Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What is quantum spacetime foam?

Transcript

What is quantum spacetime foam? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I've noticed that people just add quantum the
0:12
Speaker 1: word quantum to things to make them sound cool. Oh man,
0:16
Speaker 1: I hate when they do that. Yeah, like quantum combs,
0:19
Speaker 1: quantum um cereal. I mean it''s like they put it
0:23
Speaker 1: on everything just to make it sound awesome. Yep. I
0:26
Speaker 1: was seeing quantum dog food recently, and I'm pretty sure
0:30
Speaker 1: that's not a real fact. Your dog both loves it
0:35
Speaker 1: and hates it at the same time. But does that
0:39
Speaker 1: mean to just all of quantum mechanics is like a scam,
0:41
Speaker 1: not all of it, Like, there really is some physics
0:44
Speaker 1: in quantum mechanics, but I'd say most things that are
0:47
Speaker 1: called quantum are probably bologny. Hi am Jorge. I'm a
1:07
Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi I'm Daniel.
1:11
Speaker 1: I'm a quantum physicist and that is not bologny. Oh well,
1:15
Speaker 1: it just happens. I'm a cartoon bologny cartoonists. So all
1:21
Speaker 1: brings it together and welcome to our podcast, Daniel and
1:24
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio
1:27
Speaker 1: in which we explore everything that's crazy and amazing about
1:31
Speaker 1: the universe, from classical physics to quantum mechanics and explain
1:35
Speaker 1: it to you in a way that you can explain
1:37
Speaker 1: to your friends and sound super smart. Yeah, in ways
1:40
Speaker 1: that we do explain it and don't explain it at
1:43
Speaker 1: the same time. We're sort of like a quantum podcast
1:46
Speaker 1: in a way. We download individual, discretized units of explanation
1:50
Speaker 1: into your brain. We spin it up and spin it
1:53
Speaker 1: down for you guys. But quantum mechanics is one of
1:57
Speaker 1: my favorite topics because it is so hard for people
2:00
Speaker 1: to understand usually, but there are ways to look at
2:03
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics and get a new sense of the world,
2:06
Speaker 1: to reveal the reality that underlies everything. Yeah, it's your
2:10
Speaker 1: favorite because people don't understand it. It's my favorite because
2:13
Speaker 1: it's a great example of how in physics we can
2:16
Speaker 1: learn that the world is really quite different from the
2:19
Speaker 1: world we expected it to be. The world we grew
2:21
Speaker 1: up in is not the way the world works. That
2:24
Speaker 1: to really understand the universe, we have to remove our blinders,
2:27
Speaker 1: and quantum mechanics is a great example of that because
2:29
Speaker 1: it requires basically tossing out your entire intuition for how
2:33
Speaker 1: the world works and accepting something very different. Yeah, I
2:37
Speaker 1: feel like that every day that I wake up and
2:39
Speaker 1: read the news, like, what is this universe we're living in?
2:42
Speaker 1: What quantum politics is that you're talking about? It's just
2:45
Speaker 1: the quantum news will say, it's just the quantumy. It
2:49
Speaker 1: makes sense and doesn't make sense at the same time.
2:52
Speaker 1: It's about a dead cat and in a life cat
2:54
Speaker 1: at the same time. I feel like quantum mechanics is
2:56
Speaker 1: something a lot of people are fascinated by. They've heard
2:59
Speaker 1: about it, they hear people use words to explain it
3:02
Speaker 1: that don't quite make sense to them, and so people
3:05
Speaker 1: are thirsty for a real, honest to god understandable explanation
3:09
Speaker 1: for some of this bizarre quantum phenomena. Yeah, and it
3:12
Speaker 1: sort of seems, like you said, it almost seems like
3:14
Speaker 1: two different universes. You know. There's like the universe that
3:17
Speaker 1: you grew up and as a kid and feel you
3:20
Speaker 1: understand where you take a ball and you bounce it
3:22
Speaker 1: and comes back and you can throw a baseball and
3:24
Speaker 1: it lands where you think it's gonna land. And then
3:26
Speaker 1: there's there's the kind of the quantum universe you learned
3:29
Speaker 1: later on in life, where like none of those things
3:32
Speaker 1: you learned as a kid seem to apply precisely because
3:35
Speaker 1: your brain develops all these ideas for how things move
3:38
Speaker 1: based on what you've experienced. Things seem to move through
3:42
Speaker 1: the universe, it seems like they have a smooth path,
3:45
Speaker 1: and so later to grow up and learn that things
3:47
Speaker 1: don't actually move. They just have these snapshots and then
3:50
Speaker 1: those later snapshots in your brain is filling in the
3:53
Speaker 1: in between slices to make like a movie of the universe.
3:56
Speaker 1: Is quite shocking. I wonder if we had evolved to
3:59
Speaker 1: be much much smaller, if we would have sort of
4:01
Speaker 1: a quantum intuition, if we like had everyday experiences of
4:04
Speaker 1: quantum objects. You mean, like if it's taught at the
4:07
Speaker 1: preschool level, if we try to teach kids quantum physics,
4:12
Speaker 1: I don't think we should be doing short in your
4:13
Speaker 1: equation um one plus one, spin up, spin down, you know,
4:21
Speaker 1: just the basics that you need to deal with this
4:24
Speaker 1: crazy world we're living in. That's one approach, but I
4:27
Speaker 1: think that people would still struggle because they don't have
4:29
Speaker 1: any actual experience with it. I'm talking about really experiencing
4:33
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, Like what if they were quantum effects that
4:36
Speaker 1: were macroscopic, you know, things that were the sizes of
4:39
Speaker 1: baseballs operated under quantum rules. It's pretty hard to reveal
4:43
Speaker 1: that the universe is quantum mechanical. It took us thousands
4:46
Speaker 1: of years before we figure that out. What if it
4:49
Speaker 1: wasn't so subtle, what if it was more obvious and
4:51
Speaker 1: so people actually had an intuition for this, they're like, oh, electrons, Yeah,
4:55
Speaker 1: those moves just like these other quantum basketballs or whatever
4:59
Speaker 1: that I was playing in within my kindergarten playground. Yeah. Yeah,
5:03
Speaker 1: maybe that's the next wave of physics education, is we
5:07
Speaker 1: need to develop some sort of technology that operates like
5:10
Speaker 1: quantum objects so kids can play with like quantum balls. Yeah. Well, um,
5:16
Speaker 1: it does seem like it's kind of a separate and
5:18
Speaker 1: new universe, and it feels like there's a quantum version
5:22
Speaker 1: of almost anything. Like for anything that we have in
5:25
Speaker 1: our world, there seems to be like a quantum version
5:28
Speaker 1: of it. Like you know, I know I can spin
5:31
Speaker 1: here in my chair, and there's also something called quantum spin,
5:34
Speaker 1: and you know, my battery has charged at it, but
5:36
Speaker 1: there's also something called quantum charge and so on and
5:39
Speaker 1: so on. Yeah, there's even quantum flavor. Yeah, you think
5:43
Speaker 1: in kindergarten that there's only sweet and salty and sour,
5:47
Speaker 1: but there's also quantum flavor, and we have quantum color.
5:50
Speaker 1: We had a whole podcast episodes about all these. Yeah,
5:55
Speaker 1: so you can go to quantum Kindergarten too and learn
5:58
Speaker 1: quantum sharing and quantum And in some cases these things
6:04
Speaker 1: are metaphors, like quantum flavor. These particles don't actually taste
6:09
Speaker 1: like anything, but we're trying to make an analogy. We're
6:11
Speaker 1: trying to extrapolate from something we know, which is flavor,
6:15
Speaker 1: and give you a sense for this weird new quantum thing.
6:18
Speaker 1: But in other cases it really does make sense, like
6:21
Speaker 1: quantum spin. Those particles are not spinning in the same way,
6:24
Speaker 1: but they really do have angular momentum, so spin really
6:27
Speaker 1: makes sense. So in some cases the words are you know,
6:31
Speaker 1: really a stretch. In some cases they really are applicable, right, Yeah,
6:36
Speaker 1: that was a pretty good way to you just sput
6:37
Speaker 1: it there, right, so obvious and clear. But but yeah,
6:44
Speaker 1: but sometimes you know, I wonder, sometimes I wonder if
6:47
Speaker 1: it are pushing it a little bit too much. And
6:49
Speaker 1: so today on the podcast, we have a great question
6:51
Speaker 1: from a listener that we're going to try to answer.
6:55
Speaker 1: And this is a question from Dale from Dublin. We
6:58
Speaker 1: had a very interesting question and about another strange sounding
7:03
Speaker 1: quantum thing. Here's Dale Dale from Toblin oiland here I
7:08
Speaker 1: heard about a thing called quantum phone or spacetime phone.
7:12
Speaker 1: Could you talk about that for a bit and let
7:14
Speaker 1: us know what it is? Chairs Well, I love so
7:16
Speaker 1: many things about this. First of all, I love Dale's
7:18
Speaker 1: accent awesome, and I love the Dale wrote in. This
7:22
Speaker 1: is just an email he sent me saying, hey, can
7:24
Speaker 1: you explain this? And I asked him to send us
7:26
Speaker 1: a recording so we could talk about it on air
7:28
Speaker 1: because I thought a lot of people might be interested
7:31
Speaker 1: in the answer to this question. So thank you Dale
7:33
Speaker 1: for writing in, and thank you to everybody who writes
7:35
Speaker 1: in with their questions. Right, and just as a reminder,
7:38
Speaker 1: we are on Instagram and Twitter at Daniel and Jorge
7:42
Speaker 1: and if you want uh Daniel to answer back, try
7:45
Speaker 1: Twitter or the email because Instagram will not answer your question.
7:51
Speaker 1: I don't do quantum social media. Yeah, so if you
7:53
Speaker 1: have a question, send it on into questions at Daniel
7:56
Speaker 1: and Jorge dot com or engage with us on Twitter
7:59
Speaker 1: at Daniel in Jorge. Yeah, so this is an interesting question.
8:02
Speaker 1: Quantum foam. It's sort of sounds like one of these
8:05
Speaker 1: products that you sell in late night television that will
8:10
Speaker 1: totally clean your bathroom at the molecular level. I think
8:14
Speaker 1: a lot of times in marketing, quantum is just used
8:17
Speaker 1: to describe something to make a sound more modern or technological.
8:21
Speaker 1: You know, like like quantum dog food. That really is
8:24
Speaker 1: a thing. I mean, it's your mechanical No, Google, quantum
8:28
Speaker 1: dog food. There is a product they really do sell
8:30
Speaker 1: dog Foodn't call it quantum. I think what they mean
8:33
Speaker 1: by that is new fancy, you know, savvy to the
8:37
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical world somehow new fancy. Yeah, well that's kind
8:41
Speaker 1: of what you guys do in physics as well, isn't it. Oh,
8:44
Speaker 1: this is a charge, but it's kind of new and fancy.
8:46
Speaker 1: We'll call it quantum quantum. Wait, no, but it actually
8:49
Speaker 1: is new and fancy. Sometimes we do discover stuff in physics.
8:53
Speaker 1: It's new and fancy. All the quantum mechanics is new
8:56
Speaker 1: and fancy. It really does happen. It's not just marketing.
8:59
Speaker 1: Sometimes dog food is new and fancy. Why not and
9:02
Speaker 1: coming districted little chunks? That's true? Yeah, alright, so I
9:07
Speaker 1: should order that product and I should evaluate it before
9:10
Speaker 1: I give my opinion on it. You're totally right and
9:12
Speaker 1: content doct food. Please give us a call. We are
9:15
Speaker 1: opening for sponsorship. In this podcast, I was wondering if
9:20
Speaker 1: Dale from Dublin was the only person thinking about spacetime foam,
9:24
Speaker 1: and so I walked around and I asked people what
9:26
Speaker 1: they thought about space time folm, had they heard of it?
9:29
Speaker 1: Did they know what Dale was talking about? Did they
9:31
Speaker 1: have any idea what it was? And these questions again
9:33
Speaker 1: didn't happen to e c Irvine. This happened at a
9:35
Speaker 1: local coffee shop because I was trying to get a
9:37
Speaker 1: sense for the broader public and their understanding of this topic. Yeah,
9:41
Speaker 1: so before you listen to these answers, think about it
9:43
Speaker 1: for a second. If a physicist approached you at a
9:46
Speaker 1: coffee shop, would you be able to answer the question,
9:50
Speaker 1: what is spacetime foam? Here's what people had to say,
9:53
Speaker 1: upper layer to spacetime that kind of bubbles up or something.
9:57
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, Well, I'm no idea. I have
10:01
Speaker 1: no idea spacetime phone, no spacetime phone, no spacetime phone
10:09
Speaker 1: for space. I guess, but I don't um space. I'm
10:15
Speaker 1: not all right. I feel like people were answering and
10:20
Speaker 1: they were just about to call the police on you.
10:22
Speaker 1: On these you can sort of hear that in responses.
10:27
Speaker 1: They're like, I am so regretting answering this questions. What
10:30
Speaker 1: are you talking about? I think, yeah, I mean people
10:33
Speaker 1: go to a coffee shop to wake up, and you're
10:36
Speaker 1: asking them physics questions over their cappuccimo phone. Well, you know,
10:41
Speaker 1: I specifically tried to choose people that looked like they
10:44
Speaker 1: were studying, like they had a book open and they
10:46
Speaker 1: were reading something, because I was hoping to find people
10:49
Speaker 1: who were, you know, like had their brains on or intellection,
10:52
Speaker 1: engaged in something, or maybe curious about this kind of thing.
10:55
Speaker 1: I didn't interrupt, like couples that were smooching, or if
10:57
Speaker 1: they looked like they were listening to a podcast, You're like,
11:00
Speaker 1: that person probably knows everything already, right. I try to
11:04
Speaker 1: avoid people who already have their earbuds in, because I
11:07
Speaker 1: feel like in public, earbuds mean don't talk to me. Well,
11:10
Speaker 1: this is kind of an interesting question. Quantum foam and
11:14
Speaker 1: I I had never heard of it. If you have
11:16
Speaker 1: approached me at a coffee shop, I would have just
11:17
Speaker 1: said no, please, go on, please please asked me an
11:21
Speaker 1: easier question. You would have been like, you look like
11:23
Speaker 1: this other physicist I know, and I definitely ignore him
11:25
Speaker 1: in public. So I'm not talking to you as a
11:28
Speaker 1: blanket policy. That's my decision on physicists. All right, So
11:33
Speaker 1: this is an interesting question because it's it's like you're
11:35
Speaker 1: marrying two words that are very common space time and foam,
11:41
Speaker 1: but that together really don't make any sense. Yes, And
11:44
Speaker 1: that happens so much in quantum mechanics. People say things
11:48
Speaker 1: that use words together and you understand the individual words,
11:51
Speaker 1: but you don't really know what it means when you
11:53
Speaker 1: put it together. So we'll get into what spacetime foam
11:56
Speaker 1: is and what we know about it and how we
11:59
Speaker 1: might be able to find it in in this frothy
12:01
Speaker 1: little universe we live in. But first let's take a
12:04
Speaker 1: quick break, all right, Dannel, we're talking about spacetime foam,
12:21
Speaker 1: and it's not a weird product that you sell on
12:25
Speaker 1: late night television. It's an actual physical theory in science,
12:31
Speaker 1: and so let's get into that a little bit. And
12:33
Speaker 1: I guess let's start with the first two words to
12:35
Speaker 1: set us up for the foamy part um. So let's
12:38
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about spacetime, because in this case,
12:41
Speaker 1: I think Dale from Dublin used the word as one word,
12:46
Speaker 1: like spacetime, not space common time. He called it spacetime.
12:50
Speaker 1: So let's maybe refresh for our listeners what it means
12:53
Speaker 1: to say spacetime. Yeah, it's like you take two words
12:55
Speaker 1: you put them together. They mean something special, like green
12:58
Speaker 1: and house. Greenhouse is not just a greenhouse, right, has
13:02
Speaker 1: its own meaning. So in the same way space time
13:05
Speaker 1: is sort of a special word in physics, and of
13:08
Speaker 1: course you know it's spaces. Space is just the three
13:11
Speaker 1: dimensions of movement. You know, you have X, y, and Z.
13:14
Speaker 1: And we have a whole other episode about like what
13:17
Speaker 1: makes up space? Is it a thing because it can
13:19
Speaker 1: wiggle and dance and jiggle and expand and all this stuff.
13:23
Speaker 1: But for our purposes today, let's just think about it
13:25
Speaker 1: as sort of as the directions you can move in X, Y,
13:28
Speaker 1: and Z. So that's what space means, like the space
13:30
Speaker 1: we're in, like where we move around in. Yeah, precisely,
13:33
Speaker 1: nothing special there. And time is just time, right, time
13:37
Speaker 1: flows forwards, and you can think of time in analogy
13:40
Speaker 1: to space. You can think of us as moving through
13:43
Speaker 1: time the way you can move through space. And we
13:45
Speaker 1: have a whole podcast episode digging into how time is
13:48
Speaker 1: connected to space and how time is different from space.
13:52
Speaker 1: But Einstein is the guy who put these two things together.
13:55
Speaker 1: He's the first one to construct this idea of space
13:58
Speaker 1: time by taking three dimensions of space that you can
14:01
Speaker 1: move in and adding the time dimension to it is
14:03
Speaker 1: sort of a fourth dimension. So together space time is
14:06
Speaker 1: this four dimensional idea X y Z and then time. Right,
14:11
Speaker 1: I feel like you just said something profound though you
14:13
Speaker 1: just said time is time. That man, time is so fascinating.
14:18
Speaker 1: I could talk endlessly about time. We could spend all
14:21
Speaker 1: of our time talking about time. But maybe it's not
14:23
Speaker 1: time to do that. That one phrases made me think
14:25
Speaker 1: about my whole life and where I'm going with it.
14:28
Speaker 1: And well, can I sell you my new product. It's
14:31
Speaker 1: called quantum time the There you go, alright, quantum quantum
14:35
Speaker 1: watch to keep track of the inevitability of time. It's
14:40
Speaker 1: new and fancy and has to be charged every fifteen minutes.
14:43
Speaker 1: There you go, alright. So spacetime is this idea that um,
14:48
Speaker 1: space and time are not separate, like maybe if you
14:51
Speaker 1: think about them altogether in one package, one four dimensional bundle.
14:57
Speaker 1: Then it's more appropriate somehow like uh like the related
15:02
Speaker 1: like one of them affects the other, so therefore you
15:04
Speaker 1: should keep track of them all at the same time precisely.
15:07
Speaker 1: And it was Einstein's theory of special relativity that showed
15:10
Speaker 1: us exactly how space and time are affected by each other. Specifically,
15:14
Speaker 1: how time flows depends on where you are and how
15:18
Speaker 1: fast you are going relative to something else, and so
15:21
Speaker 1: in order to understand time, you can't just have time
15:24
Speaker 1: by itself. Time is not universal. Time is local. Time
15:27
Speaker 1: depends on where you are in space, and so it
15:30
Speaker 1: makes much more sense to combine these two things together.
15:33
Speaker 1: It's like having the weather, right. The weather is not
15:36
Speaker 1: the same everywhere, so you want to talk about the
15:38
Speaker 1: weather where you are in Buffalo, or in New Delhi
15:41
Speaker 1: or in Barcelona, and so you pair the weather with
15:44
Speaker 1: the location because that makes more sense. It's called the
15:47
Speaker 1: space time weather continuum, which you hear listen to my
15:52
Speaker 1: new quantum weather reports. It's a new Toppler quantum three
15:56
Speaker 1: thousand that probably is a real thing. I mean, you're joking,
15:58
Speaker 1: but there's probably some will station out there with quantum weather.
16:02
Speaker 1: Dobbler some local weatherman in the middle of Barcelona. And
16:07
Speaker 1: Geinstein was not crazy, right, Like, he didn't just make
16:10
Speaker 1: this up and it didn't work. It actually works, Like
16:13
Speaker 1: bundling space and time together does tell you something about
16:17
Speaker 1: the universe, and it's there's been theories and experiments done
16:21
Speaker 1: to prove that this is all for real. Oh, yes,
16:23
Speaker 1: Einstein was right about this. That doesn't mean Einstein wasn't crazy.
16:27
Speaker 1: I mean, you dig into that guy's personal life. He
16:29
Speaker 1: was more than a little bit across. What do you mean.
16:31
Speaker 1: He was also right about spacetime, all right, So that spacetime.
16:34
Speaker 1: And now the question from Dale was what is spacetime foam?
16:39
Speaker 1: And I have to say, I've never heard of this before.
16:41
Speaker 1: Is this a new thing? Is this something that's only
16:44
Speaker 1: been around for a couple of years, or is this
16:46
Speaker 1: like a fringe theory or French theory? I don't know
16:49
Speaker 1: either one. What is what is going on with spacetime phoam? Well,
16:54
Speaker 1: I can't endorse your casual slander of entire culture there,
16:58
Speaker 1: but it is a bit of a fringe in theory.
17:01
Speaker 1: It's one of these things. It's like it's an idea
17:03
Speaker 1: that took hold in some people's minds, but then not
17:07
Speaker 1: a lot of progress was made, so so HA just
17:09
Speaker 1: been hanging out there, bubbling up in people's brains without
17:12
Speaker 1: really turning into anything concrete. So it's been around for
17:16
Speaker 1: a while, but it's not really part of the mainstream physics.
17:18
Speaker 1: It's just been foaming up in people's research dockets. And
17:21
Speaker 1: so I know that you keep abreast of all the
17:23
Speaker 1: latest topics in physics and you read all the physics journals,
17:25
Speaker 1: and that's probably why you haven't heard about this recently. Right, Well,
17:29
Speaker 1: at first I thought it was maybe an acronym, like
17:32
Speaker 1: maybe fo a M stands for something. It's the first
17:35
Speaker 1: of a multiverse, which is a new theory by Jorge
17:39
Speaker 1: Cham about how we're the most awesome of all the multiverses.
17:44
Speaker 1: And somehow Dale from Dublin knew about your theory before
17:47
Speaker 1: you even thought about it and thought to ask in advance. Wow,
17:50
Speaker 1: good job, Dale. Yeah, well, in other multiverses he didn't,
17:53
Speaker 1: but this one, because it's the best he did, all right,
17:57
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about this. So there is something
18:00
Speaker 1: called spacetime foam that physicists think might be real and
18:05
Speaker 1: might actually kind of describe what the universe is like,
18:09
Speaker 1: so take us through it, Daniel, what does it mean
18:13
Speaker 1: to put the word spacetime and foam together? The idea
18:16
Speaker 1: here is to try to resolve the conflict between our
18:19
Speaker 1: two great theories of physics. We talked about space time
18:22
Speaker 1: in terms of relativity, and that all makes sense. And
18:25
Speaker 1: relativity has been tested out the wazoo and up the
18:27
Speaker 1: wazoo and in the wazoo in every way around the wazoo.
18:30
Speaker 1: Because is that it's a great theory. Is that another
18:33
Speaker 1: physics experiment acronym the wazoo, the wazoo, I'm not sure
18:38
Speaker 1: what it means collider in Italy apparently, but special relativity
18:46
Speaker 1: has been extensively tested, and so has general relativity. But
18:50
Speaker 1: we don't know if it really holds universally. That we
18:53
Speaker 1: have suspicions that it probably doesn't work on really really
18:57
Speaker 1: tiny distances. So general relativity said is that space is
19:00
Speaker 1: sort of smooth, that you can chop it up into
19:03
Speaker 1: tinier and tinier bits and you'll never sort of run
19:06
Speaker 1: out of ways to cut it in half. That like
19:08
Speaker 1: in Zeno's paradox, you could take smaller and smaller steps forever.
19:12
Speaker 1: That's what general relativity says. It predicts it, or it
19:16
Speaker 1: assumes it. It assumes that it it uses that as
19:19
Speaker 1: its essential description of what space is. That you could
19:21
Speaker 1: have a particle or an object located at any point.
19:24
Speaker 1: You know, if you have an infinite number of locations
19:26
Speaker 1: between me and you, that a particle could be at
19:29
Speaker 1: any of those locations. Oh, I see. It's kind of
19:32
Speaker 1: like Newtonian physics, right almost in a way, like it
19:34
Speaker 1: assumes that space is smooth, and it doesn't assume anything
19:39
Speaker 1: that's that anything is quantized. That's right, And you look
19:43
Speaker 1: at the universe around you, and the universe seems smooth, right,
19:46
Speaker 1: It seems like you could sit anywhere. It seems like
19:49
Speaker 1: if you took a ruler, you could cut it in
19:51
Speaker 1: an infinite number of ways. Whatever that there's an infinite
19:56
Speaker 1: number of ways. But just like the screen on your
19:59
Speaker 1: iPhone looks really crisp and smooth, but if you zoom in,
20:02
Speaker 1: you discover that there are pixels there. And so general
20:05
Speaker 1: relativity tells us that the universe is smooth. That's space
20:09
Speaker 1: is infinitely sliceable. But that's in conflict with quantum mechanics.
20:14
Speaker 1: Quantum mechanics says that you can't have infinitely sliceable space. Yeah,
20:18
Speaker 1: that at the fundamental level, it's pixelated, kind of like
20:22
Speaker 1: my iPhone screen. Although my iPhone screen these days looks
20:26
Speaker 1: kind of blurry because as I've said before, I need
20:28
Speaker 1: reading glasses. Now I'm not sure that's a problem with
20:31
Speaker 1: your iPhone screen, but well it's a it's a problem
20:34
Speaker 1: for my new quantum reading glasses. Yeah. And so quantum
20:36
Speaker 1: mechanics has this impact on lots of things that we measure.
20:40
Speaker 1: Things that at large scales seem smooth turn out to
20:43
Speaker 1: be discretized, turned out to be sliced up into chunks.
20:46
Speaker 1: Like a flashlight beam is not a smooth, continuous beam
20:50
Speaker 1: of light. It's a stream of tiny little packets called photons.
20:54
Speaker 1: The same way your bowl of ice cream is not
20:56
Speaker 1: infinitely chopped herble into smaller and smaller spoonful. There are
21:00
Speaker 1: atoms in there. It's made out of these tiny little
21:02
Speaker 1: lego pieces. So the same concept can be applied to
21:05
Speaker 1: lots of things, and quantum mechanics says that probably it
21:09
Speaker 1: also applies to space. So we have this conflict between
21:12
Speaker 1: these two great theories of physics, relativity and quantum mechanics,
21:16
Speaker 1: and the conflict lies in a place that's really hard
21:19
Speaker 1: to spot where things are super duper small, so meaning
21:23
Speaker 1: that general relativity doesn't know that there's something called quantum
21:27
Speaker 1: physics and quantum mechanics. Quantum physics sort of we don't.
21:33
Speaker 1: Do we know that quantum mechanics takes into account general
21:37
Speaker 1: relativity or is there such a thing as bending a
21:40
Speaker 1: space and quantum mechanics. So that's a great question. People
21:43
Speaker 1: have tried to say, let's take Einstein's theory of general
21:46
Speaker 1: relativity and let's make a quantum version of it. Can
21:49
Speaker 1: we make a version of general relativity where space is
21:52
Speaker 1: pixelated or we know quantum mechanics comes into account, and
21:56
Speaker 1: currently we have no great functioning theory like these. Reason um,
22:01
Speaker 1: you can make a theory of general relativity that is quantized,
22:04
Speaker 1: but it doesn't work when space is really intense, like
22:08
Speaker 1: inside a black hole. When the gravity gets really really strong,
22:11
Speaker 1: then the theory breaks down and predicts things that don't
22:13
Speaker 1: make sense. It gives you like infinities and all sorts
22:15
Speaker 1: of crazy numbers. So we don't currently have a working
22:19
Speaker 1: theory of what's called quantum gravity that tries to marry
22:23
Speaker 1: all the best things from general relativity and quantum mechanics.
22:26
Speaker 1: So does that mean that quantum mechanics operates kind of
22:29
Speaker 1: in a Newtonian or like perfect kind of pre Einstein universe.
22:35
Speaker 1: Quantum mechanics operates often in if what we call a
22:39
Speaker 1: flat space, you know, space that's not bent by mass.
22:42
Speaker 1: You can do quantum mechanics in curved space, where if
22:45
Speaker 1: you're like near the Sun or near a black hole
22:47
Speaker 1: and space is curved, you can do that quantum mechanics.
22:50
Speaker 1: But if you try to do it when space is
22:51
Speaker 1: too curved, when the gravity gets really really strong, then
22:55
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work. We just don't even have a theory.
22:57
Speaker 1: We can't like even come up with a theory that
23:00
Speaker 1: makes sensible predictions, not to mention check those predictions against
23:04
Speaker 1: actual experiments. All right, So it sounds like general relativity
23:07
Speaker 1: is good for kind of big distances and tells us
23:11
Speaker 1: how the universe works at large scales, and quantum mechanics
23:14
Speaker 1: tells us how it works in really really tiny scales.
23:18
Speaker 1: But there are situations where the two theories just don't.
23:22
Speaker 1: Neither of them work. Yeah, and what we need to
23:24
Speaker 1: do is get inside a black hole and see what
23:26
Speaker 1: happens when you have both small distances. So quantum mechanics
23:30
Speaker 1: is relevant and really intends gravity, so general relativity is relevant. Unfortunately,
23:36
Speaker 1: all the people we've sent into black holes have not
23:38
Speaker 1: been coming. Yeah, I was gonna say that you're using
23:41
Speaker 1: the word we they're pretty broadly. There any volunteers out
23:45
Speaker 1: there who wants to be the first person to die
23:49
Speaker 1: at a black hole. And this is where the idea
23:54
Speaker 1: of space time foam comes from. It comes from an
23:56
Speaker 1: attempt to try to reconcile these two theories. I see.
24:00
Speaker 1: It's a it's another one of these unifying theories, like
24:03
Speaker 1: theories of everything. Precisely. There's one theory that says maybe
24:07
Speaker 1: the universe is made out of tiny little loops. That's
24:11
Speaker 1: called loop quantum gravity. Another one says maybe everything is
24:15
Speaker 1: just a tiny vibrating string at string theory. There's even
24:19
Speaker 1: one called spin foam, where everything is like this weird
24:22
Speaker 1: spinning kind of foam. But spacetime foam is a particular
24:27
Speaker 1: theory that tries to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity,
24:31
Speaker 1: and it imagines space is being made of these tiny
24:34
Speaker 1: little pixels, but these pixels would be quantum mechanical and
24:38
Speaker 1: so like bubbles and a frothing foam they might like
24:42
Speaker 1: pop in and out of existence. All right, let's get
24:45
Speaker 1: people in the loop of this and get a little
24:47
Speaker 1: bit more into what quantum foam or spacelime foam is
24:51
Speaker 1: and how we know about it and what we might
24:55
Speaker 1: discover if we poke around in the universe. But first,
24:58
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Yeah, all right, Daniel. So
25:13
Speaker 1: quantum foam is kind of like quantum dog food, and
25:17
Speaker 1: that you know, you're trying to make something that your
25:20
Speaker 1: dog will both eat and enjoy at the same time.
25:23
Speaker 1: We're trying to make something that explains both general relativity
25:28
Speaker 1: and quantum mechanics all and that your dog will like,
25:31
Speaker 1: I guess, also um at the same time. And so
25:35
Speaker 1: and that's hard because, as you said, they're sort of
25:37
Speaker 1: based on two very different views of the universe, that's right.
25:40
Speaker 1: And you know, for relativity to work, what we need
25:43
Speaker 1: is a new imagining of it. We need to start
25:45
Speaker 1: from a different conception of what space is. Einstein assumed
25:49
Speaker 1: that space was smooth and continuous, and he built his
25:52
Speaker 1: theory upon that assumption. So we need to start from
25:54
Speaker 1: a different assumption and say, actually, spaces made of these
25:57
Speaker 1: tiny grains or these little bubbles and under stand the
26:00
Speaker 1: nature of those and then build a theory on top
26:02
Speaker 1: of that. And I don't know this is true. It's
26:04
Speaker 1: not clear that spacetime boom is a real description of space.
26:09
Speaker 1: You know. It might be the pixels are a better description,
26:12
Speaker 1: or loops or little strings, or we really just don't know,
26:15
Speaker 1: but we need a new idea. And so theorists are
26:17
Speaker 1: just sort of being creative and smoking banana peals and saying, well,
26:20
Speaker 1: maybe it's more like this, and you know, you look
26:23
Speaker 1: around the macroscopic universe to get inspiration, you know, and
26:26
Speaker 1: maybe some physicist was smoking a banan appeal and looking
26:29
Speaker 1: at soap bubbles and thinking, huh, maybe space is just
26:32
Speaker 1: like that. Well it's it's interesting because I feel like,
26:38
Speaker 1: you know, there's these two theories and it's not like
26:40
Speaker 1: you're saying like, oh, maybe quantum mechanics is wrong, and
26:43
Speaker 1: really we just need to extend general relativity, or you're
26:47
Speaker 1: not saying, oh general relativity is wrong, we just need
26:50
Speaker 1: to extend quantum mechanics. I feel like you're saying that
26:53
Speaker 1: we we need to throw both of these into the
26:55
Speaker 1: garbage and kind of come up with one theory, start over,
27:00
Speaker 1: re imagine the universe and come up with one theory
27:03
Speaker 1: that you know, it sort of looks like one and
27:06
Speaker 1: looks at the other, but actually kind of works continuously
27:10
Speaker 1: across the whole universe. Yeah, well, we don't know what
27:13
Speaker 1: the necessary process will be. It might be that we
27:15
Speaker 1: can take what we have from general relativity and from
27:18
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics and marry them um. Or it might be that, yeah,
27:21
Speaker 1: we have to toss it out and start all over again.
27:23
Speaker 1: The process of science is iterative, right. It's like a
27:26
Speaker 1: writer writing a draft of a screenplay or something. You
27:29
Speaker 1: just keep trying to make it better and better until
27:31
Speaker 1: it fits, and then at some point you realize, you
27:33
Speaker 1: know what, this is hot mess of garbage, and you've
27:35
Speaker 1: got to toss it out and start all over again.
27:38
Speaker 1: So we don't know. We don't know if you know,
27:40
Speaker 1: we're one more draft away from something we can publish,
27:43
Speaker 1: or if you've got to toss it all out and
27:45
Speaker 1: start on the next book, right, Or maybe the studio
27:47
Speaker 1: head goes, well, it's too late, let's just make this
27:49
Speaker 1: bad movie and can you make it funnier? And we
27:54
Speaker 1: live in that universe that should never have been made
27:59
Speaker 1: where the plant is It don't make any sense? And
28:02
Speaker 1: the acting is stiffid best. That's even better than do
28:05
Speaker 1: we live in a simulation? Is? Do we live in
28:07
Speaker 1: a poorly written sim simulation? Like that? I got notes
28:13
Speaker 1: for you simulation authors. Okay, here's how you should have
28:15
Speaker 1: done the simulation. Here's what rotten Tomato says about your
28:18
Speaker 1: universe business ratings on on universe simulations. I like it.
28:25
Speaker 1: There you go. Quantum Rotten Tomatoes is the name of
28:28
Speaker 1: my new website. Check it out. Alright, So step us through.
28:32
Speaker 1: What is quantum foam? Then? Is it? What does it
28:35
Speaker 1: poe mean? Why is it phone? It have bubbles in it?
28:38
Speaker 1: Is it like a froth? Why is it called quantum phone? Yeah?
28:41
Speaker 1: The idea is that quantum mechanical things fluctuate. They come
28:45
Speaker 1: in and out of existence. If you zoom into particles
28:48
Speaker 1: at the smallest scale, you can't follow them along the
28:51
Speaker 1: way you would follow a baseball. They sort of pop
28:53
Speaker 1: into existence and pop out of existence. They turn into
28:55
Speaker 1: other particles. It's like a constant mess, right, and so
29:00
Speaker 1: lots of things are happening like it's bubbling at the surface,
29:02
Speaker 1: kind of like foam. Those are the things in space
29:05
Speaker 1: and times. This is saying that space, time itself is
29:07
Speaker 1: like a phone, right, And so if space itself is quantized,
29:10
Speaker 1: it's made out of these pixels, and these pixels are
29:12
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical, then it's possible that the pixels themselves are
29:16
Speaker 1: sort of bubbling in and out of existence. It's one
29:19
Speaker 1: step to go from space is smooth to space is
29:22
Speaker 1: discrete r it's made of pixels. It's another to say,
29:25
Speaker 1: maybe those pixels themselves are not like permanent, they're like temporary,
29:30
Speaker 1: you know, they're ephemeral. They're coming in and out of
29:32
Speaker 1: existence because in the end, a lot of quantum mechanical
29:35
Speaker 1: things are Space itself is coming into and out of existence,
29:40
Speaker 1: like yeah, like this bit of space run in front
29:42
Speaker 1: of my eyes here precisely the you know, the object
29:45
Speaker 1: in front of you, for example, whatever it is, it's
29:46
Speaker 1: in front of you right now. It's a banana, or
29:48
Speaker 1: it's an apple or whatever, that's made of quantum mechanical particles.
29:51
Speaker 1: Now it seems solid, it seems like it's really there.
29:53
Speaker 1: But if you zoomed in on the little particles, the
29:55
Speaker 1: particles that make it up are popping in and out
29:57
Speaker 1: of existence. They're turning into energy, they're turning back the
30:00
Speaker 1: particles that changing into other particles and then coming back
30:03
Speaker 1: you don't even notice, right, So that phone or whatever
30:05
Speaker 1: in front of you is a frothing mess, but you
30:08
Speaker 1: just don't notice it frothing because the frothing is so tiny.
30:11
Speaker 1: So if it's hard for you to imagine, like that
30:13
Speaker 1: space itself could also be frothing. Remember everything around you
30:16
Speaker 1: is kind of frothing. Oh wait, so this would be
30:19
Speaker 1: like under the quantum particles. Like you could have a
30:22
Speaker 1: quantum particle and it's really tiny, but the space it
30:26
Speaker 1: is sitting on could be bubbling underneath it. Is that
30:29
Speaker 1: what you're saying precisely, And remember that in modern quantum mechanics,
30:33
Speaker 1: we don't even really think of particles as like the
30:35
Speaker 1: basic element of stuff in the universe. Particles are just
30:38
Speaker 1: excited states of quantum fields. And quantum fields they had
30:43
Speaker 1: a whole episode on, are a property of space itself.
30:46
Speaker 1: So you can't really separate the matter and the space
30:49
Speaker 1: because matter is just an excited state of quantum fields,
30:52
Speaker 1: which are a part of space, but is the spacetime
30:55
Speaker 1: foam on the same scale as the particles like um
30:59
Speaker 1: you know what mean? Like what if there's a particle
31:01
Speaker 1: that just happens to be sitting on a spacetime bubble
31:04
Speaker 1: and that bubble pops. Does that particle just disappear or
31:08
Speaker 1: is it like riding on top of a whole bunch
31:10
Speaker 1: of little spacetime bubbles. Yeah, I think you have to
31:13
Speaker 1: think of particles as part of space, because particles are
31:17
Speaker 1: again excited states of these fields, and the fields themselves
31:20
Speaker 1: are part of space. And so I thinks it takes
31:23
Speaker 1: a whole new way of thinking about like the nature
31:25
Speaker 1: of the universe at the smallest scale. It's not like
31:28
Speaker 1: particles are sort of filling in slots in space. They're
31:31
Speaker 1: like excited space. Oh and you're saying that this space
31:35
Speaker 1: is actually more like foam, meaning that it's just a
31:39
Speaker 1: whole bunch of little pockets of it kind of pressed together,
31:43
Speaker 1: and each one of these pockets is a quantum of
31:46
Speaker 1: space time. That's right. And we don't know the size
31:49
Speaker 1: of these bubbles. If these bubbles exist, and we don't
31:51
Speaker 1: know that they do, the question is how big would
31:54
Speaker 1: they be? And we suspect if they do exist, they'd
31:56
Speaker 1: be super duper duper duper tiny. But you have the
32:00
Speaker 1: idea is that you know you have a localization of
32:03
Speaker 1: energy that energy is an excited state of all the
32:05
Speaker 1: quantum fields in that space, and that localization of energy
32:09
Speaker 1: you could extend across multiple bubbles of quantum space, perhaps
32:12
Speaker 1: for example, like a photon, and that you know, it
32:15
Speaker 1: could be made of these little frothing bubbles. They're smaller
32:18
Speaker 1: than that packet of energy. And so what am I
32:20
Speaker 1: doing when I'm moving through space? Am I moving from
32:23
Speaker 1: bubble to bubble? Or do I take like each one
32:27
Speaker 1: of my particles might be in this bobble, bubble or
32:30
Speaker 1: that bubble. Well, you are those bubbles. You're not in
32:33
Speaker 1: those bubbles. You are those bubbles and the spacetime foam.
32:37
Speaker 1: You are the spacetime boam, and so am I. We
32:40
Speaker 1: are all one with the spacetime foam. Remember, you are
32:43
Speaker 1: just an excited state of the space that you are occupying.
32:46
Speaker 1: And when you move that information, then that energy then moves,
32:50
Speaker 1: you know, it excites another part of the quantum space.
32:53
Speaker 1: It's like you are the wave on the string. Right.
32:56
Speaker 1: If I'm holding a string and I wiggle it, you
32:58
Speaker 1: can say, like where does that wiggle? It moves along
33:01
Speaker 1: the string the same way you are wiggling the quantum
33:03
Speaker 1: fields where you are now and then when you travel
33:06
Speaker 1: somewhere for Thanksgiving, you're gonna wiggle those quantum fields. So
33:09
Speaker 1: don't think about it as you are particles in space somewhere,
33:12
Speaker 1: but you are excited wiggling of space. Oh, I see,
33:16
Speaker 1: I'm just an excitation from one bubble to the next bubble, precisely.
33:22
Speaker 1: And the idea of spacetime foam is that maybe space
33:26
Speaker 1: is discretized and those little discrete blobs are popping in
33:30
Speaker 1: and out of existence. They're like not long lasting, They're
33:32
Speaker 1: not eternal or permanent. They're sort of frothing, oh, coming
33:36
Speaker 1: in and out. But what if I get stuck in
33:37
Speaker 1: one that pops, I wouldn't recommend that. Does that mean
33:41
Speaker 1: I'm no longer in existence? Then you don't have to
33:44
Speaker 1: buy quantum pet food for your quantum dog because the
33:46
Speaker 1: quantum out of existence. You know, these things are at
33:49
Speaker 1: a very very small scale. So unless you're a particle
33:51
Speaker 1: on the size of quantum foam, you don't have to
33:53
Speaker 1: worry about it. But also energy is conserved. So if
33:56
Speaker 1: space is frothing somewhere and energetic, and there's an excitation
34:00
Speaker 1: enough space here, that energy is going to go somewhere,
34:03
Speaker 1: maybe into the next bubble with the next bubble, So
34:05
Speaker 1: the bubble itself might pop out of existence, but the
34:08
Speaker 1: energy that is represented by that excitation is not going
34:10
Speaker 1: to go away. Oh, it's just gonna move on to
34:12
Speaker 1: another bubble. Yeah, that's what you do. When you move
34:15
Speaker 1: from place to place. You are exciting those fields, and
34:18
Speaker 1: now you're exciting these fields over here, all right. And
34:21
Speaker 1: so there's a theory that says that the universe at
34:24
Speaker 1: the very core level is like a foam, But that's
34:27
Speaker 1: just one competing theory about what it looks like down there.
34:31
Speaker 1: How are we going to find out which one it is?
34:32
Speaker 1: How do we know if the universe is foaming or
34:35
Speaker 1: if it's well, we need lots of money to build
34:40
Speaker 1: a huge particle collecit That's my answer to everything, right right, Money,
34:44
Speaker 1: It just solves everything for you, doesn't it any It
34:48
Speaker 1: sort of does you know? If you want to answer
34:50
Speaker 1: questions about high energy or heavy particles or tiny distances,
34:53
Speaker 1: which you need is a microscope to look at the
34:56
Speaker 1: really really small And the only thing that prevents us
34:58
Speaker 1: from looking at really really small spaces is having enough
35:01
Speaker 1: money to build a big enough microscope. We know how
35:04
Speaker 1: to do. It is just really expensive, so we could
35:07
Speaker 1: probe these distances. We think the distances involved or something
35:10
Speaker 1: like ten to the minus thirty five meters, which is
35:14
Speaker 1: ridunculously tiny. Like if you had a microscope with not
35:18
Speaker 1: just like a ten x hundred eggs, but like tend
35:21
Speaker 1: to the thirty five x, we might be able to
35:24
Speaker 1: see these phone bubbles and time. Yeah, we had a
35:27
Speaker 1: whole episode about how you see tiny things and microscopes
35:30
Speaker 1: and electron microscopes and particle colliders, so people should dig
35:34
Speaker 1: into that if they want more information. But basically we
35:36
Speaker 1: can see down to tend to the minus twenty right now,
35:39
Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive. We think these bubbles are tend
35:41
Speaker 1: to the minus thirty five, so fifteen orders of magnitude
35:45
Speaker 1: is is actually still a lot. You know, there's a
35:48
Speaker 1: we're far away from being able to see these pixels.
35:50
Speaker 1: So that's one way is to build a really big collider.
35:53
Speaker 1: Another is to try to use like really long distances
35:56
Speaker 1: in space ah to use as base itself like a microscope.
36:02
Speaker 1: The idea is if space is bubbling and frothing, then
36:05
Speaker 1: you know it's sort of constantly changing. That means that
36:07
Speaker 1: like the distance that light has to travel from point
36:10
Speaker 1: A to point B is not necessarily fixed. So they
36:13
Speaker 1: do these crazy experiments where they look at something really
36:16
Speaker 1: really far away and they try to see it in
36:18
Speaker 1: two different ways. They try to understand, like, you know,
36:21
Speaker 1: let's look at two photons that left that really bright
36:24
Speaker 1: source of light maybe a quasar, at the same moment,
36:27
Speaker 1: and see if they arrived here on Earth at the
36:29
Speaker 1: same time. If there's a difference, then maybe that's because
36:33
Speaker 1: there was more quantum foam bubbling up for one photon
36:36
Speaker 1: then for the other. Oh, I see, because it's foamy.
36:40
Speaker 1: That means the path you take through this foam is
36:43
Speaker 1: sort of random. And so like one photon could have
36:47
Speaker 1: hit a really foamy patch I guess, and and gone
36:52
Speaker 1: through a little bit of extra space more than the
36:54
Speaker 1: other particle who just happened to go through a part
36:56
Speaker 1: of space it wasn't as foamy, and so that would
36:59
Speaker 1: tell you like, oh, space is not consistent, it's kind
37:02
Speaker 1: of frothy. That's the idea. I have to say that.
37:04
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical because you know, on long distance scales, so
37:07
Speaker 1: you would think that these things would average out, like
37:09
Speaker 1: you're going for a billion years, then the number of
37:12
Speaker 1: random tosses of a coin are gonna be pretty close
37:15
Speaker 1: to So two photons flying through incredible distances in the universe,
37:20
Speaker 1: you know we're going to have pretty even odds to
37:22
Speaker 1: go roughly the same distance. Anyway, they look at these photons,
37:25
Speaker 1: they don't see anything, no surprise, and so they haven't
37:29
Speaker 1: discovered quantum foam. All right, Well, do you think we'll
37:32
Speaker 1: ever discover whether the universe is made out of quantum
37:35
Speaker 1: foam or not? I think we will. I think it
37:37
Speaker 1: will require some really clever mathematics to come up with
37:40
Speaker 1: like how these theories might actually work. Because remember, we
37:43
Speaker 1: don't have a functioning theory. We don't have a theory
37:46
Speaker 1: we can actually go test the theory. If we ask
37:48
Speaker 1: you questions, it gives us gibberish. And so we need
37:51
Speaker 1: to come up with a good theory, and then we
37:53
Speaker 1: need to be really clever about how to test it.
37:55
Speaker 1: And I think maybe some time far in the future,
37:57
Speaker 1: when we can get closer to black holes, will be
38:00
Speaker 1: able to test some of these theories in environments with
38:02
Speaker 1: really intense gravity. But it's pretty far off in the future.
38:06
Speaker 1: So we need clever ideas and we need awesome new experiments, right,
38:10
Speaker 1: I guess all of that is just to say, San Daniel,
38:12
Speaker 1: more money is the entire takeaway. Who needs sponsorship from
38:16
Speaker 1: quantum dog food when you can just have a whole
38:19
Speaker 1: podcast to ask people for money. That's right. Email me
38:23
Speaker 1: your quantum dollars to contributions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
38:28
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that does feel like my bank account. It's
38:31
Speaker 1: both there and not there. It's constantly fluctuated. Yeah, it's
38:36
Speaker 1: poemy have phoney money, not phony money, phony money. All right, Well,
38:42
Speaker 1: thank you Dale from Doubling. We hope that answered your
38:45
Speaker 1: question about what quantum foam or spacetime foam is, and
38:50
Speaker 1: I guess the answer is stay tuned. Yeah, it's a
38:53
Speaker 1: really fun idea. It's fun to speculate about what the
38:56
Speaker 1: universe might be like at the smallest scales. It's fun
38:58
Speaker 1: to take ideas from our everyday world and see if
39:01
Speaker 1: they apply at the quantum scale. But today we don't
39:04
Speaker 1: really know if quantum bom is a thing or just
39:06
Speaker 1: an idea bubbling up in the mind of physicists. So
39:10
Speaker 1: keep on looking and keep us sending us your questions.
39:12
Speaker 1: We're happy to answer them. All right. We hope you enjoyed. Dad.
39:16
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us see you next time. Before
39:25
Speaker 1: you still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
39:29
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
39:32
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
39:35
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at
39:38
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening
39:42
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
39:45
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
39:48
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
39:52
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.