Speaker 1: you should also be able to do that mirror experiment, right,
29:23
Speaker 1: that the laws of physics should work the same here
29:26
Speaker 1: as they do in in the mirror. Right, So, like
29:29
Speaker 1: you do some experiment you watch in the mirror, you
29:31
Speaker 1: should you should be able to do that same experiment,
29:34
Speaker 1: or our laws of physics should still govern what's happening
29:36
Speaker 1: in the mirror. But you're saying the week four is
29:39
Speaker 1: totally doesn't care. Yeah, And this is one of the
29:41
Speaker 1: great stories of physics is that nobody checked for a
29:45
Speaker 1: long long time, Like they checked the electromagnetism be up,
29:48
Speaker 1: it's true. They checked the strong force e up, it's true.
29:50
Speaker 1: And they thought, well, this is just so fundamental and obvious,
29:53
Speaker 1: like we don't need to check it. You know. It's
29:56
Speaker 1: like you know, do you check that the sun doesn't
29:59
Speaker 1: like come out and middle of the night. No, you
30:01
Speaker 1: just they don't get up in the middle of the
30:02
Speaker 1: night and check if the sun is sneaking sneaking around, right?
30:05
Speaker 1: You just you checked at at sunset, you check at
30:07
Speaker 1: its sun at sunrise, and you assume what else is happening? Right?
30:10
Speaker 1: So people thought, well, the weak force is really hard
30:12
Speaker 1: to test, so we'll just assume that it also respects
30:15
Speaker 1: the symmetry called parody. And then in the fifties some
30:18
Speaker 1: theorists realized nobody has actually ever checked this, so maybe
30:22
Speaker 1: somebody should. And this is a great story about a
30:25
Speaker 1: physicist at Columbia. She was planning to go on vacation
30:27
Speaker 1: with her husband for Christmas, and she said, you know what,
30:30
Speaker 1: I can't go on vacation. I can't relax without knowing
30:33
Speaker 1: the answer to this deep question. Sounds like a physicist exactly.
30:38
Speaker 1: So her husband went on vacation by himself and she
30:41
Speaker 1: stayed back and she did these experiments where she demonstrated.
30:44
Speaker 1: She asked the question, would the weak force look the
30:47
Speaker 1: same in the mirror? And she said, up, this really
30:48
Speaker 1: complicated but but very clever experiment. And it's difficult to
30:52
Speaker 1: describe with the audio, so I encourage everybody to check
30:54
Speaker 1: out or hey, your video on on this experiment, which
30:58
Speaker 1: you can find by googling at the short version together
31:01
Speaker 1: Daniel don't remember we made it with the Derek Mueller
31:05
Speaker 1: of veritassium. If you look up. Yeah, it's a great video.
31:08
Speaker 1: It's a great video. It's called do particles respect time symmetry?
31:12
Speaker 1: Or do particles go backwards in time? In that video
31:15
Speaker 1: you can see that the weak force doesn't work the
31:17
Speaker 1: same in the mirror. In fact, in the mirror it
31:19
Speaker 1: works exactly the opposite. So not only does it not
31:22
Speaker 1: like respect this basic symmetry we assume was a true
31:25
Speaker 1: thing about the universe, it violates it almost. So it's weak,
31:29
Speaker 1: but it's like the rebel force, yeah, which means that
31:32
Speaker 1: like our universe is, you know, has a handedness. It's
31:36
Speaker 1: not like it could have been this or it could
31:38
Speaker 1: have been that. It is one way right. And anytime
31:41
Speaker 1: you see a kind of thing like that in physics,
31:42
Speaker 1: where it's like an arbitrary choice between two things you
31:45
Speaker 1: expected to be balanced or even or symmetric, and then
31:47
Speaker 1: it's not, that's a clue that tells you something happened
31:51
Speaker 1: when the universe was being cooked up, that it went
31:53
Speaker 1: this way and not that way. What is that? Yeah?
31:56
Speaker 1: It makes you realize that the universe maybe it doesn't
31:59
Speaker 1: have laws, or the laws you thought real to universe
32:02
Speaker 1: are not always true exactly. It makes you wonder is
32:06
Speaker 1: there a deeper understanding in which it had to be
32:09
Speaker 1: this way? Right? Is it just arbitrary and random and
32:11
Speaker 1: we live in a multiverse and it's one of a
32:13
Speaker 1: bazillion and there's no reason for it. I don't like
32:15
Speaker 1: that idea. I think it's a clue that there's something
32:18
Speaker 1: deeper going on. There's another way to think about the
32:20
Speaker 1: way the universe works that requires it to be this
32:23
Speaker 1: this thing that's weird to us. And and those are
32:25
Speaker 1: the moments of insight. That's when when your intuition is
32:28
Speaker 1: confronted by reality and you realize, here's a clue that
32:31
Speaker 1: reality is quite different from my intuition. Those are learning moments, right, No, definitely,
32:36
Speaker 1: I have a lot more respect now for the week
32:38
Speaker 1: for us. I mean, it's so weird and breaks all
32:41
Speaker 1: these laws. I feel like you just upgraded it from
32:43
Speaker 1: Ringo to George Harrison, you know what I mean? Like
32:48
Speaker 1: there you go. So, now we should be called the
32:49
Speaker 1: well respected, well respected will light interesting, you should speak
32:55
Speaker 1: with a stuffy British accent. Well, let's get into now
32:59
Speaker 1: whether we even need the weak force or why is
33:02
Speaker 1: it important? But first let's take a quick break. All right,
33:17
Speaker 1: let's get into why we need the weak fource? Do
33:21
Speaker 1: we even need it? Like, well, there's two questions, I
33:23
Speaker 1: think practically, So practically, first of all, what would happen
33:26
Speaker 1: if we didn't have the weak fource? We still be here?
33:29
Speaker 1: And the second why is it important to physics? Yeah,
33:33
Speaker 1: so that's a fun hypothetical question, like if you deleted
33:36
Speaker 1: a law of physics, what would happen? Right? Well, obviously
33:39
Speaker 1: everything would be different. Um you know, yeah, well you
33:43
Speaker 1: wouldn't have radioactive decay, right For example, you wouldn't have
33:46
Speaker 1: beta decay. The weak force is important to making things
33:49
Speaker 1: happen in the center of suns and the structure of
33:51
Speaker 1: the atom is partially controlled by the weak force, and
33:54
Speaker 1: so everything would be different if we took it out.
33:56
Speaker 1: If we eliminated Ringo Star from the Beatles, what would
34:00
Speaker 1: happen to my atoms? Like would I just dissolve? Would
34:02
Speaker 1: I explode? Would I feel just a little heavier or
34:05
Speaker 1: what would happen, Well, it depends. Are you talking about
34:09
Speaker 1: starting from the beginning of the universe never having the
34:11
Speaker 1: weak force, or having the current universe and then just
34:14
Speaker 1: turning it off. Let's do the second one first, So
34:17
Speaker 1: clip the switch, the weak force just quit goes away.
34:20
Speaker 1: What happens the first caveat is it's impossible. It doesn't
34:23
Speaker 1: make any sense for reasons we'll talk about in a minute.
34:25
Speaker 1: Because it turns out the weak force is just entangled
34:27
Speaker 1: with everything else and you can't get rid of it
34:29
Speaker 1: right the way. You can't just fire your drummer, um,
34:31
Speaker 1: and the universe wouldn't make any sense if you did that.
34:34
Speaker 1: But say you just turn that off somehow, somehow you're
34:37
Speaker 1: able to get to the control penalty universe and turn
34:40
Speaker 1: off the weak force. What would happen. I don't think
34:42
Speaker 1: you would feel it immediately? Um. I think we would
34:46
Speaker 1: never interact with new trinos again. Right, New trinos would
34:49
Speaker 1: just become invisible, becoming decoupled with them. But yeah, no
34:53
Speaker 1: big laws whenever they feeling. New trinos would be harder
34:56
Speaker 1: to run nuclear reactors right, and fission wouldn't work the
34:59
Speaker 1: same way, So we'd have to re engineer all of that.
35:02
Speaker 1: But again, you know, um, not everybody is a big
35:04
Speaker 1: fan of nuclear power. The structure the atom would be
35:06
Speaker 1: a little bit different, right, I mean, it certainly plays
35:09
Speaker 1: a role in how the nucleus is held together and
35:11
Speaker 1: how it gets broken up. So that's a good deep question.
35:14
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the answer of how it changes structure
35:16
Speaker 1: the atom, but mostly I think you could just totally
35:18
Speaker 1: ignore the neutrinos that were already mostly ignoring all right, So, um,
35:23
Speaker 1: so then what's the other answer that if we started
35:26
Speaker 1: off the universe without the weak force, would we end
35:29
Speaker 1: up in the same spot. Yeah, that's a great question.
35:32
Speaker 1: I think I have to deflect that question because I
35:34
Speaker 1: don't think the universe makes any sense without the weak force.
35:37
Speaker 1: And the reason is that it turns out the weak
35:39
Speaker 1: force is not its own thing. It's not like a
35:41
Speaker 1: completely separate thing that we're like right now, we don't
35:44
Speaker 1: understand any connection between gravity and electromagnetism. They seem like
35:48
Speaker 1: totally different phenomena with no relationship. Turns out the weak
35:53
Speaker 1: force is not its own thing. It's actually part of electromagnetism,
35:57
Speaker 1: or said more correctly, the weak force and ectro magnetism
36:01
Speaker 1: are part of one larger force. I've heard that before,
36:04
Speaker 1: that the weak force and the electromagnetic force are actually
36:06
Speaker 1: just one. What does that mean, Like they're they're actually
36:10
Speaker 1: the same particles, but they behave differently or they're all
36:13
Speaker 1: like different flavors of the same particles. What does that mean?
36:16
Speaker 1: It means that they're all different parts of the same thing.
36:19
Speaker 1: They're they're all like different sides of the same coin.
36:21
Speaker 1: And I think a more intuitive analogy to help you
36:23
Speaker 1: get there is to think about electricity and magnetism. Like
36:28
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago, people thought electricity, Oh, that's the
36:30
Speaker 1: thing that zaps you. Magnetism that's the thing that lets
36:33
Speaker 1: magnets fly or magnets work, right, And I thought they
36:36
Speaker 1: were totally separate. And it wasn't until Maxwell wrote down
36:40
Speaker 1: Maxwell's equations and he realized, Hold on a second, the
36:43
Speaker 1: laws that government electricity and the laws that governed magnetism
36:46
Speaker 1: are basically the same thing when you write them down mathematically.
36:50
Speaker 1: And you know, magnets can create currents and currents can
36:54
Speaker 1: create magnets. So it turns out that there's just one force, electromagnetism.
36:58
Speaker 1: And we had artificially set operated into two. We were
37:01
Speaker 1: just categorizing the different parts of it separately and had
37:05
Speaker 1: recognized that it makes much more sense when they're connected.
37:08
Speaker 1: So we said, okay, let's just call this one force electromagnetism. Right,
37:12
Speaker 1: So it's like the same force. It just sometimes acts
37:15
Speaker 1: to create currents inside of wires and sometimes it acts
37:19
Speaker 1: to repel magnets apart, but it's the same thing. You're
37:23
Speaker 1: just one guy. Sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're grumpy, right, Like,
37:26
Speaker 1: are you a different person when you're grumpy? I mean,
37:28
Speaker 1: some people might say so, but I know deep down
37:31
Speaker 1: you're you're really the same person. And so it makes
37:33
Speaker 1: much more sense to say, oh, this is different sides
37:35
Speaker 1: of somebody's personality. This is two different aspects of the
37:38
Speaker 1: same thing sometimes like different feelings of it or different
37:42
Speaker 1: behaviors of it. Yeah, exactly. And what we've discovered is
37:46
Speaker 1: that the photon and the w and the z bosons
37:50
Speaker 1: are all just parts of one force that we called
37:53
Speaker 1: the electroweak force. And you notice what happened there is
37:55
Speaker 1: that we merged electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism than we
38:00
Speaker 1: added the weak force, and like magnetism just kind of
38:02
Speaker 1: got squeezed out. It should have been called like electromagnetic
38:05
Speaker 1: weak force or something like your weak magnetic force or
38:08
Speaker 1: magneto weak force, right, electricity, electromagnetic That's how I would
38:13
Speaker 1: have maybe count it. But so you're saying then that
38:17
Speaker 1: electrons and W, the W and the z bosons, they're
38:21
Speaker 1: all those are different, but they're all carriers of the
38:25
Speaker 1: same force. Yeah, there's one larger, more complex force, and
38:28
Speaker 1: we call it electroweak. And it has four carriers, the photon,
38:32
Speaker 1: the two ws, and the z and has four carriers
38:35
Speaker 1: to it. Does the weak force have like charge, you
38:38
Speaker 1: know how we talked about electromagnetism has charge, and the
38:41
Speaker 1: strong force has color color, and and the weak force
38:45
Speaker 1: has its own thing. It's called weak hypercharge, which is
38:49
Speaker 1: like a contradictory branding a great name, I know, super awesome,
38:56
Speaker 1: not that awesome charge, it's kind of confusing. Has weak hypercharge.
39:02
Speaker 1: And then together the combined electroweak force has something called
39:06
Speaker 1: weak isospin, which is not has nothing to do with spin.
39:10
Speaker 1: So it's a big mess, and it comes from a
39:12
Speaker 1: historical naming accident. Really, the main lesson is just that
39:15
Speaker 1: they can be described by sort of the same what
39:19
Speaker 1: is it terms and the equations of the universe kind
39:21
Speaker 1: of yeah, exactly, they have. The mathematics is very similar,
39:24
Speaker 1: and in fact um when people were looking at that,
39:27
Speaker 1: they noticed, like, these things are so similar, But why
39:30
Speaker 1: is the photon have no mass and these other particles
39:33
Speaker 1: have a lot of mass? Right, Like, that's why electricity
39:36
Speaker 1: and magnetisms seem so different from the rest of the force,
39:39
Speaker 1: because this one particle, the photon, has no mass, but
39:43
Speaker 1: the other ones have a lot of mass. So that
39:45
Speaker 1: was a big puzzle like fifty years ago, and that's
39:48
Speaker 1: the puzzle that inspired Higgs himself to think up the
39:51
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. Said well, maybe there's this other particle out there,
39:55
Speaker 1: this other field, and it's interacting with these bosons and
39:58
Speaker 1: it's giving them mass. He came up with a really
40:00
Speaker 1: clever mathematical way to make that happen, to give mass
40:03
Speaker 1: to just these particles and not to the photon. So
40:06
Speaker 1: I think the conclusion of all it is then, is
40:09
Speaker 1: that the weak force. It's there. It's kind of like
40:13
Speaker 1: the conjoint twin of electromagnetism, right, it's not its own thing,
40:16
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, exactly, And it's not very consequential in
40:21
Speaker 1: the universe, meaning that you can take it away, but
40:23
Speaker 1: we wouldn't instantly feel it. But it's sort of necessary, right,
40:27
Speaker 1: It's part of the universe, and in fact, it kind
40:29
Speaker 1: of gave us a lot of clues about the universe,
40:32
Speaker 1: including the Higgs boson. That's right, and you can sort
40:34
Speaker 1: of blame it on the Higgs, right. The Higgs is
40:36
Speaker 1: the reason that the W and di z have so
40:38
Speaker 1: much mass, and that's why it's so weak. So if
40:40
Speaker 1: it wasn't for the Higgs holding it down, the weak
40:43
Speaker 1: force would have had a much different career arc. Maybe
40:45
Speaker 1: we should call it the I hate the Higgs force exactly.
40:50
Speaker 1: Probably it's a mental state than the weak force. Yeah,
40:55
Speaker 1: but it's like, you know, many Nobel prizes have been
40:58
Speaker 1: won along the route to understanding this, Understanding that electricity
41:03
Speaker 1: and magnetism are together with the weak force, understanding the
41:06
Speaker 1: Higgs mechanism, all this stuff. These are a lot of
41:09
Speaker 1: really important ideas, were all really complex. Mathematical machinery was
41:13
Speaker 1: developed just to understand this, and it's really beautiful when
41:17
Speaker 1: you learn that because it shows you how the structure
41:19
Speaker 1: these theories really are deeply mathematical. Now, how much mathematics
41:24
Speaker 1: really reveals the way the universe works. All right, something
41:27
Speaker 1: on a note of beauty. That's pretty cool. Yeah, So
41:31
Speaker 1: for those of you interested in learning more about it,
41:33
Speaker 1: or encourage you to get a little bit into the
41:35
Speaker 1: group theory because it connects for you the symmetry of
41:37
Speaker 1: these things with the idea of particles carrying these forces
41:41
Speaker 1: and why it has to be that way. It's really
41:43
Speaker 1: deep and fascinating and we should dive into it on
41:45
Speaker 1: another podcast episode. All right, Thanks for joining us. I
41:47
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. We'll see you next time. Thanks
41:50
Speaker 1: for tuning in, and I hope it wasn't a weak episode.
41:52
Speaker 1: I had a forceful impact on you. If you still
42:03
Speaker 1: have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
42:06
Speaker 1: drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
42:08
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
42:11
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
42:15
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
42:18
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
42:21
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio from more podcast from
42:25
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
42:29
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,