Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions: Black Holes, Dark Entropy and a Radio Free Zone!

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Listener Questions: Black Holes, Dark Entropy and a Radio Free Zone! · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's Daniel and Jorge and we are excited
0:02
Speaker 1: to make a very special announcement about a new project
0:06
Speaker 1: we've been working on kind of in secret for the
0:08
Speaker 1: last year or so. Is this related to your new wardrobe, Daniel, Nope,
0:12
Speaker 1: my wardrobe is unfortunately frozen in time as physics professor casual.
0:17
Speaker 1: But that's a great question and a great lead into
0:20
Speaker 1: our new project, which is all about questions. Actually, that's right,
0:24
Speaker 1: Daniel and I have written a new book. It's very exciting.
0:26
Speaker 1: It's called Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe, another humble
0:30
Speaker 1: title for our work, and it's inspired by all the
0:33
Speaker 1: questions that you folks have been asking us, all the
0:36
Speaker 1: questions you wonder about the nature of the universe and
0:39
Speaker 1: how it works, and all the questions that science is
0:42
Speaker 1: working on. So we took some of your most awesome
0:45
Speaker 1: questions that you've sent to us, and we put them
0:47
Speaker 1: in book form and actually answered them as best as
0:50
Speaker 1: we can. There are questions like where does the universe
0:53
Speaker 1: come from? And why can't we teleport? Or can we?
0:57
Speaker 1: And have aliens visited us? And why is it exact
1:00
Speaker 1: that we can't make it out there into the cosmos?
1:02
Speaker 1: So the book is coming out this November two one,
1:06
Speaker 1: but it's available right now for pre order, So go
1:09
Speaker 1: to Universe f a q dot com and order your
1:13
Speaker 1: copy today. So stop what you're doing right now, go
1:16
Speaker 1: to universe f a q dot com and pre order
1:19
Speaker 1: our new book. Frequently ask questions about the universe. It's
1:22
Speaker 1: filled with science, silly jokes, and Jorge is awesome cartoons,
1:26
Speaker 1: and maybe even a few answers, hopefully. I mean it's
1:29
Speaker 1: in the it's in the title. The title just says questions.
1:33
Speaker 1: Oh nice, Hey, Hory, did you know what? What? What's
1:44
Speaker 1: going on, Danielle. We have to be quiet? Why what's happening?
1:47
Speaker 1: It's noise pollution. If our podcast is being broadcast near
1:50
Speaker 1: a radio telescope, we might be ruining their data. Oh no,
1:55
Speaker 1: what if we're making a dumb banana joke right when
1:57
Speaker 1: an alien message arrives? Yeah? Or what if the sciencests
2:01
Speaker 1: think our jokes are so bad? We must be aliens.
2:06
Speaker 1: Humor is so difficult to translate and we should just
2:08
Speaker 1: be quiet. Hi. I'm or Hammack, cartoonists and the creator
2:27
Speaker 1: of PhD comics. Hi I'm daniel I'm a particle physicist,
2:31
Speaker 1: but I will definitely laugh at all the aliens bad
2:34
Speaker 1: jokes when they come here. Really, what if it offends
2:36
Speaker 1: them for you to laugh at their jokes? But you know,
2:39
Speaker 1: it's quickly a totally different culture, Daniel. It's sort of
2:41
Speaker 1: like smiling and nodding can be something totally different in
2:44
Speaker 1: another culture. You are like doing the okay sign with
2:47
Speaker 1: your fingers. There is an insult in some cultures. I'm
2:50
Speaker 1: probably not the right person then to send to talk
2:52
Speaker 1: to the aliens the first time, or to sit in
2:55
Speaker 1: under comedy shows. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel and
2:58
Speaker 1: Jorge explain the Universe production of I Heart Radio, in
3:01
Speaker 1: which we make light and laugh at all of the
3:04
Speaker 1: crazy mysteries of the universe, everything that we know about
3:07
Speaker 1: the universe, the bonkers, crazy ideas that we have learned
3:11
Speaker 1: about this beautiful, strange universe we find ourselves in, and
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Speaker 1: everything that we don't know about the universe, the very
3:18
Speaker 1: edge of science, of things that scientists are thinking about,
3:21
Speaker 1: the questions that they are pondering, and the questions that
3:24
Speaker 1: you are thinking about every single day as you live
3:28
Speaker 1: in this universe. Yeah, because it is a pretty big cosmos.
3:31
Speaker 1: There's a lot out there to perplexes, and there's a
3:34
Speaker 1: lot for us to ponder about how things work and
3:37
Speaker 1: why things are the way they are, and so it's
3:38
Speaker 1: natural for everyone to have questions about what's going on.
3:42
Speaker 1: That's right. You are here to have the universe explained
3:45
Speaker 1: to you because you are curious about the universe. You
3:48
Speaker 1: want to understand it. You want to somehow take the
3:50
Speaker 1: entire universe and fold it up into a little idea
3:54
Speaker 1: that fits in your neurons. Amazing as it sounds, that
3:57
Speaker 1: might actually be possible. But along the way sometimes two
4:01
Speaker 1: ideas don't quite fit, or you wonder how does this
4:04
Speaker 1: connect with that? Or this doesn't really make sense to me,
4:07
Speaker 1: even though I've heard the words. And that's what we're
4:10
Speaker 1: here for to explain all of it to you. Yeah,
4:12
Speaker 1: because it all starts with questions, right, Daniel, Science would
4:15
Speaker 1: you say starts with a question like what's going on there?
4:18
Speaker 1: Or how can I get more things to eat? Or
4:20
Speaker 1: what should I eat without dying? Yeah? Science is nothing
4:23
Speaker 1: but questions. It's just people asking questions. I was giving
4:27
Speaker 1: a talk to some students from Puerto Rico last weekend
4:30
Speaker 1: and one of them asked me how do scientists figure
4:32
Speaker 1: out what question to ask next. And I thought that
4:36
Speaker 1: was an amazing question. And I told them that it's
4:39
Speaker 1: just people asking questions about the universe. Scientists are just
4:43
Speaker 1: people with questions that they want to know the answers too,
4:46
Speaker 1: so badly that they decided to spend their lives trying
4:49
Speaker 1: to figure it out. I see, you just turn it
4:51
Speaker 1: around and ask them a question without giving an answer.
4:55
Speaker 1: Is that what science is, Daniel? Just all questions, no answers.
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Speaker 1: It's mostly questions leading to other questions. But the questions
5:01
Speaker 1: are personal. I want to know whether universe is made
5:04
Speaker 1: out of Somebody else wants to know we can make
5:06
Speaker 1: some special kind of super conducting goo, and somebody else
5:09
Speaker 1: wants to figure out how life started. All of these
5:11
Speaker 1: questions are being pursued by people who decided this is
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Speaker 1: the most important question, This is the thing I want
5:17
Speaker 1: to know most about the universe. So science is about questions,
5:20
Speaker 1: but those questions are also very personal. Yeah, and it's
5:23
Speaker 1: not just scientists that have questions. Regular people have questions
5:26
Speaker 1: to Yeah, or you could say regular people are also
5:29
Speaker 1: scientists because they have questions. Right, we're all doing science,
5:32
Speaker 1: we're all asking questions, we're all trying to understand this
5:35
Speaker 1: crazy cosmos. That's where we're all in this together. And
5:38
Speaker 1: so people have questions and sometimes they write to us
5:41
Speaker 1: with their questions, hoping that we would maybe answer it
5:44
Speaker 1: in an email or a tweet, or maybe in one
5:46
Speaker 1: of our podcast episodes. Yeah, they do it all the time.
5:49
Speaker 1: We get dozens of questions every single day. If you
5:52
Speaker 1: have a question about something you heard about that you
5:54
Speaker 1: don't quante understand or you'd like us to explain to you,
5:57
Speaker 1: please don't be shy right to us. We love your
6:00
Speaker 1: mails questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Daniel, you
6:04
Speaker 1: actually answer most or if not all, of the questions
6:06
Speaker 1: you get. I answer every single question I get, usually
6:09
Speaker 1: within just a few minutes. Sometimes I get surprised responses
6:12
Speaker 1: from people saying, what, I can't believe you actually wrote
6:14
Speaker 1: me back. But yeah, I'm just sitting here plugging away
6:16
Speaker 1: my research and I love that ding when I get
6:18
Speaker 1: a new email. Really, and I reacted well to my
6:22
Speaker 1: new email things. You actually listen to those new email things.
6:25
Speaker 1: That's pretty sure you had that turned off. I don't
6:27
Speaker 1: know if that's a feature on my phone, and I'll
6:29
Speaker 1: have to check, but I'm glad you're answering the questions
6:31
Speaker 1: because I think I would just answer with more questions, like, hey,
6:34
Speaker 1: maybe you should ask Daniel this question. I think maybe
6:38
Speaker 1: they should, or I would point to Wikipedia that that's
6:40
Speaker 1: helpful too. But yeah, we get a lot of questions,
6:42
Speaker 1: and sometimes we do episodes where we answer these questions
6:45
Speaker 1: live on the air, or at least live on the podcast. Yeah.
6:48
Speaker 1: Sometimes people ask a question and I think I met
6:50
Speaker 1: other people want to know the answer to this one,
6:53
Speaker 1: so let's talk about it. Or I just think it'll
6:55
Speaker 1: be fun, or it stumped me a little bit. I
6:58
Speaker 1: have to go off and do some research and figure
7:00
Speaker 1: it out, and then I'm excited to talk about it.
7:02
Speaker 1: All right, So to the on the podcast, we'll be
7:04
Speaker 1: talking about Listener Questions number fifteen. Wow, I can't believe
7:16
Speaker 1: fifteen of these Listener Questions episodes. It's been a while. Yeah,
7:20
Speaker 1: Listener Questions is a teenager now it's growing up. Oh
7:23
Speaker 1: now isn't now? And it's rebellious face and refuses to
7:27
Speaker 1: acknowledge this or to clean up the room, but we
7:29
Speaker 1: secretly know it still wants to hear the answers. Oh,
7:32
Speaker 1: I see, I see, It's just it's just a phase. Yeah, exactly,
7:35
Speaker 1: it's just a thin verneer of attitude. Al right, Well,
7:38
Speaker 1: today we have three great questions from three grade listeners
7:41
Speaker 1: and fans out there. We have a question about peanut right,
7:45
Speaker 1: black holes, and also radio bursts and quiet zones, which
7:50
Speaker 1: would be great to implement here in my house sometimes.
7:53
Speaker 1: All right, So our first question comes from Beckham from California,
7:57
Speaker 1: who is sixty years old. Here is this question. Hi,
8:00
Speaker 1: I am Backham and I'm six years old from California.
8:05
Speaker 1: And if you squeeze the earth to the size of
8:08
Speaker 1: a peanut and it turned into a black hole, how
8:11
Speaker 1: far away would you have to be it to not
8:13
Speaker 1: get sucked in? And so what didat the whole earth?
8:17
Speaker 1: And thank you? All right? I love black hole questions
8:21
Speaker 1: from six year olds. All right, do you get excited
8:23
Speaker 1: about all questions about black holes or other questions about
8:26
Speaker 1: black holes where you're like, oh, those are the best
8:30
Speaker 1: questions about black holes. And somebody asked me something I
8:32
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about before, and it makes me think about
8:35
Speaker 1: black holes in a new way, or go open up
8:37
Speaker 1: that General relativity book again or something that's the fun moment.
8:41
Speaker 1: All right, Well, what do you think Beckham was thinking about, Yes,
8:44
Speaker 1: if you squeeze the Earth into a peanut and it
8:47
Speaker 1: became a black hole, how far away would you have
8:50
Speaker 1: to be to not get sucked in? Wow? Yeah, I
8:54
Speaker 1: think he's trying to make black holes sort of concrete.
8:57
Speaker 1: Instead of thinking about black holes is something weird and
9:00
Speaker 1: far away? You're thinking, you know, could we turn the
9:02
Speaker 1: Earth into a black hole? And what would that be? Like?
9:05
Speaker 1: M I see, because I guess you can make a
9:07
Speaker 1: black hole out of anything, right, It's not like something
9:10
Speaker 1: exotic out there in space. You can literally make a
9:12
Speaker 1: black hole out of peanuts or by turning dirt into
9:15
Speaker 1: a peanut. Yeah, it's just a bunch of mass and
9:18
Speaker 1: energy compactified and the small enough space that the curvature
9:21
Speaker 1: gets so intense that light can't escape it. That's really
9:24
Speaker 1: all a black hole is. And you're right, you can
9:26
Speaker 1: make it out of any kind of matter or energy.
9:29
Speaker 1: You could even make it out of photons. We talked
9:31
Speaker 1: about it once in the podcast that if you have
9:33
Speaker 1: really big laser beams and you cross them in theory,
9:36
Speaker 1: you can make a black hole where they intersect. Right,
9:39
Speaker 1: Because it's not about how much mass or the size
9:41
Speaker 1: of something or how heavy it is. It's really about
9:44
Speaker 1: the density, Like if you have enough stuff in a
9:47
Speaker 1: small enough space, it becomes a black hole. And that
9:49
Speaker 1: could be something really small, or it could be you know,
9:51
Speaker 1: the size of giant arm was like a super massive
9:54
Speaker 1: black hole. Yeah, exactly. And we think that you can
9:57
Speaker 1: make a black hole out of basically anything if you
9:59
Speaker 1: make it den enough. There might be a minimum size
10:02
Speaker 1: to a black hole. As things get down to like
10:04
Speaker 1: the quantum level, it's not clear if you you can
10:06
Speaker 1: make a black hole out of like an electron size
10:09
Speaker 1: amount of mass, but you definitely can make a black
10:11
Speaker 1: hole out of like an Earth size mass or a
10:14
Speaker 1: Sun size mass. Now, most of the black holes we
10:16
Speaker 1: see out there in the universe come from stars, and
10:19
Speaker 1: so they're like ten to eighty times the mass of
10:22
Speaker 1: the Sun, or they're at the center of galaxies and
10:24
Speaker 1: then they're like thousands, millions, billions times the mass of
10:28
Speaker 1: the Sun. So we don't see very many black holes
10:30
Speaker 1: out there that are like the mass of the Earth.
10:32
Speaker 1: In fact, we've never seen one at all. That doesn't
10:35
Speaker 1: mean they're not out there. They could have been made
10:37
Speaker 1: in the very early universe, these primordial black holes that
10:40
Speaker 1: could be very very small up to very very large sizes, right,
10:44
Speaker 1: because I guess black holes that size don't get naturally made, right, Like,
10:47
Speaker 1: there's no natural common process for them to make an
10:51
Speaker 1: earth size black hole, like most of the ways are are.
10:53
Speaker 1: You know, stars going supernova is how they're made. Yeah,
10:56
Speaker 1: gravity is a runaway process, and once it gets going,
10:59
Speaker 1: then compactifies itself more, and then it gets more powerful,
11:02
Speaker 1: and it compact defies itself more and gets more powerful.
11:04
Speaker 1: The Earth, for example, is not going to collapse into
11:07
Speaker 1: a black hole. It doesn't have enough stuff in it
11:09
Speaker 1: to start that gravitational runaway process. So like the bonds
11:13
Speaker 1: between the stuff in the Earth is more powerful than
11:16
Speaker 1: the force of gravity. So you know, the structure of
11:19
Speaker 1: the rock and all that stuff is holding itself, so
11:21
Speaker 1: the Earth will not collapse into a black hole. All right.
11:25
Speaker 1: So then if you took all of the mass of
11:27
Speaker 1: the Earth and then you squeeze it all into the
11:29
Speaker 1: size of a peanut, then you would get a black hole.
11:31
Speaker 1: That's what Beckham is asking. Yeah, and you would take
11:33
Speaker 1: some external force or you have to crush and compact
11:36
Speaker 1: all that mass. But yes, in principle, you could get
11:38
Speaker 1: a black hole just from the stuff of the Earth,
11:41
Speaker 1: and you have to really squeeze it down. If you
11:45
Speaker 1: wanted the Earth to be a black hole, you'd have
11:47
Speaker 1: to take the mass of the Earth, all that stuff
11:49
Speaker 1: and squeeze it down to something less than a centimeter wide. Wow,
11:52
Speaker 1: so including all the peanuts on Earth, Like, can you
11:55
Speaker 1: fit all the peanuts on Earth into a peanut? You can,
11:58
Speaker 1: in fact, because the peanut is about the right size,
12:00
Speaker 1: you know, it's about one centimeter. And maybe we should
12:02
Speaker 1: have a new unit called the peanut. The p valley
12:07
Speaker 1: for the peanut is one centimeter apparently, yeah, just about. So, Yeah,
12:12
Speaker 1: you can fit all the peanuts on Earth, and all
12:13
Speaker 1: the bananas on Earth, and all the rocks, and all
12:15
Speaker 1: the gold and all the uranium and all the helium
12:17
Speaker 1: and all that stuff down in a really compact space.
12:21
Speaker 1: Remember that the space between things, the volume of things,
12:24
Speaker 1: depends on the forces between them. Like the reason that
12:27
Speaker 1: a rock has the size it has, it's not because
12:29
Speaker 1: of the pile of stuff it's made out of, but
12:31
Speaker 1: because the forces between those particles sort of pressing against
12:35
Speaker 1: each other, fluffing it up. It's really like a pile
12:37
Speaker 1: of little bubbles where those bubbles are made by the
12:39
Speaker 1: electrostatic forces repelling each other. If you can overcome that,
12:43
Speaker 1: then you can squeeze it down to whatever you like
12:45
Speaker 1: and eventually get a black hole. Right, So that could
12:48
Speaker 1: happen to the Earth if somebody came in and then
12:50
Speaker 1: squeeze it all into black hole. But then I guess
12:53
Speaker 1: Beckham's question is whether or not we would get automatically
12:56
Speaker 1: sucked in, or like, are we doomed if the Earth
12:59
Speaker 1: suddenly became a black hole? Or do we have a
13:02
Speaker 1: chance of getting away? The question is how far away
13:04
Speaker 1: would you have to be to not get sucked in? Well,
13:07
Speaker 1: I consider myself to be part of the Earth and
13:09
Speaker 1: so and I'm usually on the Earth. So if somebody
13:12
Speaker 1: comes along and compactifies the Earth into a black hole,
13:15
Speaker 1: then I'm inside the black hole already. But you know,
13:18
Speaker 1: if you happen to be on a trip to the
13:20
Speaker 1: space station when the Earth turns into a black hole,
13:22
Speaker 1: then I guess you can ask the question like, can
13:24
Speaker 1: you be around it safely nearby? I mean, let's make
13:27
Speaker 1: this realistic, right right, Yeah, let's pretend that you're part
13:31
Speaker 1: of this earth, Daniel. Let's dove into that fantasy. And
13:34
Speaker 1: you hear it in the question this idea that black
13:37
Speaker 1: holes sucks stuff in. And it's true the black holes
13:40
Speaker 1: have strong gravity, but they're not like vacuum cleaners, you know,
13:44
Speaker 1: they just pull on stuff the way everything else with
13:47
Speaker 1: gravity pulls on stuff. The Earth pulls on you right now,
13:50
Speaker 1: and that doesn't change just because it's turned into a
13:53
Speaker 1: black hole. So for example, if you're standing on the
13:55
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth, you feel it's gravity. If then
13:58
Speaker 1: underneath you the whole Earth turns into a peanut sized
14:01
Speaker 1: black hole, that doesn't change the force of gravity you
14:04
Speaker 1: feel because it's the same amount of mass pulling on
14:07
Speaker 1: you with the same gravity right like, nothing would change
14:09
Speaker 1: basically except that you and maybe just lose the ground
14:12
Speaker 1: under you. You would lose the ground under you. And
14:14
Speaker 1: so now, if you want to avoid falling into the
14:17
Speaker 1: black hole, I prefer the phrase falling in rather than
14:20
Speaker 1: getting sucked in, because it tells us about the gravity
14:22
Speaker 1: that's happening there. You need to go into orbit around
14:25
Speaker 1: the black hole. The reason you don't fall to the
14:27
Speaker 1: center of the Earth now is because the Earth is
14:29
Speaker 1: holding you up. If that's not the case, then you
14:31
Speaker 1: need some other way to avoid falling into the center
14:34
Speaker 1: of this new black hole, and that would be to
14:36
Speaker 1: go into orbit. Basically you need to be moving fast
14:39
Speaker 1: enough that you keep missing the Earth as you fall.
14:42
Speaker 1: That's what an orbit is. I see. So we would
14:45
Speaker 1: feel the same gravitational force, which means we would fall
14:48
Speaker 1: into the peanut sized black hole if the Earth suddenly
14:51
Speaker 1: turned into a black hole. And so it's not a
14:53
Speaker 1: matter of distance because I guess technically you would feel
14:56
Speaker 1: the force from this black hole anywhere in the universe. Right.
14:59
Speaker 1: Technically speaking, you do feel it anywhere in the universe
15:02
Speaker 1: because gravity is infinite in extent. I mean, it falls
15:05
Speaker 1: off like one over distance squared, so it drops off
15:08
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. But yeah, in principle, we feel gravity from Andromeda.
15:12
Speaker 1: That's why that neighboring galaxy is coming towards us and
15:15
Speaker 1: we're shooting towards it. We feel gravity from things that
15:18
Speaker 1: are infinitely far away, that's true, but the value of
15:20
Speaker 1: that is pretty small, and so as you get closer
15:23
Speaker 1: to something, it's gravity gets much much stronger because it
15:26
Speaker 1: increases like one over our squared right, So like technically
15:29
Speaker 1: we are getting pulled into all the black holes in
15:32
Speaker 1: the universe right now, like every black hole in the universe,
15:35
Speaker 1: for which they might be an infinite amount or trillions.
15:39
Speaker 1: We're getting sucked into them as we speak, right, Yeah,
15:42
Speaker 1: they are tugging on us, but they're being defeated by
15:44
Speaker 1: the gravity of the Earth of course, and the Earth
15:46
Speaker 1: being pretty massive and pretty close is overpowering it. I think,
15:50
Speaker 1: for example, about the Sun. The Sun is so much
15:53
Speaker 1: more massive than the Earth wise that you don't fall
15:56
Speaker 1: into the Sun right now, because the Earth, even though
15:59
Speaker 1: it's much much smaller mass, is much closer to you.
16:02
Speaker 1: So it's winning the gravitational tug of war and keeping
16:05
Speaker 1: you on the surface. Right, But technically we are me
16:08
Speaker 1: and the Earth. We are still falling into the Sun.
16:10
Speaker 1: It's just like, as you say, we're in orbit, we
16:13
Speaker 1: have some kind of velocity in a different direction than
16:15
Speaker 1: the direction of the Sun, and so that's why really
16:18
Speaker 1: we're not falling into the Sun exactly. We have just
16:20
Speaker 1: the right velocity and just the right direction to be
16:23
Speaker 1: in a stable orbit around the Sun. So you can
16:25
Speaker 1: avoid falling into something if you orbit around it. And
16:29
Speaker 1: in fact, a lot of stuff orbits around black holes.
16:31
Speaker 1: If you think about like the picture you have in
16:33
Speaker 1: your mind of a black hole, it's this black sphere,
16:35
Speaker 1: but it's surrounded by a disc of swirling stuff, and
16:39
Speaker 1: you might wonder, well, why is that stuff there, Why
16:41
Speaker 1: isn't it just immediately falling into the black hole? And
16:44
Speaker 1: the answer is that it's spinning. It has rotational velocity,
16:47
Speaker 1: and that helps it avoid falling in immediately. So you
16:50
Speaker 1: can stay in orbit around the black hole for quite
16:52
Speaker 1: a while until you lose that velocity by bouncing off
16:55
Speaker 1: of other stuff, and then you fall into it. Right, So,
16:58
Speaker 1: I guess technically if the Earth turned into a black hole,
17:01
Speaker 1: you would get sucked in even as you're standing there now.
17:04
Speaker 1: But also maybe if you're relatively far away, like at
17:07
Speaker 1: the distance of the Moon or something, you would fall
17:09
Speaker 1: in unless you can get into an orbit. Yeah, that's right.
17:12
Speaker 1: If you were on the Moon, for example, you'd already
17:14
Speaker 1: be in the Moon's orbit, and so you just stay
17:16
Speaker 1: on the Moon and the Moon would keep orbiting around
17:19
Speaker 1: the black hole. If you're on the surface of the Earth, however,
17:21
Speaker 1: you're probably not moving fast enough to stay in orbit.
17:25
Speaker 1: M I see. So the trick to avoiding falling into
17:27
Speaker 1: the black peanut hole is to start running really fast, yeah, exactly,
17:32
Speaker 1: Or get on a spaceship and how fast you have
17:34
Speaker 1: to go to be in orbit depends on how far
17:37
Speaker 1: away you are from the black hole. The closer you are,
17:40
Speaker 1: the faster you have to be moving, and the further
17:42
Speaker 1: away you are, the slower you can move and be
17:45
Speaker 1: in a stable orbit. All right, So then I guess
17:47
Speaker 1: the answer to the question is really that it's not
17:50
Speaker 1: about being far away, it's about having some sort of
17:52
Speaker 1: speed that lets you be in an orbit around the
17:54
Speaker 1: black hole. Yeah, precisely. And if you were, for example,
17:57
Speaker 1: at a hundred kilometers away from the black hole, which
18:00
Speaker 1: is pretty close, you'd have to go like sixty meters
18:03
Speaker 1: per second to avoid falling in. And if you were
18:06
Speaker 1: at one kilometer it'll be ten times that speed. And
18:10
Speaker 1: if you were just like one meter away from this
18:13
Speaker 1: peanut sized black hole, you'd have to go like twenty
18:17
Speaker 1: million meters per second. Wow, which is a your You'd
18:20
Speaker 1: be toast right, because you can go around that fast
18:23
Speaker 1: around something that's small, can you? Certainly you could. You
18:26
Speaker 1: could be a meter away, you could be whipping around
18:28
Speaker 1: really really fast. It'd be hard to accelerate to that
18:31
Speaker 1: speed without like crushing your internal organs. But you know,
18:34
Speaker 1: even that speed, though it sounds fast, is a pretty
18:37
Speaker 1: small fraction of the speed of light, So in principle
18:40
Speaker 1: you could actually go that fast. Right, What about here
18:43
Speaker 1: in the surface of the Earth, how fast would you
18:45
Speaker 1: need to be going? Like, if I'm in the highway
18:46
Speaker 1: going at you know, seventy miles per hour? Am I
18:49
Speaker 1: safe if the Earth suddenly turned into a black hole? Yeah?
18:52
Speaker 1: So if you're at the surface of the Earth, which
18:54
Speaker 1: is six million meters from the center of the Earth,
18:57
Speaker 1: then you need a velocity of about seventy nine hundred
19:00
Speaker 1: meters per second to avoid falling into the surface of
19:03
Speaker 1: the Earth. All right, that sounds not in the millions.
19:06
Speaker 1: How does that translate into miles per hour? That's like
19:09
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand miles per hour, So it's definitely faster than
19:13
Speaker 1: you're moving right now. If you're just standing still on
19:16
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth, then you know the Earth
19:18
Speaker 1: goes around one time per day obviously, then you're moving
19:21
Speaker 1: to like four hundred and sixty meters per second, so
19:24
Speaker 1: you're moving a lot slower than you would have to
19:26
Speaker 1: be if you wanted to avoid falling into a black
19:29
Speaker 1: hole at the center of the Earth. Okay, so then
19:31
Speaker 1: the answer then would be it would all fall in
19:33
Speaker 1: as you like to say, unless you just happened to
19:36
Speaker 1: be breaking some sort of crazy speed record on land. Yeah,
19:40
Speaker 1: or you had access to some really powerful rocket or
19:43
Speaker 1: spaceship or something. Oh, I see, you could activate it
19:45
Speaker 1: as soon as you hear news and the Earth turned
19:48
Speaker 1: into a black hole, you could activate your your jet
19:50
Speaker 1: pack and then fly away. If I had a jet
19:53
Speaker 1: pack and I saw the Earth sort of crumbling beneath
19:55
Speaker 1: me into a black hole, then yeah, I would turn
19:57
Speaker 1: that thing on. And that's why you have it. See,
20:00
Speaker 1: I would have given it to my kids first, But
20:02
Speaker 1: you know that's that's just me. I'm just kidding. First,
20:05
Speaker 1: put the mask on yourself. Then help the child not
20:08
Speaker 1: know what they say. Alright, Well back, Unfortunately, I don't
20:12
Speaker 1: think you have to worry about that, right. I don't
20:14
Speaker 1: think the Earth is in danger of turning into a
20:16
Speaker 1: black hole anytime soon, unless Beckham has some evil plans
20:19
Speaker 1: to grow up and compactify the Earth into a black hole,
20:22
Speaker 1: and we've just aided them. Why why did why they
20:25
Speaker 1: need to grow up? They could be a child genius,
20:29
Speaker 1: evil genius. Well here's the opening. You're not Beckham, but
20:32
Speaker 1: thanks for asking the question. All right, Well, let's get
20:34
Speaker 1: into our two other questions for today, one about entropedean
20:38
Speaker 1: time and the other one about radio births. But first
20:41
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Alright. We're answering listener questions
20:56
Speaker 1: today on the podcast, and our next question comes from
21:00
Speaker 1: who is from Germany. Here's day's question. What I would
21:03
Speaker 1: like to know is in one of your podcasts, Daniel
21:08
Speaker 1: explained that when space is generated, each concrement of space
21:13
Speaker 1: is containing its own newly generated increment of energy. And
21:19
Speaker 1: I understand that energy when it's existing, that it can
21:22
Speaker 1: be converted. Now normally, when energy is converted, as to
21:27
Speaker 1: my understanding, there's also entropy generated. I wonder what happens
21:31
Speaker 1: with this entropy. Far as I know, entropy and time
21:35
Speaker 1: are the only two physical components which move forward in time,
21:40
Speaker 1: or rather are generated and only in one direction. So
21:45
Speaker 1: are there any connections between entropy and time? And if
21:49
Speaker 1: there's a connection between entropy and time, would time freeze
21:54
Speaker 1: when there's no more entropy to be generated in our universe? Alright,
21:58
Speaker 1: thank you Dave from Germany. It's like kind of a
22:01
Speaker 1: complicated question here. I think he's asking whether you know
22:05
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about how energy is generated when
22:08
Speaker 1: new space is created in the universe, and so there's
22:11
Speaker 1: maybe some entropy associated with that energy, and so what's
22:14
Speaker 1: going to happen, you know, at the end of time,
22:17
Speaker 1: when maybe the universe is not expanding or we run
22:20
Speaker 1: out of entropy. What do you think he's asking. I
22:22
Speaker 1: think he's got a lot of fun questions, and I
22:23
Speaker 1: think he had more questions sort of generated in his
22:26
Speaker 1: mind as he was asking his initial question, And I
22:29
Speaker 1: think that makes sense because a lot of these things
22:31
Speaker 1: are connected. I think the heart of the question is
22:34
Speaker 1: probably about how the expansion of space is connected to
22:38
Speaker 1: the end of the universe, you know, like, is the
22:40
Speaker 1: expansion of space dooming us to a certain eventual fate
22:44
Speaker 1: of the universe. And I guess specifically he was asking, like,
22:48
Speaker 1: when the universe expands, is entropy increasing as well. Yeah,
22:52
Speaker 1: that's a really cool question because you know, we've talked
22:56
Speaker 1: about how the expansion of space breaks something else which
22:59
Speaker 1: we always was fundamental and ironclad rule of the universe
23:03
Speaker 1: that energy is conserved. And you know, energy is conserved,
23:07
Speaker 1: but only when space is static. Remember that a lot
23:10
Speaker 1: of these conservation laws come from symmetries that come from
23:13
Speaker 1: assumptions that we can make about the universe, and one
23:16
Speaker 1: of them is that space is static and so energy
23:18
Speaker 1: is only conserved when that holds, and if the universe
23:21
Speaker 1: is expanding, that doesn't hold anymore. So it makes sense
23:24
Speaker 1: to also ask, like what else gets broken when space expands,
23:28
Speaker 1: when the universe is creating more space. So is entropy
23:33
Speaker 1: being created with new space in the universe? I wouldn't
23:36
Speaker 1: say created, right, Entropy is not something that like you create.
23:39
Speaker 1: It's not a physical thing. It's like a calculation that
23:42
Speaker 1: we can do to evaluate a situation. Say what is
23:46
Speaker 1: the entropy of this? You know, you can like run
23:48
Speaker 1: the numbers and say what's the entropy of this situation
23:51
Speaker 1: versus that situation. I don't think of entropy is like
23:53
Speaker 1: a physical thing that's actually made. But you can ask
23:56
Speaker 1: the question when space expands, when new space is being created,
24:00
Speaker 1: does entropy go up or down? I see, is it
24:03
Speaker 1: being created or not? Just kidding? I guess is entropy
24:08
Speaker 1: increasing one space increases as well? That's the question. Yeah,
24:12
Speaker 1: And it makes absolute sense, and I think the answer
24:14
Speaker 1: has to be yes, and not just because of the
24:16
Speaker 1: second law of thermodynamics that says that you know, entropy
24:19
Speaker 1: always goes up. But because of the nature of entropy, right,
24:23
Speaker 1: entropyes are really slippery concept, and I think a lot
24:25
Speaker 1: of people think of entropy is like the amount of
24:28
Speaker 1: disorder or disorganization, sort of in the university amount. Stuff
24:32
Speaker 1: is sort of mixed up. It's a messy topic, and
24:35
Speaker 1: that's a helpful way to think about it, sort of approximately.
24:39
Speaker 1: But what entropy actually is is sort of a measurement
24:42
Speaker 1: of our ignorance about what's going on at the smallest level.
24:46
Speaker 1: To calculate entropy, you have to make like a statement
24:49
Speaker 1: about something macroscopically, like it's temperature or it's a volume
24:53
Speaker 1: or something you know macroscopically that we can see and measure,
24:56
Speaker 1: and then compare that to what we know about it microscopically.
24:59
Speaker 1: So entropy is related to the number of different ways
25:02
Speaker 1: you can make microscopic arrangements that are consistent with your
25:05
Speaker 1: macroscopic statements about things like temperature. So it's like a
25:09
Speaker 1: measure of like how much we don't know about the
25:11
Speaker 1: microscopic states. Right. It's it's almost like, you know, the
25:14
Speaker 1: messier things are, the more different ways that the messiness
25:18
Speaker 1: can be. But if you want something really neat and ordered,
25:21
Speaker 1: you you only have so many options. Yeah, it's like
25:23
Speaker 1: if you have a bunch of coins and I tell
25:26
Speaker 1: you all the coins are heads, well, then I've told
25:28
Speaker 1: you exactly how every coin has to be. They all
25:31
Speaker 1: have to be heads. There's only one way for that
25:33
Speaker 1: to happen. Right, that's low entropy. Right, Yeah, that's low
25:35
Speaker 1: entropy exactly. But if then I tell you, well, half
25:38
Speaker 1: the coins are heads, then now you have a lot
25:41
Speaker 1: of different ways to arrange all those coins. As long
25:43
Speaker 1: as half of them are heads, you're free to decide
25:46
Speaker 1: for this coin and for that coin whether it's heads
25:48
Speaker 1: or tails. So there's a lot of ways to arrange
25:50
Speaker 1: the coins to satisfy my sort of macroscopic statement that
25:54
Speaker 1: half of them are heads. And so that means it's
25:57
Speaker 1: high entropy because there's a lot of configurations. And the
26:00
Speaker 1: second law of thermodynamics is nothing more than that. It's
26:02
Speaker 1: just saying things that have high entropy are more likely
26:05
Speaker 1: to happen because there are more ways for it to happen.
26:10
Speaker 1: And usually that happens with time, right, And usually that
26:13
Speaker 1: happens with time, Like the more time passes, the more
26:16
Speaker 1: the things that are likely or likely to happen. Yeah, exactly.
26:18
Speaker 1: It's a foundational idea and quantum mechanics that every possible
26:22
Speaker 1: state microscopically is equivalently likely. But if more of those
26:26
Speaker 1: states represent the same thing macroscopically, like they're close to
26:29
Speaker 1: a fifty fifty split heads and tails, then they're more
26:32
Speaker 1: likely to happen because they're just more of those possible outcomes.
26:35
Speaker 1: It's like if you roll a huge handful of dying,
26:38
Speaker 1: you add up all the numbers, you're much more likely
26:40
Speaker 1: to get something near the middle of the possible outcomes
26:43
Speaker 1: than the very maximum value or the very minimum value,
26:46
Speaker 1: just because there's more ways to get that outcome, and
26:49
Speaker 1: there's only one way to get the maximum and one
26:51
Speaker 1: way to get the minimum. So it's really just a
26:53
Speaker 1: statement of probability. So then does that mean that as
26:56
Speaker 1: you get more space in the universe, there's kind of
27:00
Speaker 1: more ways for things to be arranged, and therefore entropy
27:03
Speaker 1: it just naturally increases. Yep, that's exactly what happens. The
27:07
Speaker 1: more ways you have for things to be arranged under
27:10
Speaker 1: the hood, the more entropy you have, and the more
27:12
Speaker 1: space means more micro states. More micro states means more entropy.
27:17
Speaker 1: I see, all right, So then is that what is
27:21
Speaker 1: causing enterpying the universe to increase or is it just
27:24
Speaker 1: helping entropy increase in the universe, entropy would be increasing
27:28
Speaker 1: even without dark energy space was not expanding, then entropy
27:32
Speaker 1: would be increasing anyway. And just because that's where the
27:34
Speaker 1: second lofterm dynamic says that if you start from a
27:37
Speaker 1: low entropy configuration, unlikely arrangement if your micro states, you're
27:41
Speaker 1: going to end up in a more likely arrangement as
27:43
Speaker 1: time goes on. So even if space was not increasing,
27:47
Speaker 1: that there was no expansion, entropy would still be gradually
27:50
Speaker 1: going up. But as you say, it's helped by the
27:53
Speaker 1: fact that space is expanding and so there's more stuff
27:56
Speaker 1: to get mixed up, and so entropy is increasing that
27:59
Speaker 1: way as well. I see, so entropies like accelerating in
28:04
Speaker 1: the universe because of dark energy, which is the expansion
28:07
Speaker 1: of the universe. M m M. And he asked another
28:10
Speaker 1: sort of fun question there because he was talking about
28:12
Speaker 1: energy conversion. You know, every time you turn one kind
28:16
Speaker 1: of energy into another kind of energy, it's never perfectly efficient.
28:19
Speaker 1: A little bit leaks out as heat, and that also
28:22
Speaker 1: is an increase in entropy. But it's really the same thing,
28:25
Speaker 1: because heat spreading out is really just like more micro
28:28
Speaker 1: states sharing in the wealth of the energy, and it's
28:30
Speaker 1: spreading out. It's more likely for energy to be spread
28:33
Speaker 1: out than for it to be compact. But he's talking
28:35
Speaker 1: about how when you convert one kind of energy into another,
28:38
Speaker 1: entropy goes up, and he's wondering about, like the actual
28:41
Speaker 1: process of creation of space itself, does that like leak
28:46
Speaker 1: heat out into the universe. What I guess, if you're
28:49
Speaker 1: creating space, you're creating energy, and if you're creating energy,
28:53
Speaker 1: you're heating things up. Yeah, it's a really fun question.
28:56
Speaker 1: I've never really thought about that before. The problem is
28:58
Speaker 1: that we don't have any idea for what that process is. Like,
29:02
Speaker 1: we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating
29:05
Speaker 1: and that means space is being stretched and created, but
29:08
Speaker 1: we don't really know what the mechanism is for that
29:10
Speaker 1: to happen. We don't have an explanation for that. Some
29:13
Speaker 1: people think it might come from negative pressure from quantum
29:17
Speaker 1: zero point energy and all the fields that are in space,
29:20
Speaker 1: But if you do the calculation, that doesn't actually work.
29:22
Speaker 1: It doesn't explain what we see. So we observe that
29:25
Speaker 1: space is being created, but we don't know what's doing it,
29:28
Speaker 1: so we have no concept for this mechanism. We don't
29:31
Speaker 1: know if it actually involves an energy conversion from some
29:34
Speaker 1: other source of external energy we haven't been aware of,
29:38
Speaker 1: or if it's actual creation of energy itself. I see.
29:42
Speaker 1: So we're too clueless to really answer that question, sorry, Dave. Well,
29:46
Speaker 1: if there's entropy being generated by dark energy, can I
29:49
Speaker 1: call it dark entropy? You can call it whatever you like.
29:53
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna reserve that for my new sci
29:55
Speaker 1: fi novel, Dark Enterpy. That is a cool title, actually
30:00
Speaker 1: mysterious and chaotic. There you go, all right, And then
30:05
Speaker 1: there was a sort of an appendent question at the
30:07
Speaker 1: end here about whether you know at the end of
30:10
Speaker 1: time or at the universe keeps expanding and expanding and
30:13
Speaker 1: entropy keeps increasing, does that mean that time is going
30:16
Speaker 1: to end or freeze? Yeah? Everybody wants to know the
30:19
Speaker 1: answer to that question, Dave, and unfortunately nobody does. Right.
30:22
Speaker 1: We just don't know what the future of dark energy is.
30:25
Speaker 1: Will it continue to pull stuff apart and write everything
30:28
Speaker 1: out and increase the entropy of the universe till an
30:31
Speaker 1: eventual heat death. We just don't know, because again we
30:34
Speaker 1: don't know what the mechanism is, and we don't know
30:36
Speaker 1: if it will continue. Remember that dark energy has not
30:39
Speaker 1: been persistent in our universe. While we think the cosmological
30:43
Speaker 1: constant might be constant because it's called the cosmological constant.
30:47
Speaker 1: Dark energy itself only took over around five billion years
30:50
Speaker 1: ago to create this accelerated expansion, So we don't know
30:54
Speaker 1: why it turned on around. Then we don't know if
30:57
Speaker 1: it's going to keep going, if it's gonna stop, if
30:59
Speaker 1: it's going to turn around and shrink the universe back
31:01
Speaker 1: down to some other crazy dense state. So we just
31:04
Speaker 1: really don't know. We can't predict because we don't understand
31:07
Speaker 1: this mechanism at all. All right, So then I guess
31:11
Speaker 1: the question is stay tuned and or we have no idea. Sorry, Dave,
31:15
Speaker 1: we have no idea, stay tuned. We may still have
31:17
Speaker 1: no idea in a billion years. This is going to
31:20
Speaker 1: be messy either way. All right, Well, thank you Dave.
31:24
Speaker 1: That answers that question, And so let's get into our
31:27
Speaker 1: last question of the episode from Robin, and it's about
31:30
Speaker 1: radio birth. But first let's take another quick break. All right,
31:46
Speaker 1: we're answering listener questions today on the podcast, and our
31:50
Speaker 1: last question comes from Robin from Oregon and she has
31:53
Speaker 1: a question about the National Radio Quiet Zone. Hello, Daniel
31:58
Speaker 1: and Jorge. Hey, this is Robin Mark in Cobrag, Oregon. Um.
32:03
Speaker 1: I just got done listening to your show about fast
32:07
Speaker 1: radio bursts and it got me thinking about the National
32:11
Speaker 1: Radio Quiet Zone in Green Bank, West Virginia, where basically
32:17
Speaker 1: nothing electronic is allowed. No microwaves, no cell phones, no WiFi.
32:22
Speaker 1: I thought it would make a great episode on your podcast.
32:26
Speaker 1: What do you think? All right? Thank you, Robbing. That
32:28
Speaker 1: sounds like a great place to visit for a vacation.
32:31
Speaker 1: No cellphones, no electronics. I mean, you probably go a
32:34
Speaker 1: little crazy the first couple of days, but maybe you
32:37
Speaker 1: we reach some sort of zen state afterwards. Yeah. It's
32:40
Speaker 1: an amazing sort of spot in the country where they've
32:43
Speaker 1: really tried to keep things quiet so that astronomers can
32:47
Speaker 1: listen to the skies and not be crowded out by
32:50
Speaker 1: all the crazy radio signals that humans to generate. So
32:53
Speaker 1: this is an actual place in the United States, in
32:56
Speaker 1: West Virginia. This is an actual place in West Virginia.
32:59
Speaker 1: The most powerful radio telescope in our hemisphere, and the
33:03
Speaker 1: largest steerable radio telescope is now the Green Bank Observatory
33:08
Speaker 1: in West Virginia exactly. And you know, this thing is
33:11
Speaker 1: listening to the sky, and it's listening to the sky
33:14
Speaker 1: not in terms of sound, of course, but in terms
33:16
Speaker 1: of a special frequency of light we call radio waves.
33:20
Speaker 1: And if you want to listen to the sky, you
33:23
Speaker 1: have to make sure you're not drowned out by basically
33:25
Speaker 1: light pollution from other sources of radio emissions. And I
33:30
Speaker 1: guess all of our cell phones, most of our electronics,
33:32
Speaker 1: they use these radio frequencies. They do, they use these
33:36
Speaker 1: radio frequencies, were constantly beaming radio waves around the world
33:40
Speaker 1: right for radio right If you're listening to us on
33:43
Speaker 1: the radio right now, then we have been transmitted to
33:46
Speaker 1: you using this kind of electromagnetic radiation whose frequency puts
33:51
Speaker 1: it in the radio band. And not just our cell
33:54
Speaker 1: phones and not just our radio towers, but a lot
33:56
Speaker 1: of our electronics accidentally sort of incidentally generated radio noise. Well,
34:02
Speaker 1: this is interesting. How big is this national radio quiet
34:06
Speaker 1: and it's like a federal thing, or how do people
34:08
Speaker 1: all agree in the large of a space to not
34:11
Speaker 1: use their cell phones. It is a federal thing was
34:14
Speaker 1: created in ninety eight. It's this big rectangle of land.
34:18
Speaker 1: It's about a hundred miles on a side, and so
34:21
Speaker 1: it's really pretty spacious. And it surrounds this Green Bank
34:24
Speaker 1: Observatory in West Virginia. Cool and you said it was
34:27
Speaker 1: creating a nine. We have radios. I guess we had
34:30
Speaker 1: radios and TV, but no cell phones back then, no
34:33
Speaker 1: cell phones. But these days also they try to restrict
34:35
Speaker 1: WiFi usage that also operates in the similar frequencies. All right,
34:40
Speaker 1: forget it. I mean I can go in a vacation
34:43
Speaker 1: with no cell phones but WiFi. Yeah. So they try
34:45
Speaker 1: to be as quiet as possible, and they actually drive
34:48
Speaker 1: around with this truck listening for radio signals, trying to
34:52
Speaker 1: catch people like emitting in their radio. And yeah, they do.
34:57
Speaker 1: They drive this patrol truck around listening for emitters because
35:00
Speaker 1: some people just aren't aware. Like if you have an
35:02
Speaker 1: old microwave oven that's poorly shielded, you can generate a
35:05
Speaker 1: lot of radio noise. I see. But then if they
35:08
Speaker 1: find somebody, how do they radio it in to come
35:10
Speaker 1: take them away? They can't, they can't. They just politely
35:13
Speaker 1: knock on the door and ask those folks to stop
35:15
Speaker 1: using it. It's not heavily and forced, like you can
35:18
Speaker 1: get a fifty dollar fine for emitting radio in the
35:21
Speaker 1: quiet zone. But they mostly just try to work with
35:24
Speaker 1: people and help them understand the importance of radio astronomy
35:28
Speaker 1: and what they're trying to do. That would be an
35:29
Speaker 1: expensive phone call if it cost you, And this is
35:32
Speaker 1: the real concerned. This is hilarious story from Australia where
35:35
Speaker 1: they also have a big radio telescope where they saw
35:38
Speaker 1: these weird signals and you know, they're listening for messages
35:41
Speaker 1: from outer space and they saw this bizarre signal they
35:43
Speaker 1: couldn't understand until they finally tracked it down after more
35:47
Speaker 1: than a decade to be the microwave in the break
35:50
Speaker 1: room where the grad students hang out. What they couldn't
35:53
Speaker 1: figure out why this signal always lasted the same amount
35:57
Speaker 1: as as a popcorn sitting on the micro Yeah, basically
36:01
Speaker 1: grad students eating frozen burritos created a false signal of extraterrestrials.
36:06
Speaker 1: I guess these telescopes are pretty sensitive, right, Like you're
36:09
Speaker 1: trying to detect really weak signals from space exactly, we
36:13
Speaker 1: are trying to listen to really quiet signals. Remember that
36:16
Speaker 1: the power of signal falls very quickly with the distance.
36:19
Speaker 1: You know, if you shout from the top of a mountain,
36:22
Speaker 1: then people can hear you if they're close by, but
36:24
Speaker 1: as they get further and further away, it's harder and
36:26
Speaker 1: harder to hear that shout. It falls with the distance squared.
36:29
Speaker 1: And so the message, for example, from an alien civilization
36:33
Speaker 1: could come with a very small amount of energy by
36:35
Speaker 1: the time it gets here. I see it's like I
36:38
Speaker 1: think you were telling me once. It's like the energy
36:40
Speaker 1: of a falling snowflake. Yes, it's a very very gentle
36:43
Speaker 1: ripple in the electromagnetic fields. And that's why this dish
36:47
Speaker 1: is huge. This thing is as tall as the Washington Monument.
36:51
Speaker 1: It's got two acres of area on the dish. What. Yeah, Also,
36:55
Speaker 1: it's kind of beautiful. You should check out a Google
36:57
Speaker 1: image of this thing. It's bigger than like the receive
37:00
Speaker 1: it's not bigger, unfortunately, but it is steerable right air
37:03
Speaker 1: cebo sort of built into the ground. This thing is
37:05
Speaker 1: above ground, but they can turn it so they can
37:08
Speaker 1: point it in various directions and that helps them understand
37:11
Speaker 1: like the location or the source of a signal. I
37:14
Speaker 1: guess one question is why aren't there more of these
37:17
Speaker 1: radio quiet zones, Like you know, I've been to Hawaii
37:19
Speaker 1: and the telescopes and note they'll find me for using
37:22
Speaker 1: my cell phone up there. Well, they don't have radio
37:24
Speaker 1: telescopes in Hawaii. Most of those are optical telescopes. So
37:28
Speaker 1: this is a special kind of telescope that's listening for radio,
37:32
Speaker 1: and so it's mostly sensitive to radio noise, and radio
37:35
Speaker 1: telescopes aren't as common as optical telescopes. It's a sort
37:39
Speaker 1: of special branch of astronomy, I see, and it's a
37:42
Speaker 1: really exciting one. I mean, there's lots of really interesting
37:44
Speaker 1: things you can learn about the universe just by listening
37:47
Speaker 1: to the sky in the radio. You know. This is
37:49
Speaker 1: how we discovered, for example, that the center of our
37:52
Speaker 1: galaxy had a black hole, because people heard this weird
37:55
Speaker 1: signal from the center of the galaxy and they thought,
37:57
Speaker 1: what's that? What could be they're making this weird holts? Wow,
38:01
Speaker 1: And then we pointed one of these telescopes to the
38:03
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy. Yeah, that's how we figured it out.
38:06
Speaker 1: Radio astronomy. The whole field was sort of invented accidentally.
38:10
Speaker 1: There was an engineer at Bell Labs who was asked
38:12
Speaker 1: to figure out, like, could we beam signals using radio
38:15
Speaker 1: waves across the Atlantic? How much interference is there? So
38:18
Speaker 1: he just built a huge radio antenna to sort of
38:20
Speaker 1: listen for the amount of noise. He was more worried
38:22
Speaker 1: about thunderstorms, but then he heard this weird signal than
38:25
Speaker 1: he discovered. Hold on a second, this isn't even coming
38:28
Speaker 1: from Earth, It's coming from somewhere else. And that's when
38:31
Speaker 1: radio astronomy was born. We realized that the stars were
38:34
Speaker 1: sending us information in another frequency and nobody had been listening. Interesting,
38:39
Speaker 1: I guess that the universe is sending us signals and
38:41
Speaker 1: all frequencies. Really, that's why we listened to the radio,
38:44
Speaker 1: and the X ray and the optical. We look at
38:47
Speaker 1: gamma rays, we look at every sort of kind of
38:49
Speaker 1: frequency because different parts of the universe glow at different
38:53
Speaker 1: frequencies of light. Right, the horder you are, the higher
38:56
Speaker 1: your temperature, and the more energetic, the higher the frequency
38:59
Speaker 1: you mid of your radiation. So radio waves come from
39:02
Speaker 1: sort of cooler, quieter stuff, but it's also very powerful.
39:06
Speaker 1: It's very good at seeing dark stuff. That you can't
39:08
Speaker 1: otherwise see, like huge clouds of gas and dust that
39:11
Speaker 1: aren't glowing in the visible light. Right. And and sometimes
39:14
Speaker 1: when you see those photos of like giant space nebula
39:17
Speaker 1: or giant clusters of stuff out there in space, and
39:20
Speaker 1: you see has all these colors. That's really what it is, right,
39:22
Speaker 1: Like they sort of manipulate the signals from all these
39:25
Speaker 1: different frequencies and they assigned colors to them. Yeah, a
39:27
Speaker 1: lot of times they do a color map. Right. They
39:29
Speaker 1: take things which are invisible to your eyes. Right, you
39:32
Speaker 1: can't see radio waves even when they hit your eyeballs,
39:35
Speaker 1: you can't see them. And then they shift their frequency
39:37
Speaker 1: so that you can see it. They map it into
39:39
Speaker 1: the visible spectrum. All right. So then this National Radio Quiet,
39:44
Speaker 1: So can anyone go visit? Is it open to the
39:46
Speaker 1: public or do you have to like sign in or
39:47
Speaker 1: get permission. There's a huge area of land, so it
39:50
Speaker 1: includes like cities. People live there, Like people's homes are
39:53
Speaker 1: in this area. It's not a closed off region. People
39:56
Speaker 1: live there, but there's no radio signals rights, no radio station.
40:00
Speaker 1: You can't use cell phones, you're not supposed to have WiFi.
40:03
Speaker 1: There's like wold towns with no cell phone or WiFi signals. Yeah,
40:07
Speaker 1: there's like a whole mountain resort there that has like
40:09
Speaker 1: you know, land lines and phone booths and all sorts
40:12
Speaker 1: of quaint stuff. Wait, what's a phone booth. It's this
40:16
Speaker 1: thing I see on Doctor Who. I don't really know
40:17
Speaker 1: what it's. And some people really like to live there,
40:21
Speaker 1: Like some folks feel hyper sensitive to electromagnetic radiation, you know,
40:26
Speaker 1: they don't like to live near sources of it. And
40:28
Speaker 1: so if you're that kind of person, then this is
40:31
Speaker 1: made for you. Or if you're a radio astronomer. Wow,
40:34
Speaker 1: I wonder if people are happier there, you know what
40:35
Speaker 1: I mean. Like, I feel like maybe my life was
40:37
Speaker 1: a little happier before this sort of constant source of
40:41
Speaker 1: noise in my pocket, all those email things that you
40:43
Speaker 1: don't pay attention to, all these things that you know,
40:46
Speaker 1: I have to ignore. I don't know. And it's a
40:48
Speaker 1: great place to do radio astronomy, but it might also
40:50
Speaker 1: be a good place to do with psychology study of
40:52
Speaker 1: the effects of modern communication. I'm sure somebody's looked into that. Interesting. Unfortunately,
40:57
Speaker 1: most of the people who live there are physicists, so
40:59
Speaker 1: you know that the happiness question down. It definitely excused
41:03
Speaker 1: the sample for sure, that it wouldn't be a scientific study.
41:07
Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you Robin for that question. It
41:09
Speaker 1: was a fun topic to explore. I had had no
41:11
Speaker 1: idea about this National Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia,
41:14
Speaker 1: that's right. So if you are driving through it, please
41:17
Speaker 1: don't blast your stereo or turn on your WiFi or
41:19
Speaker 1: open up your phone, because those astronomers want to hear
41:22
Speaker 1: the message from the aliens when it comes and not
41:25
Speaker 1: your silly emails. Yeah. All right, well those are our
41:28
Speaker 1: three questions for today. And once again, it's amazing, first
41:31
Speaker 1: of all that people are listening to this podcast. Thank
41:33
Speaker 1: you so much for being there for us. And it's
41:37
Speaker 1: amazing the range of questions we get from people from
41:40
Speaker 1: all over the world. That's right. And remember that science
41:42
Speaker 1: is just people asking their personal questions about the universe.
41:46
Speaker 1: So keep asking your questions. Think to yourself, if I
41:49
Speaker 1: could get the answer to one question about the universe,
41:52
Speaker 1: what would be my one question. And if you know
41:55
Speaker 1: what that question is and you don't know the answer,
41:57
Speaker 1: hey right to us. Maybe we can help you figure
42:00
Speaker 1: it out. We'll ask questions right back at you and
42:03
Speaker 1: avoid answering it like we did some questions today and
42:06
Speaker 1: then we'll run away to the radio free zone and
42:08
Speaker 1: avoid your email. It sounds like a good deal, all right. Well,
42:12
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed that.
42:15
Speaker 1: See you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
42:25
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of
42:28
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio or more podcast For my heart Radio,
42:31
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
42:35
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Ye