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Can you make matter out of pure electrons? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, have you started working on the menu for
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: our food truck idea? I have. Actually, I've been experimenting
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: with spice mixtures, reserving spicy food more like sparky food.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: What do you mean. I was going to sprinkle electrons
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: on top of everything to sort of jazz it up
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a bit. Wow? Is that the latest gastronomical trend? What
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: do electrons taste like? You know? I'm not actually sure.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe lightning in a bottle that would be shocking. Electrons
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: will be extra charge. Actually, maybe they'll be negative charge.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Hi am or hammy cartoonists and the co author of
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I love eating electrons. Imagine they can't taste like maybe
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: a metal little metally, you know. They taste like pasta
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: when they're in my pasta. They taste like ice cream
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: when they're in my ice cream. They taste like tacos
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: when they're in my tacos. Everything tastes like electrons because
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: electrons taste like everything. MM. Because I guess everything has electrons.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Everything has electrons, at least everything that I've eaten. I've
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: never had a pure sample of protons, for example. Are
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: you positive about that? Because I don't live in the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: center of the sun, how do you know you didn't
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: accidentally eat something that had its electron stripped away? That's true.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I guess if everybody accidentally eats like eight spiders at night,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: then probably an individual proton is flown into my mouth
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: one time without me noticing, yeah, or maybe two or three.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I wonder if your tongue can taste an individual particle
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the way your eyeball can see an individual photon, it must, right, Like,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: don't you have little nerve sensors that they tacked individual things? Right?
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I suppose? So? I wonder if people have done want
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: them tasting experiments. Maybe they have, and maybe they haven't.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explained
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of My Heart Radio in which
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: we invite you to taste the entire universe, to take
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a long drink of all of the mysteries of our universe,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to try to imbibe everything that we do understand about
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the way the universe works. From the smallest tiny little
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: bits electrons and protons whizzing around all the way up
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to the massive black holes at the centers of our
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: galaxy that are flushing it all down at the end
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: of the day. We invite you to think about all
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: of these big questions, to ask, to wonder, to explore,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and to listen to us make bad jokes about all
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of it. It's right because it is a tasty universe
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: full of amazing and filling and nutritious facts and phenomenon
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: out there for us to explore and try out and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: hopefully satisfy our curiosity. And we joke about what it's
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: like to taste an electron because mostly we experience the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: universe at sort of a certain scale. Things are like
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: roughly a meter in size, or things that way about
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: a kilogram or take about a second to eat. That's
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: our familiar experience of the universe. But we know that
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: there's another picture that if you drill down to the microphysics,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that everything that's around you is actually made of tiny
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: little particles to ing and frowing and coming together to
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: make this incredible emergent experience of our lives. And it's
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: fascinating to try to reconcile those two things, to understand
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: how all these tiny little particles do that dance to
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: come together to make blueberries and ice cream and tacos
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and blueberry ice cream tacos. Yeah, and fortunately we are
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: here to taste this amazing buffet of knowledge and amazing
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: fact that the universe has to offer, and we are
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: here to ask those questions and hopefully explain them to
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: you in a way that everyone can understand. Yeah, and
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you can explore this sort of in two directions. You
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: could start from the tiny little bits and say what
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: can these bits do? How can they come together to
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: make different kinds of stuff? That can be tricky to
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: do in as you have an incredible supercomputer or our
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: master of particles. But we can also do it in
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the other direction. We can look around and say what
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: kind of things are there in the universe, and how
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: do we explain them? How do we look around and say,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: this bit of lava and that kitten and that black
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: hole all somehow come from the same basic rules of
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the universe. What else is possible? How do we explain
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: all of these incredible variety of things using the same
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: fundamental physical laws? And what else are those physical laws
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: capable of producing? In our sort of weird emergent lives. Yeah,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: because I guess the universe has been cooking for billions
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: of years, and it seems to be following the same
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: recipe book, same rules, the same laws of physics, and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: most of the time, the same three ingredients. That's right.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Most of the stuff that's out there in the universe
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: is made of electrons and two kinds of quarks, up
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: corks and down quirks, which you can put together in
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: all sorts of amazing different ways to cook up basically
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: everything that you've ever eaten and experienced. But even just
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: those three can make an incredible variety of things and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: also different kinds of things. We see them dance together
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: to make liquids, we see them spread out to make gases,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: we see them click together to make crystals and solids.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: It's really amazing the breath of sort of different characteristics
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: and properties that these same basic ingredients can reveal. Yeah,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty amazing menu that the universe has put together,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: which is three ingredients. Although I feel like it's maybe
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: not the full menu because all of that stuff made
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: out of electrons and corks. It's really only five percent
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: of the universe, right, I wonder if there's like a
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: super secret menu out there. That's right. If you want
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to order the universe animal style, you want to know
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: what's off menu. And you're absolutely right. Everything that we
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: have every experienced or stepped on or put in our mouths,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: or stepped on and then put in our mouths are
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: made of these three basic elements. But there is a
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: lot of other stuff out there. Most of the matter
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: in the universe isn't actually made out of these atoms.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: It's made out of something else called dark matter, which
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: no human has ever tasted, though it's probably flown into
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: your mouth and then back out the other side of
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: your head without you noticing, back out of the other
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: parts of your body. It is dark matter, after all.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: That's right, But here we're talking about physics dark matter,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: not biological dark matter, which everybody produces in their gut.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: But you're absolutely right. There is more out there in
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the universe than just these three bits. But we are
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: still trying to understand how these three bits come together
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: to do their dances and to make all of this
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: incredible phenomenon that we can actually order at food trucks
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and enjoy. Yeah, and even though the many of the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: things we see and con taste and touch is made
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: up of only three ingredients. It is still pretty, as
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: you say, fascinating. How much stuff is out there that
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: we can look at and study makes it kind of
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: wonder what else is out there. That's true, there's an
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: incredible variety of stuff out there, and it makes us
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: wonder about how it all works. It also makes us
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: wonder what else we could possibly make out of these
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: little lego bits of the universe. And can you make
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: weird kinds of matter by like only using one of them?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Can you build stuff out just up corks or just
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: down corks, or just electrons? And these are kind of
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: weird ideas that physicists like to explore, so really, on
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the podcast, we'll be asking the question can you make
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: matter out of pure electron? How about impure electrons? Are
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: you saying you can make matter out of dirty electrons?
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I mean purely electrons, electrons and nothing else. There's those
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: such things as a dirty electron, because remember, all electrons
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: are really just the same electron. There's really only one
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: electron in the universe. Wait, wait, what what do you
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: mean just one electron field? Are you saying we're all
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: like inside of a giant electron. I'm making the point
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that all electrons really are I'm making the point that
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: all electrons really are the same. There's no way to
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: like label them and to say this electron is different
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: in some way than another electron. They have their quantum states,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: you know, spin and momentum and location, but there's nothing
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: really about them that's different. You're you, and I mean
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: we feel different. But electrons don't have an identity. And
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: one way to think about that is as you say
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: that all electrons are actually just ripples in the same
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: universe spanning electron field. So really every electron is just
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: sort of like part of the big electron field of
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the universe. And that's why they're all identical, because they're
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: really just all part of the same thing. They're not
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: perfectly identical, right, don't They have different quantum characteristics, and
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: maybe those quantum characteristics are infinite. Also, they have different
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: quantum characteristics like location, right, which we think maybe there
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: are an infinite possible number of values of it, and
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: so you could have an electron here, an electron there,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: and you're right, those are distinguishable technically from a quantum
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: mechanical point of view. But you could swap them and
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: there would be no difference in the quantum state. It's
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: not like they have any other secret labels. You know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: this one's Maria and that one's Fred, and they behave
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: slightly differently in the same situation. If you swapped all
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the electrons in the universe, nothing would change. But don't
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: some of them have like spin in different directions, And
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: can't those directions also be infinite? Well, the spin can't
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: be infinite because that's quantized, right, and so they can
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: spin up one half or down one half. There's only
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: two possibilities there, So there are an infinite number of
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: spin axes for these electrons. My point is just that
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: that's all there is to the electron. Is this list
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: of characteristics is nothing. Else's no like identity to each electron.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: It's just this list of characteristics. So if you took
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: like electron number seven and electron number eleven and you
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: swap them, including all of their quantum states, the universe
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: could not notice any difference because all we can notice
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: are their quantum states. Interesting, all right, Well, then the
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: question here is can you make matter out of pure electrons?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: And I thought this was a weird question, because isn't
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: aren't electrons matter? Don't we consider electrons be part of
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the particles that are matter particles? Yeah, that's true. I
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: guess a single electron you could consider matter. But if
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: you like went to a restaurant and somebody served you
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a single electron for dinner, you might not be happy
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: with what you've got. Well, it depends on how many
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: courses the dinner hats it has, you know, ten to
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: seven churns of electrons that might be definitely filling. What
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: kind of tip do you have to leave for that
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: many courses? I mean, think about the dishes that they
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: had to serve. Tend to attempt two point seven obviously
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: to the two point seven is not ten toy man,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you're thinking about ten to Anyway, it's a good question here,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: And when we talk about matter, we're really referring to
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: something on our scale, you know, things that we can
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: play with, stuff we can make in the lab and poke.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Can you have like a macroscopic serving of just electrons?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: What would that be like? What would its properties be?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Can you build a complex thing out of just electrons? Yes? Exactly?
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: What are the emergent properties of a blob? Of just electrons,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: What can they do? Because I guess you can put
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: together quarts, right, of course, you can't put together and
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: make stuff. Right, You can make protons and neutrons, and
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: you can make atomic nuclear out of those. Right, You
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: can in fact make complex structures out of just quarks.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Quirks can make protons, that can make neutrons. They can
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: also make other kinds of stuff like other hay drawn
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: and masons. Is a whole spectrum of them, chaons and pyons,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: and robe particles and omega particles, all sorts of complex stuff.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Most of that stuff is unstable. It's heavy in it
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: decays very rapidly into other stuff. The proton is stable.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: We think a proton hanging out will live forever. Neutron, weirdly,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: is not stable. A neutron floating in space will last
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: about eleven minutes. This is a fascinating mystery about exactly
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: how long it survives and extra super weird. If you
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: put protons and neutrons together to make an atomic nucleus,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: as you say, then the neutrons become stable. And one
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: of our listeners on the Discord channel was pointing this
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: out that neutrons are like maybe the only thing in
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the universe which is unstable on its own, and then
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: you put it together with other stuff and it becomes stable.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Interesting, But I guess today we're talking
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: about electrons until the question is whether we can do
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the same thing with electrons, Like can you build another
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: kind of particle maybe with electrons or any kind of
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: like a big crystal or a chunk of stuff made
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: out of purely electrons? Yeah, and then can you put
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it in a spice container and sprinkle on top of
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the food we serve in our food truck and charge
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: negative for it? Charge negative? You mean you pay people
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to eat it? Sounds like a terrible business. Electrons are
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: negatively charged. You can't charge positive money for them. That
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: would be like against the rules. What of their positrons?
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Those are expensive? Yeah, for sure, at sounds more positive too,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, as usual, we were wondering how many
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: people had thought about this question of whether you can
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: make matter out of electrons, So as usual Daniel went
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: out there to ask people can you make matter out
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: of pure electrons? Thank you very much to everybody who
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: volunteers to answer these questions. It's a lot of fun
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: for me. To hear what people are thinking before we
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: dig into a topic, and it's a lot of fun
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: for the other listeners to sort of calibrate their knowledge.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: So thanks again, and if you would like to participate
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: for a future episode, please do not be shy right
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to us to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: to think about it for a second. Do you think
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: electrons can hang out and make stuff together? Here's what
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: people have to say. That's an interesting question. I'm going
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to guess no, because the electrons being all negatively charged
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: in other words, all the same charge and not zero,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: would repel each other, so we would not be able
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: to clump them together in order to make matter. I'm
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: sure if the somehow high energy is something going on there.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: You can make matter out of just electrons, depending probably
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: how you with what they interact, or how they interact.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: If you can make crystals out of time, I think
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: you can make matter out of electrons. Of course, you
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: can make a matter out of just electrons. Electrons matter.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: You can have an electron fluid that is just a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: cloud of electrons. But if you want to build a
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: solid matter or even a liquid, you probably wouldn't need
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: several different kinds of electrons. So not I would have said, no,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you can't make matter out of just electrons, but the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: fact you're asking me suggests that answer is incorrect. With
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: that in mind, I'm going to double down and say
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: that once again, you cannot make metro out of just electrons.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: But in the next thirty minutes I lo to I
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: honestly have no idea. All Right, it sounds like people
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: are split on this question. Some people say yes, some
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: people say no. Some people are being loyally about it,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: like I was saying that electrons are matter. Yeah, there's
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of speculation here, and I loved hearing all
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the ideas that this question sparked in people's minds. Yeah.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: So I guess maybe let's take um step back here
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: and and start at the very fundamental level here and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: talk about just matter in general, Like Daniel, what does
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: matter normally made out of? So matter when we're talking
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: about like me and you and the ground beneath us,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: and excluding for the moment, all of the dark matter
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: in the universe, most of the matter that's around us,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: of course, are made out of atoms. The hundred basic
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: building blocks or so of the periotic table are what
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: make up me and you and everything you've ever eaten.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: You take that apart their electrons on the outside of
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: it whizzing around, and that the heart is a nucleus,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: which is made out of these protons and neutrons. The
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: protons are all positively charged, but they're sort of weirdly
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: stuck together by the strong force. Inside those, of course,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: are quirks, up quirks and down quirks, and a huge
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: mess of gluons sticking them all together. And so essentially
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: you've got protons and neutrons with electrons all around them,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and most of these atoms typically are balanced in terms
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of their charge, the same number of protons as electrons
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: to get a neutral atom. Yeah, that's kind of seems
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: important for things to kind of stick together. And what
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I guess what's kind of interesting is that quarks, like
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you said, can sort of stick together to make protons,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: and protons can stick together with other neutrons to make
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: atomic nuclei. And so it's kind of weird because all
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: those things are positively charged and yet they're able to
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: stick together. Yeah, because there's a lot going on inside
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the nucleus to hold that together. Right, The proto tons
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: are all possibly charged. They repel each other, and the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: electrostatic force there is very strong, right, it goes like
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: one over the distance squared. And these protons are very
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: close together inside the nucleus, so the force pushing them
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: apart is very powerful, but the force pulling them together
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: is even more powerful. This is the strong nuclear force.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So their forces everywhere inside the atom. Inside the proton,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: there's a strong nuclear force. But that strong force isn't
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: completely captured inside the proton. If you're like on one
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: side of the proton, then you're closer to like one
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: of the corks at the other, so it doesn't all
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: just totally balance out. You still feel a little bit
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: of the strong force, and the same for the neutrons.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And that's what lets the protons and neutrons stick together.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: The strong force is so strong that even just like
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the residual leftover bit that leak out of the proton
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and neutron are enough to hold them together and resist
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the push of the electrostatic force. And so that's how
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I guess protons and nuclear are able to stick together.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It's it's because there are different forces that play here. Right.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: There's the electromagnetic force pulling it apart, but then there's
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: just wrong force holding it together, and somehow that finds
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: a balance kind of in these structures exactly, And there's
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: a lesson there about the role of forces in matter.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: We tend to think of matters made out of matter particles,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: as you say, quarks and electrons. We describe the stuff
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: we are made out of in terms of those matter particles.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: But those matter particles are held together by the forces.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of energy in those forces, and you
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't have these structures without the forces. So when you
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: hear people say, oh, the atom is made of the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: nucleus and the electrons and there's a huge amount of
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: empty space between them, I always think, well, it's not
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: really empty space. There's a lot of photons whizzing around
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: there to hold the electron in place in its ground state.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Around the nucleus is a huge number of gluons inside
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the nucleus, so there really isn't any empty space there.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And the forces play a really big role in constructing matter,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: right right, Because I guess this is this look at
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: forces in terms of particles, right, Like when an electron
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: pushes another electron or proton pushes another proton, they're actually
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: exchanging particles. There's two different ways to think about forces.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: One this in terms of fields, like each electron creates
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: an electric field that's all around it that pushes on
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: other electrons. This is sort of like Maxwell's idea. Or
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: you could also think about in terms of particles. You
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: can say, well, there aren't really fields. There's just like
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a bunch of virtual particles that pass momentum around. So
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: when electrons push on other electrons, they're exchanging particles. Either way, though,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: that space is not empty, So between the electron and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the nucleus is either a vast electric field that's tying
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: it all together or a bunch of photons. And this
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: really does contribute to like the matter that matters. Think
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: about a proton, for example, it's made out of three quarks,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: but those quarks are a tiny fraction of the mass
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: of the proton. Most of the mass of the proton
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: actually comes from the energy of the bonds between them.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: So really the proton and the atom is mostly gluons, right,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: which we tend to think of as a force particle.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: So the point I want to make is just that
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of empty space there and that
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: matter that makes us up includes both the forces and
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: the matter particles, all playing their role in this symphony
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: of matter. Okay, so then course can built stuff together, right,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: like make a proton, and you can make atomic nuclei,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and then overall that has a positive charge, and then
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: that's kind of how atoms are formed. Right. You have
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: this positively charge nuclei and which attracts electrons which come
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: in and they hang out all together, and that's how
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: you get an atom of regular matter exactly. That's how
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you get an atom. And the protons that are inside
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the nucleus, the number of them, as you say, determines
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the number of electrons you need in order to balance
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: it to make it overall neutral. And that's really crucial.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: The number of electrons around the nucleus really determine the
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: bulk properties. Then you stick like ten to the twenty
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: six of these things on a teaspoon. What do they do?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: What do they look like? That depends mostly on those
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: electrons which surround the atom, and the number of those
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: electrons is determined by the number of protons inside the atom.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: So it's all connected in this really cool way, right,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And so like in the atoms in my body. I
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: have a lot of electrons, but they're only hanging out
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: together because they're all attracted to the positively charged nuclei
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: of the atoms, right, But they don't collapse into the ams, right.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: They sort of like a fly around in orbit around
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the nu. Yeah, it's tempting to think about them in orbit,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: sort of like an analogy to a planetary system. Remember,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: these are quantum particles, so they don't have classical paths.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: They're like here and then they're there, and there's somewhere else,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: and they don't have to go in between those places
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that you've seen them. So typically we describe it as
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: like electrons are in their stationary state. It's a ground
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: state of a quantum particle. It's not technically in an
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: orbit like a classical path. But yeah, the electrons are
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: all hanging out near each other because the protons are there, right,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: But they don't collapse into the nuclei because of what
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: They don't collapse into the nucleus because they have a
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: minimum energy. Every solution to the shortening your equation has
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: a minimum energy when there's any sort of confinement, and
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: that's not zero. So every quantum field. Every quantum solution
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: has a non zero minimum state, and you can think
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: about that is sort of consistent with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: It's impossible to have a particle with zero energy because
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: then you know it's energy zero and its location because
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't be moving at all. So there's sort of
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: like a minimum fuzz to all of these particles, which
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: is why they can't collapse into the nucleus, although electrons
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: do spend some fraction of their time inside the nucleus. Right,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the stationary state is mostly outside the nucleus, but some
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: there's some probability for them to be inside the nucleus
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: at any time, but not really right, because it's a
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: whole quantum. It's just a probability. I mean, you said
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: there's a minimum time, but they don't really spend time there, right, Thus,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying, it's quantum, right, It's not like the
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: cat is alive or dead. It's it's like it's it's
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: live and it I like how you say it's quantum,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: so it's not real. I think what you're saying is
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: that as a probability to be there, but we never
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: actually see it there we don't collapse the wave function
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: inside the nucleus. There's a really cool set of measurements
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: they do where they where they try to figure out
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: what fraction of the time or equivalently, what probability the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: electron has to be inside the nucleus, and it has
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: a real effect on measurements we make. We did a
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: whole podcast episode about that once. But the point is, yes,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: it's a quantum particle, so as these probabilities to be
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: into from places that does include being inside the nucleus,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: which is super weird and awesome. All right, So that's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: regular matter. That's what we're made out of. Protons and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: quirks and electrons hanging out together, and there are many
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: different ways for these atoms to hang out together. We'll
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: get into that in a little bit, and then we'll
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: talk about whether you can make stuff like that matter
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: complex matter using only electrons. So we'll talk about that,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. Alright, we're asking
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the question can you make matter out of pure electrons?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: And now, Daniel, do pure electrons cost more than regular
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: electrons or you know, first press electrons, I like using
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: imported electrons. You know these domestic electrons is just not
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: very good. Yeah, you want the Italian ones, like the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: ones coming straight out of the olives exactly like Italian
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and Argentinian electrons. They're really have that's flavor. I like, Well,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: it depends on the year or two. And you know
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the tero are of course, you know where they come from.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: You got to know the what's the name for a
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: farm that produces electrons? I don't know. I don't know.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Lap to table electrons. There you go, wellap the table.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I like to know my electron uer artisanal electrons, that's
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: that's the kind. I want each one hand crafted a
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: little bit different from the rest, that's right, Yeah, by
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: tiny little hands. But the question is can you make
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: stuff out of electrons? Can you make like an olive?
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Can you make wine out of an electron? Or purely electrons?
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: And so this is a weird question because we know
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: that electrons can be part of matter, but usually when
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: they're hanging out with possibly charged nuclei, which is made
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: out of quarks, the question is can they hang out
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: by themselves? Yeah, And it's really interesting because electrons seem
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to determine a lot of the properties that we're familiar with,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Like if you're looking at a piece of stuff and
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: you ask does it shine? Is it reflective? Is it dim?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Is it brittle? Does it conduct? Elect tricity? All these
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: macroscopic chemical quantities that are important to us and in manufacturing,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and you know, can you eat it this kind of stuff?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: How heavy and dense is it? All of this is
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: determined by how those atoms come together and how reactive
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: they are, what they like to stick to, whether they
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: do like to stick to each other, and that all
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: depends on the electrons, right, Like are the electrons stuck
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: around individual atom or do they like to flow from
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: atom to atom? And so condensed matter physicists, the people
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: who really think about like how atoms to come together
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: to make different kinds of google and what kind of
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: properties that goo has? Think about electrons is like are
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: they a fluid? Is there like a liquid of electrons
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: inside my metal that's sort of like flowing through? And
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: so it's really the electrons that determine a lot of
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: these properties. So basically it's all about the electrons. Interesting,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: which I guess begs the question do you really need
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the quarks? Right? That's kind of what we're asking to this,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: can you make an atom or a block of stuff
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: where it's only electrons, Like, do you actually need quarts
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: to put electrons together? Yeah? And we see some fascinating
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: hints already when we think about strange behaviors of electrons,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: like in the case of superconductivity. Super Conductivity is when
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: electrons can flow with almost no resistance inside of material.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Usually there's some resistance pass electricity from one spot to another,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the wire heats up a little bit, you lose some energy,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: But electrons can flow without any resistance. Then they don't
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: lose any energy. That would be awesome for like sending
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: energy really far away and all sorts of stuff. And
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: this happens when electrons come together to make pairs. They're
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: called Cooper pairs of electrons. You take two electrons that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: are about spin one half. You make this weird sort
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: of quasi particle. The two electrons combined together to make
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: effectively a boson, something that has spin one, which doesn't
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: have the same rules as fermions, Like bosons can stack
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: on top of each other and be happy and slip
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: right by each other, whereas fermions are like grumpy and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: don't like to be in the same place. So already
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: we see a hint of electrons doing something weird when
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: they come together just by themselves. Is they can do
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: this weird super conductive bitything that they can't do when
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: they're on their own, right, because I guess on their own,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and electronics negatively charge, which tends to repel other electrons.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: So really, like if you just had two electrons in
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the universe, they would want to be as far away
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: from each other as possible, right, they would keep pushing
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: each other away for eternity. That's right. And the key
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: thing to think about is the kinetic energy versus the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: potential energy. What you're talking about is their potential energy,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: their desire to push each other apart. Right, they have
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: this strong coolumbic potential energy from the electrostatic force between them,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and it provides a force that pushes them apart. The
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: other kind of energy they can have is kinetic energy,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: just their velocity. If they have a lot more kinetic
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: energy than the potential energy, then the potential energy doesn't
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: really matter, it doesn't really play a role. And that's
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: often what's happening inside metals, for example, is that these
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: electrons have a lot of kinetic energy, so they can
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: just flow and mostly ignore their repulsion. But if they
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of kinetic energy, if they're like
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: cold or slow, then that potential energy can really dominate
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: what happens to them. It can really determine the structures
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: that they can form and their behaviors. But it's I
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: guess it's not just this interplay to right, Like there's
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: other stuff going on inside of these superconductor or these
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: weird materials. Right, there's a whole bunch of electrons to
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: pushing on each electron and also other positively charged nuclear
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: hanging out right, So it's kind of like this really
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: complex soup that kind of gives you these weird behaviors. Yeah. Absolutely,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: it's very complex, and it's not something that we theoretically
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: understand that well, it's not easy to say, here's my setup,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: is this going to be super conductive or not? Like,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: we don't have the theoretical tools to be able to
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: make those predictions every time, which sort of boggles my
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: line every time I run into that situation. It's like,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: but we know the particles, we basically know how they interact.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Why can't we predict what's going to happen, And the
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: answer is it's complicated. Right. There's a lot of chaos
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and it's not easy to translate from the rules of
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: what happens to tiny particles to what it's going to
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: be like to have ten to the twenty six of them. Right,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: sort of like how macro economics is hard to predict
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: from micro economics, particle physics is based on this idea
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: of like reduction, let's strip everything down to the time,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: any basic rules that are gonna reveal what everything does.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: That doesn't always give you an explanation for what happens
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: and why it happens at the bigger scale, Right, it
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: sounds like you're just complaining how hard your job is.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Then I'm amazed at how hard everybody else's job is.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: That's why I do particle physics because we don't have
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: to worry about like more than five or six particles
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: at once. To me, it's too complicated to even think about. All. Right, Well,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the question here is can you make stuff out of electrons?
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: So I guess maybe a step is through what happens
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: if I try to make something out of electrons, Like
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: if I just get five electrons and put them together
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: in one place, they're probably going to repel each other
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and try to fly away as far away as possible. Right,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Because electrons only really feel the electro mechantic force. They
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: don't have this back of force like quarks do to
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: keep them together exactly. Electrons don't feel the strong force, right,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: they feel the electromagnetic force. They also do feel the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: weak force, so that's so weak that it's not really
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: relevant here. Do they feel gravity? You know, we don't
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: know the answer to that question. How and whether they
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: feel gravity. That depends on the theory of quant um gravity,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and it's sort of a mystery to us. Right. Wait,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: we don't know if electrons feel gravity. We think they do,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: but we don't really know how they do. For example,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: say an electron has a probability to be over here
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: or over there. Where is its gravity? Is it over
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: here or is it over there? Or is it half
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: over here and half over there. We don't know because
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: we don't have a theory of quantum gravity. We don't
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: know how gravity works for tiny, little quantum particles. But
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I guess I mean, we know that photons, for example,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: do bend to the effects of gravity, Like if you
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: shoot photons near a black hole, they're going to bend.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: If I shoot an electron at a black hole, is
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: it going to bend or is it going to keep
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: flying straight through? It's definitely gonna bend, right, And the
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: reason that photons bend near a black hole is not
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: because of their particular gravity as much as it's because
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: of the bending of space from the black hole. So
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: it's really the gravity of the black hole there that's
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: determining the path of the photon, and the electron will
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: also do almost the same thing. We won't move in
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the same geodesic as the photon because it does have mass.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: But yes, absolutely electrons will get bent around a black hole,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: so they do feel the effect of gravity. Then, yes,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: they feel the effects of gravity and bent space time,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: but we don't really understand exactly how that works because
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: their quantum particles and we don't have a theory of
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: quantum gravity. Sounds like, you know, they feel gravity, you
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: just haven't tried to figure out how it works. Oh,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: we'd love to, but those experiments are really hard to do,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: right because the force of gravity from an electron is tiny.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: The smallest things we've ever been able to measure gravity
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: for are like on the size of millimeters, and that's
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: really really hard because the force of gravity, so we
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: compare to everything else, Like a few electrons on the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: surface of a millimeter sized piece of iron will overwhelm
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the gravity of that iron because just a few electrons
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: have enough force to overwhelm the force of gravity from
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: like you know, ten to the thirty iron nuclei. Yeah,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: obviously the electromagnetic force is stronger than gravity. But I
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: guess I'm asking, like, if you have two electron sitting
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: next to each other, are they pulling on each other
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: through gravity? I think they are, but we don't really
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: understand exactly how that works because we don't know how
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: to combine the quantum uncertainty in their location with the
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: classical theory of gravity we have, which doesn't allow for
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: uncertainty in location. Yeah, so if you bring a whole
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: bunch of electrons together, they are going to be pulling
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: on each other through gravity, but it's not enough to
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: overcome the extreme repulsion they feel towards each other electromagnetically,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: that's right. So it's all just about the electromagnetic force.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And if you wanted to like have a pile of electrons,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you might think, like, can I like the coolest down
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: into a solid made out of just electrons? Can you
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: like build a crystal out of just electrons? Right? Well,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I guess you know that, don't. They have experiments where
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: you're able to create electrons, right, and you're able to
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: shoot at them. Can you just shoot a whole bunch
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: of them together at the same time? Like, that's kind
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: of how hard TVs would used to work, right, Yeah.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: TVs used to work with cathode ray tubes where you
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: would boil electrons off of the surface and then accelerate
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: them towards the screen and then they would make a
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: little flash of light. And we definitely do experiments where
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: we like smash electrons into each other and annihilate them
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: to make other kinds of stuff. But I think what
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: we want to do here is say, let's have a
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: bunch of elector rons and just like try to get
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: them together to build something bigger than themselves. Can we
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: like stack them together like lego pieces? Can we get
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: them to form some sort of structure? And then what
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: emergent properties does it have? Does it flow? Is it shiny,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: does it conduct electricity? Does it taste good? That have
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: constant volume or not, this kind of questions about the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: like emergent macroscopic properties of electrons stuff, right, right, But
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm saying it seems impossible because if you
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: try to put together some electrons together, they're just going
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: to repel each other. So step us through what the
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: idea here for maybe trying to get them all together
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: into a crystal or some kind of structure. You can
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: put stuff together that repels each other. You can stack
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: magnets on top of each other, you know, north to north,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: south to south, et cetera, just sort of sit on
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: top of each other. So you can imagine stacking electrons
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: in the same way. We like get a bunch of
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: them together. You contain them somehow, and then they fall
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: into some pattern which which like minimizes the overall potential energy,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: so they're like distances between each other. Well, I think
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: that's the key you work right there, containment, Right, You
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: somehow have to squitch them together and keep them together.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Would you do that with magnets or what the first
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: thing people tried is just making them cold. You're saying, like,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: let's just cool electrons down so they don't have a
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: lot of kinetic energy and then see where they settle
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Do they settle down into something where they're like tiling
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: themselves in a pattern, for example. But that didn't really
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: work because when electrons get cold, their quantum wave functions
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: get really wide. Same thing with the Heisenberg and certainty
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: principle there that if you're cooling something down, their location
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: uncertainty becomes really really large. And now you have all
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: of these electrons whose wave functions are overlapping, and now
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: they're interfering with each other and they tend to like
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: slosh around and break things up. So the first approach
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: just like cooling things down, that didn't really work. What
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: is cooling down an electron meaning just lowering its velocity? Yeah,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: just lowering its velocity. The idea here is to get
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: a situation where the potential energy dominates over the kinetic energy.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: You want the location of the electron to be de
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: term and by its repulsion from the other electrons. You
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: want to like stack these things together somehow into a lattice,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: so you need them to not be wiggling around very much.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: You want them to sort of like fall into a
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: little well made by all the other electrons around them.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: But they would be repelling each other. So I think
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: you're saying, like, let's put it on like maybe a
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: magnetic bottle or something where they're forced to be close
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to each other. And then you're asking what happens? Then
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: there's not a stable situation, is it? You're right, even
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: if you built this thing, eventually it would basically blow
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: itself up or there's nothing else holding it together. So
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: you need some sort of like outside containing vessel or
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: some other force. And we'll get into the experiments in
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: a minute. Most of them use either some sort of
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: like layers of two D materials to hold these electrons together,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: or some like external magnetic field or something trying to
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: like group the whole thing together so it doesn't just
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: like blow itself up from the potential forces. It's like
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: putting a bunch of toddlers or four year els together
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: trying to get them to sit in a group or
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: to stand in line. It's like, it's pretty hard. You
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: need something to kind of external force exactly. So imagine,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: for example, putting a bunch of marbles inside a bowl,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: right and thinking about the lowest energy configuration, you can
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: like stack the marbles together so they're like regularly structured.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Then they form this pattern and they're all held together
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: because they're inside the bowl and they're pushing against each
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: other because they all have these surfaces. So the question
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: is like can you do that with electrons? Can you
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: get a bunch of electrons and somehow get them together
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: so they're like stack? And then what does that make?
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Yeah, Like if you take
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of electrons and like pressure cooked them together
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: or crushed them together, what do they do on their own?
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Like do they just slatch around like a soup? I
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: think maybe you're asking, like what's the phase of the thing?
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: If you put a bunch of electrons together? Is it
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: is it a solid or is it a liquid? Exactly?
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: That's the question what is the phase? And it's a
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: famous physicist, Ernest Vigner who about ninety years ago thought
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: about this and he predicted that if you've got a
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: bunch of electrons together and you cooled them down, but
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: you also didn't use too many, you have like a
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: low electron density so they didn't bother each other too much,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: you could form something called a Vigner crystal, which is
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: matter made out of just electrons, electrons like tiled together
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: in this way. M okay, Daniel, I think after forty
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: four minutes, I finally understand the question we're asking here.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: I think you're really asking is can you make solid
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: matter out of pure electron? That's kind of what you're asking,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: can you build electron crystals? When you say matter, you're
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: actually saying solid mat right, because you can have liquid matter. Well,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: we don't know what the phase of this is, right,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Bigner didn't know. Is it going to be a liquid?
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Is it going to be solid? Is gonna be some
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: new kind of thing where neither solid nor liquid can
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: adequately describe it. We just don't really know what matter
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: can do when you bring it together the emergent properties
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: of electrons. Nobody knows what that is. You know, is
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: it tasty? Is it spicy? Is it giny? These are
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: the questions, right, Yeah, Really, the question I think you're
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: asking is what's the phase of a whole bunch of
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: electrons that you squished together and force them to hang
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: out with each other in a cold way. Because it's
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: definitely going to be matter, it's just a question of
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: what's the phase of that matter? Is it a solid
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: or liquid or something new. Yeah, if you can succeed
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: in building that, then exactly you can explore what is
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the phase of that, what properties does it have? Is
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: it's something new, is it similar to something we've seen before?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly right? Because it could just be like a liquid
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: or some kind of gas, right, or some kind of
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: like totally random structure. And Wigner proposed that if you
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: make these electrons cold enough and you space them out
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: enough so there's not so much of a density, then
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: they will form this thing he called a Vigner crystal,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: which would be a new kind of solid with different
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: properties than anything we've seen before. All right, well, let's
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: get into what this electron crystal would look like, what's
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: keeping it together, and what are the forces determining its structure,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: and also what kind of experiments are being done to
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: make one. But first, let's take another quick break. All right,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Now that we understand the question Daniel episode after half
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: an hour, which is what happens to a bunch of
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: electrons when you squish it together, stepp Us through the possibilities, like, right,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: you can squish a bunch of electrons together, cool them down,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: maybe they'll just hang out in a random pattern, or
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: maybe they'll snap together in some kind of crystal. That's
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: really what we're asking here today, right, And really the
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: question is can we get them into a crystal? Is
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: that possible? And it seems really challenging because, as we say,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: you can't just like cool a bunch of electrons down.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: There's no challenge in like binding electrons, in making electrons,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: even in getting like a bunch of electrons, but in
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: cooling them down to make a crystal is really interesting.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: People already think electrons inside of metal are basically like
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: an electron liquid. So really the cutting edge of sort
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: of like electron matter is focusing on these crystals. Is
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: it possible to build these? And because Vigner predicted this
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: like ninety years ago, everybody's been trying to make it
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: for decades. It's been like a holy gray All of
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: experimental condensed amount of physics for a long long time
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: is trying to overcome the challenges of making this electron crystal. Now,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: do they try to make these like in a vacuum
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: where it's just pure electrons or are you telling me
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: that they're trying to make it inside of another material?
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: They're trying to make it inside of another material, and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: they're trying to use a bunch of tricks. So people
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: focused initially on like using magnetic fields to try to
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: confine them. But that felt like impure because you have
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: all these forces coming from the outside and it didn't
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: really feel like it was an electron crystal. Wait, what
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: to mean that would be more pure? Right, because then
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: you're definitely just dealing with a little space of space
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: with just electrons in it, as opposed to like putting
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: it inside of another material. Then there's all kinds of
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: things in there. It's not pure anymore. In this case,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: the magnetic fields helping align the electrons. It's not just
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: like an external bottle pushing on the outside, it's throughout
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the whole bulk. And so this feels like then the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: order of the electrons is dependent somehow on the magnetic
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: field more than the actual electric field of the electrons.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: People want to see, like can you build a crystal
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: just out of the electric field of these electrons? All? Right,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: So then you're saying that the experiments they are now
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: gravitating towards is to make these electron crystals inside of
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: other materials exactly. So people are focused on two D
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: electron crystals, You can imagine these things and sort of
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: several dimensions, Like imagine what a one dimensional electron crystal
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: would be. That would just be like electrons evenly spaced
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: along a line where it's like sort of settled in
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: where all the potentials are minimized, right, so the forces
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: are all balanced. Is the lowest energy state would just
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: be a bunch of electrons along the line. Now, in
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: two dimensions on a plane, what's the sort of lowest
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: energy configuration to build electrons? That would be what we
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: call like triangular lattice, or you think about like a
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: triplet of electrons and then you just sort of like
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: tile the whole floor with that triplet. And then in
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: three D gets more complicated. You have like a cube
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: with you know, electrons at the point to maybe one
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in the center. But cubes are really hard, and people
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: have been focusing on two D electron crystals, so like
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: can you make a sheet of electrons constructed out of
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: like these triangles of electrons? So that's what people are
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: focusing on. But I guess why are they aiming for
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: these triangle structures? I mean, you don't know what's going
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: to happen, right. I don't know what makes you think
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: it's going to form into triangle structures. If I just
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: you know, throw a bunch of electrons on a tray, well,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: that's the prediction from the theory that that's the configuration
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: that would minimize the energy of the arrangement. Remember that
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: forces in the end are always trying to minimize potential.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Force comes from the negative derivative of the potential of
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: force always appears to push things to move to minimize potential.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Like you have a ball on a hill, there's a
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: gravitational potential, and the force of gravity is going to
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: push that ball down the hill to minimize the gravitational potential.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: And so this is just the prediction that comes out
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: of that calculation that says this is the arrangement. The
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: triangular lattice would be the lowest potential energy arrangement. So
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: that's what nature will try to do. You're saying that's
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the grid that a bunch of electrons on a tray
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: would fall into, because I guess each electron is repelled
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: by the other electrons, but they're also being pushed in
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: all directions from the other electron. So it's almost like
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: they're containing each other. Yes, exactly, they're containing each other.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: So this two D approach actually came out of completely
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: different research. People sort of accidentally made electron crystals using
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: the two D materials. Remember we had a whole podcast
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: episode about building two dimensional materials, these like very very
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: thin sheets of things. We started with like graphing, which
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: is a weird construction of carbon, where people were able
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: to make like one atom layer thick of graphing by
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: using Scotch tape, remember, and sticking it to like a
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: piece of coal basically and pulling it off, and it
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: actually comes off in these one atom layer sheets, which
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: we consider like sort of two D materials. And then
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: people did crazy stuff like making sandwiches layers of these
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: two D materials which have all sorts of other weird properties. Well,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: what they discovered in some of these experiments was you
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: could get electrons trapped between some of these layers, so
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: that gives you some of the confinement and inside those layers,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: if you cool the electrons down and you didn't try
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: to cram too many ectron's in, they would actually form
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: these electron crystals. Right. Interesting because I guess the electrons
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: try to go up, but they're being blocked by the carbon,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: and they try to go down and they're also blocked.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: But there's you're saying they can kind of flow free
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: lease from side to side in front of back exactly.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: But then if you cool them down, they tend to
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: form this crystal. But why wouldn't they all just ripple
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: each other towards out to the sides. But you have
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: some confinement out on the sides also, And we talked
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: about this once for two D electron gases, like if
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: the electrons have a lot of energy, then they're not
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: forming a crystal, right, they're forming like a two D
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: electron gas or two D electron liquid. That's fascinating also
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: because there's different mathematics that describes what happens there. It's
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: really cool experiment to explore, like the math of two
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: D objects, but here with interested in like a two
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: D crystal. What happens when you cool everything down? How
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: does it fit together? What properties does it have there?
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: And what did they find? So they made the sandwich,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: they cool the electrons in this sheet and did they
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: snap into crystal or did they just do random things?
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: So people have been playing with this kind of thing
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: for a long time, and they suspected that there were
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: electron crystals being formed, but it's kind of hard to
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: tell because it's very fragile, like how can you tell?
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: How can you see it? People? We're trying to use
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: things like scanning tunneling microscopes to see these electron crystals,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: but the problem with that is that you're basically using
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: electrons to probe it, and as soon as you like
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: zap it, it just breaks the crystal. You need something
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: which has really high spatial resolution, right, which you can
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: see an individual electron, but also somehow doesn't perturb the
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: electron lattice. And those two requirements were like a conflict
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: with each other, right, because being sensitive to one electron
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: requires like strong coupling to that one electron, but not
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: messing up the crystal requires not having strong coupling to
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: that electron. So they need to come up with a
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: special trick to be able to see whether they were
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: making these electron crystals, because I guess, how do you
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: see an individual electron or can you poke an individual electron?
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Have we ever taken a picture of an electron? Yeah?
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: So you can't take a picture of an electron using
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: phote hons typically because they have a wavelength that's smaller
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: than the wavelengths of light that we can use. So
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: typically people use these scanning tunneling microscopes which like basically
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: shoot electrons at a surface and see what angle they
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: bounce off at, and you can use that to make
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: an image of an atomic surface. So like the highest
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: resolution pictures we can take, that doesn't really work here
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: because it basically smashes the crystal. The crystal is made
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: of electrons, and they're very very fragile, right, because they're
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: all like very delicately balanced inside each other's electric fields.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: And now you're shooting a high energy electron into it,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: you're basically smashing the whole thing apart. So you can't
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: see it with a scanning tunneling typical microscope. What are
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: you saying it's unstable. I'm saying it's fragile, right. It
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: will hang out there by itself, we think, for a
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: long time. But if you try to shoot electrons at
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: it, it it will shatter. Then when it's formed together again, yeah,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: it probably will. But if you want to see it right,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: then you need some way to probe it without chattering
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: it all right, So that sounds like a pretty tough problem.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: How are they solving or have they solved it? They
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: have solved it. It is a team at Berkeley had
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: figured out a way to add another sheet on top
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of it. So they put a sheet of graphing on
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: top of this electron crystal, and then they image the
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: graphing with the scanning tunneling microscope and they were able
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: to figure out how the electron crystal affected the graphing.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: So it's sort of like they put a sheet between
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: themselves and the thing they wanted to see, and they
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: could probe the sheet, and they could tell how the
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: sheet was affected by the electron crystal behind it, like
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: you would see whether there was a kind of like
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: a pattern imprinted on your on the sheet you put
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: on top. Yeah, the presence of the electron crystal behind
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: it changed the electron structure of the graphing above it,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: which you could then read from the scanning tunneling microscope.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: So it's sort of like one layer of indirection. But
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: they could prove that it's there, and they were able
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: to do all the reverse calculations to make an image.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: So now we have an actual image of an electron crystal,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: which they published in this really cool paper in Nature
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: last year. We got a picture or an inferred picture
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: of this Wickner crystal, right, which is made out of
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: pure electrons that are trapped inside of these layers. Yeah,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: and just as Vigner predicted, they fall into this triangular lattice.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: It's like a perfect triangular lattice. It's kind of beautiful
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: to look at it, to see this like realization of
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: what some dude with pencil and paper almost a hundred
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: years ago predicted. But I guess what other forms could
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: it have taken? Can you fall into a square pattern?
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: If it had, that would have been a real surprise, right,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: because we wouldn't understand that the prediction is this triangular
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: lattice that makes sense in terms of like minimizing the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: energy between the electrons, but you never know until you
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: see the thing, like is it possible to make it
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: at all? And doesn't have different properties from what we expect.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And so if it had been a different shape, it
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: had been like you know, hexagonal or square lattice or
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: something different that tiled itself differently, that would suggest that
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: there's something else going on that hadn't been accounted for,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: and that would be a cool clue, right, to be
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: a thread to unrolled to learn something else about electrons. Well,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I guess it. Maybe maybe one thing that was infusing
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: me is this idea of phases, And I guess you know,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: anything that is solid is basically a crystal, right Like,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: if you cool anything down, even corks, like even the
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: quarks inside of proton, could be said to be sort
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: of like a crystal. Right, it's probably falling into some
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: kind of pattern. It depends how much order there is, right.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: There are also other things, like glasses that we talked
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: about recently, that are disordered at the microscopic level and
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: don't always fall into a crystal. It depends a little
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: bit on the forces between the things and how you're
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: cooling it. How these things relax into their lowest energy
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: state can determine whether they click together into an ordered
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: structure crystal, or whether they're even disordered when they're cold
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: and stuck together. All right, Well, that's pretty cool. They
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: made a crystal of only electrons that is hanging out
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: between these sheets of other materials, and so they prove
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: that you get a bunch of electrons cooling down, they
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: do snap together into some sort of crystal. Yeah, exactly,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: it's a new kind of solid matter. As you said,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: it's a new phase of stuff made out of just electrons,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. What's not a new phase or
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: technically right, it's it's a solid crystal. It's just it's
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: made out of something that hadn't been put together before. Yeah, okay, sure,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: it's a new example of a solid made out of
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: stuff we hadn't made solids out of before, but we
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: think it might have different properties from other kinds of solids.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: There's another prediction from Vigner that said that you can
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: melt this crystal into a new kind of liquid without
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: changing its temperature at all. So it does this weird
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: kind of quantum melting. What does that mean? Like it
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: just gets fuzzier and can you melt it over a
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: hamburger to take like a nice electron cheeseburger and just
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: bring for me here for our food truck menu. It
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: has to do with the quantum properties, right. A phase
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: transition is when the same stuff arranged differently, it gives
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: you different macroscopic properties. And so Vigner predicted you could
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: take the electron crystal and without changing its overall energy,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: it could do a phase transition to this other weird
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: kind of phase. Cool. Well, they I guess they did it.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: They made a solid out of electrons only. I guess
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: what does that mean? What does that mean about our
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: understanding about the electron Well, it means Vigner was a
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: smart dude and he knew what he was talking about.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: And it also means that we can now continue to
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: explore it in other directions, Like people can try to
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: make multiple sheets of this thing to see, like, what
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: do multiple layers of this thing form and you get
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: weird electrical properties out of it? Can you make like
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: a three D electron lattice just out of electrons? And
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: what properties would that have? Right? Would it be conductive?
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Would we not be conductive? All these sorts of questions.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Every time you make a new kind of goo, you
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: make stuff out of the same microscopic ingredients, but in
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: a different way. You can make revolutionary new behaviors. Right,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: All the kinds of behaviors we've seen in the universe
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: just come from the kinds of stuff we've been able
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: to put together, and we don't know what else matter
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: is capable of when you put it together in new
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: weird ways. So I guess now electrons can feel a
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: little bit better about themselves. Right, it's not just quarks
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: that can make structures. Now we know electrons can too.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: That's right. Electrons are doing it for themselves. They're not
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the learners we thought they were. They are able to
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: play in a team. That's right. Electrons have now unionized,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: so watch out. That's right, everything's gonna cost more in
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: come with a bigger charge, exactly. The whole universe will
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: be more negatively charged than before. All right, Well, another
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: awesome example of how the universe keeps surprising us. You know,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: we think we know all of the ways that the
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: stuff in it can click together and make stuff, But
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: there's always known interesting situations that physicists can make to
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: create new kinds of matter, and there's no telling what
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: it's gonna do and how it's gonna surprise us. One day,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: we'll make something which has a completely new kind of property.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: We don't even have a word for today because we've
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: never seen it before. And you'll see it first on
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: our menu for our food truck. Because hopefully it won't
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: kill you. We'll just taste good. And if it does
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: kill you, hopefully your errors don't sue us. Right, well,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us you
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: next time, Thank you're listening, and remember that. Daniel and
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: For more podcast for my heart Radio, visit the I
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows. Yeah,