0:00

You're listening to an AirWave

0:02

Media Podcast. Hey

0:05

there! Did you know Kroger always gives you

0:07

savings and rewards on top of our lower

0:10

than low prices? And when you download the

0:12

Kroger app, you'll enjoy over $500 in

0:14

savings every week with digital coupons. And don't

0:16

forget fuel points to help you save up

0:18

to $1 per gallon at the

0:21

pump. Want to save even more? With

0:23

a boost membership, you'll get double fuel points

0:25

and free delivery. So shop and save big

0:27

at Kroger today! Kroger, fresh

0:29

for everyone. Savings may vary by

0:31

state. Restrictions apply. See site for details.

0:41

to the world as China. I'm

0:44

Jane Pearles, former Beijing bureau chief for

0:46

The New York Times. Join

0:48

me on my new podcast, Faceoff,

0:51

US versus China, where I'll take

0:53

you behind the scenes in the

0:56

tumultuous US-China relationship. And

0:58

Faceoff, wherever you get your podcasts.

1:14

You may feel like time is warped

1:16

these days, but black holes literally warp

1:18

time and space. These

1:20

mass cobbling monsters at the centers

1:23

of galaxies also bend light, which

1:26

is what scientists measured recently around

1:28

a black hole. Now, while that

1:30

discovery was exciting, a century-old theory

1:32

had predicted it. Yep, as if

1:34

from beyond the grave, Einstein continues

1:37

to be the maestro of physics

1:39

on the large scale. But

1:41

on the small scale, where elementary particles

1:43

rule, there may be some trouble. Unexpected

1:46

experimental results at a particle accelerator

1:48

threaten to upend our best description

1:50

of the basic building blocks of

1:53

the universe. Are we entering a

1:55

new era of the most fundamental

1:57

science of all? Physics? I'm

1:59

Seth Dorn. Shawstack. I'm Molly

2:01

Bentley. This is Big Picture Science

2:04

produced at the SETI Institute. In

2:06

this episode, How Black Holes Are

2:08

Not Forever, the Strange Behavior of

2:11

an Elementary Particle, hints at new

2:13

physics. And an astrophysicist reveals how

2:15

Einstein's ideas about relativity rocked his

2:18

world at age 10. This episode,

2:20

Freaky Physics. It's

2:34

time to tip our hat once

2:36

again to Albert Einstein, the one-time

2:38

patent clerk at the turn of

2:40

the last century, before Ford's Model

2:42

T began tooling around our cities,

2:44

described a radical connection between space

2:46

and time in a set of

2:48

equations he called the theory of

2:50

relativity. We'll find out how a

2:52

more than century-old theory continues to

2:54

keep physicists busy, but first, its

2:56

formative role in shaping one boy's

2:58

future. In a recent memoir,

3:01

Hakim Olusei recalls when he learned that

3:03

time and space were not fixed but

3:05

relative. He was 10 years old, sitting

3:08

in the stairwell of his apartment building

3:10

with a flashlight, reading a volume of

3:12

the family's world book encyclopedia. The volume

3:15

on his lap covered entries that began

3:17

with E and included one that

3:19

described the radical insights of a

3:21

20th century physicist.

3:23

Hakim Olusei reads from his

3:25

memoir. At the

3:27

moment he realized time and space

3:30

were relative, Einstein said, a storm

3:32

broke loose in my mind. And

3:34

that's exactly what happened to me. Right

3:37

there in that hot, dark stairwell, I

3:40

had my own brainstorm. I'd always known that

3:42

time could feel like it was moving slower,

3:44

like in a boring class, or faster, like

3:46

when Darren and I were playing touch football

3:49

and an hour went by in a few

3:51

minutes. Einstein discovered that

3:53

the actual passage of time could change.

3:56

He Called it time dilation, which means that

3:58

the faster you travel, the. The through

4:00

space. The floor you traveled through

4:02

time. But it wasn't

4:04

just time that was relative in

4:07

space time. Time and space could

4:09

band contract and stretch. I.

4:12

Know when. Part. Of be

4:14

had always know that beings we're not

4:16

as they appeared. On

4:18

has to the amazing Molly that he

4:20

could grass these very subtle ideas at

4:22

the age of ten. Snow Time dilation.

4:24

What that means is you know you

4:26

and your buddy might have the damn

4:29

cold kind of watch, but if your

4:31

body is you know walking by you

4:33

or in a train going by your

4:35

in a car their watch will seem

4:37

to move slower relative. To your watch has

4:39

nothing to do with the mechanics. Of. Watches, it's

4:41

just do the relativity. This is all

4:44

a consequence of the fact that the

4:46

speed of light is always the same

4:48

no matter how fast your movies. always

4:50

the same. And are you know? that's

4:52

what propelled Einstein to come up with

4:54

these theories in the first place? Will.

4:57

Not only did ten year old

4:59

Hakim grasp the implications of Einstein's

5:01

insight into Relativity it's but he

5:04

connected emotionally to it to. He

5:06

writes that it provided escape from

5:08

a difficult and impoverished childhoods in

5:10

New Orleans. I wondered

5:12

if Relativity explain why even though my

5:14

body was stuck in a crappy apartment

5:16

across from the dirty be my mind

5:19

could carry me a million miles away

5:21

from the Ninth Ward. The hood lives

5:23

on the corner, mama. Sadness and anger,

5:25

my own loneliness. My. Mind was

5:28

racing so fast I could hear it were

5:30

in my head. I clicked off the flashlight

5:32

and sat in the dark a moment to

5:34

try and slow things down With even in

5:36

the dark my thoughts were moving at the

5:38

speed of light. I click the flashlight on

5:40

and off to see if I could trace

5:42

the light beams as a travel to the

5:44

far wall of the stairwell and bounce back

5:46

to my eyes. Of course I

5:48

couldn't. Be. End of the World Book article

5:50

said. Or. More the article on

5:53

Relativity in Volume Two Through our i

5:55

jump back into my body and bounded

5:57

up the stairwell to retrieve it. You.

6:00

Could say that the radical implications

6:02

of Einstein's idea hung on to

6:04

him and never let go. My.

6:06

Name is Hakim Oshie. I

6:08

am a Phd physicist who

6:10

does Astrophysics and I am

6:12

and affiliated professor of Physics

6:14

and Astronomy at George Mason

6:16

University. In his book

6:19

a Quantum Life my unlikely journey

6:21

from the streets to the Stars

6:23

Doctor always say describes how science

6:25

saved him by providing a guidestar

6:27

when he shuffled between homes as

6:30

a boy in Louisiana, Texas, California

6:32

in Mississippi, but also house. As

6:34

an astrophysicist who pioneered new methods

6:36

for observing the sun, he never

6:38

lost that thrill of discovering entirely

6:41

new ways to think about the

6:43

universe. Melt at you.

6:45

You know when we talk about a

6:47

child having an aptitude for science we

6:49

talk about that is that we know

6:51

if that means could you describe what

6:53

that means without using the word science

6:55

in it would set of questions as

6:58

a young child asking that down week

7:00

later come to identify as having a

7:02

scientific mine. While. I think the

7:04

one thing that. Distinguishes. A

7:06

scientific name is a big, curiosity

7:08

is sprayed everywhere, but the application

7:11

of rigor is not the idea

7:13

of I'd need to know this.

7:15

I'm not going to be accepted

7:17

without proof right? I mean something

7:19

that lets me verify this information

7:21

and sort of thing that struck

7:23

me about Albert Einstein stuff is

7:25

that immediately you know he put

7:28

for these thought experiment so I

7:30

could verify it on my own

7:32

and exactly what I set out

7:34

to do. I wanted. To relatively

7:36

experiments prefer so I

7:38

think that experiment team

7:40

that do aspect is

7:42

what. You. know is what

7:44

they read and begun watch but

7:47

when you start doing a big

7:49

now you're being an inquisitive and

7:51

a different way right as mortage

7:53

of i have a question is

7:55

also learning from observing that learning

7:57

from doing as well as try

8:00

that answer questions by reproducing

8:02

what you've read somewhere else,

8:04

which is what I did. Let's

8:06

come back. Let's come back to Albert

8:08

Einstein because of course this is such

8:11

a lovely description in your memoir of

8:13

how you were introduced to Einstein. So

8:15

your mom, Elaine Plummer, bought you a

8:18

set of encyclopedias. And do

8:20

you remember how you felt when they came into the house?

8:23

Well, you know, it was one of those things

8:25

of, oh, nice books. Oh, they're encyclopedias. I guess

8:27

they're not that interesting after all. But

8:30

they turned out to be very interesting. You

8:33

read them in order. Of course, you came

8:35

to Albert Einstein and that

8:37

you write that you almost didn't read

8:39

the passage about him because, and I'll

8:41

quote, you'll recognize your own words here.

8:44

Ordinarily, you'd speed read through a

8:46

biographical entry about some white dude

8:48

born in Germany 100 years ago. What

8:52

changed your mind? Why did you decide to read about him? He

8:55

looked so weird, right? He, you know, and I

8:57

was like, yo, who's this guy? He looks pretty

8:59

interesting. He looks like he could be my pal.

9:03

I like weird. He looks weird. Maybe

9:05

there's something interesting about this guy. You

9:08

also write that you identified with Einstein because

9:10

he was he was an outlier and you

9:12

felt like you were an outlier too. And in many

9:14

ways, you still do. Oh,

9:16

of course I do. Yeah. In the scientific community, especially.

9:19

You said that you connected to

9:21

his ideas about general relativity and

9:23

space time. And I really was

9:27

astounded that at 10 years old, you

9:29

felt like you had an understanding of

9:31

these four dimensions of space.

9:34

What did you read about when you were

9:36

10? And what did you connect with and

9:39

understand intuitively? Right. So there's two

9:41

things. There's the qualitative thoughts

9:43

about it. And then there's the

9:45

mathematics. So upon

9:47

reading Einstein's thought experiments, I got the

9:49

qualitative understanding pretty quickly. I was really

9:52

good like that. You know, I get

9:54

things I catch on to logic really

9:56

fast. What was the qualitative statement?

9:59

So the one. Payment was the statement

10:01

of time dilation for example, his thought

10:03

experiment on using a the light of

10:05

o'clock' inside of a train and how

10:08

a person on the train versus someone

10:10

outside while the phrase moving at a

10:12

constant speed with the time probably the

10:14

different rates rights but once I understood

10:17

that okay, any time for any distance,

10:19

anything you measure with a ruler or

10:21

clock will not be the same for

10:23

all observers, right? But then eight or

10:25

time it was called and invariant interval

10:28

right? The space time intervals and. So

10:30

I taught myself how to understand space

10:32

time interval as well. So I taught

10:34

myself all this math I study at

10:36

United Nord It instantly it took me

10:38

awhile rights mid I created a size

10:41

or experiment about it. The noise thing

10:43

about science fairs. These professors came to

10:45

my school's muscles the who was all

10:47

black school in Mississippi miles a half

10:49

down the road from the private all

10:51

white school and ah they were doing

10:53

outreach. They came to our school, told

10:56

us science fairs exist and you know

10:58

I was like okay I'll program. All

11:00

the effects of relativity and I end up winning birthplace

11:02

of the States I as their. Love

11:05

when it comes to that moment when you

11:07

were first at age ten. Antennae: get your

11:09

head around space time. I mean, I try

11:12

to get my head around as I didn't

11:14

It's very difficult. I feel like there are

11:16

moments when I catch a glimpse and I

11:18

have an understanding and then it just goes

11:21

away. Could you give us a definition of

11:23

what space time is? What?

11:25

What Albert Einstein showed us is that.

11:28

When. We move. We don't move

11:30

through space alone. We move

11:32

through time and space simultaneously.

11:34

And when we're looking at

11:36

making measurements of time and

11:38

space, how we're moving relatives,

11:40

what we're measuring will determine

11:42

what we measure. Now would you

11:44

were reading this and your understanding this intuitively

11:46

and I know that that then you went

11:48

out with it, a skateboard and you try

11:50

an experiment space Than can you just tell

11:52

us that that experiment. Was so and Albert

11:54

Einstein's thought experiment. He compared some one

11:57

sitting on a train move at any

11:59

cost of. speed. And for that person, their

12:01

experience would be just like they're sitting stationary in

12:03

a chair. So if you throw something straight up

12:05

and straight down to you, it appears to go

12:07

straight up and straight down. But to someone standing

12:10

out of the side of the train, when you

12:12

throw it up, you're in one location, but by

12:14

the time you catch it, you're somewhere else. So

12:16

whereas the person on the train see it go

12:18

straight up straight down, a person outside will see

12:20

it execute a triangle. Right? Now, I

12:23

did that on a skateboard. I'm like, let me

12:25

skateboard really fast and throw up a rock. Right.

12:27

And so we sang a song in order to

12:29

time it since we didn't have stop watches. And

12:32

so what happens is whether I was standing still, or

12:35

moving on my skateboard, the time it took

12:37

it to go straight up and straight down

12:39

was identical. All right. Now,

12:42

here's where I was like, what did I do

12:44

wrong? Right. And I realized, Oh, the

12:47

rock was actually going faster when I

12:49

was moving. So it

12:51

went a longer distance faster.

12:53

But because light always moves at the

12:55

same speed and can't go faster, if

12:58

it goes a greater distance in us,

13:00

you know, in the same amount of

13:02

time, then time must be traveling differently

13:04

for the two observers is sort of

13:06

the idea here. So I was like,

13:08

Oh, if my rock was light, I

13:11

would have shown time dilation. Yay. Well,

13:14

you're giving us an insight into

13:16

what your mind you're just incredible

13:19

fertile mind at age 10. And

13:21

your childhood was really

13:23

challenging. I mean, that's an that's an

13:25

understatement. You had a peripatetic life, you

13:27

moved from city to city. As a

13:29

result, you said that you were living

13:31

by your wits and your fists. Can

13:34

you just describe what that meant? I

13:37

had dozens upon dozens upon dozens of fights.

13:39

You know, one thing I talk about is,

13:41

you know, we talk about, you know, in

13:43

a book, we use the word poverty, and

13:45

I've worked in a developing world in the

13:47

last 20 years. And so I

13:49

changed it to say American poor. But

13:52

the biggest poverty, one of the effects is

13:54

poverty of dignity. And a lot

13:56

of young men get their self

13:59

fulfilled out of being tough

14:01

guys, right? So when you're a 12

14:03

year old kid, you gotta fight the 15 year old kid. So

14:06

I was fighting nonstop, till about the

14:08

time I got to high school, at

14:10

which point it slowed down, but then

14:12

it took on another tenor, right? And

14:14

it became very dangerous because it wasn't

14:16

so much fist fights as it was

14:18

weapons and confrontations. And in that

14:20

case, were your wits and your

14:23

ability to think, was it

14:25

an asset or was it something you had to

14:27

dissemble, you had to hide? So

14:29

it's really interesting because in the

14:32

black communities where I lived in, I

14:34

lived in completely segregated communities, everyone was

14:36

really supportive of my academic performance. And

14:38

the example I give people for them

14:41

to understand, I think people have an

14:43

expectation that people beat you up if

14:45

you're academically oriented. But if

14:47

you remember Showtime at the Apollo,

14:51

and they would have the children's amateur

14:53

night, and Kiki Sheppard would ask the

14:55

child, what's your favorite subject in school?

14:57

And if the kid said anything like

14:59

math or science, the audience lost their

15:01

mind, right? They were like, yeah, because

15:04

they so support that. So

15:06

everybody was really supporting in Mississippi, was

15:08

supportive of my nerdiness. But at the

15:10

same time, they were like, this dude

15:13

is weird. You also talk about the

15:15

role of mentors, and there are a few

15:17

key people, everyone from your

15:19

friend, Darren Brown, who played chess with

15:21

you, to a high school teacher,

15:23

Mr. Barber, Mr. Reeves, Dr. Teal, and

15:26

then of course Art Walker at Stanford.

15:29

I think the Mac entire,

15:31

yeah, Art Walker, my first

15:33

research supervisor, yeah. Describe in

15:35

what way teachers were your

15:37

lifeline, and that's the word that you use.

15:39

Well, I'll tell you one, one was my Navy

15:41

recruiter. My Navy recruiter came in, and he was

15:43

just believed in me so much. And he was

15:45

like, man, I'm gonna get you into the Naval

15:48

Academy. He did not, we missed a deadline. But

15:50

what he did do, he got me into a

15:52

program. I tested to be a nuke in the

15:54

Navy successfully. And I got into this program that

15:56

took people in from places like my

15:58

background, without a strong academic. education

16:01

and one thing they did is they took

16:03

you from arithmetic through calculus in one year.

16:05

There were two math classes, the regular class

16:08

and the remedial class. I was in the

16:10

remedial class, okay, but had I not learned

16:12

algebra in the Navy, there is no way

16:14

I would have been successful when I got

16:17

to Tulu College. So thank you, senior chief

16:19

Gage. Well, finally

16:21

at Stanford, you mentioned, and I mentioned

16:23

Art Walker, the solar physicist that

16:25

you met at Stanford University where you

16:28

got your PhD and together you worked

16:30

on a telescope to help return images

16:32

of the sun. And I wonder if

16:34

the images of the sun also

16:37

revealed anything about Einstein's

16:40

physics. We'll tie it back together, we'll

16:42

bring it around here. So I

16:44

realized, you know, certain things that did not happen

16:46

and do not happen in education. So let me

16:48

tell you one thing that does happen. And that

16:50

is this question. What is matter made

16:52

of? You ask that of anybody and they'll

16:54

say something that's correct like atoms or molecules,

16:56

right? But if they're super highly educated, they

16:59

start talking about quarks and fields. But anyway,

17:01

ask them this next question and

17:03

they're going to say the sun. And

17:05

that is, where does light come from? Right?

17:08

And I found that to be a profound

17:10

question because I was studying how to interpret

17:12

the light that comes from stars to figure

17:14

out what the matter is doing. And so

17:16

the answer that I use is matter

17:19

makes it. That's where light comes from. And

17:21

when matter makes light, the signature of what

17:23

the matter is and what the matter is

17:25

doing is encoded in the light. Because

17:29

we can have light without having the sun. I

17:31

think that's one of the points. In

17:33

a dark room every day. Yeah, a firefly

17:36

makes light. A flame. So when they say

17:38

the sun, I was like, well, there's light

17:40

in this room, but there's no sun. They'll

17:42

say energy. Now say light possesses energy. But,

17:45

you know, like there are environments

17:47

around neutron stars and

17:49

black holes where you get light created

17:51

by fields. But for the most part,

17:53

matter makes light. Right. And that whole

17:56

idea of understanding how to read light

17:58

is so critical for everything. Hakeem

18:01

Oluseyi, thank you so much for talking to

18:03

us. I hope we can have you back

18:05

on the show sometime. Absolutely. Anytime.

18:09

Hakeem Oluseyi is a cosmologist and

18:11

an affiliate professor of physics and

18:13

astronomy at George Mason University. He's

18:16

the author of A Quantum Life,

18:18

My Unlikely Journey from the Streets

18:20

to the Stars. You know,

18:23

Seth, Dr. Oluseyi mentions the role

18:25

that experimentation has played in science

18:27

and the role that it has

18:29

played in Einstein's theories. And

18:32

this brings us to the famous light

18:34

experiment that he describes. Yes. What

18:36

gave the impetus to Einstein to

18:38

think about these things was an

18:40

experiment conducted in the 1890s. It's

18:43

known as the Michelson-Morley experiment for

18:45

the two American physicists who did it. You

18:47

know, they measured the speed of light under

18:49

various conditions, and they found that the speed of

18:51

light was always the same. Now,

18:53

that may seem trivial, but it's not.

18:56

You know, you take a flashlight and

18:58

you do what Hakeem did

19:00

here, and you aim it at something far away, and you

19:02

measure how long it takes to get there, and you get

19:04

this speed of light. But if you were to do that

19:06

in a speeding car, you would think that the light

19:08

beam would be moving a little faster because

19:10

there's a speed of light plus the speed

19:12

of the car. But it isn't. That was

19:15

the big discovery, and that's what led Einstein

19:17

to think about trams and

19:19

light beams and the special theory of

19:21

relativity. Well,

19:31

Dr. Olusei's observation that understanding light is

19:34

critical for understanding everything is certainly the

19:36

case in our study of black holes.

19:38

Einstein had a theory. You're getting the

19:40

idea that he had lots of theories,

19:42

but he had one about how black

19:44

holes might behave, and physicists have

19:47

been looking for cracks in the theory ever since.

19:49

The most recent place they looked was at a black

19:51

hole 59 million light years

19:54

away. How black holes bend

19:56

light and how they might not be

19:58

forever next. freaky physics

20:00

on big picture science. A

20:06

lot happens every day. Cut through

20:08

some of the noise by listening to What's

20:10

New with Noyard, a podcast that

20:12

provides in-depth coverage on technology and

20:15

culture. With new episodes released every

20:17

weekday, you can catch up on all the major

20:19

events you missed, from AI

20:21

developments to business updates to

20:23

new scientific theories that help you make

20:26

sense of what's happening in the world.

20:28

Plus, each episode is usually pretty short. You

20:30

can easily squeeze it in on your way to

20:32

work or during a lunch break. Stay

20:35

updated with the award-winning journalism from

20:37

Noyard. Listen to What's New

20:39

with Noyard wherever you get your podcasts.

20:42

What's New with Noyard wherever you

20:44

get your podcasts. Black

20:57

holes are showstoppers. They're also, as

20:59

we'll hear, light benders. Their

21:02

mystery and seeming malevolence as

21:04

the ultimate kitchen sink with

21:07

their unstoppable gravity have undeniable

21:09

appeal. Well, their strange

21:11

behavior is predicted by another Albert

21:13

Einstein theory, that of general relativity,

21:16

also known as his theory of

21:18

gravity. When you say the ultimate kitchen

21:20

sink, you mean because everything collects in it?

21:23

Well, everything could collect in it. It

21:25

has room. It has

21:27

bottomless room. Well, in

21:29

the 17th century, Isaac Newton described gravity

21:32

as a force. For example, that which

21:34

pulls an apple to the ground. But

21:36

Albert Einstein had a different idea. He

21:39

said that gravity was really caused

21:41

by the geometry of space-time. And

21:44

a metaphor that physicists find imprecise,

21:46

but it's actually quite useful in

21:48

thinking about this, is that of

21:50

a suspended bed sheet distorted by

21:52

a bowling ball at its center.

21:55

Now, imagine that Earth is that

21:57

bowling ball. So let's say

21:59

I'm in orbit. it around the Earth, like

22:01

the International Space Station. What

22:03

the International Space Station is really doing

22:05

is it's falling along a natural curve

22:07

in space, namely a circular one, carved

22:10

by the presence of the Earth. So

22:13

in Einstein's theory of gravitation,

22:15

masses cause curves in space

22:17

and time, warps in space

22:19

and time, and how you experience them

22:21

is dictated by the path you take

22:23

in that space-time. One

22:25

of the most fundamental predictions of general

22:28

relativity is that mass can bend light.

22:30

And think about that. If you have a

22:33

10-ton truck parked on your street, would you

22:35

ever imagine that it would somehow change your

22:37

view of things down the block? What

22:39

does your view of things have to do with

22:41

light bending? Well, your view of things has

22:43

to do with the light that's reaching you from,

22:45

I don't know, that building behind the truck. But

22:48

the truck is bending those light beams coming from

22:50

the building in such a way as to distort

22:52

the picture. So you might be able to see

22:55

a little bit behind the truck. Now,

22:57

of course, a truck doesn't have enough mass to make

22:59

much of a difference here. But

23:01

a black hole does. Now, a

23:03

black hole is, you know, in size,

23:05

it's very, very small, essentially infinitely small.

23:08

But its mass can be, well, I mean, billions

23:10

of suns and mass. That's a lot of mass.

23:13

And it will warp any light that gets near

23:15

to it. How is it that a black

23:17

hole can be small and yet be so massive? Well,

23:20

how do you make a black hole? I don't know if you made

23:22

any recently, Molly. You know, you just have

23:24

a whole bunch of mass that collapses in on

23:26

itself because its gravity is so strong, it starts

23:28

pulling everything in. Now, you normally don't see that.

23:30

But if you had a big enough star that

23:32

died and ran out of fuel, all

23:34

the gravity in that star would cause it to collapse not

23:37

just to, you know, a small size or

23:39

an even smaller size or an even microscopic

23:42

size, but to an infinitely small size. And

23:44

then it's a black hole. Okay, so, you

23:46

know, a black hole, it's a heavy thing.

23:49

And it will warp all the light that passes

23:51

near to it. Now, that helps Stanford

23:53

scientists recently see light coming

23:55

from the backside of a black hole,

23:57

which Einstein said they should. Now,

24:00

here's what the physicists were doing. They were

24:02

measuring X-rays coming from the direction of a

24:04

black hole, a very distant black hole. Now,

24:07

after all, X-rays are really just another

24:09

form of light, light with very short

24:11

wavelength. Okay, the X-rays were being produced

24:13

because matter was falling into the black

24:16

hole. Why would X-rays be produced

24:18

because the black hole was absorbing

24:20

this matter? Yeah, well, it was, you know,

24:22

maybe ripping apart a star or something like

24:24

that. But before that matter actually sinks into

24:26

the maw of the black hole, it's

24:29

spinning around the black hole. It's

24:31

going around. So you heat up that gas. You heat

24:33

it up so high to millions of degrees, and then

24:35

it makes X-rays. That's how you make X-rays. Now,

24:38

you might expect that there would be X-rays produced

24:40

not just on the side of the black hole

24:42

you could see, but on the side of the

24:44

black hole, you know, behind the black hole, right,

24:46

that you couldn't see. But

24:48

Einstein predicted that the intense gravitational

24:50

field of the black hole would

24:53

bend that light, those X-rays, causing

24:55

them to come around the black

24:57

hole and be seen by us.

24:59

Like that truck bending the light

25:01

of the objects around it. Only

25:04

you said that the truck isn't massive enough to

25:06

really make much difference, so it can't really bend

25:08

light. Yeah, well, it bends like that, but

25:10

you'd have a hard time measuring that bend. It's so

25:12

tiny. But here you've got a big black

25:14

hole, and, you know, then it bends things enough for

25:16

you to measure it. So these

25:18

researchers saw X-rays coming from the backside

25:21

of the black hole. It was the

25:23

first direct observation of light from behind

25:25

a black hole. Again, that's

25:27

a scenario predicted by Einstein's theory of

25:29

general relativity, but it hadn't been confirmed

25:32

until now. Score Einstein.

25:35

But there is something that even he

25:37

wouldn't have predicted about black holes. That

25:40

discovery would be left to Stephen Hawking. Now,

25:42

we've been talking about the weird events around

25:45

a black hole, but what if you get

25:47

closer to the edge of a black hole?

25:49

What's called the event horizon? Now

25:51

we need to put on our quantum mechanics hats for

25:53

that. Yeah, those are hats

25:55

that are sometimes there and sometimes not. Particles

25:59

are radiated. radiating from the edge of that

26:01

black hole and the discovery of

26:03

Hawking radiation Changed our

26:05

understanding of black holes I'm

26:08

Jan 11 and I'm a

26:10

theoretical astrophysicist at Barnard College

26:13

of Columbia University And

26:15

I'm also director of Sciences at

26:17

Pioneer works Hawking

26:19

radiation was really spectacular discovery because

26:21

nobody saw it coming nobody anticipated

26:24

it The idea is really that

26:26

if you just look at pure

26:28

gravity no particles in the universe

26:30

just pure gravity then

26:32

a black hole creates an event horizon,

26:35

which is just a region beyond which

26:37

not even light can escape and And

26:40

this event horizon is very strict so

26:42

that the black hole becomes

26:45

completely screened and separate from the rest

26:47

of the universe in the sense that

26:49

nothing that falls in will ever come

26:51

out again and That

26:54

makes it seem as though the black hole couldn't

26:56

possibly Radiate because when

26:58

you radiate you're emitting stuff you're emitting particles

27:01

and what Hawking realized is that when you add? Quantum

27:04

mechanics when you start to add the

27:06

deep fundamental nature quantum nature

27:09

of matter that in

27:11

fact There is this very subtle

27:13

process by which the black hole

27:16

can actually get smaller and Emit

27:19

particles so what you're

27:21

saying is that unlike diamonds black

27:23

holes are not forever Yeah,

27:26

well we thought they were forever exactly

27:29

and that they could only get bigger

27:31

That's the one-way street black holes can

27:33

only grow and what Hawking

27:35

realized is that over a very very

27:38

long time scale much much much longer than

27:40

the age of the current universe a Large

27:43

black hole a black hole the size

27:45

of a star will eventually not only

27:47

evaporate but explode in the final stages

27:50

together So the black hole has

27:52

a kind of temperature at which it is Evaporating

27:54

and it's cooler the bigger the black

27:57

hole and it's hotter the smaller the

27:59

black hole So right now all

28:01

the black holes we know of in the

28:03

universe are too cold to possibly notice that

28:06

they're evaporating It's only after a very very

28:08

very long time in the far future That

28:11

they'll be small enough that the temperature will be

28:13

hot enough that we would Imagine

28:16

it being detectable, but by then presumably

28:18

will be long gone Maybe

28:20

you could explain how they do evaporate because of

28:22

course it's not in the way that a puddle

28:25

of water evaporates How does a black hole if

28:28

nothing can escape from a black hole how can it

28:30

get smaller and go away? It's actually

28:32

a really gorgeous realization. So right

28:34

outside the event horizon. Let's suppose

28:37

space is completely empty There's no

28:39

actual matter in the universe in

28:42

quantum mechanics You can't ever really

28:44

say that there's nothing there if

28:47

you've ever heard of the Heisenberg

28:49

uncertainty principle It's the idea that

28:51

you cannot precisely pinpoint the location

28:53

of a particle and its

28:55

energy or momentum and That

28:58

very subtle idea leads to the possibility

29:00

that if you can't precisely pinpoint of

29:02

something's there You can't actually

29:04

say it's not there either And

29:07

so there's a literally a quantum

29:09

limit to what nothing means nothing

29:11

doesn't mean that there's never particles

29:13

there It just means that they're

29:15

kind of popping in and out

29:17

frothing in this quantum fluctuations So

29:20

nothing is actually this

29:22

very subtle possibility

29:25

of things kind of existing and

29:27

then disappearing again and what Hawking

29:29

realized is if two

29:32

particles come out of the vacuum One

29:35

of them can be stolen by the black hole

29:37

and then the other one can't go

29:40

back to being nothing again It's like you've

29:42

ruined it one of the analogies

29:44

I like to give is to say imagine

29:46

empty space has the color green and when

29:48

two particles come from Empty space they can

29:50

be a blue particle and a yellow particle

29:53

because together they make green But

29:55

once the blue particle gets stolen by the

29:57

black hole the yellow one can't go back

30:00

The vacuum again. And. It actually

30:02

escapes and travels far away and so if

30:04

you were looking from far away you would

30:06

receive this yellow particle and you would say

30:09

that looks like a came from the black

30:11

hole but in fact it comes from right

30:13

outside the black hole. Okay, so things

30:15

don't actually have to escape from a black

30:17

hole. it's it's just there to suck in.

30:19

I don't know. Your twin brother or something

30:21

and the other brother can escape. That's right.

30:24

But the weird thing is because of

30:26

the odd nature of space and time.

30:28

When the black hole absorbs the partner

30:30

particle, it can actually make it lighter.

30:32

And that is just a very strange

30:34

peculiarity of what happens when you cross

30:37

event horizon of space and time switching

30:39

places. and so the black hole actually

30:41

gets a little bit lighter in this

30:43

process, not heavier. And that's really odd.

30:45

And that is was it was so

30:48

odd that you would have thought it

30:50

was wrong. And well. Hawkins discovery of

30:52

Hawking Radiation has. Inside at a lot

30:54

of controversy. None of it is about

30:56

the mechanism itself. Everyone believes that yes,

30:59

in fact, this is how black holes

31:01

would evaporate. That's not controversial. Will.

31:03

Let me ask you about another

31:05

strange behavior and perhaps it's related

31:07

to this is a black hole.

31:10

Radiation and problems. And that

31:12

is what's called the information

31:14

Paradox. And or I guess

31:16

it's not a reference to help poor

31:18

my local paper has begun to be

31:20

a black hole information paradox. What might

31:22

that be? Well. A

31:24

hockey and when he wrote this

31:27

paper he knew that he hadn't

31:29

really be gone. A kind of

31:31

a a revolution of sorts because

31:33

the story doesn't end there. He

31:35

knew that it meant something really

31:37

profound and that is because the

31:40

black hole is operation in some

31:42

sense never involves anything from the

31:44

inside coming out. You would have

31:46

let's say a black hole that

31:48

to made with a bunch of

31:50

matter and that matter carries with

31:53

it quantum information. about that matter

31:55

and i'm and yet this black

31:57

holes getting lighter and lighter without

31:59

ever revealing that information that it's

32:01

kept trapped behind the event horizon

32:04

through this subtle process. And so it's

32:06

as though you've yanked the curtain up

32:08

when the black hole is gone and

32:10

explodes. And all of that information trapped

32:12

in the matter has just disappeared. It

32:14

never made it out of the black

32:16

hole. And so the argument

32:19

became, well if the Hawking radiation carries

32:21

no information then there's something really pathological

32:23

about the universe because all of our

32:25

laws of physics tell us this

32:28

kind of information cannot be lost. It

32:30

cannot be destroyed. It might be very

32:32

hard to reconstruct. If I take your

32:34

local newspaper and I burn it up

32:36

in flames, it's going to be very,

32:38

very hard for me to reconstruct the

32:40

information that was in the paper. It's

32:42

technically possible. The information is not lost,

32:44

it's just scattered. In this example it

32:46

is fundamentally lost. I'm the only single

32:48

example that had ever been presented in

32:51

the history of physics where the information would be

32:53

lost. And so quantum theorists

32:55

started to argue with the relativists,

32:57

the ones on the side of

33:00

event horizons and black holes, about whether

33:02

or not information really

33:04

leaked out and how did it happen. And

33:07

so this has been going on now for

33:10

more than 30 years. That the debates have

33:12

been going back and forth about whether or

33:14

not is acceptable to lose the information or

33:16

somehow it gets out. So that

33:18

information has not come to light, at

33:21

least on the blackboards of the theoreticians.

33:23

No. Let me ask you

33:25

something else. And that is what

33:27

was so appealing about black

33:29

holes. They just seem like a

33:32

pathology in the cosmos. Just something

33:34

that can go wrong if you have a big star in

33:36

a dyes or something like that. Yeah, so

33:38

black holes are profoundly interesting in

33:41

the sense that they're unlike any

33:43

other object you can imagine in

33:45

the universe. Not just discussing the

33:47

peculiarities, but in the following sense

33:49

that I can tell the difference

33:51

between one chair and another chair. They're not identical

33:54

in any sense. One star and another star, a

33:56

person and another person. Black holes

33:58

of a certain mass spin

34:01

are absolutely indistinguishable

34:03

identical to every other black

34:06

hole with that mass and

34:08

spin. That is a very

34:10

profound statement. It makes them like they're

34:12

fundamental particles, fundamental gravitational particles,

34:15

as though there's something about

34:17

them that is deeper

34:19

in the laws of physics than

34:21

other things that we're used to. And that sense

34:24

of black hole is not a composite of other

34:26

things. It is literally an empty

34:28

region, a place in space-time. It is

34:30

empty as far as you are concerned.

34:32

Whatever that stuff was that made the

34:34

black hole in the first place is

34:36

long gone. And you can't tell

34:39

if it was made of Encyclopedia Britannica's

34:41

or Tesla's or if it was made

34:43

of dark matter. You actually can never

34:45

know that information. And so people think

34:48

you can make black holes at accelerators,

34:50

that you can make black holes little

34:52

tiny ones in the early universe because

34:54

there's something about them that's fundamental. And

34:57

I can't make little chairs in accelerators

34:59

in the early universe or I can't make little

35:01

stars. I could make little black holes.

35:04

And so black holes become a terrain

35:07

and a very special terrain on

35:09

which to play out the laws of

35:11

physics, to figure out what's next, what's

35:13

deeper, what's deeper than gravity, what's deeper

35:16

than quantum mechanics. And so that's really

35:18

the beauty. They offer us that playground.

35:21

Jan 11, thanks so very much for speaking

35:23

with us. Thank you so much. Great to be

35:25

on the show. Jan

35:27

11 is a theoretical astrophysicist at

35:29

Barnard College of Columbia University, and

35:32

she is the director of sciences

35:34

at Pioneer Works. Okay,

35:37

so to get our head around the

35:39

conversation that you had with Dr. Levin,

35:42

if we understand this right, would

35:44

all the matter in the universe

35:46

eventually disappear if black holes evaporate?

35:49

Well, that's right, because over the really

35:51

long time scale, I'm not talking centuries

35:53

here, millennia or eons or anything like

35:56

that, but talking about, you know, really

35:58

long time scales. Everything falls

36:00

into black holes. All those stars, which will

36:02

have burned out by then, in our galaxy,

36:04

they just collapse into a big black hole

36:06

in the center. So all you have left

36:08

in the universe essentially is black holes. But

36:10

then it turns out because of this Hawking

36:12

radiation, the black holes eventually all go away.

36:15

So everything falls into the black holes the way

36:17

that at your house everything falls into your kitchen

36:19

sink apparently? That's what we've learned from this? That

36:21

would make cleaning up easier. Yeah, well. Okay.

36:25

And so the black holes suck it all in or

36:27

draw it all in and then the black holes themselves

36:29

evaporate and then there's nothing?

36:31

What's left in the universe? Well, there's

36:33

these little particles that were produced

36:35

when the black holes evaporated, of

36:38

course, but everything is very cold.

36:40

It's obviously very dark. I

36:42

mean, the universe keeps expanding, but nothing

36:44

ever happens again. Kind of boring.

36:46

Do we know this to be true though? Has it

36:48

happened? Or is this what? I mean, if it's a

36:50

cyclic universe, maybe it's already happened, but is this what

36:53

is the forecast for the universe? This is the

36:55

forecast, yes. Now mind you, you

36:57

can plan to stick around until it does

36:59

happen. The time scale is about 10 to

37:01

the 100th years. That's a one followed by 100 zeros.

37:04

That's a long wait. I like that you suggest

37:06

you just have to plan to stick around. Yes,

37:08

well. I don't know what that plan would look

37:10

like. Well, you should embrace it. But

37:12

this is a theory, like Einstein's theories

37:14

and Hawking's theories, this is a theory

37:16

that this is what happens to the

37:18

universe, the ultimate fate of the universe.

37:20

Can we prove it though? Well, I

37:23

think the only thing you can do in the short

37:25

term is to find a small black hole, because

37:28

small black holes will evaporate on short time

37:30

scales. And just as they're going out, they

37:32

explode, right? So if you could find some

37:34

exploding black holes, that would at least prove

37:36

that part of the theory. That would prove

37:39

that Stephen Hawking was right. But you

37:41

said that all black holes are small. Do you mean really

37:43

small black holes? Yeah, no, in size

37:45

they are. But this would be a matter of

37:47

mass. If you could take, for

37:49

example, Mount Everest and turn it into a black

37:51

hole, that's what I call a small black hole.

37:54

That's not a plan that someone has. No,

37:56

but it may have happened shortly after the

37:58

Big Bang or during the Big Bang. that a lot of

38:01

these very small black holes were made. Well,

38:18

just when you felt comfortable with

38:20

things being relative in Einstein's world,

38:23

it turns out that it has limits. His

38:25

physics describes the behavior of things on the large

38:27

scale. Planets and galaxies,

38:29

even trucks. But

38:32

we see the possibility of trouble with

38:34

physics on the very small scale. And

38:36

Einstein's theories don't help us understand how

38:39

things behave at that scale. We

38:41

have quantum mechanics for that. And now

38:43

the unexpected behavior of a cousin of

38:45

the electron, called a muon, may be

38:47

showing us a crack in one of

38:49

physics' most reliable models. This

38:52

episode is Freaky Physics on Big Picture

38:54

Science. Hello

39:08

everyone, you may recognize me as Gabby from

39:11

the History of Everything podcast. And my name

39:13

is Brina, and you don't recognize me from

39:15

anything...yet. Together we're

39:17

two scientists who explore all of the

39:19

weird little questions and conspiracies of the

39:21

universe in our new podcast, Mystery of

39:23

Everything. Everything has an

39:25

explanation...we hope! But that is

39:27

what we're here to figure out. We will dive

39:30

into the science behind many popular conspiracy theories, such

39:32

as vaccines causing autism, flat earth theory,

39:35

and was the moon landing fake? And

39:37

if so, why the heck would anyone

39:39

even do that? But it's

39:41

not just conspiracies. There's a lot of cool

39:43

mysteries that we will attempt to use science

39:45

to explain, such as near-death

39:47

experiences. What made the

39:49

Vikings go berserk? And can

39:51

I control my co-host with MKUltra? Wait,

39:54

what? Anyway, make sure

39:56

to check out the Mystery of Everything podcast,

39:59

everywhere where you... it

40:11

wasn't all that long ago that we

40:13

thought that all matter was made up

40:15

of just three building blocks, protons, neutrons

40:17

and electrons. But as physicists

40:19

built larger and larger particle accelerators, they

40:21

found out that the recipe book for

40:24

matter was not quite so simple. We

40:26

now know of 57 different elementary

40:28

particles, a whole particle zoo. But

40:30

just as a zoo is organized

40:33

into fish, reptiles, mammals, primates and

40:35

the cotton candy stand, so too

40:37

do scientists organize these different particles

40:39

into various categories. It's called the

40:42

Standard Model. In

40:44

much the way that the zoo

40:46

organizes animals but doesn't actually explain

40:48

how evolution works, so too, the

40:50

Standard Model allows us to categorize

40:52

elementary particles. But it doesn't explain

40:55

why these 57 varieties exist. But

40:59

still, it's the best tool we have

41:01

for understanding the basic building blocks of

41:03

the universe. But the best may not

41:05

be good enough because the results of a

41:07

recent experiment may upend the Standard Model of

41:09

physics. Remember that almost

41:11

every time we found a theory that

41:13

was slightly wrong, like Newtonian physics, for

41:15

instance, it's opened a door to a

41:18

better, more complete theory. The troublemaker this

41:20

time is an elementary particle called the

41:22

muon. The muon is a

41:24

component of cosmic rays, which are

41:26

hitting us all the time. And

41:28

by the way, Einstein's theory of relativity comes

41:31

to our aid once again, this time in

41:33

helping us to measure the muon. Cosmic

41:36

ray muons, which are hitting us, are traveling

41:38

close to the speed of light, and so

41:40

their internal clocks go slower due to

41:43

relativity, and so they actually live longer.

41:46

Saying they stick around longer is all relative,

41:48

of course, if they weren't moving so fast.

41:51

They disappear in about two millionths of a

41:53

second, zip. But The fact

41:55

that they stick around a little longer, at least from

41:57

our point of view, helps us to measure their

41:59

properties. These otherwise he would be very

42:02

difficult. The measurement seem to suggest

42:04

that them you answered been weird.

42:06

They don't seem to obey the

42:08

predictions of the standard model. Snow.

42:10

You don't have to wait for a

42:12

shower of nuance from cosmic rays. You

42:15

can create your own University of Manchester.

42:17

Physicists Mark Lancaster and his team created

42:19

Nuance at the Fermilab Particle Accelerator, a

42:22

large collider just outside Chicago. So

42:24

what we do there is Sweet

42:26

Accelerates Pro Songs and we hit

42:29

them into a target which is

42:31

basically also discuss Haney protons and

42:33

then they will produce the subatomic

42:36

particles called piles and piles which

42:38

contain quirks will decay to new

42:40

ones. That to Lancaster has

42:42

recently help run the new on

42:44

G minus to experiment at Fermilab

42:47

and the results were not let

42:49

physicists expected. According to the

42:51

standard model, Mew on should have

42:53

a certain amount of spin, but

42:55

window physicists measured that spanned. By

42:57

sending them you answer magnetic fields.

43:00

They seem to get an unexpected

43:02

answer which may put the standard

43:04

model of physics in jeopardy. And

43:06

by the way, it's unlikely that the findings

43:08

of this experiment were simply an air. While.

43:11

At the moment, near the probability of

43:13

it being gay, an experimental hours morning,

43:16

and forty thousand or so, it's quite

43:18

as good a small probability. I've

43:21

been voltage physics long enough to see

43:23

unexpected things disappear and I'm on small

43:25

on our slightly cynical. When you see

43:27

some internet using that may be too

43:30

good to be true. The cynic in

43:32

me goes well. let's wait. Let's take

43:34

a little bit more day to make

43:36

sure that we could lose it beyond

43:38

the bounds of probability of being a

43:40

fluke. Well. Okay but aside

43:42

from saying that, did you know

43:44

our expectations for mew ons were

43:47

may be wrong. Sounds like the

43:49

they were. What? is the implication

43:51

of this experimental result me why did

43:53

scissors his up and shout when it

43:56

was confirmed was you know other experiments

43:58

i believe that to do experiments

44:00

have shown this same behavior

44:02

that doesn't seem to be quite

44:04

right. The excitement is really because

44:06

the current theory that we have

44:08

to describe all these fundamental particles

44:10

is actually manifestly

44:13

not very good because it

44:15

doesn't explain a whole host of

44:17

things that are self-evident in the

44:19

respect, for instance, that we know

44:21

that galaxies are rotating quicker than

44:23

they should be and we believe

44:25

that's due to dark matter

44:28

existing. We also know that

44:30

the Big Bang should have created matter and

44:32

antimatter in equal amounts at the start of

44:34

the universe but in three

44:36

minutes all the antimatter basically

44:38

disappeared. We don't really

44:40

know the physics which is responsible for

44:42

producing dark matter or getting rid of all

44:44

the antimatter. What

44:47

we need to explain those phenomena is

44:49

some new types of particles or new

44:52

types of interaction and this may be

44:54

a signal that there is an additional

44:56

interaction out there because it's causing the

44:58

nuance to behave in a slightly strange

45:00

way. So that's why people are getting

45:02

excited because perhaps it's the first hint

45:04

of us seeing new particles

45:07

or new interactions. Okay, so the

45:09

standard model as I understand it,

45:12

it's kind of a classification scheme

45:14

but there's no real theory

45:16

underlying it. It's just a

45:19

recognition that there are patterns in the

45:22

properties of elementary particles. Is that right?

45:25

I mean, is that the fair

45:27

description? Yeah, in some ways like

45:29

all theories it's largely rooted in

45:32

experimental observations. The standard

45:34

model has been amazingly successful in

45:36

that regard in describing thousands of

45:38

pieces of experimental data. Like I

45:41

said, of course, it does have

45:43

these shortcomings in not describing dark

45:45

matter or the disappearance of antimatter

45:47

but I don't really want

45:49

to slag it off in

45:51

any real way. I mean, it is a

45:54

remarkable theory which has evolved over decades and

45:57

is mathematically extremely elegant.

46:00

beautiful, but it just has some pieces

46:02

missing. Well, if I can kind of

46:04

summarize what you just said there, the

46:06

slight irregularities and the properties

46:08

of the muon, well irregularities, they're not

46:11

coming up the way you figured

46:13

they should come up, that sounds to

46:15

me like when they discovered that the,

46:17

you know, the orbit of, or the

46:20

motions of Mercury, the planet Mercury, long

46:22

ago weren't exactly right

46:24

according to Newtonian physics. And that

46:26

was a clue that Newtonian physics,

46:29

for all its elegance, wasn't right in

46:31

that something different was needed, and

46:33

in particular relativity. So this is

46:35

kind of a clue that

46:37

yeah, you know, the standard model works, but

46:40

it doesn't always work. And there's this, is

46:43

it going to help you find out what's wrong here?

46:45

No, that's exactly right. That's

46:47

an extremely good analogy of taking

46:49

these small deviations in Mercury's orbit

46:51

to point the direction that Newtonian

46:53

mechanics wasn't correct, and we needed

46:55

general relativity. And it could be

46:57

that the small things, the deviations

47:00

that we're seeing in the properties

47:02

of the muon, are exactly

47:04

the same. They're showing the small deficiencies

47:06

in the standard model and a need

47:08

to invoke a better model, a better

47:10

theory, which has new interactions and new

47:13

particles. Yes, exactly like that. So

47:15

Mark, I take it you shuttle back and

47:17

forth from England to Chicago to run

47:20

those experiments at Fermilab. What's it like to run

47:22

an experiment at Fermilab? Is it, you

47:24

know, anything like what you see in the

47:26

movies of a scientist doing? A

47:29

little bit, yeah. There's lots of people

47:31

huddled around screens in different rooms. And

47:33

the amazing thing is that lots of

47:35

different bits of equipment all have to

47:37

work together at the same time. The

47:39

accelerator has to work. And when

47:41

we first start taking data, we turn on

47:43

all our detectors and they turn the accelerator

47:45

on. And it is that

47:48

there are a couple of people pressing buttons

47:50

going go, go, go. And then

47:52

you wait and you think, oh, is it working?

47:54

Is it not working? So there's always a

47:56

nervous thing when you go, is the beam

47:58

coming around? Are our detectors working? But

48:01

eventually that gets ironed out at

48:03

the start of the experiment and

48:05

then we try and run 24-7

48:07

for about nine months of

48:09

the year and we hope to run as

48:11

smooth as possible. So there's originally

48:14

there's chaos and excitement of does this work,

48:16

is it all going? And then you try

48:18

and just sit back and run it more

48:20

like a production line where you do just

48:22

press go and you sit there and you

48:24

come back three months later and

48:26

nothing has gone wrong. That never

48:28

happens. But okay

48:30

so what's going to happen

48:32

next? Where do we go from here? I mean

48:35

I suppose the theoreticians will be

48:37

busy trying to accommodate

48:39

the muon's idiosyncratic behavior.

48:42

What about the experimental end of this?

48:45

Yeah absolutely. The theoretical opposites are extremely

48:47

busy. They have quite a lot of

48:49

imaginations and so they're coming up with

48:51

a whole host of explanations all the

48:53

time. Experimentally of course

48:55

we need more data, we need to

48:57

analyze more data. That

49:00

data already exists and we're analyzing it

49:02

but it's a quite a slow process

49:05

analyzing this data because it's millions and

49:07

billions of interactions. But yes

49:09

we hopefully in the time scale of the

49:11

next 18 months or

49:13

so we will have analyzed this data and

49:15

then we should know for sure whether these

49:18

properties that we've seen are really

49:20

truly anomalous and are showing that the

49:22

new physics that everybody has been looking

49:24

for for many years. Yes, yes. The

49:27

assumption is that nature is somehow elegant,

49:29

that you don't need more than one theory. That one

49:31

theory should be able to explain all things and it

49:33

ought to be something you can write down on a

49:36

single sheet of paper or something like that. Yeah

49:38

you would hope so. I mean that's a bit of

49:40

a bias I think that we're

49:43

always looking for beautiful symmetries

49:45

and beautifully elegant theories. I think

49:47

we were spalled a bit by

49:49

predecessors Einstein and Maxwell and Faraday

49:52

and people like that who managed

49:54

to distill things down to beautiful

49:56

simple concepts. Life may not

49:58

be like that of course. biology certainly

50:00

isn't like that. We're hoping physics

50:02

is because well certainly my mathematics

50:05

is not brilliant and so I

50:07

prefer it not to be as

50:09

endlessly complicated. Mark Lancaster

50:12

thank you so very much for speaking with us.

50:14

You're welcome sir, thank you. Thank you

50:16

very much. Mark Lancaster

50:18

is a professor of physics at the University

50:20

of Manchester. Well when

50:23

we look at the big picture here and

50:25

there's very little that's as big as the

50:27

cosmos says, the question

50:29

that we posed at the top of the show

50:31

was are we entering into a new era of

50:34

physics, the most fundamental science. What

50:36

is your conclusion? Well of course

50:38

it's still tentative as Mark Lancaster said

50:41

there could be an error in the

50:43

experiment but if this muon result holds

50:45

up yeah this tiny

50:48

little crack something just slightly

50:50

wrong is the way all new theories

50:52

get started. They find some experimental result

50:54

that just doesn't agree with the theory.

50:56

How does the strange behavior of the

50:59

muon suggest that there might be new

51:01

physics and how would that help us

51:03

understand as he said the questions that

51:05

we have about dark matter

51:07

what it is and why at the

51:09

beginning of the universe there were not

51:12

equal amounts of matter and antimatter. One

51:14

explanation for this result if it holds up

51:16

is that there's another particle out there a

51:18

big particle and that could account for dark

51:20

matter maybe that is the dark matter. Why

51:22

can't we observe it? How do we not know what

51:24

this particle is? Well it's not always easy to

51:27

observe elementary particles. Think of the Higgs

51:29

boson you had to build a five

51:31

billion dollar machine that extends over a

51:33

dozen miles and more right to find

51:35

it so they're not always easy to

51:38

find. Physics is always a refinement of

51:40

the physics that came before and

51:42

there there are a lot of things we don't understand about

51:44

the universe still and so when

51:46

you open another door you understand a

51:49

little bit more. Einstein had a better

51:51

theory than Newton. It explained more things

51:53

and maybe you know whatever theory comes

51:55

next whether it's string theory or something

51:58

else will be an improvement on what we do. we

52:00

already have, which is relativity and quantum

52:02

mechanics. Well

52:18

we don't consider the talents relative when

52:20

it comes to senior producer Gary Niederhoff

52:23

and assistant producer Sarah Derwin. They help

52:25

make big picture science possible. I'm executive

52:27

producer of the show Molly Bentley. Thanks

52:30

also to financial support from Rina

52:32

Scholzky David and Sammy David to

52:34

NASA and to the William K.

52:36

Bose Jr. Foundation. Big Picture Science

52:38

is produced at the SETI Institute,

52:40

a non-profit education and research organization

52:42

that seeks to find life elsewhere

52:44

in this big physical universe. I'm

52:47

the Institute's senior astronomer Seth Shostak.

52:49

Also big thanks to our listeners

52:51

as well as our Patreon supporters.

52:54

This episode of Big Picture Science is called

52:56

Freaky Physics. Get

53:24

ready to geek out. The Wired

53:26

Science Podcast explores all the latest

53:28

and greatest in science. Everything

53:48

from strange diseases and biological breakthroughs

53:50

to interesting tech and mysteries and

53:53

outer space. Listen to Wired Science

53:55

today wherever you get your podcasts.

53:57

That's Wired Science Forever You. you

54:00

get your podcasts.