Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions 46: Mountains, ether and time!

Transcript

Listener Questions 46: Mountains, ether and time! · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, how are the mountains in Panama?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: They are wet and hot and beautiful.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Wet and hot in the best possible way.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: That's right, the safest for work sounds plasma?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Are they like tall mountains? Is Panama famous for having
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: tall mountains?
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Sort of. We're a pretty small country, but there is
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: a pretty large volcano there. It's about twelve thousand feet.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, that sounds pretty impressive coming from like the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Danish point of view.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Are you from Denmark?
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: My wife's family is from Denmark and we all speak Danish.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: And do they have mountains there?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You know? They think they have mountains. But the highest
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: point in Denmark is like five hundred feet above sea level, But.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: The rest of the country is like two thousand feet
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: below sea level, isn't it. So it's a pretty big
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: mountain relatively.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: No, that's the Netherlands. Denmark is mostly above sea level,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: oh right, which makes it very flat and very nice
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: to ride bikes around.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: What's the biggest mountain in Denmark?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: They call it Himmelbeard, which literally means the mountain of Heaven.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: WHOA, how big is it?
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: It's like five hundred feet above sea level?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I think the hill I live on is bigger than
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: five hundred feet? Does I mean I live in heaven?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: You live in Danish Heaven.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I live in California Heaven Valhalla. I am Horhembi cartoonists
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I love mountains in the summer.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Oh not in the spring or fall.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Definitely not in the winter. Spring and fall can be acceptable.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Now do you like to look at mountains? Do you
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: like to climb mountains? Do you like to dig under mountains?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: How do you like to position yourself relative to a
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: large rock?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I like to be in the mountains in the summer.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful and the fresh air and hiking and the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: views and all that stuff. In the winter, I prefer
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: to be far away from the mountains, though I do
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: enjoy looking at them, you know, out of the window
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of an airplane.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: But doesn't that require you to get out of your couch?
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Isn't that the problem here?
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I have no problems getting off my couch in the summer.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I love going to Aspen, and I love the Rockies.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: But man, in the winter that is just not fit
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: for human habitation.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I see, so nine months a year we can find
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: you in a couch. Three months a year you're open
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: a mountain.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty good life. That's my personal valhalla.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: That's right, it's called tenure. You just disappear into a mountain.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: When you get ten year in the University of California,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: they actually give you a couch, not a mountain. Not
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a mountain. No, there's a lot more couches to go
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: around than mountains.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Just a mountain of paperwork. But anyways, welcome to our podcast,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeart Radio.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: In which we climb the mountain of mysteries that we
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: have about the way the universe works. We want to
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: take everything apart and understand how it all interacts, how
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: those little particles push and pull on each other, how
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: they dance together to make the reality that we're aware of,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and how they build themselves up into mountains and planets
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and solar systems and galaxies and the entire universe that
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: we one day hope to understand and explain to you.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: That's right. We stand on the shoulders of giants to
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: get a better view of the entire cosmos, hopefully getting
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: a little bit closer to the stars and what makes
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: them turn, what makes them shine, what makes them explode,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: and what will happen to them in the far off future.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: One of the most incredible things about physics is that
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: those questions about the stars and the questions under our
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: feet can often be very closely related. They might even
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: be the same. The same laws of physics that tell
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: us how the stars move and how they orbit each
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: other and how the universe develops should be applicable to
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the rocks and the bananas and the white chocolate and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: everything else that we find around.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Us, Especially if you live on the side. That would
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: be the same physics, right.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: That's right. Solar Newton probably had that realization a lot
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: earlier than ours.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was probably sweating the details of living
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: on the Sun.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: My favorite model of how the Sun works is actually
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Gary Larson's model.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what did he say about the Sun?
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Well, he has this awesome far side cartoon where it's
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: just like a sweaty guy inside the Sun and he's
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: got a big lever that says rise or set.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I think he had the green biology, not astrophysics.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: No, obviously that makes no sense because if you're inside
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the sun, what do you do to rise and set? Right?
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: That's your quibble with the cartoon, is like the direction
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: of up and down, not the person living inside the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: sun pulling a lever.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: No, you'd need one lever for every planet. Right, how
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: do you rise over Jupiter and set over the Moon?
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: And yes, that's my quibble with the science of the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: far side.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Maybe he was pulling the Earth lever.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot going on in that cartoon.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: At the same time, it's God layers.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: But speaking of layers, there are many layers to the Earth.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Some of them go pretty high, which gives us a
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: view of everything that surrounds us and makes us all
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: ask questions about how things work in the universe.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: It's just part of being a curious human in the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: world to wonder how everything works, to look for explanations,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: to try to tell stories about the universe that makes
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: sense to us. That's what we try to do with
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the cutting edge of science. That's what we do here
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, and that's what we want you to
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: do when you are going about your lives. I want
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: you all to think like physicists and wonder how does
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that work work? Do I really understand how these two
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: ideas come together?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: And do I really want to climb that mountain in
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: the winter?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: No, No, I want to take a helicopter to the top.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: That's what I want.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I do. Like mountains in the winter, that's the one
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: you can ski and snowboard.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: You see that, Like those are good things I don't understand. Yeah,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: you're super fun.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: What's not to like about strapping some planks on your
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: feet and then jumping down a mountain?
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cold, it's expensive, it's dangerous. What couldn't you love?
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: The thrill, the fun, the outdoor activity of it.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I get that on the four or five every day
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: around here.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Well there you go. Should just take the four or
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: five to the top of the mountain. But anyways, people
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: do have questions. We all have questions about the universe,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: about how things work around us, and sometimes we answer
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: those questions on this podcast.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: We encourage you to think deeply about the nature of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: the universe and to write to us when you are
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: confused or you want inside. We answer all of our
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: listener emails. Please send your questions to Questions at Danielanjorge
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: dot com.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: So today on the podcast we'll be tackling listener questions
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: number forty six, Couch Surfing Edition.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure nobody who's asking these questions has visited
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the Sun.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: For example, Well, how do you know, Daniel? Do you
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: know all of our listeners? I don't know all of
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: our listeners and their travel experiences.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: But I know that nobody has visited the Sun, So
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: that rules out everybody, including our listeners.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: How do you know, Daniel? Or how do you know
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: there aren't any aliens listening to the podcast?
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Are we doing that kind of podcast today? Dream skettic condition?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: How do you know, Daniel? How do you know? How
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: do you know I'm even Daniel today? If you're going
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to be really scotch.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: That's right. How do I know you're not the alien?
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Hmmm? Or I could be my brother Chimoon and you
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: know that my mother can't tell us apart on the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: phone still after fifty years.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, are we getting into the dynamics of you
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: and your brother again?
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Let's answer some listener questions.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, let's get back on track here. Our listeners have
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: questions and sometimes we answer them here on the podcast,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and today we have three pretty awesome questions. One of
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: them is about the biggest mountain possible, the other one
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: is about the Higgs field, and the third one is
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: about time and can it go faster or slower depending
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: on where you are. So let's jump right in. Our
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: first question comes from Nicholas.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: Hello, gentlemen, this is Nicholas from Sweden. Is there a
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: limit on how high a mountain can be come on Earth?
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: Before Phystix limits it? When the base of the mountain
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: grow larger and larger, does the curvature of the Earth
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: affects the height?
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Mm?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Awesome question from Nicholas. Now do you think Nicholas knows
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the difference of where Vikings come from in Scandinavia?
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure Nicholas has a good grasp on his
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: own history. I guess.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Did the Swedish countess Vikings? I think I've been there
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: and I think I did see a Viking ship there right.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, the Danes, the Swedes, and the Norwegians all have
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Viking ancestry. The Fins are different. They're Nordic but not Scandinavian.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: But did they have Vikings too?
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure some people who live in Finland
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: today have Viking ancestry the way people who live in
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: like Sardinia have Viking ancestry because the Vikings went everywhere
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: and did horrible things to local people. But the Viking
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: culture itself is more Scandinavian. Now, where does thor come
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: into this?
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Was thor? Technically Swedish, Danish or Finnish.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Thor is part of Scandinavian folklore. So yeah, that would
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: be Danish, Swedish, Norwegian.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad we cleared that up on our podcast
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Scandinavian Culture and three and Mythology.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And those countries all speak very similar languages, like if
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you speak Danish, you can understand no Region. If you
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: speak Swedish, you can understand Norwegian. If you speak Swedish
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: you can understand Norwegion. Norwegians say they can't understand Danish,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: but we know they can. But a big difference between
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: these countries is that Norway and Sweden have mountains. Denmark
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't really have any.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: But anyways, back to physics on our question. Nicholas from
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Sweden has a question about how high a mountain can
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: be on Earth before there are physical limitations to it,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: like Is there no limit to how big a mountain
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: can be? Or is there a point of which the
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: mountain just can grow?
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: This is a really fun question. I love this question
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: because there's lots of different ways you can answer it.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: You can answer it like a physicist, or you could
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: try to answer it like a geologist, and it shows
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: you how different sciences think about different things, and how
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: all science is like about building models that kind of
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: apply to the real world and have limitations.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Wait, do you get different answers if you answer it
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: as different scientists or do you come to the same conclusion.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: I would hope the same answer.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: You tell very different stories and you sometimes get roughly
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the same answer.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, this is going to depend on the definition
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: of a mountain now, or like the definition of height
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: or size.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Like all of science, it's going to depend on what
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: you include in your description and what you don't. So,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: for example, if we're going to take a physics point
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: of view, the physicist in me says, let's just think
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: about a mountain and like a big cone of rock,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and let's ask what's the tallest pile of rocks with
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the biggest cone you can build where the top doesn't
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: have so much pressure that it like crushes the bottom.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Think of it like building a skyscraper.
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: Hmmm.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: You're saying that if I just pile a bunch of
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: rocks or dirt, at some point the weight of it
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: is going to be so much that something's going to
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: happen to the bottom of it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Rock is not infinitely strong, right. You make a
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: super tall tower of rock, and the pressure on the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: bottom rock is going to be so great that it's
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: going to start to flow. It doesn't have to melt,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: it's not necessarily going to become liquid, but it will
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: start to flow because the pressure is so great. This
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: actually happens already inside the Earth and the sort of
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: upper layers of the Earth. The rock is not melted,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it's not liquid, but it does still flow because of
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: incredible pressure. So all materials have something called compressive strength
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: that if you push on it hard enough, it will
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: flow or crumble.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Right, But that assumes it has somewhere to flow, right, Yeah,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: that's right. Like, if it can flow, it can be
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: pretty almost infinitely compressible.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In this case, though, if you're building a mountain,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: then what's going to happen is that your mountain's base
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: is going to flow and it's not going to get taller.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So as you add rocks to the top, you're going
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: to be adding pressure on the bottom, and the bottom
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: is going to flow and spread out. So there's a
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: sort of physics model there that can help you calculate,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: like what is the tallest pile of rocks you can
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: make without the base spreading out from underneath you?
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Right, I guess maybe it does maybe come down to
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the definition of a mountain, which is like a pile
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: of rocks above some arbitrary level that you pick to
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: be the base of the mountain.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And so if you define a mountain like that, you
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: have a flat plane, you start by piling rocks and
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: you build those up and build those up. Then it's
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: a pretty simple model. And the answer you get for
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: like what is the tallest pile of rocks you can build,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: depends on just a couple of things. It depends on
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the gravity, because the more gravity there is, the more
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: pressure there's going to be on the bottom. Right, in
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a no gravity environment, there's no pressure. In a higher
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: gravity environment is more pressure. And it also depends on
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: the compressive strength of the material, Like if you build
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it out of titanium or you build it out of popcorn,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you're going to get a different height mountain. But just
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: really those two numbers are all that it depends on.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I think there's something in civil engineering where there's
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: sort of like a maximum angle that you can pile
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: a bunch of rocks or a bunch of dust or
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: a bunch of powder. And so I think what you're
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: saying is that at some point, if you just start
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: piling rocks, at some point the bottom rocks are going
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: to float outwards to the sides, right, exactly, And that's
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: kind of why like a pile of rocks it looks
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: like triangle basically.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: And the more stuff you put into it, the more
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: the more it's just gonna basically fall off to the
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: side and roll down the side of the mountain.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: And this is a very simplistic model, right, or ignoring
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: everything happening under the surface of the thing that formed
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the mountain. Right, Nobody actually builds mountains this way, starting
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: with a pile of rocks and adding them one at
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: a time. But in this simplistic model, you can plug
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: in the numbers and say how tall could you make
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: a mountain out of granite? For example, if you had
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: the gravitational force of the Earth, and the answer you
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: get is about twenty two kilometers high, which you know
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: for a physics model is pretty good, Like it's order
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: of magnitude the right answer.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Interesting. I mean, you plugged in the numbers and you
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: got twenty two kilometers, But what does your model say
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: happens after twenty two kilometers.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: After twenty two kilometers, then as you add rocks on top,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the bottom breaks down and it spreads out, So it
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: basically max is out at twenty two kilometers.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Like, you add another rock and the base gets wider.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So you can get a higher volume to
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: your mountain, but you can't get a taller mountain.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Oh I see, So the more rocks you add, the
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: just the wider with.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Yet yeah, you get a fatter mountain. Exactly.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: But this again, this depends on a totally flat world, right.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, it depends on a totally flat world. And it
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: also ignores the way we know that mountains are made. Right.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: In reality, mountains are not made by people piling rocks
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: on top of a flat plane. They're made by tectonic plates.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Slamming into each other with certain forests and certain speed,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and then one of them subducting under the other, forcing
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: it up to create those mountain ranges, like the tallest
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: mountains on Earth, Everest come from the Indian plates slimming
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: into the Asian plate and creating the Himalayas.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: M but pushing the rocks.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Up, pushing some of the rock up exactly. And for
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: a long time in geology there's been a debate about
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: what limits the height of mountains, some people arguing that
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: it's the pressure from the tectonic plates, and other people
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: arguing that no, it's actually erosion, because you know, weather
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and water and rivers and wind and all that stuff
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: breaks down mountain eventually. So for a long time people
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: were arguing about which of the two factors controls the
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: height of mountains.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Well, there's also in geology buoyancy, right, And at some
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: point when you pile an of rocks, it starts to
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: sink into the earth.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: That's true. But here you have two plates pushing on
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: top of each other. So one plate is being pushed
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: up by the other plate, one is sinking down, and
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: one is getting pushed up. Right, So I'm not sure
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: that buoyancy is a factor. I just read a paper
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: in Nature that came out last year that showed that
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the height of mountains around the Earth is totally correlated
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: with the pressure between the plates. Like you can measure
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the forces along the two plates, and they show that
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the greater the pressure between the two plates, the taller
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the mountains, which suggests that actually erosion is basically irrelevant
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: and the only thing that determines the heights of mountains
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: on Earth is how hard these plates are slamming into
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: each other or or me.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: That's the biggest factor though, right.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the overwhelming factor to within their arabars. And
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: that means that if you've wanted a taller mountain, you need,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: like in to zoom faster along the surface of the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Earth before it slammed into China, because it would apply
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: a greater pressure and make taller Himalayas. Right.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: But once you form a mountain, I think another limiting
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: factor is, like I said, the buoyancy of it, right,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: because the rocks inside the Earth are sort of soft
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: in a geological scale, and so that at some point
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: the mountain is going to sink into the Earth.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that in reality, there's lots of things
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that all contribute but me and we can never model
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: all the processes that control these things, so we try
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to just isolate, like what is the dominant factor. Then
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: this Nature paper claims that it's the force between these
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: two mountains, and that's really cool because it makes you
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: think about like what might have happened earlier on Earth,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Like when the Earth was hotter than the convection cells
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: within the Earth were probably cycling faster, which might have
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: meant plate tectonics were pushing things together harder, which might
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: mean that there were taller mountains on Earth earlier.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: On right, right, But I guess this is I think
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: you're talking about the origin of mountains, and like here
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: on Earth, this is how mountains were formed. Maybe they're
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: correlated to the pressure between the tectonic plates, but I
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: think Nicholas's question is like, what's the biggest one you
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: can form?
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good point, And there I guess physics says twenty
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: two kilometers is the tallest mountain you could make on
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Earth without the base of it flowing out from under you.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: And as you say, they're also buoyancy effects, So I
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: would guess somewhere around that number around twenty kilometers.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And then he also had a bit of a question
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: here about the curvature of the Earth. How does that
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: affect your calculation, because your calculation assumes a totally flat earth.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but on these scales, even a mountain is pretty
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: small compared to the curvature of the Earth. So your
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: mountain would have to be like, really really huge before
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the curvature affected it. So I think that in every
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: case we can basically ignore the curvature.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess maybe the question is what would happen,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Like if I took the Moon or maybe a whole
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: other planet, I pulvarized it in the rocks, and I
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: just started pouring those rocks in one place on Earth.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: It would at first start to make a mountain. And
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: then at about twenty you're seeing out of about twenty
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: two cols, the more rocks I pour into, the more
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: it's just going to flow to the sides.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah exactly.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: And then and then what's going to happen is the
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Earth gonna end up kind of oblong shape like a
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: cone head.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, eventually it would grow wide enough that
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: it just becomes a feature of the Earth, right, because
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the Earth varies and radius by more than twenty kilometers.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: All right, well, I guess that's the general answer for
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Nicholas Daniels says that Quartant's model, the biggest mountain that
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: you can get on Earth would be about twenty two
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: kilometers above sea level.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: But that's a simple physics model. It ignores lots of stuff.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: So before you submit a pitch to the US government
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: to build the world's tallest mountain, please get a more
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: accurate model.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: All right, thanks Nicholas for that question. So let's get
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: to our other questions here about the Higgs field and
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: the flow of time. So we'll dig into those, but
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: first let's take a quick break. All right, we're answering
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: listener questions here today, and our next question comes from Martin.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: Back in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, it was believed
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: that there was an ether that which permeated the universe. This,
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: of course, has now been disproved. However, fast forward many
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: years and scientists have shown that there is a Higgs
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: Boson field. Although not exactly the same, they do seem
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: to be quite similar. My question is, are there other
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: theories in the past that were disproved but are actually
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: similar to theories or proofs that we believe to be
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: true today.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: All right, great question here, going a little bit back
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: in history about our ideas if what the universe was
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: made out of. We used to have this idea of
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: the ether in our classmers.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the ether was an idea which was popular
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: for quite a while to try to explain the mystery
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of what is light wiggling through? We understood sound waves
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: were wiggles in air, and there were other kinds of waves,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: and there were waves in the ocean, and the idea
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that light was a wave raised the question of like
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: what is light wiggling through? And so for a long
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: time people imagine that space wasn't actually empty, it was
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: filled with something the ether that light was propagating.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Through, sort of like you know, we have air around
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: us here on the surface of Earth, and sound waves
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: are really just you know, pressure waves through air.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right, And the speed of those waves
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: is relative to the air that's the medium. And so
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: you can like catch up to a sound wave and
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: move with it, for example, as it moves through the medium.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: And so there was this idea that maybe light worked
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: the same way as sound like maybe light is a
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: wave that is being spread by something that's all around us.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And this was like a universized idea that
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: all of space was filled with this stuff we hadn't
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: ever discovered before, and then later the idea was discarded,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: and ever since then, this idea of an ether is
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: so mocked in popular science a lot. You know, anytime
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: you suggest anything that fills the universe, people are like, wow,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: well that sounds like the ether revisited. Ha ha ha,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: we know how all that worked out.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, I didn't know if this is it since
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: we're so snarky.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I think there's an element to Martin's question, which
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: is like, is this idea of a Higgs field which
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: fills the universe? Is that just the ether revisited? You know,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: like should we be concerned about inventing ideas of stuff
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: filling the universe because that didn't work out well for.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Us once, But then later you sort of build quantum theory,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: which sort of relies on an idea that's very similar
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: to either, right, quantum field.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So to put a pin in the story of
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the ether, the reason we didn't believe the ether exists
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: is because light doesn't move through space the way sound
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: moves through waves. Right. Sound moves at a constant speed
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: relative to its medium, but light moves at a constant
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: speed relative to any observer. So the Michaelson morally experiment
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: showed that like can't be moving through the ether because
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: as we move through the ether, we measure light to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: always have the same speed. It turns out that light
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: just propagates through space actually to propagation through these quantum fields.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: So as you say we have this sort of like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: new updated version of the ether, instead of imagining the
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: universe is filled with stuff as a medium for light
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: to propagate through, we say that light propagates through space
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: itself as fluctuations in those quantum fields. But importantly, and
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: this is the big difference, those fields don't have a
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: frame of reference like air does, so you can't catch
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: up to a photon. Photons are always moving at the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: speed of light relative to the observer.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: I wonder if you're sort of getting up to our
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: limits of knowledge, because you're talking sort of about relating
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: relativity right and relative istic speeds to quantum theory and
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: quantum fields, which the physicists actually been able to relate
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the two.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: So physicists cannot relate to general relativity, which is about
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the curvature space and gravity, to quantum fields. But we
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: have successfully married special relativity things moving really really fast
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and even at the speed of light to quantum fields.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: And so quantum field theory is fully special relativistic and
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: incorporates speed of light transmission and particles moving at the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: speed of light, all that stuff. So we have a
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: very robust theory that unifies quantum mechanics and special relativity.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Meaning that these ideas that you can go faster than
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: the speed of light, that's built into quantum physics.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's built into quantum physics exactly. And quantum physics
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: tells us this fascinating picture of the universe, which sounds
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: kind of familiar, like hm, the universe actually isn't empty
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: out there. Space is filled with all of these quantum fields.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: There's lots of them. There's the Higgs field, but is
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: also the electromagnetic field and the electron field, and all
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the quark fields and maybe fields for dark matter, we
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: don't know. But space is filled with all of these
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: weird quantum fields that are sort of reminiscent of the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: ether in the sense that like, oh, space isn't empty,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: there's stuff out there happening.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: And so I think Martin's question here is like, you know,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: we used to it. Now you're sort of seems can
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: make fun of people who believed in the ether, but
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: at the same time, now you believe that there is
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: something sort of like the ether that you call quantum fields.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: And so I think his question is like, are there
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: other examples of that? Like are there things we thought
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: was right but then disproved but then later it turned
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: out to be Well, it's sort of like this.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, and it reminds us to
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: be humble, right that things that we like chuckle at today,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: in the future people might be like, actually that was
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: a good idea, and you should have pursued that a
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: little bit more.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like maybe you'll try skiing one day and like it,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: and you'd be like, oh my god, I should have
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: been doing this for years.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe I'll learn how to ski at the speed
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of light. That'd be awesome.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, need it would take no time to
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: do it, so see, like you would suffer very little.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Perfect another really great story about the dismissal and then
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: resurgence of a big idea is also connected to relativity.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: But this is general relativity, and it's the idea of
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: the cosmological constant. You know. Einstein, when he he was
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: developing his theory of the universe, how space is curved
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and how gravity's actually just the motion of stuff through
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: that curved space instead of a force. He put together
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: his theory of space time and he looked at it
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and he realized, hold on a second, if this is true,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the universe has a bunch of mass in it, Why
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: isn't the universe just collapsing. Why isn't the space getting
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: curved in a way that everything just rushes together and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: collapses the universe. And he looked out in the universe
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: and he thought the universe was static. He thought all
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: the stars just sat out there in space forever. So
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: he added a fudge factor, a cosmological constant, to the
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: equations of general relativity to balance out the effects of
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: mass and hang everything sort of on balance in place.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: He just made that up, like he's like, oh, this
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: is weird. I'll just add a number here. Yeah.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: It turns out if you add a number, you avoid
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: this disastrous prediction of the equations, and only a few
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: years later he realized that that was sort of silly
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: and unnecessary.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Wait, what do you mean? He realized that he didn't
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: need that constant or did other people? I think you
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: didn't need it.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: No, he realized that we didn't need that constant, and
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: he actually called it like a huge blunder later in life.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't didn't need it? Like, what was this mistake?
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Well, he was trying to describe a static universe, the
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: universe where nothing is happening. There's no expansion, there's certainly
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: no acceleration. And this is kind of a crazy theory anyway,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: because it predicts a universe sort of like balanced on
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a knife edge, you know, a little bit more matter
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and things would collapse, a little bit more cosmological constant
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and things would expand. So it wasn't really anyway a
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: great description of the universe as we saw it. And
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: then a few years later Hubble discovered that it anyway
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: wasn't the universe we were living in, the universe wasn't static.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: It was expanding, right, there was this positive expansion of
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the universe. So Einstein figures, oh, well, you don't need
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the cosmological constant to balance the mass. You just have
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: this positive expansion already the universe somehow began with this expansion,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and the mass isn't enough to overcome that. And so
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: that was Einstein's picture of the universe to accommodate what
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Hubble and lots of other people, of course, discovered that
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the universe was already expanding.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: And so if you find out that the universe is expanding,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: then you don't need that fudge factor. You can just
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: explain it without it.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if the universe is expanding, then without that fudge factor,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: you have two options. Either we'll never collapse because the
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: expansion is so fast, or we just haven't collapsed yet
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: because enough time hasn't passed for gravity pull everything back together.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: So that was sort of Einstein's new picture, and he
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: got rid of the cosmological constancy.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: He was like dope, he.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Was like, oh, I didn't need that. That was a mistake.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: But then decades later it resurfaced and now it's a
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: crucial part of our understanding of the universe.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: What do you mean what changed?
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Well, in two thousand we discovered that the universe isn't
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: just expanding, it's expanding, and accelerating. The expansion is happening
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: faster and faster every year. Remember Einstein's description of what
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: was happening is, all right, there's some expansion, but it's
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: slowing down because of gravity, and either it's going to
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: peter out and turn around to come back to a crunch,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: or it's just going to sort of drift out gradually forever.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: But then we discovered this expansion isn't slowing down, it's
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: speeding up. And in order to make that happen, what
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: do you need? You've got to put back in the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: cosmological constant to make that acceleration happen.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: What So, without the fudge factor, then you just get
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: a universe that's evenly expanding.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Without it, you get a universe whose acceleration is either
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: zero or negative. You need the cosmological constant to have
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: positive acceleration to the expansion. And that's not to say
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: we understand why that's happening. It's just like, can we
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: even use the equations to describe what we see? And
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: to do that we need Einstein's fudge factor to return.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: And is that the official name of it, Einstein's fudge factor?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Eff. No, the much fancier name of the cosmological constant.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: But the cosmological constant just a number we put into
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the equations to describe the universe. Can we have no
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: explanation for it, no mechanism that can describe it or
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: predict it. Our attempts actually to calculate what the cosmological
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: concept might be from the quantum fields that fill space
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: give an answer that are off by ten to the
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: one hundred. So we're nowhere near understanding why this constant
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: has its number.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Interesting, So that's kind of another modern day version of
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: the either Are there any other concepts like that? In physics?
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: They're all over the place. Another famous one is string theory.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: String theory actually originated as an attempt to describe how
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: quarks interact. Now we describe quark interactions using the strong force,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: and we have a really nice theory of it called
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: quantum chromodynamics, which explains the fields involved and the gluons
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and all that complicated stuff we've talked about on the podcast.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: But originally, in like the fifties and sixties, people were
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: trying to use string theory to describe the strong interaction,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: but it didn't really work very well. And in nineteen
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: seventy three when we discover the jpe side particle, which
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: is a bound state of two quarks. That was really
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: triumph for this other idea, this quantum chromo dynamics theory
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of the strong interactions. So people abandoned string theory. They
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: were like a string theory total failure. Couldn't explain the
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: strong interactions. And then about fifteen year years later, people realized, oh, actually,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: there are things you can do to string theory to
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: make it to be able to describe not just the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: strong interaction, but every kind of interaction, maybe even gravity.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: And then you had the string theory revolutions of the
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, and now string theory is everywhere. It's
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: like the best candidate for our theory of everything.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: So it failed to describe one little thing. But then
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: people figured out it can describe lots of other things,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: but doesn't it still fail to describe the one thing
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: that it had failed to describe before.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: One of the challenges of string theory is that there's
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: lots and lots of string theories, and so they thought
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: initially that there was a basic problem with string theory
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that it couldn't describe the strong interactions. But that's because
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: they hadn't yet considered like the right string theory, and
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: so other people found ways to put constraints on the
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: strings and add bells and whistles to them that allowed
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: them to describe accurately the strong force and all the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: other stuff. The problem is, of course, we don't know
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: which string theory is the right one, and we can't
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: test it. So it's not like string theory is proven,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: but it's definitely a deep area of research where it
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: was once abandoned.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Right. It's exciting, it's maybe because of its potential, but
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: we don't really know if it's true, which was sort
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: of Martin's question, like is there something we thought wasn't
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: true but now we think it's true.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair. We definitely don't know that string theory
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: is true, but it's no longer on the dust benef theories.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Sounds like physics is constantly changing, right, And things that
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: ideas that we thought were working we would start out
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: to work, and things we thought work some things don't work.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: It's a process.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It's definitely a process, and we're constantly mining the past.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: If you look at the history of physics, there are
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: lots of scenarios where like nothing happens for forty years
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and then somebody reads an old paper and they're like,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: hold on a second, this is a great idea. How
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: come nobody's doing this? And sometimes ideas just need their moment,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: the right person to read them at the right time
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: and connect them with current thinking. So we're constantly digging
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: into our own past to look for good ideas that
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: we've ignored.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Make physics sound kind of fashionable and fickle.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, remember, physics, like all science, is of the people,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: by the people, for the people. It's not like methodical
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: or consistent in the way that it explores all ideas.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It's just like, what are people into, what are they
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: thinking about? What ideas do they have? What inspires them?
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: It's a creative process.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: What's trendy?
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: Now?
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Would you spell fickle with a pH then or fashionable
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: with a pH?
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Sh Ion, you're in charge of the names, so I
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: defer to you. Good, thank you, I'll take that title.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's get to our last question here
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: of the day, which is about the flow of time
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: and universal symmetry. So let's dig into that. But first
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: let's take another quick break. Right, We're answering listener questions.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: And our second question was whether there are a lot
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: of concepts in physics that we thought weren't true, but
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: then we realize we're true or sort of true. And
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: it sounds like there are, oh, absolutely, and it sounds
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: like physics is always changing. And so that was the
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: answer for that. But now we have our third question
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: of the day, which is about time.
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: Hell hold, I'm looking for a place in the universe.
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: Will time go way faster related to the out and
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: envelopment of this place? Is there a place like that?
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: What can make this place real? I thought maybe some
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: gravitational a different speeds effect can cause it. What did
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: you say? Thank you here? Nadav from Israel?
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: All right, interesting question. I'm not one hundred percent sure
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: I understand it, but it sounds like they're asking, can
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: you somehow make time go faster?
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: And think he wants like a box he can step
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: in where things will go much much faster than when
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: he steps out. Less time will have passed on the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: outside than on the inside.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: More time. I think, like I think what he's may
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: be referring to is that, you know, a lot of
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: the ideas we have about time is that they're about
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: slowing down time, right, Like if you go close to
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: the speed of lighter really fast and time will slow
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: down for you, or if you go near a black hole,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: time will slow down for you. I wonder if he's asking,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: you know, is there some sort of effect in physics
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: that will do the opposite and make time go faster.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll go faster for the people like in the box, right,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: so that people step in the box, they're in the
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: box for a year in our time, and they come
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: out and one hundred years is past for them. That's
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: what he wants, right.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Right, right, so time moves more, time has gone by
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: for them, they're older.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, time has flowed faster inside the box and outside
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the box.
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a good question, and you're right that this
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: is not something that's easy to assemble in physics, not
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: something we naturally see, but we should dig into like
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: why that works and how that works. But I do
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: have an idea for an adove, though I think it's
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: probably impractical.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Hmmmm, Well, in practicality has never stopped physicists, So why
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: start now?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly all right.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: So we're looking for a way to accelerate time, maybe
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: like if you wanted to age your wine faster, you
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: could stick it in this box and it would get
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: older faster. Or if you want to grow your vegetables faster,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: I guess it's one they used for it.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Or chemical reactions could happen faster. You could
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: like make new fossil fuels in the blink of an
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: eye rather than waiting one hundred million years.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. If you want to like warn jeans,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: but you didn't want to wait and be fashiona willed
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: with a pH you could use this machine.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or you could roast to Thanksgiving turkey in a
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: minute right instead of hours.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is the actual killer app for
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: this fast slow organic food.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: There you go. Physics saves Thanksgiving.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. All right, So what's your idea
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: for making this happen? So first of all, why is
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: it that we can only usually slow down time in
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: the universe.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Well, there's two different kinds of ways to change how
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: time flows. One of them is based on speed velocity,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: and that one's symmetric. And then then one of them
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: is based on gravity and a curvature of space, and
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: that one is asymmetric. So the velocity one is the
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: one people mostly think about. This is like, if you
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: see a clock moving past you really fast, you're going
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: to see it ticking slower than your clock. Right. So
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Jorges in a spaceship, he's flying by the earth, he
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: is a clock. I'm watching his clock from the earth,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: comparing it to my clock, and I see Jorgey's clock
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: is ticking slower. So Hoory's time is passing slower than mine.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Right, It's going slow for everybody, which is weird.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's symmetric. You might think, well, if Daniel
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: is seeing Jorges clock going slower, doesn't that mean Jorge
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: is seeing Daniel's clock going faster. The answer is no,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: because Jorge also sees Daniel moving fast. Like if you're
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: in the spaceship, from your perspective, that Earth is flying
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: by you at high speed, and the same rule applies
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: moving clocks run slow. You see my clock moving fast,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: so you see my clock ticking slower. So I see
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: your time moving slow. You see my time moving slow.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Nobody sees anybody's time moving quickly. And that's the whole
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: puzzle of special relativity and the twin paradox which we've
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: dug into other times on the episode, But that doesn't
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: give you any way to speed up time.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe let's dig into it a little bit. So
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: that's just how it looks to the two of us.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: For each of us as we pass by each other,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: but at some point, if we wanted to meet up again,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: one of us has to turn around, and for that person,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: time is going to move slower or faster.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Right, So, if you decide to turn your spaceship around
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: and come back to Earth so we can compare our
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: clocks like right on top of each other, without any
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: velocity relative to each other, then the rules of special
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: relativity don't really apply anymore because when you turned around,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: you accelerated, and this simple description of special relativity only
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: applies to things moving at constant velocity. When you turn around,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: that's acceleration. But you're right that something interesting happens when
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: you turn around. When you turn around, you see time
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: jump forward for me, so so far you've seen my
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: time be slow. When you turn around as you turn around,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: that acceleration has this effect that you see my time
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: jump forward, so that when you come back to Earth,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: our times are very similar to each other.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Right, But like we're saying there's something called the twins paradogs,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: which is like, if you take two twins and you
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: send one of them to the next star system, going
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: at almost a suit of light, and then they come back,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: one of the twins will have aged faster than the other.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: That's right. So the one that takes that trip, that
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: goes down in the spaceship, accelerates, turns around, comes back
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: will be younger than the twin that stayed on Earth.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: So like yeah, so like if you want to slow
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: down time for yourself, you would hop in a.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Spaceship and go away, right, Yeah, that's right.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: So to make time move faster, wouldn't stick everybody else
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: in the spaceship, send it off and then have it
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: come back, and then I will have age more. I guess.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Maybe the question is like why is it so one
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: directional or is it one directional? Like what's the difference
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Twin A and Twin B.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: The difference is acceleration. While velocity is totally relative. Doesn't
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: matter who's doing the moving, It just matters what you measure, right,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: there's no absolute frame of reference. Acceleration is not relative.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: So there is a difference between the twin that goes
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: out in the spaceship and turns around, that's acceleration, and
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the one that just states on Earth and doesn't accelerate.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: So the effects of the flow of time are different
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: on those two twins. That's why they're no longer symmetric.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: And in case where they're just passing each other in space,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: they both see the other one's time as going slowly,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: and that's perfectly symmetric because they just have relative velocity.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Nobody's accelerating. One of them turns around, then they're accelerating.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: That makes one twin very different from the other twin
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: from a physics point of view, and that's why they
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: have different outcomes. And that actually is an idea there
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: is like, well, if you accelerate, then you see time
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: jump forward for everybody else, and so that's actually a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: way to accelerate the passage of time for the rest
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: of the universe, right.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Right, That's what I mean. It's like, accelerate, send everybody
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: else on Earth and on a space ship and have
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: it come back. That's a little bit logistically hard mmm.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: And it connects nicely with the other time dilation because,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: as we've talked about in the podcast before, acceleration is
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: just like another way to see curvature in space. From
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: a general relativistic point of view, acceleration and curvature are
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: basically the same. You can even like create an event
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: horizon with acceleration. Remember we talked once on the podcast
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: about how you can like outpace a beam of light
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: if you're constantly accelerating. And so this next with the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: other kind of time dilation we can talk about, and
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: that's absolute time dilation due to curvature. If you see
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: a clock near a black hole, for example, you will
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: see its time going slower. But if somebody's at that
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: clock and they're looking back at you and you're far
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: away from the black hole, they don't see your time
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: going slower. They see your time going faster, in the
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: same way that like the twin that's accelerating sees time
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: moving faster for everybody. A twin near a black hole
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: will see time moving faster for everybody else outside in
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: the universe. So this is asymmetric time dilation because curvature
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: is not relative. Curvature is absolute, just like acceleration is.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: It's really the same thing.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: So like, for example, if you wanted to make time
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: go faster for yourself. You might go off into orbit, right,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: because the Earth is also creating some curvature, and time
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: is moving slower for things closer to the center of
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: the Earth.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Right, that's right. If you're further away from the Earth,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: then your time will be moving faster.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: So like a way to age your genes faster or
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: your water line is to send it into space or
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: to send it far away from the Earth.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So if you're hosting Thanksgiving, you should
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: host it near a black hole, so you can send
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the turkey away from the black hole so that its
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: time can move faster while it's cooking.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Right, Right, But I guess what I'm saying is you
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: don't need it the black hole. You could just do
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: it here on Earth.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, And it's a pretty small effect because
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: the Earth doesn't have really dramatic curvature. Right. But the
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: big picture we're sort of stumbling towards here is that
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: for time to go faster, you need a place with
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: less curvature. And so if you want everywhere in the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: universe to pass time slower than like your box, you
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: basically need everywhere in the universe to be near a
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: black hole or be near high curvature except for your box.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: So like my very impractical idea is similar to your
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: impractical idea. Yours was make everybody in the universe accelerate
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: except for the turkey or whatever mine is. Fill the
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: universe with black holes except for where the turkey is,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: and then time will pass faster for the turkey than
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: everybody else.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Right, right, or shoot it with a turkey gun into
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: the sky, although you won't get that much of an advantage.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: But I think maybe to answer the question of our listener,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: the answer is sort of like yes, sort of like
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: if you want time to go faster than how it
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: does here on the surface of Earth, then you can
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: do it by putting it in a box and sending
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: it off into space for a while. Right, time will
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: move inside that box faster for a little bit.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the same way that time near a black hole
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: moves more slowly. Time near the surface of the Earth
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: moves more slowly than it does out in deep space.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: So basically our time is already slowed down a little bit,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and you could take advantage of that by launching something
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: into deep space where that effect isn't happening, and its
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: time will go faster.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Right, right, So if you want it to just age
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: faster than everybody on the surface of Earth, that's doable.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: But I think maybe the question he had was, can
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: you accelerate time where there's no curvature, or where there's
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: no black holes or a planet like at the baseline
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: speed of time in the universe? Maybe out there, whether
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: you're nowhere near anything massive, can you make time go
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: faster than that?
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: We certainly don't know the answer to that question. Current
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: physics would say it's impossible, But we also know the
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: current physics doesn't really understand what time is or what
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: space is, whether they're fundamental or whether they bubble up
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: from something deeper or like a theory of quantum gravity,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: like maybe string theory. So we don't really understand what
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: time is. So if I said absolutely not, then in
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: fifty years somebody would be like, Haha, that guy didn't
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: know what he was talking about.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Right, And we know how snarchy physicists can be. They
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: would totally laugh at you.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Oh man, they're the worst. They go on these ski
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: trips and they laugh at each other over hot coco.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: It's terror, right, They're like that Daniel doesn't know what
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: he's missing.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: So current physics doesn't have a solution for you, Nadav,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: unless you want to fill the universe with black holes,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: or launch things into space.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Right, or accelerate everybody else. Although it made me think,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: like with the twins paradogs, right, mm hmm, I send
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: the twin out into space, they come back. They have
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: a slower but to the twin that h slower, the
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: other twin h faster. So what's the difference between the two.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: The difference is that one of them accelerated and the
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: other one didn't.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: But they both accelerated relative to each other. The same.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Acceleration is not relative. Acceleration is absolute. They can both
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: hold accelerometers and they can both tell which one is
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: doing the acceleration. They are not the same. Acceleration is
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: absolute in the universe and velocity is relative.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: I see, like by visual site, they will both think
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: they were both accelerating, but only one of them will
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: really be accelerating.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're just measuring the relative distance between them,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: then you can't tell. But if you have an accelerometer,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: you can tell which one has had a force applied
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: to them. Mmm. I see, it's a weird universe.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, I guess in the meantime, the best
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: advice we can give is to just buy an air
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: fryer or deep fryer for your turkey. That will definitely
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: cook it faster.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Oh I see, I thought by air fiument, a fryer
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: which launches it up into the air like hind of
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere where the less.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: Oh there you go. Yeah, and then bake it with
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: baked with cosmic rays, so it'll be not just crispy,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: but also maybe mildly radioactive.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look for that in the daniel Le Jorge merch store,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: the skyfriar.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: That's right, perfect for relatives you don't like that.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Much, relatives you want to fry with relativity.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, I think that answers that question, which
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: is that physicists are not quite sure if you can
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: accelerate time. So far, we can only think of ways
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: to slow down time.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very impractical ways to speed it up, involving black
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: holes and spaceships.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Right, but even there, you'd have to like fill the
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: universe with black holes except where you are.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an engineering problem.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's a big problem for everybody. If you
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: did that, we would all suffer everyone at the Thanksgiving table.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: All right, well, thanks again to all of our listeners
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: for sending in their questions. It's always fun to answer
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: them here on the podcast and to see how curiosity
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: works for every and what kinds of things people are
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: thinking about and wondering about.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: So engage your curiosity, ask questions about the universe, and
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: if you get a good one and write it to
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: us questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: That's right, call that lever that says ask the question.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: All right. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: See you next time.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity. Come find us on social
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, This, Org, Insta,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.