Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions 3

Transcript

Listener Questions 3 · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, if you are the dictator of a country,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: what would you do in terms of science? In terms
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: of science, I think I'd like to explore, like, what
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: is the biggest cookie that's possible to be you can
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: still be tasty. That's something physicists wonder about. I wonder
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: about that because you know, a cookie is a complicated thing.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It has to be crispy, has to be soft on
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the inside. You make it too big, then it's I'll
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: just gonna be gooey. How do you get the heat dispersed?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It's a hard physics problem. So you think you need
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to all the resources of a country to figure out
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the answer to this question. Hey, if you're gonna do something,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: do it ten billion dollars big right. That's the way
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I rolled the ten billion dollar cookie. That it would
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: be your science project, your dream science project. How would
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: you would you? Would you aim higher? I would probably
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: do just make sure everyone understand science. You know, for
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: all that money to educating people about science, you should
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: fund like an awesome podcast about it. Yeah, oh man,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: you know, and maybe like get two people on it
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and two really good looking at people. We eat a
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: lot of cookies with stay trim anyway. Yeah, and then
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: just give them the ten billion dollars. I'm sure they'll
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: be responsible with it. Yeah, totally, not spending on cookies
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. That's right, that's right. Hi. I'm Jorge.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics. And
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist by day in a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: podcaster by I don't know afternoon, and I'm a big
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: fan of cookies and science. And welcome to our podcast,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we look around and wonder what
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: is weird, what is amazing, what is crazy about this universe,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and then we talk about it in a way that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: we hope you will understand. And we're also the authors
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: of the book We Have No Idea, a Guide to
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the Unknown Universe. So if you would like to hear
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: more from us or learn more about all these great
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and amazing questions about the universe, go check it out.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: That's right, and we also love to hear from you
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: about your questions about the universe. At the end of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: every episode we tell people please write in if you
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: have something you'd like to hear us talk about if
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you have a question you can't quite figure the out
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the answer to, just using Google send it to us
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: will break it down for you. And a lot of
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: people write us, right Daniel, And we get a couple
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: of a dozen a day. Right, Oh yeah, we got
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of nice emails, and some of them are
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: just appreciation people saying, hey, thanks for the show. We're
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: enjoying it. It is wonderful to read. And then people
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: send us their crackpot theories of the universe, like, hey,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I figured out dark matter, and you know quantum gravity,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and you know why airline food tastes so bad? All
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: with my one theory? Daniel, Actually that that one was
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: for me. What do you mean it's a crack poc?
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Didn't you read it? I read all the theories that
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: people send us, sometimes everything carefully. Sometimes I skimmed through them,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I'll admit, but I do love reading them, and I
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: love getting people's emails, and mostly I love the emails
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: where people ask questions. When people say, here's something I
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: don't understand, something i'd love to figure out. Could you
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: please explain something to me? Have you ever got a
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: question that you had never thought about before? Oh? For sure. Yeah,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: lots of questions people ask I had never heard before.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I never even thought about, like how to answer that
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: question before. Those are my favorite ones, and so Daniel
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: will answer your emails. But every once in a while
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: we have an episode where we answer your questions on
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: the podcast, and today is one of those episodes. Can
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I tell you about one of the questions that we
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: got that totally blew my mind? Oh? Please? Somebody wrote
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: in and said, what if the sun is actually a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: giant banana wrapped in hydrogen gas? Think about it? Think
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: about it? So I did that. I thought about it.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, that's a fascinating idea. I've never thought
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of that idea before. I've never answered that question before.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to answer that question. So I thought,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: maybe you're the banana expert. What would be preventing the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: sun from being a banana wrapped in hydrogen? What would
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: exploding hydrogen? Well, I guess it'd be like a roasted banana, right,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: because it's pretty hot there. So if you like, you know,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: banana's flambay and then maybe they'd be good. But I'm
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: not sure how you would assemble all those hydrogen atoms
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and fuse them in the right way, they get potassium
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff to make it into a banana.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: So I think that was not a sincere question. Is
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: maybe actually a joke aimed at you. But technically is
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it possible, like um, you know, just out of random
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: you know, fluctuations, somehow a banana forms for an instant
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: in time, So it could be true. Yes, And in fact,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: if you believe in the multiverse, then there is some
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: universe in which the Sun spontaneously forms a giant space
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: banana in its core for you know, for an instant. Yes, yeah,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: there you go, There you go, And that's the universe
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I want to live in. We live This is an
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: aspirational podcast, folks. We talked about the universe we live
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: in, in in the universe we wish we lived in. That's right.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And the answer is always in the multiverse, anything is possible.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: So technically you can be optimistic about anything, even space bananas.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: That's right. I feel good, people, because it's all possible.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: It's all possible. And so today on the podcast will
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: be tackling listener questions. Some of them are questions that
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I get a lot, and I thought people might be
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: interested to hear the answer. Maybe other people have these questions.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Some of them are questions I had never heard before
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and had to do a bit of research, So mix
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: it up a little bit. Yeah, and so today we
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: have some pretty exciting questions. We have a question about
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a giant space gun. We have questions about photons, and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: we have questions about why isn't everything exploding? Or is it?
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Or is it? So we'll get into that today. So
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: buckle up, folks, it's going to be a crazy ride today.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So today's first question comes to us from Paul, and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Paul had a question about how is there a better
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: way to get to space? So here is Paul's question. Hi,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge. When I was a kid, I remember
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: reading in an old Guinness Book of World Record about
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: a gun in Barbados sticking fire sixteen inch shell weighing
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: about three hundred and thirty pounds to an altitude of
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifteen thousand feet. Now that's less than
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: half of the lowest orbital altitude, but that was fifty
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: seven years ago. So ken a gun put an object
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: into orbit? And if so, why aren't we doing it?
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: It has to be cheaper than rockets. Thanks all right,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: thank you Paul for that awesome question. This has the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: distinction to be you're the only person to ever write
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: in asking that question. Really, it's not a it's not
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: it's not a branding question in the in the public's mind.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Apparently not. Not everybody is thinking about what they could
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: launch in the space using a really big gun. But
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: I love the end this question when he says, if
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: we can do it, why aren't we doing it all
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the time? I mean, if this is within our grasp, man,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I would be like shooting banana pies into space all
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the time. I think, I think. I think it's interesting
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: because that the corollary to his question was what he
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: was sort of really asking was isn't this cheaper than rockets?
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Because really, it seems anything should be cheaper than rockets.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: That's true. Rockets are not cheap, right, and so a
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: other ways to get stuff into space because rockets cost
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: millions and millions of dollars, right, Yeah, So the question
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: really is like, can you build a giant space gun?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: And and that's how you put things into orbit. You
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: just shoot them out as super fast and up. I
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: guess vertically up is how you would do it, or
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: maybe not, and then that would just go off into space.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't stop, would go into space and get into orbit.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: That's the question, right, Yeah, that's the question. And let's
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: unpack it a little bit because there's a couple of
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: problems with this idea. First is just stting it up
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: high enough, right, Like can you shoot something from the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: ground and make it all the way into space? Right?
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And if you just want to leave the Earth, it's
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a whole separate question of could you shoot something from
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the ground and get it into orbit. But let's just
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: say you want to escape the Earth, you're on a mission,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: you want to flow down into space, and you just
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: want to leave Earth's gravity, right, meaning shoot something with
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: a gun and not have it fall back down exactly. Yeah.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So the question is then how fast does it have
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: to go? Right? That's called the escape velocity of the Earth.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: And the escape velocity of the Earth is really high,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: like if you're gonna leave the surface and not get
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: any more pushes, right, Remember, a rocket gets continuous pushes.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It brings the push the pusher with it as it's
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: going up in the air, keeps getting more and more
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: pushes keeps accelerating. Yeah, so you're going to get all
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: that push in the very beginnings. You have to have
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: your maximum speed is immediately after you leave the gun
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: because you're gonna lose it pretty quickly. So then the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: question is how fast you have to be going to
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: leave Earth's orbit? Okay, so like what's your the initial
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: velocity you need to have in order to keep going
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: on into space and not fall back down. That's right, exactly.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: And on the surface of the Earth, the escape velossity
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you'd need is about eleven kilometers per second, So in
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: one second you'd have to be going you have to
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: cover eleven kilometers, yeah, exactly. And you know, for scale,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: that's like thirty three times the speed of sound, so
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: you know, like jets can go like Mack one, Mack two,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Mock three. This is mock thirty three. Wow. How much
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: is that in in miles per hour? In miles per hour,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I think that's like twenty five thousand miles per hour. Wow,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: So that's a pretty big h I think I don't
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: think that my prius has enough digits. I think in
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: its digital readA. Yeah, I don't think the digits is
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the problem with your prius. But that's exactly the problem.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Like number one is how do you get something going
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: that fast? Right? Like shooting stuff from a rifle doesn't
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: get anywhere near that speed. Um Like rifles can. They
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: can shoot a bullet fast in the speed of sound,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: but not thirty three times the speed of sound. So
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: you need a really big gun. You need a lot
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: more explosive to get it up that speed. I say so,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: even if you take a rifle and point it up
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and you shoot, the bullet would eventually come back. Now,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: do not do that, Yes, do not point a rifle
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: straight up, because that bullet will come right back down
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: at you or the guy standing next to you. This
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: happens every year in New Year's Eve. People fire guns
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: into the air and you think, like, where do you
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: think those bullets are go? And they're not going into space,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: not into space, not into space. Then they're coming back
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: down and maybe hurting somebody. Um, So do not fire
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: bullets into the air. Um, they will not go to space.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: And the other problem is say you did manage to
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: shoot a gun, or you know, you had some payload
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: and you shot it at this incredible speeds, had enough
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: energy well, it's not easy to go through the atmosphere
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: at that speed. What happens when you go through the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: atmosphere at high speeds is friction from the air air resistance,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So you heat up, just like you know how spaceships
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: when they land, they have to come through the atmosphere,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and you know there's all that fire and burning and stuff.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: That's because of the friction with the air. So this way,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: you'd have so much speed, you'd have friction on the
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: way up. Oh so it's kind of like the re
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: entry problem, but in reverse exactly exactly, it's the re
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: entry problem on the way out. So if you build
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: like a three million dollar satellite and then want to
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: launch it into space when you don't want it's going
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: twenty five thousand miles per hour through the air because
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: it'll melt. What have you put shielding on it, you know,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: like they do with the Shuttle and the landers. Yeah,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: but the Shuttle doesn't re enter the atmosphere twenty five
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: thousand miles per hour, and that's on purpose, right. It
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: slows down a lot, and it does it very gradually,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: so you need a lot of shielding. And then this
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: thing we get heavy and then it gets more expensive
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna get this thing. Plus it's shielding up
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to twenty five thousand miles per hour. It's not easy.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Start to imagine that cold air can burn you to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a crisp right, Yeah, we'll imagine it's sandpaper. Right. Imagine
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: if somebody's gonna you're gonna do you're you have one
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: of those bananas slipping slides in your backyard, except instead
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of slippery plastic, somebody puts sandpaper. Right, that's what it
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: would be like. Yeah, that is a horrific scenario, Daniel,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and trying to raise it from my mind there, right, Well,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: that is why we don't do this. I mean there's
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: other problems too, right, but that's those are reasons number
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: one and two. Reason number three, this is why we
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: don't go on slip and slides of miles per hour,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: saying it's everything feels like sandpaper miles per hour. That's
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the point. Okay, So it's really hard to do just
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: to just to accelerate any kind of mass or object
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: up to twenty miles per hour, and also it would
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: burn up with air. So what are some of the
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: other problems. The other problem is getting into orbit. I mean,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: what we talked about just now is getting it out
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: of Earth's atmosphere and out of Earth's gravitational pull. That's
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: actually harder than getting something in orbit because you have
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: to go higher. Right, So you might think, well, what
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: if we just wanted to go into like low Earth orbit,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: we didn't want to actually leave Earth, And you think, well,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: that might be easier. It's true, but you can't actually
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: shoot something from the ground into orbit. You cannot. You
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: cannot because remember you're shooting it, you give it one push, right,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: You can't land in a stable orbit has a fixed trajectory,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: and that trajectory includes intercepting the ground, so eventually it
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: will re intercept the ground. The way to get into
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: orbit is you fly up into there and then you
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: adjust your speed so you have the right speed and
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: direction to be in orbit. But there's no way to
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: get there from the ground without additional pushes once you're
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere. But you're saying, is it you
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: need minor adjustments once you get up there, or you
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: need like a lot of adjustment. No, it could be
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: fairly minor adjustments. So, like one scenario is you have
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: stuff on the ground and you shoot it up to
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: fairly low Earth orbit or just below using your massive
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: space gun that you built because you're a dictator. And
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: then you have something catch it something in low Earth orbit,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: like catch it and then readjust it and shoot it
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: out into orbit, so that that kind of system might work.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: But you can't just shoot something into orbit from the
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: ground because no, no trajectory that starts from the ground
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: will lead to a stable orbit. Like I know, if
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you're a Superman, you could not put a football in orbit,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: no matter how hard you try. That's right, that's right.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And and football and even Superman, if he threw a
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: football thousand miles per hour, it would melt right, like
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: unless it's a super football from his original planet or something. Yeah,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: kryptonite football, that's right. But then he couldn't hold it, Yeah, exactly.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: But that's just a detail. The thing is and and
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: and Paul mentioned this in his question, is that people
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: have tried this right, People have worked on this problem.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: People have shot stuff pretty far up, so you know,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: people are not daunted by the fact that this seems
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: impossible slash in practice. Well wait, didn't they do the math? Yeah,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: you know, but these are dictators were talking about and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: so sometimes you know they are not bothered by math.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You know they rules don't apply to them. These are
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: autocrats we're talking about. Math is just fake news, all right.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: So that's a that's a pretty amazing thing to learn
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: that people have tried this, and they both people who
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: have tried it are are sort of pretty notorious. Yeah,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: this is not a community of folks you want to
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: go to conferences with. Because the first person to really
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: do this significantly was Hitler. And Hitler had this cannon
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: called the V three cannon, and he could launch projectiles
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and nine away. Again, the Germans were also working in
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: rocket technology, but this is just launching it from the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: ground with no more pushes. Well, I was wondering when
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: our discussions would eventually devolve into talking about Hitler. So
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: everything on the internet gets compared to Hitler eventually, right there,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: eventually here we are. Um, so he tried, he tried
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: to build giant cannon that would launch things into space. Yeah,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and I don't think his goal is to get into space.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I think his goals be able to like launch shells
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: to France from Germany, right, they want to like really
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: long distance bombardment. I think that was their goal. I
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: don't think they cared that much about shooting stuff into space.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Oh I see, just like, what's the biggest, uh missile
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you can build? Yeah exactly. But it inspired another guy,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: a guy named Gerald Bull, and he convinced some combination
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: of American and Canadian governments to give him a bunch
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of money for something called Project Harp, which is basically,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: build a huge gun and see if you can launch
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: stuff into space. And he didn't do a terrible job,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: really he um. He came up with a pretty good name,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Project Card, Project card project, that's build a giant gun
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: and she takes into space. Project crazy dictators fund this,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So how far did he get? Well, his
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: record still stands today. He shot a four hundred pound
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: object a hundred and ten miles above the Earth's surface,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: so that counts like he got something into space. Now
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: it came back down. It didn't escape the Earth, right,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: he shot it up and it came back down. But
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: that's the record today for in terms of launching something
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: from the ground and not giving it any more pushes
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: is a hundred and ten miles. How did he do it? What?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: What did this gun look like? It just looks like
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a really big gun. I mean, it's just like a
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: really big tube. I mean, there's not a whole lot
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of cleverness here, right, It's just a big twoe but
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: a big explosive in it, you know. And the question
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: is can you get enough money to build a bigger,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: bigger and bigger gun. And you know, some of these
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: things don't scale that easily, and the strength of the cylinder, etcetera.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: You have to take into account. But basically it's just
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: spend more money, make it bigger. It's kind of like
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: particle physics, right, Spend more money, make a bigger accelerator.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I guess. The idea is that you sort of make
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a like a rocket, but instead of having the propellant
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: in the fuel on the rocket on the missile, you
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: just keep it on the ground exactly, you know what
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I mean. Like, that's what a giant gun solves, is
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the idea that you don't need to bring the fuel
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: with you. You just exploit it all here on Earth
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and then that sends you into space. That's right. The
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: problem with the rocket is you're not just lifting your payload,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you're lifting the fuel. You need to lift the fuel.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: You need to lift the fuel, etcetera, etcetera, so it
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: gets by the time you're actually launching your fuel. So
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: this solves that problem by basically blowing up all the
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: fuel at once on the ground and seeing how far
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: it goes. Right. Um, but it does really solve the problem.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I think a more clever idea is like laser supported rockets,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: like shoot the energy at it using beams basically so
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: you don't have to transport the fuel. You can send
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: it up from the ground as it goes wow, and
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: shoot it with lasers which would absorb the late and
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: they would absorb the laser and redirected to their propulsion.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I mean if I was a dictator and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I was funding crazy science projects getting stuff in the space,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I would definitely put some money in laser propulsion. You're like,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be one of those crazy dictators
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and build giant gun. I'm just gonna be a dictator
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: that makes giant lasers. Yeah exactly. Um, But the story
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't end there. This guy Gerald Bull, he ran out
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: of money from the U. S. And Canada and didn't
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: finish his gun, but then he sold the idea. He
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: sold the idea to Saddam Hussein right to what Yes,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: inspired by Hitler and then employed by Saddam Hussein, and
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: he said, look, I'm gonna build you the biggest gun ever.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: And I guess that sales pitch worked. You know, he
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: must have a killer powerpoints slide deck, and he was
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: building the mother of all guns. Had three words, biggest
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: gun ever. And it's just like I wanted. Um. Yeah,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And so he was in the middle middle of building
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the biggest gun ever. Like I think Saddam called it
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the mother of all guns. And you know, Saddam probably
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: had the same idea that the Hitler had, like I
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: launched shells to Israel or launch shells to anywhere in
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: the Middle East or something nefarious. Um. But the Bull
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: was actually assassinated by we don't know who, um while
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: he was working on the project. So it didn't end
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: very well for the scientist. Wow. Yeah. And that's a
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: movie or a comic book right there, Yeah, exactly. Ben
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Affleck is probably writting the screenplay as we speak. Yeah,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: he's the CIA agent task with assassinating the Big Gun.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: So Gerald Bull got a bunch of money from Iroq,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: but he never matched his original high score that he
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: did on his own using Project Harp. So that stands today,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: um so and miles is the record. I don't think
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: it's a practical way to launch things because remember the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: kind of things we want to launch in a space
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: are usually delicate, right, tele communications, satellites or people, um,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and you've got to be pretty careful. So the rocket
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: approach is much more gentle because you never achieve as
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: high as speed. Interesting, so putting it, putting your delicate
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: object on top of like tons and tons of explosives
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: not recommended. That's the safest way to do it in
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: a rocket, Yes, that's that is the safest way to
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: do it. Gradually blow up all those explosives, right, don't
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: blow it up all at once on the ground. All right.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: So that's the answer for Paul. Can you shoot stuff
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: into space using a gun? That's the question. The answer is, um,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: technically yes, but it's but it's really hard, not a
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: good idea. And also you can't put it into orbit.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: You need something else, that's right, Yeah, you need another stage,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I mean to catch it and redirect it or something
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: once you get up into orbit. Yeah. And also for Paul,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: stop trying to make this gun because they're going to
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: assassinate you. Little little pro tip there from your podcast. Also,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: funding from dictators doesn't always end out well. All right,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: thank you, Paul. And so we have two more questions
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: about particle collisions and about dark energy. But first let's
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: take a quick break, all right, Daniel, So today we
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: are answering reader or more more like listener questions, questions
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: that are listeners out there sentence and so we answered
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: one about building a giant space gun. And so our
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: second question comes from Jacob, and Jacob has a question
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: about your job, right, Daniel's Hey, Daniel and Jorge. I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: was just wondering how you guys isolate and manipulate the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: particle or particles that you use for the large Hay
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: John collider. Thanks. That's a great question, right, He's asking
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: us like, how do you get one particle into the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: collider and slam it into into the other particles and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: how do you control them and manipulate them. It's a
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: great question, yeah, because, um, you know we know that
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: in a particle collider you're smashing particles together, and so
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I guess, I guess the question is how do you
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: how could you possibly get two of these particles to
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: hit each other right on the head. That seems like
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: an impossible problem. It is an impossible problem. And that's
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: why we don't do that because that's basically impossible, right, Yeah,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: you don't. You don't. You don't aim one particle to
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: hit another particle. No, that would be really hard. It's like,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: imagine you're like throwing a water balloon from l A
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and somebody else that throwing a water balloon from New York,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and you have to have them like meet somewhere over Kansas. Right,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: that's basically impossible. But wait, wait, what if you used
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: a space gun? Totally will work. Absolutely, a water balloon
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: will survive miles per hour, no problem, a space a
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: potato gun, or a water builon gun. Yeah, now, the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: it's a good question. That's impossible. And so it's also
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: very hard to just isolate individual particles. I mean, there's
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: a whole field of physics that works on that, atomic
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: molecular optics and stuff like that where they trap individual particles.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: But that's really hard to do. Um And so what
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: we do instead is we don't send individual particles flying
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: against individual particles. We send a little gas of particles
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: like a bunch of particles against a bunch of particles coming.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: The other direction is that the official physics name bunch
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: of a bunch. We actually use the word bunch, and
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the reasons you use, yeah, exactly, bunches. You can look
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: it up at the lhc UM and um. The reasons
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: for that are is that even if the particles do
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: hit each other, the chances of a collision are not great,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: like mostly they just you know, gently brush off each other.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: So we want, actually, is a bunch of collisions happening
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: at the same time, so that you have a higher
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: chance of seeing something interesting. Plus it's just hard to
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: get it, so even if you so, even if you
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: could align one particle and aim it directly at another particles,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: they might not collide at all. Yeah exactly. I mean
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: what do we really mean by a collision? A collision
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: is an interaction. We think of collision is the edges
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of two things hitting each other, right, because we're used
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: to macroscopic objects. But in that case, you know the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: zoom in macroscopically and think about what's happening when the
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: two edges touch. What happens really is that the particles
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: in one push away from the particles and the other.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: That's an interaction, that's like a force. So now strip
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: that all away, and you have just two particles pushing
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: against each other. Right if they're going really really fast,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: unless they hit immediately right on each other, then they'll
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: just whizz right by each other. Um And even still,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: even if they go they go right on top of
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: each other. It's quantum mechanical, and so sometimes just nothing happens.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Most of the time, very little happens most of times.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: The thing that happens is boring is that the two
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: particles just like slightly deflect. So what we want to
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: see is the rare stuff at times when two particles
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: smashed together make something weird and crazy nobody's ever seen before.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: So to make that happen, we have to send a
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: bunch of particles in at once. But what's the difference
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: between them interacting and not interacting? Do you know what
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I mean? Like, how do they decide? Or is it
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: just that they're more head on than others and or
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: that they have no other option but too smushed together
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: or what? There's a real quantum mechanical mystery there, because
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: you know, quantum mechanics tells us that you can repeat
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: the same experiment. You can like shoot two particles exactly
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the same angle at each other the same way and
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: get two different outcomes. So you're asking, like what determines
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: whether they interact or they don't, or that the interaction
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: is a boring one or an interesting one. It's random,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Like there's somewhere in the universe a die gets rolled
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: every time these two particles collide. That determines like are
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: they going to bounce off each other gently? Are they
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: going to create a Higgs boson? Are they going to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: create something else these folks have never seen and blow
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: their minds, or are they just gonna miss? And so
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the strategy you guys use is to just go of
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the numbers. You just throw a whole bunch of the particles.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: You don't try to hit individual particles together. You just
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: throw a whole bunch of them together, and you hope
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: that you get some of them hitting each other exactly.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: It's like you're looking for your first job, and so
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: you send out like thousands of resumets, right, you know,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: just email one resume and then wait a week, Right,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: you send out a lot of resumes and in our case,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: like my faculty search when for a professorship, exactly right,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: you go for the numbers um. And so in this case,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: we have ten to the eleven protons and every bunch
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: that's a hundred billion protons in a little bunch, and
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: they're all in a really small space, right, yeah, exactly,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and we focus them using magnets. So the other part
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: of his question was like, how do you control them,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: how you maintain them? Basically, use magnets because you can't,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: like you can't have a little zip block bag which
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: just tend to the eleven protons in it, you know,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: you carried around. So we have a magnetic bottle. Essentially,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: we use magnets to keep these things moving in a circle. Right.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Magnets bend path of a charged particle. So we focus
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: that using magnets, and we get it down to um
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: two and a half micrometers. Right, So we we want
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: to we want as many protons as possible and as
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: small as an area as possible, because it's the greatest density,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: the greatest possibility that something exciting is going to happen. So,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and you might think, well, that's a lot of particles, right,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: it is, but it's also a small number right, like
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: you know UM a mole, which is you know the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: atomic unit as UM you know is Avogadre's numbers like
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: tend to the twenty three particles, right, And a really
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: really good vacuum has tended to twelve particles in it
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: um per cubic meter. So tend to eleven particles is
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a lot if you just count them. But it's also
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: it's very diffuse, right, it's not. It's not like this
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: is a very dense thing. This this this bunch of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: protons and you you don't just send one bunch at
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: a time, You send a whole bunch of bunches at
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: each other. That's right. It's organized like a Swiss clock,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: which makes sense because it's a huge circle in in
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: in Switzerland. Geneva up, and we have more than two
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: thousand bunches in the accelerator at all times, and you know,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: the thing is like tens of kilometers around, and so
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: they're all synchronized, and so every twenty five nanoseconds, one
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: bunch hits another bunch, and then nanoseconds later, another bunch
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: is coming down the line and they collide. And so
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: it's just like all day, all night, every five nanoseconds,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: we collide one bunch of protons against another bunch of protons.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: It's like a ferris wheel, but instead of each pod,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you have twenty eight hundred bunches just going around and around. Yeah,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: first world makes it sound like it's all fun, enjoy,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: but these guys are slamming into each other. It's uh,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: it's like an assembly line. You know, they're just coming
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: down the line and getting smushed into each other. Um.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And also you can reuse the bunches, Like the bunches
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: passed through each other, some tiny fraction that maybe interact,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: but most of them are untouched, so you can send
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: them through again, so they go through each other and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: then they just come back around again. Yeah, exactly, you
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: don't discard them. Yes, when we come out, it's called
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: to fill. We fill the accelerator. We put all these
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: bunches and we get them going. We slam into each
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: other and then you know, eventually you lose some of
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: them because you can't have perfect containment um and so
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the the effective number of collisions you're getting starts to drop.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: So then you empty it and you refill it start again.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, so that answers Jacob's question the he
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: has how do we control how do you control the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: particles in the collider, and how do you get like
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: single particles who hit each other? And the answer is
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: using a bunch of bunches. Yeah, exactly. So we don't
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: throw one water balloon at another water balloon. We throw
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: like a hundred billion water balloons at a hundred billion
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: water balloons, and then we have it's so so much fun.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: We just get to watch what happens. We like, you know,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: create explosions and watch them all day long. Best job
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: in the world. Okay, here's here. Here's a question. Then
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: for me, um, what if you aimed this collider into space,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: would you get the proteins up into space into proteins
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: are definitely moving fast and to escape Earth velocity, but
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere would stop them because they would slam into
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: other particles and they would, you know, very quickly, so
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: one proton would hit another proton, and then those two
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: protons would share the original protons energy to have two
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: particles at half the energy, and then you have four
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: particles at accord of the energy, and eventually you have
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a trillion particles at a trillion the energy. But some
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: of them might make it out into space, right, Yeah,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: some of them might bleed out over the edge of
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere. But you wouldn't have like you know, you're
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: imagining like Superman rocketing from the surface of the Earth triumphantly,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: arm raised, Right, that's not what would happen. You just
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: gently heat the atmosphere, basically. Yeah, but some of them
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: might leak out into space, Yeah, exactly. Some of them
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: might leak into space, but not into Earth orbit. Got it,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Got it? All right, Jacob. Hope that answered your question,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: and so we'll we have one more question about the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: exploding universe, but before we get to it, let's take
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: a quick break, all right, Today we're answering listener questions
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: questions from you, the listeners of this podcast, and so
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: our third question of the day for this episode comes
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to us from someone in Dallas. Hi, Daniel and Jrge.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: This is Tom from Dallas. I love the show and
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: always leads me to more questions. And one thing that
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: I've been really grappling with is the expansion of the universe. Right, So,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: if the entire universe is expanding faster than the speed
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: of light because of dark energy, and it's not expanding
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: from a central point, but rather from all points in
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: spacetime simultaneously. That wouldn't everything just kind of be exploding
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: around us? How do I even exist? If I'm imploding
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: at faster than the speed of light? I don't feel
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: like I'm imploding Anyways, Guys, I really appreciate you taking
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: my question, and I really enjoy the show. Thanks for
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: everything you do. Yeah, I love that question. Um, I
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: love he had his mind blown. You know that he's
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: thinking about this cosmic sized questions he wants to understand.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: And that's my favorite thing is when you can get
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: you can give people a piece of information that they
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: didn't know about the universe, and then they try to
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: fit it into their brain. They're like, Okay, if that's
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: crazy thing you just said is true, then why doesn't
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: this happen? Why doesn't that happen? And that's physics, right,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: that's like how do I reconcile this thing with all
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the things I know? And so I love seeing people
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: do that. They're basically being physicists. Yeah, I feel like
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: we're doing our job. If it makes people think and
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: have their own questions, that's right. Not if we're making
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: people worried that they're exploding. But you know, it's a
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: good it's a good question to ask. They are their
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: minds are exploding, their mental consciousness, their connection to the universe. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: And it's a great question. And I think the question
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: comes from hearing that dark energy is expanding the universe, right,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: stretching it out. Yeah, because we had an episode where
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the tide of the podcast episode was is the universe exploding?
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And we said at the end that yes, the verse
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: that's right, the universe is exploding. And um, I think
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are tempted to think about that
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: like an explosion which has a center. Right, you blow
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: up a bomb, things fly out from the center, and
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: so you imagine, oh, the expansion is happening from the center,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: things are getting pushed out. But we we made the
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: point in that episode, which is true, that that's not
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the way it's happening. That dark energy expands all of space.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: So every point in space is being affected by dark energy.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: New space is being created all the time, everywhere. Right,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: It's like the dark energy is not just acting in
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the center of the universe or at the end. It's
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: like all the way through there's just a little bit
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: of dark energy that's pushing everything apart. That's right. And
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: it also it sounds really violent because we say that
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: dark energy is you know, almost three fourth of the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: energy of the universe is dark energy, So it sounds
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: like maw and this must be a really powerful force.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: It's pushing galaxy is apart, and galaxies have hundreds of
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: billions of stars, So what could possibly have the energy
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: to push those apart? And if that's applying to me too,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: if you could push galaxies apart, why isn't just just
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: shred me like tissue paper? Right? I think that's the
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: essence of the question. Yeah, And in particular, he said
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that if we are if the universe is expanding faster
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: than the speed of light, how is it that we
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: don't feel it right now? Like? Why why isn't my
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: um hand moving away from my other hand at the
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: speed of light? If the whole universe is expanding faster
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: than the speed of light. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Um Well,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the answer, the thing to understand and to grapple with
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: this question is that dark energy is the most powerful
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: thing in the universe in that it has the biggest
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: slice of the energy budget. But remember the dark energy
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: is everywhere, right, Most of the stuff in the universe
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: is not everywhere, like the matter in the universe is
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: clumped up into stars and galaxies and it's in most
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: of space doesn't have matter in it. Right. Dark energy
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't work like that dark energy. She's uniform. It's spread
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: equally everywhere, So it doesn't have to be very powerful
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: to add up to a really, really really big number
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: because most of the places where there's nothing, there's dark energy.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Do we know that for sure that dark energy is
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: evenly spread out, it's not at all clumped together or
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: in in you know, imperceptible clumps. That's right. We know
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: very little about dark energy, but that's the model that
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: fits the data. That dark energy is expanding the universe everywhere.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: And we again, we don't know what dark energy is, right.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: It's really just a description to the fact that the
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: universe is expanding. But it's consistent with something which is
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: a property of space, meaning that it's uniform. It's everywhere,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: you know, whether you're in the middle of a star
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: or you know, in the middle of one of our listeners,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: or in the middle of one of these huge voids
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: in the in the super supercluster sheets and bubbles. Right,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: it's everywhere, Right, it's like a it's like an even
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: glow that the universe has exactly, And because it's everywhere,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: it's not really very strong anywhere. Okay, So, yes, it's
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: creating new space between our galaxy and other galaxies, but
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of space there, so it adds up. Right,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: it can have a big effect, but between like your
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: hand and the your other hand, there's not a lot
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: of space. So it is creating new space there, but
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: it's very weak compared to the other forces at play,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: namely the chemical bonds holding your body together. Right. The
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: reason that you don't fall apart is that the stuff
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: in your body is holding onto the other stuff in
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: your body, and those bonds are more powerful than dark energy. Right.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think Tom was maybe wondering how
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: it can be that the universe is expanding faster than
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: the speed of light, but yet you don't feel it here. Yeah,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Well you don't feel it here because it's a very
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: small effect here, right, Like it's it's creating a very
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: small amount of space per space, and that adds up
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: to making things, to creating space faster than light can travel. Right, Like,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: imagine all the space between here and another galaxy. So
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: every piece of that space increases by one per cent,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and then another one percent, and another one percent, and
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: it's increasing at a rate that that it's faster than
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: light can go through it. Remember, nothing can go faster
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: than light through space, but there's no limit to how
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: fast you can create space. So all those little bits
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of space between us and that other galaxy are working
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: hard enough to create more space than light can fly through.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: I was thinking maybe a good analogy was that, you know,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: if you grab a rubber band or a strip of
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: rubber band and you stretch it. You know, the ends
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: of the rubber band can be moving really fast relative
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: to each other, but if you're somewhere in the rubber band,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't feel the stretch that violently. Yeah, I think
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: that works, except you know, we don't know if the
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: universe has an edge, right, But if you just pick
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: two points, right, like two galaxies, you can think of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: them as the edges of the rubber band, and uh,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and all the space between them is like the rubber
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: bandy part of the rubber band, Then yeah, I think
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: that works, right, because the distance between the two alexis
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: is the sum of all the increasing distances um and
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the little bits of space in between. Right, yeah, yeah,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: So dark energy is there, is out there, it's everywhere
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: in the universe. It's also inside you. And the reason
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: that like isn't ripping you away from the Earth is that,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: like the force of gravity is strong enough to keep
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: you on Earth. The force of gravity, even though it's
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: so weak, is stronger than dark energy is right here, right,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Dark energy, remember, is very weak on a local scale,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: but only only great when it adds up over huge
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: pieces of space. So you're like you're in one point
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: of the rubber band and the ground the ribband is
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: stretching a little bit, but you're keeping yourself together stronger
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: than the rubber band is stretching you at that little
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: point in the band exactly right, Like if you're you know,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: you're it's a windy day and somebody's getting blown, but
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: they can grab onto something, right, You can grab onto
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: a pole or to your friend or something. You can
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: overcome the power of the wind just by holding on. Right,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: It's the same thing. Dark energy is just like wind,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: expanding everything in space, but it's it's a bit of
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: a gentle ease, and so it doesn't take that much
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: of a force to overcome it. And that's why, for example,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: our galaxy is not getting torn apart, right, the space
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: between galaxies is increasing. Why isn't our galaxy getting shredded?
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: The reason is gravity. There's enough gravity in our galaxy
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to hold itself together to battle dark energy. We don't
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: know how long that's gonna that's gonna be the case
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: because dark energy turned on like five billion years ago
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: and started expanding the universe. We don't know why. We
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: don't know how long it's going to keep going. We
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: don't know if it's going to increase the intensity of
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the expansion or stop and turn around. We don't really know.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: So we'll forever be weaker than you know, local gravity
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: and local chemical bonds, and we don't know. It could
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: be in the future it's much more powerful and it
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: shreds everything, right, or it could turn off and get
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: board and go do something else. Looking forward to that
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: all right, So Tom asked, why isn't dark energy exploding everything,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: even the things around is? And the answer is that
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: it is. It is exploding everything. That's right, You've and you,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Tom Boom, we just literally blew your mind. But we
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: use the word exploding and the word faster than the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: speed of light kind of when a universe skill, right, like,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: on a universe scale, it's sort of exploding. And the
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: ends of the university, if there are ends, or two
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: extreme ends of the universe, are maybe moving faster than
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the speed of light relative to each other. But on
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: like a local, little tiny, hey my house scale, it's
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: not such an incredible effect. Right, Well, those ends are
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: not moving faster than speed of light relative to each other,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: but space is being created between them faster than light
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: can move through it, which is a slightly technical difference
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: in the way you say it, but yeah, exactly, yeah, okay, alright, cool.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: So those are three awesome questions, mostly from the Southern
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: United States. That's right, randomly selected, but this time they
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: mostly ended up from the southern US. But we get
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: questions from all over the world. So if you're a
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: listener from a far flung place, please send us your questions,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: or if you just have a burning question about something
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: in the universe and you'd like us to explain it,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: please write it in. I love getting your emails. Yeah,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: so please send them into questions at Daniel and Jorge
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: dot com. Well, thanks for listening. We hope you guys
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: enjoyed that. Tune in next time, and if you're a
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: dictator of a country with a billion dollar signs budget,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: consider investing it in a podcast or a giant space
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: gun using rubber bands to fly protons into outer space.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: There you go, give this man some money that I
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: will agree with. See you next time. If you still
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
• 41:50
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• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or email us at
• 41:57
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• 42:00
  Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
• 42:07
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• 42:10
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