Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions 12: Higgs Bosons, Black holes and earthquakes!

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Listener Questions 12: Higgs Bosons, Black holes and earthquakes! · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel. People often ask me what is the target
0:11
Speaker 1: range for our podcast in terms of age. I like
0:14
Speaker 1: to think of it like nine years to years old. Wow,
0:18
Speaker 1: that's a big range. Do we really have nine year
0:21
Speaker 1: old listeners? Oh? We do. We even get questions from
0:24
Speaker 1: six year old You know, kids are masters of curiosity? Wow,
0:28
Speaker 1: they have actual masters and curiosity. They're born with it.
0:32
Speaker 1: But it only goes up to ninety nine. What happens
0:34
Speaker 1: if you turn a hundred? Does the audio automatically cut off?
0:38
Speaker 1: I think if you live to be a hundred, we
0:40
Speaker 1: should be asking you question. Maybe should make it nine
0:42
Speaker 1: to nine hundred and ninety nine, just in case, you know,
0:45
Speaker 1: aliens might live longer than us. That's true. I look
0:50
Speaker 1: forward to meeting a thousand year old and I'll let
0:52
Speaker 1: the marketing team know to find some ads suited for
0:55
Speaker 1: nine hundred year old listeners. I hi am jorheamat cartoonist
1:13
Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm
1:17
Speaker 1: a particle physicist, and I wish I had the wisdom
1:19
Speaker 1: of a nine year old, but not the body of
1:22
Speaker 1: a nine year old. Well, maybe the you know, cybernetically
1:27
Speaker 1: enhanced body that would be pretty awesome, yeah, or maybe
1:30
Speaker 1: the wisdom of living inside of a computer for nine
1:33
Speaker 1: years that would probably seem like nine million years. But
1:36
Speaker 1: welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe,
1:39
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, in which we take
1:42
Speaker 1: you on a tour of all the incredible and crazy
1:45
Speaker 1: and bonker stuff in our universe. We drilled down to
1:47
Speaker 1: the tiny particles to reveal the truth about the universe,
1:50
Speaker 1: and we zoom out to the entire universe to share
1:53
Speaker 1: with you the scope of the scale, the wonder, the drama,
1:56
Speaker 1: the violence, all the incredible things that are out there,
1:58
Speaker 1: the things that we understand and and the things that
2:00
Speaker 1: scientists are still trying to figure out, and the things
2:03
Speaker 1: that you are curious about. That's right. We take it
2:06
Speaker 1: to the forefront of science and human knowledge and talk
2:09
Speaker 1: about questions a lot. We talked about questions that scientists
2:12
Speaker 1: are asking right now and also questions that regular people
2:16
Speaker 1: like those of you listening might be asking yourselves. And
2:19
Speaker 1: sometimes those questions are one and the same exactly, And
2:21
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't realize that science
2:24
Speaker 1: is pushed forward by scientists asking their own personal questions,
2:29
Speaker 1: like the reason one scientist ends up in biology or
2:32
Speaker 1: in physics is because those are the questions they personally
2:35
Speaker 1: want answered. And so science really is all about personal questions.
2:39
Speaker 1: What do you want to know about the universe? Are
2:42
Speaker 1: you saying? Scientists are people to scientists by people, for people,
2:46
Speaker 1: and of people. It's all about people wanting to know
2:49
Speaker 1: the answer to some one individual burning question. And you
2:52
Speaker 1: know as well as I do that by the time
2:54
Speaker 1: you get to your PhD, you're so narrowly focused on
2:57
Speaker 1: one tiny little sliver of human knowledge that it has
2:59
Speaker 1: to be Really you're driving curiosity the thing that you
3:03
Speaker 1: want to figure out. That's right. It's your inalienable right
3:06
Speaker 1: to ask if there are aliens out there and to
3:09
Speaker 1: spend your life trying to figure it out. But of
3:11
Speaker 1: course it's not just scientists who are curious. Everybody out
3:15
Speaker 1: there is curious about the universe, especially people listening to
3:18
Speaker 1: this podcast. And so we don't want to just talk
3:21
Speaker 1: about the questions that scientists are asking of the universe.
3:24
Speaker 1: We want to answer your questions as well. Yeah, so
3:27
Speaker 1: to be on the program, we'll be tackling listener questions
3:35
Speaker 1: Number twelve, The dirty doesn't the dark matter doesn't? We
3:41
Speaker 1: have a child's question on the program today, so let's
3:43
Speaker 1: try to keep it clean. I think that I read
3:47
Speaker 1: through the questions Daniel, and I feel like the nine
3:49
Speaker 1: year old question is the most sophisticated one year. I
3:52
Speaker 1: told you children ask amazing questions. You know, just last
3:55
Speaker 1: week we got a letter from a six year old
3:57
Speaker 1: and he asked a long list of really hard particle
4:00
Speaker 1: physics questions that I thought were sophisticated for an adult. Wow. Well,
4:05
Speaker 1: I feel so good knowing that we're helping to educate
4:08
Speaker 1: six year old in bad puns and bad jokes. I
4:12
Speaker 1: feel like you know that kid is getting an early start.
4:17
Speaker 1: His hardest question was how does Jorge manage to eat
4:19
Speaker 1: so many bananas? They're gross? No? I made that one up. Well,
4:25
Speaker 1: we have a lot of amazing questions here from listeners
4:27
Speaker 1: of our program, questions related to dark matter and the
4:30
Speaker 1: Higgs boson and black holes, and also questions about tectonic
4:34
Speaker 1: plates in our planet, which tetonics. That's not a rock group,
4:39
Speaker 1: is it's it's like an actual science thing. No, I
4:41
Speaker 1: think isn't a transformer and or a transformer? Yeah? Good
4:45
Speaker 1: be maybe hold on, maybe it's a rock group of transformers.
4:50
Speaker 1: Do they have bands and transformers. Let me think they
4:53
Speaker 1: had construction vehicles, they had dinosaur transformers. Maybe maybe, yeah,
4:58
Speaker 1: maybe they need a rock band or transformer. Maybe there's
5:01
Speaker 1: could be one transformer that transforms into an electric guitar. Right,
5:04
Speaker 1: Oh man, somebody out there Mattel is scrolling down these ideas,
5:07
Speaker 1: I hope. And also banana. We haven't had fruit transformers either.
5:12
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's jump right into our awesome questions
5:15
Speaker 1: from listeners, and our first question comes from a nine
5:18
Speaker 1: year old Dylan wrote to us but an awesome question
5:21
Speaker 1: about dark about dark matter and the Higgs boson. Nim
5:26
Speaker 1: from London, and my question is could the Higgs boson
5:29
Speaker 1: interact with dark match? Thanks? Wow, that's amazing. That is
5:34
Speaker 1: such a simple question, and yet I feel like it
5:37
Speaker 1: blows my mind at the same time. It is. It's
5:40
Speaker 1: a great question. Yeah, and he's got a wonderful accent,
5:43
Speaker 1: of course, and it's a really deep question. And we're
5:46
Speaker 1: gonna have to talk about a lot of really interesting
5:48
Speaker 1: facets about dark matter and the Higgs boson to unravel
5:51
Speaker 1: this particular one. All right, So Dnon's question was does
5:54
Speaker 1: dark matter interact with the Higgs field and the Higgs boson,
6:00
Speaker 1: and I guess it's one and the same thing. Yeah,
6:01
Speaker 1: I remember that interacting with the Higgs field means essentially
6:04
Speaker 1: exchanging Higgs bosons with stuff, and so you can think
6:07
Speaker 1: about them together. But broadly, remember the Higgs field is
6:10
Speaker 1: the thing that fills the universe. And you can create
6:13
Speaker 1: a Higgs boson if you put enough energy into the
6:15
Speaker 1: Higgs field. That's how we discovered it at certain by
6:18
Speaker 1: smashing particles together and making enough energy in the Higgs
6:21
Speaker 1: field to create a Higgs boson. But you can interact
6:24
Speaker 1: with the Higgs field even if you don't have that
6:25
Speaker 1: much energy around, because you can just exchange virtual Higgs bosons, right,
6:29
Speaker 1: And so, just to recap for people who might not
6:32
Speaker 1: know or our need to the program, the Higgs field
6:34
Speaker 1: is one of the quantum fields that fill the universe,
6:36
Speaker 1: and it's the one that specifically gives us mass, gives
6:39
Speaker 1: the other particles mass. That's exactly right. It's everywhere. Every
6:43
Speaker 1: piece of space we think has a bunch of different
6:46
Speaker 1: quantum fields in it. There are fields for every particle.
6:49
Speaker 1: There's the electron field, their fields for the photon, there's
6:52
Speaker 1: fields for the corks. There's this whole big set of fields,
6:55
Speaker 1: and the Higgs field is the most recently discovered one,
6:59
Speaker 1: and it interacts with other fields, and it interacts in
7:01
Speaker 1: a way that makes particles move differently. It makes particles
7:04
Speaker 1: move as if they had mass, right, Like, if you
7:07
Speaker 1: push in a particle, it might take you a little
7:10
Speaker 1: bit a bit of time before it can accelerate. That's
7:12
Speaker 1: kind of the definition of mass almost. Yeah, and we
7:14
Speaker 1: have two ideas of mass, but here we're talking about
7:16
Speaker 1: inertial mass. Just as you said, it means you have
7:18
Speaker 1: to push a particle to get it going, and you
7:21
Speaker 1: have to pull on it essentially to slow it down.
7:23
Speaker 1: And what he's doing with this question is really interesting
7:25
Speaker 1: because I feel like he's mashing together these two huge
7:27
Speaker 1: concepts that were in separate parts of my brain. And
7:30
Speaker 1: his question is like, are these two things related? Do
7:32
Speaker 1: they interact with each other? And so he asked if
7:35
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson interacts with dark matter, and so just
7:38
Speaker 1: reacap again for folks. Dark matter is this big part
7:41
Speaker 1: of the universe that's out there the nobody knows what
7:43
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, we discovered in the last few decades
7:45
Speaker 1: that most of the stuff that's in the universe. The
7:48
Speaker 1: matter is not the kind of matter that we're familiar
7:50
Speaker 1: with that makes up me and you and gas and
7:53
Speaker 1: stars and hamsters and bananas. It's this other, weird, invisible
7:57
Speaker 1: kind of matter that we can see only because of
8:00
Speaker 1: it's gravitational effects. It makes galaxies spin faster, it changes
8:04
Speaker 1: the whole structure of the universe. We're really pretty sure
8:07
Speaker 1: it's there. But the thing that's tough about dark matter
8:10
Speaker 1: is that it's really hard to see because it doesn't
8:12
Speaker 1: interact in any way we've detected so far except through gravity.
8:16
Speaker 1: So we're looking for dark matter and we're trying to
8:19
Speaker 1: figure out if there's any way to interact with it.
8:21
Speaker 1: And that's what makes this such a great question. It's like, well,
8:24
Speaker 1: could we use the Higgs boson or the Higgs field
8:27
Speaker 1: somehow to interact with dark matter? Because dark matter doesn't
8:30
Speaker 1: interact with light or electromagnetic forces, so you can't see
8:34
Speaker 1: it and touch it, but it does interact through gravity,
8:38
Speaker 1: which makes you think, like, does dark matter half mass?
8:41
Speaker 1: I guess I never I've never thought about that question, Daniel,
8:43
Speaker 1: Is that true? Does dark matter half mass? Dark matter
8:45
Speaker 1: definitely has mass because it creates gravity. Like that's why
8:49
Speaker 1: we call it matter. It's not dark energy, it's dark matter.
8:52
Speaker 1: It's dark matter because it's some stuff. We know that
8:55
Speaker 1: it's there because the gravity that it generates, and so
8:58
Speaker 1: it has some sort of energy density, some sort of
9:01
Speaker 1: mass that creates that. And our best model currently of
9:04
Speaker 1: dark matter is some slow moving massive particle. So absolutely
9:09
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense for dark matter to have mass
9:12
Speaker 1: so that it creates gravity. I guess if it dark
9:15
Speaker 1: matter didn't have mass, it would be zipping around at
9:17
Speaker 1: the speed of light, right, that's right. All massless things
9:21
Speaker 1: move at the speed of light, and we know that
9:22
Speaker 1: dark matter is slow. But also if dark matter didn't
9:25
Speaker 1: have mass, it wouldn't create the kind of effects that
9:28
Speaker 1: we see. That is that we see gravitational effects that
9:31
Speaker 1: are out there, these things that hold galaxies together even
9:34
Speaker 1: though they're spinning and change the whole shape and structure
9:37
Speaker 1: of the universe. That means that there's some gravity out
9:39
Speaker 1: there and we can't see the mass that's creating that gravity.
9:43
Speaker 1: And so that's what dark matter is. It's really a
9:45
Speaker 1: description of the missing mass, the mass necessary to create
9:49
Speaker 1: the gravity that we do see. So it's perfectly natural
9:53
Speaker 1: to think that dark matter does have mass, and that's
9:55
Speaker 1: why it's such a great idea to think, oh, maybe
9:58
Speaker 1: we could talk to dark matter through the Higgs boson,
10:00
Speaker 1: because that gives some particles mass, right, And again I
10:03
Speaker 1: guess interacting with gravity is different than interacting with the
10:08
Speaker 1: Higgs field, right, It's not necessarily the same thing. It's
10:11
Speaker 1: not like inertial mass is not the same thing. It's
10:13
Speaker 1: gravitational mass, that's right, And there are different ways to
10:16
Speaker 1: get inertial mass. So there's a few things to disentangle.
10:19
Speaker 1: Their Gravitational mass means you're creating gravity, like I have mass,
10:24
Speaker 1: and you have mass, and the Earth has mass and
10:26
Speaker 1: the Sun has mass. So we each have our own
10:28
Speaker 1: gravitational field or we bend space, which changes the way
10:32
Speaker 1: the things move around us. So that's the force of gravity.
10:36
Speaker 1: It means that you have gravitas. It means you're so
10:40
Speaker 1: important you have an impact on the universe, right, you're
10:43
Speaker 1: not insignificant. So that's one concept that's like, you know,
10:46
Speaker 1: mass as a sort of the charge of gravity. How
10:49
Speaker 1: strong is your gravitational force will? It depends on your mass.
10:53
Speaker 1: Then there's this other concept of mass that we just
10:55
Speaker 1: talked about recently, which is this inertial mass, which is
10:58
Speaker 1: how much force does it take to at you moving.
11:00
Speaker 1: That's the mass that appears in F equals M A
11:03
Speaker 1: relates force and acceleration. You have a really big mass
11:07
Speaker 1: that takes a big force to accelerate you. That's why,
11:10
Speaker 1: for example, even though you have the same gravitational force
11:13
Speaker 1: on the Earth as the Earth does on you, you
11:16
Speaker 1: feel the Earth's gravity much more strongly because your mass
11:19
Speaker 1: is smaller, so you have a larger acceleration for the
11:22
Speaker 1: same force. So inertial mass is this separate concept from
11:26
Speaker 1: gravitational mass. Although numerically everything seems to have exactly the
11:30
Speaker 1: same gravitational and inertial masses, like, we've never measured any discrepancy, right, Yeah,
11:35
Speaker 1: We've talked about that kind of mystery in an early
11:37
Speaker 1: episode about you know, you have inertial mass and you
11:40
Speaker 1: have your gravitational mass, and they seem to be exactly
11:43
Speaker 1: the same, but theoretically and mathematically they don't have to
11:46
Speaker 1: be the same. That's right. The mass that appears in
11:48
Speaker 1: the gravitation formula M doesn't have to be the same
11:51
Speaker 1: mass as the one that appears in F equals M A.
11:55
Speaker 1: But we measure them and they are exactly the same.
11:58
Speaker 1: And that's a whole other fascinating puzzle. We actually talked
12:01
Speaker 1: about that in our fun book, which came about a
12:03
Speaker 1: few years ago. That amazing puzzle. I just think I
12:09
Speaker 1: have no idea what we wrote Danniel in our book,
12:11
Speaker 1: We have no idea. Well that you should read it
12:12
Speaker 1: some time. It's pretty funny. It's partially resolved by general relativity,
12:16
Speaker 1: but it's still a really deep interesting question in physics.
12:19
Speaker 1: But it's also relevant to today's question about whether or
12:22
Speaker 1: not dark matter talks to the Higgs boson, whether you
12:25
Speaker 1: can interact with dark matter using the Higgs boson right,
12:29
Speaker 1: Because I guess, is it possible for something to have
12:31
Speaker 1: a gravitational mass but not inertial mass? Is that even possible?
12:36
Speaker 1: We've never seen that happen, and general relativity suggests that
12:39
Speaker 1: it's probably not possible. There's some weird little threads there
12:42
Speaker 1: to think about, like photons have energy but no mass,
12:46
Speaker 1: and general relativity tells us that space curves in response
12:50
Speaker 1: to energy density, not necessarily mass. But usually those two
12:54
Speaker 1: things are identical, like for every particle, for every object,
12:58
Speaker 1: the inertial mass and the gravitational matter us are one
13:00
Speaker 1: and the same, so we just think of it as
13:02
Speaker 1: the mass. But I guess maybe the point is that
13:06
Speaker 1: we know dark matter has gravitational mass because that's how
13:09
Speaker 1: we see it, and we also know it that has
13:11
Speaker 1: inertial mass, because otherwise it would be zipping around. That's right.
13:14
Speaker 1: We think we know something about the speed of dark matter.
13:17
Speaker 1: We talked on the program before about how if dark
13:19
Speaker 1: matter was really really low mass, but it was very
13:22
Speaker 1: very light, then it would move really fast and that
13:24
Speaker 1: would change the structure of the universe. The universe would
13:27
Speaker 1: be smoother. We think dark matter is slow moving and cold,
13:31
Speaker 1: and that's why we got the structure that we have
13:33
Speaker 1: today that amplified all sorts of little quantum fluctuations in
13:36
Speaker 1: the early universe to be the weird, amazing, beautiful structures
13:40
Speaker 1: in today's universe. So I guess that the point is
13:43
Speaker 1: that we know for sure then the dark matter interacts
13:45
Speaker 1: with the Higgs because it has inertial mass. Not quite.
13:48
Speaker 1: We know that it has inertial mass, but there are
13:51
Speaker 1: other ways to get inertial mass what not through the Higgs,
13:55
Speaker 1: not through the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is a
13:59
Speaker 1: special trick that we use to get mass to all
14:02
Speaker 1: the particles that we know quarks and leptons, etcetera. And
14:05
Speaker 1: we had to use that trick because all these particles
14:08
Speaker 1: interact with the weak force. Quarks and leptons and even neutrinos,
14:12
Speaker 1: all these particles interact with the weak force, and the
14:14
Speaker 1: weak force is really weird. It doesn't left particles just
14:18
Speaker 1: have a mass that breaks like a special symmetry, a
14:22
Speaker 1: property of the weak force that it likes to protect.
14:25
Speaker 1: And so that's why the Higgs boson is such a
14:27
Speaker 1: clever idea. It's not just like, hey, here's a field.
14:30
Speaker 1: It's a special mathematical trick that lets you interact with
14:34
Speaker 1: these particles in a way that so that they move
14:36
Speaker 1: like they had mass without actually giving them any mass,
14:40
Speaker 1: like deep down. So the Higgs is this way you
14:43
Speaker 1: can give particles mass if they have weak interactions. What
14:48
Speaker 1: because every other particle that we know about has weak interactions.
14:52
Speaker 1: Every matter particle that we know about has weak interactions,
14:55
Speaker 1: that's right, So it falls under this weak symmetry. And
14:58
Speaker 1: so the Higgs was created. Who break this symmetry. We
15:01
Speaker 1: call it the particle that breaks electro weak symmetry. So
15:04
Speaker 1: every particle that feels the weak force, this weakest of
15:07
Speaker 1: forces that we know about that's mediated by those W
15:11
Speaker 1: and Z particles, needs the Higgs boson in order to
15:14
Speaker 1: give it mass, because without the Higgs boson, they wouldn't
15:18
Speaker 1: have mass. If there was no Higgs boson, they wouldn't
15:20
Speaker 1: have mass. And if the Higgs Boson field collapsed, all
15:23
Speaker 1: those particles their masses would go to zero. We talked
15:26
Speaker 1: about how the Higgs boson could destroy the universe if
15:29
Speaker 1: the field collapsed to some lower value. So, yeah, they
15:32
Speaker 1: get mass because the energy in the Higgs Boson field. Okay,
15:36
Speaker 1: But then I guess the caveat is then if something
15:38
Speaker 1: doesn't feel the weak force, it doesn't need the Higgs field.
15:41
Speaker 1: That's right. If something doesn't feel the weak force, it
15:43
Speaker 1: can't talk to the Higgs boson, and it doesn't even
15:45
Speaker 1: need the Higgs boson. It could just have a mass.
15:48
Speaker 1: You could just put it in there. You can just
15:49
Speaker 1: have inertial mass. You can just have inherent inertial mass.
15:52
Speaker 1: That's right. And remember one time we talked about like
15:55
Speaker 1: what is the real mass of the electron and we
15:57
Speaker 1: talked about it in the context of renormal station that
16:00
Speaker 1: the electron itself has no mass, but we add up
16:04
Speaker 1: mass to the electron through these interactions from the Higgs boson.
16:07
Speaker 1: It's not like a core property of the electron itself.
16:11
Speaker 1: It's like the electron when you consider it with all
16:13
Speaker 1: of its like quantum fluctuations and interactions with the Higgs boson.
16:18
Speaker 1: But these other particles, dark matter particles could just have
16:22
Speaker 1: a mass inherent to that. What I feel like, you
16:25
Speaker 1: just took the Higgs field down and not like I
16:26
Speaker 1: thought it was like super fundamental to the universe. But really,
16:29
Speaker 1: when we say that the Higgs field give its particles mass,
16:32
Speaker 1: you really just have to say all the particles that
16:34
Speaker 1: we've know about so far, yeah, yeah, like you have
16:36
Speaker 1: to count it. Right. It gives mass to all the
16:39
Speaker 1: particles that feel the weak force, but there might be
16:41
Speaker 1: particles that don't. That's right, and we think that dark
16:44
Speaker 1: matter doesn't feel the weak force because if it did,
16:47
Speaker 1: we would have seen it already. We have really sensitive
16:50
Speaker 1: detectors looking for dark matter interacting with normal matter, and
16:54
Speaker 1: if dark matter could feel the z for example, if
16:57
Speaker 1: you could use the z boson to talk to protons,
17:00
Speaker 1: then we think we would have seen that already. We've
17:02
Speaker 1: been running those experiments for decades. So we think that
17:05
Speaker 1: dark matter does not feel the weak force, or we
17:07
Speaker 1: would have seen it, and so very likely it gets
17:09
Speaker 1: its mass in some way other than the Higgs boson. Now,
17:12
Speaker 1: there's always some crazy theory out there, there variations of
17:16
Speaker 1: supersymmetry that have loopholes that allow the dark matter to
17:19
Speaker 1: talk to the Higgs boson, or sometimes these theories have
17:23
Speaker 1: a special extra higgs boson, a dark higgs boson that
17:26
Speaker 1: gives mass to the dark matter particles. Yea, the dark
17:30
Speaker 1: higgs boson. Wow, that is a plot twist for a
17:34
Speaker 1: telenovella I've I've ever heard, or the name of the
17:36
Speaker 1: band in the Transformers movie. We're dark higgs Bosons. We're
17:43
Speaker 1: to rock you out and give you mass. You don't
17:46
Speaker 1: feel the weak force, that's right. So we don't know.
17:49
Speaker 1: We don't think that the Higgs boson gives mass to
17:52
Speaker 1: dark matter particles, because otherwise it probably would mean that
17:56
Speaker 1: dark matter particles feel the weak force, and we're pretty
17:58
Speaker 1: sure that's not true. But you know, we're not sure
18:02
Speaker 1: about anything when it comes to dark matter. Oh man,
18:05
Speaker 1: I feel like nine year old Dylan just took down
18:07
Speaker 1: the Higgs field good job, Dylan, A good job Daling.
18:11
Speaker 1: What an awesome question. You just destroyed the Higgs field
18:15
Speaker 1: and it made it seem inadequate for our universe. Yeah,
18:17
Speaker 1: it's a great question. And unfortunately, you know, asking whether
18:21
Speaker 1: or not you could discover dark matter through the Higgs
18:23
Speaker 1: boson it's really just the same thing as asking whether
18:26
Speaker 1: dark matter feels the weak force, and the answer to
18:28
Speaker 1: that it's probably not, probably not, but we don't know,
18:32
Speaker 1: So stay tuned. That's right, and hey, build an awesome
18:34
Speaker 1: dark matter detector out of your legos, Dylan and prove
18:36
Speaker 1: us wrong. Yeah, or or wait a few years and
18:39
Speaker 1: and then actually make the discovery, build your own particle collider.
18:43
Speaker 1: I foresee. Great, thanks for Dylon, keep at it doing.
18:46
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's an awesome question and in a
18:49
Speaker 1: mind blowing answer, And so let's get to some of
18:51
Speaker 1: these other great questions about black holes and ticonic plates.
18:55
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel,
19:10
Speaker 1: you and an annual just blew my mind about the
19:12
Speaker 1: Higgs field in the first twenty minutes of this. So
19:16
Speaker 1: let's get to some of these other amazing questions. The
19:19
Speaker 1: next question is from John from Norway and he has
19:21
Speaker 1: a question about articles and black holes. Hi guys, John
19:25
Speaker 1: from postion norwhere listening to one of your episodes about
19:29
Speaker 1: black holes. You talked about how on the density of
19:32
Speaker 1: energy is high enough in a volume of space a
19:34
Speaker 1: black hole is formed. Then why is it that a
19:37
Speaker 1: point particle that has some energy to it, like an electron,
19:42
Speaker 1: does not turn into a black hole. It has energy
19:45
Speaker 1: that is concentrated into a point, so it should have
19:49
Speaker 1: infinitely dense energy concentration. What time I missing here? Please explain?
19:54
Speaker 1: All right, Thank you, John, awesome question. The question is
19:57
Speaker 1: can you make a black hole with the thing? Go particle?
20:01
Speaker 1: Because I guess particles are point masses, so technically they
20:04
Speaker 1: have infinite density. So does that mean that every particle
20:07
Speaker 1: is a black hole? I'm as confused as John here. Yeah,
20:12
Speaker 1: it's a great question. It's basically like, why isn't every
20:15
Speaker 1: electron a black hole? We're all black holes? Is that
20:18
Speaker 1: what we're saying? Everything is a black hole? Everything that
20:21
Speaker 1: feels a week forced me. I feel like you have
20:24
Speaker 1: to add caveats now all over the place. I love
20:26
Speaker 1: this question, and it's this sort of a genre of
20:29
Speaker 1: questions here we get, which is like why isn't X
20:31
Speaker 1: a black hole? You know, like, why didn't the Big
20:33
Speaker 1: Bang just turn into a black hole? Why wasn't the
20:35
Speaker 1: early universe filled with black holes? Or how do we
20:38
Speaker 1: know there aren't black holes out there in the atmosphere.
20:41
Speaker 1: Somebody asked me, what's the smallest possible black hole that
20:44
Speaker 1: could be hiding in my basement? Did you answer, because
20:50
Speaker 1: there probably is a minimum kidding black hole in their basement?
20:53
Speaker 1: I did answer. I did answer. Yeah, you could have
20:56
Speaker 1: a black hole the size of a grain of sand
20:58
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't even really notice it. Oh wow, And
21:00
Speaker 1: it wouldn't grow or would it just evaporate right away? Yeah,
21:03
Speaker 1: it would grow, and so then you would eventually notice it.
21:06
Speaker 1: But you know, until then, while it's small and tiny,
21:09
Speaker 1: you wouldn't notice it. So there's fodder for a horror
21:11
Speaker 1: movie right there. For a few milliseconds, you you could
21:14
Speaker 1: be unaware of a black hole before you you get
21:16
Speaker 1: sucked into it. And that's right, Your life and fantasy
21:19
Speaker 1: could continue unaltered for a few more moments before it
21:22
Speaker 1: comes crashing down, all right. So the question is, if
21:24
Speaker 1: particles are point masses, don't they have infinite density? And
21:28
Speaker 1: if they do, shouldn't they be sort of a black
21:30
Speaker 1: hole in and of themselves. What's the answer, Daniel. The
21:33
Speaker 1: answer is that John has poked a really really good
21:36
Speaker 1: hole in two of our really important theories, general relativity
21:41
Speaker 1: and quantum mechanics. Mostly quantum mechanics though. And he's right
21:45
Speaker 1: that if you applied what we said before on the podcast,
21:49
Speaker 1: that we treat particles as point masses, and you turn
21:52
Speaker 1: around and use general relativity on that and says, well,
21:54
Speaker 1: a point mass has infinite density and so it should
21:57
Speaker 1: be a black hole, then yes, all particles would be
22:00
Speaker 1: black holes. But they aren't. And so what that tells
22:04
Speaker 1: us is that there's a problem in those theories. And
22:06
Speaker 1: you know, you can't just always take these theories and
22:08
Speaker 1: apply them to crazy extreme situations because we don't think
22:12
Speaker 1: they hold up in every single circumstance. He's poked a
22:16
Speaker 1: whole into our theories. He's shine the light on a
22:19
Speaker 1: part of the theory that we know already we don't
22:22
Speaker 1: understand very well, which is what happens in really strong
22:26
Speaker 1: gravity situations for quantum objects, because we just don't have
22:30
Speaker 1: a theory that describes gravity on a quantum scale. We
22:34
Speaker 1: know how to describe gravity for really big stuff, even
22:37
Speaker 1: for really heavy stuff, even for really massive stuff, but
22:40
Speaker 1: for really small stuff on the quantum scale, we don't
22:43
Speaker 1: know how to combine gravity with quantum mechanics and answer
22:46
Speaker 1: these questions. We just don't even really have a theory
22:49
Speaker 1: that makes predictions, right, And it's mostly about scale, right,
22:52
Speaker 1: Like when you get down to the quantum levels, scales
22:55
Speaker 1: like of a single particle, then you know, our theories
22:59
Speaker 1: about gravity that work on like a galactic scale don't
23:02
Speaker 1: necessarily work at those small scales, that's right. And because
23:05
Speaker 1: gravity is so weak, it's very hard to test, like
23:09
Speaker 1: how do you do experiments that test the gravitational pull
23:12
Speaker 1: between two protons? Right? The gravity between two protons is
23:16
Speaker 1: really tiny because protons way almost nothing, have almost zero mass,
23:20
Speaker 1: and they have all these other forces that are always
23:22
Speaker 1: getting in the way. So it's very difficult to probe
23:25
Speaker 1: gravity on the quantum scale. I guess the question is
23:27
Speaker 1: more like, you know, if you have a particle and
23:29
Speaker 1: it's a point particle and I get really really close
23:32
Speaker 1: to it, at some point, do I get sucked into it?
23:35
Speaker 1: Kind of like is there a black hole at the
23:37
Speaker 1: center of every single particle out there? I don't think
23:40
Speaker 1: that there's a black hole the center of every single
23:42
Speaker 1: particle out there. It would really change the behavior of
23:44
Speaker 1: those particles. But I think it is interesting to think
23:47
Speaker 1: about the extreme of these theories, Like when we talk
23:50
Speaker 1: about these particles as point particles, do we really mean
23:53
Speaker 1: physically that there's a dot there infinite density? Of course
23:56
Speaker 1: not right, it's an approximation. We make it our theories
24:00
Speaker 1: because it's convenient. We don't think that there's an actual
24:03
Speaker 1: dot of infinite density there. We talked about on the
24:06
Speaker 1: podcast before, like how small is a particle? What does
24:09
Speaker 1: the size of a particle even mean? And we don't
24:12
Speaker 1: even really have a good answer for that, Like what
24:13
Speaker 1: do you mean the size of the particle? Is it
24:16
Speaker 1: the width of the quantum wave that describes where it is?
24:20
Speaker 1: Is it where it pushes back on things? You know,
24:23
Speaker 1: where it's forcing your probe back? And so there isn't
24:26
Speaker 1: really even from like philosophically speaking, a great definition for
24:30
Speaker 1: the size of a particle. So you can't actually talk
24:32
Speaker 1: about the density of it because you need volume to
24:34
Speaker 1: talk about density. Yeah, exactly, so, but I guess you
24:38
Speaker 1: know from a distance, like if we're talking on a
24:40
Speaker 1: large scale you do treat them as point particles in
24:43
Speaker 1: the math and in the just practically speaking, but once
24:46
Speaker 1: you get down to that small level, then it gets fuzzy. Yeah,
24:50
Speaker 1: we treat them as point particles because it doesn't really matter,
24:52
Speaker 1: doesn't change any of the calculations. It's just sort of convenient.
24:56
Speaker 1: But that's because we're not doing calculations where it makes
24:58
Speaker 1: a difference. And then when it does make a diference,
25:00
Speaker 1: when you're getting really really close, then we can't treat
25:02
Speaker 1: them as point particles anymore. And then it gets really fuzzy,
25:05
Speaker 1: and it depends exactly on the question you're asking, like
25:08
Speaker 1: are you poking at this electron with a photon or
25:11
Speaker 1: with the w moson or with the z boson or
25:13
Speaker 1: with the Higgs boson. You'll get a different sort of
25:16
Speaker 1: response from it based on how you're poking it. So
25:19
Speaker 1: there's not like a concept of the electrons size itself.
25:23
Speaker 1: So that's one thing is like the limitation of our
25:25
Speaker 1: understanding of these things as point particles or not. So Unfortunately,
25:29
Speaker 1: we talked about them as point particles even though you
25:32
Speaker 1: know physically that doesn't make any sense. But we also
25:34
Speaker 1: don't have a better way to think about Well, maybe
25:37
Speaker 1: a good way to approach this question is to, like,
25:39
Speaker 1: let's ignore quantum mechanics for a second. You know, like
25:43
Speaker 1: let's say let's just see plantum mechanics doesn't exist, and
25:46
Speaker 1: we still lived in a classical world and there are
25:48
Speaker 1: point particles like an electron is really is a point
25:52
Speaker 1: of with a certain mask to it. Wouldn't there be
25:55
Speaker 1: a black hole sort of at some point as you
25:57
Speaker 1: get closer to that point. Yes, if you could isolate
26:01
Speaker 1: mass in a very very small region and we remove
26:04
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics from the universe, then general relativity tells us
26:08
Speaker 1: that that would be a black hole. Like in general relativity,
26:11
Speaker 1: there is no minimum mass for a black hole. A
26:14
Speaker 1: black hole can have any arbitrary mass down to like
26:18
Speaker 1: really infinitesimal values. There's no minimum in general relativity. Yeah,
26:22
Speaker 1: Like if you could take the mass of a single
26:23
Speaker 1: electron or a proton or a court and put it
26:27
Speaker 1: in a point, then it would form a black hole.
26:29
Speaker 1: It would be a black hole. Yes, And if your
26:31
Speaker 1: universe was nothing but point particles with masses, then it
26:34
Speaker 1: would be nothing but black holes. Man, all black holes
26:38
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, Or think about it the other way,
26:41
Speaker 1: that means quantum mechanics is saving us and just being
26:44
Speaker 1: a universal black holes, right, all right, So then if
26:48
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics didn't exist, every particle, every point mass would
26:54
Speaker 1: be a black hole like you know, electron, if you
26:56
Speaker 1: get close enough down next to it at some point
26:58
Speaker 1: you would see a little event horizon exactly. But then
27:02
Speaker 1: now let's put back in quantum mechanics. And the problem
27:06
Speaker 1: is that, I like how you just like, you know,
27:08
Speaker 1: you're flipping the quantum mechanics knob on the universe here.
27:10
Speaker 1: We're just like you're just like willy nilly, like turning
27:12
Speaker 1: things on and off and expecting us to make sense
27:15
Speaker 1: of it. What happens if I do this? What happens
27:18
Speaker 1: if I do that? Don't do anything more rocking your
27:22
Speaker 1: brain here, You're gonna break things, man. And I just
27:25
Speaker 1: walk into the control room at the Universe stud flipping
27:29
Speaker 1: and you're like, what exactly what if our universe really
27:32
Speaker 1: is a simulation and you got to visit it one day,
27:34
Speaker 1: would you just be flipping these switches just to see
27:35
Speaker 1: what happens. Let's see what happens. Let's answer John's question
27:38
Speaker 1: from Norway, and we'll find out. We'll just see what happens,
27:42
Speaker 1: oops destroyed the universe. I guess that's the answer. I
27:45
Speaker 1: guess what I mean. It's like, if you suddenly turn
27:47
Speaker 1: on quantum mechanics, then you wouldn't be able to see
27:49
Speaker 1: that event horizon around that electron, because that event horizon
27:53
Speaker 1: would be sort of within the fuzziness that quantum mechanics introduces, exactly.
27:59
Speaker 1: So you turn quantum mechanics back on, and then you
28:02
Speaker 1: can't allow the electron to be a point particle anymore,
28:05
Speaker 1: because quantum mechanics says you can't know the location of
28:08
Speaker 1: a bunch of energy that precisely. It is an inherent
28:11
Speaker 1: fuzziness there. So if you replace the point particle with
28:14
Speaker 1: the quantum mechanical blob that has some uncertainty in its
28:17
Speaker 1: location um, and we take sort of the size of
28:21
Speaker 1: that distribution to be the Compton wavelength of the object, right,
28:25
Speaker 1: We just sort of like proportional to the width of
28:28
Speaker 1: its wave function, the thing that tells you where to
28:30
Speaker 1: find it. It's not a great definition for the size
28:33
Speaker 1: of the object, but it's it's one that we can use,
28:36
Speaker 1: and a lot of times in physics we don't have
28:38
Speaker 1: great answers. We just use the best one that we
28:40
Speaker 1: can find, and we just remember that there's like a
28:43
Speaker 1: lot of asterisks associated with it, like this is probably,
28:46
Speaker 1: you know, not correct, but it's also less wrong than
28:49
Speaker 1: anything else we can imagine. That's what we aim for
28:52
Speaker 1: in this podcast. Let's be less wrong than all the
28:55
Speaker 1: other podcasts. Well, you know, John is asking his personal
28:58
Speaker 1: curiosity question about the unif ears, And when you're the
29:01
Speaker 1: first human to like adventure into intellectual territory, you don't
29:04
Speaker 1: always have the tools you need to really get an answer,
29:07
Speaker 1: so you just like do the best you can. You say, well,
29:09
Speaker 1: let's see what happens if we bang on it with
29:11
Speaker 1: this and try to answer it with this, do we
29:13
Speaker 1: get a reasonable answer? And if not, does it inspire
29:15
Speaker 1: something better? And so this is the way you push
29:18
Speaker 1: forward on human knowledge, Right, you give the least wrong
29:20
Speaker 1: answer you can. Yeah, So I guess the the answer
29:23
Speaker 1: then is that the roould be a meaning black hole
29:25
Speaker 1: around every particle. But quantum mechanics, like the blobbiness, the
29:28
Speaker 1: fuzziness of quantum mechanics kind of smushes that out, like
29:32
Speaker 1: it's the fuzziness is bigger than where you would find
29:35
Speaker 1: the black hole around every particle. Yeah, and they actually
29:38
Speaker 1: converge in a really interesting way because the size of
29:42
Speaker 1: the black hole is dependent on the mass of the particle.
29:45
Speaker 1: So it gets bigger as a particle gets more massive,
29:47
Speaker 1: but then this wavelength of the particle gets smaller as
29:50
Speaker 1: it gets more massive. So you can set them equal
29:53
Speaker 1: to find the minimum mass of a black hole generated
29:58
Speaker 1: by a quantum object. So we said early or if
30:00
Speaker 1: no quantum mechanics, there is no minimum. Once you turn
30:03
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics on, you get a minimum mass for a
30:06
Speaker 1: black hole. Interesting meaning like, if I have a massive
30:09
Speaker 1: enough particle, it would are you saying it would make
30:11
Speaker 1: a black hole? I'm massive enough particle, Yes, but this
30:14
Speaker 1: minimum mass is twenty one micrograms, which is like much
30:19
Speaker 1: much heavier than any particle we've ever seen. You know, Electrons,
30:23
Speaker 1: for example, are like ten to the mine is twenty
30:25
Speaker 1: four ms. But here we're talking micrograms, like the massive
30:30
Speaker 1: grain of salt. Oh. I see, so if there was
30:32
Speaker 1: a particle with the mass of a grain of salt,
30:36
Speaker 1: it would be a black hole. Yes, salt tents are
30:38
Speaker 1: all black holes. You heard it here first, as in,
30:43
Speaker 1: don't put salt on your food, you'll turn into a
30:46
Speaker 1: black hole. That's right. Every time you shake that salt canister,
30:51
Speaker 1: you're pouring black holes into your food. Yeah, that's why
30:54
Speaker 1: it salt is salty. Yeah, that's what black holes taste like. Yeah, exactly,
30:58
Speaker 1: We've answered the ancient philosophical question what does the black
31:01
Speaker 1: hole taste like? And why does salt taste salty? Also,
31:06
Speaker 1: all at one, that's right, that's right. That's the black
31:10
Speaker 1: hole flavor theorem, invented by Jorge Chamont and John from Norway.
31:13
Speaker 1: We're gonna share the credit, right all right? So um, okay,
31:17
Speaker 1: So I guess yester then is a particle can be
31:19
Speaker 1: a black hole, but it would have to be super heavy.
31:22
Speaker 1: That's right. And all of this is probably wrong because
31:25
Speaker 1: we just don't have a quantum theory of gravity here.
31:28
Speaker 1: What we're doing is reusing two theories, general relativity and
31:31
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, both of which we know fail in this regime,
31:35
Speaker 1: and we're trying to like combine them in an awkward
31:38
Speaker 1: way and use both of them to kind of agree
31:40
Speaker 1: on a black hole particle mass. So this is probably wrong,
31:43
Speaker 1: but it's the best answer we can give today. Right,
31:46
Speaker 1: we need to throw some salt over our shoulder and
31:48
Speaker 1: just too, wishes luck. Yes, and that's actually the other
31:52
Speaker 1: caveat which is it might be possible to make black
31:55
Speaker 1: holes out of electrons or protons. The key thing there
31:58
Speaker 1: is not just to increase mass up to like a
32:01
Speaker 1: grain of salt, but to increase the energy, because remember,
32:04
Speaker 1: gravity is in response to energy density, not just mass.
32:08
Speaker 1: And so that's what we do with the Large Hadron collider,
32:10
Speaker 1: for example, we smash protons together at very high energy,
32:14
Speaker 1: and that's why we think there's a possibility that we
32:17
Speaker 1: could one day create a mini black hole out of
32:20
Speaker 1: particles because we've used the energy of the proton to
32:23
Speaker 1: like ramp it up to black holes. Did you just
32:27
Speaker 1: admit that you're trying to make black holes the Large
32:29
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider? I am a d P hoping we make
32:32
Speaker 1: black holes to the large Yes, a d That would
32:36
Speaker 1: be fascinating. We would get to study them. They are
32:38
Speaker 1: also a hundred percent safe. Wow. All right, well, I
32:41
Speaker 1: guess that answer is John's question. The answer is, yes,
32:45
Speaker 1: you can make a particle be a black hole, but
32:47
Speaker 1: it's almost unrealistically heavy or unrealistically fast or what are
32:54
Speaker 1: we saying, or you have to elbow your way into
32:57
Speaker 1: the universe. Control room and turn off quantumic are flipping
33:00
Speaker 1: switches not recommended, by the way. Well, if it ever happens,
33:06
Speaker 1: I'll bring you along, Daniel, and you can restrain me. No,
33:10
Speaker 1: I'm the one who likes to press big red buttons.
33:12
Speaker 1: Like every time I'm in the control room with the
33:14
Speaker 1: LHC is that big red button and I'm just like
33:17
Speaker 1: desperate to touch it and push it and feel the click.
33:19
Speaker 1: All right, well let's get into our last question, which
33:22
Speaker 1: is about tectonic plates. But first let's take a quick break.
33:39
Speaker 1: Al Right. I know, I'm not sure my mind can
33:41
Speaker 1: handle anymore mind blowing. Here we've discovered that the Higgs
33:45
Speaker 1: boson may not interact with dark matter, and that parkles
33:49
Speaker 1: can be black holes. What else we have here today? Well,
33:52
Speaker 1: let's bring it back down to Earth. Here's a question
33:55
Speaker 1: from Canada. Hello, Daniel and Horrey. My name is Hard Jock.
33:59
Speaker 1: I'm from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and my question for you
34:02
Speaker 1: is what would happen to life on Earth and the
34:05
Speaker 1: landscape of the Earth if the Earth was no longer
34:08
Speaker 1: tectonically active. I look forward to your answer. Thank you,
34:12
Speaker 1: awesome question, Thank you, her dread. It's a tricky question.
34:16
Speaker 1: She's saying, what would happen to the Earth and to
34:18
Speaker 1: us and to life on it if suddenly we didn't
34:21
Speaker 1: have tectonic activity in our mantle, in the in the
34:26
Speaker 1: Earth's crust. Do you think she's worried about an earthquake
34:29
Speaker 1: and hoping tectonic stop, or she's like writing a science
34:31
Speaker 1: fiction novel in which the Earth freezes. No, but it's
34:34
Speaker 1: a fun question. And I like these what if questions
34:37
Speaker 1: because they make us think about how fragile our existence is.
34:40
Speaker 1: We're dependent on so many different processes happening in exactly
34:44
Speaker 1: the right way all the time for life to continue
34:47
Speaker 1: as we know it. So it's fun to imagine, like
34:49
Speaker 1: how life would be different if just one of those
34:51
Speaker 1: things went away. So again, maybe to refresh people, what
34:54
Speaker 1: does the tectonic activity? What does tectonic mean for us?
34:57
Speaker 1: It means essentially that the Earth is still in motion.
34:59
Speaker 1: It's not just a frozen ball of rock. But we're
35:02
Speaker 1: sitting on top of the crust, which is sitting on
35:05
Speaker 1: top of essentially liquid rock, and so these big pieces
35:09
Speaker 1: of land that we still sit on, that we stand on,
35:11
Speaker 1: are floating around and and changing. You know, if you
35:14
Speaker 1: look back at the history of the Earth over millions
35:16
Speaker 1: of years. You can see the continents moving like floating,
35:20
Speaker 1: as if there were, you know, on a pool of
35:22
Speaker 1: hot lava. We're not on solid ground, yeah, we are
35:25
Speaker 1: not in solid ground. In fact, most of the Earth
35:27
Speaker 1: is molten, right, and there's activity down there. There's all
35:30
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff swirling around. And that's good because it
35:34
Speaker 1: means that we have things like magnetic field that we
35:37
Speaker 1: think are generated by the motion of all that hot
35:40
Speaker 1: swirling metal inside the Earth, and so the Earth is
35:43
Speaker 1: not just a frozen cold ball. It's like it's hot
35:46
Speaker 1: and it's active and this stuff going on down there.
35:49
Speaker 1: And we talked about how if because we have a
35:51
Speaker 1: magnetic field, we have kind of a shield against cosmic
35:54
Speaker 1: rays which would strip our atmosphere and basically kill us
35:58
Speaker 1: right pretty quickly. Yes, space is filled with death bullets
36:01
Speaker 1: from the Sun, and if you don't have great shielding,
36:04
Speaker 1: then you get cancer and diet really quick. And the
36:07
Speaker 1: Earth has an awesome literal force field, which is its
36:10
Speaker 1: magnetic field, because these particles are charged, and charged particles
36:14
Speaker 1: bend when they hit a magnetic field and so basically
36:16
Speaker 1: just deflects most of this space radiation, which is good
36:20
Speaker 1: because otherwise we'd all get cancer made all right, So
36:23
Speaker 1: then that's what tectonic means. It means that, you know,
36:26
Speaker 1: the plates of the Earth's cross are still moving around
36:29
Speaker 1: kind of a molten core. And so the question is
36:32
Speaker 1: what would happen if that stopped? Like I guess, first
36:35
Speaker 1: of all, what would cause it to stop? Yeah, it
36:37
Speaker 1: would be pretty hard to stop. Like if you are
36:39
Speaker 1: a cartoon villain and you want to stop you know,
36:42
Speaker 1: the motion of the Earth. That would be pretty difficult
36:45
Speaker 1: because it's at an enormous amount of energy. How much
36:48
Speaker 1: energy is stored in like a cubic mile of liquid
36:52
Speaker 1: iron A lot, right, but we have a lot more
36:55
Speaker 1: than one cubic mile of liquid iron. So it's just
36:59
Speaker 1: an incredibly vast amount of energy. Oh, I see, you
37:02
Speaker 1: were saying a lot of the tectonics come from just
37:05
Speaker 1: having stored energy inside of the Earth. It's not you know,
37:09
Speaker 1: like if the Earth got cooler and cold and frozen,
37:13
Speaker 1: wouldn't we still have some motion? Or would we will
37:16
Speaker 1: we then turn into a solid ball of rock. Now
37:19
Speaker 1: that is the future of the Earth. We think that
37:21
Speaker 1: in a billion or two years, the Earth will cool
37:24
Speaker 1: and it's internals will stop moving as much, and our
37:27
Speaker 1: magnetic field will dim and our tectonics will stop. And
37:31
Speaker 1: that's in fact what happened to Mars. Mars is smaller
37:35
Speaker 1: than the Earth, and so it cooled faster, and so
37:38
Speaker 1: we think that it's essentially frozen on the inside, and
37:40
Speaker 1: it's magnetic field, which it once had is gone, and
37:44
Speaker 1: it has no more plate tectonics. So plate tectonics are
37:47
Speaker 1: sort of like a feature of a younger planet. It
37:49
Speaker 1: tells us that we're still like hot, we're still young,
37:52
Speaker 1: and yes, exactly, hot and flowing. We're still hot. And
37:57
Speaker 1: so one question ask is like, what happened ends when
38:00
Speaker 1: play tectonic stoff? The other one is like, how does
38:02
Speaker 1: that happen? What makes it happen? And to make it happen,
38:05
Speaker 1: you have to basically cool the Earth, which means waiting
38:08
Speaker 1: a billion and a half years, or developing some awesome
38:11
Speaker 1: technology that sucks all the heat out of the center
38:14
Speaker 1: of the Earth, or maybe to prevent it, we could
38:16
Speaker 1: inject energy into the earth. Yes, exactly, we could keep
38:19
Speaker 1: the youth. We could inject botox effectively into the Earth
38:23
Speaker 1: and keep it young and prevent those you know, tectonic wrinkles,
38:27
Speaker 1: you know. The tectonic wrinkles essentially are a way that
38:29
Speaker 1: the Earth gives off some of this energy, burns some
38:32
Speaker 1: of this energy. And so if you like try to
38:35
Speaker 1: freeze the crust of the Earth without cooling it in
38:38
Speaker 1: the inside, and that would like build up somehow, and
38:40
Speaker 1: then where would that heat all go, and so that
38:43
Speaker 1: could be pretty devastating. I see, well, I thought that
38:45
Speaker 1: a lot of like the moltenness and the meltiness and
38:48
Speaker 1: the heat and the energy inside the Earth was due
38:50
Speaker 1: to gravity and like the pressure of all this rock,
38:54
Speaker 1: you know, being compressed down there at the center. So
38:57
Speaker 1: are you saying that we we could freeze that or
38:59
Speaker 1: maybe are you saying that it wouldn't be enough for
39:02
Speaker 1: just from gravitational pressure to keep the magnetic field going. Yeah,
39:06
Speaker 1: it's not enough. Eventually we will cool Like you're right,
39:08
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes from gravitational pressure. There's also
39:11
Speaker 1: a little bit of heat that comes from vision, just
39:13
Speaker 1: like heavy stuff in the center of the Earth decaying
39:16
Speaker 1: and giving off energy. But you know, we're not dense
39:19
Speaker 1: enough to cause fusion life happens in the sun to
39:21
Speaker 1: stay hot and so over a long time, eventually we
39:25
Speaker 1: will cool. Like gravity compressed the Earth to a certain density,
39:30
Speaker 1: but you know, the Earth pushes it back. It has
39:32
Speaker 1: a certain rigidity to it, and so we will not
39:34
Speaker 1: gravitationally collapse to anything more dense. It'll just eventually cool
39:39
Speaker 1: and become, you know, much colder. All right, So I
39:43
Speaker 1: guess then the answer to the question what would happen
39:45
Speaker 1: if tectonics stop? The answer is nothing good. We we
39:50
Speaker 1: get fried by the sun mcnetic field collapses. We get
39:53
Speaker 1: fried by the Sun, but it's unlikely to happen for
39:56
Speaker 1: another one and a half billion years. Yeah, and I
39:58
Speaker 1: wouldn't say nothing good. I mean, living here in southern
40:01
Speaker 1: California where we're always thinking about earthquakes, there is one
40:05
Speaker 1: upside to freezing the Earth is that, hey, no more earthquakes. Right,
40:08
Speaker 1: earthquakes are caused by tectonic activity. We get fried, but
40:12
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have to worry. We wouldn't have to get
40:14
Speaker 1: earthquake insurance, is what you're saying. That's right. And this
40:17
Speaker 1: way we get fried from above instead of from below.
40:19
Speaker 1: Because if there's no tectonic activity in the Earth is cold,
40:22
Speaker 1: that means also no volcanoes, right, So no like devastating
40:26
Speaker 1: lava flows and super volcanoes. You've seen that movie where
40:29
Speaker 1: a super volcano comes up from underneath Los Angeles and
40:33
Speaker 1: basically kills everybody but the good looking actors. Wow, is
40:36
Speaker 1: that the one with the mega shark in it or
40:39
Speaker 1: that swims through magna? I want to see that one.
40:43
Speaker 1: I think there's a Robomega shark too, I believe. I mean,
40:46
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know. I don't watch these kinds of movies,
40:48
Speaker 1: but yeah, and it transforms into an electric guitar, right,
40:52
Speaker 1: so that on the good side, you would have no
40:54
Speaker 1: more earthquakes and you would have normal volcanoes. But yeah,
40:58
Speaker 1: you would also you would have no more athetic field
41:01
Speaker 1: and then you would have no more mountains because remember
41:03
Speaker 1: that mountains like the Himalayas, these are caused by tectonic
41:07
Speaker 1: plates ramming into each other and forcing dirt up and
41:10
Speaker 1: up and up, and then mountains are sort of worn
41:13
Speaker 1: down by rain and wind and all that stuff. And
41:16
Speaker 1: so if you have no more tectonic activity, you don't
41:19
Speaker 1: have any fresh mountains. Wait, are you saying that we're
41:21
Speaker 1: still making mountains today? The Earth is still like making
41:24
Speaker 1: fresh mountains? Yeah, I think the Himalayas get higher every
41:27
Speaker 1: year because India is basically ramming into the rest of
41:31
Speaker 1: Asia and causing the Himalayas, and so that's still going on.
41:35
Speaker 1: A lot of mountains are getting softer and softer because
41:38
Speaker 1: you know that tectonic activity has ceased for whatever reason,
41:40
Speaker 1: and then the rain wears them down. But yeah, there's
41:44
Speaker 1: still some fresh, sharp mountains out there. Well that's the
41:46
Speaker 1: reason I haven't climbed Mount Everest, to be honest, because
41:49
Speaker 1: it's just gonna get taller. You're waiting for it to
41:51
Speaker 1: be waiting for the peak to peak. Yeah, that's right,
41:56
Speaker 1: because if you climb it this year, then next year
41:58
Speaker 1: comes somebody say, well, you didn't climb the real not everything.
42:01
Speaker 1: You missed a centimeter. I want to I want to
42:03
Speaker 1: climate a peak peakness. Okay, all right, I'll sign you
42:07
Speaker 1: up to climate everything about two million years when point
42:10
Speaker 1: seven billion years, I guess that would be all right. Well,
42:13
Speaker 1: thank you for Dran, and thank you to everyone who
42:15
Speaker 1: submitted a question. We had tons of questions, right Daniel,
42:18
Speaker 1: We do, and we love them and we answer every email. So,
42:22
Speaker 1: if you have personal curiosity about the university, if this
42:24
Speaker 1: is something that you were just dying to know, the
42:27
Speaker 1: answer to then, hey, become a scientist or just email us.
42:30
Speaker 1: That's probably easier. And if you're a year old alien,
42:34
Speaker 1: we definitely want to hear from you because we have questions.
42:37
Speaker 1: That's right, how did you stay so young? And lava
42:40
Speaker 1: botox obviously, Daniel answer that's right. All right, Well, thanks
42:45
Speaker 1: for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
42:56
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
42:59
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